dpk’s weblog

Unseasonably warm.
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Seattle Times article about Seattle’s plans

The good:

The effort includes public-service announcements on television and radio, repainted crosswalks, billboards and signs encouraging safe driving, and stepped up enforcement of pedestrian-safety laws.

The really, obscenely bad:

The city also will start installing traffic cameras to photograph cars that run red lights.

I won’t go in to the whole “anti-red light camera” argument here — plenty of sites cover that already — but suffice it to say I am wholly against red light cameras and how they are implemented.

This plan for pedestrian safety completely fails to take into account the realities of driving in downtown Seattle. Pedestrians tend to cross whenever the traffic light is green or yellow, regardless of the walk/don’t walk signal’s status. Pedestrians rarely seem to look or care where they are walking. In part, I blame parents and the educational campaigns. How many times have you seen parents dragging their kids across the middle of the street, not even at a crosswalk? I was taught early on that “pedestrians always have the right of way”. Luckily, I was also taught (or born with? I dunno) enough smarts to know that just because I have the right of way doesn’t mean I can be a jackass and expect that everyone will avoid hitting me 100% of the time.

A real pedestrian solution to downtown Seattle would involve more “delayed start” walk signals. This would allow some cars through every light, and still give pedestrians a chance to cross the street. As it is now, it is lucky if two or three cars make a right turn during a green light.

Additional enforcement of crosswalk laws would help a lot, too. Convince people to stop entering the crosswalk when “don’t walk” is flashing.

And for the busiest intersections, overhead or underground crosswalks could be installed, such as used in Las Vegas. Help the pedestrians stay safe by simply removing them from traffic.

Until Seattle addresses the pedestrian safety issue using methods other than simple education or signs, it will continue to be a serious problem for the city.

Blackened Chicken Breast Recipe

I didn’t feel like signing up just to rate the recipe (what’s with having to sign up for everything lately, sheesh), so I’ll rate it here: It’s very good. I had to make some changes to the recipe, for various reasons:

1. Changed paprika from 1/2 to 1/4 teaspoon
2. Skipped onion powder — I just don’t have any. :)
3. Used olive oil instead of cooking spray (don’t have any), and just spread the oil and spices on the chicken with my hands
4. Heated the oven to 375F instead of 350F
5. Bake for 14 minutes instead of 5 minutes, checking temperature after 10 — 5 minutes leaves it pretty raw. I think that was a typo, anyways.

I plan to get a small jar and mix up the oil and spices so I can just brush it on, in the future. I figure that’ll keep in the fridge forever, and save me a bunch of hand-washing between steps.

ZAP Issues One Billion Dollar Purchase Order to DaimlerChrysler Group for Smart Cars

ZAP reported that it has received over $1 billion in advance purchase orders for the Smart Car Americanized by ZAP from U.S. auto dealers, and continues to receive more as a result of its marketing efforts.

..however..

ZAP has not agreed to accept all Smart Car purchase orders at this time. ZAP is currently in discussions with a number of potential partners to meet the strong American demand for the Smart Car. [...] Once ZAP finalizes the required strategic partnerships and has approval from all government agencies, it will determine its delivery schedule for Smart cars in the United States.

We’re still a long ways off from seeing lots of these cars on the road.

Unfortunately, the US smart website is poorly designed, requiring Flash, making you click pointless, often “dancing” buttons to get to its very limited content. It does not even list the miles per gallon figures. Given how small and light they are, and that they only have a 60HP engine, the cars themselves should be far more efficient than this travesty of a web page.

It is yet to be seen if Americans, with their unfortunate desire for large, wasteful vehicles, will buy in. With it starting in the same price range as other cheap imports (think Kia, Hyundai), 8,900€ (around $11.2K, and based on pricing in France), it at least has a chance. I’m sure they wouldn’t be happy with that comparison, though. :)

This opening day crowd is much smaller than I saw for Episodes 1 + 2, outside the same theater at the same time.

posted via mo:Blog

Bush Aide Says Newsweek Report Damages U.S. Image

“This report has had serious consequences,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said today in West Point, Virginia, where the president was giving a speech. “It has caused damage to the image of the United States abroad and people have lost their lives.”

The lies spread by the Bush administration have cost the lives of over one thousand Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the tens of thousands of non-American lives (which they conveniently do not track). This news article may have contributed to 16 deaths in riots.

Newsweek certainly should (and has) apologize for publishing an article that turned out to be false (apparently). That does not mean that the rest of the media should back off and let the Administration get away with pinning all of the blame on Newsweek. Newsweek did not put hundreds of Muslims in jail, without charges and without access to attorneys. Newsweek did not send troops to Iraq under the premise of destroying Saddam’s WMD capabilities. That was all Bush and his subordinates.

And where are the Democrats in all of this? I’ve yet to see an article or a press release from them denouncing President Bush’s efforts to shift the blame on to Newsweek. What is the point of having a multi-party system (ie: > 1) when one party is too scared to speak out against the other?

OK, enough ranting from me for now. Not like more than a couple people read this anyways.

Recently, my Treo 600 died. It was acting like the battery was shorted. It would power on while on the charger, but as soon as you removed it, it would die. I took it down to the Sprint store where I bought it. Turns out, they have an on-site technician. An hour later they handed me a replacement, for a $10 deductable (or co-pay or however they put it). Real easy. Didn’t have to argue with anyone about what may have caused the problem (I’m not really sure, anyways).