roads, oil, and tires

Today I learned that the government has winnowed the options for an I-10 bypass of Tucson to four possible routes, but either they're being impossibly vague, or the reporter who wrote the story for the local paper is incredibly incompetent. I did find a map of the un-winnowed possible routes on the page provided by the residents and fans of the San Pedro River Valley, where you can sort of guess which routes they're thinking about. H would actually function like a beltway, and it would give good access to the south, but it would go right between the national park and the national monument, so that sounds like a crummy place to put a freeway. All the other potential routes go through the San Pedro River Valley except for L, which appears to stay on a steady course through the absolute middle of nowhere, thus probably sentencing the endangered somethingorother to death. My humble opinion, as an Eastsider, is that I never drive on the freeway, so the Westsiders ought to just stay off I-10, and then we won't need to build another freeway.

Actually, I'd be a lot more ok with more freeway if we all drove electric cars, which brings us to this article that says oil prices have risen to $95 a barrel because of speculators, not because that's what oil needs to cost. I don't know how much higher people need to drive the price, but it's probably time to think about investing in a proper electric car company. If everybody drove electric cars, I'd be much more ok with a freeway between the national park and the national monument.

In other news, the guy who found out radio waves separated out the hydrogen in salt water was actually inventing a cure for cancer, and playing fields made of ground up tires will kill you.