A recent study shows that America has now paved about 6,000 square miles -- an area larger than the state of Connecticut -- to accommodate cars or trucks.
This is more than a fun little piece of trivia.
We now have more registered parking places than we have cars, with 11 parking spaces for every family in the country. Even the Environmental Protection Agency admits that all of that pavement and concrete creates enormous water runoff problems and pollution.
You may want to look at how the huge parking lots in your area have changed water runoff. When a shopping center pops up where a field used to be, how does that change water flows in local creeks and streams? Have you noticed that areas that used to never flood now do? What has changed in those areas? Your local urban planner might be a great resource on this one.
Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of
The High Cost of Free Parking, wrote an interesting op-ed piece about the connection between people who cruise downtown areas for parking spaces and traffic congestion. What an interesting issue that would be real visual.
In his op-ed, Shoup writes:
When my students and I studied cruising for parking in a 15-block
business district in Los Angeles, we found the average cruising time
was 3.3 minutes, and the average cruising distance half a mile (about
2.5 times around the block). This may not sound like much, but with 470
parking meters in the district, and a turnover rate for curb parking of
17 cars per space per day, 8,000 cars park at the curb each weekday.
Even a small amount of cruising time for each car adds up to a lot of
traffic.
Over the course of a year, the search for curb parking
in this 15-block district created about 950,000 excess vehicle miles of
travel -- equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the
moon. And here's another inconvenient truth about underpriced curb
parking: cruising those 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gas and
produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If all this
happens in one small business district, imagine the cumulative effect
of all cruising in the United States.
So what is a city to do? Shoup says the answer lies in the price of curbside parking. If the spaces do not open often enough, then the price of the meter is too low. If they are open too long, the price is too high.
Shoup continues:
Cities can adjust the price of curb parking in response to demand to
keep roughly one out of every eight spaces vacant throughout the day.
Right-priced curb parking can eliminate cruising.
The balance
between the varying demand for parking and the fixed supply of curb
spaces is the Goldilocks Principle of parking prices: the price is too
high if too many spaces are vacant, and too low if no spaces are
vacant. But when only a few spaces are vacant, the price is just right,
and everyone will see that curb parking is both well used and readily
available.
Supreme Court to Take on Lethal Injection
Be alert to this. The Supreme Court of the United States said this week that
it will decide a case that focuses on the question of whether death by lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. The courtroom arguments will likely happen this fall with a decision in the spring. I wonder if any governors will delay executions while the decision is pending.
The Supreme Court agreed to take on a similar case that comes
from Kentucky. At least 10 states have put executions on hold.
The Seattle Times says:
The Kentucky case to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court is the
first time the court has considered a challenge to a method of
execution since 1879, when it upheld the use of a firing squad in Utah.
The court's decision will likely stall the use nationwide of the
controversial three-drug cocktail that has been used to execute 927
inmates since 1972.
Lethal injection was first conceived in Oklahoma as a more humane
method than the electric chair. Although the procedure varies among
states, it generally involves injection of anesthetic, a muscle
paralyzer and a substance to stop the heart. Death-penalty foes have
argued that if the condemned prisoner is not given enough anesthetic,
he can suffer excruciating pain without being able to cry out.
Thirty seven states allow for lethal injection executions:
Alabama,
Arizona,
Arkansas,
California,
Colorado,
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Florida,
Georgia,
Idaho,
Illinois,
Indiana,
Kansas,
Kentucky,
Louisiana,
Maryland,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
Montana,
Nevada,
New Hampshire,
New Jersey,
New Mexico,
New York*,
North Carolina,
Ohio,
Oklahoma,
Oregon,
Pennsylvania,
South Carolina,
South Dakota,
Tennessee,
Texas,
Utah,
Virginia,
Washington,
Wyoming,
U.S. Military,
U.S. Government.
*New York's death penalty was
declared unconstitutional on June 24, 2004.
Click here to see when executions are scheduled in several states.
Who Gets the Ring if the Wedding Falls Through?
I bet
this is the sort of story that would get people talking. Usually it is fodder for advice columnists, but in Nashville, the question of "What happens to the engagement ring when the wedding falls through?" went all the way to the state Court of Appeals. The trial court held that the passing of the ring is a gift and that the woman should keep it even if the marriage falls through.
But the appeals court said the ring should go back to the guy who bought it because while it is a gift, the gift is conditional. An engagement ring is given in contemplation of marriage, and is therefore a conditional gift. If the marriage "for whatever reason" does not occur, the giver gets the ring back," the court said.
Click here to read the ruling [PDF].
In the ruling, you will see some very interesting cases on which the Tennessee court built its decision.
The Tennessee court leaned in on a decision from Kansas which included this passage:
[i]n the absence of a contrary expression of intent, it is logical that engagement rings should be considered, by their very nature, conditional gifts given in contemplation of marriage. Once it is established the ring is an engagement ring, it is a conditional gift.
And in 1997, an Indiana court said:
In our society, an engagement ring -- i.e., a gift incidental to an engagement -- is the symbol and token of a couple's agreement to marry. As such, marriage is an implied condition of the transfer of title to the ring and, thus, the gift does not become absolute until the marriage occurs. Put another way, marriage is a condition precedent before ownership of an engagement ring vests in the done.
And in 2005, a Wisconsin court ruled:
We find the conditional gift theory particularly appropriate when the contested property is an engagement ring. The inherent symbolism of this gift forecloses the need to establish an express condition that marriage will ensue.
The Wisconsin ruling said in effect that it would be too much to ask a guy to say, while proposing, something to the effect of, "You know honey, if this doesn't work out, I want the ring back."
In 1964, however, a Connecticut court said that if the engagement does not work out because the donor of the ring was at fault somehow, then the woman gets to keep the ring.
And so it goes ...
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends on the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
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