Somewhere Else

I think it helps to watch them in this order:

According to the P-I, Christopher Monfort, the person shot by police earlier today and suspected of the killing of Seattle Police Officer Tim Brenton on Halloween, had two traffic infractions on his state record, and that’s it. I did a quick lookup at the Washington Courts site, and found that those two infractions were from 9/14/2007 and 3/11/2009. What that site doesn’t show is that on 10/16/2009, Monfort was cited in Seattle for driving without insurance. I got that from the Municipal Court of Seattle’s site.

“Monfort may have been recently laid off from a job as a security guard or private investigator, a Seattle police source familiar with the investigation said.”

Aside from being a $550 fine, that charge on the 16th would have been his third inside just over two years. I don’t know where he worked or what the terms of his employment were, but I’ve seen job listings for which you couldn’t have three or more traffic violations within the past three years. If his job had such a requirement, that Seattle ticket would have been the reason he was laid off.

The court mailed him his hearing notice on the 28th. It probably would have reached him on the 30th or 31st. If he’d been stewing for a while, that could have set him off. If he’s not the guy, then that all doesn’t mean anything. But if he is, it sounds like as good an explanation as any for what happened.

Incidentally, the suspect profile the SPD released on the 5th said, “We do believe that although he shot a police officer, he may in fact admire them and even act like them.” The car he was driving when he got the insurance ticket may have been a Crown Victoria with a spotlight, like a cop car. Records show it was a 4-door Ford, anyway, and his neighbors report that he drove a car that looked like a Crown Vic.

In my previous post, I wondered what it took to get someone convicted of vehicular homicide or assault, if they weren’t drunk or high when they committed the crime. I found one example, a guy who drove with his windows fogged over to the extent that he didn’t see someone in a crosswalk. I posited that driving blind was another way to satisfy the “disregard for the safety of others” condition, and here’s some more evidence for that:

“Although none of Mr. Foos’ doctors could cite the precise condition of Mr. Foos’ vision on Sept. 17, the inferences from their testimony establish that his vision was seriously impaired on that date,” the appeals opinion stated. “Mr. Foos’ decision to ignore his impaired vision and the advice of his doctors establishes that he drove with disregard for the safety of others.”

That’s Randall Foos, who killed 19 year old Sara Beth Casey in 2003 by driving into her while she rode her bike. So there’s another data point. Ways to get convicted for vehicular homicide or assault include being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, driving with non-transparent windows, and driving with a medical condition that affects your vision. I’m still looking for any indication that a history of driving infractions is enough to do it. It ought to be.

I’d like to point out to the “no morality without religion” crowd and to the folks who think I wrote about Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz because I’m an anti-semite, that Randall Foos was a pastor at a Kennewick church when he killed Sara Casey, and that after he illegally left the state following his conviction, he got another job as a pastor in Las Vegas. So, you know, I’ll go a step farther than I did with Rabbi Schwartz, and say that not only should Randall Foos never be allowed to drive again, he also isn’t fit to lead a congregation. I hope they throw the book at him.

After reading a number of posts about the recent “Traffic Justice Summit” ^{1, 2, 3, 4}, I got to wondering–what, realistically, could a non-drunk driver who kills or injures a pedestrian or cyclist be charged with? I’m not a lawyer, so my interpretation of the RCW and SMC are what they are. (Although it doesn’t look like being a lawyer would help much, in this regard.)

This is a long one, so I’m adding a cut.

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the start of Emperor Norton’s reign.

I think that to observe the occasion, I’ll scan and make facsimile PDF versions of a bunch of the old books and pamphlets I have about him. Stuff from the 1930s and earlier that’s not in the public domain, but probably won’t have anyone sending me takedown notices. I’ll also fix the one I scanned nine years ago, and just today realized is missing a few pages.

If you’re interested in Norton, the Wikipedia page is a good start. But probably the best single book on Norton is Norton I, Emperor of the United States, by William Drury. It’s out of print and expensive, but occasionally a copy shows up on ebay for a decent price.

Somehow, I’ve been signed up for the “Stop The Bag Tax” mailing list. And last night I got a call from an opinion research company clearly doing a poll for the anti-bag-tax operation. I’m generally pro-bag-tax, but I hadn’t really done much research, so I decided to look into it. The email directed me to visit StopTheGroceryBagTax.com for more facts. Unfortunately, that domain doesn’t exist. StopTheBagTaxSeattle.com and StopTheSeattleBagTax.com do, however.

Among the “facts” listed there:

+ “Grocery items from big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target? Also could be exempt.”

There isn’t a Wal-Mart in Seattle, which is the city this tax applies to. Good attempt at trying to ride anti-Wal-Mart sentiment, though. And what’s this “could”? Are they exempt, or aren’t they? (Update: not exempt, according to Crosscut.)

+ “Seattle reports 595 bags per person per year (Seattle Public Utilities’ Frequently Asked Questions, page 5). Average “family” nationwide is 3.14 people (source: U.S. Census). Thus average family uses 1,868 bags. At 20 cents per bag, that is $374 per average family per year ($300 to be conservative)”

Isn’t the point of the bag tax that taxing the bags encourages people not to use them? How many of those 595 bags per year only held one item? How many of them would be declined if it cost 20 cents instead of being free? Instead of paying $300/year for disposable bags, wouldn’t people just pay a few bucks for a few reusable bags and… reuse them? (The average family uses over five disposable grocery bags every single day of the year? Wow. That sounds like behavior I’d like to discourage.)

+ “a new tax that tries to force Seattle residents to do what 91% of us are already voluntarily…”

Wait, 91% of us are already reusing and recycling bags, and we’re still getting 595 new bags a year, each? Man, we really need this tax, don’t we? Or an outright ban.

+ “To implement the tax on paper and plastic bags, businesses will have to spend money and time creating a system to track and report the number of grocery bags given out and the tax money collected.”

Too bad there’s no system already in place for tracking and reporting items sold and tax collected at grocery stores. I bet some clever inventor could come up with some sort of device to register purchases made and cash received. Some sort of … cash… register?

So, who are the people who keep emailing, mailing and calling me to tell me how much money I’m going to lose because of this tax? According to stopthebagtaxseattle.com, they are:

Paid for by the Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax.
Coalition Members:
7-Eleven Inc.
Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council

Huh. 7-Eleven and manufacturers of plastic bags. But, wait, stoptheseattlebagtax.com has a different list:

The “Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax” is an alliance of responsible Seattle residents, independent organizations, and business groups who have joined together [...]

- Korean American Grocers Association
- Washington Association of Neighborhood Stores
- The Convenience Group, LLC
- 7-Eleven
- Independent Business Association
- Central Area Motivation Program
- Sunrise Media
- Mac Capitol, LLC

7-Eleven’s still in there, but where did Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Chemistry Council go? Surely they aren’t trying to hide the fact that the plastic industry is spending over a million dollars to defeat this tax (compared to around $64,000 being spent by the other side), are they?

Well, at least they’re local, right? I mean, it’s not entirely being run by the plastic industry. It’s being run by… let’s see…

stopthebagtaxseattle.com – sam_mcmakin@americanchemistry.com
stoptheseattlebagtax.com – sam_mcmakin@americanchemistry.com

Hrm. Sam McMakin of American Chemistry. Maybe he’s local. Or maybe not.

Well, but what about the phone numbers on those domain registrations? They could be local. 866-478-2696 looks like it belongs to Washington Food Industry, a trade association with a membership which “spans from growers to grocers who collaborate to promote the principles of Free Enterprise to ensure a vigorous, competitive, economically healthy food industry.” Sounds good, although I prefer “healthy” to “economically healthy” when it comes to food. And 253-209-5079? That’s the number of Jan Gee, the President/CEO of Washington Food Industry [cite]. It’s also the number of Jan Gee, contact for the 20th Northwest Festival of Clowns. AKA Cupcake the Clown, who specializes in Christian messages for Children and Adults.

I don’t really know what to do with this. The people listed as contacts for the coalition to stop the bag tax are a representative of the plastics industry:

and a Christian clown:

Oh, and http://www.stopthebagtaxseattle.com/? That’s just a frame wrapper around this page, hosted at americanchemistry.com. That’s quite a coalition.

Cam pointed this out to me just now, and I remembered that I’d come across it before and wondered what was up:

That’s Google Maps, calling Green Lake by an incorrect plural name, “Green Lakes“. MapQuest, Yahoo and Bing all get it right:

There are also a bunch of golf sites which seem to think that there’s a Green Lakes Golf Course on the south side of Green Lake. There’s a Green Lakes course in New York, and another in British Columbia, but the course in Seattle is singular: Green Lake Golf Course.

Where’s that “s” coming from?

What’s particularly weird is that if you search for “green lake, seattle“, the map centers at I-5 and 85th, where it’s calling the neighborhood “Green Lakes”. If you search for “green lakes, seattle“, the map centers on the lake itself, labeled “Green Lake Park”.

Via metafilter, Tim Erickson performing “Amazing Grace”:

(direct link in case embedding doesn’t work)

Be sure to watch to the end, for the throat-singing. Also be sure to check out Tim’s discography, which has many full albums available for free streaming. My problem at the moment is deciding which two or three I want to buy right now and which can wait until later.

I was listening to Obama’s press conference on the radio this evening, and it struck me that he missed the opportunity for a good joke. A reporter had just asked him if he could guarantee that, with a government-funded public health care option in place, nobody would be denied treatment because of their insurance; that all medical decisions would be made between the doctor and the patient, with no interference from their government-run insurance. (I can’t find a transcript which includes the questions from the press yet, or I’d quote him exactly.)

Here’s the joke; I’m sure you’ve heard it before:

A guy goes to the ER with a mangled hand. He’s accidentally run it through some kind of industrial machine; it’s pretty messed up. It’s going to require some fairly serious surgery to fix it. The surgery is a success, and in the recovery room, with his hand all bound up, the guy asks the doctor, “after I’m healed, will I be able to play the violin?” The doctor reassures him that of course he will. “That’s great”, says the guy. “I couldn’t before the accident!”

*rimshot*

See, it’s funny, because what that reporter was asking about, we already don’t have. Ha ha.

I don’t even know what to say about this.

Remember the whole violet blue thing at BoingBoing last year? The bit where Xeni Jardin disappeared a bunch of posts by, about, or tangentially related to Violet Blue, and then there was a shitstorm in the blogosphere about whether, given Cory Doctorow’s views on the reputation economy and such, that was something BoingBoing ought to be doing? And then BoingBoing’s site policies were silently updated to make that sort of thing ok, and everyone involved patted themselves on the back and learned some lessons about how to run a large site with comments? Or something? Yeah…

It was inevitable that when Amazon reached into its customers Kindles and removed copies of 1984 and Animal Farm, Cory would have something to say about it. DRM! Amazon! Orwell! Inevitable. Here’s his post. The second comment there points out the parallels between what Amazon did and what BoingBoing did during last year’s unpleasantness. And, also inevitably, that commenter is shouted down by fans (some of whom are moderators) who insist that there is no equivalence whatsoever. (Seriously, the commenting culture there is kind of fucked up and fannish.)

I made a comment defending the point of view that there was some similarity between the two situations:

AFAIC, if Amazon wants to unpublish some e-books they sold, it’s jake with me.

*cough*

I know they aren’t the same situation, but come on, you have to see the parallels. In a reputation economy, the price we pay as readers is our attention and goodwill (and, if we have our own blogs, links). We (some of us, anyway) had the apparently unwarranted impression that posts and comments—the product being sold, if you will—were permanent, or as permanent as anything is online. And then it turned out that posts were silently removed, and comments from moderators and authors were edited or removed after publication when doing so was in the site’s best interest. And then the site policies were rewritten to make that all ok, without any mention that there’d been a policy change. There’s no comparison between that and Amazon yanking some e-books and pushing updates out to others? None at all?

I made that comment as a registered user. Here’s a screen shot (click to embiggen):

I just checked. That comment has been removed. Admittedly, it’s probably because I used the same opening line in a comment on the other post at BoingBoing about the same thing earlier on. (It’s a reference to Cory’s only comment on the whole “unpublishing” mess: “AFAIC, if one of my co-eds wants to delete some posts they made, it’s jake with me.”)

I’m sure that “double post” is the reason they deleted unpublished my comment, even if the one they deleted was substantially longer and included an actual argument, not just a snarky one-liner. That must be why. Because otherwise… is there a word for recursive irony?

I’ve been meaning to make pickles for something like five years, at least. Even bought pickling salt a while back. And I’ve bought a bunch of pickling cucumbers at least twice, and let them go bad in the fridge.

I finally made a quart of pickles this evening, using cucumbers from the raised bed in our parking strip. Aside from having to boil a whole stockpot of water for just one jar of pickles (water bath canning works best when you have a bunch of jars to process at once), it was super easy. And in a month, I’ll know if they’re tasty or not.

“Thank you for calling the Seattle Police Department. You have reached the public disclosure desk. We are unable to take your call right now. If you leave your name, number and a brief message, we will return your call as soon as possible. Thank you.”

This is the message I’ve gotten every time I called the public disclosure desk this week. I’ve left a message the first time I called each day. I have yet to hear back from them.

According to RCW 42.56.520:

Within five business days of receiving a public record request, an agency, the office of the secretary of the senate, or the office of the chief clerk of the house of representatives must respond by either (1) providing the record; (2) acknowledging that the agency, the office of the secretary of the senate, or the office of the chief clerk of the house of representatives has received the request and providing a reasonable estimate of the time the agency, the office of the secretary of the senate, or the office of the chief clerk of the house of representatives will require to respond to the request; or (3) denying the public record request.

I submitted my public records request some time around June 25, in person. The officer at the desk gave me an information sheet which said I should be receiving a response by July 3, and if I hadn’t, I should call the public disclosure desk. That sheet looked just like this, but with July 3 as the date.

I have yet to hear anything about my request. Maybe their response got lost in the mail. I don’t know. If they’d ever return my calls, maybe I would know. But as it is, nobody ever answers the phone at the number they’ve provided (I’ve called at least three times a day every day this week) and nobody returns my calls when I leave a message (one every morning this week).

This is really beginning to annoy me. I don’t want to take time off work to go back downtown and inquire in person, but it’s looking like that’s what I have to do.

Squee! In my email just now:

Faster Internet from Qwest(R) is here.

You asked us to notify you when we upgraded Internet service in your
area. Well, we just did. Now you can get thrilling connection speeds
that’ll change your online experience.

But the web page has all sorts of disclaimers about “available in selected areas only” and “available in more areas later”, so I went ahead and clicked on their customer support chat.

info: Thank you for contacting Qwest. My name is Raki S. (20254). How may I help you today?
Josh: I’m curious whether you can check actual availability of high speed service to my location, or if the services available are listed based on general area.
Raki S. (20254): I will be happy to assist you.
Raki S. (20254): I can check actual availability for Internet access at your home; if you can provide me with your entire address.
Josh: It’s [my address]
Raki S. (20254): Thank you. At your location, we do offer all of our Internet speeds; 1.5M, 7M, 12M and 20M.

Squee!

I love Speakeasy; I’ve been a customer (or employee) of theirs since 199…5? 1996? Probably 1996. I used to have a really low userid on their shell server (low three digits), so I was probably one of their first 500 dialup customers, anyway. (I lost that low customer ID six years ago when I consolidated the accounts that I was using for the DSL at my parents’ house and my own house, and they merged them both into the more recent account. *sniff*) But the highest DSL speed they can get me is 1.5/384, and I don’t reliably get even that. Apparently, I’m just too far away from the switch. But I do get a customer loyalty discount, and they don’t care that I’m running servers.

But if Qwest can actually get me a 7.0/896 connection for $42/month ($30/month for the first year), I think it might be time to switch. First, though, I think I’ll see if I can somehow switch from Covad to Qwest for the uplink and keep Speakeasy as my ISP.

(Update: doesn’t look like I can keep Speakeasy as an ISP if I go with this. I think I’ll see if I can have both installed at once, so I can test the Qwest deal for a few weeks. If it works, maybe for a month or two longer, so I can migrate everyone currently using the box in my closet for email onto gmail or dreamhost or somewhere.)

Further update, regarding prices:

Comcast’s “Performance” broadband offers “up to 15Mbps with PowerBoost”, which looks like it uses traffic shaping to boost your download speed for the first 10MB of any given transfer. I don’t know what the un-boosted speed is. I also don’t know what the upstream speed is. The listed price for that is between $43 and $60/month, depending on whether I have other Comcast services. I won’t, so let’s say $60/month for that. I don’t know if there’s a minimum length contract, or not.

Qwest’s “Titanium” broadband offers “up to 12Mbps”, and doesn’t mention anything like “for the first 10MB”. Upstream is “up to 896Kbps”, which is about three times faster than what I currently get. With basic phone service, it costs $52/month with a 2-year contract, or $65/month for no contract. Without any phone service at all, it’s $57 or $70, respectively.

So, at first glance, Qwest looks like the better deal, as long as I opt for a 2-year contract. Speakeasy is only costing $45/month, but the speed is maxing out at about 1.2/300.

And, of course, there are promotional offers. Qwest is offering $40/month for 12 months with basic phone service ($45 with no phone). Comcast is offering $20/month for 6 months, but I think that requires me to also get cable tv or voice from Comcast.

Also, there’s hardware. I don’t know how much it costs to buy a cablemodem, but I remember the lease being around $5/month. Qwest is offering a free modem ($60 value), but I can’t remember what the terms are on that. It might require a 2-year contract, but I’d probably be signing up for that anyway.

One point in Comcast’s favor is that I know I could run both Speakeasy DSL and Comcast broadband simultaneously, to provide a transition period for folks who have been using an OpenBSD system in my closet for web/mail hosting. I don’t think it’s as easy to have two DSL lines running simultaneously, so I’d probably have to move everyone to a hosted solution before signing up for Qwest.

Hrm.

Thomas Wright, a West London barrister, came home from his Lincoln’s Inn chambers one evening in January 1904 to find a mob of treasure hunters wrecking his front garden. One of them had already dug down to the base of the garden railings and was busy trying to dislodge them to see if a £50 medallion had been buried beneath. Glancing up and down Westbourne Terrace, Wright could see that many of his neighbours’ gardens had been invaded too. This had been going on for four days.

Via metafilter, the story of London’s newspaper treasure hunt riots is a fascinating read. The author, Paul Slade, also has a cool set of articles about murder ballads.

In fact, there are a bunch of really interesting investigative historical essays at Planet Slade. If there had been stuff like this in any of my high school history classes, I think my academic career (such as it was) would have been substantially different.

Hot dog! I can stream Hulu to my Xbox 360 via TVersity Pro running under Fusion. Looks like maybe TVersity Pro includes an embedded Firefox for playing content from “premium websites“.

A test run earlier was a little blocky/jerky, but I suspect that’s mostly my crappy DSL. (1.5/384 is really the best I can get here? Bah.) Might be time to check Comcast’s internet-only package prices again… Also, time to crawl under the house and finish running cat5 to the room where the tv and xbox are.

Update: Oooh. According to Qwest:

Fiber optic fast Internet service should be available in your area by the end of October, 2009.

It might be worth waiting for that. Between Comcast and Qwest, which is the lesser of two evils? I’m not sure.

Auto-Tune the News #5 is the best yet:

On ask.metafilter.com there was a question recently about striking up a friendship with someone who is experiencing delusions, possibly of the schizophrenic type. While the question was about how to do the least harm to the delusional person, eventually someone mentioned that the questioner might want to watch out for his own safety:

My point is that even though your acquaintance seems non-threatening now, people with delusions are unstable… and engaging with an unstable person can be dangerous.

And, because I’ve participated in ask.metafilter.com for a while, I knew that pretty soon a comment defending the mentally ill as more likely to be victims would show up. Which it did:

Generally, it is safe to talk to delusional people. In the vast majority of crimes involving the mentally ill, the mentally ill person is the victim.

I know this is one of Cam’s pet peeves, and it’s become one of mine as well. I posted this response:

In the vast majority of crimes involving the mentally ill, the mentally ill person is the victim.

While true, this doesn’t actually say anything about whether people with severe mental illness are more likely than the general population to be perpetrators of a violent crime. Which, it appears, they are, somewhat. Mental illness may not itself be a predictor of violent crime, but substance abuse seems to increase the likelihood that someone with severe mental illness will engage in violent crime more than it does among the general population. (And while I haven’t found any studies which explicitly say this, it seems like a lot of them imply that severe mental illness is a predictor for poverty and homelessness, which is a predictor for substance abuse.) And among victims of violent crime perpetrated by the severely mentally ill, the majority are acquaintances or family members.

So, yes, this guy is way more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than he is to make you the victim of a violent crime. But he’s also somewhat more likely to do you violence than he would be if he weren’t mentally ill. Especially if you get to know him. And extra especially if he’s a substance abuser.

The only comment addressing that since then has been this:

More on violence and mental illness. Summary – you’re in more danger crossing the road than talking to this guy.

Now, ignoring for the moment that the link provided is part of a campaign to destigmatize mental illness—hardly an unbiased presentation of information—that’s a completely irrelevant comparison. Yes, you’re more likely to die in an auto collision than by being stabbed by a severely mentally ill person. You probably also have a lot more interactions with autos than with the severely mentally ill.

Imagine if the question had been, “there’s a grizzly bear cub in the park. Should I pet it, or could that cause its mother to reject it?” Would a reasonable response be to say that more people are killed by cars than by bears, so don’t worry about playing with the bear? Because, you know, that’s true too: more people are killed by cars than by bears. And it’s probably also true that in human/bear interactions, more often the bear is the victim of violence than the perpetrator. But neither of those say anything about whether it’s safe to play with bears.

Now, I’ve been known to interact with crackpots myself. It’s a habit I’m trying to break. And I certainly don’t mean to imply that every person with a mental illness is likely to flip out and kill you with no warning. But, you know, given the choice of making friends with the delusional person and not making friends with them, I’m going to have to go with “not”. Don’t pet the bear.

Presented without comment, Raymond Scott and his Quintet(te):

Powerhouse (mp4)

Twilight in Turkey (mp4)

War Dance For Wooden Indians (mp4)

Ok, I lied about the “without comment”. If you grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons, you’re already familiar with the work of Raymond Scott. I’m not sure I’m a fan of his later electronic music, but his pre-war jazz is awesome. Even without the positive associations from cartoons, this is some damn fine stuff. You can get an album of mp3s from Amazon for $9: The Music Of Raymond Scott: Reckless Nights And Turkish Twilights. You may be surprised by how much of his stuff you recognize. I know I was.

I stopped at Los Reyes Tienda Mexicana on the way in to work today and picked up an assortment of paletas. They’re in the freezer at work, and as I try them, I’ll add to this post.

+ Chunks O’ Fruti Strawberry Cream

Didn’t care for this one. Good strawberry flavor, but too sweet, and completely the wrong texture for an ostensibly creamy paleta. There was a creamy flavor, I guess, but this was definitely an ice-based paleta, not a milk-based one, so it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. If they have a plain strawberry flavor, it would probably be better. Not recommended.

Ingredients: strawberries, water, fructose, maltodextrin, whole milk, whey powder, guar gum, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, carrageenan and locust bean gum. (118ml)

+ Paleteria La Princesa Rice

Horchata-flavored, really, what with the cinnamon. Very tasty, but with a slightly gummy texture. Definitely closer to what I was expecting, but I think still a little over-processed. Points off for corn syrup, too. Recommended, with reservations.

Ingredients: ice cream mix (milk, cream, corn syrup, whey, mono and diglycerides, locust bean gum, guar gum, carrageenan), rice, sugar, water, cinnamon, natural and artificial flavor. (150ml)

+ Chunks O’ Fruti Coconut

Again, a little sweet for my liking. And despite milk being the first ingredient, it’s still got the texture of an ice-based paleta. Since there’s already coconut cream in these, they probably could have left it water-based and not used the milk. A good amount of coconut flake, though—not too much, not too little—and well-distributed throughout the bar, not all lumped at the top. I’m neutral on this one.

Ingredients: skim milk, fructose, sucrose, coconut flakes, coconut cream, maltodextrin, whey, natural stabilizers (guar gum, xanthan gum and dextrose) (118ml)

+ La Princesa Vanilla

This (like the horchata flavor) says “ice cream bar” on the package, but unlike the horchata bar isn’t what I’d call ice cream. Ice cream bars should have the consistency of ice cream—you shouldn’t be able to cleave bites off and see a long crystalline structure on the broken face. So this is an ice bar, not an ice cream bar. I didn’t care for the first few bites, probably because of the raisins which had settled to the bottom as it froze. But it grew on me. I wish the wrapper had been printed such that I could read the ingredients, because there’s a secondary flavor besides the vanilla that I can’t quite identify. It might be the raisins, but I don’t think so. Vanilla’s a tricky flavor to get right; too much is cloying and not enough is bland. This one struck a pretty good balance, I thought. Recommended.

Ingredients: ? (150ml)

+ Chunks O’ Fruti Piña Colada

There’s nothing really wrong with this one. There are, as advertised, plenty of chunks of pineapple. It could probably have used some coconut solids, though. On the bright side, it wasn’t over-sweetened. I was beginning to think that all the Chunks O’ Fruti bars might be too sweet, but I guess not. Tasty, but unmemorable, so… recommended?

Ingredients: pineapple, water, coconut cream, fructose, sucrose, natural stabilizers (guar gum, carob bean gum, carrageenan), citric acid. (118ml)

Number of cyclists required to slow traffic on I-99 during last Friday’s evening commute: looks like a few hundred

Number of drivers required to stop traffic on I-5 during Monday’s morning commute: looks like about seven

Hmm.

(My pal Jake pointed out that it would probably only take a dozen or so cyclists to stop traffic like that, which is true. On the other hand, Critical Mass happens at a predictable time, once a month, and usually sticks to surface streets. Auto accidents shutting down the freeway are unpredictable and also more common.)