apple juice

Inspired by Kottke.org’s rules for the NYC subway, I present my 10 rules for driving on the interstate. Follow these rules and it will help everyone get to where they are going safely.

1. Sell your SUV. Seriously, you don’t need it. Buy a wagon.
2. The left lane is for passing. If you are not passing someone, move over.
3. If you are passing someone, move with a purpose. I’m coming up behind you.
4. It’s nothing personal. You are not the speed limit enforcer.
5. I don’t want to pass you on the right, it’s not safe.
6. Two flicks of the brights is simply a signal. Please move over. Remember, nothing personal.
7. After you pass, move to the right lane again.
8. Do not try to race me. I am not trying to race you. It’s nothing personal. I just want to safely get around you.
9. Pick a speed and stay there. They make this great feature called the cruise control. Know it and love it.
10. Sell your SUV. Seriously, I don’t care if you want it or that its your American right to own one. We share the road. We share the same resources. Didn’t your mom ever teach you to play nice?

I realize that about 2% of you SUV owners out there pull trailers, haul stuff, and generally make good use of your trucks. Fine. I’m talking to the 98% that I see out there with one person in their plush Escalade/Navigator/Tahoe/etc. sucking 8mpg chatting on their mobiles. Buy a wagon. It’s safer for you, your family, and those around you. There is nothing you need to do with a truck that you can’t do with a wagon. And if there is, you can take that $500 you saved on fuel in the year of owning your wagon and rent a truck for the times you actually do need it.

I found an excellent article via a post at Kottke.org this afternoon entitled Why Don’t We Do It In The Road

Traffic, transportation, and rail travel has been a peripheral interest of mine ever since I wrote a paper about the decline of Amtrak in 10th grade. This article is fascinating for a few reasons, but mostly because it makes so much sense, and it challenges the basic beliefs of traffic engineering in America.

A new school of traffic design says we should get rid of stop signs and red lights and let cars, bikes and people mingle together. It sounds insane, but it works.

Something I observed in Sweden and Germany, but have only seen in a few places in my travels through America is the Traffic Circle. The roundabout made an appearance in Golden, CO during my 3rd year of college, and it was met with much consternation from the locals. I was a bit upset with them as well, but for a different reason.

A roundabout forces you to slow down and merge into the traffic that is travelling around the circle. You then drive until your exit, and merge out. It is very simple in concept, however the planners in Golden completely missed the point.

Two of the three traffic circles were designed in such a way that you didn’t really have to slow down to head through them. So people were seeing the oncoming cars not slowing down and then they were stopping IN the circle (never do that). It was chaos for a couple months. But after the initial breaking in, I think people were probably pleased with the lack of 3 pointless stoplights that could have gone in there.

Of course, the author also points out that:

When it comes to reconfiguring streets as community spaces, ground zero is once again Holland and Denmark, where planners are removing traffic lights in some towns and cities, as well as white divider lines, sidewalks and speed limits. Research has shown that fatality rates at busy intersections, where two or three people were being killed every year, dropped to zero when controls and boundaries were taken away. (This is food for thought among alternative-transportation advocates in the United States, who extol northern Europe as a model precisely because so much space in these countries is dedicated to segregated pedestrian spaces and bike lanes.)

Those segregated pedestrian and bike lanes were something that I loved about bicycling around town in Sweden. You could get to anywhere on the bike paths. Compared the US, where you are risking life and limb heading out into the streets on your bike…. which is pretty much the whole point of the article.

In Wisconsin there are many fine eating establishments. You’ve got your Norske Nook in Osseo. There’s Bosacki’s up in Minocqua. And who could forget the (now closed) Chalet, also in Minocqua?

On trips of a repetitive nature, I often pick out a restaurant or two that I would like to stop at some day for a bite to eat. It’s a fantasy really, when am I ever going to stop at El Amigo in Castle Rock, CO or The Black Steer (casual upscale dining) outside of Coates, MN. (Or the House of Coates for that matter). It would be like the Red Sox and the Cubs in the World Series. It can’t happen. Got to get to where I am going!

But I can look. And dream. My current dream involves this place:

The Thorpedo

The Thorpedo Restaurant is surely one of Thorp’s finest. I have wanted to stop there many times as I fill up at the Amoco across the street (they have Premier Diesel).

This time through the town, we came close to eating at the Thorpedo. I asked the young lady at Subway what she thought of her hometown restaurant, and she replied simply, “It’s not too bad”

“Do they have a sandwich named “The Thorpedo” or something similar?”

“Yeah, yeah, I think so.”

A ringing endorsement.

Well, maybe next time through I will stop at The Thorpedo in Thorp for a Thorpedo Sandwich. I’ll see what all the hype is about.

This blog post from Scott Rosenberg is about as clearheaded as they come.

The Bush administration, and now its apologists like Safire, maintain that points 1, 2 and 3 together constitute “ties” between Saddam and al-Qaida. But here’s the fuzz: they completely ignore central contradictory facts. For instance: (1) bin Laden didn’t get what he wanted from Saddam — he was rebuffed. (2) Every credible and careful review of the evidence about Atta’s Czech rendezvous has concluded that it never took place. (3) Ansar-al-Islam operated in a part of Iraqi Kurdistan that Saddam did not control, and Ansar, far from being in cahoots with the dictator, wanted to overthrow the Saddam regime — the Islamic Ansar detested the secular Baathists.

That’s the cliff notes version you can use anytime you’re arguing with a republican about “longstanding ties”.

The Plain Truth

It’s hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.

On Monday, Mr. Cheney said Mr. Hussein “had long-established ties with Al Qaeda.” Mr. Bush later backed up Mr. Cheney, claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist who may be operating in Baghdad, is “the best evidence” of a Qaeda link. This was particularly astonishing because the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime.

Read the whole article. I’m just dumbfounded that Bush and Cheney continue to run around and lie to everyone. Well, I guess I know why they are doing it. People are letting the wool be pulled over their eyes.

• Saddam did not have stockpiles of weapons
• Al Qaeda and Saddam were not linked
• None of the hijackers were Iraqi

Read the article. The Plain Truth

It’s always a fun time seeing Mike Doughty in concert.

I arrived at First Ave. way, way too early, sometime around 6:30. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking that I didn’t have a ticket, and I was also thinking that about 7 different places on the net said the show was at 7.

The show wasn’t at 7, the opening band was at 7:30 and then M. Doughty and his human band were on around 8:45.

This actually turned out to be a blessing. I met some fine people who had also arrived a bit early for the show, and my lady was able to finish up her homework and come down to the show! She arrived about 7 minutes before they busted into the first song.

We grooved for the entire show, even though I one point I became acutely that my back really, really hurt! I must be getting old or something 😉

The music was a good mix of some old and some new, although admittedly, most of the new sounds a lot like the old. But that’s really not the point for us. We’ve listened to these guys for so long, it’s just fun for us to hear Doughty stand up there and refer to the keyboardist as “The Doveman” and for him to play Firetruck (which was written by a 4-year-old) and for him to tell us all that he fell asleep to the blue light of Pimp My Ride.

At one point in the evening, Doughty went off on this story about getting a phone call from one of the members of They Might Be Giants about doing a benefit album for Moveon.org

Now, we’re not a political band, but for those who don’t know, Moveon is an organization dedicated to getting George W. the fuck out of office. So all of you go out there and vote in November.

The crowd went nuts.

After being underwhelmed with their last effort, Hello Nasty and the subsequent 4 years of fresh gray hairs added to their heads, I was not expecting great things from the new Beastie Boys album. At most, I had hoped that there would be one last tour in support of the new album, and I would finally be able to see them before they announced their retirement.

I could not have been more wrong.

To The 5 Boroughs has been a very pleasant surprise. The MixMaster Mike beats and scratches are probably the tightest of any Beastie Boys album ever. It is clearly hip-hop through and through this time around as well. No jazzy interludes from the Check Your Head days. You can roll down the windows and crank it up. This will be a great summer album for embarassing your wives and girlfriends as you roll around town.

The rhymes themselves, are, well, the Beastie Boys. They sound better on the album than they would if I were to type some out here for you. But it’s the Beastie Boys. We’ll leave it at that. The lyrics do have a sharp political edge this time around (besides the obligatory 3 MCs and 1 DJ look-a-like “Triple Trouble”). Since no one else in mainstream music seemed to be carrying the anti-Bush torch, they have happily grabbed it and are proudly displaying for all to see. At this point, they really have nothing to lose, but it would be nice to see some others in the mainstream music arena really start to step it up.

Overall, fans of the Beastie Boys, pick up this album.