Entries from December 2008 ↓

A few years ago, I lived in the small town of Douglasville, Georgia. Shortly after moving there, I began to discover that there was a reason that the town was kept in a remote, out of the way county. It had a reputation for being populated by a disproportionately large number of rednecks.

That stereotype was in no way dispelled by the efforts of the people who made the local signage:

As one might infer from the amount of rust seen on the bolts of the second sign, literacy faults like these are seldom noticed in Douglasville, let alone promptly corrected.

A couple of weeks ago at Thanksgiving, Allison and I had the privilege of visiting her parents for a wonderful family get-together and holiday meal. The setting was their beautiful house, nestled in the woods beside a picturesque mountain lake. Their community, which surrounds a golf course, is considered quite upscale, and has a manned security gate where guards issue passes for vehicle access.

This morning, while driving to work, I noticed the pass on my windshield that I’d neglected to remove, and also remembered that I’d planned to blog about the literacy fault I had previously found there. It seems that no matter how formal the setting may be, there will always be subtle, heart-warming reminders that we’re still in Georgia after all.

From today’s news (emphasis in the last paragraph is mine):

BEIJING, Dec. 6 (AP) – (Kyodo)—China successfully launched a hybrid rocket Friday for the first time, Xinhua News Agency reported.The rocket, “Beihang-2,” was launched from a launch site in northwestern Gansu Province and reached an altitude of 3,000 meters before its head was parachuted to the ground 1.2 kilometers south of the site 15 minutes later, Xinhua said.

The launch was mainly intended to test the performance of the rocket’s hybrid engine, designed by the School of Astronautics of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. A hybrid rocket is known to cost less in launch as it does not explode.

As I recall, it took our rocket scientists a while to develop cheaper, non-exploding boosters, too.

Hello all.  I’m on the road again this week at March ARB near Riverside, California.  It’s been quite hectic, and in reality the very last thing I’ve got time to do right now is write a blog entry.  However, something in this morning’s news struck me as rather outrageous, as so often happens when I make the mistake of noting what goes on in the world.  It involves another idiot, and it occurs to me that the very best thing I can do in terms of dealing with such idiots is warning the world about them.  After all, the more bloggers put someone’s name on the internet, the more likely it is that a Google search for that name will turn up something interesting!

Today’s idiot: Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Galluccio.

A Boston couple, the wife in labor with contractions spaced about three minutes apart, were driving in the breakdown lane of a major freeway.  Several other troopers had waved them on, advising caution but otherwise causing no problems.  Such laissez-faire law enforcement would not do for Trooper Michael Galluccio, though. He stopped the couple, made them wait while he finished writing a ticket to another motorist, and then cited them for a traffic infraction, costing them five to ten valuable minutes while the pregnant woman continued in her efforts as pregnant women are wont to do.

Here’s to you, Trooper Michael Galluccio, you idiot!