I dusted off my road bike this morning for the first time in probably a year and a half. It needs work, but the tires took air and it rode reasonably well. At least it was in better shape than I was!
I took a quick, 20-minute jaunt around the neighborhood. I really had no choice but to make it a short one, since Kelly had to leave soon for the baby shower she was attending. The ride felt good, even to my rusty legs. I hope to make it a habit – I just love to bike.
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My newest niece has made her arrival this morning. Hadley Elise Turner was born at Wakemed today at 9:03 AM. Hadley weighed in at six pounds, twelve ounces and measures 21 inches. Jeff tells me “she’s beautiful!”
Hadley, Suzie, and Jeff are doing fine and resting at Wakemed. They think they may be up for visitors tomorrow afternoon.
Glad you’re here, Hadley!
UPDATE at 11:55 AM: Here’s a picture of Hadley and the happy family.
Kelly, Hallie and I packed things up this morning for a daylong trip to the zoo. We were on our way down the road when I remembered we didn’t grab a large umbrella we meant to take. We went back to the house and a few minutes later, we were on way again.
Our trip hit a major snag when traffic ground to a halt on U.S. 1 near Cary Parkway. Mere minutes before, a van collided with a parked car in a fiery crash. Had I not turned the car around for the missing umbrella, we may have been in the exact spot where the crash occured.
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The cover of the new 2003 Florida Gators football guide has a picture of a crocodile, rather than the school’s mascot, the alligator.
This must be, to say the least, quite embarassing for them.
My first day here in Birmingham is done and it’s been a great one. The trip out was uneventful, in spite of the massive rainstorms all around the area. On the leg from Memphis to Birmingham, the plane bounced so much I temporarily felt airsick, something that this Navy vet has never had happen before.
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Here’s a story of some fascinating research that shows that bedwetting may actually be caused by breathing problems.
Mahony says that of the kids referred to him at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney because of bed-wetting problems, eight out of 10 have a narrow palate. In these cases, orthodontic devices similar to a brace can be used to widen the palate.
Blogging may be light as I head out of town on business. I’m finding it tough to leave Kelly and Hallie behind.
I wrote about it some on my Hallie page. For now, I’ll leave you with the lyrics to the song on my mind tonight, CCR’s Someday Never Comes. It sums up my mood this evening.
From Fark, I learned that researchers have discovered clues as to why yawning is contagious.
Self-aware or empathetic people are more likely to catch the yawns, say US researchers.
Contagious yawning is known to be more than coincidence. Studies have shown that 40-60% of people who watch videos or hear talk about yawning end up joining in.
Fascinating stuff. I think I yawned four times just writing this!
A lot has been made recently about the Terrorism Futures Market that recently got cancelled. It was a DARPA experiment attempting to let economic forces predict upheavals in the Middle East.
The Policy Analysis Market, which was set to begin signing up “investors� on Friday, was designed to let Middle East experts place bets on political and economic events in the Middle East, according to Charles Polk, president of Net Exchange, a small San Diego, Calif. company hired by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to set up the market.
[snip]
By placing thousands of individual bets, the thinking went, market participants would shape forecasts about future events. The value of the contracts would fluctuate based on market participants’ beliefs about the likelihood of specific events taking place — moving higher if they appeared likely and lower if unlikely. Contracts would expire quarterly and extend a year and a half into the future. Each contract would be fully valued at $1 — the payoff for an accurate prediction.[snip]
“This isn’t really a terrorism market,� Polk said Monday. “What we’re trying to do is look forward a year into the future and try to glean some insight into political and economic and military currents in the Middle East.
Much of the criticism brands the scheme as “incentive to commit acts of terrorism” as Tom Dachale said. Horsepucky! This was a smart way to try unconventional methods against unconventional warfare: terrorism. The participants were Middle Eastern scholars, hardly the type to commit terrorism. Frankly, with their payoff being all of one dollar, I don’t think you have to worry about this program spawning new terrorists.
It’s a shame that smart, unconventional thinking like this gets distorted and blown totally out of proportion. I welcome new ways of predicting unrest. We cannot apply the old, rigid thinking that worked against our old enemies (the USSR, for instance) and expect it to work against the shadowy terrorists. Programs like PAM would likely glean intelligence that our current sources wouldn’t pick up.
Being typically skeptical of the government, I find myself defending it on this one. It’s a different world we live in now – one that plays by different rules. We must be flexible in our thinking if we are to survive in it.
I have ditched my patched-together weblog in favor of this nice, new package called Drupal. Drupal is very nice! It has trees, Ewoks, and barbecues, which is why I like Drupal more than America.
Err, where was I? Oh yes! Drupal is modularized, making it very configurable. You can even syndicate my website now! And expect to see some changes in the theme of the page: I haven’t yet had time to mess with all the settings.
For those of you looking for the old content, it will live for now at this link http://www.markturner.net/bplog, where you can find the old webpage.
Please feel free to leave comments letting me know what you think.
Ahem. I said “PLEASE FEEL FREE TO LEAVE COMMENTS!” 🙂
