RPI goes high-tech

RPI is running an “Exploring Engineering Day” this winter which I think C would enjoy. It’s free, but requires registration. Do they have an online registration form? No. You have to download a PDF. Is it a fillable PDF, which would allow you to easily and legibly enter your info and e-mail it in? No. You have to PRINT IT OUT and MAIL it. With your street address, so they can MAIL back a confirmation letter. Really, seriously? I’d expect that of a liberal arts college maybe, but c’mon.

(I went all 20th century and faxed it, then e-mailed the organizer to see if she got it. No response yet. Maybe they’re having trouble with their vacuum tubes or dropped a punchcard or something.)

They’re also inexplicably segregating the children by gender; boys in the morning, girls in the afternoon. (They didn’t have a place to mark gender on the form though; I wonder where they’ll place C.) Maybe they want the boys to get used to how it would be if they actually attended RPI?

the sky is falling!

Our household is becoming better able to weather short-term or long-term emergencies. Next week we are having a woodstove insert installed into our fireplace which should be capable of heating our house. I shudder every time Dan uses the fireplace because I feel it’s wasteful (it doesn’t put out much heat and it sends a lot of pollution up the chimney) but the insert should resolve both of those objections, plus we’ll have a backup heating/ cooking source when the power goes out.

A big birthday present this year was a water filter which, in addition to filtering chlorine and pollutants from our tap water, is capable of removing microorganisms as well. The filters should last over a decade and can render pond water safe for consumption. So if our town water supply has problems we’ll still be able to purify drinking water.

And I’ve finally gotten a 30-day supply of food stored away. I’m guessing that the food we keep in our kitchen would feed us all for 30 days, so having the extra storage in the basement means we can probably feed our family for two months. I see this as a good insurance policy, not only in the case of a community disaster or epidemic but if we’re sick or lose our jobs or for whatever reason don’t want to buy food for a while. I’ve stored things we normally eat- beans, pasta, etc.- which will be rotated into our pantry so the supplies stay fresh.

Given the ugliness and bad government handling of natural disasters over the last decade, I do not feel safe expecting outside assistance if my community is cut off from normal supply lines. Do you?

Halloween Trick or Treating

The start of a very rainy trick-or-treating night...C as mercury pollution from Lafarge Cement plant, A as ballerina/princess, and me as Gargamel--note smurfs caught in a net bag, "Azrael" the cat peeking out of my cape, and I also made "smurf brownies" with blue M&M's that came out well... (even though he wasn't trying to eat the smurfs, of course, but instead turn them into gold).

Closeup with a friend

showing off the new short haircut

Blossoms Halloween Parade

A is one of the big kids now! Don't forget to click on photos to enlarge.

I am becoming less jaded in my old age

I've been listening to more radio in the car lately, both as an attempt to shake off Kurt Cobain and because I've had more car time in the past week than in the previous month. What I’ve been hearing is catchy but disturbing. I laughed when I caught the line, “I know she loves me- she loves everybody.” Listening more carefully though it’s a sad and creepy song. Yet it's nowhere near as bad as "a kiss with a fist is better than none." It’s sickening to hear, and even assuming it is supposed to be metaphorical, it’s suggesting that it’s better to be in a painful relationship than in none at all. Please, go find the girl who loves everybody instead.

bike plan again

As expected, the final presentation of the Albany Bicycle Master plan was disappointing. I'm not sure whether the organizers wanted to limit attendance or are just inept (and am not sure which bothers me more) but they didn't announce the meeting until last week and didn't release the plan until today, so no one could read it before the presentation. Not that it would have mattered anyway, I suppose, since they again refused to allow questions or comments from the audience. (I was tempted to stage an uprising but was unsure of my support.)

A few things will be implemented in the next year or so. They're entirely inadequate but I didn't think they were going to even pretend that this process was going anywhere. This spring: an education program. Woo-hoo. We'll see what this looks like, and hopefully it will be more focused on drivers not killing people than bicyclists being irritating to drivers. Also, CDTA is going to assist businesses and municipalities in bike rack installation and include bike racks along the bus rapid transit line between Albany and Schenectady.

The big exciting finale: sharrows along a few disconnected streets. Sharrows are pavement markings with pictures of bicycles and arrows, intending to inform drivers that bicycles are in fact allowed on the road. Maybe they're better than nothing, but they risk giving the impression that bicyclists aren't supposed to be on the roads without them. (Bike lanes can be problematic in this way too, but at least with them the cyclists are getting something out of it.) And white paint is apparently very expensive 'round these parts because they're only putting them in a few random places. (Well, presumably they're not random and are streets that are being worked on- Delaware Avenue is one- but the final effect will be disjointed. And given how hard the City finds it to keep even lane markings painted, I wonder how long they'll be maintained.) Perhaps we need to just go in and paint our own, like these folks?

There are going to be actual bike lanes on Clinton Avenue but only for a few blocks.

The reports is at (100-page pdf) and comments can be directed to AlbanyBikePlan@cdtcmpo.org.

Biking ten miles in the rain after dark was thankfully not a total waste of time. It is a nice night despite the drizzle and a fox crossed Delaware six feet in front of me.

it's better than wanting an unnecessary minivan

I’ve been thinking a lot about going car-free once our current car dies. If there were a local carshare program, we could definitely do it, and I think we might be able to pull it off anyway- the occasional taxi or rental car should be less expensive than the monthly cost of purchasing, maintaining, insuring, and fueling a car. Even if we can’t keep it up long-term I think it would be an interesting experiment to try for a few months.

I’m perhaps using this to justify my lust for cargo bikes. I’ve researched them sufficiently to have picked out what I would get; a Yuba Mundo which is decidedly less fancy than a lot of options but should be able to do pretty much anything I want it to for a reasonable price. (Comparatively reasonable, I mean; it’s still more than $1000.)* I was pretty much set to just get it when Dan pointed out that we can really do most of what we need with our current bike trailer and that it was rather unlike me to buy anything that we can reasonably make do without. I didn’t much appreciate being forced to admit that I just wanted it because I like it, but it’s true, so I’m letting it wait. Hopefully the new model coming out next month will only be available in hideous colors to reduce my temptation.


* Nerdy details about the final narrowing-down once I decided to focus on the less expensive options: I was torn between the Mundo and a Big Dummy, which is similar in a lot of ways but has fancier components plus the benefit of working with Xtracycle parts which are coming out with more nifty accessories each year. (The Kona Ute, also in this category, didn’t sound as sturdy.) But in addition to costing more than 50% more, I was worried about the shape of the frame making it more difficult for both Dan and I to ride it. The top bar of the Mundo is angled such that I think we’re both more likely to be able to ride it comfortably. (Its frame comes in just one size, while the Big Dummy comes in several, which means it’s not designed to accommodate riders of dramatically different heights. Most people don’t share bikes.) Finally, a very patient man at a Portland utility bike shop was kind enough to chat with me and he said he’d get the latest version of the Mundo even if price were no object. Then I was sold.

You've probably never noticed this, but fathers are treated differently than mothers.

Facebook post from a guy I knew in college: “[Name] is beat from picking apples and carrying children all day.” His mother posted: “Dads like you are rare!” I was tempted to write something snarky about how fathers who spend time with their children aren’t rare in my world, where most of my friends wouldn’t consider having kids with someone who wasn’t willing to be a co-parent, and that men shouldn’t be given pats on the back for doing what ought to be expected. I managed to refrain (it’s his mother, after all, and I can give her the benefit of the doubt and pretend that she just wanted to tell her son that she’s proud of him and wasn’t thinking about her word choice) but it was difficult. When I see women posting similar things they get comments like “isn’t fall fun?” or “but aren’t kids worth it!”

It’s most noticeable to me when Facebook-ers are expecting children. Women can’t post anything without people mentioning the baby. “I had an avocado for lunch” will get comments about how they should eat more, or the unsaturated fats are so good for their fetus, or they’d better be careful so they don’t gain too much weight, or to enjoy it while they still got to eat with two hands. Men’s impending parenthood is generally ignored. A friend of mine who posted about his baby for two trimesters was kind of ignored; he’d put up a status like “Finished sewing curtains for the baby’s room!” and people would comment about his art, his house, anything but fatherhood. It’s so frustrating to see people who quite clearly are not choosing a stereotypical gender-based division of labor to remain externally defined by it. What could a pregnant woman possibly be thinking about other than gestating, after all, and her husband must certainly be more interested in other things, right?

(Incidentally, the research potential of Facebook comments is pretty much untapped; if I were in grad school I’d be figuring out how to use Facebook data for my dissertation.)

90% of you still have at least one kidney! Congratulations!

Social marketing can work. And pointing out that most of your peers are engaging in healthy or prosocial behavior can be effective, so, for example, a 16-year-old virgin doesn’t think she’s the only one left. But the University at Albany attempts to do this in a rather confusing way.

Every semester the counseling center hangs up posters around campus: click here to see them. The one on my floor says: “79% of UAlbany students drink alcohol twice a week, less often, or not at all.” This is presumably supposed to make students who don’t drink frequently feel better about themselves. My reading? More than a FIFTH of the student population is drinking three or more times a week. WOW. Really, twice a week on average is quite a bit, assuming that it’s typical student-type drinking rather than a beer with dinner. Wouldn’t the statistic have been a little more encouraging to non-drinkers if it only included those who drank less than once a week? Or was that number too embarrassingly low to publish?

Another? “80% of UAlbany students have not engaged in unprotected sexual activity as a result of alcohol use.” I’m not entirely sure what this is trying to convey. That those in this 80% shouldn’t feel like prudes? Seems a little bit backwards. Maybe it would be more effective to point out that an entire FIFTH of the population apparently has, which (a) you may want to make an effort to avoid, and (b) means that whoever you’re sleeping with may well be in this category and perhaps more likely to be diseased. (Also: 77% have not physically injured themselves and 88% have not gotten into a fight due to alcohol. Reverse those odds, and wow.)

There are more. “58% of UAlbany students consume four or less alcoholic drinks at bars.” Disregarding the grammar, it’s hard to even know what this means (other than that 42% consume 4+). Is this only among students who are old enough to drink at bars, or can just about anyone get served around here? Or are all the people lacking fake IDs included in that 58%? “89% of UAlbany students believe that alcohol shouldn’t interfere with academics.” The rest think it SHOULD?

I’m not sure whether the survey results were so disturbing that there was no good way to present the data positively, or if the campaign’s designers just weren’t thinking. I find it pretty hard to believe that these posters are going to do what they hope.