http://www.uspirg.org/news-releases/transportation-news/transportation-news/-president-obama-calls-for-smart-infrastructure-investment-to-create-jobs
I was watching a documentary on creating the Shanghai Transportation Hub. Brilliant bit of engineering and creative thinking. You have to hand it to the Chinese, they can work together, and see each others structural problems as part of the big picture. They are so modest about it too.
They put 19% car tyre rubber in the tarmac mix so it was stretchy to exactly 30cm. That was because they were joining a new bridge to an older bridge that has already settled. That might be a good way to repair bridges quickly that get washed away in floods.
Where I grew up along a river, we had retractable bridges to allow tall masted ships through. I don't understand why if you live somewhere prone to flash flooding this can't work. If your bridge is going to get washed away next time it rains, surely you build a bridge that has a solution to this problem. Even if you end up having to re-build a pylon, it's nowhere as expensive as building a new bridge. Anyway old bridges used to have pointy water dividers, so that they didn't take as much impact. I wonder why some bridges are over 1000 years old in Europe and we can't get a modern bridge to stay up these days. This one in Kent is 600 years old, 450 foot long and looks pretty good. http://www.villagenet.co.uk/highweald/villages/yalding.php
Well what a superb solution to that tarmac. What a good way to get rid of tons of car tires without having to have them disposed of. If it were me I would try doing the same research again for the specific needs of the tarmac. I wonder if it offers better traction, and less friction. That seems stupid to say, because if the road has better traction, it would offer more friction... der. You never know until it's tested though.
However I wonder if it could be used to build rolling bridges, that would be cool!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Bridge
Now if we are all resurfacing roads, does this also make it stand up to frost damage better, because it would cut the road repairs by millions! We get frost damage to our tarmac in winter.
The traffic zoning was so simple and clever. This is where playing with train sets and scalectrics comes in handy as children. we used to try all sorts of loops with our tracks.
What fantastic trains too. at over 400km per hour (nearly as fast as a plane) and silent because they run on magnets and are suspended over the track. They look dead cool as well! Obviously very eco friendly as they need far less energy to run them. It seems they are partially propelled by the magnets as well. I would love to have a look at one close up.
Also the use of reed beds to clean up the water. I am a great fan of reed beds. You get cleaner water and more wildlife, and it doesn't cost so much to treat water. What was interesting was that during winter they thought the roots weren't still doing the work, when the tops had died back. They were, which is why reeds are a wonderful resource. They were also used for roofing materials back in the last century. Now to get re-thatched it costs a fortune, and it's a dying art. Now we have to spend a fortune insulating our roofs, when thatch was a very eco solution, and is providing a natural insulator, it looks so pretty as well.
I have a great picture of an overgrown thatch I spotted in France!
I was watching a documentary on creating the Shanghai Transportation Hub. Brilliant bit of engineering and creative thinking. You have to hand it to the Chinese, they can work together, and see each others structural problems as part of the big picture. They are so modest about it too.
They put 19% car tyre rubber in the tarmac mix so it was stretchy to exactly 30cm. That was because they were joining a new bridge to an older bridge that has already settled. That might be a good way to repair bridges quickly that get washed away in floods.
Where I grew up along a river, we had retractable bridges to allow tall masted ships through. I don't understand why if you live somewhere prone to flash flooding this can't work. If your bridge is going to get washed away next time it rains, surely you build a bridge that has a solution to this problem. Even if you end up having to re-build a pylon, it's nowhere as expensive as building a new bridge. Anyway old bridges used to have pointy water dividers, so that they didn't take as much impact. I wonder why some bridges are over 1000 years old in Europe and we can't get a modern bridge to stay up these days. This one in Kent is 600 years old, 450 foot long and looks pretty good. http://www.villagenet.co.uk/highweald/villages/yalding.php
Well what a superb solution to that tarmac. What a good way to get rid of tons of car tires without having to have them disposed of. If it were me I would try doing the same research again for the specific needs of the tarmac. I wonder if it offers better traction, and less friction. That seems stupid to say, because if the road has better traction, it would offer more friction... der. You never know until it's tested though.
However I wonder if it could be used to build rolling bridges, that would be cool!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rolling_Bridge
Now if we are all resurfacing roads, does this also make it stand up to frost damage better, because it would cut the road repairs by millions! We get frost damage to our tarmac in winter.
The traffic zoning was so simple and clever. This is where playing with train sets and scalectrics comes in handy as children. we used to try all sorts of loops with our tracks.
What fantastic trains too. at over 400km per hour (nearly as fast as a plane) and silent because they run on magnets and are suspended over the track. They look dead cool as well! Obviously very eco friendly as they need far less energy to run them. It seems they are partially propelled by the magnets as well. I would love to have a look at one close up.
Also the use of reed beds to clean up the water. I am a great fan of reed beds. You get cleaner water and more wildlife, and it doesn't cost so much to treat water. What was interesting was that during winter they thought the roots weren't still doing the work, when the tops had died back. They were, which is why reeds are a wonderful resource. They were also used for roofing materials back in the last century. Now to get re-thatched it costs a fortune, and it's a dying art. Now we have to spend a fortune insulating our roofs, when thatch was a very eco solution, and is providing a natural insulator, it looks so pretty as well.
I have a great picture of an overgrown thatch I spotted in France!
Sometimes you see flowers growing in the thatch too.
It has to be wind and watertight obviously.
You also get birds and bats and beasties living in the thatch.
I don't have a problem sharing with the wildlife, so long as they don't eat the thatch or bite me.
This will be beautiful inside too.
We do have the technology to sort out all these problems. Imagine if some serious consideration were given to building a world our next generations were amazed at. Technology doesn't have to have an ugly 'skin'.
For instance in renovating the ouside of my victorian building, I kept all the old and weathered slates and put them on the roof at the front so it didn't look like a new roof. Its insulated to the teeth, and looks authentic, even to the extent that the roof now looks more warped than it did before we put extra timbers in to strengthen it. (I wasn't planning on building a movie set). All the rest is new round the back. It kept the charm of the building.
Well that's enough rambling for this morning, I might go do something useful....
Another thing I don't realy understand is why everyone is hovering over Libya like a flock of mal-nourished vultures. It's pretty obvious the moment the oil is flowing there is going to be a load of terrorists trying to blow things up. Think of the danger everyone will be in working there. Let Libya establish a proper government, and make sure there is a proper state in place for a few years, or we may find we have worse problems.
There is the old saying 'better the devil you know', which has kept Mr Ghaddafi in power so long. I guess that without a clear structure in the government and a 'cards on the table' from all factions in Libya, it's just not worth the risks of going there to invest in their oil industry.
Besides everyone really needs to be thinking of clean investments, and you can bet there will be some pretty big backhanders going on behind the scenes that the Libyan people won't see a sniff of an oil rag in their own economy. You may just end up funding Al Quaeda or similar groups anyway... directly... instead of backhanders from the Ghaddafi regime.
I wonder how many wars over the last 40 years haven't been started over oil and mineral rights?
Sorry about the spellings, I do try to correct them but the weebly site just loads back the typing errors.
This used to annoy me to bits too. http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks
I can never understand why basic textbooks can't be re-sold or have any value after doing a course. I like second hand books, especially with notes in the margins. The textbooks for every course would be changed by our local college, and you had to have that particular edition. What was printed inside was obviously pretty much the same. Also any relevent laws and bylaws. Health and Safety changes should be researched as well, as these change even before any book has got to print!
I still have a 1930s textbook, which was the standard reading for my profession until about 1950. It includes all the old concoctions, some of which weren't too healthy!
Wigmaking was still part of our apprenticeship when I did it. Still I can make wefts, switches, curls and ponys. Oh I am soooo old!
It has a section in it on how to deal with burns when you perm someone's hair. It was a given that the client would get chemical burns! That would land a hairdresser in a court case these days! The client just accepted this was likely.
I also did Black hairdressing, and seeing some of the hair damage caused by home relaxer kits gives me the shivers. I can never understand why these are sold over the counter.
It was lovely, we learned to do black hair for just one client. She ended up with her hair almost 20" long. Went to visit cousins in America, sat in the salon and asked to have her hair cut short because we kept talking her out of it.
The salon erupted and all the black ladies were shocked she could even imagine having all her gorgeous hair cut off. Then they asked how she got it relaxed in Jersey, how come she got such a fantastic relax if there were no black hairdressers. So our client said, 'They aren't Black'. This left a stunned silence for a few seconds apparantly, and then someone said, 'You mean white girls can relax hair'?
On the standard of this client's relax we were awarded honorary 'Black Girl' status! We had loads of Black clients after this, as suddenly people coming to Jersey knew they could get their hair relaxed, and we knew how to style Black hair. so they came to work and live here.
It has to be wind and watertight obviously.
You also get birds and bats and beasties living in the thatch.
I don't have a problem sharing with the wildlife, so long as they don't eat the thatch or bite me.
This will be beautiful inside too.
We do have the technology to sort out all these problems. Imagine if some serious consideration were given to building a world our next generations were amazed at. Technology doesn't have to have an ugly 'skin'.
For instance in renovating the ouside of my victorian building, I kept all the old and weathered slates and put them on the roof at the front so it didn't look like a new roof. Its insulated to the teeth, and looks authentic, even to the extent that the roof now looks more warped than it did before we put extra timbers in to strengthen it. (I wasn't planning on building a movie set). All the rest is new round the back. It kept the charm of the building.
Well that's enough rambling for this morning, I might go do something useful....
Another thing I don't realy understand is why everyone is hovering over Libya like a flock of mal-nourished vultures. It's pretty obvious the moment the oil is flowing there is going to be a load of terrorists trying to blow things up. Think of the danger everyone will be in working there. Let Libya establish a proper government, and make sure there is a proper state in place for a few years, or we may find we have worse problems.
There is the old saying 'better the devil you know', which has kept Mr Ghaddafi in power so long. I guess that without a clear structure in the government and a 'cards on the table' from all factions in Libya, it's just not worth the risks of going there to invest in their oil industry.
Besides everyone really needs to be thinking of clean investments, and you can bet there will be some pretty big backhanders going on behind the scenes that the Libyan people won't see a sniff of an oil rag in their own economy. You may just end up funding Al Quaeda or similar groups anyway... directly... instead of backhanders from the Ghaddafi regime.
I wonder how many wars over the last 40 years haven't been started over oil and mineral rights?
Sorry about the spellings, I do try to correct them but the weebly site just loads back the typing errors.
This used to annoy me to bits too. http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks
I can never understand why basic textbooks can't be re-sold or have any value after doing a course. I like second hand books, especially with notes in the margins. The textbooks for every course would be changed by our local college, and you had to have that particular edition. What was printed inside was obviously pretty much the same. Also any relevent laws and bylaws. Health and Safety changes should be researched as well, as these change even before any book has got to print!
I still have a 1930s textbook, which was the standard reading for my profession until about 1950. It includes all the old concoctions, some of which weren't too healthy!
Wigmaking was still part of our apprenticeship when I did it. Still I can make wefts, switches, curls and ponys. Oh I am soooo old!
It has a section in it on how to deal with burns when you perm someone's hair. It was a given that the client would get chemical burns! That would land a hairdresser in a court case these days! The client just accepted this was likely.
I also did Black hairdressing, and seeing some of the hair damage caused by home relaxer kits gives me the shivers. I can never understand why these are sold over the counter.
It was lovely, we learned to do black hair for just one client. She ended up with her hair almost 20" long. Went to visit cousins in America, sat in the salon and asked to have her hair cut short because we kept talking her out of it.
The salon erupted and all the black ladies were shocked she could even imagine having all her gorgeous hair cut off. Then they asked how she got it relaxed in Jersey, how come she got such a fantastic relax if there were no black hairdressers. So our client said, 'They aren't Black'. This left a stunned silence for a few seconds apparantly, and then someone said, 'You mean white girls can relax hair'?
On the standard of this client's relax we were awarded honorary 'Black Girl' status! We had loads of Black clients after this, as suddenly people coming to Jersey knew they could get their hair relaxed, and we knew how to style Black hair. so they came to work and live here.
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