Try getting around by bike in "America's Most Livable City"

Here are some recent e-mail exchanges that I initiated regarding commuting in to Oakland by bike. The most recent e-mail reply below was nice, made me happy. I would be interested in seeing some of the e-mail exchanges that occured between "Figures" in Oakland due to my sparkiness ;-)

Subject: Re: bicycle racks full in bst1 garage off lothrop
From: "BikePGH"
Date: Fri, October 16, 2009 1:45 pm
To: "P S" <@pitt.edu>

Hey P,

Sorry it's taken so long for me to respond. Suffice it to say, your email sparked quite the exchange amongst some figures in Oakland. I'm glad to see that BST3 has replaced the rack. As for the bus lane, it's true. Bikes aren't allowed in it, but how are you to know that? We're trying to fix that entire area, but it's going to take years. Here's a blog post all about some of the issues we're facing:

http://bike-pgh.org/2007/09/action-alert-demand-a-safe-route-into-oakland/

Keep in touch. We'll need you for future public meetings in Oakland to push the issue of making the neighborhood more bike-friendly.

-s

S B
Executive Director
Bike Pittsburgh
*****************
website: http://www.bike-pgh.org
*****************************

Here was the e-mail that I fired off after my lovely interaction with one of our cities fine bus drivers-

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:34 PM, P S wrote:

What is the policy for bicycles on 5th avenue? I was under the impression that bicycles were allowed to use the 5th avenue busway to get up in to oakland. There simply is no other reasonable way to get up in to oakland after crossing the birmingham bridge. Riding on Forbes would be suicide. There is that big new wide sidewalk along 5th avenue coming up from the birmingham bridge, but bicycles are not supposed to be riding on the side walk. I was riding up the busway on 5th today at about 1:45pm and bus #5617 came up behind me and honked at me. I don't know if she was just trying to warn me but she seemed pretty hostile. At the first light she came upon I caught up to her, I was on the sidewalk at that point. I stood there, pointed to my bike, then swept my hand up and down the sidewalk, trying to gesture "I am supposed to ride on the sidewalk?" She bent over towards me and clearly said, in a pronounced way, the explicative "Axx-hole" (substitute s's for the x's) I , at no time made any derogatory gesture, etc.. It is hard enough to try to barely avoid getting hit by a car every 5 to 10 seconds, just about anywhere in Pittsburgh. Additionally, most people are typically talking or txt-ing on their cell phone. Most people clearly have very little regard or concern for cyclists and basically treat us a nuisance. They frequently shout out comments, that can be derogatory, startling, or something along the lines of "Go Lance", such as when I'm climbing a hill (very clever). Thus, we are constantly objectified and treated as 4th class citizens. Pittsburgh is not a good, safe town to bike in. Is it too much to ask that a bicyclist can have a direct, straight-forward way to get up in to Oakland from the 2 adjacent bridges. Honestly, am i supposed to ride up the Bates street hill from 2nd avenue in to Oakland on the right hand side of the road? There is clearly no room, no bike path, the cars race up there pretty fast, and as noted, most are doing everything else but driving. I cannot afford to give a car a shot at hitting me. Thus, I ride up the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street. That sidewalk is typically devoid of pedestrians, maybe 1 or 2, sometimes, yet, that is considered illegal. The only other option is the rather round-about route through Panther hollow.

Another issue is that there should be 2 to 3 times as many bike racks in locations that are convenient to the buildings where one works around the U Pitt med school campus. It would be better to have more racks around that are empty than the present situation where the bike racks are overflowing.

Anyhow, it is amazing the number of bicyclists here in pittsburgh, but 95% of the population has very little to no bike consciousness. People that can establish that they commute by bike should get a nice tax credit, and this monetary benefit should be above and beyond the money that we save by not commuting in a car. This would be a reasonable solution, until society gets around to showing bicyclist a modicum of tangible respect (ie, safe bike lanes, direct bike commuting routes, etc.)

regards, P S



Here was an e-mail I sent off because it is darn hard to find a place to lock up your bike around Pitt Medical School-

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:17 PM, P S wrote:

Dr. L (ie, the big guy at Pitt Med School)-

Greetings.
There are 2 bicycle racks occupying 2 parking spaces in the BST1 parking garage off of lothrop. The racks are routinely completely full with approximately 40 bikes locked up to the racks and adjacent building railings. Frankly it is difficult to nearly impossible to find a place to lock a bike on most days. It seems that it would be helpful to give up the 2 additional parking spots and commit that section of the parking garage to bicycle parking. Plus, it may serve the purpose of encouraging more bicycle riding to work, especially if some ascetically pleasing signage was placed to accentuate that place as a bicycle parking corral. Thank you in advance for your consideration of this matter. I did not know who to contact regarding this matter and was hoping that you could forward this request/comment to the appropriate parties with your endorsement.

regards, P

All I'm saying is that this dude confronting Arlen Specter in a town hall meeting is a hero of mine at the moment



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9BhYnwNEpw

I just cut and pasted this article for safe keeping....



FACT CHECK: Obama's words on home aid ring hollow
Buzz UpSendSharePrint
By CALVIN WOODWARD and JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writers – Wed Feb 25, 5:46 am ET
Featured Topics: Barack Obama Presidential Transition

AFP – President Barack Obama waves prior to his address before a joint session of Congress in the Capitol in …
Slideshow:President Barack Obama
Play VideoBarack Obama Video:Health Care Overhaul? FOXBusiness
Play VideoBarack Obama Video:Rep. Perlmutter:Use Stimulus For Roads, New Energy CBS4 Denver
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama knows Americans are unhappy that their taxes will be used to rescue people who bought mansions beyond their means.
But his assurance Tuesday night that only the deserving will get help rang hollow.
Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who used lousy judgment.
The president skipped over several complex economic circumstances in his speech to Congress — and may have started an international debate among trivia lovers and auto buffs over what country invented the car.
A look at some of his assertions:
OBAMA: "We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values."
THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money only goes to those who got in honest trouble, it hasn't said so.
Defending the program Tuesday at a Senate hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it's important to save those who made bad calls, for the greater good. He likened it to calling the fire department to put out a blaze caused by someone smoking in bed.
"I think the smart way to deal with a situation like that is to put out the fire, save him from his own consequences of his own action but then, going forward, enact penalties and set tougher rules about smoking in bed."
Similarly, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggested this month it's not likely aid will be denied to all homeowners who overstated their income or assets to get a mortgage they couldn't afford.
"I think it's just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans," Sheila Bair told National Public Radio.
___
OBAMA: "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
THE FACTS: Depends what your definition of automobiles, is. According to the Library of Congress, the inventor of the first true automobile was probably Germany's Karl Benz, who created the first auto powered by an internal combustion gasoline engine, in 1885 or 1886. In the U.S., Charles Duryea tested what library researchers called the first successful gas-powered car in 1893. Nobody disputes that Henry Ford created the first assembly line that made cars affordable.
___
OBAMA: "We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before."
THE FACTS: Oil imports peaked in 2005 at just over 5 billion barrels, and have been declining slightly since. The figure in 2007 was 4.9 billion barrels, or about 58 percent of total consumption. The nation is on pace this year to import 4.7 billion barrels, and government projections are for imports to hold steady or decrease a bit over the next two decades.
___
OBAMA: "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."
THE FACTS: Although 10-year projections are common in government, they don't mean much. And at times, they are a way for a president to pass on the most painful steps to his successor, by putting off big tax increases or spending cuts until someone else is in the White House.
Obama only has a real say on spending during the four years of his term. He may not be president after that and he certainly won't be 10 years from now.
___
OBAMA: "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."
THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.
___
OBAMA: "In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas."
THE FACTS: First, his budget does not accomplish any of that. It only proposes those steps. That's all a president can do, because control over spending rests with Congress. Obama's proposals here are a wish list and some items, including corporate tax increases and cuts in agricultural aid, will be a tough sale in Congress.
Second, waste, fraud and abuse are routinely targeted by presidents who later find that the savings realized seldom amount to significant sums. Programs that a president might consider wasteful have staunch defenders in Congress who have fought off similar efforts in the past.
___
OBAMA: "Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
THE FACTS: While the president's stimulus package includes billions in aid for renewable energy and conservation, his goal is unlikely to be achieved through the recovery plan alone.
In 2007, the U.S. produced 8.4 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, including hydroelectric dams, solar panels and windmills. Under the status quo, the Energy Department says, it will take more than two decades to boost that figure to 12.5 percent.
If Obama is to achieve his much more ambitious goal, Congress would need to mandate it. That is the thrust of an energy bill that is expected to be introduced in coming weeks.
___
OBAMA: "Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs."
THE FACTS: This is a recurrent Obama formulation. But job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers.
The president's own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, "It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error."
Beyond that, it's unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it's clear when jobs are abolished, there's no economic gauge that tracks job preservation. The estimates are based on economic assumptions of how many jobs would be lost without the stimulus.
___
Associated Press writers Tom Raum, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Dina Cappiello contributed to this story.

enjoyed the comments of Rep. Capuano

Wall Street offers mea culpa for meltdown

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
11 mins ago
WASHINGTON – How's this for an image makeover? Someone on Wall Street is actually apologizing for any role he or his bank may have played in underwriting a housing bubble that burst and plunged the nation into a recession.
"We are sorry for it. I am especially sorry for what's happened to shareholders" and to all Americans, Morgan Stanley chief executive John Mack told a House panel Wednesday. "Clearly, as an industry, we have accountability and we're taking responsibility. I'll take responsibility for my firm."
The seven CEOs assembled with him remained silent.
Rep. Michael Capuano didn't, rejecting the apology outright and stopping just short of calling the banking chiefs criminals.
"You come here today on your bicycles after buying Girl Scout cookies and helping out Mother Teresa," railed the Boston-area Democrat. "You're saying, 'We're sorry. We didn't mean it. We won't do it again. Trust us.' I have some people in my (district) who have robbed some of your banks and they say the same thing."
It was unclear whether Mack's mea culpa did much to answer public fury over the conduct of an industry that got the recession ball rolling and was the first to receive a taxpayer bailout with virtually no strings attached.
Lawmakers on the panel weren't assuaged, many still bitter over passing the deeply unpopular $700 billion rescue that may or may not have helped slow the economic slide — only to see reports that Wall Street firms doled out more than $18 billion in bonuses to their employees last year.
Not helping soothe tempers: The longer the economy slumps, the harder it is to raise campaign cash for the 2010 elections. Every House member will be on the ballot.
Mere contrition and gratitude satisfied almost no one on the committee Wednesday, but the CEOs tried.
First point: They understand that everyone's furious.
"It is abundantly clear that we are here amidst broad public anger at our industry," Lloyd C. Blankfein, CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said at the opening of testimony.
Second: They abandoned any attempt to defend what so many find indefensible.
Why, Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., wanted to know, does anyone need multimillion-dollar bonuses on top of million-dollar salaries?
"If in good times you were told you weren't going to be getting a bonus, what part of your job would you not do?" Frank asked. "Would you, like, leave early on Wednesdays? Would you take longer lunches?"
"It's complicated," Mack said. "All that has to be looked at again."
Third: They're making sacrifices, too.
Citigroup's Vikram Pandit reminded the committee that he canceled an order for a $50 million jet last month because it seemed unseemly just after his company received $45 billion from the government.
"We understand the old model doesn't work," Pandit said, adding that he's cut his own salary to $1 until Citicorp returns to profitability. "We did not adjust quickly enough to this new world. Let me be clear to the committee: I get the new reality."
He would have been blind and deaf to have missed it. Citigroup canceled the jet order after none other than President Barack Obama pressured them to nix the "outrageous" expenditure.
What about Citicorp's other jets and those owned by the other banks?
"You could sell them" and use the money to reimburse taxpayers, commented Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif. "The big show of not buying one particular type of new plane flies in the face of how you're really flying."
No one took him up on the suggestion.
Next, the CEOs tried to frame the debate in future terms by offering to take personal responsibility for any problems going forward.
JP Morgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon even offered to personally deal with credit card rate complaints, one by one.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ridiculed "our captains of the universe" and demanded to know whether the banks toughened the terms of credit cards or loans last year.
Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis tried a little recession humor. These days, Lewis said, he feels more like a "corporal of the universe," rather than a captain.
Not amused, Waters snapped, "Did you increase your credit card interest rates?"
Yes, Lewis replied, on about 9 percent of Bank of America's customers.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

Bushisms over the years

This is from an AP article, just wanted to keep them somewhere so I can read them over and over, again

• "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." — September 2000, explaining his energy policies at an event in Michigan.
• "Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?" — January 2000, during a campaign event in South Carolina.
• "They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the commander in chief, too." — Sept. 26, 2001, in Langley, Va. Bush was referring to the terrorists who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.
• "There's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail." — Oct. 4, 2001, in Washington. Bush was remarking on a back-to-work plan after the terrorist attacks.
• "It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber." — April 10, 2002, at the White House, as Bush urged Senate passage of a broad ban on cloning.
• "I want to thank the dozens of welfare-to-work stories, the actual examples of people who made the firm and solemn commitment to work hard to embetter themselves." — April 18, 2002, at the White House.
• "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." — Sept. 17, 2002, in Nashville, Tenn.
• "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." — Aug. 5, 2004, at the signing ceremony for a defense spending bill.
• "Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." — Sept. 6, 2004, at a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo.
• "Our most abundant energy source is coal. We have enough coal to last for 250 years, yet coal also prevents an environmental challenge." — April 20, 2005, in Washington.
• "We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job." — Sept. 20, 2005, in Gulfport, Miss.
• "I can't wait to join you in the joy of welcoming neighbors back into neighborhoods, and small businesses up and running, and cutting those ribbons that somebody is creating new jobs." — Sept. 5, 2005, when Bush met with residents of Poplarville, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
• "It was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship. After all, 60 years we were at war 60 years ago we were at war." — June 29, 2006, at the White House, where Bush met with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
• "Make no mistake about it, I understand how tough it is, sir. I talk to families who die." — Dec. 7, 2006, in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
• "These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved." — June 11, 2007, in Sofia, Bulgaria.
• "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit." — September 2007, in Sydney, Australia, where Bush was attending an APEC summit.
• "Thank you, Your Holiness. Awesome speech." April 16, 2008, at a ceremony welcoming Pope Benedict XVI to the White House.
• "The fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place." — May 27, 2008, in Mesa, Ariz.
• "And they have no disregard for human life." — July 15, 2008, at the White House. Bush was referring to enemy fighters in Afghanistan.
• "I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office." — June 26, 2008, during a Rose Garden news briefing.
• "Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people." — July 4, 2008 in Virginia.
• "The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer — prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them. It's good to come down here." — Sept. 3, 2008, at an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast.
• "This thaw — took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." Oct. 20, 2008, in Alexandria, La., as he discussed the economy and frozen credit markets.

Success in Academic Research

So the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2008 was awarded to 3 individuals for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP,

 Osamu Shimomura, who first isolated and purified the protein from a jellyfish,

Martin Chalfie, who successfully expressed the GFP coding sequence in E. coli and C. elegans cells, and 

Roger Tsien, who made a key point mutation that dramatically improved the fluorescence properties of GFP.  

It is unfortunate, a travesty even, that Douglas Prasher was not included in the prize anouncement.  He was the individual that determined the nucleotide sequence and cloned the gene for GFP.   A critical, vital lynch pin to any progress that was made with GFP.   I don't know who else was working in the field at the time, but it's probably true to say that a powerful tool such as this would still not be in hand, but for the work of Doug Prasher.  Now, he is driving a courtesy van for an auto dealership in Alabama and has expressed his desire that he were still able to be doing laboratory research.   I guess I am just a disgruntled research academic with a Rodney Dangerfield complex that can relate.

Ballad of Larry Craig and our civil society

It is truly disconcerting to see how people reason, or not, about matters of liberty and justice....and it is funny how some things have an effect on me when I see situations where some case comes to light (ie, in the news) where we see somebody famous, or not, has gotten in to some apparent trouble with the law and watching how things go down. The first case in point was when I saw the fiasco that was the reponse of the boston police department and city government to the supposed perceived "bomb threat", some lite-bright type of devices placed at various visible locations around the city, that was actually a promotional for some upcoming Aqua-teen Hunger Force movie (I don't have cable so don't know much about this adult cartoon...I do enjoy some other mature cartoons, however). It was at that time that I set up this blog page...but, lamely, failed to start posting...so lame...

Well, I am ambivalent about this senator from Idaho but the whole concept of what happened really troubles me....it is just all endemic of the post 9-11 malaise that we find our country in, the greatest "democracy" in the world with liberty and justice for all, blah, blah....

So, there is some sting at the Minneapolis airport to catch men that are attempting to engage other men in the men's room for a little bit of bathroom jiggliness. The good Senator (I like saying that) was apparently acting in a bit of an erratic manner, standing outside of the stall, then bumping the guys foot in the stall next door, running his hand palm-up under the edge of the stall. Then he gets interogated by the half-whit sargeant, who seemed to berate him for not coming clean or whatever. Well, what the hell do you expect someone to do when they've been entrapt before actually doing anything to break any laws or cause any harm. Craig apparently was not admitting anything. Can you blame him? That would be a weird. ...And you smug one's beware. If you think you are exemplary and above reproach, there are other analogous situations where you could get nailed. ie, anybody who's driven right after just 2 beers (especially microbrews) at an office party or bar, can get stopped at a DUI checkpoint; there's a good chance most people would blow over the legal limit and spend the night in the hooskow. People are usually pretty uppity about themselves ....until they get caught doing "fill in the blank".

Anyhow, then some brilliant reasonable dude that actually blogs on the webpage, www.libertyblog.com, writes this in response to some other blog postings that apparently attempted to defend the good senator:

-------------quote from www.libertyblog.com-------------
"Nobody has to go to a dogfight. But if I’m in the Minneapolis airport and have to pee, I need to use the men’s room, and I shouldn’t have to visit a pseudo-sex club, or even a pseudo-gay bar, to do so.

As to homosexuals in the military, also alluded to in the Gillespie op-ed, the analogy of government in the bedroom has to be properly considered. Government ought to stay out of your bedroom, but when government runs the barracks and assigns roommates, it’s already in your bedroom. It ought to behave responsibly and not impose homosexual roommates on military members.

Is this stuff so difficult to comprehend? "
-------------end quote from www.libertyblog.com-------------

I love his closing ....ahem, like, dude, "I'm mister F'ing Common Sense Man (but isn't this the universal syndrome) anyhow ....so lame ....giant douche

I mean, was it really getting to be like a bath house in the Minneapolis airport bathrooms? And is this stuff being forced on you? Is it really necessary to be expending precious law enforcement resources on this? And besides, people, including even pre-adolescents, should learn how to be cool and carry them selves in a savvy manner. Just say "yo, dude, not interested, don't roll that way, whatever". We can't sterilize the world.