Archive for January 9th, 2007
It works so well in prisons
From Making schools safe:
Seattle’s Roosevelt High School was recently rebuilt with a single, large common area and connecting academic wings in a starburst design.
This is called the “pod” design; it allows a reduction in the staff to prisoner ratio in modern prisons.
Roosevelt students are grouped by grade into “learning pods,” spending most of the day in one area of the school. Teachers get to know them better and may be more aware if a conflict is brewing, Trainor said.
Learning pods, detainment pods, whatever.
“It’s hard to design something that prevents gun usage in the hallways, unless it’s set up like a prison,” (Marsh) said
But district officials opted not to install cameras in hallways — at least not yet, he said. “We don’t want the school to look or feel like a prison,” Peters said. “We want to
provide a good learning environment, and we believe safety flows from that.”
That good school design and good prison design share so many elements is probably not coincidental.
Why don’t power companies sue landowners?
If a landowner allows a situation to exist (say, a weak tree) that results in a loss for a utility, why don’t those utilities sue the landowner? If trees falling on power lines in Seattle caused the outages in December, why don’t the shareholders that bear those losses pressure the utility to recover the costs of repair from the people that caused that repair to be required? If you’re driving along and take out a power pole with your vehicle, the power company will pursue you to recover the cost. I don’t see why trees get a pass; driving around the east side, there are many trees that were leaning on the power lines before the storm that are still leaning on them. I assume in a subsequent storm, they’ll cause an outage.
