I'm a lasagna boy!

My list of things to do today.

Movies with Scottish characters and thick talk:

Gosford Park (Mary Macheachern)
Rushmore (Magnus Buchan)
Trainspotting

That barefoot girl could run too fast.

New rules mean that the lonesome lowing of the train whistle will sound a little quieter.

December 18, 2003

Under Rules, Train Whistles Will Lose Some of Their Blare
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — The distant whistle of a passing train is about to get a little more distant.
The Federal Railroad Administration on Wednesday announced the first limit on how loud a whistle can be and set a procedure for towns to set up "quiet zones."
Allan Rutter, administrator of the agency, said the proposed rule resulted from a collision of suburban growth and a rise in rail traffic.
"People find themselves adjacent to busier railroads, that's where the conflict comes," Mr. Rutter said. He said his grandmother in the Texas Panhandle lives within earshot of a line that carries 80 trains a day.
Bill Withuhn, the curator of transportation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, said, "The lonesome train whistle is not so lonesome anymore."
The museum has just opened a new exhibit on transportation, which includes a celebration of train whistles. But Mr. Withuhn agreed that the whistle could go from romantic to annoying. "Airplanes are romantic, too, but in small doses," he said.
Mr. Rutter said that 9.3 million people were "affected in some way by train horn noise" and that the rule would cut the number by 3.4 million.
Train engineers sound their whistles mostly when they approach roads at grade-level crossings, of which the United States has more than 150,000. Towns and cities have banned whistles at about 2,000 crossings, and in 1996, Congress called for uniform standards for such bans. Mr. Rutter said it took years to come up with them because there had to be a way to balance peace and quiet against the death toll at grade crossings, which last year was nearly 400.
The 500-page "interim final rule" is still subject to a 60-day public comment period and would come into force a year from now.
One provision will limit volume to 110 decibels, compared with the 120 decibels of some whistles now in service. The minimum since 1980 has been 96 decibels, and whistles must still be loud enough to be heard in a car with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner running.
Also, engineers will blow their horns 15 to 20 seconds before reaching a crossing. They now must sound the horn a quarter-mile from a crossing, which for a slow-moving train can be much longer than 20 seconds.
For those living near the tracks, that is probably still long enough to "hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morn."

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For cribbin' out loud.

The thoroughly enjoyable Charlie LeDuff article on the Los Angeles River may have been plagiarised.

Consarnit.

Eats donuts, shoots, and leaves.

I'm predictable: Aram sent me this link, writing "The first paragraph made me think of you."

There's a classic bit o' humour involved.

So sweet / and so stoic

Thanks to lossy text compression, we find hidden treasures in the 'fridge:

I correspond sagacious with eaten
the plums
that were in
the freeze befuddlement
and which
you were principally ostensible
extrication
for energy
Condone me
they were achievement seeking
so sweet
and so stoic

Did you know that Wm. Carlos Wms. was paediatrician to Allen Ginsberg?

10.15 on a Monday night.

"I was in the back of the bus. The next thing I know, I'm flying through the air," said a man who declined to be identified. "It was a big bang. No brakes, we went full speed into the building."

A 14-Mission slammed into a porn shop at the intersection of Sixth and Mission last night, injuring a score of people.

Traffic flow in Lower Manhattan.

An article in today's New York Times discusses traffic flow around the rebuilt World Trade Center.
What is the Level of Service for the area around the site?

Two wheels on line!

Magicbikes promise wide-ranging, free wireless internet access through the everyday bicycle.
By using the bicycle as an amplifier for already-available Wi-Fi signals, artist and teacher Yuri Gitman hopes to broaden the reach of wireless to previously inaccessible spots: subways, wide avenues and parks, outer areas of the boroughs ...