Tag Archives: public

What is the point of public transport?

What is the point of having public transport? What’s it for? That’s what I was thinking about driving around Frankfurt-am-Main. You see, in my mind, the point of public transport was always to provide a means of transport that is cheaper than driving cars. This includes providing transport for those who cannot afford cars, that’s the same thing. Interestingly, it does not seem to be the case in Germany.

The public fare from Darmstadt to Frankfurt-am-Main with the S-Bahn (suburban train) is 8 euro one way. The distance is only 35 kilometres center to center, so by car you would spend less than 4 Euro including maintenance costs and depreciation. Even if you were to drive alone, it would make perfect sense to go by car instead of public transport.

So it turns out that the public transport in Germany is twice as expensive as driving cars. What is it for then?… -->

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Air dryers may not be so good for hygiene…

University of Leeds performed a study comparing jet-air dryer, traditional hot-air dryer and paper towels highlighting coming to an unexpected outcome: air dryers contaminate the air around them and may lead to decrease of hygiene.

Participants then dried their hands in a controlled environment and scientists tested bacteria in the air near the various hand-drying options. What they found: the air around jet-air dryers held 27 times more bacteria than was found around paper towels, and 4.5 times more than around warm-air dryers.

Further, “a similar pattern was seen for bacterial counts 1 meter away,” they write. And that bacteria lingers: Half was collected in the air around dryers five minutes after use, with bacteria still hanging around after 15 minutes.

“Next time you dry your hands in a public toilet using an electric hand dryer … you may be splattered with bugs from other people’s hands,” a researcher says in a statement.

The researchers conclude “air dryers may be unsuitable for use in healthcare settings, as they may facilitate microbial cross-contamination.”

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Advertising blacks for whites?

I am walking through an airport in one of the Europe’s capitals. Passing along rows of monitors I cannot help watching the advertisements. As I walk, one advertisement changes another but the main theme remains. There is always a white family or a bunch of white friends and the main protagonist helping them is black. Every single time. The main character is black and he helps white people, who are, of course, helpless. Mind you, the public at the airport is uniformly white. What is that? What are we supposed to think when we see that?… -->

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Welcome to a slightly worse world

I was standing in the queue to the border control in Frankfurt. A small queue, ten people or so, two windows. When I was the second in queue, two guys run from behind and create a second queue parallel to ours. I expressed my displeasure in no uncertain terms, asking them to queue behind us. They just stayed there and kept saying that there are two windows and there should be two queues. And everyone else is just pretending not to be there. Unfortunately the dim young German border guard took it upon himself to order two queues. Understandably, he did not want a fight. On the other hand, the rude and egoistic assholes win again. What does it tell me? I guess I will try to make sure my children can play rude egoistic assholes to get ahead in the world. I just hope it will not become their nature. Welcome to an ever worse world, everyone.… -->

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