Vacc Suit and Laser Carbine

Right now US runners are in the lead pack for both men and women.

UPDATE: Kara Goucher led the women until real late and finished third. Ryan Hall faded earlier but battled back and also finished third in the men’s race.

Two third-place finishes is quite an accomplishment for American running.

Are Tiny, Gas-Saving Cars Unsafe? Today Mine Saved My Life
I rolled my Toyota Yaris three times this morning after hitting a six-foot-high dirt embankment at highway speed. I crawled out with no more than a bump on my head, seat belt burn, and a massively stiff neck. So, for all you small car safety-doubters out there, I’ve now got personal experience to say otherwise.

The writer says that after this experience he believes small cars are as safe (or even safer) than larger vehicles and that he would have no trouble trusting the lives of his family to a small fuel-efficient car.

The problem here, of course, is that the writer’s one personal experience, which even he describes as “miraculous,” is not enough data to draw a meaningful conclusion from. If someone knows a person who had one accident in a small car and was killed, would that mean that small cars are a 100% guarantee of death? No, of course it wouldn’t. In the same way, this one incident does not really prove anything about the safety of the Toyota Yaris.

While I’m certainly glad that the writer was fine after his accident, I don’t think that any sort of point has been proven. And to take his opinion as a guide for legislation or safety requirements to be applicable to other people would be irresponsible.

I once heard an argument very similar to this from a guy who refused to wear a helmet when he drove motorcycle. He had experienced what was basically a “miraculous” survival after spilling his bike without a helmet and refused to wear one. Without getting into details, a later accident didn’t end so well and I had the unfortunate luck to be kneeling in a pool of his blood at 2AM one morning waiting for the ambulance to arrive. It got there quickly, but not nearly quickly enough.

People have survived falls from airplanes without parachutes. That doesn’t mean parachutes are a vastly overrated safety device and we’d be fine jumping without them.

One resident, however, grew angry when he was not allowed to pass a checkpoint Monday, according to a news release from the Cedar Rapids Police Department.

After being denied re-entry to a flooded neighborhood, Rick Blazek, 53, returned to his vehicle as a state trooper used his police vehicle to block the checkpoint, according to the news release.

“Blazek drove his vehicle toward the state trooper and struck the state trooper three times with his vehicle,” the release said.

Police told Blazek to get out of his vehicle, and when he refused, “the driver’s window was broken out because the doors were locked and Blazek was removed from his vehicle,” according to the release.

The trooper was not injured. Blazek, who was arrested and charged with assault on a peace officer with a deadly weapon, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Account from CNN.

I don’t have any problem with someone being arrested for trying to drive their vehicle into a police officer. But the police weren’t allowing him to return to his property, and I’m not so sure about that.

I don’t think you can rightfully be forced to evacuate, and I would side with the citizen every time if police were trying to forcibly remove him from his property without charges. But are they obligated to let someone back in once they’ve left?

Crossposted from GunPundit.

UPDATE: Discussion at Sebastian’s.

Well, we’ve done it. We’ve suspended our DirecTV account for six months.

We haven’t totally cut the cord, as we will continue to watch DVDs, video on demand from Netflix (a pretty good deal) and a stockpile of TiVoed programs.

Still, canceling our service until October is a significant move, I think.

We’ll see how it goes. If nothing else, we’ll miss virtually all of the campaign commercials.

This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend – and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.

The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.

“I yelled to the boss, ‘I’m out of here,”‘ the Livonia man said Thursday after coming to state Lottery Bureau headquarters in downtown Lansing to pick up his first $1 million check.

And then there’s this:

Despite his longtime association with Ford, he said he won’t be using any of the money to buy one of his former employer’s vehicles.

“I worked for Ford Motor Company,” he said. “I won’t be buying a Ford product.”

Quality is job one.

UPDATE: Major oops on the part of the AP, here.