Traffic

As the oil crisis worsen, and the price of petrol continue to raise, more and more Americans are reconsidering their use of their cars, more and more decide to commute using bicycles with some unexpected results.
As more and more people take their bike in the streets of New York, more and more agressive behaviour can be seen between the different users of the roads: car driver versus bicycle user, and biker versus pedestrians. Car driver are not used to share their space with bicycle, unlike what is happening in Netherlands (where more than 15% of the population is using bicycles ), American car driver does not seem to know how to behave nor the cyclists as most of them are newbies in the bike commuter comunity.

And this highlight the weakest link of the car based transportation system: the human factor.
As explained in the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, it seems we are behaving like total nonsensical idiots when we sit down behind the wheel of a car.

An interesting fact to think about next time you're driving:
- the safer a driver feels ( because he's driving a SUV, or he's on a straight road... ), the more dangeroulsy (fast, or careless) is going to drive.
As a result roundabouts, are probably safer than red-lights intersection as it forces us to take more attention to our surroundings.
Our perception of danger in a car is false, and falsed.


Trafic movie by J.Tati

Back Diving....

Back diving (seriously) after a couple of week-end were i was not very actively diving (interrupted by work travel, and my previous dive was only in 10 meters with a trainee).

Dive Site: Pinnacle in Kilkee.


I had a lovely siren/buddy to accompagn me :

USA - First Trip

For the first week of august 2008, I had my first trip to the USA, work related, no tourism, so no pictures.

Results:

• USA - checked.
• Portland (Oregon) - checked

A very long trip ( Shannon - Atlanta - Portland ), for a very busy and interesting working week.
Portland seems an interesting place, one hour from the sea, one hour from the moutain.
Just checked for the moment....

Off course even that far away from the rainy emerald Island, we found comforting ourselves with a pint of guinness.

Childhood Dreams ?

A moving lecture:


So what have you done with your childhood dreams ?

Is this post too long to read....

Contradicting the title, it will be a short post. I've just read two interesting articles about reading online: the first one form the New York Times about the generation gap existing in the way people read, and a more disturbing one called "Is Google Making Us Stupid ?" by N.Carr.

I have not realized it before, but online reading, fundamentally change the way you read, instead of immersing yourself in a lengthy article or a book, you mainly skim the surface of online article, jumping from one information to another. The online way is a fast, accumulation of data, and we don't really spend time to digest, re-think internally what we read, unlike the way you progress through a book.
And it seems that favoring the online reading, limits our concentration capabilities, because it's so easy to get distracted and jump to another subject.

Sea Kayak Level 2

Last week end, I went down to county Waterford to do two full days of sea-kayaking.
We paddle around broadstand pier, near Tranore.


I did the level 2 course with seapaddling.com.

Now I am seriously thinking investing in a kayak... and a surf.

Monday night I also went to see Wall-ee, brilliant, as every Pixar, but i probably need to see it again later when the hype will have disappeared.

Tonight I went snorkelling near Spanish Point:

Irish Petanque

Oh I've actually been busier than initially expressed, setting up at work a regular game of Petanque during lunch time



Great fun... but seems the Irish are beating the French at their own games... Sacrebleu.