Adam Clare

Trams Win For Moving People

Traffic is a problem in every city, and more and more people are concerned with the most efficient way of getting people from A to B. It turns out we already know the answer: mass transit. The issue in traffic planing is slowly changing from how much space should cars get to how much space should the car give up. Bicycling and mass transit are the most efficient way to move people through cities and now urban planners are thinking of how to divide up space that the car once dominated for those modes of transportation.

Cars, as youâ€™d expect, came dead last, taking over four minutes to move just 200 people over the line. In the city, the superior acceleration and speed of a car give no advantage. Busses and trams come firstâ€”no surprise, theyâ€™re called “mass” transit for a reason. But bikes come in far behind pedestrians, taking two minutes to get 200 people over a line, compared to just 38 seconds for walking. Obviously, over longer distances, things change a lot, but itâ€™s interesting nonetheless, as much city travel is stop-start.

Teenage Pregnancy Rates Plummet Thanks to Birth Control

Just over a decade ago the documentary The Education of Shelby Knox looked at how pathetically backwards sex education is in the USA. Thanks to documentaries and compounding evidence that asbstinance-only education has no impact on teen pregnancy rates (it does increase STI/STD rates though!) sex education is no different. The USA is catching up with the rest of the developed world when it comes to talking to teens about birth control.

Since 2007, teens have become better informed of their choices around birth control and are using that knowledge.

What changed was how teenage girls used contraceptives. The percentage of sexually active teens who used at least one type of birth control the last time they had sex rose from 78 percent in 2007 to 86 percent in 2012. More teens gravitated toward better types of birth control â€” like pills, IUDs, or implants â€” rather than relying on lower-quality birth control like condoms.

Bicycling is the Safest Form of Transportation

In Toronto, the car rules the road so much so that the city is fine with non-driver (that’s everyone) deaths, and the city won’t do much to stop drivers from killing. Sadly, Toronto isn’t a unique case. In far too many places bicycling infrastructure is an afterthought that plays second fiddle to cars. Despite this lack of support for safety, riding a bike is still the least dangerous way to get around.

Bicycling is so safe that you can actually lengthen your lifetime by riding! Mr Money Moustache ran the numbers and found out that statistically no matter where you live you’ll live longer by riding a bike! So get out there and get on a bike and remember the more people out there commuting via bicycle the safer the streets!

Riding a bike is not more dangerous than driving a car. In fact, it is much, much safer:

Under even the most pessimistic of assumptions:

Net effect of driving a car at 65mph for one hour: Dying 20 minutes sooner.Â (18 seconds of life lost per mile)

Net effect of riding a bike at 12mph for one hour: LivingÂ 2 hours and 36 minutes longerÂ (about 13 minutes of lifeÂ gainedÂ per mile)

Men Shouldn’t Worry About Being Breadwinners

Gender stereotypes and expectations aren’t good for anybody, and there’s more and more evidence that men who worry about having to be the primary income earners hurts their health. The old way of thinking that a man had to earn more than his partner in a heterosexual relationship no longer makes sense. Thanks to the efforts of countless individuals there are fewer obstacles for women to make as much, if not more, than their male counterparts.

She attributes that to gender performances that cloud our judgment. Men are taught to see breadwinning as an obligation; women to see it more as an opportunity. Women are less likely to dwell on what other people will think of them if they arenâ€™t the primary source of income, while men feel the need to take on higher-paying positions, even when the role might just be an anxiety-inducing, taxing, stressful experience.

Of course, generalizations like that reinforce the gender binary at the root of this, but in service of understanding the flaws in that conceptualization.

â€œI would encourage men to feel more free to ask, â€˜Do I really need to do this? Do we need this extra money?â€™â€ she said. â€œI think women are more likely to ask themselves that.â€

What Will We Think of the Banks in Years to Come?

IN this TED talk, Michael Metcalfe wonders how will we look back on banks in the future. Will we think of the banks as an unethical industry that contributed greatly to climate change or as a tool that can be used to help the environment.

Will we do whatever it takes to fight climate change? Back in 2008, following the global financial crisis, governments across the world adopted a “whatever it takes” commitment to monetary recovery, issuing $250 billion worth of international currency to stem the collapse of the economy. In this delightfully wonky talk, financial expert Michael Metcalfe suggests we can use that very same unconventional monetary tool to fund a global commitment to a green future.