Are streets without traffic signs conceivable? Seven cities and regions in Europe are giving it a try — with good results. Drachten in the Netherlands has gotten rid of 16 of its traffic light crossings and converted the other two to roundabouts. ‘We reject every form of legislation,’ the Russian aristocrat and ‘father of anarchism’ Mikhail Bakunin once thundered. The czar banished him to Siberia. But now it seems his ideas are being rediscovered. European traffic planners are dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren — by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs. A project implemented by the European Union is currently seeing seven cities and regions clear-cutting their forest of traffic signs. Ejby, in Denmark, is participating in the experiment, as are Ipswich in England and the Belgian town of Ostende. The utopia has already become a reality in Makkinga, in the Dutch province of Western Frisia. A sign by the entrance to the small town (population 1,000) reads ‘Verkeersbordvrij’ — ‘free of traffic signs.’ […]
WASHINGTON — House Democrats are targeting billions of dollars in oil company tax breaks for quick repeal next year. A broader energy proposal that would boost alternative energy sources and conservation is expected to be put off until later. Hot-button issues such as a tax on the oil industry’s windfall profits or sharp increases in automobile fuel economy probably will not gain much ground given the narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in an outline of priorities over the first 100 hours of the next Congress in January, promises to begin a move toward greater energy independence ‘by rolling back the multibillion dollar subsidies for Big Oil.’ Yet the energy plan being assembled by Pelosi’s aides for the initial round of legislation is less ambitious than her pronouncement might suggest. For the most part, the tax benefits are ones that lawmakers talked of repealing this year when Congress struggled to respond to the public outcry over soaring summer fuel prices and oil companies’ huge profits. Topping the list for repeal are: -Tax breaks for refinery expansion and for geological studies to help oil exploration. -A […]
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s most frank admission yet over the war in Iraq came during an interview on the new Al Jazeera English television channel with Sir David Frost Tony Blair admitted that British intervention in Iraq has been a disaster last night – sending shockwaves through Westminster. In his frankest admission about the war to date, Mr Blair admitted that Western forces have been powerless to stop the descent into violence. The Prime Minister stopped short of accepting the blame for plunging Iraq to the brink of civil war – blaming instead the insurgent uprising that has killed 125 British troops. But his admission in an interview with the Arab new channel Al Jazeera will be seen as an historic climbdown for Mr Blair, who has always fought to put a positive gloss on often disastrous events. Challenged by veteran interviewer Sir David Frost that the Western invasion of Iraq has ‘so far been pretty much of a disaster’, Mr Blair said: ‘It has.’ His words were last night seen as an olive branch to other states in the Middle East and his critics at home. But critics will be angered that […]
It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs. To save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036. Chris McKay of the Nasa Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com: ‘There’s a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to be doing something about killer asteroids … to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid. ‘The public wants us to have mastered the problem of dealing with […]
The Qinghai-Tibet plateau is home to tens of thousands of glaciers, fields of ice at the roof of the world where Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks look down on China and Nepal. But the glaciers are melting faster than anyone thought, fresh research by Chinese scientists shows, as global warming speeds up the shrinkage of more than 80 per cent of the 46,377 glaciers on the lofty plateau. Rising temperatures on the ice fields of Qinghai-Tibet and surrounding areas in the past 50 years are having a devastating effect on the environment, as receding glaciers translate into water shortages in China and huge swathes of south Asia. China will soon have to add more deserts, droughts and sandstorms to its already lengthy list of pollution woes, while India and Nepal will have to deal with staggering environmental consequences, as the melting lakes of ice threaten essential natural resources for the large population centres at the foot of the mountain ranges. About 47 per cent of China’s glaciers are on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau in the Himalayas, where the Yangtze, Yellow, Brahmaputra, Mekong and Salween rivers all originate. The rate of melting, estimated at some 7 […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
