My last crash happened when I unexpectedly came upon a huge diesel spill covering the road in the middle of a turn. Went down so fast, I never even got my hands off the bars. I was wearing my helmet at the time and good thing, too, because... oh wait, it never impacted anything. I landed on my shoulder and my face (jaw) and went sliding down the street in a pool of diesel. Almost knocked me out and I had a headache for 3 days, but my helmet, unscathed, lived to ride another day!

From the fun with statistics department: All the people I *personally* knew who died as a result of collision or crash while riding their bicycle (sample size: 3), all of them were wearing helmets. So, 100% mortality rate!

Also, I love it when someone says after a crash while showing me a cracked helmet, "the helmet saved my life!" I usually respond with, "how do you know that? Have you previously had a similar crash for comparison purposes and not survived?"

Now of course, I believe that a bike helmet has some protective capacities. I just believe risk of riding without one has been overstated, especially for people with decent bike handling skills

Absolutely. We need to start by abolishing the TSA, followed shortly by DHS. And I say that as a survivor of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. Yes, I was scared as it was happening, but that was fleeting. Pissed, yes, that someone tried to kill me. Scared after an hour? Nope.

I also ride my bicycle without a helmet sometimes. People look at me as if I'd just killed a puppy and ask, "don't you know dangerous that is?" To which I say, "Yes, I do. I consider my bike handling skills, the physics involved in a crash, the likelihood of a crash based on my skill level, the likelihood of a crash involving a head injury, the likelihood of a crash involving a brain injury, the likelihood of a crash involving a traumatic brain injury and I accept the very low level of risk of riding without a beer cooler on my head today."

Now, I also ride motorcycles on the street (at reasonable speeds) and on the track (at ludicrous speeds) and I always wear my helmet. People try to tell me that makes me a hypocrite. I say, "No. That makes me someone who understands risk." (and physics)

It was quite possibly a misunderstanding. On a Volt a flashing green light means fully charged, while a solid green means still charging. Seems backwards to me and hoping someone will come up with a hack to change it.

Wow... Yes, I know how most cities got sited. Apparently your humor detector needs recalibrating. And having spend 20 years in DC, I would argue that it's still a malarial swamp (That's a humorous reference to Congress and politicians in general)

What everyone's really forgetting is that this is just ONE of their data centers. Where do you think they've been holding all this data up until now? Most NSA data centers were probably built during the heyday of mainframes and therefore already bigger than average, with the power and cooling to support big iron. Probably only represents 20% of their capacity at most. Hell, this might just be an off-site backup for agency records or the world's largest WoW server.

The city planners should have thought about this before deciding to put the town there. Now they're having to use public money to fix their short-sightedness!

This! Not a real budget cut, but simply a reduction in the growth of spending. However, I, as a DoD civilian will personally take a 10% cut in my salary this Fiscal Year. The politics of going after the people first doesn't sit well with most of us rank-and-file types. You know, the non-political 99% of government that's really just trying to make this country better despite what the congress and WH do.

There are plenty of things the gov't could stop doing or buying that would more than cover that $44B, but once gov't gets its hands on something it has a really hard time letting go. Personally, I think the Federal Government should be doing only about half of what it's doing right no,w, but it will never abdicate those roles.

No. Ads leech off legitimate users' bandwidth. I pay for my bandwidth and don't want it being sucked up by ads. I'd pay more for an ad-free internet, but no ISP offers that, so I use the tools that are offered.

The problem I have with targeted ads is that they are shown to me without my permission. They should only be shown to me when I inquire about purchasing something. That's one of the reasons I never conduct unsolicited business. The 100%, sure fire, guaranteed way to get me to not buy something from you is to try to sell me something I didn't ask about.

Not gonna happen. When I was participating in military exercises on/over private land in the late 1980s, no live ammo was allowed anywhere near the exercise. The only exception was for every 10 or so M-16s issued to us we had to have someone with a "guard gun" with live ammo in case some of the locals wanted to try to rob us. The guard gun was usually an M9 Beretta, but on one occasion we had to use another M-16. We taped up the whole weapon with yellow and black "Hazard" tape. The magazine was also spray painted orange and had "Live Ammo" written on it. We take safety seriously when were practicing to kill people! However, it was quite fun as an Air Force geek to be flying 50-100 feet off the ground in a Blackhawk strafing cattle with M-60 blanks! Rafter Man: "How can you shoot women, children?" Door gunner: "That's easy. You just don't lead them as much!" --Full Metal Jacket

Apparently, the US Gov't treats its own employees much better than it expects corporate America to. A junior, just-starting-out, probationary employee gets 13 days vacation (annual leave), 13 days sick leave and 10 Federal holidays per year. You are *expected* to take sick leave when sick and you are *expected* to take your vacation time. If you are on sick leave for more than 3 days, your supervisor *may* request that you provide a doctor's note, but it's not required. There is no stigma attached to taking leave the way there appears to be in the corporate world.

Unused sick leave rolls over year-to-year with no maximum accrual amount. (e.g., I have over 1000 hours) Annual Leave rolls over as well but you must have less than 30 days (240 hours) on the books at the end of the year. In my agency, if you have a "use or lose" leave balance, you must submit a leave schedule to management showing that you will in fact not lose any leave.

Al Gore created the Universe!

Have you checked the Netflix catalogue lately? Pretty sparse unless you want to watch >1 yr old TV series. I'm 0 for my last 5 attempts at trying to watch the movie I'm in the mood for. After enough searching I can usually settle for *something* but most likely I'll just turn it off.

All the HPDEs I've been to allow data collection as long as it's not visible/accessible during your on-track sessions. None have set up a beacon for lap timing. I'm told that's a restriction of the liablilty insurance provider. During the motorcycle track days I've done, about 75% of participants run a lap timer. There is always a beacon set up.

Personally, I can't wait to try out this app on my next track day.

I remember a telephone add-on device from the 1980s that would intercept your incoming calls and ask you to enter your PIN in order to complete the call. You would simply give that number to people you expected call from all others got the option to leave a message, if you allowed that option. Better than an answering machine since your phone didn't ring until after the correct PIN was input by the caller. I'd like to think that can be done in software now on IOS or Android.

If he goes FPC Montgomery, then I'll likely see him out cutting the grass or emptying trash cans as my office is about 500 yards from the entrance to the camp here on Maxwell AFB. Prisoners do all the grounds and building maintenance on base. Consequently, this place is immaculate -- hardly a blade of grass out of place.

They live in open bay barracks (so they tell me) and cannot have money, outside food & drink, cell phones and many other electronics (They've recently been allowed to have MP3 players). One of the prisoners who's been here since 1999 and works in our building was curious about my iphone as he had never seen one in person. They have a fair amount of freedom (for prisoners) and are very well behaved because they know if they screw up then it's straight to a "pound me in the ass" facility for the rest of their sentence.