bee oh oh, aych oh oh.

Election Year + Non Issue(Minor Annoyance that Everyone Agrees On) = Politicans and Newspapermen Knocking Each Other Over to Hype a HUGE Issue

High gasoline prices in the US? Nonsense. Suck it up. Supply and demand, and a bit of speculation amidst a not completely stable world stage (and regardless of the Middle East, the supply side of that equation is just going to get greater; thanks China). Believe it or not, signing a petition is second only to starting one on the list of useless actions to take when trying to react to higher gasoline prices.

Here's a simple comparison of prices in US and Europe.

Here's a nice post from Smithers on the situation.

And to soothe any incensed, vein-swelling indignance you may have at those bastards who're lining their pockets, take a look at oil industry profit percentages (that's cents on each dollar sold) compared to a couple of others:

Autmobiles 1.1
Apparel 6.6
Oil 7.6
All U.S. Industry Average 7.9
Real Estate 8.9 (talk about no-value-added middlemen)
Semiconductors 14.6
Software 17
Pharmaceuticals 18.6
Banks 19.6

I'm no fan of the oil industry, but direct your ire to the bankers first (almost 20 cents profit on every dollar you pay them), and work your way down the list until you get to the sector that pays you. Once you get there, sell your SUV, bike to work (or at least carpool), smile, and shut the hell up.

Great idea, astonishingly bad implementation

So we know this has been in the works for some time: mobile phone companies (in this case Sprint) were going to capitalize on their ability to use GPS and/or cell-phone towers to triangulate your position to report where you are. This started out being a service offered by third parties, but it makes sense that the phone cos themselves would figure out how to squeeze them out. They're marketing this to parents and it seems like a not egregious problem - if the kid wants a cell phone, the parent uses it to find them.

The problem is, it looks like Sprint hasn't built any sort of safety feature into the tracking capability. One can enter a phone number into their list of numbers to be tracked, and so it is. Obviously, they should have an invitation system so your probing can be refused, otherwise all the roided out ex-boyfriends with baseball bats behind the front seats of their Mustangs, and the crazy, manipulative, mascara-smeared ex-girlfriends will have a field day at 3:30 am when you're still not home from your third date with someone so much better than the previous wacko who's currently driving to the new person's house.

At least this will spread privacy concerns from the 25 and above crowd down to the kids in their teens and early twenties; raising awareness of collective threat through personal experience.

I'm just glad I'm out of the dating scene. (Insert joke here.)

Beef. It's what's for dinner.

Bad cow!  Mmmm, mm!

What did we do before it?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The internet is the coolest thing ever.

The latest little epiphany will revolutionize scary kidnapping notes, finally saving me from cutting out every damn letter from a bunch of newspapers and getting a cramp in my hand.

                   


From now on, every email and document at work gets typed in flickr letters.

Sweep Them Aside

An interesting post about the homeless and the places they call home on Detroit Blog. Includes an insight not normally come by, I'd imagine:

...they have some strange quirks you’d never imagine. Like the fact that many of them collect shiny objects such as bottle caps, batteries and lighters and arrange them on the floor or on a couch, something I’ve seen in several buildings. Or like the fact that they’ll gather related objects and stack them,...

Barely related, as I left downtown tonight after work I drove past a toothless and sunken cheeked homeless guy who was holding his hand around an imaginary handgun, and carefully sighting high and probably too far away for his firearm of choice, repeatedly pulling the trigger. Doubt he hit much.

Hamstring the Man

A federal judge in Detroit, not believing a self-employed securities trader's request to be exempted from the onerous requirements of grand jury duty, has made him sit in the proverbial corner. The man must report to the Levin US Courthouse every day the jury meets (Tue - Thu, every other week) and sit in the hallway, without pay, no reading allowed, to think about his alleged lie to a judge for seven hours. The man wasn't found to be in contempt or otherwise guilty of anything, but to avoid further trouble, he's complying. In an article in the Detroit News, Judge "Friedman said he has inherent authority to administer justice that is not spelled out in any specific statute."

Of course, officials in our government need special abilities and rights to do their jobs. But it's Judge Friedman's type of thinking that has lead the Administration to profess that it isn't beholden to FISA laws because of the good intentions of the President. A Congressional news email that I get every morning asked the question, 'Do the Democrats need to form a platform like the Republicans' 1994 Contract with America in order to win in 2006?' If they do, they would be wise to re-state the fact that officials aren't to grant themselves rights which were never prohibited, rather, they only have the rights which are explicitly stated.

As an aside, if a judge does have inherent authority to 'administer justice' shouldn't it still be incumbent upon him to prove his allegation (that someone lied to them, for instance)? Some sort of written document, along with proof of the need for justice, should be produced. As an aside to an aside, does an inherent authority to administer justice also give Friedman the right to dress in green and yellow tights and beat up bad guys during his off time?

Every April’s Second Sunday

"This is the one race that I dream of all year long, and look forward to all year long."

Now that He-Who-Needs-Not-to-be-Named is out of the pro cycling game, the number of North American people using the word ‘peloton’ in casual conversation is going to plummet, but that’s okay.

Cycling’s memory is very long, and will continue to be, even without the scattered attention of the USA. Something unique happened over the last seven Julys, but there’s much more to be watched, and it’s not always when the most people are watching. The speedy jostling of the Classics, one day races upon which cyclists’ careers are measured, are adrenalized shots of tequila compared to the larger Tours’ long mint juleps. And for one of them, Paris-Roubaix, chase that shot with mud and a broken tooth.

The "Queen of the Classics" has been held every year since 1896 (except for the two world wars) in conditions not normally anticipated when looking at the half-inch wide tires of racing bikes. Rain and mud punish the riders who don’t slow down even for numerous bottlenecks, twisting lanes, and cobblestones. The cobblestone stretches especially define Paris-Roubaix; in 2004 there were about 30 miles of them in the 160 mile-or-so race. The Belgians and French have won this race more than any other country, and an American never has, but last year American George Hincapie (pictured, and quote above) took second, and he’s given some great, gutsy fights in other years. How will George do this year? You’ll have to tune in.

Update: Hincapie crashed about 30 miles from the finish when his steerer tube broke; evidently he was able to get to the side of the road, at high speed with no handlebars, but fell to the side, breaking his right shoulder. Hugely disappointing day for a great rider who's made it no secret that he dearly wants a Paris-Roubaix victory in his career. Good photos of the race and Hincapie, post-fall here.

Update: According to VeloNews.com Hincapie's shoulder is separated, not broken, and he won’t require surgery. Should be back in the game in just a couple of weeks, and racing in June.

I, Scooter

Add author to his resume. Thanks to Wikipedia: offering new, unexpected glimpses of the people we love:

After his indictment, a novel Libby wrote in 1996 (The Apprentice) gained new attention. In the book, Libby tells the story of a group of travelers stranded in Japan's Northern Honshu province in the winter of 1903 during a smallpox epidemic. A New Yorker columnist reprinted passages describing extremely graphic pedophilia, bestiality, rape and incest. [12]. An autographed copy of the book went on sale at Amazon.com for $2400, and unsigned hardcover copies went on sale for $1000.

late night musings

Lying awake tonight, first randomly remembering things from flying in the Navy, and then, amazed that I hadn't thought about them for so long, and amazed in a way that I did them at all, less randomly trying to remember more because much of it was so damn enjoyable, especially compared to my contented, but mostly unchallenging and unphysical work now.

People often remember things in which they were wholly focused on one thing very well, even years after; I was in a bad car crash once and I can still remember every second, including the mistaken sensation that I was hitting my chest on the steering wheel and then my head on the windshield (it was actually my seat belt first and then my rear-view mirror flying off the windshield and smacking me in the nugget, which is funny when you think about it that I thought that little smack was the often-fatal windshield, but I should be excused as I had very little experience until then of being in car crashes - there's another really funny part of the crash involving my dread at seeing parts of my insides on the outside, but that can wait). Now that I'm thinking about these not-often-thought-about flying memories, I can remember so well the sounds, smells, and sights, but I don't remember completely which guys I was with for each episode, and for some of them it's hard to remember even when, within a year, they happened. That bothers me a little, not the timeline, but the people, because I greatly respected and enjoyed so many of those guys, and now I can't remember exactly which things we did together. Some people are really good at rattling off stories about who they were with when whatever happened, 'you know, back in March of '89' or whatever. I wish I could do that. Because I feel like that moment and that memory of it afterward is the only thing we have to pull out later and dust off, and be content that we did something rewarding, or fun, or at least memorable; I feel like that's the only thing that shows we were alive. And, as friends lose touch and stop going over the old times I get a little afraid that those memories grow fuzzy and disperse, and that parts of ourselves are lost (the most important parts because what we remember of ourselves is generally no where near as accurate or interesting as what others thought of us).