Milano! Che Bello!
The most important part of the trip first:A truly lovely time reconnecting with childhood friends and family-friends I haven't seen in 18 years! Sharing old memories with Francesco and Giovanni Riva, refreshing others (as Franz puts it, his brother has "an elephant's memory" - his memories of details was shocking!), and picking up where we had left
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So, once oil has run out, the wealthy will construct even larger SUV's with a small nuclear reactor on board and drive unopposed at 400 km/h through pedestrian, cyclists, houses, roadblocks and pretty much everything that stands in their way!
:-)
Great definition of cycling by the way: a form of urban warfare. To tell you the truth, I am not a model cyclist and have broken my own share of traffic laws over the years... and I have also been hit by a car driver while cycling on a dedicated bike crossing with green light for me and red for him - and he was talking on his cell phone! - but he was the motorist so he HAD to be in the right.
So you are right, it is a matter of survival! (and you are also right in saying that breaking traffic laws does not endear cyclists to anyone) There are little to no bike paths, and small streets mean frequent brushes with speeding cars.
However, the people who have the lousiest role in Milan's traffic drama are the bus drivers. They are the only ones that must obey the law or face serious consequences (they are monitored), they are fined if they are not on time, even if it is not their fault, and the rest of the categories seem hell-bent on making their life as miserable as possible, by clogging up the lanes with multiple rows of parked cars and generally behaving in a most unruly way.
Sometimes buses are even hijacked in extreme circumstances (like during the most recent Soccer World Cup Victory celebrations) while the poor driver is forced to swallow this violence - what can a man do against 15? There was even talk of putting armed guards on buses during and after potentially "troublesome" events...
The law is enforced very sketchily and without coherence (it is Italy after all), and often having a good lawyer or good contacts is all that is needed to avoid repercussions for bad or dangerous behavior, especially at the wheel; and some of the worst offenders are sometimes those who should set an example. In other cities of Italy it is even worse (Naples is something from another planet).
Well that's another glimpse of Milan's and Italy's transportation... San Francisco looks more and more intriguing, and the cyclists are really organized and have a lot more privileges and facilitations. I should learn from them! (we do have Critical Mass... but nowhere near as big)
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On a more serious note, I would like nothing more than for the world to get a lot more serious about safe reactor designs, maximum safety reprocessing, twinned with nuclear disarmament and thorough international inspections. IMHO, climate change is serious enough to warrant that radical a policy.
That might then become a very interesting source of hydrogen for the transport sector...though I surely wish we'd have more offshore wind turbine electrolysis.
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As history demonstrates time and again, no uranium enrichment, no one is upset ... :-)))
There is the small matter of said technology being available in the ex-soviet countries where it is sold cheaply, but it is another matter...
I do not believe we will ever manage to pair nuclear power usage with nuclear power disarmament - the two things are really to closely intertwined. It is necessary people understand that conflicts cannot be solved through force, and that is a long process.
Speaking seriously, I agree with you on nuclear power... 1000000%. It is one of the energy sources that I feel will play a great role in the future. The problem is that, for nuclear power to be safe and clean we must start from the nuclear power that we have now which has some little problems. However, this does not sit well with a lot of short-sighted people - it is probably the price we must pay to have clean energy in the future! Also research needs to be done and that costs money, which politicians are not going to spend if they aren't sure they are getting it back in the short term. Seeing how nuclear power isn't generally very popular with people who make the decisions because of costs, danger, environmental problems,we need to hope that enlightened individuals continue to explore this path (with care, of course).
It is strange how we always seem to be lacking energy as there is so much power in an atom, and so much energy is received by Earth from the sun every day - the problem that we are facing is more how to harness this energy (which is generally also very clean). Should we effectively tap into these almost unlimited supplies, it should be easy to use this energy for whatever is needed, including hydrogen production.
We'll see what the future brings us!
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Need to devise a more cunning plot!
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