Dwight Howard’s Pregame Ritual?

Dwight Howard’s Pregame Ritual? He Takes A Dump.

D-Howard, you are the man. I do this before work too.

Taking Pork to Paris

Taking Pork to Paris – Bitten Blog

That’s what I’m talking about. Will make!

The Last Ace – The Atlantic

The Last Ace – The Atlantic March 2009 .

1. What’s the point of building a next gen fighter aircraft if it doesn’t seat two? If it doesn’t seat two then you can’t make Top Gun 2 cause Top Gun was a buddy movie and you can’t do a buddy movie with single seater fighter aircraft.

2. The article’s fairly biased in trying to sell the F-23. Yes, the US military wants to maintain superiority over it’s potential enemies but it’s rather obvious that the level of superiority is already huge and it would take something pretty significant to see the US advantage to evaporate or shrink to a point where US pilots were at risk.

US pilots get so much more training time that they could probably take on the air forces of the entire rest of the world and still come out on top by a significant margin – they’d still have hundreds of aircraft flying.

3. It’s fascinating to real about the level of physical and mental skill required to fly a fighter jet. In many ways the aircraft flies itself – it’s running the weapons platform that’s hard as is the issue of how fast stuff happens. 100 miles is nothing in these planes. The pilots really are the best of the best.

Billboard Tells California Senator His "Cell Phone Law Sucks"

Billboard Tells California Senator His “Cell Phone Law Sucks”

Drunk Drivers = People who talk on cellphones while driving.

At least in terms of the danger they pose – I’m not applying a value judgement here, rather the science says that drunk drivers and people who talk on cellphones (even if hands-free) are equally dangerous. In both cases, the driver doesn’t see what they’re missing so they both think they’re doing just fine.

I’ve referenced it before but Tom Vanderbilt’s book, Traffic, talks about this too – they put cameras into the cars of people including those who talked on the phone while driving and had these people watch the recordings. The results were pretty scary, people would be *just* missing cyclists, pedestrians, other cars etc that they completely did not notice because they were maxing out their mental capacity to process information.

That said, do I favour a law prohibiting talking on the cell while driving? Not really, there are circumstances where talking on a cell phone while driving isn’t that dangerous (on a quiet highway that’s mostly straight for example) whereas driving drunk makes you a danger EVERYWHERE.

I also think it’s reasonable to make a short call to handle things like “I’m here”. A blanket ban is the cheap way of trying to minimize risk, personal imposition and law enforcement. The right way to do it is via education and stiff penalties when cell phones end up being a factor in an accident. 

There’s a certain amount of risk a person should be allowed to take, risk that might result in danger to others around them (like smoking) and a blanket ban isn’t going to solve a problem that isn’t simple black and white.

Chinese mistress contest takes tragic turn

Chinese mistress contest takes tragic turn

Remind me that if I decide to pare my mistress list to not do a contest.

2009 Mazda 6 i: Manual Shift Control

2009 Mazda 6 i: Manual Shift Control

The Mazda is correct but the reason it’s correct isn’t that because it is how it’s done on race cars but how it’s done on manual transmissions. On a manual you pull back to get to 2nd gear and push forward to get to first and that’s the natural, default movement on a manual. On an auto, it’s the other way around.

The Mazda is right to assume that users of manual shift control are likely to be manual drivers who are stuck with autos and not auto drivers who have suddenly decided they like to have some manual control.

That all said, if the gearbox doesn’t rev-match on downshifts then it’s not worth the trouble.

A special court rejects autism-vaccine theory

A special court rejects autism-vaccine theories

Exactly.

This isn’t much different than what the Republicans think will fix the economy. These people are cranks.

Way to ruin a brand

Advertising – As Consumers Try to Cut Back, Tropicana Promotes Quality and Value – NYTimes.com.

If you haven’t noticed or heard the Pepsi corp is in the process of destroying their visual brand capital by creating all new packaging and logos for their products. The latest disgrace to society is the new Tropicana packaging where the iconic straw in an orange has been replaced by stock photography.

I hated the UPS logo redesign and the Diary Queen one among many others and I’m always sad when I see ad agencies steal money from people by redesigning iconic logos – logos that have a clear definition.

You don’t see Apple fucking around with their logo – they just gradually modernize it but it’s the same logo after all these years. IBM is IBM, let’s not dick around with it.

More: Pepsi takes the Tropic out of Tropicana

30 Rock

You should watch it. It’s the best show on TV.

My Benjamins

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“What is this dollar bill doing in my pile of Benjamins?!”