I was formulating my own post on the subject of traffic circles (yes, I am a geek) when I noticed today that Fark beat me to it. How fortuitous!

I’ve driven around a few local traffic circles during the past week and have decided they’re a smart idea. First off, they are known as “traffic calmers,” meaning they slow traffic down. While this is certainly true if you are comparing them with a street lit by green lights, they actually speed up traffic that ordinarily would be waiting for red lights. This not only means you’re not kept waiting at the light, it means that your car is not sitting there idling. Thus, not only are you not wasting time, there is less ozone being created by idled engines. Sweet.

Traffic circles are also safer. Instead of having two directions of traffic to avoid (left and right of you as you pass through an intersection), you only have to look one way: your left. Also, the only cars going fast in a circle are on the NASCAR circuit. You don’t have to worry that some jackass is going to appear out of nowhere and sideswipe you. If you do get smacked, you only have yourself to blame for not looking in the ONE direction you have to look. No one can “run” a traffic circle.

Traffic circles are also much more appealing visually. You can actually landscape a traffic circle, or even put a fountain there. Beats having an open, dirty square of pavement any day.

But the best reason to think about traffic circles is that the alternative we’ve got now – traffic lights – just doesn’t work. Traffic lights drive me nuts when I’m the only one waiting at an empty intersection. It’s a waste. And there are scores of intersections in town with faulty traffic lights: lights that provide turn signals to phantom cars.

What really drives me nuts about lights is how many of them aren’t synchronized. You can be stopped at one intersection, and just when the light turns green and just when you’re moving at the speed limit, the light at the next street turns red in front of you. Stop and go. Stop and go. Ridiculous.

When the power goes out, as it did during last winter’s ice storm, intersections with traffic lights become free-for-alls. I was more afraid of driving around town than I was from falling tree limbs. Seriously.

Traffic circles solve all of these problems. They keep your car’s momentum up, making your drive go much smoother. They’re practical and they’re attractive. I’m glad to see them popping up in the area. I really hope they catch on.

On my way back from Chapel Hill tonight I was in awe of that shining bright red orb in the sky known as Mars. Through all the construction lights blazing along I-40, through the stadium lights at Carter-Finley, that mysterious world could be seen, floating above it all.

I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of Morehead Planetarium’s free observation sessions this week. A lucky few will get to see Mars through a 24-inch telescope. There will be smaller telescopes outside the observatory, so maybe there’s still reason to visit Chapel Hill.

You owe it to yourselves to take a look at Mars. You’ll never see it quite this way again.

I’ve never seen gas prices as high as they’ve been this week. According to Reuters and the Lundberg Survey, an oil research group, these sky-high gas prices are due to the Northeast power outage.

Bah! This is nothing but price gouging. You can’t tell me that just because power was out for 12 hours around New York that the entire U.S. gas supply took a huge hit. The article vaguely mentions some refineries being offline. Doesn’t New Jersey (which never lost power) have more refineries than New York? Come on, Manhattan has no room for refineries. You can’t tell me that this was the problem.

This is nothing but simple price gouging, taking advantage to raise prices before Labor Day. Sure, Arizona has a pipeline problem, but that’s refined gas on the way to retail stations and it affects only the Phoenix area. There’s no reason that should be affecting the rest of us.

Man, oil companies are scum.

This is pretty embarassing. U.S. Troops in Iraq are stuck having to borrow AK-47s because they jam less and ammo is more readily available for them.

“We just do not have enough rifles to equip all of our soldiers. So in certain circumstances we allow soldiers to have an AK-47. They have to demonstrate some proficiency with the weapon … demonstrate an ability to use it,” said Lt. Col. Mark Young, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 67th Armor Regiment, 4th Infantry Division.

Now, if our Commander In Chief spent less time in carrier-landing photo ops and more time equipping the troops to do their jobs, we may actually get OUT of Iraq some day.
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This N&O article says that college kids these days are more optimistic, selfless and tolerant than ever before. Sounds like they’re sheep to me. There’s “Generation X,” and after that comes “Generation Rx:” kids too doped up on happy pills to notice the cracks in the thing we call a country.

I’m hoping they’re not too blind to put that optimism and selflessness to good use. In other words, I hope they’re not as jaded and cynical as I am. If you can’t be good, be a bad example. 🙂

I just finished ordering a Voice over IP phone from Packet8. They have a residential deal that provides all the custom calling features that Bellsouth charges an arm and a leg for, but with Packet8, you get everything for $20. A VoIP phone works over your DSL or cable modem connection and plugs right into your regular telephone.

Callers to your VoIP phone never know their call is going over the Internet. In fact, you can take it with you on trips. Wherever you have a broadband connection, you can receive your phone calls.

Now that I’ve ordered my phone (risk free, thankfully), I found this in the Triangle Business Journal which talks states are considering regulating VoIP companies as telephone companies. I don’t think VoIP companies should be considered telephone companies. They have not strung any cable, are not benefitting from the public right-of-way, nor are they guaranteed a profit from cushy tariffs. It’s just a ploy from the scared-shitless local phone companies to stave off their inevitable deaths.

Time Warner Cable is also planning to offer VoIP services, according to the article. Unlike other VoIP firms, TWC actually did file as a phone company. That’s probably because they DO benefit from public rights of way. Whatever you think of the cable company, having more phone competition can only be a good thing.

During my recent trip to Birmingham, I was talking with someone about the funny slang that doctors use to describe patients. Fark linked to just such a story today.

A patient who is “giving the O-sign” is very sick, lying with his mouth open. This is followed by the “Q-sign” — when the tongue hangs out of the mouth — when the patient becomes terminal.

General practitioners may use LOBNH (“Lights On But Nobody Home”) or the impressively bogus Oligoneuronal to mean someone who is thick.

But they also have a somewhat poetic option: “Pumpkin positive”, referring to the idea that the person’s brain is so tiny that a penlight shone into his mouth will make his empty head gleam like a Halloween pumpkin.

Here’s another story on Dr. Fox from the Beeb and one from Ananova. A horribly-formatted page of slang terms is here.

Researchers have made progress in discovering why songs get stuck in your head:

Research has helped define, but not explain, the experience. A recent study by the University of Cincinnati looked at the affliction, which the author, James Kellaris, calls earworms from the German word ohrwurm. The ear part is obvious, but the worm part isn’t incidental. Kellaris, a consumer psychologist, says it conveys the parasitic nature of the travel of songs into their listeners’ ears, only to then get lodged and played on mental continuum.

He found that some 98 per cent of listeners will at one time or another be bothered by a tune that won’t leave their heads. The study also found some common offenders, including the Kit-Kat jingle (“Gimme a break”), “Who Let the Dogs Out,” Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” the “Mission: Impossible” theme, “YMCA,” “Whoomp, There It Is,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “It’s A Small World After All.”

The study also showed that musicians and those with compulsive tendencies are the most afflicted. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though the act of repetition — in popular songs on the radio and on the rehearsal floor for musicians — plays a role.

Bonus! The article quotes Neil Diamond as being a victim of this effect:

“If I wasn’t in the business of songwriting, I’d probably be seeing a doctor,” Diamond said. “I’ve tried everything from cold showers to listening to other people’s music, but nothing helps.”

I guarantee you that one of these songs listed above is already lodged in your head. If I could charge rent to song and jingle writers for every song taking up brain cells in my head, I could retire early!

A comment on Slashdot hit the nail on the head for a product/service I want to create:

Where *are* all the wonderful ‘independent’ movies and documentaries and such on the Internet these days? Back in the early 90’s, we predicted there’d be simply scads of new and entertaining film content available on the ‘net for perusal, but it seems like its either ‘movieflix’ or sites like silversow.com and demandmedia.net, none of which truly satisfies my urge to surf/download and watch good quality film media I got from the Internet.

Technology is coming together to allow for content distribution entirely via the Internet. Think of it as “Tivo over Ethernet.” It will be the next wave of media, and I hope to to position my surfboard on the sweet spot of this wave and have the ride of my life.

The tools are there. The demand is building. It’s only a matter of time.