For those who saw or listened to the Veep debate tonight, did it sound like a toned-down Fargo-lady was doing her Ned Flanders impression at the podium?

Gosh darn it!

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2008/07/then-well-grab.html

If this isn't a deliberate hoax, it's pretty hilarious.  Just goes to show translation and interpretation is still best handled by the humans.

"I'm an engineer, I solve problems!"

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/24780.html

What's with two wheeled vehicles and stupid behavīor?  Just yesterday I nearly plowed into three cyclists who blatantly rode through stop signs without even checking to see if a) they had right of way, b) if anything large and metal was already in the intersection.  Then there was the other time this moron decided to do a large 360 turn in middle of the street on his bike, into incoming traffic.  I would've thought this was a case of recency-bias on my part, but it turns out a recent study by the city of SF found bicyclists were at fault in the majority of bicycle-automobile accidents.  I guess the temptation to act both as a vehicle and a pedestrian is just too much, and leads to extremely dangerous and careless behavīor. 

Of course, this doesn't explain the Night of the LIving Dead style behavīor exhibited at the last Critical "Let's Piss Off Everyone so People will Support Us" Mass.  That's right, terrorizing a trapped family is really going to make people vote for more bike lanes.

It's not the human-powered variety of two wheeled vehicles either:  saw another case of aggressive lane splitting this morning.  I think it's only a matter of time before I see a lanesplitter fly into the air and bite it horribly (as opposed to just getting up, like the other lucky bastard I saw).  I know some folks who worked in trauma for several decades, and they've got a nickname for these guys: "Organ Donors".

So the question is: why is driver behavīor suddenly much more stupid and dangerous when on a two wheeled vehicle?  Unless the distribution was heavily skewed, it's unlikely people who choose to ride a bike or a motorcycle are dumber than the general population. 

A likelier explanation is this is mix of User Interface issues and more disastrous consequences of an accident.  It's a UI issue because the current setup (roadways, rules, education, etc) allow the sort of risky behavīor I described to happen.  Sure you start out biking by the book, but after a while you become comfortable with the environs, and b/c of the perception of not being a motor vehicle, it becomes easy to justify going through the crosswalk, or the red light, since that's what you'd do as a pedestrian.  Same probably with lanesplitting: drivers become comfortable with piloting a cycle, and become too confident.  At 75MPH: "You can fit a compact car through that gap!  Done this a million times: I'll just sidle on through to keep traffic flowing OH CARP WHERE'D THAT TRUCK COME FROM"

You see the same kind of behavīor with drivers on the road: those who decide to engage in risky behavīor like mega-merges (2+ lanes in one fell swoop), or doing near misses.  The thing is, cars these days are heavily optimized to absorb kinetic impacts, and accidents are probably far less likely to result in disastrous injuries, whereas it's much harder to shield the passenger on a motorcycle, or a bicycle.  A fender bender that results in broken tempers is much like noticable than a collision between a biker and SUV.

I'm going to swear off anythign job or task that even remotely involves web programming.  Harsh words indeed, but harsh words are deserved for such a broken development model.

(yes, t'is a vent, and this is completely unrealistic, etc etc)