Panglossian
adj.
Blindly or naively optimistic.
[After Pangloss, an optimist in Candide, a satire by Voltaire.]

dik·tat \dik-ˈtät\ n
Peace treaty dictated under duress. Name the Nazis gave the Versailles Treaty.

Ann Coulters Jaw Wired Shut

A man with no arms allegedly stole a 23″ TV from a store in Munich, Germany. According to reports, he had helpers strap the TV to his chest. From the Daily Telegraph:
A police spokesman admitted: “It’s hard to believe that the sight of an armless man walking along with a giant TV clamped to his body did not get anyone’s attention.”

:: The Daily Telegraph via Boing Boing Via Google Reader Via email (Thanks Matt Gutenhosen!!) ::

CNN Talking Head Guy Anderson Cooper moderates the following beatdown.

Okay, this is how these shows should work:
-Every point each speaker makes is recorded on a sidebar
-Each counterpoint should be recorded on a sidebar
-Each citation of fact should be immediately googled

Then the participants get kicked off and the producers go through and reasonably discuss the validity of the points made. They declare a winner and then mock the loser over cocktails. When can I have my own show?

In Roman mythology, Janus (or Ianus) was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. His most prominent remnants in modern culture are his namesakes: the month of January, which begins the new year, and the janitor, who is a caretaker of doors and halls.

This last bit is made all the more interesting because janitors frequently cross border fences to get here.

:: Wikipedia via Email (thanks JFace!) ::

It is not the the government’s place to make moral judgements about the ethics of sex between between consenting adults. It is however the government’s place to make sure that people don’t turn to prostitution because of a lack of economic opportunities. Furthermore, it’s preposterous to think that making something with the moniker “the worlds oldest profession” illegal would be smart or effective. Wholly unregulated industry is generally a bad idea.

To all the people who’s puritanical/neolithic 2nd wave feminist values drove you to vote against prop k, congratulations you’ve helped perpetuate a public health disaster and divert resources from child prostitution and the international sex trade. ohhh and all the problems you have with prostitution remain firmly entrenched! good on ya ;)

I didn’t vote in san francisco but I’m also deeply disappointed that the GW Bush sewage plant didn’t pass. There is no good reason for this!! I yearn for the day when the public develops a sense of humor, hopefully one that is at least as vitriolic and embittered as my own.

remember, voting is only a one-day event; so don’t let your “effort” today be the only way you participate.

Additionally, the oval office is now called the barack-togon. spread the word!!

I don’t know whether I saw this video of traffic jam research on this blog or if TD sent it to me, so I’m (re?)posting it:

Today I reached a new level of traffic empathy.

Driving as slow as 2.2 mph in a major jam on the four-lane British “Motorway”, I had a lot of fun trying to be The Best Motorist Possible.  I obliterated a few of the shockwave jams when I could see them coming, and instituted my own acceleration-jams in their place (places where cars all accelerate at the same time on the highway, like at the front of the shockwave).

My technique is simple: brake as little as possible.  This seems risky in bumper to bumper traffic - brake lights are information that people depend on to determine your speed, right?  But it’s contagious information that gets unnecessarily propagated and amplified.  And we were clearly suffering from traffic jams, so I did what I could to prevent the information from spreading. I also found it quite useful to leave as much space ahead of me as possible, and appreciated it when other drivers did the same.

I seem to recall hearing some plan for putting stoplights at short intervals on a california highway, maybe it was 880, and I wonder if the theory is to accept traffic jams and deal with them by making them stay in place (like standing waves).

Only one guy passed me to get into the gap I was leaving to facilitate braking, and he immediately started driving into the tailpipe of the next car ahead, ramming on the accelerator and then braking like an angry bug, over and over.  Clearly this man didn’t realize how much his actions affected everyone else on the road, as waves of traffic-jamming braking rolled backwards away from him. I then realized that the key factor in improving traffic on a grand scale from an individual level, is traffic empathy.

My friend Tim writes:

Let’s say you’re on a four lane divided highway.

The first level of driver empathy: a driver in the right lane realizes a car on the on-ramp wants to merge in. This right lane driver lets them in, either by speeding up, slowing down, or shifting into the left lane. Shifting left is preferable, especially if there’s a row of cars in the right lane.

The second level of driver empathy: the car in the left lane realizes the car on the on-ramp wants to merge in, and the car in the right lane will want to shift left to let that car in. It requires the left lane driver to understand and expect one car’s effect on another, and move accordingly.

first level is pretty common, but shouldn’t be counted on. I’d say the second level happens less than 20% of the time. Pretty often the leftlane car will ignore the rightlane car’s turn signal and keep plowing ahead.

Traffic theory is pretty neat.

:: Good for the Goose ::

Awesome news and one small step closer to dismantling the prison industrial complex. This is also one small step towards complete strangers NOT approaching me on the assumption that I want to buy drugs, sell them drugs, or know where to get them drugs. Which I find highly, highly annoying.

For the record:
Rastafarianism is a religion practiced by people so hopelessly baked that they worship a dictator as the second coming of Christ. seriously? yes.

“Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.”

from “Another Roadside Attraction”

Burning Man always makes me think of at least 22 cool bike ideas, and bring before me a bunch I either dreamed I could build, or that hadn’t even crossed my mind.

I just found these two, which I like a lot - especially how that guy solved the creation an upside-down tallbike:

I’m flying to the Bay Area tomorrow and I’m going to be pretty busy in sausalito explaining why software companies don’t understand their users* More free time starting wednesday and stretching into the week after that although still busy.

call or email if you want to get ill

wheatgrass@ 970-21-8708

:: Gadzooks via Yahoo ::

Three Scenarios
1. Guy is making it up (unlikely since there is documented gov papers)
2. Gov is making it up (requires cooperation of old man)
3. Aliens?

I don’t really think it’s worth much time to think about aliens but more and more I see things that edge me farther away from indifferent agnosticism.

I have a reputation for being highly persuasive which I think is largely undeserved. What appears similar but is actually quite different is that I am very good at helping people get what they want. I also (try!) to shut the fuck up unless I’ve considered the topic at length and I’m pretty decent with logistics. My theory is that while not totally impossible it’s a pretty big waste of time to try to change people’s minds or get them to do things they don’t want to do.

I think it’s shitty, deceptive and displays quite a bit of muddled thinking.

The New York Times puzzle for March 14th had an interesting clue

36a. “The White House,” for “the presidency,” e.g.

The answer was METONYM. ummm, will shortz, why you gotta be doggin us like that?

but what does wikipedia say?

:: via email (thanks Wildcard!) ::

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
- Richard Feynman

:: I Own This, I’m just waiting to get it framed via Imaginary Foundation ::

I just found this FBI-issued warning against possible terror threats in the world of SCUBA diving.  I like to dive a bit, and I’m ecstatic - I hadn’t thought of half of the possibilities of “nefarious” diving.

I mean, the FBI basically published a list of things I want to try at the earliest possible opportunity.  Did you know that fish-count surveys are conducted by a guy scuba diving while holding onto a rope that’s dangling from a boat, powered like a jet in water?   And that’s called “liveboating”?  That’s way more exciting than I thought was possible for a fish-count.  Marine biologists really have the life, from everything I’ve seen and heard.

How about “conducting kick counts”?  Does that mean there are guys good enough to memorize the seafloor and get around on it with their eyes closed?  That must be a hell of a lot of fun.  At least it’s a little more adventurous than floating around with a compass like some kind of technologically advanced manatee.

Thanks due to the FBI for publishing my to-do list!

The real thing I’m wondering is who, and where are these guys I’m paying to sit and think these things up?  Can someone ask them to add skydiving?  Is there a way I could get these terror-alert-todo-lists just sent straight to my house?

(I suppose I could pass on ‘requests to dive in sewer pipes’)

image by marriedtothesea