Month: February 2007

  • This Week in Traffic

    Taiwan Moves ‘Em Along!

    Taiwan’s Lunar New Year celebrations brings 1.6 million vehicles in one day on three highways! Wow!

    Columbia, SC Does Something about Wrecks

    They show statitical reductions across the board, but will they maintain it for another year? I hope so…

    Another Bomb Plot with LED’s

    Like the Aqua Teen Boston fiasco, a man was arrested for placing little lights on signal poles.

    More Camera Enforcement of Signals Discussion

    This seems to be the month for it. Alabama debates using camera enforcement.

    Traffic Camera Records Murder

    In Cali, Colombia, a traffic monitoring camera recorded the murder of 4 people. Hopefully they will use the images effectively to capture the second gunman.

  • Sick as Proverbial Pooch

    I have a nasty cold. It started on Friday last and by Saturday I was down for the count. The couch and I became very close friends. I didn’t sleep during the day much, so I watched a lot of movies and TV. Here’s the count, plus my evaluation.

  • The Guardian. Kevin Costner and Aashton Kutcher. Old-hand Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer teaches values to New Recruit. Entirely predictable and not worth your time, although it had cool rescue scenes.
  • Flyboys. James Franco. American Cowboy goes to Europe to fly against Germany in WWI. Really REALLY predicatvle and not worth your time.
  • Accepted. Justin Long. High School graduate who isn’t a slacker somehow is not accepted to any colleges (?) and through a series of unfortunate events, founds his own. Exactly what I expected, so it didn’t disappoint, but my expectations were low. The main character had an annoying tendency to pratfall every third scene or so. Why? I don’t know; it was unnecessary.
  • Still to be watched: A Scanner Darkly and Little Miss Sunshine.

    TV Movies watched this weekend: Under Siege, the only Steven Seagal movie worth watching; Love Actually, a Christmas movie that drove me nuts in the theater, but wasn’t horrible on TV with Tivo at hand; Notting Hill, one of Jenn and My favorite movies; How to lose a guy in 10 Days, which while stupid, wasn’t so stupid I didn’t like it.

    I also watched an excellent snake documentary on the Discovery Channel with that Nature Narrator Dude who does all sorts of shows (who’s name I cannot recall). They had snake-cameras and everything. Even a cute baby cobra.

  • MANGO!

    As brought to me by sfsignal.com, here is Mango, a worthy successor to Badger and Bananaphone.

  • Conservapedia

    Well, after all of the hurly burly about conservapedia.com I’ve been hearing lately, I decided to go check it out.

    I popped through some articles, and read their commandments, and was heartily amused. For example, under the article Theory of Relativity, there is only one mention of Eistein (what do they have against Einsten? He was Jewish?) and near the bottom was this addition.

    Relativity has generated a huge following by advocates of moral relativism(Citation Needed). The idea of moral relativity may exist independent of (and substantially predates) the theory of relativity, but invocations of the theory are used in attempts to lend legitimacy to this version of morality.

    Aha. What a useful addition to an article about a scientific theory. A link might be useful, but a full paragraph? Sounds like proselytizing to me.

    I was going to go in and make a comment and change the article to reflect that, but guess what? You have to be logged in to edit, and there is no way to log in! You can’t register for an account (as of today). So, this conservapaedia (look, I just violated commandment 5, no non-american spelling) is a worthless piece of crap. Maybe they shut down the login because of vandalism. Who knows, because they don’t say on their main page.

    Let’s take some samples from another related article. Like, Einstein, for instance.

    Unlike most advances in physics, the theory of relativity was proposed based on mathematical theory rather than observation. The theory rests on two postulates that are difficult to test, and then derives mathematically what the physical consequences should be.

    Difficult, yes. Impossible, not even close, as there have been many experiments confirming the predictions of relativity. This paragraph (which I’m not allowed to edit) implies that difficult = untestable.

    This theory rejects Newton’s view of gravitation and replaces it with a concept that there is a continuum of space and time…

    Relativity does not “reject” Newtonian physics, it builds on it. Newton’s theories work perfectly for medium speed, medium size, medium weight objects, ie. the type of things we normally encounte in our day to day lives. There’s no need to inject special relativity to get that last 0.0000001 bit of accuracy when we’re trying to figure how long it will take a plane to get from Denver to London.

    Don’t you wish Christian Conservatives would spend more time doing what they say they’re after? Protecting the weak and feeding the poor?

  • Shark Jumping: Thy Name is Battlestar

    I’m disappointed to note that I believe Battlestar Galactica has Jumped the Shark.

    Almost the entirety of season 3 has been disjointed and weird. The beginning credits note that the Cylons “Have a Plan” but even they don’t seem to know what it is.

    Battlestar has moved away from what made it so good during the mini-series and first season. The strong roles played by each iconic character against the backdrop of the evil human-destroying cylons made it a great series. Now they’re taking valuable time to develop nebulous concepts and explore interactions amongst minor characters. This would normally be great, except the set of Battlestar is way too small to do this.

    Alas, I am not a professional critic. I am a professional science fiction appreciator though, in that I pay myself to do it. And my opinion is that if the next couple episodes don’t get better, I’m not going to watch any more.

  • This Week in Traffic: 23 February 2007

    Fines by Fone

    In Dubai, UAE, the traffic police will be issuing traffic citations by phone soon. This will teach those crazy people in Lubbock who don’t want to enforce their traffic lights with automatic cameras.

    Speaking of Lubbock

    My former residence of Lubbock, Texas is having a bruhaha over potential red-light enforcement. The cited article decries camera enforcement prior to engineering improvements such as improved signal timing. I’ll keep in touch with my friends back there and see what happens.

    Speaking of Signal Cameras

    An article in today’s AJC covers the impact of red-light enforcement in Georgia (free registration req’d).

    Charleston Ordinance Doomed to Failure

    This ordinance, intended to prevent drivers from cutting through a particular subdivision to avoid traffic, is ultimately going to fail for several reasons (I define “Fail” to be “not satisfy the residents who pushed for the ordinance.”)

  • It will reduce traffic, I’m sure, but when the cops aren’t out there, people will drive through. It’s like speed limits. People will drive where they are comfortable driving
  • It’s illegal, unless the subdivision purchases their streets back from the city.
  • It’s poor design. It may be more expensive to retrofit with roundabouts or other traffic calming devices, but ultimately, that’s the only solution that will work.
  • This particular article touches on several topics of concern to me (personally) including connectivity between neighboring subdivisions in suburbia. But that is for another post.

    Airliner Whoopsie

    ToTheCenter mentions an airliner denied permission for an emergency landing. The pilots went ahead and landed anyway, rather than run out of fuel and crash. At least, that’s what this posting says. I can’t confirm this with news reports from anywhere else. (edit: Here’s a confirmation) However, the inclusion of this quoted line from the link is what makes it worthy of my weekly-ish posting.

    They were forced to take an unmentionable risk, but did make the landing on the other runway

    Is it still unmentionable after you’ve mentioned it?

    Tappan Zee Bridge

    The NY State Thruway Authority is installing gates in the median of the Tappan Zee bridge to allow drivers to turn around and drive off the other direction in case of lane closures. Idea long in coming…

    Santa Cruz in the News

    Santa Cruz pops into my feedreader more often than any other location, including NYC and Los Angeles, etc…

    Kim Rainville on German Transportation

    A blog posting about her travels in Germany. Worth the read.

  • Bikini Waxing

    I feel…naughty posting this. But, it’s not porn, so my reputation, as it is, should be ok.

    Check out this youtube video of various women (and one guy) getting a bikini wax. Very entertaining…

  • Dresden Files

    I’ve been trying to write a post about the Dresden Files since the second episode. I keep putting it down and then the next week’s episode is broadcast and I have to modify it. Everything below the fold was my draft comments as of last week, take them as they are, I stick by them.

    However, I have to say that I don’t like the show anymore. It’s disappointing on a number of levels. What makes the books so good is the mixing of supernatural with the “real” and Harry’s angst in dealing with it all. This is entirely missing from the TV show. I will probably keep watching it, like an incipient car wreck, and I’ll let you know if I think it is getting better. Firefly, this is not. which probably means it will stick around for 6 seasons

    (more…)

  • Wikipedia is Down!

    I can’t access Wikipedia! We’re all going to die!

    10:40 edit: It’s back up. We’ll live after all.

  • Know Your Neighbors

    Befriend your neighbors or something like this might happen to you.

    This man was dead for a year before he was discovered. That’s just wrong.