New Skyscrapers To Be Linked By Stunning 65-Metre High CycleBridge

On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 9:22:48 PM UTC-7, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Friday, November 27, 2015 at 7:28:43 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
Snipped
Although I believe that is still the fundamental concept threads do
take on a life of their own as time goes by :-)
--

Cheers,

John B.

No, the threads get HIJACKED by people who can't be bothered to start a new thread when the topic shifts. This makes it hard to find threads with relevant information when doing a search. I believe it's one of the contributing factors to the shrinking Usenet memberships an d usage.

Look at how few posts in this thread are even remotely related to the Copenhagen bridge.

I dont let it bother me anymore. Like many others if I need timely information or want to discuss a particular BICYCLING relate topic I now go to a bicycling forum.

Andrew is one of the few who'll post RELEVANT data to a bicycling related thread.

Cheers

itsa tourism thing....show and glow....feel good yawl got some pull...

traveling from the BRIDGE THING to Walker et al in the Mississippi of the North no big deal....

On Mon, 30 Nov 2015 03:21:40 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Sun, 29 Nov 2015 18:41:59
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 22:35:06 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Sat, 28 Nov 2015 07:28:34
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 21:57:47 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Fri, 27 Nov 2015 18:37:33
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Thu, 26 Nov 2015 23:08:48 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

Duane considered Thu, 26 Nov 2015 11:26:34 -0000
(UTC) the perfect time to write:

John B. wrote:
On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 10:34:41 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 25/11/2015 6:25 AM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 10:29:31 +1000, James
wrote:

On 25/11/15 10:09, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/24/2015 5:18 PM, James wrote:
On 25/11/15 02:24, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/24/2015 12:17 AM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
"A new pair of skyscrapers linked by a pedestrian and cycle bridge
will be built in Copenhagen Harbour with construction due to start in
2016.

The unusual new design is the work of New York-based architect Steven
Holl and will feature an angled bridge 65m above the water's surface.

The bridge needs to be high up in order to allow enough room for
cruise ships to safely pass by below. "

Article herte:

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/skyscraper...164450982.html




How innovative!! Finally, cyclists will have a safe place to ride
between skyscrapers!

See, that's the trouble with North America. The Danes are willing to
invest in REAL segregation, separating bicyclists from motor vehicle by
over 150 feet of VERTICAL space. But North American traffic engineers
still expect cyclists to ride on the ground! And why? Just to save tax
money!!

You can't expect everyone 8 through 80 to ride on the ground! Only the
"strong and fearless" will ever ride on the ground!



Smarmy sarcasm aside, yes the Danes are willing to invest in real
segregation, separating cyclists from motor vehicles where motor vehicle
volume and speeds are such that it makes sense.

I'm fine with that segregation where it makes sense.

Progress.

Trouble is, most
of the proposed segregation schemes in the U.S. really don't make sense.

Agree, same in Australia. The designers don't seem to have any
comprehension of what makes sense and what doesn't, or if they do, there
are so many other requirements of the surrounding infrastructure, too
many compromises have to be made.

I commented on the design of a separated lane proposal for a street in
Melbourne. I said the protected lane should continue to a busy
intersection, and a separate green phase for bicycles needed to be
added, so that cyclists were safe from left hooks and the charge of the
light brigade of motorists. The suggestion was squashed with claims of
reduced motor traffic throughput. In other areas there are cries from
shop owners if you want to remove street parking to make way for a cycle
lane. It's all about the car!


Well yes. It is called "democracy" I think. You know, that silly
scheme where the majority get to make the decisions?


Hmmm. Sounds like a new concept. Here in Canada the head of the party
with the majority of seats makes the decisions. The norm is about 30%
or registered voters. Parliamentary Democracy.

Of course. The 30% who actually vote get to make the rules. While the
70% who didn't bother with all the foolishness and stayed home get to
bitch about it :-)

--

Cheers,

I should have said 30% of voters. With 3 or 4 candidates the PM's party
usually wins with ~30% of the vote. There are no run offs.

Run-offs are expensive, so there is a reasonable excuse for not having
them.
The same effect can be achieved by Single Transferable Vote, where you
rank the candidates in order of preference. One election is held, but
the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated, the votes
cast for them being moved to their next preference. This is repeated
until one candidate has over 50% of votes cast.


What happens in the case of the "dirty bum that I wouldn't vote for if
he was the last man in the world"? Do I still have to show him on my
preference list?

No, you leave them unranked, so that your vote cannot be transferred
to them under any circumstances.

The greatest advantage is that it prevents a candidate getting elected
because the vote against them is split between two or more
alternatives with similar policies to each other.

I'm not sure I see the logic here. Lets say that he are a thousand
voters in one location and three individuals running for a political
position. Only about 50% of eligible voters bother going to the poles
and one candidate gets, let us say, 35% of the votes cast. the two
remaining candidates get 33% and 32% of the votes.

Well, having only 3 candidates or only a 50% turnout would both be
astonishingly low under such a system, but to some extent, the exact
figures are irrelevant.

Are you saying that as no one got a majority of the votes cast that no
one gets elected ?

No, the candidate who got 32% would be eliminated, and all the votes
cast for them would instead be allocated to their 2nd preference
candidate. With only 2 candidates, one would therefore have over 50%.


You mean that I vote for My Guy and if he doesn't win my vote get
counted in support of "That Stupid F--- that I wouldn't let clean my
furnace"?

No, because you don't rank that candidate.
Of course, that does mean that if you only rank one candidate, and
that candidate comes last, your vote is discounted, as it can't be
allocated to anyone else, but that's better than the normal FPTP
system of discounting all the votes that are cast for anyone other
than the highest ranking candidate on the first round of counting.

I don't think I like your system at all.

I'm fairly sure you are misrepresenting it on purpose, and actually
understand it perfectly well.

No actually I don't. I simply can't imagine a system where when I vote
for an individual the vote can be passed on to someone else and I also
can't envision a political system where the voters don't vote for an
individual but just pick a list of blokes... any one of which will do.
--

Cheers,

John B.

On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 09:10:55 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 11/29/2015 6:41 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 05:29:30 -0800, sms
wrote:

Not to be outdone in the craziness, Scott Walker proposed a wall between
the U.S. and Canada, to complement Trump's wall between the U.S. and
Mexico. Of course neither will ever be constructed.

Why build a wall? Just make a law penalizing those who benefit from
the illegal's :-)

Of course spending few million to build a wall will undoubtedly
benefit some people :-)

A few million won't build much of a wall.

Probably not these days. But as someone said, "a million here and a
million there and pretty soon you are talking real money" :-)
--

Cheers,

John B.

On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 06:32:05 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 11/29/2015 3:41 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 05:50:50 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 11/28/2015 3:28 AM, John B. wrote:

Not really. Pass a law that says that an individual that hires an
illegal worker is subject to 5 years in jail and a fine of 10,000
dollars, and a company that employs them is subject to a 100,000
dollar fine.

There was a program like that in the U.S.. The corporations that benefit
from illegal immigration fought e-Verify with a passion because they
would not be able to hire and exploit enough low-wage workers. Right
wingers didn't like it because a lack of illegal workers would drive up
wages. Progressives didn't like it because they would rather have
employed illegal immigrants than unemployed illegal immigrants, for
obvious reasons. I think that the program still exists but it is ignored
by those that benefit from ignoring it and there is no constituency with
any power that wants it enforced.

Of course it is possible to rationalize all kinds of excuses not to do
something but in reality the solution is quite simple, enact a law
penalizing the individual who does the deed and enforce it.

The solution is not simple. Anytime anyone tells you that there is a
simple solution to a complex issue do not believe it.

Sorry, but the solution is simple.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong.

H. L. Mencken

I hate to defame Mencken but Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest
answer is also likely the correct one :-)

--

Cheers,

John B.

On 30/11/2015 6:53 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 06:32:05 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 11/29/2015 3:41 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 05:50:50 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 11/28/2015 3:28 AM, John B. wrote:

Not really. Pass a law that says that an individual that hires an
illegal worker is subject to 5 years in jail and a fine of 10,000
dollars, and a company that employs them is subject to a 100,000
dollar fine.

There was a program like that in the U.S.. The corporations that benefit
from illegal immigration fought e-Verify with a passion because they
would not be able to hire and exploit enough low-wage workers. Right
wingers didn't like it because a lack of illegal workers would drive up
wages. Progressives didn't like it because they would rather have
employed illegal immigrants than unemployed illegal immigrants, for
obvious reasons. I think that the program still exists but it is ignored
by those that benefit from ignoring it and there is no constituency with
any power that wants it enforced.

Of course it is possible to rationalize all kinds of excuses not to do
something but in reality the solution is quite simple, enact a law
penalizing the individual who does the deed and enforce it.

The solution is not simple. Anytime anyone tells you that there is a
simple solution to a complex issue do not believe it.

Sorry, but the solution is simple.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong.

H. L. Mencken

I hate to defame Mencken but Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest
answer is also likely the correct one :-)

--


Ocam's Razor tells us that given more than one solution, the simplest
solution is the correct one. Not exactly the same thing. A solution
not being just an answer but a correct answer. g

In this case though, I think your suggested solution ignores most of the
problem. In many cases I'm happy that it is NOT so simple to enact a
law and enforce it.

On 11/30/2015 3:53 AM, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 30 Nov 2015 03:21:40 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Sun, 29 Nov 2015 18:41:59
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Sat, 28 Nov 2015 22:35:06 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Sat, 28 Nov 2015 07:28:34
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Fri, 27 Nov 2015 21:57:47 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

John B. considered Fri, 27 Nov 2015 18:37:33
+0700 the perfect time to write:

On Thu, 26 Nov 2015 23:08:48 +0000, Phil W Lee
wrote:

Duane considered Thu, 26 Nov 2015 11:26:34 -0000
(UTC) the perfect time to write:

John B. wrote:
On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 10:34:41 -0500, Duane
wrote:

On 25/11/2015 6:25 AM, John B. wrote:
On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 10:29:31 +1000, James
wrote:

On 25/11/15 10:09, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/24/2015 5:18 PM, James wrote:
On 25/11/15 02:24, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 11/24/2015 12:17 AM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
"A new pair of skyscrapers linked by a pedestrian and cycle bridge
will be built in Copenhagen Harbour with construction due to start in
2016.

The unusual new design is the work of New York-based architect Steven
Holl and will feature an angled bridge 65m above the water's surface.

The bridge needs to be high up in order to allow enough room for
cruise ships to safely pass by below. "

Article herte:

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/skyscraper...164450982.html




How innovative!! Finally, cyclists will have a safe place to ride
between skyscrapers!

See, that's the trouble with North America. The Danes are willing to
invest in REAL segregation, separating bicyclists from motor vehicle by
over 150 feet of VERTICAL space. But North American traffic engineers
still expect cyclists to ride on the ground! And why? Just to save tax
money!!

You can't expect everyone 8 through 80 to ride on the ground! Only the
"strong and fearless" will ever ride on the ground!



Smarmy sarcasm aside, yes the Danes are willing to invest in real
segregation, separating cyclists from motor vehicles where motor vehicle
volume and speeds are such that it makes sense.

I'm fine with that segregation where it makes sense.

Progress.

Trouble is, most
of the proposed segregation schemes in the U.S. really don't make sense.

Agree, same in Australia. The designers don't seem to have any
comprehension of what makes sense and what doesn't, or if they do, there
are so many other requirements of the surrounding infrastructure, too
many compromises have to be made.

I commented on the design of a separated lane proposal for a street in
Melbourne. I said the protected lane should continue to a busy
intersection, and a separate green phase for bicycles needed to be
added, so that cyclists were safe from left hooks and the charge of the
light brigade of motorists. The suggestion was squashed with claims of
reduced motor traffic throughput. In other areas there are cries from
shop owners if you want to remove street parking to make way for a cycle
lane. It's all about the car!


Well yes. It is called "democracy" I think. You know, that silly
scheme where the majority get to make the decisions?


Hmmm. Sounds like a new concept. Here in Canada the head of the party
with the majority of seats makes the decisions. The norm is about 30%
or registered voters. Parliamentary Democracy.

Of course. The 30% who actually vote get to make the rules. While the
70% who didn't bother with all the foolishness and stayed home get to
bitch about it :-)

--

Cheers,

I should have said 30% of voters. With 3 or 4 candidates the PM's party
usually wins with ~30% of the vote. There are no run offs.

Run-offs are expensive, so there is a reasonable excuse for not having
them.
The same effect can be achieved by Single Transferable Vote, where you
rank the candidates in order of preference. One election is held, but
the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated, the votes
cast for them being moved to their next preference. This is repeated
until one candidate has over 50% of votes cast.


What happens in the case of the "dirty bum that I wouldn't vote for if
he was the last man in the world"? Do I still have to show him on my
preference list?

No, you leave them unranked, so that your vote cannot be transferred
to them under any circumstances.

The greatest advantage is that it prevents a candidate getting elected
because the vote against them is split between two or more
alternatives with similar policies to each other.

I'm not sure I see the logic here. Lets say that he are a thousand
voters in one location and three individuals running for a political
position. Only about 50% of eligible voters bother going to the poles
and one candidate gets, let us say, 35% of the votes cast. the two
remaining candidates get 33% and 32% of the votes.

Well, having only 3 candidates or only a 50% turnout would both be
astonishingly low under such a system, but to some extent, the exact
figures are irrelevant.

Are you saying that as no one got a majority of the votes cast that no
one gets elected ?

No, the candidate who got 32% would be eliminated, and all the votes
cast for them would instead be allocated to their 2nd preference
candidate. With only 2 candidates, one would therefore have over 50%.


You mean that I vote for My Guy and if he doesn't win my vote get
counted in support of "That Stupid F--- that I wouldn't let clean my
furnace"?

No, because you don't rank that candidate.
Of course, that does mean that if you only rank one candidate, and
that candidate comes last, your vote is discounted, as it can't be
allocated to anyone else, but that's better than the normal FPTP
system of discounting all the votes that are cast for anyone other
than the highest ranking candidate on the first round of counting.

I don't think I like your system at all.

I'm fairly sure you are misrepresenting it on purpose, and actually
understand it perfectly well.

No actually I don't. I simply can't imagine a system where when I vote
for an individual the vote can be passed on to someone else and I also
can't envision a political system where the voters don't vote for an
individual but just pick a list of blokes... any one of which will do.

Ranked voting is being used more and more on the local level. It
eliminates the costs of runoffs, and prevents a multitude of fringe
candidates from siphoning off enough votes to throw the election to the
less popular non-fringe candidate.

You are voting for who your vote is passed on to should your first
choice not win, the vote is not just "passed on to someone else" with no
action on your part.

In California, statewide elections are now non-partisan for the primary,
with the two top vote-getters in a run-off regardless of party. So you
often have two Democrats in the general election. They hoped that this
would result in less far right and far left candidates, which would have
benefited Republicans since they tend to nominate right-wing extremists.
But so far the Republicans haven't been able to grasp the concept, and
have been shut out of the general election while two moderate Democrats
compete.

On 11/30/2015 5:17 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Ocam's Razor tells us that given more than one solution, the simplest
solution is the correct one. Not exactly the same thing. A solution
not being just an answer but a correct answer. g

In this case though, I think your suggested solution ignores most of the
problem. In many cases I'm happy that it is NOT so simple to enact a
law and enforce it.

The "simple solution" usually ignores the total problem and doesn't
evaluate the unintended consequences. Not taking a big picture view of
things is the cause of a lot of policy failures. Even when those making
the bad decisions are advised of the likely negative consequences they
often ignore them because they have other goals. W was advised of what
was likely to happen in Iraq and the middle east if he invaded Iraq, but
he ignored that advice. The rise of Al Qaida and ISIS was not unexpected
to foreign policy experts, but the decision to invade Iraq was not based
on logic, it was based on manufactured "intelligence."

In terms of illegal immigrants, it's not too hard to predict what some
of results would be if employers were not able to hire them. Food costs
would increase of course, and it would be increases on many of the
healthiest foods--vegetables and fruit, as well as on meat. Less healthy
food that could be harvested more cheaply would become a larger part of
people's diets, so there would be increased obesity, diabetes, etc,
raising health care costs. Deported illegals with legal children would
leave their kids in the U.S. to be taken care of, so now the U.S. would
have the expense of taking care of the kids, but without collecting the
taxes and the adults were paying.

On the plus side, wages for farm labor would go way up so legal
residents doing farm labor would have increased income.

Maybe we could combine the proposals for "free college" with a
requirement that students spend 240 hours per year picking crops in
exchange for their "free" education.

On 30/11/2015 9:27 AM, sms wrote:
On 11/30/2015 5:17 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Ocam's Razor tells us that given more than one solution, the simplest
solution is the correct one. Not exactly the same thing. A solution
not being just an answer but a correct answer. g

In this case though, I think your suggested solution ignores most of the
problem. In many cases I'm happy that it is NOT so simple to enact a
law and enforce it.

The "simple solution" usually ignores the total problem and doesn't

snip
I don't like the word "usually."

It depends on what you mean. Computer science is pretty much based on
finding the simplest solution. A problem's complexity is relative to
the difficulty in finding a simple solution but it doesn't mean that one
doesn't exist.

Pascal supposedly apologized that a letter was too long because he
didn't have time to shorten it.

The problem here with "les functionaires" (civil servants) is that there
are too many people working on any problem and many of them have no
valuable understanding of the problem so they tend to bloat every
project and still miss the issue in the end.

On 11/30/2015 7:39 AM, Duane wrote:
On 30/11/2015 9:27 AM, sms wrote:
On 11/30/2015 5:17 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Ocam's Razor tells us that given more than one solution, the simplest
solution is the correct one. Not exactly the same thing. A solution
not being just an answer but a correct answer. g

In this case though, I think your suggested solution ignores most of the
problem. In many cases I'm happy that it is NOT so simple to enact a
law and enforce it.

The "simple solution" usually ignores the total problem and doesn't

snip
I don't like the word "usually."

Usually I don't like it either.

I just find it amusing when people insist that there is an obviously
simple solution to an incredibly complex problem and when the "simple
solution" is obviously not a solution at all.

In electrical engineering you have to use feedback to avoid instability;
open loop systems are often unstable.

One right-leaning organization did an analysis of how much the economy
would be impacted if all illegal aliens were deported.

"Removing all 11.2 million undocumented immigrants, both forcibly and
through Mitt Romney's infamous "self-deportation" policy, would take
about 20 years and cost the government between $400 billion and $600
billion. The impact on the economy would be even larger, according to
the study: Real GDP would drop by nearly $1.6 trillion and the policy
would shave 5.7 percent off economic growth. Researchers Laura Collins
and Ben Gitis also write that their estimates are conservative, since
they do not include, for example, the cost of constructing new courts,
prisons, and other buildings that might be needed to process and detain
millions of immigrants."

These estimates don't include the costs of rounding up and deporting
everyone, they are only the hit that the economy would take if they were
all gone.

You can be pretty sure that all those Trump voters believe that the U.S.
would be saving money if all the illegal aliens were gone.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-18/here-s-what-the-u-s-economy-would-look-like-if-trump-deported-undocumented-immigrants

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/the-conservative-case-against-enforcing-immigration-laws/387004/

On Mon, 30 Nov 2015 06:27:57 -0800, sms
wrote:

On 11/30/2015 5:17 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Ocam's Razor tells us that given more than one solution, the simplest
solution is the correct one. Not exactly the same thing. A solution
not being just an answer but a correct answer. g

In this case though, I think your suggested solution ignores most of the
problem. In many cases I'm happy that it is NOT so simple to enact a
law and enforce it.

The "simple solution" usually ignores the total problem and doesn't
evaluate the unintended consequences. Not taking a big picture view of
things is the cause of a lot of policy failures. Even when those making
the bad decisions are advised of the likely negative consequences they
often ignore them because they have other goals. W was advised of what
was likely to happen in Iraq and the middle east if he invaded Iraq, but
he ignored that advice. The rise of Al Qaida and ISIS was not unexpected
to foreign policy experts, but the decision to invade Iraq was not based
on logic, it was based on manufactured "intelligence."


You are dancing all around the problem and not facing facts. The rise
of the fundamentalist Islamic movement is not a problem in the sense
that it is difficult to understand and has rather simple causes which
anyone that understands the Middle East can enumerate. But the second
invasion of Iraq certainly was apparently based on ignorance and one
might even suggest on reasons far removed from any Islamic
consideration.

In terms of illegal immigrants, it's not too hard to predict what some
of results would be if employers were not able to hire them. Food costs
would increase of course, and it would be increases on many of the
healthiest foods--vegetables and fruit, as well as on meat. Less healthy
food that could be harvested more cheaply would become a larger part of
people's diets, so there would be increased obesity, diabetes, etc,
raising health care costs. Deported illegals with legal children would
leave their kids in the U.S. to be taken care of, so now the U.S. would
have the expense of taking care of the kids, but without collecting the
taxes and the adults were paying.

But the solution to the "problem" simple. Just penalize those that
utilize the illegal workers.

You are adding all kinds of complexity to a simple problem. Why, for
example, should anyone simply born in the U.S. be a citizen? I know of
no other country that awards citizenship on the physical location of
birth.

And yes, I can understand the reasoning in the mid 1700's but the same
conditions do not exist today, in fact one could argue that quite the
opposite is the fact today.

On the plus side, wages for farm labor would go way up so legal
residents doing farm labor would have increased income.

Your argument lacks basis in logic. Farm labour in, say the grain
business is largely legal, in the dairy business largely legal, in the
beef business, in the horse business ( a far larger business than most
people realize), in the cotton raising business, in the chicken and
egg business largely legal. In fact, it is likely that illegal farm
labour is probably a very small percentage of the total U.S. farm
labour costs.

Maybe we could combine the proposals for "free college" with a
requirement that students spend 240 hours per year picking crops in
exchange for their "free" education.

And why not? After all I have a good friend who grew up in Hungary
under the Communist government. His education, from primary through
collage was totally free and in return the State designated what field
he would work in. The system does work.
--

Cheers,

John B.