In 1974, Dr. Henry Heimlich published findings on what was to become the Heimlich Maneuver. A week later, the first choking victim was saved by the method. In 1978, New York City passed a law requiring that every establishment, regardless of size or design, “where food is sold and space is designated specifically as eating areas shall have posted in a conspicuous place, easily accessible to all employees and customers, a sign graphically depicting the Heimlich Maneuver or a comparable technique instructing on how to dislodge food from a choking person.” The bill was passed unanimously by the City Council in 1978 (five days before Christmas and its feasts.) “Dislodging food from person choking; poster” became Local Law 43 when signed by Mayor Koch on December 29. The law notes that it “does not impose any duty or obligation on any proprietor, employee or other person to remove, assist in removing, or attempt to remove food from the throat of the victim or a choking emergency,” and that the NY Department of Health “shall make signs available, and may charge a fee to cover printing, postage and handling expenses.” The posters are distributed along with your restaurant license.

In 1997, the posters were dramatically redesigned. An article in the UK Independent On Sunday (November 30, 1997) notes

“The Department of Health grew concerned that, in a city like New York, where dining in is the exception, habitual restaurant-goers may suffer from over-exposure to Heimlich signs, and that, over time, the charts risk becoming so much civic-minded wallpaper.”

To the rescue came students from Parson’s School of Design who redesigned the old institutional orange design with a jarring new constructivist design in primary colors. The poster is certainly harder to miss, though with 10 years of exposure it may be time again for a redesign.

Update 1/2005: For a more extensive history of this poster design, see Guns, Butter and Ballots. Citizens take charge by designing for better government, January/February 2005. (Towards the middle of the page.)

Tired of all that blood for oil? Roll up to your elected representative on your own home brewed biodiesel using any of these handy guides. (Diesel vehicle required.)

“E-democracy represents the use of information and communication technologies and strategies by democratic actors (governments, elected officials, the media, political organizations, citizen/voters) within political and governance processes of local communities, nations and on the international stage. To many, e-democracy suggests greater and more active citizen participation enabled by the Internet, mobile communications, and other technologies in today’s representative democracy as well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement in addressing public challenges.”

Steven Clift has a nice list of E-democracy links. Check some of his own articles, too.

Found via VoxPolitics.

From the New York Times:

“Four years ago that children’s television show began broadcasting an Israeli-Palestinian co-production, conceived in the afterglow of the 1993 Oslo accords. The collaboration produced 70 half-hour shows, each one containing Hebrew and Arabic segments.... Under a new co-production agreement, which now includes Jordanians, the project has run into difficulty. The name ‘Sesame Street’ has been changed to ‘Sesame Stories’ because the concept of a place where people and puppets from those three groups can mingle freely has become untenable. The original shows were built around the notion that Israeli and Palestinian children (as well as puppets) might become friends. Now, reflecting the somber mood in the Middle East, producers see their best hope as helping children to humanize their historic enemies through separate but parallel stories.”

The segreation strikes me as a failure. The article also mentions various travel restrictions that are hampering production.

Posters from the By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943. 908 posters from the collection of the Library of Congress. Read about the exhibit, check the massive subject listing, or skip straight to the highlights.

The New York Times reports on an experiment using flywheels to convert and store the braking energy of subway trains approaching stations and release it back into the electrical system in a regulated way. The system could save up to 20 million tax payer dollars a year in electricity costs and would help relieve a lot of the heat subways generate. Between Bloomberg’s budget cuts and the sweltering stations in July, this is a beautiful thing.

Found via Slashdot.

“Depleted uranium is created as a by-product of the processes used to convert natural uranium for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. NATO used ammunition and weaponry made of depleted uranium during its air strikes on Yugoslavia in 1999. Suspicious deaths and illnesses among Europeans exposed to the substance are prompting investigators to examine DU’s health risks. The United States has denied any link between illnesses and exposure to depleted uranium.”

Read Trail of a Bullet, a series of articles from the Christian Science Monitor. Join the call to ban the use of DU.

Micah Wright has put together some funny World War II style propaganda posters satirizing the current “war on terrorism” and all the hopped up rhetoric. Some of my favorites: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Found via Dr. Menlo and warbloggerwatch.

“Veronica Webb’s eco-friendly electric car turned into a fire-spewing death machine the other night, burning down her Key West house and killing her beloved dog, Hercules.” Says Webb, “Electric cars and golf carts are always overloading their chargers and burning up, but no one knows about it.” From Page Six.

“13 months ago [Sugata Mitra] launched something he calls ‘the hole in the wall experiment.’ He took a PC connected to a high-speed data connection and imbedded it in a concrete wall next to NIIT’s headquarters in the south end of New Delhi. The wall separates the company’s grounds from a garbage-strewn empty lot used by the poor as a public bathroom. Mitra simply left the computer on, connected to the Internet, and allowed any passerby to play with it. He monitored activity on the PC using a remote computer and a video camera mounted in a nearby tree. What he discovered was that the most avid users of the machine were ghetto kids aged 6 to 12, most of whom have only the most rudimentary education and little knowledge of English. Yet within days, the kids had taught themselves to draw on the computer and to browse the Net. The physicist has since installed a computer in a rural neighborhood with similar results.”