Imagine the surprise on the looks of the faces of students participating in a Saturday Dissertation House session when the President of the University peeks in to say hello and wish everyone luck! The smiles permeated the room as UMBC’s President, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski made an impromptu visit to the Dissertation House this afternoon. Dr. Hrabowski greeted the group as “future Ph.D.s” and wished them well. ABOUT Dr. Hrabowski: http://www.umbc.edu/aboutumbc/president/index.php

This morning, Dr. Carter is discussing the need to be prepared for meetings with your advisor and your dissertation committee. Bottom line: Be professional! Be on time, come prepared, and follow-up.  Students will blog about their plans and experiences throughout the day. Take a look: http://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/winter-2011-challenge/

Thanks to Wikicommons.

New York City has taken HUGE steps to promote biking by creating designated lanes through out the city. Some have touted this as promoting a greener tomorrow.

Others, such as John Cassidy, disagree quite strongly wondering

whether the blanketing of the city with bike lanes—more than two hundred miles in the past three years—meets an objective cost-benefit criterion. Beyond a certain point, given the limited number of bicyclists in the city, the benefits of extra bike lanes must run into diminishing returns, and the costs to motorists (and pedestrians) of implementing the policies must increase.

Felix Salmon knocks this argument down though noting that

If indeed the limited number of bicyclists in the city was a given, then Cassidy might have a point here. But it’s not. Bike lanes attract bikes no less effectively than roads attract cars and the number of cyclists in New York has been growing just as fast as the city can create new lanes for them.

Over at Free Exhange, R.A. promotes even more bike lanes as

if drivers paid for all the costs they impose on others, there would be fewer drivers complaining about bike lanes and more people using them. As things stand, given that cyclists help alleviate some of these externalities (a cyclist takes up dramatically less road space than a car, doesn’t use on-street parking, does not emit ozone, and does not contribute to climate change) it seems quite sensible to allocate a larger share of New York’s roadways to lanes for cyclists.

This got us thinking? Should bike lanes be promoted elsewhere in the country? We usually don’t go out into the sun (and thus have no experience biking) so what are your thoughts?