Forced Seatbelt wearing will actually make you less Safe?

See the Peltzman Effect.

Also if you're wondering how many annual road deaths it takes for drivers in your hometown to slowdown and drive more carefully, see Smeed's Law.

Oh, and for an awesome site for city data see www.city-data.com. It's got lots of stuff and graphs for my small town!

Lebron James on a Spelling Bee

Okay, he wasn't really on a spelling bee.

But, right now the Eastern Conference Finals are on at the same time as the National Spelling Bee. And I gotta say, as excited I am for this Cavs vs. Magic game (mainly because I really want Cleveland to win, but they're down 3 games to 1) this National Spelling Bee is definitely much more intense than the game.

Laodicean, can you spell that!? That was the winning word.

I can't believe that Cleveland's blown a 23 point lead, a 16 point lead, and now a 20 point lead (they're down 67-63 right now after being up 30-10) in this series though.

EDIT: Shoot, I forgot to include this originally--http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/up/news/1823197/total_recall_pixars_winning_streak--Rotten Tomato's recap of how awesome Pixar is. I'm gonna make it a plan to watch my remaining ones from that list over the summer.

This one goes to OleKingKole

So a good friend of mine (who's actually biking across the nation this summer while building houses with Habitat for Humanity through Bike and Build) handed his old bike down to me for my riding (and commuting to math class) enjoyment, and I am PSYCHED. Okay, so he didn't really hand it down to me, he gave it to me for 20 bucks and a few stipulations, but that's beside the point. I have a ROCKIN, SOCKIN, bike, and I'm quite excited to travel around Philadelphia and everywhere around in it.

Krumbhaa, you now have a wingman.

In fact, I'm so excited that my friends decided to go bike riding a couple times in the past few days, one of which was mountain biking at the nearby Lake Minnewaska. It was my first time mountain biking ever, and I'm probably really bad at conveying my enthusiasm for the trip over blogging, but from that experience mountain biking definitely has a shot at being my second favorite hobby (next to snowboarding). It's got the speed and downhill excitement of snowboarding, with a bit of sightseeing mixed in, and a whole lot of fun sweat-equity (read: going up hills is a bitch but awesome when you get to the top). In fact, I really want to get a legit mountain bike now and travel around to different places to bike around. AND it's a summer sport, so I don't have to choose between that and snowboarding.

So thank you, OleKingKole, for giving me your bike and inspiring me to take on a new hobby. It's cardio-tastic, yet not nearly as difficult as running, and infinitely more fun. Who knows, maybe if I like it enough I'll take on the great wonder that is Bike and Build too.

I'll end this post with two remarks: JAI HO (because that song's stuck in my head) and if you're curious to see what biking across the nation's like, visit OleKingKole's blog here: http://jonkole.blogspot.com/

Oh wait, actually one more thing. You'll see in the pictures that I'm wearing a helmet. I'm actually quite glad I wore a helmet that day. Not because I almost ran into a tree or because I fell off my bike, but because at the very end of the day, as we were packing the bikes back onto the roof rack of the car, I dropped the thing on my head. Yeah, go helmet!...

The Men (Actually as fieresome as we look, I was actually really afraid of falling off the ledge in this picture because I'm a decent bit afraid of heights. And yes, we're FIERCE.)

Some lovely lake background scenery

97-96 Cavs

Lebron James is amazing. 1 second to go and 2 points down, he's inbounded a pass and jumps over Hedo Turkoglu to score a 3 and win the game.

That was amazing.

How were you going to compete with Wal-Mart again?

Yesterday's to buy list:

20 bags of red cedar mulch
6 bags of water softener salt (pellets)
1 set of replacement windshield wipers for the Sienna

Local Store Prices:
Red cedar mulch - $4.00 a bag
Salt - $11 a bag
Wipers - $26 for the set

Walmart Prices:
Red cedar mulch - $3.50 a bag
Salt - $6 a bag
Wipers - $22 for the set

I decided to buy my items at the local stores around town, and ended up having to go to three separate shops to buy all three items since the place we usually get salt from doesn't carry red cedar mulch. Walmart had all three in one store at lower prices. I'm a proponent of local shops, but jeez how can they expect to keep an edge against companies like Walmart?

Really Interesting Article

Looks like math has some urban use after all.

I'm really psyched to read his next 3 posts.

Link: http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/math-and-the-city/

Heaven

"When it comes to heaven, I'm gonna be a fall tap."
-The Admiral

In Philly for the Summer?

Philadelphia Weekly just published their annual summer guide to Philly. It includes stuff about concerts, art exhibits, food events, etc. For "teh crazy," it even contains a guide to having sex in public and info on masturbation month... uuuummmm right.

Oh, and if you go to the link it'll ask you to sign in. The following username and password will work:
Username: bloopa
Password: bloopa1234

http://issuu.com/reviewpublishing/docs/051309_pw_opt

Reposted from Under the Button

Let's Rank the Presidents!

Lolz at Johnson, Filmore, and LBJ.

The tomato is a VEGETABLE!!!

The Supreme Court says so:

Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court addressed whether a tomato was classified as a fruit or a vegetable...The court unanimously decided in favor of the defense and found that the tomato was classified as a vegetable...

Of course, their rationale is much more logical than I made it seem. I just found it funny that the Supreme Court deliberated on whether or not tomatoes were fruits or vegetables.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden

lol wtf?

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.html

Good thing they didn't use cows. They wanted a "low carbon" approach, and apparently cows fart alot. Like A LOT. Enough to be a contributor of global warming.

Second link: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GlobalWarming/Story?id=2723201&page=1

X-Factor

I just got an email from an email address formatted Firstname.Middleinitial.Lastname. Only the person's middle initial was "X".

So really, it looks like Firstname.X.Lastname, with the X looking like it's supposed to stand for X-Men, or X-factor, or something X-treme along those lines.

Hey, it's better than Nicholas.W.Eng, where the W might stand for something dumb, like "wuss" or something like that... =/

The Big Bang Theory

This post is actually regarding the actual Big Bang Theory and not some joke or TV show, and comes from my studying for my Astronomy final:

Describing both the follies and the achievements of the human race, Carl Sagan once said,

"These are the things that hydrogen atoms do--given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution."

(PS-BTdubs, the actual age of the universe is now refined to 14 billion years. Sagan died before scientists claimed us all a bit younger)

The Cosmic Perspective, 4th Ed., pg. 690.

Broadband's gonna be the next Cellular

Cellular providers suck. There are essentially only 4 major companies, all of which charge insanely inflated prices, force people into plans with minutes they'll never use, and destroy you on overage fees if you happen to choose the wrong one.
The one saving grace argument for them is that they need to generate all that revenue to raise capital to upgrade their networks to 4G.

You know what that reminds me of? Broadband service providers.

Let's see: there are essentially only 5 major companies (Time Warner, Comcast, Verizon, Cablevision, AT&T), they charge inflated prices which are constantly getting higher (especially if you're getting TV from them, sheesh), and are beginning to destroy people with caps and metered billing.
The one saving grace argument for them is that average data usage per person is going up (due to things like YouTube, watcing shows online, etc.), and that they need to generate large amounts of revenue to raise capital to upgrade their networks.

But wait, is that true?

ArsTechnica reviews such a claim and finds that it's just not true. Even in the wake of upgrading systems and adding customers, revenues are going up while costs are going down. And it's not just average cost per customer that's decreasing, it's total costs.

So, are the major ISPs charging high prices just to generate increased profits? Most likely. Are the data caps and metered billing neccessary for them to stay competitive and solvent? Probably not.

Are they one day going to be worse than cellular providers? Probably. Afterall, ISPs are essentially natural monopolies since the fixed costs of entering an area are so high. So the incentives to generate competition (which leads to better services and more affordable pricing for consumers) are much less.

I'm interested to see what happens with all of this in 10-15 years.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/isps-costs-revenues-dont-support-data-cap-argument.ars

That looks like an awful device

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_Chair

To: http://gizmodo.com/5239173/stake-chair-makes-my-delicate-parts-quiver-in-terror

I want one. (The 2nd thing! Not the first!)

Please tell me this is a joke...

"I don't think it is. Way too much effort for a joke..." - Ribnick

http://www.revengecrabs.com/