The Evil Eyebrow

  • This Week in Traffic: 6 March 2007

    Privatizing Existing Roadways

    Other than getting the maintenance headache off of the gov’t’s shoulders, I haven’t bought into the economic feasibility of selling roads to private consortiums. Robert Puentes agrees with me.

    Live Reporter Whoops

    Apparently someone wrote a bit of nasty copy for a traffic reporter to read, Live. I haven’t watched this yet, so you’ll have to let me know if it’s worth it.

    PP&M

    Here is a list of songs by Peter Paul & Mary containing transportation themes. Because, what else do you have to do today?

    Bus Envy?

    A jacket designed for sleeping on Public Transportation.

  • I Hate Me

    According to this quiz.

    I guess it will have to be alcohol, unless “drug accident” includes some odd combination of over the counter medication and coffee.

    You’ll die from a Drug or Alcohol accident.
    Let’s face it – when you get drunk/high you lose all control and do stupid stuff. Unfortunately in your case those propaganda anti-escapism commercials prove true.
    ‘How will you die?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

  • Good Science Fiction Story Sentences

    From SFSignal, the top 10 sentences from third rate scifi stories.

    This one is the best:

    As one, the Spacemarines stood up, raised their spacerifles in salute, then marched out the spacedoors to the spacedock, where their spaceship was waiting to boldly take them where they’d all been before: Space!

  • This Week in Traffic: 3 March 2007

    Undergrounds

    Mentioned by Justen Stepka, here is a list of Top 11 underground transportation systems with images and video.

    Highway Protest

    University of California Santa Barabara students protest the Iraq war by occupying a strip of highway. I guess they didn’t read the “PEDESTRIANS BICYCLES MOTOR-DRIVEN CYCLES PROHIBITED” sign on the entrance ramp.

    Google Traffic

    Google Maps offers Traffic conditions in ITS-capable cities around the U.S. Interestingly, the google traffic map seems to be providing information on a portion of the Atlanta highway system that our local ITS system (www.georgia-navigator.com) does not have available. That makes me wonder what the difference is between these two systems, and where they are gathering their data.

  • Modern Marvels' Marveliscioustasticness

    I watch the History Channel. It soothes my occasional need for something interesting to look at while my mind zones on other things. Modern Marvels is a particular favorite because they manage to explore (superficially) a lot of different subjects that we don’t run into on a day to day basis. For example, last night I was watching Railroads* which was cool because I learned about Bailey Yard (Google Maps Link), the largest railroad switching yard in the world. See the wikipedia link for more info, although the acreage and track numbers listed in wikipedia don’t match what was on Modern Marvels last night.

    Coincidentally, the Modern Marvels episode prior to this one was about “The Strongest” stuff, including Tugboats, and I slowly draw near to why I’m writing this post. The tugboat in question, made by the Foss Company in Oregon, is powered by two 4000 hp railroad engines.

    Now, if you watch Modern Marvels, you are familiar with the little bit of trivia they sling at you just before every commercial break and the deep intonations of massive importance and wondrous awe. Usually, the tidbits are interesting, but sometimes they manage to state something that might be considered…obvious. For example: [paraphrasing, approximately]

    The tugboat is powered by two 4000 hp railroad engines, [deep ominous voice] each capable of pulling a fully loaded passenger train.

    Duh?

    *I think it was called Railroads. I went to the Modern Marvels website and the most recent episode they had in their “archive” was February 9th.

  • More Suspicious Devices in Boston

    Another scurrilous bomb plot is foiled in Boston. This suspicious device was detonated by the Boston Police Department.
    A Traffic Counter is mistaken for a Bomb

    Here is the original story.

    Here is a video of it being detonated.

    Looks like I’m out of a job! Either that or we’ll have to navigate through new layers of bureacratic oversight before placing traffic counters. At the moment, there are none, generally, and traffic counting firms can place counters wherever they want. This leads to quick turnaround times for needed information, which is good! Now, I forsee three-month waiting periods and police escorts for the people placing the counters.

    Woo hoo. I love living in a post 9-11 world.

  • 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?

    • The Evil Eyebrow

    There is no knowing the Evil Eyebrow

    Twenty Twenty-Five

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