I got 94%

There is a test about civic literacy posted at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Apparently, a lot of elected officials have problems with basic concepts (44% correct answers). On a positive note, the population as a whole gets slightly higher scores (49%).

I got 94%. Darn Lincoln-Douglas Debates!

US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

"It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test, but when you consider the even more dismal scores of elected officials, you have to be concerned," said Josiah Bunting, chairman of the National Civic Literacy Board at ISI.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, govern.

Mines is in a Bowl Game - Again?

Gosh, they made it to the this game last year too. In 2004 they were in the NCAA Division II Playoffs.

When I was there we thought it was a stellar season if we broke .500.

(ST. GEORGE, Utah – November 10, 2008) The Colorado School of Mines Orediggers and the Western Washington University Vikings have accepted invitations to play in the 23rd-Annual Dixie Rotary Bowl Game, as announced by bowl director Gary Benson announced Monday afternoon in a press conference held during the St. George Rotary Club’s weekly luncheon held at the Holiday Inn. The game will be played Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008, at 12 noon (MST), at Hansen Stadium in St. George.

The 2008 Dixie Rotary Bowl match-up will mark the first-ever meeting between the Orediggers and Vikings on the gridiron. For WWU, the 2008 Dixie Rotary Bowl will be the Vikings’ first postseason bowl game in school history, while CSM will be making its second-straight Dixie Rotary Bowl appearance. In the 2007 Dixie Rotary Bowl, the Orediggers faced Western Oregon and came up on the short end of a 26-12 loss to the Wolves (12/01/07).

This looks like fun.

A cool year

I've seen a lot of newspaper stories about how this has been such a cool year. I was willing to nod knowingly and agree, while sweating. Then I saw this image.

Wouldn't you know it would turn out that I live in the one major area in the entire country that has seen significantly higher temperatures this year.

The Skinny on Sex

I've always said that all the plump ones had to come from somewhere.

Overweight and obese women have more sex than skinny types, a new study suggests.

The research, announced today, is based on data on more than 7,000 women collected in the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth. The new analysis looked at the relationship between body mass index and sexual orientation, age of first intercourse, number of partners and frequency of intercourse.

The results seem to contradict stereotypes that overweight and obese women have less sex. If anything, the researchers said, the opposite seems to be true.

We are not Worthy! We are not Worthy!

Now that's a burger!

Denny Beer Barrel Pub has upgraded their regular menu burgers since the last time I wrote about them. This still isn't as big as their Main Event Charity Burger, though. That one was 80 pounds of meat.

CLEARFIELD, Pa. - It took Brad Sciullo 4 hours and 39 minutes to finish a marathon. A meat marathon, that is. The 5-foot-11, 180-pound western Pennsylvania chef is the first person to eat a monstrosity called the Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser: a 15-pound burger with toppings and a bun that brought the total weight to 20.2 pounds.


The mountain of beef is the product of Denny's Beer Barrel Pub, about 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Clearfield.

Sciullo, 21, of Uniontown, said he was surprised he finished the sandwich Monday. "About three hours into it, things got tough," he said.

When asked what possessed him to eat a burger that big, Sciullo said: "I wanted to see if I could."

The burger included a bun, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, mild banana peppers and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard and relish, pub owner Dennis Liegey said.

For completing the challenge in the under-five-hour time limit, Sciullo won $400, three T-shirts, a certificate "and a burger hangover, as I call it," Liegey said.

Well, I should think so.

Don't believe it exists? Go here.

Apple Season

It is apple season here, so we took advantage of the holiday today to drive up to Charlottesville to the Carter Mountain Orchard. They have "pick your own", but I'll leave that to the families and those who want them 'just so'. Besides, per picked is only 10 cents a pound more, and that hill was steep.

While we were there we also did some wine tasting and picked up a bottle of Reisling and a bottle of Port. Thank goodness they had apple cider doughnuts up there, because we needed it when we got out of the tasting room. We don't usually 'sample' at that time of the day.

Storm footage

We had quite a good storm back on 9/25, though it wasn't "tropical". A few seconds of footage follow. Compare to Tropical Storm Hanna a few weeks before. I took the earlier footage from the area I show being underwater here.

The Dogs Don't Forget

After 14 months they just say "where were you?"

This Might Explain Some Things

The British commander in Afghanistan doesn't think the war there can be won.

"We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army."

He went on: "If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that's precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this. That shouldn't make people uncomfortable."

Well, he may be right, or he may be wrong. But attitudes like that certainly go a long way to explaining why, 232 years later, there are US troops permanently based in the UK, and not the other way around. That "negotiating with the insurgency" thing didn't turn out that well for them.

Market Crash

You think our stock market has problems? Try a country absolutely dependent on exports with a history of public corruption as wide as the Volga and a mile deep.

Russian shares suffered their steepest one-day fall in more than a decade on Tuesday, losing up to 20 per cent, as a sharp slide in oil prices and difficult money market conditions triggered a rush to sell.

The heads of the Russian central bank, the finance ministry and the financial market regulator met on Tuesday night for an emergency discussion on ways to halt the crisis.

Earlier, trading had been suspended on both the Micex and RTS stock exchanges as investors ignored assurances by Russian officials and a cycle of distrust set in amid liquidity fears.

Obama? Magua?

Is it just me, or does The One remind you of actor Wes Studi as Magua?

When the Grey Hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart. Before he dies, Magua will put his children under the knife, so the Grey Hair will know his seed is wiped out forever.

Another "Almost a Darwin Award"

There's a lot of water. Here. And bridges. And draw-bridges. Please, don't believe what you see in the movies.

A motorist fleeing police tried — and failed — to jump across an open drawbridge in Chesapeake on Tuesday afternoon, and emergency workers had to pull the driver and his car out of the Elizabeth River.

Michael Christopher Mills, a 38-year-old Chesapeake resident, was wanted on four counts of identity theft. After his escapade on Tuesday, he has also been charged with felony disregarding of police.

Tropical Storm Hanna

It's not much as these things go. I'll post an update if it changes.

It'll be a HOT day in hell...

At the urging of our glorious General Assembly, VDOT has contracted to turn the I-495 beltway around D.C. into HOT (High Occupancy - Toll) lanes. The idea is that car pools travel for free (like HOV lanes), but cars containing only 1 or 2 people can travel in them by paying a toll, thus saving a little time.

How much of a toll? How much time? From the Washington Post -

Using an average rush-hour toll of $1.54 a mile, as projected in the studies, a 6.3- mile morning commute between Route 29 and Braddock Road in Fairfax County would cost $9.70 and save 90 seconds over the Beltway's "free lanes." That translates to $6.47 for each minute saved -- an hourly rate of $388, which would make some K Street lawyers jealous.

Yikes! Ten bucks each way? Well, I can't afford it, but I guess there are those that can. But to save 90 seconds? Come on, you've got to have messed up the numbers.

Project officials say HOT lanes traffic will move at a minimum of 55 mph. That is why there is no cap on toll rates -- to discourage drivers who might clog up the lanes and slow speeds.

That predictability could eliminate what transportation planners call "buffer time," the extra time travelers build into their commute to cover traffic mishaps. Eliminating buffer time could mean an extra hour with family, a second cup of coffee with the morning paper, an extra hour of sleep. There also is the security of knowing that traffic will not cause one to miss that job interview or breakfast with the boss.

"Buffer time". Hmmm, call me self centered, but if I left for work an hour early, and traffic was light, and I got there, well, an hour early, I might be tempted to possibly leave an hour early. Net loss to my family - zero.

This is more like a way to screw yourself even worse. Imagine that instead of a bona fide K Street lawyer, you are a guy that uses the lanes, but feels the pinch.

The way they keep traffic flowing at a minimum of 55mph is by raising the toll. As the speed drops they raise the toll in real time. OK, you can afford $1 per mile. You OK with $1.50? How about $2? $4? Remember, it's now 20 minutes until the day care closes, and they charge you an extra $15 for every 15 minutes you're late. What do you do?

By the way, about that minimum 55mph?

Daley says the toll lanes will maintain an average speed of 55 mph, but the internal reports estimate average rush-hour speeds of 43 mph to 44 mph.

Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if it was that slow. See, the Beltway doesn't have HOV lanes now. ("Huh?" is what I said when I moved into the area.) Car pools are mixed in with everyone else, but a lot of people do pool. How many? We'll find out. But remember, car pools use the HOT lanes for free. The toll payers are just using the spare capacity. Also,

Off-peak tolls could be as little as 14 cents a mile.

Yeah, you stick with that story. I've driven the Beltway late at night, or on good-weather weekends. It's 4 to 6 lanes of 75mph from the Potomac to nearly Springfield. No one is going to pay even 14 cents unless you make that 75mph the legal speed limit.

The LHC

More Gobal Warming

While claims fly that the north pole could be iceless this year, there are different reports from nearer the other pole, in New Zealand.

Mt Ruapehu is claiming the biggest snow base ever recorded for a New Zealand skifield with over 4.5m of snow on the ground.

Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, operator of Mt Ruapehu ski area, was celebrating what it called a major milestone today.

The snow measuring stake at Turoa previously only stood at 380cm so had to be extended to measure today's 455cm snow base.

The Whakapapa side of the mountain also had 350cm of snow, the biggest since 1995.

For the metrically challenged, a 455cm snow base translates as 179 inches (about 15 feet).

So, anyway, how is that whole ice-free, basking on the beach, polar bear-drowning thing working out? Uh, not.

...data sources show Arctic ice having made a nice recovery this summer. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center data shows 2008 ice nearly identical to 2002, 2005 and 2006. Maps of Arctic ice extent are readily available from several sources, including the University of Illinois, which keeps a daily archive for the last 30 years. A comparison of these maps (derived from NSIDC data) below shows that Arctic ice extent was 30 per cent greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007. (2008 is a leap year, so the dates are offset by one.)

Our Governor is an F'ing Fool

Obama - Change You Can Believe In

Ah, another endorsement

Barack Obama is not a left candidate. This fact has seemingly surprised a number of progressive people who are bemoaning Obama’s “shift to the center.” (Right-wingers are happy to join them, suggesting Obama is a “flip-flopper.”) It’s sad that some who seek progressive change are missing the forest for the trees. But they will not dampen the wide and deep enthusiasm for blocking a third Bush term represented by John McCain, or for bringing Obama by a landslide into the White House with a large Democratic congressional majority.

A broad multiclass, multiracial movement is converging around Obama’s “Hope, change and unity” campaign because they see in it the thrilling opportunity to end 30 years of ultra-right rule and move our nation forward with a broadly progressive agenda.

You might want to click through on that link and see who's endorsing him.