Data / not data; Indian food.

RantWoman's life continues to cross pollinate among #HacktheCommute , #SeaOpenDataDay and #SNAPSmem. No, the threads will not all necessarily appear in this blog post except that RantWoman needs separately to elaborate and has to digress about people and phenomena not in data.

This digression brought to you partly by whichever Twitter stats app RantWoman decided NOT to download to her Smartphone yesterday. RantWoman appreciates being ASKED whether she wants to allow the app to read her contacts, her camera (today's theme: blooming, cheery blossoms and houseplant greenery, plus the Queen of Spades), her location, and RantWoman does not remember what all else.

(Readers get to imagine a black cat peering out a window toward a white wall with pink cherry blossoms and sundry other large trees; the house plant tangle is in another room. RantWoman has seen the link for uploading things from her phone but opted not to try to figure it out just now. Whine. Moan. Score anothehr one for definitely not at the latest shriek of fashion.)

Um, NO. RantWoman esteems #privacy, at least enough to meditate about it all over the internet.

But, wait a minute.
RantWoman awhile ago went to an event about pedestrian mobility and pedestrian safety on First Hill. One clump of mental lint from the event that stuck in the brain was a comment from a Responsible City Official and trained engineer and general all-around competent and careful professional.

(#snapsmem meme: Center at UW for Engineers talking to Humans, human-centered design...)

The comment, plus or minus some RantWoman paraphrasing: "We use some specific models for designing roads and traffic patterns, but pedestrians are not reflected at all."

There followed, by voices much better informed about that area than RantWoman several comments about people who do or do not cross certain streets at certain corners and why, Phew. Not only RantWoman. LOTS of low income, elderly, and people with disabilities! In an area probably slated for ... but in the meantime....

Earth to RantWoman: if people want pedestrian behavior in people's models and planning, MAYBE it would help to consent to share location data through smartphone apps.

Maybe.

But for the moment the internet is just going to have to cope with  the no data /reluctant to share data, at least long enough for RantWoman to think about who to entice into conversations about what's in it for pedestrians!

And speaking of not in the data, RantWoman is interested in the interpretation here of "crosswalk."
http://transportation-nag.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-is-crosswalk.html

Oh, and ... valuable info about an area RantWoman visits fairly often but that probably would not have surfed anywhere near the top of RantWoman's media stream without a live human connection to route the link to RantWoman's Facebook feed.
http://columbiacitysource.com/2015/02/27/and-another-car-runs-into-a-building




And just because rantWoman is utterly charmed by the idea of a physics journal talking about recipes and spices
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/03/03/a-scientific-explanation-of-what-makes-indian-food-so-delicious/