Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea

As you all probably know, Ken Burns makes excellent documentaries. Mostly about war, music and baseball, Burns is changing themes and going green (although the pan & zoom he made famous I'm sure will serve him well here). Still with a slant on history, "The National Parks: America's Best Ideas" I'm sure is going to be trip inspiring, and is coming to PBS in a 6-part series September 27th.

http://sierraclub.org/parks/

I'll post up torrent links here a few days after episodes air...

09.09.30: UPDATE here. No torrent yet, but watch to your heart's content, free until October 9th...

More bikers = increased safety.

From the Atlantic.

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/08/why_bike-sharing_programs_are_really_good_ideas.php

The number of reported accidents goes down as the ridership increases (ummm... stating the obvious much? I apparently wrote this for those of you can't read graphs ;) .

NYC seems to have improved their infrastructure significantly over the last few years, which may also be a contributing factor, but internationally, it seems to be working two fold; increasing ridership and safety. Correlationally, at least...

Bike share system that gives energy to the city.

Like, actually feeds back energy to the grid (in addition to the revitalization aspect of it all!)

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/16/hybrid2-public-bike-concept-promises-to-help-power-city-buses/

... the hybrid part of the bike (a regenerative braking system) wouldn't be used to help power the bike itself at all, but would instead store the energy in an ultracapacitor that'd then feed the energy back into the grid when its parked at a special bike stand, which would in turn be used to help charge the hybrid electric buses. Not one to overlook an ingenious little detail, Chen has also devised a special card RFID card that would not only be used to unlock the bike, but keep track of the energy that each rider generates -- build up enough credits and you can ride the bus for free.