Burning question

This is the house being built just 30 feet or so from our south property line, as it looked at 9:20 a.m. today.

Notice the big brush pile (red arrow) containing the trees and shrubs that were cleared from the site prior to construction. Before construction began, the builders tried to burn the debris using some kind of petroleum accelerant. It belched black smoke, which suggested to me they were using kerosene or diesel fuel. They tried a couple of times and it never really took off, probably because it was still very green.

The pile, which is considerably higher than a man is tall (hard to get the perspective in this shot) is obviously still there and we’re wondering how they plan to dispose of it.

Surely the don’t plan to burn it that close to the new house. Or are they? What could possibly go wrong?

Waking up with the iPod Touch

Here’s an unexpected use for my Wifi enabled iPod Touch – a first-thing-in-the-morning information source.

I didn’t realize other people were doing it too until I read a blogger writing about how she keeps her iPhone at her bedside to check on the world before she gets out of bed.

That’s what I’ve been doing for the last month or so. I use the Weather Channel app to get the current conditions, forecast and peruse the weather radar, then I check my email and next I hit the New York Times and USA Today apps to see what the lamestream media thinks is important. I find it’s a lot less intrusive than flipping on the TV, especially when I wake up before Maria, which is most of the time because we geezers always wake up early.

Rider training can’t save a moron from himself

My BMW riding friend Dom sent me this piece from The New York Times that, to say the very least, is counter-intuitive:

April 5, 2010, 7:30 am

Motorcycle Training Does Not Reduce Crash Risk, Study Says

By CHERYL JENSEN

Courses designed to make new motorcyclists safer are not decreasing crashes, according to a new study by the Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. However, research also shows that helmets and antilock brakes on motorcycles are life savers.

“We are not saying they aren’t supposed to get training, but we need to have realistic expectations about what training can do,” said Anne McCartt, the senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute, which is funded by the insurance industry.

These findings are part of a number of studies the institutes have just released on motorcycles. The groups have looked at antilock brakes, helmet laws and rider training programs to see what role they play in keeping riders safe and preventing deaths.

The issue is that as ridership has increased, so has the number of fatal crashes. Motorcycle registrations rose to 7.7 million in 2008, which is up from 4.3 million in 2000, according to R.L. Polk & Company data. Rider deaths topped 5,000 in 2008, more than in any year since 1975, when the government began collecting fatal crash data.

Eight out of 10 motorcycle crashes result in injury or death, compared with two out of 10 car crashes, the study found. It makes sense, because motorcycle riders don’t ride in a cocoon with crush space, seat belts and airbags to protect them.

But some things do help prevent deaths.

The study shows that motorcycles with antilock brakes are 37 percent less likely to be involved in fatal crashes, and buyers can now find them on at least 60 new models, according to the institute. And helmets reduce the likelihood of a death in a crash by 37 percent.

What is not so certain are the safety benefits of mandatory training programs for young drivers in some states. The study compared insurance claims in four states that require riders under 21 to take courses with states that do not. The study noted a 10 percent increase in crashes in states that required the courses.

But that finding wasn’t “statistically significant,” Ms. McCartt said. That means the increase might or might not be real, although the institute found it worth noting. “It is important that it was going in the opposite direction of what people would expect,” she said.

While it seems counterintuitive that more education couldn’t be a good thing, this finding is similar to other research on driver education for teenagers that has concluded that driver education hasn’t been shown to reduce car crashes, Ms. McCartt said.

“I certainly think it is compelling that rider training classes don’t seem to be keeping people safer,” she said. “People need to know how to operate motorcycles, and I think a training course would be a good way for someone to learn how to do that.”

But, she said, it may be that a training class does not change the “potential risk-taking behaviors that are associated with crashes – speeding, alcohol, the type of bike you are riding. There is a lot a class can’t do.”

Robert Gladden, the general manager of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation — an industry-sponsored group that promotes safety through rider training and education, operator licensing tests and public information programs — said he had no comment on the findings because the foundation “would have to spend quite a bit of time going through their data to either verify or validate it.”

WTF? That certainly doesn't square with my experience. Here’s my best guess at what’s going on here:

Those of us who taught/teach the MSF course in Indiana where course attendance is voluntary see a self-selecting group of riders who are seriously interested in staying alive and uninjured, compared with states and military installations where the course is mandatory and you have a mix of serious riders and hot dogs who don’t give a rat’s ass about all this pansy safety stuff and whose riding style is generally uninfluenced by the course material. It doesn't take a lot of judgment impaired hot dogs to skew the numbers.
I know that the course has saved my ass more times and I can count and I've had several former students tell me the same thing.
And, of course, riders interested in staying alive buy and wear good helmets and buy bikes with ABS.

Yes, the course can keep you safer, but only if you have the right attitude and pay attention.

Justify this craziness, Obama voters

This is from Bride of Rove and it pretty much sums up my sense of horror, alarm, disbelief, rage, whatever, over Obama’s insane, treasonous ideas about how we should behave in a nuclear world:

 

I have a gun. I will not use it.

 

Last week I was robbed.

Not really, but stay with me here for a minute.

The criminal was quite menacing. He had acid in a bottle ready to throw it and all sorts of weapons. I totally understood where he was coming from, though because I totally suck and should not have all this stuff that I have – the iPhone especially because it’s just shamefull, really – so I told him, “Look. I have a gun on me and it’s totally loaded for bear, you know? And the house? God every room is armed to the frigg’n teeth. I’ve got enough ammo to kill half the state.”

Not really, but stay with me here for a minute.

“I can see you are grossly under-armed there yourself and really no match for myself and my family, but as you can see posted on the mailbox and on the button I’m wearing here on my shirt – I’m not going to use any of my own weapons to stop you from doing bad things to me or my family because I want to set a good example and stuff. What you do? Well. that’s on you. I appreciate your anger and avarice, Truly I do. I don’t even know why I exist on this planet or have bothered to earn money or buy things because it’s obviously causing you to do things you would not do otherwise. I may kind of sort of WANT to defend myself, but just kill me before I change my mind. I’ve said I won’t use weapons to defend myself and I want to die sticking by my word and my high minded morals. Someday people will admire my Ghandi-like passivist stance and the fact that I stood by my suicidal beliefs and wonder. Not … anyone in my family because I doubt they’ll survive this, but complete strangers will step over my dead body, take what they need, burn the house down … and for a brief shining moment I will have made someone happy.”

President Obama is completely insane btw. I think this is grounds for impeachment. It has to be. The one thing he is supposed to actually do for us and he makes a huge-assed statement saying “Meh. Not so much. Not feeling the defense thing with you America.”

Is this about sainthood? Because I will procedural cannonize Obama rightthehell now if that’s all it is.

Not moving on from this just yet. Can’t.process.te.stupid

The Dawgs made all of us Hoosiers proud

Last night was kind of a flashback for me, rooting for underdog Butler against basketball powerhouse Duke in the NCAA final game.

I was an Indiana University basketball fan back in the Bob Knight days and my enthusiasm hit its high-water mark when Keith Smart nailed the buzzer-beating last shot in the 1987 championship game against Syracuse, giving I.U. a 1-point win.

I was hoping for the same kind of joyous miracle last night when Gordon Hayward launched his desperation 40-foot shot in the final second of the game. It almost went in, which will be one of the all-time most famous “almosts” in college basketball history.

Even so, the Butler kids had 90 percent of the crowd rooting and praying for them. Polling people today who watched the game, it’s hard to find a Duke fan, especially among folks who aren’t Duke alumni. Seeing an underdog team perform so brilliantly was like watching “Hoosiers” all over again.

Now I can go back to not caring about college basketball for another year.

Dawgs

I don’t care what the score was. Butler is a winner.

Happy Easter

(Thanks to Charlie Parsons for the graphics.)

Meet Frank

This is Frank, a Jack Russell terrier who lives with Zeb, a big old black Labrador retriever, at the cattle ranch on the other side of the woods to the west of our house.

Frank and Zeb are free-range dogs. Frank has no collar and Zeb’s collar has a cattle ear tag on it.

Frank showed up in our yard yesterday afternoon, limping and holding his left front leg up in the air.

He got a belly rub from Maria that made him smile, then hobbled off to a driveway two houses to the east where he flopped down next to his buddy Zeb, who appeared to be taking a nap.

A more powerful SSD

My replacement 32GB SSD (solid state drive) arrived in yesterday morning’s mail and I spent the afternoon installing it and loading Windows XP and all of the other software – Goo0gle Chrome, Windows Live Writer, Irfanview, Skype, Sprint SmartView, AVG antivirus, FTWO motorcycle record-keeping, and the open source image editor GIMP – that I need to be fully functional away from home.

I had problems with the previous SSD when I tried to run Photoshop, so maybe GIMP will be a better fit.

Getting personal

It’s getting personal quicker than I expected.

The folks who are renting our Indiana house may take a severe economic hit – and consequently us too – as a result of the idiotic student loan provisions of the Obamacare debacle.

The wife is a nurse and the husband works for Sallie Mae, the federally chartered company that handles student loans.

You can read all of the background here, but the bottom line is that the nationalization of the student loan business means as many as 2,500 firings at Sallie Mae. I talked with our guy yesterday morning and he said most of the lost jobs will be at a loan origination center in Florida, but there will likely be an impact on the Fishers, Ind., operation too. He, and we, remain hopeful that he can dodge the bullet.

Taking the Big Picture into account, this may be a good thing because it will further enrage an already madder-than-hell electorate and result in a massacre of liberal members of Congress this fall and the subsequent repeal of Obamacare. I’ve come to believe Obamacare is deliberately flawed, so as to cause an even greater crisis, resulting in an even deeper plunge into Socialism.

A winner!

I bought a Powerball ticket on a whim early this week and just now got around to checking the numbers from the Wednesday draw.

Damned if I didn’t match three numbers. The odds were 359.06 to 1 against me, but I won a whopping $7.

Woo-hoo.

Braggadocio and Cooter

 

I took a Funny Town Name Tour this afternoon across the Missouri Bootheel.

My 150-mile ride took me to Braggadocio, then to Hayti for gas and on to Cooter before I headed for the barn.

The forecast is for increasing clouds today and rain tomorrow night, so I figured I’d better make good use of today’s excellent riding weather.

Considering my options

The skillet I’ve been using to make my cheese omelet breakfast lately was dirty and languishing in the dishwasher and I was in no mood to wash it, so here I am at IHOP, trying to ignore the inane conversation in the booth behind me involving a woman who looks older than me, but is almost certainly 10 years my junior, and her family. The woman was chowing down after having part of her foot amputated because of diabetes and her daughter or granddaughter was yammering on about how some other diabetic relative lost both of her legs because she neglected her condition.

And that’s why I favor protein over carbohydrates.

I got here late enough to avoid the morning rush and to get a window booth so I can keep an eye on my bike.

This promises to be the warmest, sunniest day of the week and I had vague thoughts of going for an extended motorcycle ride – either down to Gillette, Ark. and the Arkansas Post to collect a stamp for my National Parks Passport or up to Cape Girardeau, Mo., to do a little shopping at Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles.

I’ve finished my IHOP breakfast and it’s 10:46 a.m. -  too late to undertake the long slog to Gillette, but Grass Roots is still a possibility.

We shall see.

Testing

It appears the new layout can accommodate animated GIF images. At least is looks like it in Firefox.

Can you see the animation on your browser?

Fear and Loathing at McDonald’s

 

I stumbled into a scene at a McDonald’s restaurant yesterday that reminded me of this bizarre Ralph Steadman illustration from Hunter S. Thompson’s epic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

As I walked to the counter to place my order, I noticed a young woman in McDonald’s uniform loading numbered balls into a tumbler for bingo. Then I scanned the restaurant and saw it was mostly full of senior citizen types – considerably older than I – who had bingo cards before them. Checking my watch, I saw it was a few minutes before 2 p.m. and surmised that bingo starts there at 2 o’clock.

The crowd quieted after the first couple of numbers were called in a slurred accent that at first baffled my Yankee ears. I then became aware of another young woman in McDonald’s garb pushing a big plastic trash container on four castered wheels across the tile floor going the length of the restaurant and making no effort at all to minimize the horrendous racket she was generating. She made at least three such trips across the restaurant, making it difficult – if not impossible – to hear the numbers being called.

And then there was the loud-mouthed fat guy in his 60s who either had a hearing problem or was just an obnoxious moron – I couldn’t tell which – who seemed to be doing his best to drown out the number caller.

According to a report last summer by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Arkansas ranked 10th in the nation in obesity with 28.6 percent of the population being seriously overweight. And, as you might suppose, that percentage was even higher at McDonald’s. Throw in some startlingly ugly faces and you have a truly bizarre, chaotic scene.

Serves me right for thinking I could enjoy a quiet lunch at McDonald’s.

What community organizers don’t know about economics and business

“Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don’t understand a thing about business, and that includes the President,” says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. “My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn’t understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him”…

Read the whole thing here.

An empty nest again…

Austin is moving back to Indiana.

He got laid off from his warehouse/tractor parts distribution center job in late April 2009 and came down for a visit, arriving on May 3.

Assuming current plans don’t change, the visit will have turned out to be about three weeks shy of a year.

The original plan was that he would stay with us for two weeks, during which time he would get a job and an apartment. He’s still in our guest room because he couldn’t find a job that paid enough to pay rent on an apartment.

We were supposedly working on a solution that would have him living independently and restore our empty nest status, but nothing was happening on that front and I couldn’t imagine a scenario that would make it happen.

I hadn’t considered the influence of a girlfriend. In this case, it’s a Lebanon, Ind. girl Austin knew from high school. The first clue we had was the announcement on his Facebook page that he was “in a relationship” with the girl. Then we noticed the non-stop cell phone and Skype conversations. He went up to Indiana two weekends ago for a visit, which led to another trip last weekend (we’re talking at least 14 hours on the road each weekend) and the announcement that his old job is waiting for him. So he gave notice to his employer, our BMW friend Charlie who is a pharmacist and hired Austin to work in his drugstore in Paragould, and plans to leave for Indiana a week from tomorrow.

Happy Anniversary, Steve and Nicky!

My son Steve and his lovely bride Nicole are celebrating their ninth wedding anniversary today.

We think Steve is the luckiest guy in Las Vegas. Nicky did OK too. And their daughter Lisa has the most loving and attentive parents a little girl could ever want.

KIA

Did I mention that I really like these commercials?

SSD en route

My replacement 32GB SSD is on its way. Here’s the info from the U.S. Postal Service tracking system:

Your item was processed through and left our SYRACUSE, NY 13220 facility on March 30, 2010. The item is currently in transit to the destination. Information, if available, is updated periodically throughout the day. Please check again later.

Detailed Results:

• Processed through Sort Facility, March 30, 2010, 10:20 pm, SYRACUSE, NY 13220
• Electronic Shipping Info Received, March 29, 2010