Water quality in Lake Boren has been stable over the past decade, according to the Newcastle News. Yea! Glen, the Lake Boren Carp, has been doing an excellent job.
A few neighbors are complaining that the city is using the lake as a catch basin. OK, how is the city supposed to keep water from running downhill? This will be interesting.
The issue is that sometimes in winter rains the lake turns brown. Glen says a nice mud bath once in awhile is good for the skin. Nobody is interested in testing the lake during winter rains. The tests are only done when the water is clean and clear in summer.
Meanwhile the City Council, ignoring the whiney Lake Boren Neighbors, has quietly updated the zoning code to allow a new stand-alone King County Library branch to be built.
Previously the requirements were that the building includes a city hall, car wash, deli, scrap yard, and 80 low income apartments. And no parking because we want people to use the strange new “Transit Center” being built right in front of the site.
On an inspection tour last Sunday I was trying to see how Sound Transit was going to get busses out of the traffic lanes to pick up passengers. From the plans on the internet (Newcastle web page link) and visual inspection I don’t think the street is any wider. The sidewalks and planting strips are wider but the street looks about the same.
This interim temporary Transit Center could take up the slack until they get around to building the new 21st Century multi mode Transportation Station on the shores of Lake Boren. Apparently one of the holdups is the question of water quality in the lake. Just call it “Lake Mocha Mucho Grande” on those rare occasions when it turns brown.
But it shouldn’t matter because commuters can walk to the new library and get a good book. Maybe a book on hydraulic engineering. Or city planning.
The SR 520 Floating Bridge is in very real danger of sinking sometime before the year 2000. We really need to replace it. It’s urgent. 2030 seems about right.
However, the State Highway Tong (WAHSDOT) may have to build it in Tacoma. That’s because nobody on either side of Lake Washington can agree on anything relative to the new configuration. Some want six lanes, some only four, many want no bridge at all, and some want a double deck tunnel with entry and exit ports at special locations, such as Husky Stadium.
One of the candidates for King County Executive has said that the East Link Light Rail should be built into the SR 520 plan. Her point is that designing the bridge with light rail and roadway and then constructing it that way would be much better than reconfiguration of the existing I-90 floating bridge. The current plan is to run the light rail on the Reversible HOV lanes of the I-90 Bridge.
There are lots of arguments from lots of folks about this. Commuters need to be able to get to work. The favorite mode right now is to get in the Prius and drive by yourself. Transit planners think that’s kind of annoying. They prefer you stand in the rain and wait for a bus.
WASHDOT is also annoyed because Prius drivers pay a lot less gas tax. That’s a primary source of road construction money. We’re going to get tolls everywhere. That’s another subject, so we’ll drop that for today.
Another issue is that millions of people living in Seattle actually work in Bellevue and Redmond. People living in these two cities work in Seattle. So there’s a lot of waving as these two masses of commuters very slowly cross over the floating bridges.
A characteristic of the area is that we live on one city and work in another. So all our freeways are crowded in both directions. Then guess what happens? Management announces that the whole organization is moving to yet another city on the other side of another body of water and thousands of folks have to teach their Prius a new route. What’s the plural of Prius?
The rail transit planning solution is to eliminate the I-90 Reversible HOV lanes by installing light rail on them. And this causes a lot of angst. As we know from the past it takes a massive road closure to make any changes to existing roads. People are worried that construction of the rails will block a lot more than the HOV lanes. And even if they don’t use the bridge right now the manager could make that announcement at any time.
From that point of view construction of a simple library in Newcastle seems like it should be pretty easy. But that might require demolition of the brand new wider sidewalk and closures on Newcastle Way. And more truck loads of dirt to and from Maple Valley.
By the way: a message to the blog police – this is not a political lobbying blog. So don’t taze me bro!
Al
Friday, October 23, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Slides and Tunnels
On the east side of our local mountains there is a nice polite river that has many names. At the top it’s the American River, joined by Morse and Mesatchee Creeks. A little further the Bumping River joins in and then the Little Naches. From there to the Yakima River it’s called the Naches River.
This valley shows many remnants of the last Ice Age when massive torrents of water from melting glaciers tore out a lot of basalt. The walls of the canyon are basalt but the floor is all worn rocks of many kinds. Experts can tell you which ones were shaped by river tumbling and which ones were shaped by glaciers.
Now you have some idea of the geology of the Naches River Valley. Pretty interesting. Also very scenic. There are pine, larch, fir, and cottonwood trees.
Last week a part of this scenic wonder subsided and cut off the highway and dammed up the Naches River. The location is an area called “Nile.” I don’t know why it’s called that.
There’s another tributary called Rattlesnake Creek. I know why on that one. It’s almost as big as the Naches and a lot of water goes through there.
Since the “slide” put a massive amount of rock and dirt in the river it decided to find an alternate route. See, rivers have a job to do, such as the Green River above the Howard Hanson Dam. Their job is filling up the oceans. They won’t stand for any halfhearted efforts to keep them from doing that.
Here’s a link to photos on WASHDOT http://www.flickr.com/photos/wastatednr/sets/72157622570021278/
You can go to WASHDOT home and click on Travel Alerts. Then NEWS and then stories about SR 410 and then select flickr in the list at the right to get to these photos. It’s amazing.
There should be a way to combine the Howard Hanson Dam issue and the Naches slide into a win-win. Nope; the tunnel boring machine is getting oiled up to dig a replacement for the Alaska Way Viaduct.
The TBM, as it’s called, will be put to work under Seattle. It might miss the bus tunnel already under there. We hope so.
Part of that project will be to replace or repair the seawall along the waterfront. This is important because the tunnel will go below sea level. Or the new tunnel could turn into a very long car wash – not really a good idea.
Most tunnels these days get a liner installed right behind the TBM. I saw that on the Discovery Channel. You should watch “Build it Bigger” with Danny. He’s a kick. But the hope is the tunnel liner will keep the water out even if the seawall doesn’t. But still a good seawall would keep downtown Seattle from getting its feet wet.
Anyway, Seattle (suburb of Newcastle) has some major projects coming up in transportation news. The Alaska Way Viaduct demolition, the 520 Bridge relocation to Tacoma, the East Link Light Rail connection to Bellevue, Redmond, and Enumclaw via Renton, plus the high water in the Auburn/Kent Valley this winter. All very interesting but has to wait until the election to see what kinds of nuts will be filling key positions.
Both the Mayor of Seattle and the King County Executive will be new. They could either help get this stuff going or tie it up for the next four years. Newcastle will get a library.
Al
This valley shows many remnants of the last Ice Age when massive torrents of water from melting glaciers tore out a lot of basalt. The walls of the canyon are basalt but the floor is all worn rocks of many kinds. Experts can tell you which ones were shaped by river tumbling and which ones were shaped by glaciers.
Now you have some idea of the geology of the Naches River Valley. Pretty interesting. Also very scenic. There are pine, larch, fir, and cottonwood trees.
Last week a part of this scenic wonder subsided and cut off the highway and dammed up the Naches River. The location is an area called “Nile.” I don’t know why it’s called that.
There’s another tributary called Rattlesnake Creek. I know why on that one. It’s almost as big as the Naches and a lot of water goes through there.
Since the “slide” put a massive amount of rock and dirt in the river it decided to find an alternate route. See, rivers have a job to do, such as the Green River above the Howard Hanson Dam. Their job is filling up the oceans. They won’t stand for any halfhearted efforts to keep them from doing that.
Here’s a link to photos on WASHDOT http://www.flickr.com/photos/wastatednr/sets/72157622570021278/
You can go to WASHDOT home and click on Travel Alerts. Then NEWS and then stories about SR 410 and then select flickr in the list at the right to get to these photos. It’s amazing.
There should be a way to combine the Howard Hanson Dam issue and the Naches slide into a win-win. Nope; the tunnel boring machine is getting oiled up to dig a replacement for the Alaska Way Viaduct.
The TBM, as it’s called, will be put to work under Seattle. It might miss the bus tunnel already under there. We hope so.
Part of that project will be to replace or repair the seawall along the waterfront. This is important because the tunnel will go below sea level. Or the new tunnel could turn into a very long car wash – not really a good idea.
Most tunnels these days get a liner installed right behind the TBM. I saw that on the Discovery Channel. You should watch “Build it Bigger” with Danny. He’s a kick. But the hope is the tunnel liner will keep the water out even if the seawall doesn’t. But still a good seawall would keep downtown Seattle from getting its feet wet.
Anyway, Seattle (suburb of Newcastle) has some major projects coming up in transportation news. The Alaska Way Viaduct demolition, the 520 Bridge relocation to Tacoma, the East Link Light Rail connection to Bellevue, Redmond, and Enumclaw via Renton, plus the high water in the Auburn/Kent Valley this winter. All very interesting but has to wait until the election to see what kinds of nuts will be filling key positions.
Both the Mayor of Seattle and the King County Executive will be new. They could either help get this stuff going or tie it up for the next four years. Newcastle will get a library.
Al
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Howard Hanson - Dam
Here in Western Washington we live with something called hills. People also call them mountains. Cougar Mountain, Tiger Mountain, and Rattlesnake Mountain are examples of names we use to scare people.
We also have Grass, Huckleberry, and Blue Mountains in case you don’t like scary ones.
A benefit of mountainous areas is that people can store water behind dams for later use. We have hundreds of dams in the state. We have the Grand Coulee Dam.
“What’s a coulee and what’s so grand about it?” Well way back in pre-history the whole eastern part of the state was flooded with lava that cooled into basalt. That’s a kind of rock. Then during the last Ice Age Glacial Lake Missoula was formed because of a huge ice dam. Nature also builds dams.
When the ice broke or floated up the old Lake Missoula came pouring out all over the old basalt. It was in all the papers. Science people think this may have happened many times. One result was the basalt was scoured out in several channels and we call these channels “coulees.” The Grand Coulee is the biggest of these.
On our side of the mountains it rains a lot. We call it “normal” and we learn to live with it. However a lot of folks in the Green River Valley got tired of the river flooding their pastures and the Corps of Engineers decided to build a dam to help moderate the flow.
They named the dam after a Seattle attorney and state legislator. He died in 1957 after campaigning long and hard for the dam project. It changed the valley from periodically flooded farmland to a sea of warehouses, industrial plants, condominiums, and shopping centers.
Last January we had some unusually heavy rains in the west slopes of the Cascades and that resulted in some torrents of water and debris in many places. One result was the Howard Hanson Dam sustained damage. It reminded old timers of the Lake Missoula Floods. Very old timers. Not too many remember the Ice Age any more.
So far we’re not sure where this is going. Hang on, there’s more.
Earlier this fall the folks over at the dam site decided they were worried that heavy rains this winter might breach the dam. This would allow flooding once again in the Green River Valley. They decided it would be a good idea to warn people who live, work, and own property to get flood insurance.
Part of the flooding could also cause interruptions to water supplies, electricity, and access to Wal-Mart. That last item raised a panic. Insurance companies nearly had a land rush as people lined up to buy insurance. But wait! Can you legally buy insurance a week before and inevitable event? How does that work? Well, for one thing they might have fine print that says “Does not cover flooding resulting from failure of a man made structure; for example, the Howard Hanson Dam.”
Mayors of the many towns in the valley along with most of the owners of properties began to evaluate what the flood might do. We have a correction facility (jail) in Kent that would have to be evacuated. The prisoners would have to fill sand bags 24 hours a day. Many car dealers are located in the valley. Their lots are full of traded in clunkers. The list is way too long for my little report. The point is the hue and cry reached deafening proportions. (You can quote that)
Finally the BBMFIC of the Corps of Engineers came out and said allowing the dam to fail and flood the valley is not an option. But here are some of the things being said on local news programs:
"The best advice for those who live in the green river valley:
Get flood insurance now. Make an emergency plan for your family. Put together an emergency kit and get a radio and fresh batteries."
OK, we know how the insurance thing will (won’t) work. What’s an emergency plan? “Drive to California” might work. What about duct tape? How do you tell if batteries are fresh? Do they smell ripe? What’s a radio? We need answers, man!
The key element here is that the cities and big businesses are making a lot of noise and the people who live and work in the area are worried by all the reporting.
Contractors and water damage cleanup companies are lining up. Everyone is in frenzy. Some cities are telling citizens that if they have a flood alert they should follow the volcano evacuation routes.
Obviously we might hear more about this in the coming weeks. The Corps is saying that they will have the dam ready for anything by November 1. I’m not saying there won’t be flooding because I have no way of knowing the future. What I’m saying is that they need to handle the alerts better. Telling people to buy flood insurance is pretty much the same thing as saying it’s going to flood. Scary stuff. Poor old Howard Hanson would be very annoyed.
I just hope we don’t have a flood. It would be an amazing amount of damage due to all the development since the dam was built.
Al
We also have Grass, Huckleberry, and Blue Mountains in case you don’t like scary ones.
A benefit of mountainous areas is that people can store water behind dams for later use. We have hundreds of dams in the state. We have the Grand Coulee Dam.
“What’s a coulee and what’s so grand about it?” Well way back in pre-history the whole eastern part of the state was flooded with lava that cooled into basalt. That’s a kind of rock. Then during the last Ice Age Glacial Lake Missoula was formed because of a huge ice dam. Nature also builds dams.
When the ice broke or floated up the old Lake Missoula came pouring out all over the old basalt. It was in all the papers. Science people think this may have happened many times. One result was the basalt was scoured out in several channels and we call these channels “coulees.” The Grand Coulee is the biggest of these.
On our side of the mountains it rains a lot. We call it “normal” and we learn to live with it. However a lot of folks in the Green River Valley got tired of the river flooding their pastures and the Corps of Engineers decided to build a dam to help moderate the flow.
They named the dam after a Seattle attorney and state legislator. He died in 1957 after campaigning long and hard for the dam project. It changed the valley from periodically flooded farmland to a sea of warehouses, industrial plants, condominiums, and shopping centers.
Last January we had some unusually heavy rains in the west slopes of the Cascades and that resulted in some torrents of water and debris in many places. One result was the Howard Hanson Dam sustained damage. It reminded old timers of the Lake Missoula Floods. Very old timers. Not too many remember the Ice Age any more.
So far we’re not sure where this is going. Hang on, there’s more.
Earlier this fall the folks over at the dam site decided they were worried that heavy rains this winter might breach the dam. This would allow flooding once again in the Green River Valley. They decided it would be a good idea to warn people who live, work, and own property to get flood insurance.
Part of the flooding could also cause interruptions to water supplies, electricity, and access to Wal-Mart. That last item raised a panic. Insurance companies nearly had a land rush as people lined up to buy insurance. But wait! Can you legally buy insurance a week before and inevitable event? How does that work? Well, for one thing they might have fine print that says “Does not cover flooding resulting from failure of a man made structure; for example, the Howard Hanson Dam.”
Mayors of the many towns in the valley along with most of the owners of properties began to evaluate what the flood might do. We have a correction facility (jail) in Kent that would have to be evacuated. The prisoners would have to fill sand bags 24 hours a day. Many car dealers are located in the valley. Their lots are full of traded in clunkers. The list is way too long for my little report. The point is the hue and cry reached deafening proportions. (You can quote that)
Finally the BBMFIC of the Corps of Engineers came out and said allowing the dam to fail and flood the valley is not an option. But here are some of the things being said on local news programs:
"The best advice for those who live in the green river valley:
Get flood insurance now. Make an emergency plan for your family. Put together an emergency kit and get a radio and fresh batteries."
OK, we know how the insurance thing will (won’t) work. What’s an emergency plan? “Drive to California” might work. What about duct tape? How do you tell if batteries are fresh? Do they smell ripe? What’s a radio? We need answers, man!
The key element here is that the cities and big businesses are making a lot of noise and the people who live and work in the area are worried by all the reporting.
Contractors and water damage cleanup companies are lining up. Everyone is in frenzy. Some cities are telling citizens that if they have a flood alert they should follow the volcano evacuation routes.
Obviously we might hear more about this in the coming weeks. The Corps is saying that they will have the dam ready for anything by November 1. I’m not saying there won’t be flooding because I have no way of knowing the future. What I’m saying is that they need to handle the alerts better. Telling people to buy flood insurance is pretty much the same thing as saying it’s going to flood. Scary stuff. Poor old Howard Hanson would be very annoyed.
I just hope we don’t have a flood. It would be an amazing amount of damage due to all the development since the dam was built.
Al
Friday, October 2, 2009
Three Topics; No Time
I have three things to write about. I’ll start with a transit related item and then move on to the other two in subsequent posts. It’s bonus week!
When one returns from a different planet, for example New Hampshire, one finds things are not very different from when one left. Or two. The number of travelers isn’t crucial.
Sound Transit has been approved by voters to extend the Link Light Rail over Lake Washington to Bellevue. The plan is to eventually connect to Redmond. The route over the I-90 Floating Bridge carpool lanes is being challenged. That should slow the whole thing down by years.
The route in Bellevue is also still open to some decisions. Committees are forming as we speak. You might be on one. You better check because the meetings have started and you don’t want to be late.
Bellevue feels that if Sound Transit goes along streets on the “surface” it will conflict with cars and cause disruptions to normal traffic flow. Have you been to Bellevue? Nothing is normal. I’ve seen as many as six cars run the light after it changes to red.
Anyway, one Bellevue solution is to bore a tunnel under the central business district. There are three main questions: where does it start, where does it end, and who has to do the digging? I’m not going to do it. They have a Tunnel Boring Machine that can take care of it but its being oiled up for the Alaska Way Viaduct project right now.
The Sound Transit “Fact Sheet” shows various routes. Protests are already beginning. Maybe you’re on one of those groups, too.
We here in the Greater Newcastle Puget Sound Metropolitan Area (GNPSMA) have been fighting transportation issues for over 100 years. We have the four longest floating bridges in the world. Two have sunk and been rebuilt and another is ready to sink. We also have the largest ferry fleet (number of boats) in the world.
One of the most vexing problems is that there is no place for a new multi-lane highway. We have to fit more capacity into the ones we have. And they too are nearly at the edges of their right-of-ways. That’s the primary argument for increased mass transit.
There’s a Puget Sound Regional Council consisting of 67 members… Wow that’s a recipe for wasting time right there. Each “member” is from an agency that has its own responsibilities and goals. The problem is these are naturally in conflict. The light rail on I-90 is just one example of a conflict. We apparently have a law in Washington that says you can’t use a road built with gas tax dollars for anything but a road. That’s how we built the I-90 Bridge so it has to be used for a road. Maybe. The courts will have to decide.
Another planet heard from is Kemper, the Bellevue Square guy. He says rail transportation can only work in very dense cities, such as New York. He’s got a point; in order to make a transportation system efficient it needs to collect riders near their starting points, run so often that missing one is no impact, and deliver riders close to their destinations. The GNPSMA bus/rail/ferry/trolley systems require riders to travel some distance from origins and at the end of the ride travel again to their destinations.
But the vision for the future is that we’ll reach a sweet spot where that hub and spoke concept will work. Here’s one part of that concept: more cars on the road these days use less gas which means they don’t pay as much in gas tax. Thus fewer dollars for roads. More riders on public transportation also mean fewer dollars from gas tax. Smart people are working on electric cars and bikes that use no gas at all. So traditional funding for roads is shrinking. What they want to do is add a pay as you go system. Everyone will be tracked and get a monthly bill for miles.
What that will do is make people realize what it costs to drive. Right now it’s hidden in the gas and other tax. If they see the specific costs they will change their habits. This will usher in a new form of small neighborhood collection vehicles. These will run around picking up commuters and dropping them off at the transit centers where they catch a bus or train. At the end of the trip another local delivery system will shuttle them to destinations. This isn’t my idea or even my solution. I don’t see it. But some heavy thinkers are saying it might look like this out in the future.
Right now the two biggest issues with the East Link Light Rail are the I-90 Express Lane usage and the route of the downtown Bellevue segment. Do either of these even mention Newcastle? No. So why do I care? Because once the dust settles I bet the whole thing will move to Newcastle. We’ll have the world class transit station much sooner than we expected.
There’s no punch line to this one, so watch Letterman tonight.
Al
When one returns from a different planet, for example New Hampshire, one finds things are not very different from when one left. Or two. The number of travelers isn’t crucial.
Sound Transit has been approved by voters to extend the Link Light Rail over Lake Washington to Bellevue. The plan is to eventually connect to Redmond. The route over the I-90 Floating Bridge carpool lanes is being challenged. That should slow the whole thing down by years.
The route in Bellevue is also still open to some decisions. Committees are forming as we speak. You might be on one. You better check because the meetings have started and you don’t want to be late.
Bellevue feels that if Sound Transit goes along streets on the “surface” it will conflict with cars and cause disruptions to normal traffic flow. Have you been to Bellevue? Nothing is normal. I’ve seen as many as six cars run the light after it changes to red.
Anyway, one Bellevue solution is to bore a tunnel under the central business district. There are three main questions: where does it start, where does it end, and who has to do the digging? I’m not going to do it. They have a Tunnel Boring Machine that can take care of it but its being oiled up for the Alaska Way Viaduct project right now.
The Sound Transit “Fact Sheet” shows various routes. Protests are already beginning. Maybe you’re on one of those groups, too.
We here in the Greater Newcastle Puget Sound Metropolitan Area (GNPSMA) have been fighting transportation issues for over 100 years. We have the four longest floating bridges in the world. Two have sunk and been rebuilt and another is ready to sink. We also have the largest ferry fleet (number of boats) in the world.
One of the most vexing problems is that there is no place for a new multi-lane highway. We have to fit more capacity into the ones we have. And they too are nearly at the edges of their right-of-ways. That’s the primary argument for increased mass transit.
There’s a Puget Sound Regional Council consisting of 67 members… Wow that’s a recipe for wasting time right there. Each “member” is from an agency that has its own responsibilities and goals. The problem is these are naturally in conflict. The light rail on I-90 is just one example of a conflict. We apparently have a law in Washington that says you can’t use a road built with gas tax dollars for anything but a road. That’s how we built the I-90 Bridge so it has to be used for a road. Maybe. The courts will have to decide.
Another planet heard from is Kemper, the Bellevue Square guy. He says rail transportation can only work in very dense cities, such as New York. He’s got a point; in order to make a transportation system efficient it needs to collect riders near their starting points, run so often that missing one is no impact, and deliver riders close to their destinations. The GNPSMA bus/rail/ferry/trolley systems require riders to travel some distance from origins and at the end of the ride travel again to their destinations.
But the vision for the future is that we’ll reach a sweet spot where that hub and spoke concept will work. Here’s one part of that concept: more cars on the road these days use less gas which means they don’t pay as much in gas tax. Thus fewer dollars for roads. More riders on public transportation also mean fewer dollars from gas tax. Smart people are working on electric cars and bikes that use no gas at all. So traditional funding for roads is shrinking. What they want to do is add a pay as you go system. Everyone will be tracked and get a monthly bill for miles.
What that will do is make people realize what it costs to drive. Right now it’s hidden in the gas and other tax. If they see the specific costs they will change their habits. This will usher in a new form of small neighborhood collection vehicles. These will run around picking up commuters and dropping them off at the transit centers where they catch a bus or train. At the end of the trip another local delivery system will shuttle them to destinations. This isn’t my idea or even my solution. I don’t see it. But some heavy thinkers are saying it might look like this out in the future.
Right now the two biggest issues with the East Link Light Rail are the I-90 Express Lane usage and the route of the downtown Bellevue segment. Do either of these even mention Newcastle? No. So why do I care? Because once the dust settles I bet the whole thing will move to Newcastle. We’ll have the world class transit station much sooner than we expected.
There’s no punch line to this one, so watch Letterman tonight.
Al
Scientific American Fumbles Again
The latest issue of Scientific American (my bible) talks about how some of the things in space we think are “black holes” are actually black stars. Theory.
Here’s my view of the way it works. First of all there was no “Big Bang” forming the so called Universe. We humans have decided that nothing exists except what we can see. And our observations have told us that the farthest objects in deep space are moving away from each other. Thus they must have been all packed in tight at one time.
No, that’s not true. See our little corner of the Milky Way has a strange view. We think it’s all expanding because of some esoteric math mumbo jumbo. No, it’s not expanding. If you believe stuff just because somebody has a math equation for it then you need to get a grip. That stuff is always moving since there’s no way to tie it down.
Right now we don’t know of a fuel that can propel an object, such as Flash Gordon, anywhere close to the speed of light. The Millennium Falcon is fiction. Thus we have no perspective of outer space. Stars and galaxies we see are actually only their light arriving from millions and billions of years ago. So we don’t really know where most of those things are right now. It all just flows around in space over all of time itself.
Anyway, it’s funny to read these long winded articles about big bangs, black holes, and lots of other interesting theories. This particular item about how there might be black stars is also based on math. For some reason they think that there may be a kind of star that does not reach the point where it gives off light.
On the other hand I’ve seen some of the new TV shows and I’d have to say some of those stars don’t glow much either. So maybe there’s something to it.
Did I mention that I didn’t do that well in science classes in college? That’s because I didn’t realize how theoretical it all is. I thought they were trying to convince me about facts and stuff that’s real. It’s mostly guesswork.
People said for years that there is no other life besides what’s on Earth. Then a guy on TV in the 70s, Carl, says that that can’t possibly be true because of the odds. Given that life exists on Earth and there are uncounted billions of other planets it must be true that life exists elsewhere. That’s been accepted to the point where we actually spend money listening for some kind of organized waves from space. What humans produce (except for Rap) can be distinguished from “noise” because of frequencies and other parameters. We’re listening for some kind of waves that might indicate they originated from a fabricated source rather than just background radiation across the spectrum.
They said the moon was a dry barren rock but now they think there might be frozen water on the moon. At some point many years ago some bonehead said something like the water on Earth has not increased or decreased by a single molecule – it evaporates and then condenses into rain or snow and falls to the ground again endlessly. Well in High School we separated water into hydrogen and oxygen so we proved that nonsense wasn’t true. We also make water every time we drive a gasoline powered car. Plus there’s evidence that many of the chunks of debris falling from space contain water. So the moon obviously has some water because space debris hits it too.
So what’s the point of all this? Newcastle needs a world class transit center. Everything else is just theoretical math.
Al
Here’s my view of the way it works. First of all there was no “Big Bang” forming the so called Universe. We humans have decided that nothing exists except what we can see. And our observations have told us that the farthest objects in deep space are moving away from each other. Thus they must have been all packed in tight at one time.
No, that’s not true. See our little corner of the Milky Way has a strange view. We think it’s all expanding because of some esoteric math mumbo jumbo. No, it’s not expanding. If you believe stuff just because somebody has a math equation for it then you need to get a grip. That stuff is always moving since there’s no way to tie it down.
Right now we don’t know of a fuel that can propel an object, such as Flash Gordon, anywhere close to the speed of light. The Millennium Falcon is fiction. Thus we have no perspective of outer space. Stars and galaxies we see are actually only their light arriving from millions and billions of years ago. So we don’t really know where most of those things are right now. It all just flows around in space over all of time itself.
Anyway, it’s funny to read these long winded articles about big bangs, black holes, and lots of other interesting theories. This particular item about how there might be black stars is also based on math. For some reason they think that there may be a kind of star that does not reach the point where it gives off light.
On the other hand I’ve seen some of the new TV shows and I’d have to say some of those stars don’t glow much either. So maybe there’s something to it.
Did I mention that I didn’t do that well in science classes in college? That’s because I didn’t realize how theoretical it all is. I thought they were trying to convince me about facts and stuff that’s real. It’s mostly guesswork.
People said for years that there is no other life besides what’s on Earth. Then a guy on TV in the 70s, Carl, says that that can’t possibly be true because of the odds. Given that life exists on Earth and there are uncounted billions of other planets it must be true that life exists elsewhere. That’s been accepted to the point where we actually spend money listening for some kind of organized waves from space. What humans produce (except for Rap) can be distinguished from “noise” because of frequencies and other parameters. We’re listening for some kind of waves that might indicate they originated from a fabricated source rather than just background radiation across the spectrum.
They said the moon was a dry barren rock but now they think there might be frozen water on the moon. At some point many years ago some bonehead said something like the water on Earth has not increased or decreased by a single molecule – it evaporates and then condenses into rain or snow and falls to the ground again endlessly. Well in High School we separated water into hydrogen and oxygen so we proved that nonsense wasn’t true. We also make water every time we drive a gasoline powered car. Plus there’s evidence that many of the chunks of debris falling from space contain water. So the moon obviously has some water because space debris hits it too.
So what’s the point of all this? Newcastle needs a world class transit center. Everything else is just theoretical math.
Al
Sound Transit Makes Noise
Way back when we had steam locomotives and unreliable airbrakes trains were interesting. You’d hear the whistle and open the window to watch the train go by.
In 2009 the light rail is having an opposite effect. People hear the train and it is nothing more than noise. They close their windows.
Trains run of steel tracks and in order to keep them on the rails the wheels have flanges. These flanges rub on the sides of the rails when the train goes around a corner. Big freight trains use much more shallow curves and mostly we don’t live very close to the tracks. The Link line is elevated in Tukwila. There are sharp turns and in places it goes close to homes. Thus the squealing flanges bother neighbors.
Also the brakes seem to make noise. This may be just something to complain about because modern brakes should have ways to keep quiet.
Then there are the electronic beeps that are supposed to warn of an approaching train. They don’t use the big air horns or car type horns. They use a sort of loud computer error beep.
Lastly there is some noise from the train as it goes by on straight flat track. A little more than one would expect from an electric powered thingy.
Well, guess what? The noise exceeds Federal standards and Sound Transit is trying to correct the problem. We thought they would just tell us to get over it. But, no, they are going to address it.
One suggestion was to build walls to separate the tracks from the homes. That won’t happen. It would be similar to building a tunnel through the air. Not even the home owners would want that.
Another one has to do with some kind of lubrication on the flanges. Hoho just what the driver needs running steel wheels on steel tracks is a glob of grease. It would eliminate all those bothersome station stops.
I bet they can find a better warning tone than the “Windows Fatal Error” beep they use now. There must be hundreds of Verizon ringtones to choose from. How about the theme from South Park? Or the 1812 Overture?
We don’t know (at least I don’t know) what kinds of things they might do to fix the noises. But we’re expecting some fixes pretty soon. In December they’re planning to open the last leg from the Tukwila station to Sea-Tac. We don’t need more noise at the airport.
One of the neighborhoods in Bellevue is protesting every route choice from I-90 into the business district. They began this before the noise issue came up. Now they have noise to add to their list of horrid and evil things light rail will do to their area.
All in all there’s a lot of interesting things to watch. How can Bellevue get its light rail connection from Seattle without using the I-90 Bridge? The new 520 bridge? How can the neighbors south of Bellevue’s downtown prevent the noise and other evils of light rail near them? The new 520 bridge? How can we turn up the heat on the critical issue of a major transit center on the shores of Lake Boren? The new 520 bridge? I’m starting to see it come together. Double deck floating bridge with general purpose lanes on top and bus/carpool/ transit lanes below replaces the old 520 bridge. And we make the railing on the new bridge into a giant antenna that can listen for signals from outer space. Feel free to claim you thought of it first.
Al
In 2009 the light rail is having an opposite effect. People hear the train and it is nothing more than noise. They close their windows.
Trains run of steel tracks and in order to keep them on the rails the wheels have flanges. These flanges rub on the sides of the rails when the train goes around a corner. Big freight trains use much more shallow curves and mostly we don’t live very close to the tracks. The Link line is elevated in Tukwila. There are sharp turns and in places it goes close to homes. Thus the squealing flanges bother neighbors.
Also the brakes seem to make noise. This may be just something to complain about because modern brakes should have ways to keep quiet.
Then there are the electronic beeps that are supposed to warn of an approaching train. They don’t use the big air horns or car type horns. They use a sort of loud computer error beep.
Lastly there is some noise from the train as it goes by on straight flat track. A little more than one would expect from an electric powered thingy.
Well, guess what? The noise exceeds Federal standards and Sound Transit is trying to correct the problem. We thought they would just tell us to get over it. But, no, they are going to address it.
One suggestion was to build walls to separate the tracks from the homes. That won’t happen. It would be similar to building a tunnel through the air. Not even the home owners would want that.
Another one has to do with some kind of lubrication on the flanges. Hoho just what the driver needs running steel wheels on steel tracks is a glob of grease. It would eliminate all those bothersome station stops.
I bet they can find a better warning tone than the “Windows Fatal Error” beep they use now. There must be hundreds of Verizon ringtones to choose from. How about the theme from South Park? Or the 1812 Overture?
We don’t know (at least I don’t know) what kinds of things they might do to fix the noises. But we’re expecting some fixes pretty soon. In December they’re planning to open the last leg from the Tukwila station to Sea-Tac. We don’t need more noise at the airport.
One of the neighborhoods in Bellevue is protesting every route choice from I-90 into the business district. They began this before the noise issue came up. Now they have noise to add to their list of horrid and evil things light rail will do to their area.
All in all there’s a lot of interesting things to watch. How can Bellevue get its light rail connection from Seattle without using the I-90 Bridge? The new 520 bridge? How can the neighbors south of Bellevue’s downtown prevent the noise and other evils of light rail near them? The new 520 bridge? How can we turn up the heat on the critical issue of a major transit center on the shores of Lake Boren? The new 520 bridge? I’m starting to see it come together. Double deck floating bridge with general purpose lanes on top and bus/carpool/ transit lanes below replaces the old 520 bridge. And we make the railing on the new bridge into a giant antenna that can listen for signals from outer space. Feel free to claim you thought of it first.
Al
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