Word: ramps
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...These are three victims of the slaughter of wildlife on Australia's roads. Quantifying the annual carnage is impossible, but "it's going to run into millions," says Daniel Ramp, an environmental scientist at the University of New South Wales. He's been studying a 30-km stretch of the Snowy Mountains Highway for six years, and each year it has claimed around 650 kangaroos. "And that's not counting wombats, possums or anything else," he says...
...reduce the toll? With difficulty, says Ramp. "Most of the options are things people aren't willing to do." Redesigning roads to incorporate overpasses, underpasses or fencing would cost billions of dollars; deterrent devices fitted to vehicles simply don't work; experiments with spreading predator scents along the verges have been unsuccessful. The simplest solution would be for drivers in the bush-especially those at the wheels of big trucks, which are the most murderous-to change their attitude: stay alert, slow down on single-lane highways, try not to drive when animal activity peaks at dawn and dusk...
...that skateboard style has influenced clothing and graphics, the new parks have begun to grab the attention of designers in other fields. Architect David Rockwell, designer of the Nobu restaurants in Manhattan and the set of the musical Hairspray, says skate parks, with their use of "the continuous ramp that leads you through a series of adventures," were an inspiration for a new playground he's working on. Joe Ragsdale, who teaches landscape architecture at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, says that every year his students come up with different ways to provide ideal flight paths for intrepid skaters...
...with style. Skate parks, which first appeared in the 1970s, started out as places meant to draw skaters away from the respectable concrete of downtown. But those early parks tended to be melancholy stretches of concrete with a few bowls and half pipes--that's a semicircular ramp--thrown in. The merest parking lot was more fun. Over the next decade many of the parks closed, victims of underuse and high insurance costs...
...usually required helmets and elbow pads. Park "design" tended to be contracted out to sidewalk-concrete pourers, playground-equipment manufacturers and lowball bidders. Most had never set foot on a skateboard, much less done a 360 on one. The results were uninspiring. To an intrepid teenager, a mass-produced ramp is about as exciting as a documentary on the Federal Reserve System. Thrasher, a skating magazine, spotlights the worst parks in a feature it calls "Certified Piece of Suck...