Yet Another Dead Zone

What, firsties?

Funny Kit today, I like execess

You mean Austin American-Statesman. If it matters.

Not to downplay any risks to Brownsville, but people here are willing Dolly our way. Loomis has a better chance of rain than we do, lucky her.

Right! Got it. Fixt it.

>it will be unedited, unsupervised, and completely irresponsible.

We're turning into Weingarten?

dudn't?

Love the picture

Staring at the photo, it makes me feel peaceful, serene, and maybe a bit drowsy.

*yawn*

I'm still looking at it. Looking at it. Looking at it.

I
Will
Obey

Rhetorical mayhem to scorch eyeballs seems to be the mantra of the McCain campaign right now. I've always liked McCain, but he really seems to have gone mad. There's no debate of issues, he's just flaming Obama indiscriminately, it seems to me. Obama wants to lose the war, is singlehandedly to blame for gas prices, doesn't support the troops and on and on. Does it strike anyone as kind of panicky? He certainly doesn't seem to be enjoying himself which was part of what made him attractive as a candidate, IMHO.

O Boy! I'll be able to post links to my favourite magazine.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/magazine_rack_rejects.php

When I saw the Kit title, I thought we were headed back to the conclusion of the Baja Fluffitado...

:-)

Interesting bit about art donations.

When I grow up I want to become an art donor. It sounds like a good racket. You have a nice pad suitable for hanging materpieces. Lots of investements to support your collector habit. To feel happy you donate stuff.

For the moment, I'm restricted to writing about art collectors who are adept at the practice of international skullduggery.

Sigh.

Gosh, Joel, you've barely had time to break in the new publisher, and now you're going to explain everything to a new editor. Good luck with that. And have fun in the meantime. I'm sure *we* will.

The very best part of that Patrick Beach blogfest kerfluffle was the letter from his ex-wife at the very bottom of that link. If yer adamant about having an ex-wife, she sounds like the kind to have.

I just realized, I'm pretty sure the building behind Rachel in the previous kit is where I used to work. Right across from the Bethesda Round House Theater.

I have donated art twice, last weekend I donated some *art* to the local thrift store. I have also donated one of my grandmothers paintings to the hospital in the town they lived.

Not sure we are talking about the same kind of art donations though :-)

Forgive me it is raining again believe my mind has gone moldy.

'Mudge;

I'd have to agree Mr. Beach is pretty darn lucky in the ex department.

What's all this carbonist "Also anyone living there would be dead on account of having no greenhouse effect at all and nothing to create the kind of polymers you need to construct complex structures necessary for life" pap, Achenbach?

Don't make me come over there and eat all your semiconductors. I'm feelin' peckish as it is.

Agree, Scotty. But it raises the question, why was he boneheaded enough to get rid of her, or why was he boneheaded enough to do something so stupid she had to ditch him? On the face of it, she sounded like a keeper.

Of course, he's a newspaper reporter, so maybe it (the boneheadedness) is self-explanatory.

Thanks Joel, this is *exactly* what the internets need, a place to anonymously vent pent-up anger.

Speaking of carbon-based potables, eat your heart out Weingarten! This guys was way past the state of alcoholic stupor and he was still driving.

"AP PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- State police say they arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level was 0.491 percent -- the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn't dead"

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-odd-extremely-drunk,0,1336559.story

Oh, great. Umbrage from an asphalt-based life form.

IIRC, wasn't the horta a mom? If so, shouldn't that be "Harriet Horta"? Just askin'.

Are there any Fulminating Denizens?

Anybody hear the rumor that McCain is being financed by Russian petro-mobsters and he is going to sell ANWR to Venezuala? No? That's because I just made it up.

Please feel free to copiously repeat unattributedly.

this is amusing - a city measure to rename a sewage plant after arbusto made it on the san francisco ballot (12k signatures collected). it has an excellent chance of passing. there's a video clip about it on the l.a. times website.

Gerson's column today, about Cindy McCain, is extraordinary. I expect that probably everything he says is factually true, but I have never seen such fulsome praise and fawning admiration outside of campaign advertising. Heck, not even inside campaign advertising, because it is so over-the-top that it looks like satire. Is he prepared to give the same treatment to Michelle Obama, who is not without her own track record of good deeds and strength in the face of adversity?

THIS is classic!

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/chi/748263604.html

OK, time for some REAL umbrage! It ain't 0.491 percent!!!!!! It's supposed to be .491 grams per deciliter.

1) You don't need the "0" in front of the decimal, because the range in question never gets even close to 1.0, and seldom even to half of that value. Not all measurements "require" a zero in front of the decimal, i.e., .22-caliber gun. You ever heard of a guy packing an 0.45 Colt? No, and you never will.

2) Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is NOT, repeat, NOT NOT NOT NOT a measure of percentage of alcohol in your blood. It ain't any kind of percentage at all. It is impossible to create any kind of a percentage from a weight-per-volume measurement. A BAC is the weight of alcohol in a certain volume of your blood, just as 62 lbs. is the weight of water in a cubic foot of volume; yet you would never say water weighs 62 percent. That a BAC "looks" like a percentage because it commonly has two decimal places is purely a coincidence and optical illusion. (You have to divide weight by weight or divide volume by volume to get a percentage.)

I happen to know this for a fact because there's this crazed guy who works for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and who one day happened upon a footnote explaining this factoid. Intrigued, said wacko decided to investigate further, and after much travail discovered the truth of it.

Seems that in the 1920s the toxicologists who discovered the process of measuring alcohol in blood used an intermediate step in the math calculations they nicknamed "percent weight per volume," knowing full well it wasn't a true percentage but just their own shorthand. The name not only stuck, it got reduced to just "percent" and got itself attached to the final product of the measurement. All toxicologists know this, and know that in a technical sense it is NOT in fact a percentage in the normal mathematical meaning of the word (one part out of a hundred).

Nevertheless, over the years "percent" crept into the jargon as well as into the laws governing drunk driving. As you may know defense attorneys over the years have tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to defend their DUI clients every which way -- except the actual misnomer at the heart of the test.

In 1998 came the happy moment when truth was outed. In an Indiana traffic case called Sales v. Indiana, a guy got stopped for failing to yield the right-of-way, and the breathalyzer showed he blew a .14, which was reported as ".14 percent." The smart defense attorney saw the problem, and based his client's defense on the fact that the description was, in fact, dead wrong. Further, he argued that since the amount of alcohol in your breath is approximately one/2,100th of what's in your blood, Sales couldn't POSSIBLY have had .14 of his breath be alcohol, because then he'd have 2,100 times as much in his blood. He'd not only be dead-- he wouldn't even need embalming. (The fact is, a breathalyzer takes the measurement and then multiplies the number by 2,100 to give you the readout number, which is a guesstimate of what is in your blood; it isn't a direct measurement. The proper technical term for a breathlyzer reading is "breath alcohol concentration," or BrAC.)

The Sales case went to the Indiana Superior Court (four-judge bank), then got appealed up to the Indiana Supreme Court (three-judge bank). So in all no less than 8 judges at three levels looked at all this--and agreed unanimously the term "percent" was dead wrong. (Sales got convicted anyway, though, because there were additional charges not involving the language thing.)

Anyway, back to our wackjob, umbraged filled NHTSA crackpot who researched this. Took him half a year and a closely reasoned 12-page report titled "When Is a Percent Not a Percent? When You've Been Drinking: BACs and Blood/Breath Alcohol Concentration Terminology" to be circulated upward, ever upward, through the ranks of NHTSA boffins, big shots and brass, until finally his report was agreed to and made canon law throughout the agency. (Which is ironic, since the very first clue came from that footnote in a 1994 NHTSA document in the first place, stating that a BAC percent wasn't a percent and that the % sign was wrong. And then, ever since 1994, NHTSA proceeded to forget about said footnote, until our hero came along.)

When last seen, our crazed hero was last spotted wandering in the desert on the outskirts of Needles, California, reciting the findings of Sales v. Indiana to a young (and admittedly attractive) Keno cashier named Tyffani, who held an 0.38 on him in case he tried anything funny.

I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!

For a copy of the extraordinarily well-written report "When Is a Percent Not a Percent? When You've Been Drinking: BACs and Blood/Breath Alcohol Concentration Terminology," and/or a copy of the lyrics to "Singing in the Methane," please raise your hand and I'll see what I can do.

Perhaps Joel might wish to pass it on to the WaPo copy desk, where it (the report, not the song), should be read, digested, and recited five times a day while facing Waldorf.

Dang 'Mudge, this is much more interesting than anything that is going on, you know, anywhere else...

Jeez, I sooo feel like Dennis Miller.

I'll bet you guys thought "service ferret" would be a googlenope.
Nope.
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/07/22/ot-ferret-080722.html

Jaysus, 'Mudge.

I always wondered about that terminology, since it indicated percentages that were kinda small (if we recognize the meaning of a decimal point) or really kinda large, if we read it as usually said, which ignores the decimal point. Obviously, it means neither of these things but has a correct and unambiguous denotation.

Oh, since the Sales case, 39 states have changed their DUI terminology to omit the word "percent" in BAC readings. And all breathylyzer manufactures have changed their machines to output correctly reading reports.

I loved that story, 'Mudge. I'm clipping it for my "notes" file where I keep keen scatological facts. It comes in handy when settling arguments.

I admire how the umbrage-filled NHTSA crackpot spoke truth to power. He's an American hero.

Thanks for a giggle, Boko. Right back atcha:

http://www.nbc4.com/news/16956663/detail.html

Hey Reverend Mudge, aren't you done cutting noughts off yet?

phew! this is a relief!

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/ksc/725674463.html

Tim, even more incredibly boringly (as a science pointy-head type who carries a mass spectralmomometer in his vest, you'll appreciate this), you know that blood is heavier than water, having a specific gravity of about 1.05 (where water is 1.0, the baseline), since it contains all sorts a crap, salt, germs, old pieces of Twinky, red blood cells, white blood cells, etc. Further, alcohol weighs a lot less than water, at about .789. So when you factor in these two things as well as re-jigger the calculation, it turns out that a BAC number is NOT a percent by about 12 points (percent) in weight (going over), and 8 percent off (going under) by volume. So calling a BAC a "percent" is mathematically off by either about 8 percent or about 12 percent, depending on whether you're talking about weight in your blood, or volume in your blood.

You have just NO idea how many NHTSA employees our crazed fellow made take off their shoes so he had enough toes to count to figure that out, which I don't believe anyone has ever done before.

DNA Girl, if I weren't a gentleman I'd suspect you were being a bit noughty yourself.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Here's a question I ask of my Biochem students. It's fun watching them work through all the conversions and units.

a) How many 12 oz bottles of 5 % beer could a 70 kg person drink and remain under a legal limit of .08? (a 70 kg person contains about 40 L of water; you may ignore the metabolism of ethanol for now, and assume that the person's water content remains constant).

b) Ethanol is metabolized at a constant rate of about 120 mg per hour per kg body weight, regardless of its concentration. If a 70 kg person were at twice the legal limit, how long would it take for their blood alcohol level to fall below the legal limit?

Humbrage--is than when one rants about Hummers?

Brag, humbrage is what Humbert Humbert got charged with for diddling Lolita. In the second degree.

well my mind is in the gutter...my first thought was 'who the heck would rant about a hummer?'

"Got a tip about some supernatural or paranormal event that the mainstream media refuses to publish on account of it being extraordinarily improbable?"

You want a science-politics confab? No problem: today we addressed the time horizon - event horizon conflation at our blog, rangeragainstwar. Is this the sort of thing you're after, Joel?

1. Speaking of alcohol, one of our national breweries was sold to the Belgians some time ago, and now Bud. Clearly they're up to something.

2. Wording of our criminal code:

253. Every one commits an offence who operates a motor vehicle [blah, blah, blah]

(b) having consumed alcohol in such a quantity that the concentration in the person's blood exceeds eighty milligrams of alcohol in one hundred millilitres of blood.

3. Gardening update: raspberries producing like mad; tomatoes still a few weeks away; missed cutting broccoli (again) and it's flowering (again); cucumber doing well.

4. Book update: just finished "The Secret Garden" (never read it before).

Hmmm. Toothless nibbling service koi.
Well, slap me silly.
Well, slap me, silly.
I'll quit while Ima head.

Howdy, untrammeled and unedited Boodlers. I love your rant, Mudge, but must say it wouldn't have done my DUI clients any good, nor would it help the folks whose cases now cross my desk. As you say, most states use the decimal (usually .08) as a cutoff limit, but don't refer to it as a blood alcohol percentage. I once had a client with a test upwards of .32, who was driving around and not dead. The guy was so pickled I don't think he was ever quite sober. I also had a guy with about a .18 who couldn't understand how he got there, since he hadn't had a drink. Of course, he'd been drinking Nyquil on an empty stomach for a couple of days. Ah, good times.

Someone asked why people don't like Bud being bought by the Belgians. I'd guess in part it is because that particular corporate culture pretty much guarantees that the current Bud corporate culture will be swallowed up and replaced with one (a)which will most likely replace most of the management jobs with their own, (b) is unfriendly to women, (c) has no corporate stake in community ventures, as Bud does.

All 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and the Territories all use .08 as the legal "per se" limit, Ivansmom. We finally got it the same all across the board. Now some idiots want to lower the drinking age to 18. Oy.

I'll leave it to you to explain "per se." (Which is not italicized in most style rules, BTW.)

SofC, (b) looks OK to me; they're just playing havoc by moving the deci and millis and whatnot around. That's the bloody-minded metriculating system for ya. Of course, it sound inelegant, but then most legal ritin' does.

Mudge, your report sounds interesting.

Has anybody ever swished booze, gargled, spat, and then tried to breathanalyze themselves to see if they would test as having zero blood alcohol content?

Did that work?

I'm a trifle cynical about equalling breath alcohol to blood alcohol.

I suppose the most accurate test is the blood test done on a corpse, Wilbrod. No change in the level over time there.

wilbrod - the mythbusters did a bunch of tests about things that could "trick" the breathalyzer - nuttin worked...

and just for you BOKO!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCwLirQS2-o

(you knew SOMEONE would do it!)

Well, I believe the service ferret does do the work it is described as doing.

I feel sorry for the woman with the ferret. If the ferret is trained to obey basic commands and to stay on her lap and out of the way and not make aggressive sounds towards others, she should be allowed to travel with her ferret. "Concerns" without actual incidents documented isn't enough reason.

US law says the animal must be trained to a specific task to migitate a disability.

Seizure alert dogs tend to do the alerting naturally, although they do undergo training for seizure response behavior and overall public access manners. The training requirement is not exempted for any species of animal.

There are only three species, though, that have been traditionally trained to work with people in performing non-instinctual tasks- horses, donkeys, and dogs. (Cows can be trained for riding, though).

The USDOJ is currently considering legislation to tighten the definition of "service animal" to exclude monkeys and other exotic species and livestock (equids may be exempted-- not so ok).

Service cats and ferrets may be allowed under present proposals. Doesn't mean they should work in public, though.

BTW, Wilbrodog has been acquainted with ferrets and doesn't think much of them on the whole.

Wilbrod, you can't take a valid breathalyzer test if the person has swallowed alcohol within about 15 minutes of the test; it takes that long to get the alochol fumes out of your mouth. Therefore, it would give you a false positive. Cops are routinely trained to make sure they wait 15 minutes before giving the test (in a lot of places, they take you to a testing location, rather than doing it roadside; this also gives some time) if they've found an open bottle in your car, or otherwise suspect you've been drinking very close to the moment of arrest.

The fact that a BrAC is multiplied by 2,100 to equal a BAC is somewhat arbitrary itself. This ratio is stipulated by law--but in fact, it represents a variable ranging from a low of about 1,900 in some people to a high (no pun intended) of about 2,400 in others. But by law, you can't challenge the 2,100/1 ratio by claiming you're really a 1,900 person, or whatever.

The alcohol measured by a breathalyzer comes from the alcohol in your blood (obviously) but which has evaporated inside your lungs and, as a vapor, has passed across the blood/vapor barrier into the airways. So it isn't really alcohol but alcohol fumes the machine is measuring. About one/2,100th of the booze in your system evaporates this way, which is where the number comes from.

What is it you are skeptical of, Wilbrod? (If it's about the mathematical fudging and rounding and approximating that goes on, you're basically right; there are variables from one person to the next, ability to "handle" booze based on weight, gender (YES!), what's in your stomach, etc.) That's why the "per se" rule was adopted: it throws all those questions into the trash can and says, "look, if you blow .08 we ain't gonna quibble about all those variables; we're going to say you are drunk, end of discussion." That's the "per se" aspect. It's basically a quibble-stopper.

Mo, I think that was supposed to trick the breathanalyzer into lower readings.

I'll have to watch it again and see if they tried to trick the breathanalyzer in thinking they were drunker than normal.

How drunk is normal?

I wish to he11 somebody'd start training "service tennagers" to do simple things around the house and mitigate MY freakin' disabilities.

Hobbling for the bus.

All of us sort of hang on the .08 level being the definition of being drunk. Was there not an article in the WaPo several months ago about some jurisdictions fining drivers at the .02 level for DUI because they were driving erratically?

DLD

The 15 minute rule answers that concern, Mudge.

That's all I was skeptical about; I don't dispute this guy was really drunk, but I wonder if it was 15 minutes + after the last SWALLOW.

My vague understanding, and I'm sure Mudge and/or Ivansmom can clarify this, is that the breathalyzer test is not generally the source of evidence on which they attempt to convict someone; it is the source of evidence on which they base probable cause for a more intrusive and definitive test -- i.e., a blood test.

My understanding also is that nobody really can "hold their liquor" better than anyone else. Blood alcohol concentration is blood alcohol concentration, although it takes more liquor to reach that concentration in a big fat person compared to a small one. Rather, some people have coping strategies that enable them to appear not so impaired as they really are. Walk more slowly, place their weight carefully, speak with careful diction, that sort of thing. None of that will help with driving, in which reaction time, perception, and judgment are tested by physics.

Curmudgeon, you'll have to do that yourself. I suggest firm discipline and positive reinforcement.

"Pick this up for your poor old dad."
*click and toss them a doritio*

The answer to Yoki's question, as Curmudgeon knows from his sailing experience, is "one sheet in the wind" is "tipsy," or normal drunk; " three sheets in the wind" is falling down drunk on calm seas.

*TIM! THIS BIG FAT PERSON IS TAKING UMBRAGE!

I think the world needs more quibble-stoppers, although, as a professional quibbler, this is against my self-interest.

Just caught this on MSNBC...

Our favorite hated right-wing nutcase columnist, Bob Novak, pulled a hit-and-run somewhere on K Street today. Apparently the 66 year old guy that he hit went up the hood and off his Corvette's windshield. Novak then promptly drove away at what witnesses considered a high rate of speed. The best part is that a bicyclist chased him down and blocked his path to let him know he just hit somebody -- the very best part is that the bicyclist is an ex-editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Novak claimed he had no idea he hit anybody. Imagine that! I guess the cops only ticketed him for "failure to yield", but other charges could be pending -- especially with so many willing witnesses around.

Too bad they don't have a BAC (Blood Asininity Content). They could have tossed him in jail for that right on the spot.

I wouldn't do that, mo. I understand umbrage can be very hard to lose. I suggest you leave that umbrage alone.

Way to go, martooni! If I had limited myself to the so-called "responsible" media, I would have thought that he barely touched the guy, who suffered no visible injuries according to a fire department spokesman. In the newly wild and woolly spirit of the Unedited Achenblog however, I prefer to think that Novak aimed for a little old lady with an Obama '08 button and backed over her once or twice, just to make sure the job got done.

Ok, found it, just not on the WaPo site, they refused to cough it up. Too old?

http://www.dui.com/dui-library/washington-dc/zero-tolerance

So be careful out there.

DLD

Fascinating.
Riveting, actually.
The mandela (falsely purported to be an image taken from the HST) is actually a reproduction of a sixties psychedelic black-light poster created by Mike "Wavey Gravey" Normbeck of Chicago (here I might add, represented without permission).
Personally, I'm currently working on altering my blood chemistry to include... blood.
On an even more personaly front: it turns out that my youngest son has occassional trouble swallowing because he has a large Latin word stuck in his throat. What a relief! We were afraid it was some sort of medical condition!

Fascinating.
Riveting, actually.
The mandela (falsely purported to be an image taken from the HST) is actually a reproduction of a sixties psychedelic black-light poster created by Mike "Wavey Gravey" Normbeck of Chicago (here I might add, represented without permission).
Personally, I'm currently working on altering my blood chemistry to include... blood.
On an even more personal front: it turns out that my youngest son has occassional trouble swallowing because he has a large Latin word stuck in his throat. What a relief! We were afraid it was some sort of medical condition!

Fascinating.
Riveting, actually.
The mandela (falsely purported to be an image taken from the HST) is actually a reproduction of a sixties psychedelic black-light poster created by Mike "Wavey Gravey" Normbeck of Chicago (here I might add, represented without permission).
Personally, I'm currently working on altering my blood chemistry to include... blood.
On an even more personal front: it turns out that my youngest son has occassional trouble swallowing because he has a large Latin word stuck in his throat. What a relief! We were afraid it was some sort of medical condition!

Oh dear!
Not sure how I managed that - didn't mean to see how many times I could post the same thing.
Slinking off now to crawl under my rock...

Quibble-stopper in '.08!

PlainTim, barely touching IS touching, as you should have learned in sex harrassment class.

Hit-and-run laws exist because it is a crime to leave an accident scene without establishing the victim is not in need of aid.

As a former victim of a hit-and-run, I take deep, deep umbrage at this rationalization. I was knocked unconscious.

It seemed only a few seconds after impact, but judging from events, I could have lain there for 30 minutes or more.

That the victim was not badly hurt is no excuse, especially as his defense was "I wasn't aware I hit anybody."

I'm still walking around with my brain function intact.. no thanks to the hit-and-run driver who was never caught and who probably "wasn't aware I hit anybody", but thanks to the people who saw me out cold on the road and called 911.

That's the spirit, PlainTim.

I can assure you that one certainly may be convicted of DUI on the basis of a breath test, and many many people are. A blood test is not necessary to convict, or even to bring a charge. If you blow .08 or greater that'll be enough for most juries, no matter how thoroughly you cross-examine the expert on the breathalyzer equipment or the gas chromatograph spectrum doohickey which does the actual testing. You don't even have to have erratic behavior. It is not uncommmon for law enforcement to park near a bar, watch the cars coming out, look for a traffic violation such as expired tag or a tag light out, then stop the car and wind up making a DUI arrest. No actual moving violation such as speeding or weaving need occur. Cops LOVE that license tag light, by the way. Even though I never drive under the influence (too many clients) I always make sure all my car lights are working. [Please note my unnecessary use of caps for emphasis, in our new devil-may-care arena.]

DLD, most states have some kind of reckless driving provision which may be enhanced if the reckless driver has any kind of elevated reading on the breath test. Many years ago in California an .06 was a guaranteed "wet reckless".

That was my point exactly, Ivansmom. 99.999% of us think we are ok if we are under .08. T'aint necessarily so, as you have said.

Did you really mean to tell *Tim "That's the spirit" in a comment concerning alcohol?

DLD

..."unedited, unsupervised, and completely irresponsible."

Oh, goodie! Italics must surely be coming soon!

I'm holding out for BOLD and mixed fonts!

DLD

oh, oh, ... Color!

Heart. Pounding. Fast.

DLD

...Sub/Superscript and Strikethrough.

Feeling really faint now.

End of Boodle hog. Going home.

DLD

Hmm, stepping out of satire for a long moment...

Wilbrod, I wasn't rationalizing. My point is that martooni's story of the event was exaggerated, presumably for humorous intent, and Novak did not bounce anyone off his hood. Novak was not consciously doing a hit-and-run, and he stopped within a reasonable distance, albeit only after being flagged down. The fact that the pedestrian was not seriously visibly injured does not support a claim that he was not touched nor injured, but it supports Novak's claim of being honestly unaware of any contact, and supports the notion that he was not impaired except by being a willing dupe of the Republican Party.

When I got T-boned by a car while bicycling, I definitely did bounce off the hood and roll/slide across the street. There was no question that I was hit and it was the driver's fault. When my father was hit by a car, the car made a turn directly into his path and Dad was launched over the roof of the car and onto his head (fortunately, he had a helmet). There was no question that he was hit and it was the driver's fault. When my sister was hit, she was dragged around the interior of a right turn by a driver who was making a rolling stop while my sister was legally stopped at an intersection. There was no question that she was hit and it was the driver's fault, although the driver later tried to claim that my sister should be responsible for repairing the scratched paint on the car.

So, yes, I understand why there are hit-and-run laws. But I also understand that honest mistakes can happen. Given the general opinion 'round here of Novak, and the fact that there is a real substrate of fact for martooni's story, I felt that his satire could benefit from a little footnoting. You may recall that you, yourself, opined that the New Yorker cover on Obama required some footnoting or titling or redesign to make the satire obvious for those inclined to believe the worst of Obama. As if that would have made any difference for that audience. The shoe is now on the other foot. Just because Novak is, in fact, detestable, does not make it okay to believe falsehoods about him.

Hmmm. I see that I failed to make clear that all three of us -- Dad, sister, and I -- were operating bicycles when we intersected with cars, and that these events occurred on three separate occasions that were separated by years.

PlainTim.
Just an observation: you and your family need to 1) stay off bikes; 2) while on bikes, stay off roads!
Yikes!
I mean... Yikes!
I guess that's the best way to sum that up.
Dmon

It's honesty when you can call foul on your own team. So many are incapable of it.

I'm still trying to figure out what curly molarity has to do with being drunk.

* blinks and finally reads the kit. Oh.*

As for scurrilous rumors in haiku..

Novak's hit-and-runs
flatten gnomes like bowling pins;
Pleads gnome ignorance.

Sealed records, though, show
Many seniors were roadkilled
With kids for spice, too

how can someone NOT know they hit something/someone? are they seriously THAT dulled to anything outside of their car?

My family also managed to have a serious bicycle accident while riding on a nice, safe, bike path. I'll say no more, except to note that my step-mother has a permanent argument-winner for all disputes with my Dad.

Each of us separately learned one of the most important truths of bicycling: even well-meaning drivers are complete idiots and should be treated with the same caution as one would use with a grumpy elephant. And I include myself, when I am operating a motor vehicle. I believe it is some effect of the carbon monoxide in the exhaust.

Remember, folks: always wear your helmet when bicycling. It's a life-saver. Parents, always make your kids wear a properly-fitted helmet, and always model the practice yourself. Make it a lifetime habit, for a nice long lifetime. A $60 helmet costs a hell of a lot less than a coffin or brain surgery.

Ever driven on a DC street? It's easy to believe that the *thump* of a pedestrian bump (especially on a protruding part of the rear bumper or fender) could be mistaken for the *bump* of a tire hitting a pothole. I'll give the guy the benefit of the doubt.

PlainTim, there was a lawyer a few years ago that killed a girl walking along a street. She claimed she didn't know she had hit anybody. She was on the cell phone at the time.

I've been in a few near-accidents with people who were talking on cell phones, so I certainly can believe she was unaware.

No matter how credible a claim of not being aware of hitting somebody is, it is the duty of the driver to be aware at all times, and to take himself off the road the minute he is aware that he cannot live up to that duty.

In my case, the bike was pulverized. I was hit straight from behind, the pedal was ripped off, the rear tire bent out of shape, and I was launched straight forward. There wasn't much doubt that the driver must have seen me, although it's remotely possible he didn't know his car was hitting my bike square on.

In Minnesota there is a law that all cars must give all bikes and pedestrians at least 3 feet's worth of room while passing.

That is the standard of "responsible driving" up here.

I now bike only with Wilbrodog because I need to be aware of traffic, but this law, faithfully followed by all the drivers I see swerving to give us room, really helps a lot for our safety.

This and Wilbrodog are the only reason I'm even cycling today.

maybe cuz my car is so low to the ground that i know exactly what's around me... another strike against SUV's and mega-mobiles... i'm sure in a hummer you could run over ruben studdard and not even tell...

wilbrod - i was gonna say, isn't it a little dangerous to ride a bike when you can't hear what's coming up behind you? even bikes traveling faster that want to get around you? poor wilbrodog - i'll bet THAT's a workout running beside a bike and STILL working! (wilbrodog - i love your waistline no matter what the size - you are my sweetie!)

more cat humour
http://www.roflcat.com/
*WARNING - SOME BAD LANGUAGE!*

Actually, coffins and other funeral expenses are often covered by insurance, so a helmet may be more expensive.

What?

Sheesh. Just trying to be helpful.

Wilbrod, it sounds like what happened to you certainly was indefensible and inarguable. Probably, the guy imagined that he would do something clever like tap your rear wheel and scare the living daylights out of you. Some drivers are really schmucks and don't seem aware that both you and the car actually are moving at considerable speed while on the road. I have seen a guy in a van try to run my Dad off the road, and I have had close encounters of my own with these clever jesters. Stay strong! Stay fast! And stay alert!

Remember, they are grumpy elephants. They do not comprehend how much power they wield, and they are not aware of anything too small to hurt them.

mash, spice and roadkill
make tasty spirits, "douche bag"
planned a still refill

Insurance for funeral expenses? Is that a Canadian thing? I never heard of such, around here. Prepayment for burial, yes, insurance, no.

I know of a friend's brother's friend, a champion bicyclist who was killed by such a schmucky driver. The brother will no longer ride alone, but in packs.

Maybe it IS time we lobbied for laws similar to Minnesota's 3-foot room law to protect bicyclists.

BTW, let me say I favor mandating that all cars equip bigger rear license plates easier to read by a stationary observer.

I do not think we will improve safety unless people are held more accountable for following traffic rules.

Mo, no way I'm turning my back on a car ever again. What I (and most deaf people do) is that we ride against the direction of traffic to see all oncoming traffic, stay on empty roads, bike lanes, or sidewalks.

Wilbrodog helps alert me to traffic approaching an intersection out of sight or behind me, so I can get off the road.
Also his vest does help people slow down a bit more than they would otherwise.

We go slowly, at a steady pace so Wilbrodog can keep an even trot and we can stop and get out of the way as needed.

I'm not training for the Tour of France.

Even walking can be dangerous when you have drivers breaking the law, and this is my beef.

The most dangerous infractions for a deaf pedestrian in the wrong place:

1) blind right turns at full speed onto intersections.

I don't care if this is legal ANYWHERE. It's freakin' dangerous. Slow down and STOP before doing a right turn, especially if you can't see across the corner for any pedestrians, due to shrubbery or whatnot.

Wilbrodog has already saved my neck by hearing the car coming around and pulling me back to the curb when a woman did a right turn right onto a crosswalk, no slowing. She would never have been able to see me in time to stop from hitting me.

2) Acting like YOU have the right of way, not the pedestrian. The law says different, and there's a reason beyond your greater speed and danger.

Honking your horn DOES NOT CHANGE THIS LAW. Ever.

I've been cussed out by drivers who nearly ran me over because they thought I heard them honking their horn and was ignoring Their Majesty on purpose.

3) Running red lights across an pedestrian crossing. Even where you might not think there is one.

I can't count the number of times I've crossed one lane with vehicles at legal stop, peered around at an apparently empty lane, then jumped back because of a red light runner.

4) Not slowing down or being careful around buses unloading. The law says school buses, but you can't go wrong being careful around ALL buses.

5) Thinking before you break the law, such as the idiot who chose to drive on the wrong side of the street to bypass a line of stopped cars. He nearly hit a car turning from a three-way intersection that he didn't know was there.

As it was, I was lucky I was looking both ways as I was crossing, not just BEFORE I was crossing.

6) Failing to give all pedestrians or bicyclists you are passing a wide berth. Never assume they can see or hear where you are. Many joggers wear ipods and are dangerously, dangerously unaware of their surroundings (I'm often aghast at their behavior).

I'm sure Dandylion might have his own personal list of behaviors highly dangerous to blind pedestrians.

[Making note never to cross a street with *Tim's family.]

Did anyone notice that (male) service ferret is named Gyno?

Greetings from South Carolina. One day we simply must stop at that Mexican Theme Park located just south of the border. Preferably after I am dead.

Which reminds me, funeral insurance is something that they advertise a lot on the Food Network. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. But I am double-checking all the recipes for unusual levels of saturated fat.

Best of luck, Joel, as you enter this new phase of unconstrained creativity. I just hope all the big craziness doesn't inspire to the boodle to abandon our traditional strict adherance to the Designated Topic.

Speaking oif which, I find those dead zone areas oddly fascinating. They, once again, remind me just how freakishly unusual the conditions that led to life on Earth might actually be. I mean, I've seen the Drake Equation and I know that we have found lots of systems that have potentially earth-like worlds. But that's like saying we have found lots of families that potentially contain another Picasso. And yet the number of actual Picassos is shockingly small.

Which is a real shame because I, for one, can always use some more tax deductions.

Okay, this is over-analyzing what was intended as a facetious comment, but yes, the standard auto policy here has no-fault benefits including death benefits and funeral expenses that can be accessed by a "pedestrian" struck by a car (with "pedestrian" defined as an individual who is not an occupant of an automobile). Without researching the point, I think that would include bicyclists.

So I guess to continue my thought, a really thrifty person could ride around on their bicycle with no helmet, spend their $60 on their heart's desire, then go get ran over by a car (regardless of fault) and get their funeral expenses paid for. What a scam!

TBG, I agree with you on that one. I'll be waiting at least 30 seconds after *Tim crosses ANY street before I dare cross myself.

As for Gyno, no I'm not even letting my mind go there. Maybe it was supposed to be a variant on Gino?

Lest I start a rash of suicide bicyclists for funeral benefits scammers, let me add that we keep careful track of bicyclists coming over the border with no apparent plans for return trips.

Me, I'm walking right next to *Tim, as close as I can get; like Garp's house, he's pre-disastered.

I meant, of course, that I'd walk next to *Tim because he's a great conversationalist, very knowledgeable on a wide varierty of subjects, has a great sense of humor, kinda cute, and pre-disastered.

Um, being next to Arthur Dent didn't help earth any...

just remember that it's all about *tim's (beep)

wilbrod - don't get me started on DC drivers! people using the inside lane at the arlington cemetary traffic circle to go over the bridge to DC drive me NUTS!! NUTS!!! NUTS. I. TELL. YOU!

Mo, I was going to reference that! It is amazing how you can be talking anything from the economy to politics to appetizers, and next thing ya know, there you are! I suspect it might really take skill.

truly amazing LiT!

*tim has mad skilz!

uh oh - tornado warning for the dc area! and me without a basement!

sort of on topic, well not really. We are having a large dinner party at work for the french connection who are going home tomorrow. Well everytime a certain song comes on the radio,I've got to turn it up.

So I crank it up and in walks my boss's boss. Thankfully,everyone liked the song and why wouldn't they

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6VDmozvNrM

is everyone already in the basement? y'all left me here by myself? i don't know bout tornado but it's raining cats and dogs!

I am here mo, stay safe!

Here, too, you all but the thunder mumbling and grumbling sounds like it's in the next room. Three power blips already, but holding steady now, not much rain, tho.

We've been having wave after wave of t-storms since about 5 pm. The first one started with a tornado warning which was quickly cancelled, thank heavens. According to the local news, at least a dozen homes in the Boston metro area have been struck by lightning today. Ugh. Is it just me who sometimes feels like I'm living at the beginning of a Stephen King novel about out of control weather? And that this is the start of many years of more and more extremes? Wow, just had an amazing clap of thunder. See you later-I hope.

I've been following the boodle discussion about Novak and the man he hit. Here 'tis:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/23/AR2008072301624.html?hpid=moreheadlines

There is an eye witness account who says he saw a man roll over the hood of Novak's car, witness was on bike, caught up with Novak, and informed him that he was a hit and run. That's when Novak said he didn't know he had hit someone. So, folks, I think we've got ourselves a case.

me with my bad hearing could hear the rain splattering outside even with the TV blasting straight at me. I looked out the window and the rain was going sideways. except where it wasn't coming down in sheets. I opened the window to get a better look and got rain all over me (the outside walls of my building are two feet thick, so wow). wow, just um, yeah wow...I think the wind is fiercer than that hurricane we had recently (was it last year?). Only this time with LIGHTNING/THUNDER/and/RAIN

Sneaks, looks like there's a line of storms from Massachusetts to lower South Carolina. They're going through the Charlotte region now. I hope it results in more rain and less thunder-and-lightning than last night's storm.

We had a sprinkle at suppertime here in the mountains, but that was all. However, there were 3 inches of water in the rain gauge when we got to the house. All the plants look pretty good.

This has been the windiest summer I can recall. Not storm wind, just regular sunny days and windy. I wasn't thinking King novel but "The Day After Tomorrow"

Just wanted to check in and say...

Night, boodle. Sweet dreams.

And boko, sorry about the wreck I made with your name this morning.

Thanks guys for acknowledging my request for sponsors. I did okay, we're on the air again.

As for the new rules governing the boodle, I thought we already had that. And the picture makes one feel kind of lost. It does look kind of peaceful, but if everything is dead in that zone, that could account for the look.

Real tired. Going to bed. Slyness, it has rained a lot here. Real bad storm earlier. I hope that isn't the case for your area tonight.

Loomis, I hope you safe and sound.

"you are safe and sound." Sorry.

A quick review of Novak's columns would easily reveal his perceptions are those of an alternate universe. He really didn't see that guy on his windshield; he saw an Elagabalus in the circus instead. Guilty of nonperception, maybe, but in Bushworld that's a feature, not a bug...

Ahem, a tune for Mo:

Oh every time it rains
It rains puppies from heaven
Don't you know each cloud contains
Puppies from heaven
You'll find your felines
Fallin' all over town
Be sure that your umbrella is upside down
Trade them for more litters of kitters
If you want the things that move
You must have critters
So when you hear it thunder
Don't pee under a tree
There'll be puppies from heaven
For you and meeeee...

He's 77, Medallion. I hope the DMV make him take another driving test. It could be a case of declining vision and denial at the high-water mark.

Stay safe guys.

Normal drunk is when my the top part of my cheeks begin to feel numb...oh you meant generally.

I certainly hope all you storm-laden Boodler are okay. Of course, if you lived here, that tornado warning would tell you whether there was just circulation or one on the ground, and when it would hit your town, and if it was aiming for your block. There are advantages to living in the Land of Extreme Weather. As we suffer through our week of 100 degree days I keep reminding everyone that Global Warming is all about Extreme Weather Events.

MedallionofFerret, that's a very plausible interpretation. I'd like to have you on a jury. Lovely to hear from you. By the way, where's my bridge?

On happier binking grounds:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080724/ap_on_fe_st/odd_hero_rabbit;_ylt=AgZ3kDHY8m3RFjuKA
dhbpM4Z.3QA

Apparently Lassie wears a cotton tail and long ears today. Pka pka pka...

Wilbrodog --arrff arrff arrff.

Rest of Boodle, into the bunker! I ambled into the bunker, inspected the chairs, found a good one with a antimassacar. I am very carefull not to sit on a promassacar one.

Good night Boodles, stay safe.

Well, I gotta say that if the guy really did roll off the hood, it's a Big Deal. The WaPo article that I read before martooni's post did not mention such drama, so I assumed martooni was embroidering a bit. Perhaps not. I shall investigate further.

Hello, all.

Joel, I think you need an orange and white striped smock if you're going to open "Umbrage R' Us."

And give my best to Newman as he makes his way over to Slate.

I'd write something funny regarding the Dead Zone around the Pinwheel Galaxy, but I'm sure that some Red Blogger would draw a parallel between that galaxy and the good ol' US of A.

More later, kids.

bc

Hmm, well, I see that the current version of the WaPo story confirms every particular of the way that martooni reported it. There is a witness who does, indeed, maintain that the victim rolled up onto the hood and windshield. That suggests that Novak either is impaired, was impaired, or lying (which is a different form of impairment).

Novak was just distracted... I think there was a leak somewhere.

Over the hood...doesn't that imply braking? I think I learned somewhere that if you're going to hit a deer, you should 1/go ahead and hit the deer...trying to dodge it just does not work, and 2/just before impact take your foot off the brake so that the deer is sent up and away from the car, and not toward you by coming over the hood and into your windshield.

But what do I know...my knowledge of physics is generally limited to pool and darts.

Let me state clearly for the record...#1 does not apply to people. #2 has something to do with where the nose of the car is pointing upon impact.

Clearly, I should have at least taken better notes in physics class. And not had it so early in the morning.

Plain Tim dons his Lord Peter Wimsey monocle and his natty tweeds to unravel the mystery.....

Honest to Pete, slyness has put me on to the Dorothy L. Sayers books and must say that "Strong Poison" & "Gaudy Night" were a treat. Am now into "The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club". Wonderfully stuffy old men, this club is full of.

And I'm sure somebody will join Lord Peter Timsey as Jessica Fletcher as they reconstruct the scene of the crime.

Meanwhile RD Poirot will have exercised his little grey cells and deduced that there was indeed a frame job, but strangely, it turns out that Novak really did it after all.

And then Martooni can don a raincoat and a dimwitted shamble as he carefully badgers Novak into confessing.

And then we need some hardboiled gumshoes to track down tawdry affairs and other dirty skeletons in the closet as well.

Also, Cassandra can play Miss Marple and come up with a good biblical/ village story about some stolen tarts that explains it all.

Yes, it's time to ride the Oriental Mystery Cliche Express and find out that Novak was really served justice by relatives of 12 hit-and-run victims he had already run over but paid off.

It also will mainfest that a sociopathic 12-year old was actually driving at those times.

Oh, and I forgot the lovers that meet before or during the crime scene investigation and launch their tender romance under the knowing eye of the boodle. One of these lovers may or may not be the actual detective(s) investigating.

And we need a mysterious "not-an-animal" as a symbol to title the mystery, as well. "Saint Bernard" might work.

Although we could combine it with car puns and do something like "The Bug Who Swatted a Man".

So many decisions to make. However do mystery authors decide on anything?

A mysterious "not-an-animal": surely you mean Mr. Stripey, symbolic and enigmatic gumshoe extraordinaire.

Ah yes, the enduring symbol of the boodle. We must not forget Mr. Stripey as the very talented villianous gumshoe.

This afternoon the Satellite Transmission System at my employer's place near Shepherdstown proved vulnerable to heavy rain. No word on whether the Secret Tunnels (if any) flooded.

Who ran over the boodle?

Wow, when I posted my previous message, for some reason I hadn't refreshed my browser and completely missed the Novak/car discussion. I'm such a dope.

Wilbrod, it was suggested to me by a friend that there are conditions where you wouldn't want to come to a complete stop before making a right hand turn under green, particularly in congested urban traffic. Such a manuver might cause an accident, as drivers are not expecting to have to stop at a green light.

I do instruct performance driving, and one of the things we teach is visually scanning far ahead of where you're driving, and look where you want to go. You'll see obstacles and road conditions well before you get there, and your hands and feet will cooperate to get you where you're looking. Even with shrubbery and pedestrians, in many cases, a driver can get visual clues about what may lie around the corner on a city block. For example, you may not be able to see around a knot of pedestrians crowding a street corner waiting for a light before making that right turn, but you may be able to use the windows in the building across the street to see what's around that corner, particularly if there's traffic and brake lights.

And LIT, you're right about getting off of the brakes just before impacting a deer in order to bring your vehicle's nose up, and to encourage said deer up and over roof rather than inviting it into the windshield and front seat with the nose down under heavy braking.

[Course, Novak's 'vette has a pretty low nose to begin with, I'd think it'd be relatively easy to flip someone up onto the hood or even completely over a low shovel-nosed vehicle like that.]

And as far as pre-disastered goes, I grew up along Connecticut Ave. Been hit by cars more times than I can remember (I imagine that there were a few concussion-related blackouts in there) as a young man, nearly all of them my own fault. I learned that it's far better to go up and over than under. Look, I'm Lance Alworth! [ooh, that'll set a few folks' memories going. Anyone remember his nickname? I sure do.]

Didn't someone say God watches out for drunks and idiots? Well, as a kid, I wasn't walking around drunk. Much.

Er, does cough medicine count?

Hmm. I may have had both conditions going for me there.

bc

Bc, that's why traffic design is important (regarding right turns on green blind right into crosswalks).

Even a sign saying slow crosswalk on right would be a help.

I believe many blind pedestrians prefer to cross at least 15 feet from an intersection in order to more accurately hear incoming traffic. I can't disagree with that concept-- the fewer directions to worry about, the more chance of a safe crossing.

We may well indeed have to revisit how crosswalks are designed in relation to traffic.

Of course, traffic design is rarely pedestrian-friendly-- a major problem with US cities (and you wonder why we're getting fat and out of shape?), even when right turns are regulated.

Visual scanning is a great skill, and I do a lot of what you suggest (scary that you HAVE to teach it, though).

It's not always enough. Aural scanning is also not always enough either, especially in very congested intersections with lots of traffic noise.

Deer evrywhere tonight and fog made for a not so fun commute home. Tomorrow has got to be a better day.

Hey, gwe, glad you made it home ok. I remember many a foggy night commute home to nearly Front Royal - not fun. Thanks for the youtube clip - love REM.

Very tired here - and it's reverted back to winter again - but supposed to warm up tomorrow. Need vacation bad.

Once, the sharp leaf tip of a Butia palm pierced my left eardrum. During the recovery, I lacked the ability to locate things by ear. Concerts at the Jacksonville Symphony were weird--I hadn't realized the extent to which I'd been hearing the music in three dimensions. Listening for traffic--impossible.

In a report from Hawai'i, an expert on the palms of Madagascar spent some eight hours touring a pair of gardens on the Big Island. Loads of Madagascar palms, all sorts of questions about their identities . . . lots of "not" palms.

Interesting arrangement regarding art donations. Rich people or their tax advicers can be very creative when it comes to tax avoidance.

Your comic book collection could make you very rich, Joel. When you sign up to be a member of one of those million-dollar clubs, don't forget us. Pass us some money making tips that only million-dollar club members are privy to.

There are many different types of palms here. I'm sure there palms of Madagascar here, but driving around, I see a lot of foxtail palms in people's yards. Well kept, the foxtail palms do look very pretty.

SCC : adviser

Throwback tomatoes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/dining/23toma.html?em&ex=1217044800&en=07f2eb815aaa6011&ei=5087%0A

I know Mudge and omni will remember the heyday of the Jersey tomato. I do, and am hoping to buy a few today.

They're still ripening, but I'm awash in garden tomatoes. There are at least 75 green ones and a like number of blossoms. Guess I shook those bushes too vigorously or the bees have been sneaking around at night.

Herbs are doing well too, except for the dwarf sage (which I want to cast for jewelry). Zinnias? Unbelievable. Virtually everything I've put in the raised bed gardens is gorgeous, everything directly in the ground, meh.

SoC, I truly envy you the raspberries.

What's amazing is how many drunk drivers aren't arrested, ever.

mo, yer Reubenesque, remember? :-) *HUGS*

The weather pattern last night reminded me of when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan came through in '04... Winds from the west as the stomrs moved north... At least things were "quiet" enough that it was "only" severe T-storms. Hope things were relatively under control down in TX.

And I see SOMEONE is on the op-ed page again. Wonder if his submission was edited?

*off-to-the-early-train-with-probably-too-little-caffeine Grover waves* :-)

Hey dbG!!! *extra-early-morning waves* :-)

God loves us so much more than we can imagine through Him that died for all, Jesus Christ.

Morning, morning, friends. If Novak's explaination for his hit and run offense is anything like that stuff he writes here, he may be in a whole lot of trouble.

Ivansmom, I had to laugh at your comment concerning Nyquil. I have a cousin that used to drink the stuff all the time just to get high when he was a young man. Of course, he graduated to the hard core stuff, and now his life is a wreck, with one illness or another, and more than one addiction.

Mudge, Slyness, Martooni, we need to get cracking folks, and good morning to all.*waving*

Scotty, do you ever sleep? I can never get here before you. God bless you, and family.

dbg, and green, good to hear from you.

I did not read the opinion section or even the front page this morning. Nothing drew me. I want to read the story about Chandra Levy, but I just can't make myself do it. I believe the investigation was botched, and botched badly. I think they probably thought, and this is not nice, that it was business as usual. I'm sure Washington has its dark side, as all large cities do.

It rained a lot yesterday, and was so hot. And we had a homemade pound cake yesterday at the Bible study. It was so good. Ah, what would the world be without good cake? Totally un-livable! I should run from anything with the least bit of sugar in it. Probably break my neck in the process.

Have a great day, folks. Time to swim.

Good morning, Dawn Patrol.

I only have time for a fly-by this morning, but that's me doing a wing-waggle just to let you know that it's me in this old Sopwith.

bc

My four biking accidents have been mostly self-inflicted. At eight I took a hill too steep for my ability and stopped by sliding down the shoulder gravel. I needed eight stitches in my chin and the bandages are in all of my uncle's wedding pictures.

At fourteen I wasn't looking where I was going and rode into the back of a parked car and dislocated my shoulder.

More recently, I took a Columbia bike path turn too sharp and slid when I hit the moss covered bridge. Sprained ankle.

Two years ago, climbing a short hill I hit a rock and my bike slid out from under me. Slight scrape on the arm, but cracked my helmet like a watermelon.

Always wear a helmet.

'Morning, Boodle. A very frustrating evening, power-wise. Was working on some writing while monitoring the Boodle, and had a 2-second power loss that shut down everything, and had to get it all back up. Discovered I lost about three paragraphs of work.

Started writing a post, then bam-- another outage that knocked out the entire neighborhood about 10:15. Power never came back, so went to bed early -- not a bad thing, I guess, but I'd been on a roll and hated to stop. The Muse don't like it, either. Old biddy.

Went to our local Borders last evening with my Father's Day Border's gift card in my hand. Bought the new James Lee Burke Dave Robichaux paperback, "Tin Roof Blowdown," a George Pelecanos ("Drama City"), and the third novel in Pat Barker's WWI trilogy, called "The Ghost Road," won the Booker Prize.

Here's a gutsy headline I like from the home page: "U.S. Voters: Kinda Out of It?" I like the use of "kinda." I like that the copy desk allowed it. And I like the Ignatius hed, too: "Middle East Peace for Dummies."

Wonderful Dana Milbank column, "Sorry We Asked, Sorry You Told."

OK, gotta start moving.

Carry on.

I ride my bike very carefully in traffic (and always wear a helmet). Intersections are the most scary, but there's also the case of the bozos who pass me and then turn in front of me, forcing me to brake and swerve--need to pay attention for that at every corner. So far I've avoided any actual contact with automobiles, but I've had enough close encounters to keep me from being complacent about it. My bicycle accidents have all been a result of general klutziness--I have strength and endurance, but I'm no athlete when it comes to any measure of coordination or grace. When I was a teenager I had an accident that happened when the bike was stationary. I was just dismounting the bicycle and failed to lift my foot high enough to clear the bar. I lost my balance and fell, and I happened to be standing next to a slope, at the bottom of which was a barbed wire fence. I still have the scars from that one.

In Key West, one Friday evening after a hard week of teaching elementary school, I was almost home and was cruising up to the deli to grab a burger. What I thought was a ramp to the sidewalk turned out to be a low curb. I lost control and fell and all my weight landed on my left elbow. My arm was in a sling for weeks, and it was years before that elbow worked normally. (Sometimes it would get stuck at 90 degrees, and I would have to bend it more before I could straighten the arm) It's fine now, though.

Just needed to ask a question quickly..

A friend of mine has a problem. She ask me for help. The city manipulated the sewer system on her street, and her home got flooded with raw sewage. The city has offered her 1500 hundred dollars, and I'm not sure if they're going to do the clean-up. She wants to know what she should do. Can someone help me with this? She's renting this home, and I don't know how involved the landlord is in this matter.

And I'm getting double emails supposedly from Fed-X talking about mailing some kind of package, which isn't really a package, but a money transfer or some sort. Anyway they want me send them 200 dollars. I've never heard of such a thing, and all of this from Nigera, which sends up a red flag for me. Any thoughts?

G'morning.

All this talk of bike accidents scares me. I have a mountain bike I love, but it hasn't been out in months and months. I *do* wear a helmet and ride just in the neighborhood, or here in the mountains. There is a road in the next county that follows what once was a railroad bed, along the New River. It's practically flat for all of its ten miles, and beautiful. As it is posted for bikes, the few drivers who travel it know to watch and always wave to the bikers. And we wave back, of course.

Pound cake, Cassandra, yum. One of my good friends owns a bakery that specializes in pound cake. All three of the dottirs worked there, and not one of them will eat the product because they know what goes into it. But it is simply divine.

Good morning Boodle--bit of a late start for me. Roaring off into a new day. Have a good one, Boodlers.

cassadra, report those e-mails as another phishing scam, your red flag is flying properly this morning.

I can't offer anything on the sewer issue, though. Sowwy. :-(

Thanks, Scotty. I did that for the emails.

Like you, I don't know what to tell my friend. Some of her stuff is sitting beside the road. I know she can't use it anymore. It is a mess.

Cassandra, the city should clean up the mess AND give her the money. She should ask the county health department to inspect and make sure everything is okay before she accepts the money.

We had over an inch of rain last night before 10 pm and who knows how much since. We seem to be in a lull this morning and the sun is out for a change.

Cassandra, I have no experience with sewage overflows but I would think your friend should get an estimate for the clean up before she accepts any specific amount from the town. Also don't understand why the landlord wouldn't be directly involved in this process, it's his house for goodness sake. What Scotty said about the phishing thing. Don't ever respond to an email from Nigeria or anyplace where you don't know anyone, just delete them.

Hope everyone stays safe, seems like all on the east coast are in the t-stormy areas today.

Cassandra - there are similar emails going around for UPS - which contain a virus - both are scams.

Morning all - we are having our morning deluge here but looks like it won't last too long. We officially broke the rain record yesterday.

Have a great day all

balanced beautiful
biker babe bumbles biking
barbed brakes bone breaks, boy!

g'morning boodle. Busy day ahead but I'm getting started with a frostcat snuggle fest and a cup of coffee. Rainy mornings are best started slowly.

Mudge-thanks for the heads up on the Milbank column. We are sooooo overdue to drop "Don't Ask Don't Tell." And it was truly good to have Elaine Donnelly outed for the loathsome, evil creature she is. Milbank doesn't mention that she was appointed to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS) back in the '80s. That she was ever placed in a position with a hint of importance in any administration is mind-boggling to me. I hope this means we won't see her used as an "expert" on women in the military in any media, now in existence or to be invented in the future.

Good morning, You all.

I've been out on the deck watching the flowers shrug off rain drops and absolutely shine, birds are bursting with happy song. We got much needed rain last night, even the grass is humming. It's the kind of morning for pressing an ear to the ground to listen to the earth, rear view might be fairly ugly, tho.

I'm impressed by the number of bikers in the boodle. Stay safe, having ridden a bike in my younger years, I am very aware of them and give them plenty of room on the road. I've said before, husband is still a serious biker, oldest son as well. Pedal power rules.

'Mudge, Harriet's busy with our 6,000,000,000 kids, so she told me to give Achenbach what-for.

And you think YOU have a "Honey-do" list? Try:

Eat rock
Fight off miners
Eat rock
Paint the nursery
Eat rock
Write McCoy another thank-you note
Eat rock
Eat rock

That's some stellar nursery, harry!

Just imagine how confusing Father's Day is on the tribble home world.

Harry, I'm glad you're enjoying the silicon lifestyle, and finding it fulfilling.

For some reason it occurred to me that there may be zones around Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where others enjoy silicone lifestyles.

In all of the cases - the Gulf of Mexico, the zones around LA and LV, and in the Pinwheel Galaxy - there's probably more complexity and diversity of life than is apparent at first Observation. Certainly from the heavily biased perspective of we imperfect and oh, so carbon- and baryonic matter-based humans.

Of course, I'm an optimist.

bc

Not so tough for us, yellojkt...

Carbon-dating, doncha know.

Good morning all. We had a doozy of a thunderstorm roll through the Grand Strand last night. (I have it on good authority that some meteorologists have even considered elevating it to a whopper.) It reduced the dog to a shivering mass of canine flesh. She spent most of the night huddled nervously against my head.

Today's agenda is to hit the beach. This is not my favorite thing because I'm not really a "frolic in the surf" kind of guy. I'm more a "sit in the shade with a good book and a cold beverage" person. Granted, I do love me a nice sand castle now and again. But the offspring have gotten too old to provide plausible deniability.

Firefox, by the way, doesn't consider "deniability," an actual word. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Anyway, I am very impressed with the new little house my in-laws have down here. I am sitting in their screened-in porch enjoying the fruits of their recently installed wireless router. (Which I installed last night with nary a hitch. Kinda impressive what with the Majitos and all).

Anyway, this house is small, but extremely well designed. Energy efficient, with no wasted space. I look at some of the grotesque McMansions in the area and cannot imagine that those people are any happier than are my in-laws in this cozy little home. Even with four additional house guests and a highly-strung dog.

Backboodling a little earlier this am I realized I ignited the DUI fire and then fled the scene, so I committed arson and a hit and run. Sorry.
Wilbrod, measuring the ethanol in the blood my the means of ethanol in the breath is based on Raoult's law for ideal solution; the vapour pressure over a liquid is the sum of the vapour pressure of all the components of the mixture multiplied by their molal fraction. At low ethanol content, the water/ethanol solution is ideal enough, no problem there. Vapour pressures are very much temperature dependent, I think that breath alcohol measures taken on deeply hypothermic or highly feverish subjects (or a dog...) could be dubious, but in general people are at a constant 37.8C. Calibrating the machine at the same altitude the measure will be done takes care of the pressure problem. The technique also implies the lungs are ideal membranes, i.e. the membrane is as permeable to ethanol as it is to water. So I suspect the variability of the multiplying constant reported by Curmudgeon (1900-2400 for a nominal 2100) is an effect of both the temperature of the subject and the variability in the non-ideality of the pulmonary membrane.

Mudge, one thing that doesn't help is the moronic units used by biologist and organic chemist. (Remember, this is a full umbrage, eyeball burning boodle)
Why the heck use mg /dL when g/L would express the concentration in basic units? Why 80mg per 100ml instead of 0.8g/L? Biologist just love to bring units to the size of the sample, like μg/ml. It makes no sense at all but if you insist on mg/L they see blenders capable of pureeing 1 kg of rats in 5sec instead of their current unit capable of pureeing a mouse in the same time. And I know there are no Mr/Mrs Litre, or at least that they weren't involved in units if they existed. L is often used in text to avoid the l/1 confusion. Me, I would use the cursive ℓ but I'm not the one who decides.

In truth we should use molal concentration but I suspect the scientists involved weren't interested in explaining to the lawyers and cops that moles aren't:
tasty Mexican sauces;
pre-cancerous skin lesions;
secret enemies; or
furry burrowing mammals.

Thanks, Scotty & Cassandra!

Cassandra, can your friend contact Legal Aid or find a lawyer who does pro bono? That doesn't sound like much for having your home flooded with sewage and probably having to toss everything. I feel for her.

Went to a 6 a.m. yoga class in a cool, dark room with ethereal music. I always walk out feeling like I've had a good massage. It's a beginner's class, the rule we've agreed upon is if you hear someone laugh, she's laughing at herself, so don't worry.

Now I guess I should get some more work done. Have a good Boodle day, all!

Shriek;

As I was propping my eyelids open reading that, I could have sworn you snuck an italic in there...

:-)

Harry,
You date carbon? What a kinky swinger you are! As they say, once once you go carbon, you never go carbon black.

na Scotty, it's only symbol. WaPo wouldn't spring for an italic and Bold capable software, would they, the cheap bastatidos.

na Scotty, it's only a symbol. WaPo wouldn't spring for an italic and Bold capable software, would they, the cheap bastatidos.

Don't go getting all graphite on us, yellojkt.

ooops.

MoLE
as in
oLE

as in the Spanish flair or bravura expression.

The secret ingredient in moLE sauce is chocolate. MMMMmmmmmmm.

Or a dip made with avogadros.

I agree biologists are molarons, but why concentrate on the chemists?

Other WaPo blogs like Celebritology have italics and bold, but no HTML. It's just capricious favoritism in order to keep us in our place.

I read the Chandra Levy thing in WaPo. I always wondered if she owned a bicycle. I figured as she was described as athletic, she surely must have. I never heard of it, except a brief mention of her going to a bicycle shop. So maybe she did. I figured someone would ask. But no one did, that I know of. I always wondered if she was riding her bike when foul play happened.

Over at the NYT Freakonomics asked "What is the most racist city in America?" Haven't read all the comments but the first couple dozen were surprisingly not flamingly stupid or flaming. They promise to do a follow up next week with "social science thinking."
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/what-is-the-most-racist-city-in-america/
Charlottesville VA got a mention. I happen to think it's near the top, but perhaps not "most" in all the land. One commenter suggested that you have to live in a place for a while to know for sure how racist it is. Can't fault that logic which is why I'm holding my fire on nominating Minnesota's "Twin Cities." Painting with a broad brush, but Minnesotans seem to think there are 2 kinds of non-blonde, brownish people-the kind you want your church congregation to adopt and bring from some foreign land, and the kind who are dragging down your property values and ruining your schools with all their special needs.
(The latter being mostly the US born offspring of the former, and descendants of southern blacks who came north in the great migration.) Obviously I need more coffee before I start returning phone calls to people we are courting for contributions to our nonprofit.

Harry is probably looking for a Diamond in the Ruff.

DLD

¢¤¥§©®±¶¹²³АБВГДЕЖ All kinds of things are available.

Ai chihuahua...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/07/23/cancer.cell.phones.ap/index.html

Talk about giving in to hysteria...

*SIGH*



Harry, ya made me laugh.

Jeez, Bertooch. Hey, all you bike riders: be more careful! I can't go writin' a poem every time one of you tumbles off a bike.

It's not the radiation. It's all the parts in a cellphone outgassing the manufacturing byproducts. Brand new electronic gear smells like a FEMA trailer when it warms up. Pyew! That stuff can't be good for you.

Carbon free is dead? Perhaps silicone can step in for a role. But the temperatures might be higher. Those bonds are strong.

Levees holding so far in the Rio Grande Valley, but copious amounts of rain still falling there. Six buses of 250 were sent down to the Valley as a preliminary measure from San Antonio. Red Cross also using Alamo City as a staging area for delivering relief supplies. With daybreak, there'll be a better assessment of the damage from Hurricane Dolly in the hardest hit areas.

We got a few sprinkles around 2:43 p.m. yesterday that lasted for two minutes--just as I was getting the mail, a brief shower just after 5 p.m. and then apparently a heavier downpour in the evening while we were in the theater seeing "Dark Knight." Dolly busted the deep, deep South Texas drought, just putting a small dent in ours--so far (but not so good). Very dramatic tropical storm skies yesterday afternoon despite not getting much precip. We are under a tornado watch for most of today.

Heard NPR's Terri Gross interview "Knight" director and he said Ledger's makeup was based on Francis Bacon's paintings, but all I could think of was how Elizabeth Short's body was disfigured with a carved smile, she of Black Dahlia murder fame. At least the film was better than Hulk and Iron Man, though I still wasn't wildly enthusiastic. *Sigh.*

My attention is elsewhere this a.m.--been phoning and e-mailing this morning trying to learn more about a very rare auto that may or may not be up for sale. Sleuthing is what I'm doing. Got wind of it via a phone call from the East Coast last night, then was Googling late last night after the flick, and doing the follow-up this morning. Am working off this "hit" I found last night at the Popular Mechanics website--#56, the appraiser/dealer trying to tickle Jay Leno into being interested in the car. Know more than I'm saying--best at this point to stay mum.

Anyone know how to find out how many of these cars are still in existence? Others besides me are interested.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/jay_leno_garage/4218200.html

This is getting back to Joel's concept of "weird life" posited here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072701692.html

Since we don't have any record of life on earth much before DNA, I suspect we'd see the very same proto-life we used to have, as very weird. And if something similar exists in Europa or similar environs, we might not recognize it, thinking it's merely an interesting protein stew. Working very, very slowly. So "slow life" would seem to be "weird life."

I still suspect carbonless areas are much more likely to be lifeless.

I'd suggest various car clubs, Loomis. That pops out of the internet and seems where to find those most knowledgable on the classic cars.

Re. Novak - Check out this version:
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/07/mission-to-18th-and-k.html

*clapping* for Shrieking Denizen and Harry. Nice way to start the day.

Hi, all.

I'm heading out of town for a short vacation with the kids, and may not be able to Boodle while I'm gone.

LL: Don't have time to help you with the research, but here's a place where car guys like me start *our* research on such things: Hemmings.

http://www.hemmings.com/

Good luck.

bc

New Kit!

Sorry to be late to with a comment on bicycle/car accidents, but I would like to proudly announce that I avoided one last week on my drive home.

Sitting at a red light, wanting to turn right, I remembered having passed a bicyclist not long before. So I waited before making my turn and, sure enough, said bicyclist came up on my right. And proceeded straight through the red light. Even though I was making a legal turn and he was illegally going through the intersection, that would have been small comfort given the prospective damage to his body, his bicycle, and my car.

Adding to bc's principles of defensive driving: just because something's illegal, never assume that some bonehead won't do it.

*