A curation

Apparently it used to be frowned upon for Bloggers to merely reference a load of links however my computer seems to run quite slowly when I have too many links open. At the moment there are just under 50 web pages open in my Chrome browser and according to the Task manager they are using over 90% of the memory. I run standard 32-bit Windows 7 and although the machine has 4Gb of RAM installed as far as i understand it there is only  3Gb available in the normal way to programs.

The trouble is with so little spare space the operating system has to page programs in and out from the hard drive which makes it much, much  slower. If I open up Outlook for email it slows down so much (Outlook can also use a big chunk of RAM) that it seems as if it is going backwards.

So the solution is to either write about the web pages or get rid of them. I could save the links – but that just complicates matters. So what is first in this slightly eclectic list.

Well the first is about the car and some of the unwanted effects it has (such as particulates) – “Car-free Sunday for smog-struck Milan”. Apparently they have been taking this approach for the last 15 years according to the comments. It sounds great to me.

This isn't Milan it is Madurai in India.

I can’t forget to include something about the CGB (Cambridge Guided Busway) – apparently the bill could hit £200m – although it would seem that this is a bit of one political party bashing the other party. If this was a playground the dinner ladies would be saying stop fighting and play nicely together. I can’t see how this infighting will help Cambridgeshire (and so us).

My last two posts have been about fixing road problems – fortunately there was nothing like the pothole in the link that swallowed up a car in Surrey.

In my occasional series of links to stars on bike – here are Goldie Hawn and Kate Beckinsale. Why do the majority of pictures feature women?  Is it because there are more famous women cyclists or that men prefer their cars? Whatever, a recent study has shown that men who see their cars as an ‘extension of themselves’ are more likely to be aggressive drivers. I have long held the view that the car is an extension of the idea that our “home is our castle” – in our time-poor society with ever more vehicles on the road it has also led to less courteous driving with more risks being taken.  Occasionally on motorways they paint chevrons where the drivers are reminded that a safe gap to the vehicle in front is two chevrons. In my experience few drivers leave that sort of gap anymore.

I am sure that there are more deer roaming around the Fens although they are still pretty shy creatures. Another report suggested that they cause at least 42,000 road accidents a year. I am amazed. The number has dropped from 74,000 deer-related accidents every year as reported by the Daily Mail in April 2010. The huge difference makes me take the numbers with a pinch of salt – especially as they are such round numbers. According to vehicle licensing statistics there were just under 35m vehicles licensed at the end of Q2 2011 in Great Britain. The smaller number implies that 1.2 in every 100 vehicles has an accident with a deer every year. it seems high to me. When I cycle around I do see dead deer by the roadside, around 5 – 10 a year.

Tragically whilst searching for this data I came across an item reporting how a 15-year old cyclist  was killed  after colliding with a deer near Brough.