The water utility in Edmonton, EPCOR, published the most incredible graph of water consumption last week. By now you’ve probably heard that up to 80% of Canadians were watching last Sunday’s gold medal Olympic hockey game. So I guess it stands to reason that they’d all go pee between periods.

via What If Everybody in Canada Flushed At Once? | Pat’s Papers.

Awesome!  We were watching a show a while back about the power grid in England and they were watching the game because when it ends there is a massive uptick in power usage as most of England turns on their electric tea kettles when the game finished.  Since electricity is generated split seconds before we use it they needed to make sure they bring extra generators online as the spikes happened.

I love how data logging and technology have made funny bits of information like this readily available.

Uphill slopes: l don’t know anyone who enjoys biking up a hill, especially when you’re trying to get somewhere you need to be. Going uphill is worse than simply being much slower; it’s also exhausting and can take a toll on the rest of your ride. Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you’re biking on. Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you’ll require and the speed you’ll achieve while going uphill. We take this speed into account when determining the time estimate for your journey, and we also try hard to avoid routes that will require an unreasonable degree of exertion. Sometimes the model will determine that it’s far more efficient to make you ride several extra blocks than to have to deal with a massive hill.

via Google LatLong: It’s time to bike.

Damn, when they have data about everything it is awesome to see it used for stuff like this.

I don’t really go on planned bike rides where I don’t know the path but I bet for people that do this is awesome.  My rides are generally “ride till I feel like turning around” or “go somewhere on a bike instead of in a car.”  I mapped my drive to work and the only thing it said I should do differently on a bike is cut behind Wegmans instead of taking the big intersection.

As you journey along the path you meet an old man.

He tells you that modern neuroscience has proved that all our actions and decisions are merely the machinations of a predetermined universe and that our concept of ‘free will’ is naught but a comforting illusion.

If you agree with his hypothesis, turn to page 72

If you disagree, turn to page 72

Page from a choose-your-own adventure game about free will – Boing Boing.

click for a scan of a “book.”  Like BB says, it may be real, it may not, but the important thing is it’s funny.

AshleyMadison.com, the dating site for married people (yes, you heard right), surveyed all of their new members last year. Of the 1.9 million folks who signed up to cheat, er, date in 2009, these were the top professions:

For Women:
1. Teachers
2. Stay-at-home Moms
3. Nurses
4. Administrative Assistants
5. Real Estate Agents

For Men:
1. Physicians
2. Police Officers
3. Lawyers
4. Real Estate Agents
5. Engineers

via Who Cheats? Docs and Stay at Home Moms! – Love + Sex on Shine.

Ya have to wonder if the women make up their profession to sound sexier?  That’s probably sexist to say it like that but the idea itself is probably accurate.

We’ve partnered with Google to offer our entire 137-year archive for free browsing. Each issue appears just as it did at its original time of publication, complete with period advertisements. It’s an amazing resource that beautifully encapsulates our ongoing fascination with the future, and science and technology’s incredible potential to improve our lives. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

via Search the PopSci Archives | Popular Science.

My dad had a bunch of Popular Science (and Popular Mechanics) that I read as a kid and I started my subscription in middle or high school, I’m pretty certain my Pap got it for me a few times and then I just kept renewing it.  I ended my subscription recently because I can now have the subscription @ work routed to my mailbox   In theory I can do this with any magazine but … perhaps I will look into this, anyway…

I loved reading the old Pop Sci’s when I was younger because they had such insight into what was new and cool at any given time.  Especially reading the old ones it’s cool to see things that have caught on and things that haven’t (usually things that would be awesome to have, or really stupid, or both).  While I started browsing the archives I initially went to look @ a story on windmills from Jan, 1981 but there were articles about “Hi-Fi on the road” about AM/FM/Cassette car radios and speakers and the next page was about electric staple guns.

It isn’t an awesome interface yet? You can’t go full screen so you can’t really read without tons of scrolling, but they are working on “more advanced features.”

In 1985, according to Ward’s Communications, 22.4% of all vehicles sold in the United States came with a manual transmission. By 2007, the number had plummeted to 7.7%.
…
That doesn’t mean we have to like it, though. For the serious driver, piloting a car with a manual transmission is a badge of honor. Having control over your ride carries an appeal that may well go back to the time when man first rode astride a horse. That sort of intimate control over your steed is heady stuff, and a feeling not easily conceded. The conviction that the driver knows best also comes into play: an automatic transmission can’t see that just down the road is a decreasing radius turn that’s going to require you to downshift a gear or two so that you can launch yourself smartly out of the turn.

Then there is the pride one takes in a perfectly timed two-three upshift, wringing it out to the redline and listening to the symphony of pumping pistons and whirring camshafts, or perhaps mastering the black art of heel-and-toe shifting and precisely matching revs on a downshift as you drift into a corner.

Perhaps it is because, in a world that seems increasingly out of control, in the driver’s seat you are in complete control, and with a manual transmission and an open road to the horizon, that is as much as we can hope for these days.

via Check The Manual Transmission: Stick Shift Cars Going Away.

For as long as I still can I will buy manual.  I have never owned an automatic; ‘00 Focus SE 5-spd, ‘97 Jetta Trek 5-spd, ‘03 Jetta GLI 6-spd.  I have to say, the 6 is fun but I wish it was more of a cruising gear than it really is.  6th gear basically the same final drive ratio as top gear in the 5-speed, which is unfortunate because I have a seriously torque-y VR6.  I think the cars that are still selling manuals gotta be one of two things, they are either sports cars, or they are economy cars.  Its more fun to drive a manual, and I call bullshit on the idea that manual is somehow distracting and less safe:

“We also find that parents are mainly concerned with the safety of their teen driver and a manual is one more thing to distract them from focusing on driving.”

I think that having a good understanding of the car and what its doing will make you a safer driver.  If people drove manuals then there would be no injuries from the Toyota recall because you just press in the clutch or something else smart a knowledgeable driver would know how to do.

To the Campus Community,

On the night of February 26th the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center experienced acts of vandalism. The entrance to the LGBTRC was defaced with derogatory and hateful words that target the Queer community.

This vicious hate crime demonstrates the need for community centers like ours to exist in order to offer a safe space on campus and combat the homophobia, discrimination, and hate that is still prevalent within our society.

As a center we wanted not to immediately remove the vandalism in order to ensure that this hate crime does not go unnoticed by the campus community. Facilities and administration offered to clean it up immediately but we wanted to take this opportunity to educate the campus about struggles that our community continues to face. We feel it is easier to erase physical representations of violence than to heal from the ongoing impacts of this hatred. Erasing it makes it possible to avoid believing these things happen on our campus. We want to work towards a healing resolution.

via The Aggie: Letter: LGBTRC vandalized.

I do think it is important that they don’t clean the spray paint right away.  Whoever did this doesn’t have their hatred cleaned when they clean the physical representations of hate but it makes it seem as though everything is fine.  Everything is not fine, people out there have hatred and bigotry and while it may be easy to just clean up the physical mess they make, it’s not so quick and easy to clean up the emotional mess they make.

Two parents are suing the Alameda County school district in California because they don’t want kids to be taught that it’s wrong to beat up gay kids.

Lesson 9 is a once a year 45-minute presentation that suggests respect for all students. THAT is what they are suing about.

via Joe. My. God.: Parents Sue To End Anti-Bullying Course.

Cook is a founder of Alameda Concerned Parents, a group that opposed Lesson 9, while Dietrich was one of the original signers of a petition to recall the three school board members who voted to approve Lesson 9 in May 2009.

via Parents sue Alameda schools over gay-issues curriculum – ContraCostaTimes.com.

They are suing because they say they didn’t have time to review the lesson plan on not bullying other students.  Except they have been against it since May 2009.  Seems like these parents were the bullies, not the victims when they were in school.

Under pressure, the NCAA pulled the ad yesterday:”The decision by the NCAA came in response to vocal protests from a small number of advocates for gay and lesbian athletes, who complained that the group’s views that homosexuality and abortion are immoral are inconsistent with the NCAA’s stated nondiscrimination policy. ‘Focus on the Family did have a banner ad on NCAA.com. Today, it was decided to remove the ad from the website as a result of concerns expressed by our membership,’ Bob Williams, an NCAA spokesman, said via e-mail late Tuesday.”

via NCAA Pulls ‘Focus on the Family’ Web Ad Following Pressure – Towleroad, More than gay news. More gay men.

I wrote in and complained and I hope my voice helped; Focus on the Family is an evil organization that would prefer to impeded on the rights of others rather than help their own flock become stronger.  If only crazy right wing Christians would actually read and understand the whole bible…

They did eventually update their site/statement so that it doesn’t seem so diminishing towards the people who complained.

“The decision by the NCAA came in response to vocal protests from advocates for gay and lesbian athletes — which quickly grew into a broader audience of critics who sent e-mails and set up what has now become the standard, a Facebook page — who complained that the group’s views that homosexuality and abortion are immoral are inconsistent with the NCAA’s stated nondiscrimination policy.”

Which still sounds kinda dickish but eh.  I didn’t even know there was a Facebook page.

I am sick of people complaining and whining about Toyota.  The first recall was because a dealer put the WRONG mats in a Lexus and they got stuck against the pedal.  They recalled 3.8 million vehicles voluntarily because it’s possible to install the wrong floor mat and not attach the floor mat to the floor? WTF! User stupidity is not Toyota’s fault and nor should it be.

The second recall seems worse but I still think some of the blame lies with the user.  If you are so complacent with the machinery that makes your car work (for a method of travel that kills 100 people in the US every day) that you don’t notice that it is hard to press the gas pedal and you don’t know what to do if the accelerator sticks then negligence on your part should not equal an emergency on Toyota’s part.  This is not some sudden thing that happens, the device they use to give a realistic “feel” to the drive-by-wire system can be affected by wear and environmental conditions that can, in certain situations, cause the pedal to return more slowly or in worse case scenarios.

Car and Driver seem to have their heads on straight though:

In February 2010, Car and Driver executive editor Mike Dushane wrote that the “media circus” overlooked the fact that “the numbers don’t reveal a meaningful problem”, with the alleged fatality risk at about 1 in 200,000 recalled Toyota vehicles, versus a 1 in 8,000 risk of a fatal car accident in any car in the U.S.^[79]

AND:

However, tests of the Camry by Car and Driver in 2009, attempting to use the brakes to stop acceleration of a purposely-stuck throttle at 70, 100, and 120 mph, found that the test driver was able to reduce speed to 10 mph in all instances, and in the 70 and 100 mph tests, stop the car completely.^[49][50] The Camry’s braking distances with a purposely-stuck accelerator were also shorter than that of the Ford Taurus’ regular stopping distance.^[49]

There is also conspiracy theory talk that the US gov is making a big deal out of the Toyota recall because now that they have majority ownership of GM, obviously a Toyota competitor.  I don’t think the US gov is smart enough to put the two ideas together though so I doubt it.

Bottom Line: If you are an able driver who is aware of your surroundings you will continue to be fine.  If your car is a magic box that gets you from one place to another then you should do us all a favor and stay off the road.