Inexcusable

A montage of 20 years of Australian Transport Accident Commission driver-safety videos.

I've never understood why people intentionally get drunk.  Personally, the few times I've drunk too much, I've found it rather unpleasant.  (I tend to find drunk people rather unpleasant on the whole, too.)

But for the people who get drunk and then knowingly go out on the roads and drive while drunk — let alone the ones who do so habitually — I have no words.

It's said Nature recognizes only three crimes — misdemeanour stupid, felony stupid, and capital stupid.  Now, if you want to go out and commit capital stupid, I figure that's up to you.  It's long been a principle of mine that any arguable "right to life" is close to meaningless without an equal right to end your life in the time, place and manner of your choosing — provided you don't take anyone else with you who didn't make a free and informed decision to join you in it.  But drunk drivers go out and make other people involuntary accomplices in their own capital stupid.

And that is inexcusable.

Winter preparedness and other things

Last week, I got the snow tires swapped onto the Volvo, just after the first real snow of the winter.  This morning, cymrullewes had her snow tires mounted and fitted to the Baby Benz, just in time to head off to Portland, Maine for the first actual job interview she's gotten in ten and a half months of job hunting since being laid off at the end of January.  Portland is further than she really wants to go for a job, and if she gets it we'll end up paying Maine state income tax, but a job is a job, and I don't think Maine's state income tax laws are quite as Byzantine (and certainly not as kleptocratic) as those of Massachusetts.

The temperature's actually risen noticeably above freezing for the first time in a week; it's over 37°F on the shady side of the house.  The snow melting off the trees out back sounds like heavy rain.  I'm hoping it'll warm enough, and for long enough, for the front and rear gutters to thaw.  (We turned on the power to the roof-edge heat cables last week, in the hope of preventing ice dams this winter, but unfortunately failed to notice that after the contractors doing the repair work on the house installed the cable along the north side of the roof, they helpfully unplugged BOTH sets of cables.  We didn't notice until Sunday that they were unplugged, so the gutters are now full of ice.)

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ZOMG b00biez! ... Or not

The FTC says kids can find adult content in virtual worlds.  You know, like Second Life.  And as we all know, God forbid our delicate, emotionally-fragile kids should see a low-detail, poorly-animated boob on a cartoonish avatar.