Viewer Mail

Jennifer sent a cute article about a kitten who survived a six-story fall and was rescued by a radio reporter. The grateful owners repaid the vet expenses and sent the reporter flowers. The kitten is undergoing physical therapy.

Lynn sent a followup on the self-tuning piano I mentioned recently. This paper is written by the inventor of that piano and describes the problems and solutions from his quest.

Vote for the California State Quarter design. No no, not that one, pick that one! (thanks Lisa!)

And lastly, Tony wrote in to say that traffic roundabouts are not good for bicyclists. Here’s what he had to say:

In the Nederlands far more people commuter by bicycle than go
by car. So ALL roundabouts in the Nederlands, many thousands of them,
were replaced by traffic signals about 15 or 20 years ago. Naturally,
there is no right turn on red in the Nederlands—indeed many traffic
signals there have a separate phase for bicyclists whose presence is
detected by induction loops buried in the road.

I did some specific web searching on this topic and found a Florida report (in PDF) that states that although car and pedestrian accidents are reduced at roundabout intersections, bicycle accidents increase. Not good. I also found a U.S. DOT research paper on roundabout safety which does mention the issue of bicycle safety on this page. It reports that the Netherlands have been very successful in their roundabout use, but does mention the high accident rate of one of the designs used there. “Mini-roundabouts” have reduced bicycle injuries in the Netherlands, but not in Britain. Looking at the actual source material cited by the study would shed better light on this issue. But bicycle safety is definitely a concern for roundabout usage.

Thanks for the mail everyone!