Friday miscellany

[magid]

The unused entrances to the Arlington T stop (across from my building) have been fenced off since yesterday. This morning I saw someone at the site, and found out what's going on. The unused entrance will be redone, then opened for use so they can close the other entrance and refurbish the station, putting in newer elevators and escalators. They'll still have stairs (given the T's track record with broken elevators and escalators, it's good there's always the stairs), but new ones. I'm very glad, since those stairs have made me nervous for a while; the steps move too much when I use them, and I keep wondering when they're going to break. I asked if they'd keep the currently-unused entrance open once they've refurbished the current entrance, but that isn't the plan. Perhaps a suggestion campaign could change that, even if only as a passes-only entrance (as Central has). Multiple entrances just seems like a good idea, since the work has already been done. Once the station's completely redone, they're going down the line to refurbish Copley, though I wouldn't guess when that would be.

I never knew there were 2000-year old archaeological sites under downtown Miami.

Reagan might not have been wholly wrong after all: a new study (by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg) shows that trees cause pollution, by producing methane.
(Listen to the NPR story here.)

And in other environmental news, it seems that the extinction of many kinds of frogs are the result of the chytrid fungus, spreading as the climate gets warmer during the nights and cooler during the days.
(NPR story here.)

License plate on a cute Cooper parked in Cambridge: MA plate NOSUV

After years of walking by, last week I finally figured out what intrigued me about a dental practice's sign (bold mine):
[first name] Carpe, DMD

P.S. There's a poll to nominate a worthy LJer for a permanent account.

P.P.S. LJ has changed the little icon for a feed, from the little satellite dish to an orange square with radiating circle arcs.

Comments

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

There was a whole law suit about historical preservation regarding the Copley renovations. The neighbors figured they paid too much to live there, to have some ugly elevator house on the street, so that the station could become wheelchair accessible.

[magid.livejournal.com]

There are ugly elevator houses, and less ugly elevator houses. I hope the T has found something that fits in reasonably well with the neighborhood. But even if it hasn't, it's worth having the station be accessible.

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

They are going to make glass ones, so you can see right through them.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Well, then theoretically, at least, they shouldn't change the view :-)

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Gosh, and then all that pretty glass can get smudged and covered with graffiti and little stickers and so on! Much better idea than, I dunno, an opaque elevator house made of something like, I dunno, brick? To match all those old buildings in the neighborhood.

[queue.livejournal.com]

The feed icon matches the icon that shows up int he bottom right corner of Firefox when you're on a Web page where a feed is present.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*nod* I recognized it, but it's still a surprise to see the icon changed in other places.