Travel, history, politics and everything else

I was peddling home the other day when I stopped at a light heading south. I saw at least 3 cars in in the northbound left turn lane in front of me as the light turned green. As I started peddling, going straight across the intersection, the lead car patiently sat there waiting for me to clear the intersection. As I started moving, I also noticed a lady on her bike coming off a bike path on the southeast corner cut across in front of the cars in the turn lane - against a red light (by the time she passed in front of the car, the light had been red in her direction for probably 5 seconds or more!) Had the lead car not been waiting for me, the bicyclist would have plowed right into the right front side of that car as the driver would have pulled out into the intersection. Naturally, the driver in the car honked at the stupid cyclist at which point the cyclist had the gall to turn and give the driver the finger! It was the stupid cyclist that deserved the finger! As I continued to cross the intersection I tried to make eye contact with the driver, shrugging my shoulders to try and indicate my thoughts on the stupid cyclist..... Drivers or bicyclists - there's way too many bad examples of each. Luckily, most of them are courteous and careful.

Now, if we can get the idiots who toss glass bottles out of their cars off the streets....

Labels: biking

Sad news today that George Carlin has passed away Sunday afternoon. George Carlin was a great comedian. He probably incensed every person who ever listened to him at least once (including probably himself). His comedy was insightful and inciteful at the same time. Brilliant almost always. I first saw him when I was a kid watching the Tonight Show (in the days of Johnny Carson) and his comedy monologues there were always G rated and hillarious there.

"Jumbo Shrimp: is that a big shrimp... or a little jumbo?"

"Why do we need a 'hot water heater?' - if the water is already hot, why do we need to heat it?"

"Have you ever wondered why we park on the driveway and drive on the parkway?"

And his baseball/football routine is a classic. Later, I discovered that his Tonight Show material was greatly cleaned up compared to what he did on stage and on his many albums. I don't care much for 4 letter word saturated monologues, but I still found his work hillarious. Damn, we're going to miss that F-ing bastard!

Here's a few youtube videos (some of these are NSFW due to language):

Baseball/Football
Airport Security
The Ten Commandments
Things You Never See
Some people are stupd
George Carlin nails it
Religion is bullshit
"Stuff"
Have a Nice Day
Those Little Moments
Common experiences
on Language

Thanks and goodbye, George.

Labels: George Carlin

Ok, After the nerd test, I couldn't pass up the trekkie test:

So I took the Nerd Test 2.0 and scored pretty high on it. From now on you have to refer to me as a "Cool Nerd King".

This is a little disgusting thing I have witnessed a few times. Have you ever sat in a public bathroom (aka "the library"), minding your own business when you hear the guy in the next stall finishing his business (tp and all), flush, then get up and head straight out the bathroom door? Yuk! Wash your freaking hands! And use that nice antibacterial soap they have on the wall next to the sink too! I'm not going to shake anyones hand who is wearing those brown loafer shoes. It's bad enough when you watch someone step away from the urinal and head straight for the door, but even after wiping..... That is disgusting! :xP

We went to see the new Die Hard movie with Bruce Willis last night - "Live Free or Die Hard" and while it was an enjoyable movie, the scientist in me was cringing at abuot every action scene because of the Cartoon Physics that this movie employed liberally.

The left and right halves of my brain were battling each other - one half was enjoying the action and adventure. The other half was saying "No! That can't work! He'd be killed!" The first half would reply "But it's Bruce Willis - give me more! Explosions, gunfire, crashes, helicopters!"

I won't put any spoilers in here - assuming you know it's a Die Hard film and that there are always explosions, gunfire, crashes, etc. in a Die Hard film....

Labels: Cartoon Physics, movies

I am really tired of the Global Warming debate. I'm not talking about the debate over whether it is really happening. There clearly is some global warming. I'm just tired of the "religious" beliefs in the subject on the extremes of both sides. I'm not talking about Jesus here. I'm talking about belief for the sake of belief and digging for facts to support your notion of the "truth" regardless of what an unbiased examination of the evidence would indicate.

The one thing I think we can say about the climate on Earth is that it changes. Both external affects such as variability of the energy output of the Sun and Earthly affects such as volcanic activity and of course human activity affect the amount of energy Earth's climate takes in. To me, it's not clear which are really the dominant affects on climate and I'm not convinced particularly of the dire predictions that are coming out of the global warming extremists. To me, it appears that they are cherry picking from the data, selecting a subset of the evidence that supports their dire predictions while ignoring evidence that does not support their claims, as well as using unreasonable extrapolations of the various influences on the environment.

It troubles me particularly to see otherwise reasonable people, even fellow scientists, who jump to conclusions about a claim or something said which does not fit in with what is now the "consensus opinion" which now is that Global Warming is caused by humans and we will suffer dire affects in the not-too-distant future because of it. I've even seen otherwise reasonable folks resort to political name calling over the issue and claiming that someone whose opinion differs from theirs is an idiot. That is just not right!

And of course, the extremists on the other side of the debate are not doing their cause any justice either.....

We need to reset the entire subject and remove the religious and political motivations from it and put it firmly back into a scientifically unbiased and objective study. Yeah, that's probably asking too much.

Labels: Global Warming

I've been turned off of Olver Stone movies. Mostly because Mr. Stone has created fictional stories around controversial real life subjects in the past, in particular JFK where he ran roughshod over the facts of the case and has convinced a generation or two that there was some huge conspiracy/coverup in the Kennedy assassination when the facts strongly suggest otherwise. So when I heard about his new movie about 9/11, "World Trade Center", my first instinct was to simply ignore it. But it seems to have some favorable reviews so far and doesn't seem to take the anti-establishment approach that some of Stone's other films (like "Nixon" or "Platoon") have taken which I find rather distasteful. So I guess I'll have to go see it when it opens, especially when it seems to remain focused on the experiences of a few the heroes that deserve some attention from that awful day.