"Crotches kill."

A Canadian ad advising drivers not to text while driving.

"It’s pretty racy for a Government of Alberta ad, but sex does sell and it did get people’s attention," Edmonton radio personality Rick Lee tells CTV News. "It’s good to see the Government of Alberta is taking the step to connect with younger listeners, and listeners in general, and taking the racy approach is a good way to do it I think."

Oh, Canada.

"An 80-year-old former Australian Catholic priest... bit off a fellow clergyman's ear during a row over a parking spot."

"Thomas Byrne... reportedly told [Fr Thomas Smith, 81] to pick up something he had lost during the brief scuffle. That something turned out to be a part of Smith's ear.... but he did not realise that until he got back to his room and took the object out of his pocket."

At some point, very old people really shouldn't be driving.

Imagine if... women bought cars!

An ad from the May 5, 1967 issue of Life Magazine:



"You'll discover that even driving down to buy bread can be kicks. You'll find yourself saying 'I'll pick you up' even when it's Helen's turn to drive. Or Ed's.'"

I love the use of the word "kicks." It's almost as if our little lady is getting in some of those drugs we've been reading about as the Summer of Love rolls in.

The mid-calf skirt is suddenly a mini skirt, but it's only 1967, and if you're as old as I am, you know what that meant — your stocking tops and even your garters might show:



ADDED: The anti-drug song "Kicks" was a hit in 1966. If you ever worry that you don't know how to dance, I guarantee you that 20 seconds into this "Kicks" video you will be able to dance as well as Paul Revere & the Raiders.

"Should drowsy driving be prosecuted like drunken driving..."

"... or is nodding off at the wheel simply an accident – like hitting a patch of ice?"

If we truly care deeply about the death of young children...

... what are the most effective things we can do? There's so much talk about gun control in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, but rather than fixating on the particular device that has fixated our attention, perhaps we should reflect on what actually causes the most fatality in children, particularly since we have so much power to act affirmatively to prevent these deaths.

Here is a chart (PDF) from the National Center for Health Statistics, showing the "10 Leading Causes of Death by Age Group, United States – 2010." Young children's lives are clearly most threatened by accidents.

Here's a chart (PDF) showing "10 Leading Causes of Injury Deaths by Age Group Highlighting Unintentional Injury Deaths, United States – 2010." You can see that the greatest threat, by far, is the motor vehicle accident. Second, for 5- to 9-year-olds, is drowning. Third is fire. Homicide by firearm is fourth for this age group.

Go ahead and talk about the problem of murder, but let's remember that one thing we've learned from the Newtown massacre is how much we love and want to protect children. Children are continually dying from crashing cars, drowning, burning, suffocating, and poisoning. There are so many things we could do to be more careful and protective every day. Some of these things are fabulously banal, like keeping your eyes on the road and not walking away from the bathtub. There are no political enemies here to demonize, no legislation to stuff down your stubborn opponent's throat.

We're fixated by violence, and we love remedies for violence that have a frisson of (metaphorical) violence. But if we really care about the death of young children, we could take care.

If you crashed your $376,000 Lamborghini Aventador into a snowy ditch and walked away from it...

... you'd Instagram it. You know you would! (Compare me, in 2005, when I wrecked my car.)

"Hundreds of people are killed each a year when drivers turn the wrong-way into the face of oncoming traffic on high-speed highways..."

And the solution is... well, what would you think of?

The National Transportation Safety Board proposes...

... cracking down on drunk driving.

"And as I get older, I like [flying] less and less. I don't much like driving either. I prefer to be driven."

"And, when I'm in London, I don't even like walking on the street. I can never get used to looking the right way when I cross the street. When we're over there, I always say to my wife, 'Stay in the hotel. Don't go out there. It's too dangerous.'"

Says Christopher Walken, who'd like you to know that he's not the creepy guy he always seems to be in his movies. He's  "a regular guy. I stay home a lot, I make an effort to keep a distance from the whole social thing, the openings, the parties. I try to live in a calm way."

I can see why a fearful, avoidant sort of person could manifest as oddball on screen.

How has he survived in the cut-throat, hyper-ambitious world of Hollywood? "Well, you know, I've always found it to be an honest place. They either want you for a role or they don't. It's pretty simple. People talk about Hollywood being this place where you can never get straight answers, but my experience is the opposite. If they don't want you, it's very clear."

What's the worst thing about his job? "Learning lines, for sure. I don't know how people learn their lines quickly. It's always been a tedious, agonising chore for me. I hate it. It takes me ages to know my lines. I just wish I could do movies with cue cards. That way, it's easy. Not lazy, but easy. You know what? I wish I could live my whole life with cue cards. I really do."

Maybe what we're perceiving as odd is his struggle to recall the lines. As for cue cards: 1. Marlon Brando used cue cards, and 2. What's that quote? Life is a play for which there is no rehearsal and only one performance. Something like that. Or am I merging 2 or 3 famous quotes?

Recycling your turkey-frying oil in Madison, Wisconsin for the greater good of America and the world.

A City of Madison news release:

"We know that there are many people who have lots of oil left over after frying their Thanksgiving turkey," Madison recycling coordinator George Dreckmann said. "We are very excited to be able to offer them a chance to turn that old cooking oil into fuel for cars and trucks in our area."

Dreckmann — a euonym! The Oxford English Dictionary defines "dreck" — from Yiddish drek (German dreck) filth, dregs, dung — as "Rubbish, trash, worthless debris":

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. 491 Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
1947 Horizon Feb. 90 The anonymous countryside littered with heterogeneous dreck.
1965 E. Lacy Double Trouble v. 58 Drek your dolls are!.. I wouldn't stick my customers with such junk!...

Back to the press release:

"Every year thousands of gallons of old cooking oil is tossed in the landfill or flushed down the drain. Since we began our cooking oil program we have recovered over thousands [sic] of cooking oil" Dreckmann said. "Now we can recover this resource and use it to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and cut air pollution."

Cooking oil must be brought to the 1501 W. Badger Rd. or 4602 Sycamore Av....

So hundreds/thousands of citizens with their gallon jugs of used oil will get in their cars and drive to the oil collection site and then various unseen processes will be applied to convert that stuff into something useful. Is there a net benefit to the environment and to the American economy? I don't know, but think how wonderful it is that the nice people of Madison can feel good about themselves (after they went ahead and deep-fried the turkey instead of just roasting it).

Oh, Althouse, why are you so cynical?!  I'm sorry. Let me paint a different picture. The turkey-frying Madisonian hangs gallon jugs of used oil on his handlebars and bikes down South Park Street to Badger Road.

It's a problem, making "political or philosophical" art when the market is "about hyper-capitalism" and the art is "poker chips for billionaires."

Nate Lowman is "bummed out" that "other people’s gambling habits change the meaning of paintings." Contemplate the pain of artistic success when the high prices paid "dictate how people perceive art."

Lowman’s work takes the shape of smiley faces, magnetized bullet holes, and Arbre Magique air fresheners. The images he gathers often come from the news cycle or the crime blotter (distressed blondes in general, among them Nicole Brown, murdered former wife of O. J. Simpson; “More or Less,” a 2003 show at Apex Art, featured bearded men such as John Walker Lindh, Jim Morrison, and Che Guevara), and he re-purposes “found” language that lies awkwardly between personal and impersonal, like the bumper sticker Jesus would use the turn signal, asshole.

ADDED: The linked Vanity Fair text is written by Edward Helmore, and he seems unaware of the political (and moral) incorrectness of referring to a murdered woman as a "distressed blonde."

"Corn stalks sticking out of truck lead to drunken driving arrest."

"The stalks were acquired when Elliott drove off a highway into a cornfield and then back onto the highway, seen by a driver who claimed Elliott almost hit his vehicle, police said."

In other Wisconsin farms-and-bad-driving news: "Police said texting while driving led to the death of a 2012 World Dairy Expo prize-winning Jersey cow on Saturday night."

Madison, where the powerful bike lobby pushes for policies that will get 20% of workers commuting by bike...

... bicycle commuting dropped to only 4.69% in 2011. The previous year it was 6.03%.

The bike lobby folks disparage the survey, which asked people how they got to work in the previous week. Maybe the question was asked after a week of nasty weather. Of course, here in Wisconsin, it's frequently too cold or rainy for anyone other than a hardcore bicyclist.

The number of people walking (8.38 percent) and using a motorcycle (0.15 percent) to get to work edged down slightly. The number who said they took public transportation to work (8.79 percent) inched up, and those who drove to work alone rose to 65.46 percent from 63.42 percent.

This is America, people. We drive. We have a lifestyle built on cars. Do you mind?

Arthur Ross, Madison's pedestrian-bicycle coordinator, could not be reached Thursday for comment, but data from the city paint a picture of steady growth for bike commuters. According to a 2011 report by the city's traffic engineering department, the annual average volume on the John Nolen Drive and Brittingham Park bike paths has steadily climbed since 1987, when an average of 400 bikes per day used the paths. In 2011, the number, according to the bike counts, had more than doubled to about 975 bikes per day.

Yes, but are these people biking to work? Or are we talking about people who bike for exercise/pleasure on weekends and off hours, mostly concentrated in the pleasantest times of the year? I know I bike those paths a lot, but not as a method of commuting.

Meanwhile the 20% goal lives on, with influential politicos hyping expensive improvements (or supposed improvements) as if people will shift to bicycle commuting. I find it amusing that my liberal city puts so much tax money into amenities that serve, overwhelmingly, its white male population.

Does a landlord have an ethical obligation to disclose that the previous tenant died in the apartment you're thinking of renting?

The NYT ethicist thinks the obligation is "seemingly obvious" or even "compulsory." He's responding to somebody who wasn't informed before signing the lease and now finds it "unsettling and slightly disturbing" to know that the previous tenant died. Of an overdose. Not a murder, just an overdose. A forgotten man slipped away through the portal to the beyond that exists within that rental unit... and everywhere else on the face of the earth.

This last week, we've been driving quite a distance across that face. Maybe an eyelid's expanse of earth-face. Much of the eyelid has been Montana, where the Montana American Legion has been carrying out its White Cross Highway Fatality Marker Program since 1953.

The unique idea of marking fatal traffic accident sites with a white cross was the brain child of Floyd Eaheart, a member of the American Legion Hellgate Post #27, Missoula, Montana; after six lives were lost in the Missoula area over the 1952 Labor Day Holiday. The safety program started out as a county and later district project for the Missoula American Legion Post. However, the idea was so good that it was soon adopted as a statewide program. The Montana Highway Commission (now Department of Transportation) approved the program in January 1953, with the blessing of the then 13th governor of Montana, J. Hugo Aronson (the Galloping Swede)....

The program is intended as a highway safety, not a memorial program.  Still, many families place wreaths or other decorations on the white crosses, which may be considered a memorial to a loved one lost in an accident.  Obstruction of the white cross with these decorations defeats the purpose of the safety program.  

You appropriate an individual's death for your message of traffic safety, with the state's approval, and you don't like when the people who loved that person pile on a message of their own. Either it's a speech forum, where viewpoint discrimination is banned or it's the state's own speech, and it's an Establishment Clause violation (unless the courts say it's not).

The white crosses serve as a public service message, reminding drivers to “Please Drive Carefully.”  They are a sobering reminder of a fatal traffic accident, a place where a human being lost his/her life....

Not all highway fatalities are marked.  Due to a federal ruling, white crosses are not allowed along interstate highways.

Here's some discussion of the case. I don't see what the interstate has to do with it. The Constitution applies off the off ramp. But the crosses are all over the place in Montana, reminding us where people have died. How unsettled the skittish NYT reader might feel, driving in Montana, knowing about all that death. Or perhaps it's soothing to see so few doorways to oblivion have opened up in the years since 1953. Half a century has gone by and yet there are long spaces on the road that have never swallowed a human being. Often you can traverse an entire eyelash on the face of the earth without seeing a white cross.

Seeing the white crosses, I wonder about the places where there has been death. What if you could — everywhere — see who (and what) has ever died on that spot. How covered with death would the earth be? I'm blogging in the breakfast room of a Holiday Inn Express in Bismarck, North Dakota. Am I sitting on a dinosaur carcass?

On the Going-to-the-Sun Road...

... it's truly amazing (and terrifying!):



We were in Glacier National Park. Keep your eyes peeled for the glacier cameo.

"The Flathead County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a person pulling a horse trailer with a truck on Montana 82 traveling at 80 miles per hour or more in a 45-mile-per-hour zone."

Meade reads the newspaper out loud, here in Flathead County, Montana:

A resident of White Rabbit Lane reported she was being harassed by her neighbor. She reported someone put a trash bag full of fish guts in the bed of her pickup truck.

A man reportedly head-butted a woman in a vehicle on U.S. 2 East in Columbia Falls.

The windshield of an animal control officer’s vehicle was struck by an owl on North Somers Road.

An employee at a business on Hungry Horse Boulevard in Hungry Horse reported a group of four teenage boys kept coming in, being obnoxious and inappropriate, spitting everywhere and making obscene gestures.

A woman called with a question about how to deal with the fact that her 15-year-old son was using drugs....

A group of teenagers were reported drinking heavily....

The Whitefish Police Department received a call from a man who said he had been told by an officer that he could not have his guitar case open on the street downtown without a permit.

I'm most concerned about the owl, specifically targeting animal control. The animals do not want to be controlled. It could get ugly. Also: Teenagers. They are getting obnoxious and inappropriate. Things are collapsing all around.

"If my rule-breaking is ethical and safe (and Idaho-legal), why does it annoy anyone?"

Asks Randy Cohen, the original NYT "ethicist," who admits to treating stop signals as yield signals when he's on his bicycle.

I choose my riding style mindful of my own safety and that of my neighbors, but also in pursuit of happiness. Uninterrupted motion, gliding silently and swiftly, is a joy. 

And you ask why it annoys anyone! There will always be some people who are annoyed by somebody else having fun — you know, the people H.L. Mencken was knocking when he defined Puritanism as "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." But there's something else about rule-following that matters. If there's a system of rules, individuals can always subjectively, flexibly, pragmatically spin out all sorts of applicable exceptions that let them do what they want. Randy Cohen has used his big brain to determine that he's right about the unnecessary severity of the rule in this case, but he's promoting a style of thinking, an approach to ethics, that others will use in all sorts of self-serving ways. If we're not going to follow the rules anymore... then what?

Interestingly, Cohen ends his little essay with a quote from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who, we're told sometimes bikes to work:

“The advantages? Exercise, no parking problems, gas prices, it’s fun. An automobile is expensive. You have to find a place to park and it’s not fun. So why not ride a bicycle? I recommend it.” 

Now, Breyer isn't saying anything about whether or not he follows the rules, and Cohen seems to be injecting relevance by quipping: "I don’t know if he runs red lights. I hope so." But if you know a few things about Supreme Court Justices and their theories of interpretation, you shouldn't think Cohen dragged in Breyer because he's some random celebrity who, like Cohen, bikes for fun.

Breyer is not a rules guy:

Breyer has six interpretive tools—text, history, tradition, precedent, the purpose of a statute, and the consequences. In his view, it's a mistake to ignore the last two. Scalia replies that to look at either the purpose or the consequence of a statute is to invite subjectivity and beg the question.

And yet, Scalia admits he's "exceeded the speed limit on — on occasion."

PIERS MORGAN: Have you ever been caught?

SCALIA: Oh, yes. I've gotten tickets. None -- none recently.

MORGAN: That's it? That's -- that's the only criminal act..

SCALIA: Yes. I...

MORGAN: -- in your life?

SCALIA: -- I am pretty much a law-abiding sort.

MORGAN: I like the phrase "pretty much." It gives me somewhere to go.

SCALIA: No I -- I'm a law-abiding citizen.

"She was adamant that... it was not possible that she mistook the drum sticks for his penis."

"Ayers told deputies that he is a drummer who commutes between Jacksonville to Daytona Beach and he frequently simulates playing the drums while driving by hitting his steering wheel with drum sticks.... 'The drum sticks were a natural wood color and closely resembled Ayers's own skin color'...."

Another he said/she said case.

"Why drive? Why own a car? Why ‘go’ anywhere?"

Generation Y doesn't see why.

"When a child is transported without a car seat and dies, the siblings may be removed from the home by child welfare authorities..."

"... the California Supreme Court rules in a Los Angeles County case."

The state high court ruled in favor of Los Angeles County social workers who placed two young boys in foster care after their 18-month-old sister, held on the lap of an aunt, was killed when a driver ran a stop sign and plowed into the car their father was driving.

Lose one child... then lose them all.

NASCAR vibe sacrificed by Democrats.

Would they have located the convention in North Carolina if they knew they wouldn't be able to do the Charlotte Motor Speedway event?