Quarterback Legend: Billy-the-Gun
SNL reached back into its pro football archives to bring its viewers this outrageous story of a notorious quarterback.
"To restore science to its rightful place"
It's not that I'm infatuated with the words of Potus44, but Barack Obama's inaugural address (that I've already addressed) hit quite a few notable notes. One of which was the promise to "restore science to its rightful place". He also said,
"Promoting science isn't just about providing Resources-it's about protecting free and open inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient.
That's a breath of fresh air, indeed. But the real question and challenge will be: What exactly is this Rightful Place? The previous administration acted as though they believed that science belongs after political expedience and the Bible, not necessarily in that order. They fired or censored anyone whose carefully calculated conclusions disagreed with their prejudged opinions. It will be a long time cleaning up the resulting mess. Mike the Mad Biologist posted: To Restore Science to Its Rightful Place, We Need to Redefine Elitism. In brief, science is not easy to follow once you reach the discoveries of The Enlightenment and beyond. It takes a certain amount of education and dedication to know good science from pseudoscience. And this is anathema to American principle of Democratic Populism, the idea that all men are not only "created equal", but are in fact equal.My first time getting caught by photo enforcement of a traffic violation.
It didn’t take long to realize what that that "Photo Enforcement Program" letter from the City of St. Louis was all about. As I opened the letter, the only thing that occurred to me was to make sure whether the letter was for me (as opposed to my wife). It was for me. I had gotten nailed by the new photo traffic enforcement system that the City of St. Louis installed near my house. Over the past 30 years, I've received a total of 2 traffic tickets. I guess I was due. I was pissed, of course. This was going to cost me $100 even though I didn’t do anything flagrant. I had rolled a right turn onto a high entrance ramp through a red light. This occurred at a traffic light 1/2 mile from my house. I had done it hundreds of times; hundreds of other safe drivers do it every day. My crime is that I failed to come to a complete stop before turning right to accelerate down that highway ramp. I was going about 5 mph around that corner. I remembered the strobe flash going off that day last week; at the time, I wondered whether it was aimed at me. Sure enough. I should clarify: I don't always roll through that right turn. If ever there is any traffic in the area, or any pedestrians, I always come to a complete stop.
Stay back because . . .
I saw the sign on the back of the van and I understood that I was to "Stay Back." I just didn't understand why. Not that I was tempted to disobey. I wondered, "Did they forget to lock the back door? Will a prisoner throw the door open and scratch my car's bumper?" I suppose the sign means that drivers should give the sheriff lots of room to get the prisoners in and out of the van. Perhaps the warning could be better phrased, though.
High-resolution multi-stitched inauguration photo
At Barack Obama's inauguration, David Bergman kept busy with his robotic camera mount used in tandem with his Canon G10 camera. After the inauguration, he used his Macbook Pro to stitch together the resulting 220 images into one gigantic 2gb tiff file. The resulting 1,474 megapixel image is dramatic and fun to explore. Equally impressive is that the Gigapan camera mount and the G10 camera he used are not expensive--they can both be purchased for less than $1,000 (less than $500 each).