No left turn.

Steve pointed me to this Consumerist post about a new “superstreet” design:

Left turns increase the potential for an accident and also waste fuel¹. So traffic engineers have come up with a new street design, called “superstreets” that get rid of all left turns. And a new study says they are both faster, and safer.

The design uses dividers to force all turns to be right hand turns. Want to go in the opposite direction? Use the U-turns located just down the road from the intersection.

Superstreets have been around since the 60′s but now the North Carolina State University study finds that superstreets reduce travel time by 20%. See, the U-turns are actually faster because drivers aren’t stuck at the light trying to wait for traffic to clear enough to turn. Not only that, but the superstreets studied had 46% fewer reported car collisions and 63% fewer collisions that ended in personal injury.

Of course, this doesn’t really help established cities or encourage mass transit use, but it’s a cool idea.

Update: Scott points out that the “Michigan left” has been been a fixture of the state since the ’60s.

Son of Touchstone.

This week’s “Jevons Paradox¹ object lesson” comes in the form of wirelessly charging a Tesla Roadster:

In short, sending power through air (a good insulator) is infinitely massively² less efficient than copper (an excellent conductor). This negates a lot of the fuel-efficiency advantages of electric cars, to say nothing of what happens when those giant battery packs need to be replaced. However, because they’re marginally more convenient, newer, and cooler, I fully expect wireless charging to be commonplace soon.

Linkwad.

To the end of time:

1. 
   Another @BrendanKoerner link: a motorcycle trip across Transylvania.
2. Turns out McDonald’s burgers don’t rot, but neither do homemade ones.
3. Four new Atlas Sound demo albums music wads.

Linkwad.

Killer bees on the swarm:

1. Full-body scanners are fucking stupid. No one likes them; not pilots, not security experts, and especially not small-donged TSA employees and the sexually assaulted passengers¹ whose images they save. Plus, they (still) don’t work.
2. The Washington Independent‘s down for the count. However, a lot of their reporters have graduated to bigger things, and continue to do great work.
3. Girl Talk’s new LP, All Day, is pretty outstanding, and as always, it’s free.
4. In Florida foreclosures, banks have gotten the courts to help with their legally shaky foreclosures–at a rate of up to 25 cases per hour.

Full eyes, clear hearts.

I’ve neglected blogging for a while, in part because I’ve been tearing through the excellence that is Friday Night Lights, but more accurately because I haven’t felt like it.

Now, I’m back! And here are some (not-entirely-awful) cell phone photos of my trip to New Paltz to visit Steve and his fiancee Allyson. I’ll just say that the Hudson River valley is gorgeous during fall and Market Market makes a damn good burger. Quite an outstanding, relaxing weekend.

More…