Cor-Ten steel? Similar to what was done at New River Gorge (West Virginia)?

“Did you ever cross the Booneville bridge”

Nope. I've gotten to cross a number of old truss bridges, but not that one.

Speaking of places to go and other bridges: my most noteworthy may be the Baring Bridge in western Washington state, just off US 2 on the way from Seattle metro to Stevens Pass and the Cascade Tunnels of 1900 and 1929). The Baring Bridge is Model A stuff. (I crossed it often in an RX-7.)

http://www.bridgemeister.com/pic.php?pid=44

http://www.abarim.com/Bridge%20at%20Baring.htm

I used to go to Stevens Pass and Scenic, west and beneath the pass, to watch trains at the portal of the Cascade Tunnel as well as visit the two old Cascade Tunnel portals. There has been other interest in the area after I left Seattle in the 1990s. The following is a map of the area around Stevens Pass and the tunnels as well as the old railway route. (Suitable for recreational trail use; I don't know if the old Cascade Tunnel will ever be used as a rec trail; when I was still in the Seattle area, the Snoqualmie Tunnel, 2 miles long, was opened to recreational users. I loved taking a flashlight and walking through it, from eastern to western Washington and back, two different worlds — others rode quickly through the tunnel on bicycles.)

Stevens Pass

http://people.msoe.edu/~westr/stevens.htm

Snoqualmie Tunnel

http://www.theslowlane.com/paths/iron.html

http://www.piap.com/photos/20050820/pictures/ds…

http://www.pnwhikes.com/hike.asp?hid=48#pictures

http://www.the4cs.com/~cathy/Photos/Tunnel2008/…

(I wish more tunnels were opened to the public for recreational use.)

Did you ever cross the Booneville bridge when it made your car sway along way?

“Good luck on your travels.”

Thanks. I've been doing it in earnest for many, many years and want to keep doing it while I still can. (Health problem is eventually going to severely constrain travel.)

“The country is beautiful, at least from the top of a hill.”

You bet! This is an added benefit of visiting the oldest, most famous Missouri wineries — not limited to the especially-famous view from Montelle, either.

http://www.squidoo.com/missouri-wine-country

http://www.southernliving.com/travel/south-west…

NOTE: While I understand it joins other old truss bridges in being replaced with what technically is better, while I like some newer bridge designs (though many cable-stayed bridges are ugly, and multiple beam bridges are boring), I have a fondness for old truss bridges (which are often narrow, which emphasizes their length as well as height). I'm sad about the losses with the passage of time, and frequent progress.

http://www.modot.mo.gov/northeast/projects/even…

http://bridgehunter.com/mo/gasconade/hermann/

(Other trusses were lost at Alton and farther from St. Louis, at Cape Girardeau, earlier. At least I got to drive on the old Cape Girardeau bridge before it was removed. Also worth mentioning is that the old 66 Chain of Rocks Bridge is open to recreational non-motorized users in St Louis metro.)

http://www.trailnet.org/p_ocorb.php

http://www.theroadwanderer.net/66Illinois/chain…

Driving along the Missouri River (including through the best-known wine country) was always fun, as was threading through the Ozarks (beginning in Eureka and Pacific!). The road north from Herrmann (which included a good, old-fashioned truss bridge across the river) snaked north through the hills on the north side of the river, then emerged abruptly onto open prairie. Welcome to Siberian America! North of Jeff City, the Arctic Ocean is approximately 2,000 miles onward, more or less(!).

NOT LONG ENOUGH! I had to leave yesterday, the same day I arrived, as I needed to get farther west as soon as possible. Not truly imperative, but I was on a tight budget and schedule and needed to get out to where I should spend the most time and money, where I'm set to start a new job on Monday.

I wish I had been able to stay longer (at least overnight, to revisit my favorite restaurant in the neighborhood where I used to live). As it was, I did manage to get “stuck” there from 12:30 until after six PM (just drove until early the next morning to get to Joplin, my next stop rather than Oklahoma City). I went by my old neighborhood (shopping district and former street where home used to be), then headed to a site to check on e-mail (sent from there), then took my time getting out of town. I miss it already.

??? Well, you had actually addressed something. Not only was I aware that you're anti-coal, but that you specifically have exhibited this position in the past on the thread you created that you yourself just described, above,

” the TVA disaster that occurred just about a year ago now – I'm strongly against mountaintop removal and strip mining”

which of course I was reminded of (all of it) when I saw that book yesterday.

“I was thinking of you earlier, as I was in a used book store (i.e., a gold mine) and spotted a book, Big Coal, and thought of you and a slogan attributable to you, given your stance on coal as an energy source. (See below)”

I was one of the first and only bloggers writing about the TVA disaster that occurred just about a year ago now – I'm strongly against mountaintop removal and strip mining.

You lost me.

Thanks. Greetings from Joplin. For some “strange” reason, I was delayed leaving St. Louis…

I was thinking of you earlier, as I was in a used book store (i.e., a gold mine) and spotted a book, Big Coal, and thought of you and a slogan attributable to you, given your stance on coal as an energy source. (See below)

“what is so tragically ignored in the original release from the task force is the human toll represented by dismissing the 15% of women ages 40-49 whose lives are saved by the current guidelines”

Yep. This is not strict usage of the nomenclature, but consider it a sinister “opportunity cost” of making a cost-benefit analysis or appropriateness decision in favor of rejection of screening those who we know a fraction will have cancer that would have been detected if we were looking.

“this will not go away”

Oh, no, not at all. This issue (breast cancer screening and early detection methods) will probably get more R&D (not merely lip service as lightweight balm in the next few weeks or months). On a more general note, consider not only breast cancer, but other cancers and other conditions that someday might be able to be reliably predicted based on genetic as well as other inherent “markers.” We would probably all agree this is a good thing. But — once these pieces of information and the methods for revealing them are known, the insurers legitimately will have a right to use them, which means more pre-existing condition identification (much more, probably), and what I have long figured would be the end of the insurance model and an even-more-likely-than-now (which is close to “already”) insistence by the public overall of government intervention in health care (more than now, beginning at least with regulation and prohibition of uses of these more advanced future detection methods, which is counterintuitive and counterproductive in general, and which leads to a bigger push for government intervention in more ways, possibly including provision of health care eventually).

Jill's New Slogan (for what's it worth — the price paid is zero)

“It's Cheap. It's Filthy. It's Coal!”

(I like “filthy” rather than “dirty”)

But I also think they did a lousy job of trying to make their case.

Yes – I'm sure, this will not go away.

http://neohiofamily.com/articles/index.php?view…

(God, I miss this place, and the neighborhood where I used to live, among the finest in the eastern USA — I'm not in a hurry this afternoon to get back on the highway; that says something…)

Jill, the recent mammo findings are not the last word, and certainly more federal R&D is merited (including making tests more sensive and able to detect cancer earlier — ahem — as well as reducing false positives, for example). Also, at least this subject, highly politicized as it is, isn't as corrupt as climate “science” (lefty PC “psyience”) has long been known to be, and about which the current scandal about leaked e-mails about PC corruption and suppression of dissent from catechism is no surprise, only interesting insofar as the extent of it was revealed (and kept silent by lefties, including on this site).

Well, we do have to separate the politics from the science (even more so with “climate change” and the puritanical PC fundamentalism and quasi-Insquisitionist elements and related behaviors there, but also with health care — which has been so corrupted not only with women's health issues, for example, but which has seen at least one article in the [oft-politically-slanted] New England Journal of Medicine that parrots the BS about systematic discrimination of the medical system against minorities, and the actual suggestion that minorities on the transplant organ waiting lists have their progress in the queues moved up with awards of “race-conscious points, for example). (There's more PC brownshirt-ism and puritanical fundamentalism in PC-politicized science than any caricature that can be made up about “purists” in the Dem and GOP political parties.)

A lot of people are overreacting to what was done, and the irony of this event is amusing and delicious.

“dropping a guideline that if kept will save the lives of 15% of the women diagnosed between ages 40-49 should be [rejected as a policy decision]“

Well, certainly the potential consequences are devastating (which is why we want to seek, not reject, for example, defenses against ballistic missiles and other deliveries of nuclear weapons, and try for the best defense possible, as any “leakage” is devastating, to use a better example and illustration). But also, “it depends.” On what? On how effective the screening really is; on the risks of testing as well as the benefits of disease and death forestalled; on, yes, the costs versus the benefits, and this is especially pertinent when comparing this screening routine for this disease against the needs and desires to spend time and money fighting and reducing other diseases and deaths as well. We can't magically do everything at zero cost or effort. Think “allocation” as well as cost and effectiveness (still the key from an intellectual and clinical viewpiont, in a fiscal and other-subject vacuum). Sooner or later, we need to do triage. With this event, it was simply a revision of current thought (“consensus” should be used right away if we want to treat this as well as, or better than another political subject, “climate change”) and a finding (which isn't necessarily surprising, given the reality we know about preventive care, which is no miracle or panacea) that some screening is less merited on the latest known facts than it was before.

(I'll look for any replies in about three hours. I'm in Terre Haute on the road west to St. Louis and beyond Will try to check again in St. Louis briefly.)

Don't worry about “thinking out loud” (and putting it onto this site in real-time).

> I'm not sure which activists you're talking about – health care reform? people who want to keep the
> guidelines as they've been? the ones who want to cut back?

No! There is no activism in these two groups that amounts to anything at all. Activists want ever more treatment, and for government to provide it (or for “insurers” to be required to provide it, which is in effect the same time, but indirectly). These people also (because they're defensive in that learned people don't ignorantly believe the “more, more, more” oft-unfounded or dishonestly-driven mantra) deny that any kind of rational approach to health care “reform” and the related major issues of appropriateness, effectiveness, cost, allocation of therapies and of money and effort on this versus that, will lead to any kind of (or more) rationing, denial of care, or any kind of negative or unpleasant or disappointing outcome.

Here (once again), they are proven right, and ironically, given this event's timing and applicability (not only with “appropriateness,” and pertinent issues about overhyped preventive care and risks as well as benefits of all kinds of care, including preventive or prophylactic care, and screening, but with the health care “reform” effort and associated emotionalism and impatience and current frustration at lack of “progress”). It provides quite a bit of delicious irony.

It's not the a final determination of everything (these were “I statements” and less than level A recommendations, in fact, which make the overreaction to it additionally noteworthy and amusing), but it does throw some rational, real-world cold water on those expecting findings to follow the (politically) “correct” trend of supporting current levels of intervention or advocating additional treatment, and the heavy politicization of women's health issues (like real and fake pollution and “climate change”).

[chuckle] Thou cannot serve two mistresses. Thou shalt not worship both Goddess and Mammo.

The fact is, breast cancer screening hasn't improved and the medicine practice around the screening remains unable to agree because they simply don't know.

For me, there's just no justification that can be given with adequately persuasive information – data or anecdotal at this time that tells me dropping a guideline that if kept will save the lives of 15%of the women diagnosed between ages 40-49 should be dropped (sorry – definitely writing as I think!).

This event (“mammo guideline” revision) (re)introduces numerous issues and ironies.

(Naive or unrealistic activists had better be careful about what they want.)

A woman who gets a mammogram between ages 20-30 and is diagnosed has a less than 1% chance of actually having the disease; 30-40 has a 7% chance, 40-50 has a 20% chance, and 50-60 has a 32% chance. This is after the initial mammogram.

However, this seriously narrows the full range of people who should be tested by biopsy. Among those left in the test group (who were diagnosed via mammogram), a woman who tests positive on the biopsy who is 20-30 years old now still only has a 45% chance of actually having breast cancer; 30-40 years old has an 88% chance, 40-50 has a 96% chance, and 50-60 has a 98% chance of having the disease after the two positive tests.

It's an interesting problem, because even in the 50-60 age range, false positives outstrip the real positives. It should also be noted that younger women tend to get more aggressive forms of cancer which develop from stages 0 or 1 to higher, more deadly stages more quickly. So that needs to be weighed as well, although I'm not sure how to statistically analyze that one.

I believe inclusion of women in the 40-49 range is appropriate for a number of reasons but not the least of which include: this is a primetime that women are caretakers of both children and aging parents. The human toll of illness, detected or undetected, is enormous at this phase. The decline in deaths is 15% – that is huge when applied to the general population who will be diagnosed in the 40-49 range. Consider the collateral damage that would be allowed to occur if a full 15% of women who will die between the ages of 40-49 were allowed to die because of no screening coverage or recommendations.

I agree 100% that WOC will be seriously, negatively impacted if the recommendations are adopted in any wholesale way. It would be an absolute dereliction of humanity.

The whole what's is gonna cost thing – you know, let's talk Viagra. And insurance coverage for it because erectile dysfunction is considered a disability. But if we're only having sex to procreate and we're talking about men who've already had kids and are still with the same women, then why do they get to have Viagra covered? Isn't that a subsidy I'm paying?

We could go on and on and on like that – when what is called for is an examination of the human impact. This stuff about extreme anxiety and overbiopsying and the false positives? Sorry – I will NEVER buy that those harms outweigh saving the lives of 15% of the women who otherwise would be diagnosed with breast cancer in the 40-49 range if the guidelines remained as is.