Welcome to The 0K Blog
December 26, 2004
Happy Boxing Day
I hope you all had a swell solstice holiday. The solstice is the true original reason for the season; it's the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, when the Earth is at its tilt eccentricity. Now we can look forward to longer days and eventually, warmer weather. The sad thing is that the ski areas in the Washington Cascades have not opened yet. I don't ski much anymore (too expensive, snowshoeing is more rewarding), but the ski areas are an indicator of the climatic situation in the mountains. Low snow pack is not good because it means more receding of the glaciers, more lowland weeds becoming established in the delicate high-elevation Alpine areas, less water for us and for fish in the coming summer, and generally a depressing outlook on Earth's climate as a whole.
Also sad is the tsunami that struck a large chunk of south Asia and killed innumerable people. This is a huge tragedy. I wish our government could divert some resources to helping these people, rebuilding their infrastructure, and establishing an emergency alert system. The Bush administration has been upsettingly quiet about this tragedy, while other countries like Japan and Australia have jumped in and pledged support to the disaster-stricken people. Oh wait, I forgot that we are in the middle of a war and can't be bothered by such matters. Maybe we would have more interest in the tsunami if terrorists were involved or our oil supplies were threatened.
Anyway, have a good Boxing Day, doing whatever it is that one does on Boxing Day. Can any Canadians out there enlighten me of the meaning of Boxing Day? Let me know.
December 20, 2004
Track of the Day
Yuck, I'm home sick today because I am beginning to get a cold. Here is a track that I thought I would share today:
Banco de Gaia - Last Train to Lhasa
Banco de Gaia (a.k.a. Toby Marks) does a beautiful job of blending traditional chants and folk songs from around the world with modern electronic grooves. This track is from a CD that I bought several years ago, but it has since been stolen from me. I just discovered an MP3 backup of the entire CD, buried on my hard drive, which I had made years ago and forgotten about.
December 15, 2004
New Wheelz
My home-made bike is up and running! For the past two months, I have been borrowing my mom's bike because I cracked the frame on my old bike, rendering it inoperable. So I built a new bike with salvaged parts, a new frame that REI replaced for free (because the one that broke was an REI with lifetime warranty), some parts that my friend Nick gave me, and about $40 of new/used parts. This bike is a single speed with slick, fat tires and is very lightweight. I will use it for commuting to work, running errands, and general urban roving. Behold! I will name my newborn bike Zippy.
To the non-bike nuts who wonder why anyone would desire a single speed bike: Going single-speed allows one to eliminate the annoying shifters and shorten the chain, which reduces energy loss due to friction and stretching in the chain and shifters. It is beauty in simplicity. By using bar ends, clipped pedals, fat tires, and my obese calves, I can get around most all of Seattle's hilly topography with one gear. Off-roading is another story, however, which is why I am also working on building a separate mountain bike for the non-urban terrain.
A big challenge with this bike was getting the chain tension just right, because I am using a mountain bike frame with so-called vertical dropouts, which do not allow the wheel position to be horizontally adjusted. My interim solution is to use an old rear derailleur to pull on the chain to take up the slack. See how this works. In hindsight, I should have looked into swapping my frame for one with horizontal dropouts, which is a much more elegant solution for a single-speed drive train.
The bike still needs some tweaking, but it nonetheless rides like a charm. I'm hoping to find a way to eliminate the derailleur/tensioner by using a gear combination that results in perfect chain tension without needing an extra component in the drive train. I found a handy website with a calculator that should help me figure out that perfect combination.
Props go out to Nick for giving me parts and showing me how to assemble the components.
December 7, 2004
Replacing the Viaduct
In the news today is a story that the City of Seattle has chosen a six-lane tunnel as the preferred alternative for replacing the Waterfront Viaduct, which is expected to collapse in the next big earthquake, or sooner. Besides the tunnel, the other options that were being considered included replacing the two-level structure with a similar structure, dismantling the viaduct completely while improving the surface street, and fixing the existing structure with some expensive band-aids.
Link to the Seattle P-I article
The problem is that no money has been earmarked for the viaduct replacement, and the tunnel is expected to cost upwards of $4 billion. To put that in perspective, that is about $1200 per person in the Puget Sound area (King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap counties: population about 3.3 million).
My recommendation is something that has not even been considered as an alternative: A smaller elevated structure with only four lanes. Either a single level or double level structure might work, depending on how the geometrics play out. This would be cheaper than the tunnel or the full viaduct replacement, and would be less of an imposing structure than the latter option. Currently, the viaduct really doesn't get all that congested, except during the peak of the rush hour. Also, the planned monorail route will provide another West Seattle to Downtown to Ballard connection, which should alleviate some of the traffic along the viaduct route. There has been talk of using tolls to pay for the replacement structure; this would further reduce the demand for this route.
Some people have used the example of the Embarcadero freeway in San Francisco as an example of why the Viaduct should be torn down permanently. The Embarcadero was a structure similar to the viaduct that was damaged in an earthquake, torn down and never replaced, a decision that ended up revitalizing that neighborhood. The problem with making this comparison is that the Embarcadero was more or less a feeder ramp onto the Bay freeway, whereas Seattle's Viaduct actually provides a North-South through connection used by over 110,000 vehicles daily. To me, total elimination of the Viaduct connection does not seem like a balanced solution. The four-lane roadway would preserve the convenient connection for most of the people that need it, although congestion will probably still exist during the peak hours.
The corridor stretching from West Seattle, through Downtown, and to Ballard has the potential to become an area served by fast and frequent monorail trains, surrounded by walkable transit-oriented development where people can live without cars. Let's not waste money on an oversized project that works against this possibility.
December 3, 2004
Setting a Future Path
At work yesterday we had this end-of-year retreat thing where we all get out of the office for a day, go to someone's house, and discuss accomplishments, visions for the future, and work plans for the next year. This got me thinking about the things that I really want to accomplish and the dilemma I have with were I want to direct my own work. It's timely to think about such things because I just finished my last bit of schoolwork earlier this year and got one of them Masters Degrees in Transportation Engineering.
I enjoy doing technical engineering work, and working on my projects that improve the quality and efficiency of transit service. I like it when I work towards my overarching goals of reducing our dependence on the automobile for everyday transport needs, and reducing the environmental impact of transportation. But I realize that the best way to make a real difference in achieving those goals would be to get into the area of politics, since that is were the real decisions are made. But political posturing is not my strength and is not what I like to do, I just like to build things. So that is my dilemma: Should I do what I would rather not do to get the results I want, or should I do what I like to do to get the results that somebody else wants? Then if I choose the former path, how do I do it in a way that it doesn't blow up in the face of an established opposition? If anyone has the answers, let me know.
Here's a song that also seems to be facing a dilemma: Total Eclipse - Psychedelic Terrorist. Does it want to be break beat or does it want to be trance? It seems to do well at being both at the same time.
November 30, 2004
Tragedy in Kent
Yesterday, tragedy struck the Seattle suburb of Kent, WA, a mere 100 miles from the continually-erupting Mt. St. Helens. A man was killed by his Lava Lamp when he tried to heat it on a stove. Who knew that those mysterious globes of oozing goo could contain such evil. Expect Lava lamps to be added to the list of items prohibited on aircraft, and a sample lava lamp installed next to the chainsaw in that glass display they have near the security checkpoint at the airport.
Also, my friend Kris has written an account of our adventure getting down to Eugene for Alder's gathering, which I mentioned at the end the previous Nov. 23 story. Check out his blog post, it's a good story. I would try to include far too much detail if I tried to write a story about that adventure.
November 25, 2004
Happy Thanksgiving
Today is the holiday of food. I ate some Turkey and it was good. Lately I have been avoiding meat, but I make exceptions for mom's cooking and national holidays. I think that reducing the amount of meat that we eat is a good thing, but being hardcore about vegetarianism turns a lot of people off. For me it's not worth getting all worked up about; basically I just pick non-meat based foods when deciding for myself what to eat. I do this because I do not like factory farming or the animal cruelty that is involved with most meat production, also plant-based foods are much more energy efficient and their production consumes less water and land. Plus I can cook a mean tofu stir-fry.
Here is some music to download and listen to while you digest your feast:
erth - jungle told
November 23, 2004
Globe All Warming
My first real blog entry will talk about an issue that concerns me a lot these days, and that is the phenomenon called global warming. Most people are somewhat familiar with the theory: The emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, from combustion of fossil fuels, causing an overall warming of the planet. But many people either don't seem to believe that it is a significant problem, or don't believe that it is enough of a problem to warrant personal sacrifice or effort of any amount whatsoever. The apathy is understandable, given that most people haven't been able to notice the effects of climate changes yet in their personal lives, and so far the most solid evidence of climate change comes from scientists who nobody has heard of before (can you name some famous climatologists?), who do research in the far reaches of the globe, where nobody really cares about. So, here I will explain an experience that really affected my views on the subject of global warming/climate change. Exhibits A and B:
The image on the left shows a map of a place near Glacier Peak that I visited in 2001 called Milk Lake Glacier, located in the North Cascades of Washington State. The map, surveyed in 1988 shows a large glacier in this basin. The photo on the right shows what I found in 2001, after climbing to an elevation of 6900' to reach it. (The red icon shows the location and direction on the map where I took the picture) You will notice that there is no glacier, instead just a pea-green lake filled with sediment. The photo unfortunately doesn't do justice to the scale of the change evident here, but it can give you an idea. Also as I stood here overlooking this basin, I saw several landslides as the rim of the basin began to cave in. An entire glacier gone within 13 years and an eroding landscape; this, I feel is the tip of the iceberg in terms of changes that are to come, a melting iceberg to be more exact. I have seen other evidence of a warming climate in mountains, but this is the most obvious one that I have so far encountered. Click for Exhibit C, an aerial photo of the same location taken in 1998, you can see a remnant of the glacier floating in the lake.
What do I want you to get out of this example? Simply a realization that global warming is real and happening fast. I also ask that you keep your eyes peeled for more of the warning signs of global warming, either through your personal observations or through media reports. Further, I ask that you think about your use of fossil fuels and consider the impact that they cause as you use them.
To learn more about global climate change, I refer you to this website, created by my friend Alder, he has some links to primary sources on the issue. Alder organized a lovely gathering/presentation/party thing in Eugene, OR this past weekend, which I traveled down to attend:
http://www.prototista.org/E-Zine/climatechange.htm
More on this topic later...
November 16, 2004
Baby Blog & The Feedback Channel
The OK Blog less than an hour old, and it's time for the next entry; a convenience of straying up past midnight. Since the blog is
still in it's infancy, I thought I would spend a few minutes writing about where it might dwell. You can visit my homepage, if you haven't already been there, to get an idea about what I do and where I come from. The issues that
I feel most passionately about are transportation, energy, and preserving the health of the planet; these are issues that I feel are very closely intertwined, and that I feel deserve much more attention than they typically receive. I live Seattle, WA, in the Pacific Northwest region and I love it dearly, so I will probably talk about a lot of local issues, but I'll try to include a range of information ranging in context from personal to global scales. I might occasionally share a tidbit of insider information that I uncover through my current engineering job at Metro Transit.
I would love to hear feedback from you about The OK Blog, maybe you have a question about something I have written, or something doesn't make sense, maybe you flat out disagree with one of my ideas, maybe the background color annoys you, let me know! But bear mind that anything you write about the OK Blog is fair game to be quoted in a future entry, with possible snide comments following. Send an email to the address shown below, and be sure to mention the OK Blog in the subject.
November 15, 2004
Baseline
So, I've decided to start one of these weblog things. I envision this becoming a forum where I share my random, spur of the moment, and reactionary thoughts, as I find time to put them down. A major factor that is driving me to start this 'blog' is the fact that The Shrub was just been fertilized for another 4 years of rampant growth. This makes me feel, more than ever, a need to share my thoughts about the things that I see happening around me and my interpretation of them. The web/internet is a powerful tool, but a tool that is useless if left in the basement to gather dust, as I found that my static web site was doing (not to mention that the server that runs this webpage is physically sitting in my basement, with a healthy layer of dust on the tower case.)
So with that, I christen The 0K Blog. Stay tuned to see what may transpire...
© 2004 Owen Kehoe
