PushBack News Log

Coastal Commission Blocks Devil's Slide Tunnel

Progress on the $275 million, 4,000-foot twin-bore tunnel approved by San Mateo County voters way back in 1996, and supposed to begin construction this fall, has been blocked by the California Coastal Commission over the transfer of a small parcel of land.

Approved by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in May, the Commission filed an appeal in late July to block the project. Caltrans' promise to transfer the Martini Creek Devil's Slide property to California State Parks after construction is completed is not good enough—they want the transfer written into law before giving their final blessing to the project.

More details can be found in this article from the San Mateo Times: Devil's Slide tunnel tossed a curve ball. State Senator Bryon Sher is the author of the legislation, SB 792.

D.C. Schools Cutting in Wrong Place

Today’s edition of CNN.com includes a story on the job cuts in the D.C. public schools. The story leads with the fact that 545 teachers and 226 others will be losing their jobs, but the really interesting details are in the last several paragraphs.

According to the article, the school has 65,099 students, 14,058 total employees (1 non-teaching employee for every 7.52 students), and 5,400 teachers (1 teacher for every 12.06 students). Teachers make up barely a third of the school system’s employees, and the student to teacher ratio is worse than the non-teaching employee ratio to students!

Logging Blamed for Wildfires?

Looking through my newspaper clippings, I came across an LA Times article from 2002 citing a University of Idaho fire ecologist, claiming a link between heavy logging and an increase of big-burn forest fires. I ’m not sure of the validity of the claims in the article, but the accompanying charts of logging and fires from 1945 to 1995 are interesting in and of themselves.

Drunk on Hydrogen

In the RANT, physics teacher Dom Crea gives his perspective on the energy efficiency in a hydrogen economy.

Libiot and Conservadum defined

Recently, a listener to Dr. Bill’s show came up with some clever definitions for stupid liberals and conservatives. Libiot is a contraction of liberal and idiot, while conservadum is a contraction of conservative and dummy. The full definitions of Libiot and Conservadum have been added to the Pushback Glossary.

20% of Calif. high-school seniors won’t graduate

The AP is reporting that A fifth of California’s high school students expected to graduate in 2004 won’t receive their diplomas because they have not taken all the math classes they need in order to pass the mandated tests.

So why are the politicians and administrators and school boards responsible for this mess allowed to remain in power, and cover their asses by delaying the requirement for another three years?

Using materials efficiently

Page 17 of the July 2001 issue of Popular Science shows a metal can with a honeycomb pattern of indentations on it, formed by water pressure. Invented by Frank Mirtsch, this technique is claimed to provide enough strength to allow 20–40% less material to be used. So why hasn’t some smart government bought the patent, and then given the technology away to anyone that wants to use it? It seems to me that doing so could greatly aid the environment.

Disaster communications breakdowns

I’m not convinced that our government is doing the right things to make sure our public agencies have reliable communications that will work in a disaster. The trend towards fancy trunked radio systems in the 800MHz band may simply be making already incompatible systems even more incompatible and far more unlikely to work during a major disaster.

Articles on this topic that you should read include “Interoperability Of Public Safety Communication Systems” (Popular Communications, November 2002), Fixing A Communications Breakdown, and Lessons Learned After September 11th.

Corn-Fed Gas

So, will the use of Ethanol raise gas prices? A Reuters news story says, ethanol will boost prices—while a recent story in the Contra Costa Times cites CA energy officials as saying it won’t raise gas prices.

Who is behind the anti-war protests?

Authoritarian Opportunists Who Cozy Up To Genocidal Dictators—for Peace has tracked down the orginizations behind the ANSWER anti-war group, and the list may surprise you.