Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

More links!

# A defense of one of DD&U’s favorite shows, Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Not that I think it needs defending or anything.

# More on the absurd cost of higher education in America.

# More on the absurdity of the U.S. News college rankings.

# A tantalizingly brief piece on Boston’s defunct A Line.

# A nice remembrance of Satchel Paige, the most fascinating ballplayer in the history of the game. Did you know he once threw all three games of a triple-header, all complete game shutouts. With a broken leg.

Whenever I come across a video or an article or a photo that I think might be worth blogging about, I throw it into a draft e-mail and, ideally, click on it when I’m in a good blogging sitch and make the wordsmithery happen. As you can probably imagine, some of these links slip through the cracks. Not because they’re not good, but sometimes I just don’t get around to writing about them before something more timely comes up.

So this is me, clearing out my list of links, which I present to you for your weekend reading enjoyment.

# A not quite tongue-in-cheek documentary on Comic Sans, the most hated of typefaces. I’m not 100 percent sure, but it may have been produced by bu students. Still pretty ok, though.

# Here’s Walter Pincus on the troubles with journalism. Thesis:

My profession is in distress because for more than a decade it has been chasing the false idols of fame and fortune. While engaged in those pursuits, it forgot its readers and the need to produce a commercial product that appealed to its mass audience, which in turn drew advertisers and thus paid for it all. While most corporate owners were seeking increased earnings, higher stock prices, and bigger salaries, editors and reporters focused more on winning prizes or making television appearances.

I don’t necessarily agree with that statement, but far be it from to question a guy who’s logged as many miles as Pincus. Read the piece!

# Miles over at Now Is Not the Rhyme wrote a piece about the tricks that designers play with Photoshop, and the consequences that arise. I started writing a loooooong response titled “What is authenticity? An epistemological hermenutic of Photoshop,” which, mercifully, went off the rails before I could finish it. Read it, and then look at this, and just let things percolate.

# Neat drawings of different subway systems, done to scale.

My pal Reeves over at his Meanderings blog is doing a neat little exercise. I’ll quote the man himself at length:

People in major cities spend a lot of time on mass transit; by my rough estimate, most New Yorkers spend an hour per day, 7 hours per week, 30 or so per month, and a dozen or so full days per year on a transit vehicle of some kind. That’s a lot of livin’.

So, hopefully with your help, we’ll be chronicling those 12 days of life. This is not meant for “Weird Shit That Happened on the L Train.” This is meant for the everyday, the normal, the poignantly average.

He’s done a few so far, and they’ve lived up to the “poignantly average” directive. Reeves solicited guest contributions, and I was more than happy to oblige. You can read my entry here. Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun will recognize the running diary format from various Gossip Girl and Oscar posts; I’m nothing if not predictable.

I call it a neat exercise because riding the train is such a monotonous, soul-crushing, utilitarian activity. If you use mass transit regularly, you truly enter autopilot. Not to say that I did a terribly good job, but actually looking around and jotting down my thoughts, instead of just staring blankly across the aisle or listening to my iPod, was an interesting change of pace. I didn’t expect to find the inspiration for the Great American Novel in a crumpled up Metro, but it was nice to actually experience my ride. I recommend you read Reeves’s entries, because he’s better at this sort of thing than I am.

And while you’re there, you might as well throw Meanderings into your bookmarks or RSS reader or whatever it is you use to keep track of the vitally important things that you must read daily. It’s like a smarter and more disciplined Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun. His “This Week’s Best Profile” and “I didn’t know this yesterday” features are especially thoughtful and eminently stealable.

Guitar legend Les Paul died today, at age 94. As a rock and roll fan, I obviously knew Les Paul was a crazy influential guy, but holy smokes, that’s barely half the story. This guy was like, the da Vinci of rock. Inventing the solid body electric guitar, without which the entire genre of rock and roll (and hence metal, punk, alternative, and c.) wouldn’t even exist? Check. Pioneering all sorts of variations in recording speed and microphone position? Check. Creating the eight-track multitrack recorder? Check. When we turn on the radio or listen to a track on the computer, we don’t even think about how each element of that track was recorded and edited separately to achieve the professional, seamless sound that we take for granted. That kind of process didn’t always exist! Look at this amazing quote from the Times:

“Honestly, I never strove to be an Edison,” he said in a 1991 interview in The New York Times. “The only reason I invented these things was because I didn’t have them and neither did anyone else. I had no choice, really.”

No choice! Genius!

And then there are the just amazing stories from his life. Like the well-known story of the car accident he was in in 1948 necessitated that his elbow be fused and made immobile forever. He had the doctors position it so he could still play. This was 60 years ago.

The Les Paul guitar he designed for Gibson hasn’t changed since 1958. That was 50 years ago, and it’s still good enough for Slash.

He broke an eardrum in 1964.

He had quintuple (!) bypass surgery and suffered from arthritis so badly that he had to relearn how to play the guitar. Some people never learn how to play once! So when you listen to the clip below, of Les Paul playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” at the age of 93 (h/t to Brow Beat for the vid), you’re listening to a guy that learned to be a guitar virtuoso twice.

He’ll be missed, of course. But I think that Les Paul has reached that sort of legendary status that as long as you live, you won’t be able to go a day without engaging his influence. Guys like that are never really gone.

For whatever reason, there’s been a lot of biking-related articles and posts on the ol’ Intertubes. Up here in the Hub, the Globe ran a story about Boston’s plan to institute a bike-sharing program. Perhaps in response to the anti-biking firestorm that erupted in the comments section, the Globe ran a piece a week later lambasting Boston cyclists for their bad habits and lawlessness. Tsk tsk tsk!

Bostonist did a serviceable takedown of that particular story, so I won’t rehash all of the arguments that make drivers sound as wacky as tea-bagging town-hall protesters. I could very well have put up my little GIF buddy and shook harder are car operators (I actually probably will eventually, but whatever), but instead, I’d like to address what I see as the most substantive issue in the whole drivers vs. bikers standoff.

Ryan Avent touches on it here. Money quote:

The other thing to think about is that cyclists typically have no natural place on the road. Pedestrians have sidewalks and cars have their lanes, and a cyclist must navigate his way between the two, which isn’t easy or comfortable.

I remember when I was a kid, graduating from riding-my-bike-around-the-block-for-fun to riding-my-bike-to-get-places, I was amazed and a little frightened to learn that bicycles are supposed to be ridden in the street. Why? Because it’s just not intuitive. Here I am, flesh and bone, on 30 pounds worth of steel and rubber, riding cheek to jowl with Civics, Suburbans, and 18-wheelers. That’s just dangerous! Which leads me to the question at the heart of this post.

Why are bikes and cars governed by the same laws?

Has anyone seriously addressed this issue? It makes so little sense. Cars are faster, larger, and less nimble than bikes. Just saying that these two wildly different classes of vehicle have to share the road doesn’t make them equal. It strikes me as a lazy, cheap, and unimaginative way of dealing with the very real problem of bikes and cars coexisting. It doesn’t require lawmakers to either a) come up with a reasonable set of parallel regulations to govern bicyclists, or b) pony up for the infrastructure that would make bicycling safer. As it stands, bikes inhabit a little-policed no-man’s-land between driving and walking. It’s really the worst of all worlds for bicyclists and drivers alike.

Bicyclists aren’t scofflaws, by and large. I’ll parrot what most bicyclists who have written on the subject have said about the “lawlessness” of bikers: most of the time, when a cyclist breaks the law, it’s to pursue what they see as the safest or least absurd route.

I say safest because sometimes, riding on the sidewalk is safer than riding on the road. I ride on the sidewalk, the wrong way, down Martha Road every morning to get to the Museum of Science. Why? Because going the right way on the road would take me into fast moving traffic. My rolling at half a mile an hour down the sidewalk is a much better option for everyone.

And I say least absurd because, honestly, when I’m sitting there at a red light with the rest of the cars on the road, and I’m watching pedestrians cross the street because there’s no cross-traffic, what’s the point? If I were to hop off my ride and walk it through from corner to corner, I’d be entirely justified and within the boundaries of the law. (In fact, the City of Boston advises bicyclists to use crosswalks if traffic is too heavy to make a left turn.) Why wouldn’t I roll through a red light if there were no cars coming?

Now, I understand, the law is the law. But there’s a powerful cognitive dissonance here. And I also understand that if cars acted in the same way as bikes, there’d be chaos.

Which leads me to this recent post from Matt Yglesias. The main thesis:

The basic idea of traffic rules—separated uses, painted lane markers, giant signs, etc.—is to make it safe for the drivers of cars to drive their cars very quickly. That’s an okay design principle for a highway, but its nearly-universal adoption as a design principle for urban roadways is arguably very misguided.

Yglesias has a tendency to throw radical ideas out there and let his commenters hash them out, and this particular case is no different. No one expects Commonwealth Avenue to become a wide-open free-for-all of walkers, bikers, and drivers. But it’s been done elsewhere. And it’s at least worth thinking about how we can develop more effective, and more safe, ways of bikes, cars, and pedestrians sharing the same space.

So I learned this weekend that Canyon Cody, who I worked with at the Heights, the independent student newspaper of Boston College, has a new album out. See, Canyon is like, the coolest guy I ever met. It’s not even a contest. He has a record label! He won a Fulbright Scholarship! He’s been on NPR like, 100 percent more times than I have.

Anyway, the product of Canyon’s Fulbright stint in Granada, Spain is an album called Granada Doaba. I’ll let the man himself explain:

Granada Doaba explores the broad roots and divergent branches of flamenco hip-hop. Inspired by the religious convivencia of Al-Andalus, the album features 16 musicians from around the world who all currently live in Granada, Spain.

Spain’s history of multicultural confluence dates back to the early morning of mankind. Andalusia, the birthplace of flamenco and southernmost region of Spain, sits at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the New World. . . . Flamenco is Andalusian Gypsy music and dance with a diverse history of Arab, Jewish, Indian and Afro-Latin influences. As a result of convergent paths of immigration, rhythms from around the world have come together in Andalusia, where they evolved into an indigenous musical culture: flamenco.

I had a chance to listen to the album over the weekend, and it’s wicked chill. I plan on listening to it more, and reading what CC has to say about the music. And the good news is, you can download all 14 tracks yourself, for the price of “on the house.” I recommend that you do.

And if you’re in the Bean this weekend, you should check out the Gnawledge showcase at the Middle East Upstairs on Saturday. I’ll be there!

You may have noticed, cherished reader, a paucity of posts from your favorite blogger this weekend. That’s because I was on the Cape with some pals! It was a tremendous weekend.

We ate this.

And drank this.

And listened to this.

All in all, a great weekend. But I’m back in the Hub of the Universe, and some furious blogging should be in order. Get pumped!

So this band Tinted Windows played a show at the Paradise this week. If I hadn’t found out so last minute, I would have gotten a ticket. Why? Because the band consists of Taylor Hanson on lead vocals, the guitarist from Smashing Pumpkins, the bassist from Fountains of Wayne, and the drummer from Cheap Trick. Huh? I mean, what? I wonder what that’s all about!

I’m going to give this group a listen, but in the meantime, let’s talk about Hanson. Why is Hanson still a punchline? I mean, the sands of time have blunted the sharpness of the joke, but I still feel like the band is synonymous with not just one-hit-wonderism, but with a vaguely embarrassing phase that we as a culture went through and would prefer not to mention, thank you very much, but if we are going to talk about it just agree to dismiss it with a chuckle and a shrug of the shoulders, shall we?

Why is this the case? I think we’re all mature enough to admit that “Mmmbop” is a GREAT song. And at the very least, it’s a peppy, feel-good number for the summer. If you disagree, you should stop reading this crappy blog, and go find your heart. You’ve misplaced it!

Listen to some “Mmmbop.”

I’ve been alerted by an eagle-eyed reader that last night’s post didn’t show up in his RSS feed. Who knows why? The vagaries of the Intertubes are beyond this humble blogger’s ken, precious reader.

Anyway, if you’ve been sitting around, thinking that Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun hasn’t updated recently, and what’s up with that, stop thinking that! And check out last night’s “Shake Harder, Boy,” which I think you’ll find to be a delightful romp.

Today’s installment of Shake Harder, Boy is dedicated to the stupid Walk Button. You know, the button on the corner that you press to compel the walk signal to light up. The button you sort of impulsively press because there’s nothing better to do while you’re waiting for the light to change. The button that’s undoubtedly crawling with all manner of bacteria, germs, pathogens, viruses, protists, nematodes, trichina worms, assorted flagellates, and grimy elements. That one.

The plain and honest truth of the matter is that the concept of the walk button is so ludicrously dumb that anyone that isn’t a child just assumes that it’s a placebo device. A button, that makes the signals work? That anyone can press? Really? Think about it this way: while you’re walking down the street on any given day, how many actual functional buttons do you come across? Do you come across any? Good! There’s a reason we don’t put buttons that are actually connected to consequential circuitry out where any Tom, Dick, and Harry can press them. Odds are, any Tom, Dick, or Harry is the kind of idiot you wouldn’t trust with the buttons on his own shirt!

So when a normal human comes across the walk button, can you blame her for just standing there patiently waiting for the light to change? Has anyone actually witnessed proof that the walk button actually does anything? In 25 years, I’ve never been foiled by the walk button. With that body of experience backing me up, I made a decision I’ve made thousands of times before: when I came to the intersection of North Washington and Thacher streets, I just stood there, and patiently waited for the light to change.

It’s not a terribly complicated intersection, but North Washington does lead to a bridge, and there’s a left-only light going in one direction, so there’s some stuff going on. So I waited. As I rolled up, the left-only traffic was just wrapping up. So then the traffic on North Washington started moving (this is the traffic that’s perpendicular to my route, so I had no choice but to wait). All the while, the red hand on the other side of the street is steadily shining at me. Then the left-only traffic started moving again. Now, there was a guy on the corner with me, and a girl on the other corner, so a certain amount of mob non-moving mentality was at play. The red hand is still shining. Then . . .

Press me. If you're an idiot.

The North Washington traffic started moving again! The walk sign never came on! Because no one pressed the walk button! Seriously!

Now, on a rural two lane dirt path, in the dead of night, in a sparsely populated county, where there are rarely any pedestrians, I would understand having a system where walk signals didn’t turn on unless there was someone there to press a button. Because who wants to be stuck at a red light on an invariably haunted rural county road for no reason? But this is downtown Boston! There’s always going to be people crossing the street!

And why is the burden of button-pushing on the pedestrian? The people in cars don’t have to press anything. I’m not an idiot; I’m not advocating some wacky system of button pushery on the part of motorists. All I’m saying is, the regime of button pushery should be brought down for everyone!

And really, the walk button isn’t affecting the actual traffic lights. (That’s not based on any real knowledge; I just have to assume that people pressing buttons on the sidewalk aren’t affecting the length of traffic lights. I need to believe that, precious reader. I need to.) And it’s not like if the walk signal isn’t on, that the don’t walk signal isn’t on either. There’s always a light on! What’s the benefit of not just automatically putting the walk signal on when it’s safe to walk? Why are we putting this onerous responsibility on the shoulders of pedestrians?