I’ve made the switch from the old reliable Bloglines to the newer (and therefore improved) Google Reader to keep the manifold of Internet feeds sorted and stacked. The interface is, like all things Google, well thought out, amazingly intuitive and mostly mistake-free.

Unencumbered by the Bloglines bookmarking system, I’ve freely and easily accumulated a number of “starred items”, and rather than post a bunch of pithy links off to the right, I thought I’d dump them all on you at once.

Here’s the all time greatest cover of The Final Countdown, via HTATBL. If that doesn’t help you avoid the bummer life, then it’s hot on your tail.

One of my personal crusades is getting people to understand the consequences of using cell phones and iPods when they oughta be paying attention to other things, like their surroundings, driving, other people trying to get off the escalator, etc. Sometimes it’s annoying, but frequently it puts people’s lives at risk, and it’s one I feel acutely when I have a close call with a car whose driver is on the phone. It seems to me that if we know talking or texting impairs your driving as profoundly as driving drunk, then we oughta be as serious about stopping it. Perhaps the fact that one of the engineers on the Metrolink that crashed, killed 25 people, and injured 130 more sent 29 text messages in the hours before the wreck, the last one 22 seconds before the collision, will get folks to take it seriously. Or maybe we’ll keep inventing new ways to select ourselves out of nature, since we’ve defeated a lot of the old ones.

Dammit. I was going to post a link, via BoingBoing, of Big Bird singing “It’s Not Easy Being Green” at Jim Henson’s memorial service, but it’s been removed. Maybe YouTube was inundated with complaints from people about getting caught crying at work, it was sad and beautiful.

From Amsterdamize, The Dutch are trying to drop their CO2 emissions to 40% below 1990 levels, and one piece of that puzzle is figuring out how to distribute goods in dense, often congested urban environments. DHL is taking advantage of Amsterdam’s abundant waterways and using floating command centers, racy red and yellow gondolas that serve up to 20 bicycle couriers. Too cool.

Who Is IOZ? IOZ is the one talkin’ sense atcha, so listen up, then get to bookmarkin’.

The idea that we should cease purchasing oil that originated in this or that country as a kind of economic sanction to punish governments we don’t like for being Muslim and Scary and Evil is right on par, morally and intellectually, with the idea that we should invade them, kill their leaders, and convert everyone else to Christianity. The reason we should seek to reduce consumption of all oil is that it’s a non-renewable, dirty resource of declining recoverability which has deranged millennia-old patterns of human settlement and habitation for the past hundred years. Its point of origin is totally not germane.

Again via Amsterdamize, A Dutch traffic engineer visits Burlington, Ontario to help them build a better bike infrastructure. My feelings on helmets are similar to his, I think.

In the shadow of Burlington City Hall, the tall, lanky Dutchman Wim Mulder looks down at the bike helmet as if he doesn’t often wear one or hasn’t even seen one before.

Yet, the traffic engineer visiting from Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, is here to help Burlington build its cycling infrastructure. He rides. In fact, his job is all about growing his hometown’s cycling network.

“We have a policy that we want to make the roads safe enough that it’s not necessary,” Mulder says of his bike helmet, loaned to him before a group ride to see how Burlington measures up on cycling terms.

And finally, to get you on your way on this link-tastic Monday morning, enjoy some top notch Bicycle Kung Fu Fighting, courtesy of Cyclecious.

Gonna be tough not to have a great week now, ain’t it?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Ride By's. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.