Biking

Pleased to see that Petach Tikva intends to effectively expand Hayarkon Park eastwards.

The plan includes 1,250 dunams (312.5 acres) for parklands, 1,066 dunam (266.5 acres) extension of the national park, 107 dunams (26.75 acres for sport, 642 dunams (135.5 acres) for agriculture, and 639 dunams (159.75 acres) for housing and employment. The plan will be sent for approval by the Central Israel Planning & Building Committee.

More Stanford student bikers are observed wearing masks than helmets. OK now it’s just a pandemic of idiocy.

Also today I noted a pic of Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid stepping out of an aircraft at Bahrain’s airport. He was alone on the middle steps, his aides up top at the aircraft doors, the welcoming committee on the tarmac, yet he was masked. Covid theater undermines our public confidence in following sensible guidelines when they are actually sensible and salutary.

This author’s 8 best e-bikes, each cooler or funkier than the next.

“Modelling Process Intensive Scenarios for the Smart City” [PDF]. In this paper by professors at the computer science department at the University of Camerino in Italy, the authors discuss BPMN (and bpFM, which I’d never heard of before) in the context of municipal services, specifically bike-sharing.

Another perspective on bike-sharing, this time re usability, by mobile-first thought leader Luke Wroblewski.

Occasionally you come across a piece that you feel you should have written, that if you were a more fully expressed version of you, you would have written. Randy Cohen in “If Kant Were a New York Cyclist”. Bikers “are a third thing, a distinct mode of transportation, requiring different practices and different rules.”

Walking in America, or rather the lack thereof. A 4-part series in Slate, by Tom Vanderbilt (whom I met 1996). One thing to which he doesn’t correlate national walking statistics, and it seems to me the obvious thing, is the number of anti-depressants prescribed.

Beautiful piece by Bruce Weber of The New York Times on his second bike ride across America.

Forced exercise is better for the brain than voluntary, and can help with Parkinson’s.

Vivid, loving portrait of the beach at Brighton that gets in some of my own favorites, like Jack and Linda’s Smokehouse.