The recent furor over the large traffic fines (and linked state income tax increases) seem pretty justified to me.

Aside from their onerous size, the tickets seem poorly geared toward saftey, and even the Governor agrees they are mainly a revenue measure.

Speed, especially on the interstates is not a major saftey concern....changing speeds are....like the sudden changing of the speed limits in Newport News (Warwick Blvd.) and Norfolk (Terminal Blvd.) downward to take advantage of this upcoming windfall.

The 20mph downswings in speed limits on rural roads like 258 in Isle of Wight county are already an issue....they tend to be sudden with minimal warning and often associated with a hill and a patrol car. This is sleazy enough without a thousand dollar fine (and a spike in taxes for years).

Traffic fines should be for satey...not revenue generation. I hope the backlash from this is VERY strong.

I seem to remember back in the early days of the republic we had a method of dealing with public officials like Gov. Kaine....I wish I could remember what that was....

                     

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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. ...who is getting his gall bladder removed tonight.

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And we haven't been back in 35 years....

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Here is an official Chun Li pic as compensation.

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 ....the alternative is worse.

Sen. John Kerry said during a C-Span appearance that fears of a bloodbath after the US withdrawal from Vietnam never materialized. He says he’s met survivors of the “reeducation camps” who are thriving in modern Vietnam. An award-winning investigation by the Orange County Register concludes that at least 165,000 people perished in the camps.

Note that 165K is a seriously lowball figure even for the camps alone. It does not take into account those killed outright by the commies nor does it deal with the genocide perpetrated against the Montagnards.It does not deal with 250,000+  boat people who died in leaky sampans trying to flee the socialist utopia inflicted upon them and it doesn't even touch the death tolls in Laos and Cambodia caused by the  fall of those nations governments to the communists which the fall of Saigon made all but inevitable.

....but it is a good place to start.

...and I'm sure survivors of the reeducation camps are going to say anything they can to prevent being put back into the fine accommodations that Kerry's efforts in the US made available to them.

Asshole....

This seems part of a larger campaign by Dems to whitewash the human catastrophe that was the result of their proudest moment.

Senator Kennedy earlier this year made this rather bizarre statement.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., replied, "Well, first of all, I heard the same kinds of suggestions at the time of the end of the Vietnam War. The 'Great Bloodbath,' we're going to have over 100,000 people that were going to be murdered and killed at that time. And for those of us who were strongly opposed to the war, [we] heard those same kinds of arguments."

Yeah...and those arguments proved correct...

 The purpose of this memory hole silliness is, of course, to deflect attention from what will happen if we bail on the Iraqis the way we did  the South  Vietnamese.

  There were many principled arguments and good people on the side opposing the decision to go to war in Mesopotamia. But the notion that ONCE THERE we should break our word and leave them to a Cambodia scale horror or worse is not in any way an act of good faith...It is moral cowardice, intense denial,  or the most venal politicking.

 This long war is difficult, heartbreaking, expensive in blood and treasure and, like all wars, it is a terrible and wretched thing. However, I firmly believe that given our current choices, fighting it is the best, most ethical alternative for our long term security, and  that of the Iraqis.

More hereand here.
An interview with General Petraeus here.

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Few things are as unhealthy as snack chips.
Now the Japanese have found an innovative way to not just discourage people from eating nabs but actually give them such a sour stomach that they may skip lunch altogether!
more...

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....about a week ago. Said friend E-Mailed me back, agreeing with my inane blather and wishing me well. As a bonus, I got to see the E-Mail I sent...

Holy fricking crap....typos from hell.. ops:

This is why it's important to let a post "sit".

Of course thats not possible if you are trying to be timely.

'Course what I need to do is just learn to type.

Thank you Firefox for keeping my online self-humiliation to a minimum.

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Oh...and a picture of a very pink Catgirl by Yumedust...
_{Who has completely revamped her website, and is taking orders so go check it out!}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It looks like the Help Forum is up!

Let's go make snow angels!  

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Cool news on the spacesuit front.

L.Riofrio reported back on the 4th about rather exciting developments in the area of true skinsuits.

Now Clark Lindsay has some additional links.

"A current prototype of the suit consistently exerts pressures of about 20 kilopascals on its wearer but newer models have reached pressures of up to 25 to 30 kilopascals, which is about one-third that of the Earth's atmosphere and the target for spaceworthy BioSuit, researchers said. A fully functional suit could be made ready for spaceflight in about 10 years, they added.

At the heart of the BioSuit is mechanical counter pressure, which uses tightly wrapped layers of material that are both flexible and protective to the astronaut inside. The suit's layers are wrapped in a meticulous fashion -- based on three-dimensional maps of the human body in motion -- to provide structural support while maintaining mobility, researchers said."

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I meant to link to this the other day but got distracted by stuff...



HT: Bits n' Pieces

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9 out of 10

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No not really, but Lynn over at A Sweet Familiar Dissonance has stumbled on to a  seriously cool online store.

With a name like United Nuclear you know its gotta be good!

Europium paint!
Cloud chambers!
Aerogels!
Radioactive decontamination spray (?!)
FREAKING TESLA COILS!!!!*



And thanks to Don for pointing out her blog!

_{*tesla coils do not actually freak}

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Oy....

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This morning  I saw a couple of dolphins in the James River from the Monitor Merrimac Bridge Tunnel.

Cool!

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Dr Helen reports on a new study that suggests that girls constantly talking about their problems and commiserating each others misery could be...
....co-ruminating...(?)


A researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia has found that girls who talk very extensively about their problems with friends are likely to become more anxious and depressed.

_{( 'co-ruminating' sounds like something forbidden in Leviticus...which gives me a hankering  for shrimp)}

I assume they are talking about extreme cases but I have observed this sort of thing in female acquaintances.
 
OTOH from my limited observations of female behavior, in it's moderate form it's perfectly natural.

Get some girls who've had something bad occur...they'll talk in circles about it for hours one of 2 things will normally happen...
A: They'll transfer misery between them in ever increasing amounts until  POW!  critical mass is achieved and they have a good cry and thereby make themselves feel better.
...or...
 B: 1 or more little goth girls will be born. *


Read the whole post, which, being written by a well adjusted female clinical Psychologist is notably free of the silly-ass snarking of a lonely bitter man.



* regards B....Note that if something goes horribly wrong...then an Emo kid might be born...which, of course, requires an intervention...

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AOL reports "strong"

Mag 6.5
Tsunami has hit....
Damage...
Rail Lines shut down...

OK the tsunami was 20 inches high....damage appears to be light.

whew!

Some bullet train lines are shut down as a precaution...3 or so houses collapsed.

Well this looks to be not nearly as serious as it could have been.

UPDATE 11:45 July 17: Between the aftershocks and  nuclear leaks, things seem rather more serious than initially reported. As I type this 9 people are confirmed dead. It does not seem to be anything like the Kobe quake or the Great Kanto quake of  1923.

As an aside, the majority of radiation leaks seem at this point to have involved waste storage drums tipping over. One of the lessons learned is likely to be storage drum holders. 

More disturbing to this layman is the fact that the company reps are saying that a 6.8 earthquake is beyond what the plant was designed to survive. If so then the plants performance is a credit to its designers and builders, however, given that historic times (indeed the last 80 years) have seen earthquakes in Japan registering  as high as 8.4, the fact that a nuke plant not rated at 6.8 was built seems worrisome to me. The strongest earthquakes ever recorded, 9.2& 9.5 in Alaska and Chile respectively occurred quite recently in areas tectonically similar to Japan and indeed, very broadly speaking they are part of the same tectonic system (the ring of fire) .

I'd think that safety in a 9.0 magnitude would be a minimum. This is expensive to be sure, but less so than a cracked pressurized water reactor in a populated area.


More on the earthquake here, here, here, and here.

***************************************
Dispatch from the ministry of the obvious......
As I type this (11:45 AM July17) the BBC picture collage ends with this line...
"Nevertheless, some are clearly trying to make the best of a difficult situation."
Ya think?

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more...

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more...

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