Towns banning cellphone use while driving

So, currently there's no data to support the fact that accidents decrease in places that ban handheld cellphone use while driving. Yet towns like Chapel Hill want to make it illegal to use a handheld phone while driving. The best you can do is cite a AAA study that claims you're just as impaired while talking on a cellphone as if you had a blood acohol level of 0.08, which is the legal limit. So you're just impaired enough to be BORDERLINE too drunk to drive and thus we need to ban them? And the study is by the AAA, for goodnesssakes. Can we get some data from more than one source on this before we do it?

And honestly, I don't believe this is the kind of thing a town should be allowed to legislate anyway. The article states that the state legislature has to allow them to do this, which is good, unless the state actually does allow it. Then it's bad. Why? Because I can't think of a single reason why something that's bad enough we should ban it in Chapel Hill isn't something we should ban statewide. And if you think "oh, no, it's safer to talk on your handheld phone when traveling in rural areas", well, fine. That still means EVERY city should ban it, which is something the legislature could just do. I mean seriously, do you want to have to worry about what the law is in every city you go in and out of? Heck, they don't even mark the city borders on every road! How are we supposed to KNOW what the law is where we are?

It's rediculous, especially since many people (like myself) live outside Chapel Hill and would have little say in the creation of this law. I suppose I can lobby my state representatives if Chapel Hill chooses to ask for this, but really...I shouldn't have to. Note that nowhere am I claiming it's a safe thing to do. But we should be having this discussion at the state level only.

This is just wrong.

On so many levels, this is just wrong. Found in a Food Lion. They had a very large tub of these in the middle of the aisle. Who picks that up and thinks "wow, I'll get this for my kids!"?!?!?

Confusing the message with the delivery vehicle!

So, I genuinely love my man, Chris Grams. I'm pretty sure we first met when he was hired at Red Hat, but somehow we have several non-Red Hat mutual friends we've since found. I don't see Chris often (not nearly often enough, that's for sure), but I do follow him in the social networking scene. So when this post popped up on his blog, I had to respond.

Normally, one might respond to a specific post like his through the comment section of the original site. I'm not doing that because I haven't updated my own blog enough lately. pause Okay, that's not true...I'm really doing it here because I'm going to disagree with him somewhat vehemently yet at the same time I believe his general point is still valid. It's more the metaphor and some of the quotation I don't agree with. Oh, and I'm also putting it here because this is a topic that my Dad and I were discussing just a few days ago (no kidding).

I had already noticed a trend that traditional albums on vinyl (or LPs, as they are commonly called) had started to make a bit of a comeback. It's long been known that serious musicians haven't given up on tube-type amplifiers, either. In fact, there was a long period where there were no mass produced turntables being made, yet now you can walk into any Restoration Hardware and buy one (thanks to the fact that the Beatles stuff was re-released recently). Chris points this trend out as well, and goes on to give some of the reasons why people are going "lo-fi" (which is short for "low fidelity", the opposite of the trend toward higher fidelity sound systems based on digital music and such).

I just don't get it. These days one can record with incredible accuracy for cheap. There's simply nothing stopping you from sitting in a basement with a dog on the floor and getting a precise recording of "the best stuff." So why would you then dilute your "best stuff" by sending it out the door via what's not only lower quality, but adds errors (cracks and pops)? To me that's using lo-fi to help hide your own flaws that might happen in your "best stuff." And if you do that, aren't you being less "authentic"?

Okay, I do get why someone would want to listen to a 1966 recording via LP. In fact, I see both sides of that coin. There's obviously a market for the remastered stuff for the folks who don't care, but it most definitely is more authentic to listen to it as everyone had to in 1966. What I don't get is why anyone would want to do that with a modern recording. You're just diluting your own authenticity, in my opinion, by lowering the quality of your product intentionally. (And for the record, pun intended, I'm the proud owner of a Seeburg jukebox that sits in my basement full of original vinyl that I dearly love.)

I think you can be "real" as a musician and still release your music in unaltered digital form. I think you can be fake in recording in a studio, obviously. But you can also be fake by recording in your basement with your laptop, editing to high heaven, and then releasing on vinyl. The vinyl and the CD and iTunes are all just vehicles. The vehicle does not define the message. It can't enhance the message, but it can take away. So what's the real reason for the resurgence of vinyl? I think it's just a cool fad. Nothing more.

How a company markets is no different than how authentic a musician chooses to be. A company can go hire a big corporate ad agency and end up with a lie as an advertisement that's nothing more than actors saying what writers who are completely disconnected with the actual company tell them to say. Then they can edit to complete "perfection." But I think we've seen companies hire big corporate ad agencies and get "authentic" advertisements using real employees and real messages. We've seen plenty of companies get even more "authentic" by doing contests to let customers create their advertisements for them and show the winner during the superbowl! The spectrum is there, and a company can certainly do a good job of getting their message out in a lo-fi way.

Sometimes the politicians get it right.

I want to say a big thank-you to the NC General Assembly for passing legislation banning smoking in almost all restaurants and bars starting in less than two hours. I'm not sure if it was original or not, but a friend of mine posted to Facebook just yesterday with something I'm going to repeat here. "A smoking section of a restaurant is like a peeing section in a swimming pool."

I agree completely. Many restaurants had done a great job of having air filtration systems to help mitigate the problem, but I find that I had pretty much quit eating at "sports-bar" type places like Buffalo Wild Wings and Bailey's. And it was because of the smoke. I like bar food, and I like the fact that bars are the kind of place where you can often get fairly high quality food but get it faster than many fancier restaurants (nice for those times when you don't have time for Outback but want something better than fast-food).

As a life-long resident of North Carolina, a state whose economy was long dominated by tobacco, I honestly never thought I'd see a change like this in my lifetime. Thanks, legislators!

Gun rights.

Call me crazy, but I just don't see any rational argument with any of this. Preach on, Ted.

I'm a big HAM!

So a week ago I took the test for the Technician Class amateur radio license. I passed, and today I received my first callsign, KJ4RIC. I'll probably get a vanity callsign, but for now, that's my unique ID on the airwaves! Made my first transmission on the OCRA 442.150 repeater this afternoon thanks to a lot of help from Troy getting the radio setup properly. There's nothing terribly hard about it, but just a lot of little details to get figured out. Fun stuff!

Still getting my feet wet figuring everything out. Looks like some pretty neat stuff will be possible. At the very least I'll now be much safer when I mountain bike as I'll have communication capability pretty much everywhere.

March Madness

Oh yeah, baby! From the super scintillating to just plain awesome, the adrenaline levels are off the charts! This tournament is the P-T-Per of tournaments! It's awesome, baby!

Oh, sorry, got stuck in Dickie V. mode there for a second. Anyway, just needed to vent a little bit. The NCAA is apparently considering options on expanding the already-65 team field for the men's college basketball tournament. Say what? I understand there's always some whining about who got in and who didn't, but in reality, once you subtract out the automatic bids, we're talking about teams that weren't in the top 25 of college basketball. And if you weren't in the top 25, well, you didn't have much of a chance of winning anyway. So while the selection process isn't perfect, the reality is that it is pretty good and it's definitely "good enough."

I mean honestly, if the NCAA wants to change something, give us a FOOTBALL playoff! But messing with basketball is silly. But okay, let me throw out an idea. If they want to increase revenue and improve the tournament, how about considering making the Final Four a double elimination tournament? So you make it to the Final Four and then you still can lose one game and win the championship. That adds two (or perhaps three) games, but those are BIG games. HUGE. I think most fans would prefer that to another earlier weekend slammed with too many games to watch anyway.