@9: Rob, Dieter Rams and his colleagues designed a whole range of things for Braun fifty years ago that Apple could basically rebrand without changing a knob:

http://www.die-neue-sammlung.de/z/nuernberg/sammlung/achse1/b0001_7_en.htm

#34 Snowrunner:

The 85% risk reduction the IIHS estimates comes from the 1989 study they cite. Its abstract:

Abstract

Bicycling accidents cause many serious injuries and, in the United States, about 1300 deaths per year, mainly from head injuries. Safety helmets are widely recommended for cyclists, but convincing evidence of their effectiveness is lacking. Over one year we conducted a case-control study in which the case patients were 235 persons with head injuries received while bicycling, who sought emergency care at one of five hospitals. One control group consisted of 433 persons who received emergency care at the same hospitals for bicycling injuries not involving the head. A second control group consisted of 558 members of a large health maintenance organization who had had bicycling accidents during the previous year. Seven percent of the case patients were wearing helmets at the time of their head injuries, as compared with 24 percent of the emergency room controls and 23 percent of the second control group. Of the 99 cyclists with serious brain injury only 4 percent wore helmets. In regression analyses to control for age, sex, income, education, cycling experience, and the severity of the accident, we found that riders with helmets had an 85 percent reduction in their risk of head injury (odds ratio, 0.15; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.07 to 0.29) and an 88 percent reduction in their risk of brain injury (odds ratio, 0.12; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.04 to 0.40). We conclude that bicycle safety helmets are highly effective in preventing head injury. Helmets are particularly important for children, since they suffer the majority of serious head injuries from bicycling accidents.

Quoted from: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/21/1361

Original article: New England Journal of Medicine
Volume 320:1361-1367 - May 25, 1989 - Number 21

A case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets
RS Thompson, FP Rivara, and DC Thompson

I'm not a statistician (nor a medical professional), but I'm willing to lend a certain amount of trust to a controlled study that has been peer-reviewed for almost twenty years and cited by several dozen other works - read some of them at the link above.

Cefeida - if you have roof access, you can always go beekeeper: http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/small_beekeeping/index.htm - city honey is supposed to be more delicious than rural honey because cities actually supply a greater variety of plants (all they grow out in the country these days is rape, sunflower and corn and that doesn't amount to much in terms of tasty honey. If that sounds like too much work, try a vertical garden like the one the Casa Camper hotel has in Barcelona: http://www.xymara.com/inmyx/index/inmyx107/tcs-200701-index/tcs-200701-casa_camper.htm

We're all very focused about the energy consumption of our cars, but at least here in Germany, the number one gas/coal/whatever guzzler is heating which uses almost 50% more energy than the average car.