Pete is a strange choice. I would have gone with someone like John Milton in Washington or Toks Omishakin at Coltrane, but maybe Pete will have a better sense of the struggles local agencies actually face in securing funding and improving roadway safety. I mean, at least it wasn't Rahm Emanuel.

Traffia safety researcher here. Chao was not well liked, and a lot of people are looking forward to some genuine leadership at DOT instead of a problematic emphasis on privatization and a general abdication of responsibility. 

From starting undergrad to finishing my PhD, it took me 9 years. Some folks who got very fortunate with publishable, funded projects were able to finish in 8-8.5, but that was pretty rare. A buddy of mine will have taken 7 just to finish grad school by the time he wraps up his classics dissertation.

So sorry you went through all this. It’s unfortunate academia has been so hostile to women. I’m trying to think of sexual harassment I’ve witnessed in my career, and I recall hearing female colleagues who were terrified about my former college going open carry because emotionally disturbed men had already threatened…

I sleep on the couch pretty frequently when my wife is on a work schedule that doesn’t really mesh with my own, mostly so I can stay up as late as I’d like and she can get as much sleep as she needs. It works out just fine for us!

My research area isn’t in medicine, but the pandemic has also given us a rather unique natural experiment to better understand travel and how policy action affects travel. We received a huge grant to lead a multidisciplinary effort over a compressed time frame; it’s been difficult doing what might usually be years of…

My wife’s a physician, and while she obviously mourns the massive loss of life this pandemic has caused, she’s been pretty excited to see a decade of vaccine research compressed into a year.

Most of the lefties I know pronounce it an-tee-FA, with the emphasis on the last syllable to really drive home the fascist connection.

I’m not nearly bold enough to pull that look off, but I like it.

The journey the title “Happiness in Slavery” has taken here is interesting. From the preface of a French erotic novel to a song about suffering artistically under a possessive record label to the ill-intended name of a climbing route.

Right, just grifting all the way down.

Wasn’t that what Steve Bannon got indicted for?

Yah, there have been studies of the effect of high-visibility enforcement on speeding, and the conclusion seems to be that within a few weeks of the enforcement being removed, speeding behaviors return to normal. 

Oh, thanks for the clarification. Yes, I think, compared to the way the US handles it, it is a more effective deterrent. The distinction I’m trying to make is that this type of deterrence, even if more effective than the way we do things, is inherently reactive rather than proactive, and there are definite limits to…

Regarding British Columbia, I think it’s a case of downstream systems management versus upstream systems management. As you note, they have the right structure to be able to push those buttons and mitigate the problem as it happens, but it isn’t really an upstream solution that tackles the problem itself. Does that…

Oh, a topic I can speak to with some authority! I haven’t examined drunk driving during COVID-19 closely, but we have seen a startling increase in another driving behavior: not wearing seatbelts. Most of the country has been at about 90% compliance with seatbelts for a very long time, but that compliance rate has…

My wife is a physician here at the University. She doesn’t work in the Covid ward most of the time because she’s an internal medicine doctor, but Covid has definitely made her work life worse. The hospital has had to divert so much of their internal resources to treating Covid patients that the other rotations are…

Apparently there was a brawl in D.C. last night between Trump’s people and BLM protestors. The article I read was scant on who started it, but some folks were stabbed.

Nah, a CNN article pointed out he just let it go grey instead of blonding it after the loss.

Truly, Bigfoot hunters contain multitudes.