EMC Spraying Poison Beside a Public Highway

Ever wonder why all the trees and shrubs die under the power lines? Company workers spray toxic chemicals on them. Driving on GA 122 between Pavo and Barney and saw some electric company spraying going on. This fellow didn’t seem happy I was recording:

Note that this worker is unprotected from this poison. No eye covering, no mask. Spraying is a shame in many ways.

Why do they do this? Continue reading →

Fixing a perfect storm of bad planning and design

Asked about typical modern shopping corridors, Texas A&M Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning Eric Dumbaugh replied:
“from a traffic safety perspective, the modern commercial arterial is a perfect storm of bad planning and design. These roads are designed to support high operating speeds, making it difficult for drivers to stop quickly to avoid a crash, and the presence of commercial and retail uses on these roads means that drivers will routinely need to stop quickly in order to avoid crashing into pedestrians, bicyclists, and especially vehicles turning in and out of driveways.”
The 2006 article, Safe Urban Form: Revisiting the Relationship Between Community Design and Traffic Safety, by Eric Dumbaugh and Robert Rae, notes: Continue reading →

Trees make streets safer

Beta New Urban Network reported 1 September 2006 that Research: trees make streets safer, not deadlier:
Proposals for planting rows of trees along the roads — a traditional technique for shaping pleasing public spaces — are often opposed by transportation engineers, who contend that a wide travel corridor, free of obstacles, is needed to protect the lives of errant motorists.

Increasingly, however, the engineers’ beliefs about safety are being subjected to empirical study and are being found incorrect. Eric Dumbaugh, an assistant professor of transportation at Texas A&M, threw down the gauntlet with a long, carefully argued article, ”Safe Streets, Livable Streets,” in the Summer 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. A follow-up article by Dumbaugh, in the 2006 edition of Transportation Research Record, will present further evidence that safe urban roadsides are not what the traffic-engineering establishment thinks they are.

Though engineers generally assert that wide clear areas safeguard motorists who run off the roads, Dumbaugh looked at accident records and found that, on the contrary, wide-open corridors encourage motorists to speed, bringing on more crashes. By contrast, tree-lined roadways cause motorists to slow down and drive more carefully, Dumbaugh says.

Dumbaugh examined crash statistics and found that tree-lined streets experience fewer accidents than do “forgiving roadsides” — those that have been kept free of large, inflexible objects. He points to “a growing body of evidence suggesting that the inclusion of trees and other streetscape features in the roadside environment may actually reduce crashes and injuries on urban roadways.”

The study asks a key question: Continue reading →

Monsanto and Blackwater

Jeremy Scahill write in the Nation about Blackwater’s Black Ops:
Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the “intel arm” of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.
What’s the connection between Total Intelligence Solutions and Blackwater, the company famous for its activities as a military contractor in Iraq, and now known as Xe? According to the story, both are owned by Blackwater’s founder, Eric Prince, pictured to the right.

-jsq

Monsanto rep meeting with president of Peru

Illustrating access at the highest levels of government, a representative from Monsanto meets with Alan García, president of Peru:

García is the large man sitting in front of the flag. The Monsanto rep. is the short man sitting to García’s left.

It’s not clear when this meeting took place, but it may have been the one referred to in this 11 Oct 2007 story, which says: Continue reading →