Running a system like the REM over a bridge can cause a phenomenon called courant vagabond or stray voltage, which can cause corrosion if current flows through elements not meant to carry electricity. Engineers are now figuring out how to prevent this on the new bridge.
Updates from July, 2019 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Three men got stabby Sunday afternoon in St-Léonard. Now why you want to spoil such a nice day with a big knife, huh?
Marc
Kate
Marc, you left a blank comment. Or was this a statement in itself?
dwgs
Brevity is the soul of wit!
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Kate
Bringing together several threads today, this is another Bernard Street saga, and another concerning Outremont: two different court cases are pending against the borough on account of a plan for a lieu de culte on that street. It’s not a new story, but this Radio-Canada piece includes a good summary of the history.
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Kate
TVA talks to a young woman who came to grief when her bike hit a pothole in the dark. I have a beef with one word in this piece, where it talks about her intention to wear a helmet in future because of the “risques de ce sport.” She was on her way home from work, not practising a sport, nor are most cyclists. They’re commuting or travelling, not making risky maneuvers for thrills – or trying not to.
Vazken
Well even if it’s for commuting, you should still wear a helmet……unless I’m misreading your post?
Kate
I’m not talking about the helmet.
Depicting cycling as a sport implies the practitioner is willingly accepting some degree of risk. Someone merely cycling down a city street isn’t looking for the kind of thrill that a mountain biker does coming down a rocky slope or that a racer does on a track or in a Tour de France peloton.
The word also takes less seriously the fact that people can, and do, commute on their bikes, in a non-sporting manner. Unless everyone driving to work is indulging in a sport because a few Formula One guys drive cars, cycle commuting is not a sport.
ant6n
Characterizing cycling as a sport also implies it’s only for young, fit people. In reality, cycling is for everybody, including kids and the elderly.
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Kate
Concordia has hired a Wikipedian-in-residence to help the university understand how to use and participate in the encyclopedia, and how to diversify it from the dominance of white male editorship.
Michael Black
Maybe I misread it, but I was left with the idea that while she’s paid by ConU, only one day per week for this, it’s about improving wikipedia, rather than ConU.
That said, while I have my biases, wikipedia is often limited by the people making entries. They will read something, and rush to create an entry, but not have enough overview. I’ve niticed this in technical articles, but others too.
The Montreal Fringe entry is like that, when the definitiin is well defined elsewhere, and all it takes is to look at entries for other Fringes.
Even the various entries for family members lack info, and bits of information are just tacked on here and there. And no real attempt to connect them, so they can be lost. Cousin Louis has always been represented wrong, but few want to pursue his entry.
I should leave more notes at the talk pages, but I’m too close to edit those pages, though ironically I know the history because it’s what I’ve been reading about.
Michael
Kate
Michael, some years ago your criticism was more valid, but now, if you make statements on Wikipedia, you’re meant to add some sort of checkable reference, whether to another web page or to a more conventional source like a media article or a book.
Also don’t forget, if you know an article has mistakes, you can correct it, especially if you have a source that previous editors haven’t been aware of.
Tim S.
I largely agree with Michael. The problem with Wikipedia is not that individual facts are often wrong, it’s that the articles aren’t arranged to provide a comprehensive overview of a topic, so important bits can be left out, and facts that are not incorrect can nonetheless be presented in a way that distorts their importance. From what I understand of Wikipedia’s editorial structure, no one is responsible for addressing this, which is not surprising because it would be a lot of work. Frankly, I don’t know if it would be even possible in Wikipedia’s structure, because to provide a well-rounded, balanced overview of a topic requires some kind of individual authorial/editorial judgment of a nature that Wikipedia deliberately tries to avoid. That’s why I sigh when I see academic institutions, at all levels, try to figure out ways to make Wikipedia work. Just like in other fields (say, graphic design!) you sometimes have to pay to get a job done right. And universities should be encouraging people to pay for their students’ knowledge, not encouraging the students to give it away.
Kate
That’s the nature of crowdsourcing information. Somehow it doesn’t bother me if any two articles don’t have exactly the same structure, so long as important statements are referenced.
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Kate
La Presse has a good, but sad, analysis of Bernard Street, also falling prey to what we might call Shiller Lavy disease, but the article also briefly mentions possible solutions based on methods from Paris and San Francisco. Lede calls back to an enthusiastic New York Times piece on the street in 2010, but I also recall when a posh European magazine, Flaneur, devoted an entire issue to the street.
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Kate
Outremontois are hanging on hard to their “right” to leave their cars in public for free, now demanding a public consultation on the matter.
Martin
The thing that I don’t understand about this is the fact that buying a private permit to park on the street is actually a privilege, or it should be seen as it is. I live on a street in Rosemont where the parking on the street is very problematic because there are too many people from outside who park here freely and for and long they wishes (we don’t have the resident vignette system on my street). I would gladly pay a fee to have the privilege of “resident parking” on my street, and I’m not financially well-off like most Outremontois, believe me.
dhomas
And they say millennials are entitled. Never have I seen such entitlement as a boomer who feels they should be able to drive anywhere/everywhere and park anywhere, for free.
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