Irregular Times took a suggestion of mine and made a bumper sticker out of it.
"Bush '04: Lies, Damned Lies, and Lies of Mass Destruction"
There are a lot of other items there which will amuse or infuriate you, depending on your political leanings. I get no royalties on this sticker, so pick any anti-Bush sticker you like.
Wired News reports “Some politically minded bloggers find a new way to keep themselves busy this campaign season: They "adopt" a journalist and track his or her every keystroke.” (by Noah Shachtman).
Wow. That’s a lot of work. Somebody like Eric Zorn writes several columns a week, plus a blog. The Wired writer, Schachtman, isn’t suitable either. He’s done 227 other Wired stories.
I’d want to track somebody who didn’t write so much.
Somebody dead, so they can't suddenly go all productive on me.
I could find somebody being tracked by other people. So, I could comment about their commentary.
I wouldn’t want to do it on my own time. And, I wouldn’t want to do it where I had to hide the activity from my employer. Ideally, I’d like to get paid for this. That would be cool.
I’d like this job to be respected. I know the people I’m writing about just used regular names, but I’d like to be called .... Professor.
I guess this explains why academic jobs in the humanities are hard to get, even though the pay is low.
A bad day for feeling young.
I tried the "clock test" for Alzheimer's on this page: http://www.pbs.org/theforgetting/symptoms/testing.html and my clock pretty much matched the description of early Alheimer's. So, I had my boss take the test. His clock looked exactly like the "good" example.
While waiting for the dentist, I read an article in Bicycling magazine which stated that high mileage cyclists are at increased risk of osteoporesis. I did over 5,000 miles in 2004.
The dentist spent a long time examining my tongue, muttered something like "Hmm ... might be precancerous." He took some pictures, and asked me to see him in a month. He might recommend a biopsy.
I think I'll go to bed now.
Today was Winter bike to work day, so I figured I'd ride in despite the 8 degree temperature.
There was a small group at Daley Plaza (about 7:20), with the CBF providing hot chocolate, t-shirts, and donuts or cookies or something like that. I got interviewed by WGN channel 9, probably because my ski mask made a good visual; channel 7 was also there. I saw two fellow Evanston Bike Club members, Dave Barish and Dave Skogley.
It's odd when people tell you they saw you on TV, but you didn't get a chance to see the film yourself.
Highlights:
I achieved my New Year's resolution to do a century in every month (metric
OK if below freezing).
I finally did a brevet (OK, so it was only the 200K brevet, but ...)
Touring: a 7 day, 650+ mile trip from Kalamazoo, MI to Petoskey, MI and back home to Chicago. This was a wonderful trip -- no rain, no flats, and no negative incidents I can recall.
I finally went mountain biking at Kettle Moraine Forest in Wisconsin this fall. I got a 1-day UCI licence and entered a cyclocross race. Both were great fun (even finishing 39th out of 43 in the race).
Mileage: 5079 (a new high for me).
2004 goals:
Fewer miles. I'm using up most of my annual vacation on a trip abroad, and I want to do more volunteer rehabilitation work in the local forest preserves.
My resolution is not to obsess about the lower mileage.
On the other hand, doing a 300K brevet would be an interesting goal, too. ;)
Yes, Fuzzy Math Gurus, there is a Santa Claus.
There are "facts" floating around the internet, "proving" that one Santa just couldn't do it all, but they fail too see the obvious conclusion -- FRANCHISING! This also explains why "Santa" is often known as "Santa Claus".
Let me explain:
1. Yes, it's true Santa would need to make 822.6 visits per second, or 2,961,360 per hour. However, if we assume that there are 740,340 worldwide Santas (the exact number is known only to the Salvation Army), then each Santa has to make 1 visit only every 15 minutes.
2. Roughly speaking, this is
5 minutes for travel (footnote below)
1 minute for sorting out that house's gifts
1 minute for chimney diving / lock picking
3 minutes for gift arranging
2 minutes for cookie eating
1 minute for exiting premises and returning to sleigh
2 minutes "slack" time for unforseen events (most commonly, large dogs)
---
15 minutes
3. "Santa" is, of course, a very sought after title, and the geographic franchises to be the local "Santa" are subject to yearly adjustments due to population shifts. The changes in the legal paragraphs governing geographic territories in the "Santa" agreement are called "Santa Clauses", a term which eventually has been commonly applied to "Santas" themselves.
Thanks for the opportunity to clear this up.
Footnote: The travel time has been reduced considerably in this century by the use of "jet sleighs" manufactured by Boeing. The original model 7 sleigh, in fact, is what gave the Boeing corporation its name. Elves, noticing how the new sleighs (with, sadly, aluminum reindeer) bounced from housetop to housetop, cheered "Boing! Boing!", which in an Elvin accent sounded like "Boeing! Boeing!".
Picture above: Santas start training -- if they can't ride a bike, they will never master the sleigh!
A list of leak-through paths (bike/pedestrian shortcute) in Glenview, Illinois has been added to my home page, making that home page not quite useless.
This was written in response to Eric Peters' article
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/autos/package.jsp?name=autos/sharing_road1
a piece he wrote on bicycles sharing the road -- or, in his view, hogging it.
There are some good points on which bicyclist behavior could be improved. Certainly there are bicyclists who ride incorrectly, and a couple of traffic tickets might go far toward improving that. In particular, only idiots bike at night without at least the legal minimum lights and reflectors.
However, there's a general attitude in your article, that everybody should
get the heck out of my way. There's also, in my opinion, a general
misunderstanding of who is in whose way.
Are good cyclists really in anybody's way, any more than they would be if
they were just one more solo driver in a Lincoln Navigator? That's doubtful.
I'm in a suburban household with 4 drivers and two cars, and personally
seldom drive. Instead, I bike over 4,000 miles a year (and take the train to
work).
Back when I was in a car for those miles, I was one more solo driver
clogging up the road. I was the last car that made it through a traffic
light, so you had to wait. I took up the last close parking spot, so you
had to park a block away.
You had to wait 5 minutes for me while I finished
pumping my gas. I parked in front of your house, which was a real pain in
the butt because nobody wants to see a red 1982 Ford Escort out their front
window. My buddies and I drove to the gym during evening rush hour, and
caused you to be an extra minute late every working day because of the jam
near the gym. I got rid of my pennies at the toll booth, which made the
automatic counter take an extra ten seconds counting them. My car alarm
went off when you leaned on my car to tie your shoe. Every other month, I
hit the "panic button" instead of the "door unlock" and it took me 20
seconds to figure out how to turn it off. I drove the speed limit in the
left lane of the expressway.
I was Everyman in a white minivan. You didn't notice ME, because there were
so many of ME, and because I was YOU, too.
On my bike, I'm noticeable because I'm different, just like you notice the
neighbor who owns a yellow Corvette. But am I really in your way any more
than I was then? No. I'm just more visible. (and in a lot better shape than
I used to be)
