One of the things that has irritated me quite a bit about crosswalks in Eugene has been their placement relative to intersections. If a driver is supposed to yield to pedestrians, then crosswalk should be extended away from a traffic circle, so that a stopping or yielding vehicle that stops for a pedestrian also does not at the same time I impede traffic in the traffic circle. The crosswalk in the image shown allows for a full bus length between the crosswalk and the traffic circle.
Category Archives: Other Journals
Chocolate Log
Not all chocolates are created equal. This trip has had some which are better than others. This is an opinionated evaluation of dark chocolate. Usually about 54% or 56% dark.
This one from Belgium tasted great. I rank it a 4 out of 5. it had great taste but lacked just slightly on the cocoa butter content.
This was a 2 out of 5. Would not buy again or recommend.
This was at least a 4.6 out of 5 and worth taking back to the states.
This was the same as Frey in a different wrapping.
My long time favorite bar has been Ja! By ReWe, a German grocery… I have heard that it is actually made by nestle. And is certainly a 5 of 5.
Belgium by bike
Belgium, specifically Ghent had quite a few interesting bicycles. We also went biking with our friends. Katja was quite happy to be biking on the road and touring the inner city. … though the cobblestone did give her some troubles.
Bike culture surfaces in interesting ways. For example some interesting hitches exist as these are embedded into concrete walls.
I took some photos of the different ways that parents move their kids about.
Diverse Doors
One of the incredible things I noticed in Belgium is the incredible diversity in street-facing doors.
Sometimes the metal work looks like the designs I see on men’s clothing in Africa.
Ghent castle
Staying fit
I’ve been checking out Apple fit while traveling in Europe. It has been very motivational. One night I went for a jog, another for a brisk walk just for the sake of closing rings.
I have found I get more steps in if I plan a reasonable distance between waffle sellers, ice cream shops, and French fries sellers.
Oostende
Leg day
Brussels
I guess we did all the things that tourists do in Brussels. What do non-tourists do?
The Industrialized Nation
As I work through family history research and visit some of the contexts I which that history occurred one of the interesting things is the longevity of various members of our family. My memories of “old” family members mostly included various boring trips to small apartments in the Bronx with my parents to visit my dad’s aunts or uncles. In my memories these people got cancer and died, or died of heart attacks. The real cause of death may have been otherwise. I might be creating a convenient narrative around the cause of death.
A recent medical study in the USA suggests that the Bronx does have a higher than average rate of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. My own grandfather was diagnosed and lived a significant portion of his life in the Bronx.
As I have gotten older I have often wondered why there is an apparent up-surge in the types and rate of cancers (and diseases like Alzheimers and leukemia). Many point to genetic dispositions and gene based therapies. I find these narratives hard to believe. If we take a long term evolutionary view on the development of humans, which I also don’t concede to, then why didn’t cancer attack and kill off humans in their development?
As I learn more about risk management in business, the structure and approach in scientific studies (often looking at single factor contributors), and the role of regulation in environmental protection and sustainability (to limit the liability of companies and to secure the resources needed by companies through time), it seems that I believe the gene-based foundation for cancer less and less. That is, I believe that most cancers are the body reacting to something external, rather than something body-internal. I’m not currently prepared to take a strong position on this, but that is what seems to be the more believable story. We see this with asbestos and sun-based skin cancers.
If cancers are really reactions to environmental conditions, and they are more prevalent over the last 3-4 generations, then my assumption is that they correlate with the activities introduced within the context of the Industrial Revolution, the petrochemical and plastic production chain, and modern impacts of the application of pesticides, herbicides, plastics, and petroleum products to life processes. (For example one medical equipment sterilization company released atmospheric gas which are attributed to a significant increase in cancer in area residents.) We now come into contact with more plastics than at any point in humanity’s history. Plastic permeates the globe. I was at a park yesterday Where wood and natural materials were treated as “high end” upscale materials. Our generation is presented with interesting combinations of food allergies that people are diagnosed with, but very little investigation (at the individual case level) has gone into the treatment of these specific foods or how seed stock might have been modified from even 20 years ago.
I find the connection between how humans perceive and experience their environment and how industrial processes are interconnected to the dwelling environment interesting.
The larger context of how industry and big philanthropy dollars ends up guiding the outputs of nonprofits and charities is interesting. In the case of the second hand shop mentioned previously, I wonder what kind of research they sponsor. That is, can they ever sponsor enough cancer research to actually create change in the highly profitable industrialized petrochemical industry? Perhaps the best kind of cancer research is the kind of research that doesn’t seek to heal cancers, but to find and develop alternative economic industries to those which mandate the use of chemical products.