Trilkhai

Pedestrians have the right of way in our state in general, but in most of the state they still wait until it's safe (i.e. no cars immediately arriving) before they cross. In Berkeley, especially in the two-lane roads immediately surrounding the university, pedestrians often walk out blindly wherever they please in the assumption that cars will stop. Getting through some intersections takes freaking forever because groups of pedestrians simply ignore the signals, causing traffic to snarl.

I've always figured that the narrow roads over there were (much like the ones in the older European cities) created long before cars, when people relied on horses or horse-drawn vehicles for transport. Roads designed after cars became common tend to be much wider.

That's certainly the case in the densely-packed public-transit-friendly cities where the only option to being inside is either a sidewalk or the street. Out in the less-public-transit-friendly suburbs, kids can (and do) run around in their front/back yards or even the street if it's not too busy.

Reminds me a little too strongly of Infocom's interactive-fiction game Suspended: A Cryogenic Nightmare http://gallery.guetech.org/suspended/suspended.html

They said you would sleep for half a millennium — not an unreasonable length of time, considering you'd be in limited cryogenic suspension. Your body would rest frozen at the planet's nerve center, an underground complex 20 miles beneath the surface. Your brain, they told you, would be wired to a network of computers; your mind would continue to operate at a minimal level, overseeing maintenance of surface-side equilibrium. And you would not awake, so they promised, until your 500 years had elapsed — barring, of course, the most dire emergency.

Then, and only then, you would be awakened to save your planet by strategically manipulating six robots, each of whom perceives the world differently. But such a catastrophe, you have been assured, could not possibly occur.

Good morning.

The studies I've seen showed correlative links between m/paternity leave itself with improved psychological results, not necessarily ones that are specific to reproductive rather than personal leave or aren't also tied to the workplace/society having better social support. Somebody with an employer or in a society that allows people X weeks/months off for personal reasons -- whether it's a matter of choosing to reproduce, finish a degree, caring for an ailing loved one/pet, or combating burnout -- is likely to fare much better psychologically than somebody required to work continuously regardless of their personal circumstances.

An interesting parallel occurred a while back when there was sudden widespread adoption of Finland's "baby box" of supplies for new parents after the BBC noticed that Finland's infant mortality rate plummeted after their introduction. The results have been lackluster, however, because people had overlooked that the improvement in Finland had been tied to a whole bunch of policies & healthcare changes, with the box being only a tiny part of the result.

Soma in BNW is described in a way that matches a combination of opiates and hallucinogens -- it artificially elevates mood, makes everything seem wonderful and pleasantly exciting, causes sensory hallucinations similar to synaesthesia, and so forth. That's a whole world away from Xanax, which merely controls anxiety & nausea with a side-effect of feeling sedated.

There's already an OpenSUSE spin with that name, so that won't work. OTOH, there doesn't seem to be any distros called Iguana, Crocodile, or Agamidae yet...

USPS has increased its shipping prices quite a bit in the last several years, enough that I can (unfortunately) easily see it costing $9.99 or even more to send a box set of DVDs. Try checking the USPS shipping calculator, you might be surprised at the results.