Rotundus.com

Front page story:
Fewer speed camera fines as police lose right to cash: The article noted that this occurred at the same time as "road deaths fell to their lowest level since records began".

Flip a few pages in and what do you find? A second article (unfortunately not available online without subscription) entitled "Traffic lights turned off so drivers and pedestrians can get to know each other". This article detailed an upcoming experiment in London with disabling traffic lights to see if traffic flow was improved. This was based on a theory that traffic flows better without them and was supported when "the lights failed one day at a busy intersection and traffic flowed better than before. Interestingly it also noted similar experiments in the Netherlands:

In the Dutch town of Drachten the removal of traffic lights at one big junction resulted in crashes falling from 36 in the four years before the scheme was introduced to two in the next two years. The average time for each vehicle to cross the junction fell from 50 seconds to 30 seconds despite a rise in the volume of traffic.

Add the two together and it seemed like some great evidence to support my conclusion that, particularly as currently enforced, speed limits are counterproductive. Think as well about "school zones" - would you rather have a driver pay attention to the road or their speedometer.

Having spent about six weeks of the past 12 months overseas, one of my conclusions is that it's nice to escape from the grasp of the internet every once in a while. I've been thinking that it's something that I probably should do more often.

My guesstimate is that I probably spend 10-12 or more hours a day in front of a computer each day during the week. A lot of that is accounted for by working on a Computer Science degree (who could have guessed that that would involve time in front of a computer?), but a lot of that is basically time just slipping through my fingers.

Anyways, my current plan is to try to get away from reading blogs for a bit. I'm not quite sure whether or not that plan will actually work out. However, hopefully it'll give me some time for a few other things instead. Some of the "few other things" includes more time for research and more time with my nose in a book (You weren't really expect me to do something involving this odd concept called a "social life" were you? Who do you think I am?)

As a footnote, what's up with me always waking up at about 6:30am for a while after I get back from traveling? After last year's Middle East trip, my schedule was more normal than normal (without using an alarm clock) and now I keep waking at up about the same time even though the alarm clock isn't set to go off until 7am.

Well, just another 24 hours or so remain before I should be back on the ground in Calgary if all goes according to plan. Perhaps I should ask my Singaporean chaffeur to bring a sign to the airport in case I've forgotten what he looks like given how long I've been gone ;)

It's been a busy trip - London, Geneva, Rome (+ Naples/Pompeii), Paris being just the European portion of the tour. A few of you may have seen some photos from the trip already, and I may just have to torture the rest of you with a few as well once I get them sorted out.

... and then once I'm back it'll be time to see what others think of this research direction that came to mind in Geneva.

There are some some interesting sets of photos out there with equally interesting - or at least amusing - captions:

40. Afghan girls attend school on February 16, 2009 in the village of Sandarwa in eastern Afghanistan. Women's education has been severely compromised in Afghanistan as a resurgent Taliban has practiced a policy of intimidation of female students. Women, who make up a significant proportion of Afghanistan's population, have been killed, burned and threatened for attending school. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Next thing you know someone will be claiming that there's truth to the rumours that there are women in Canada.