@airshipper
> we don’t have a big enough population to afford to maintain so many kms of safe state highways
Highways that seem to need constant patching. Unlike well-built rails.
Highways made of bitumen. Which is a byproduct of oil refining. As we learned when there was that fuss about the bitumen from Marsden Point being better than the imported stuff.
So like fossil fuels, roads aren't actually sustainable. Something we need to transition away from.
_The Evening Post_, 25 May 1923:
LOCAL AND GENERAL
Perhaps the day may not be far distant when the horse-drawn vehicle will be a thing of the past in the thoroughfares of big cities, where tarred #macadam or bitumen-surfaced roads will provide splendid speedways for motor traffic. In the meantime, however, it is stated that tarred macadam roads are not popular with horse-drivers, who say that on hot days in the summer time it is twice as hard for horses to draw loads over such surfaces as it ordinarily is to pull similar weights over water-bound macadam roadways. The wood-blocks on the streets of Wellington are most favoured by drivers because the evenness of their surface makes for smooth haulage in all weathers. #Bitumen roads remain to be thoroughly tested in this city, but those thoroughfares which have been so treated appear to give satisfaction to horse-drivers.
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19230525.2.28
#OnThisDay #OTD #PapersPast #Roading #Roads #Vehicles #Wellington
#Neanderthal glue points to complex thinking
The stone tools were unearthed around 1910 at a French archaeological site called #LeMoustier that scientists believe Neanderthals used between 120,000 and 40,000 years ago. Since the 1960s, the tools had been untouched and individually wrapped at the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin.
By Katie Hunt, CNN
Published Feb 26, 2024
"The researchers were initially surprised to find traces of #ocher, as it reduces the stickiness of #bitumen. However, when they made their own version of the glue, using bitumen from a bituminous lake in the France’s Massif Central and ocher from Italy, the reason became clear.
"Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, found that the makers of the stone tools used the adhesive to mold a handle rather than haft the tool to wood.
"'The bitumen there is very sticky and makes everything on you unusable if it touches the bitumen. Everything on you is sticky with black stains and it smells. But if you mix in high ochre loads, what you get is a viscous mass that can actually be touched and used as handles,' Schmidt said via email."
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/neanderthal-glue-points-to-complex-thinking/1625440
06 #ArtAdventCalendar - In-Between Times -
#Pechelbronn in #Alsace was one of the world's first industrial oil fields: exploitation started in the 18th c. (They used the natural bitumen already in the 14th c.) The famous brothers Schlumberger started here, the know-how was exported to #Texas and #California. A project in photos and text 
https://landscapesofchange.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-world-in-between.html
@writingcommunity
(The #Alberta #EnergyRegulator announced on Thursday it issued an #environmental #ProtectionOrder for a #Calgary based #OilAndGas company.
The order comes after a #JointStudy from the #UniversityOfAlberta & #StanfordUniversity found an #IndustryLink between in situ #bitumen recovery & the #earthquakes that shook the #PeaceRiver region last November.)
