Evel Knievel, the hard-living, death-defying adventurer who went from stealing motorcycles to riding them in a series of spectacular airborne stunts in the 1960s and ’70s that brought him worldwide fame as the quintessential daredevil performer, died yesterday in Clearwater, Fla. He was 69.

Mr. Knievel had been in failing health for years with diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition. In 1999, he underwent a liver transplant after nearly dying of hepatitis C, which he believed he had contracted from a blood transfusion after one of his many violent spills.

By his own account, he underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips. “I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me,” he said.

He had a titanium hip and aluminum plates in his arms and a great many pins holding other bones and joints together. He was in so many accidents that he occasionally broke some of his metal parts, too.

His health had also been compromised by years of heavy drinking; he told reporters that at one point he was consuming a half a fifth of whiskey a day, washed down with beer chasers.

R.I.P.

Evel Knievel, 69, Daredevil on a Motorcycle, Dies - New York Times

In another blow to the Motor City's tarnished image, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation's most dangerous city, according to a private research group's controversial analysis, released Sunday, of annual FBI crime statistics.

Here we go with this again..

Ranked Most Dangerous
1. Detroit, Michigan
2. St. Louis, Missouri
3. Flint, Michigan
4. Oakland, California
5. Camden, New Jersey
6. Birmingham, Alabama
7. North Charleston, South Carolina
8. Memphis, Tennessee
9. Richmond, California
10. Cleveland, Ohio

Jersey will always have Camden. It's never going away.

I've got a peeve to bitch about here... I am completely puzzled as to why no one yammers on about Michigan being a shithole, while Jersey is widely seen as America's armpit. They have _two_ cities entrenched in serious positions on that list... Screw Michigan, seriously..

Now that I've gotten that load off my chest, I would like to point out that the truly nefarious thing going on here is the "Safest Cities" list:

Ranked Safest
1. Mission Viejo, California
2. Clarkstown, New York
3. Brick Township, New Jersey
4. Amherst, New York
5. Sugar Land, Texas
6. Colonie, New York
7. Thousand Oaks, California
8. Newton, Massachusetts
9. Toms River Township, N.J.
10. Lake Forest, California

I know both Brick Township and Toms River really well. I went to high school in Toms River and I'm in Brick all the time. These may be very safe places, as compared to somewhere like Lebanon, but all the factors that make it work out that way also contribute greatly to why they are miserable places to actually reside.

Brick Township does not "feel" safe. I can't think of another place in the US that has such a high ratio of police to people, and I work in downtown Washington, where we bathe in a sea of constant high security.. Brick is scary, because there doesn't appear to be any reason why it's necessary for it to be a police state like environment. It feels like it's unsafe as hell, because there are always cops, everywhere. There is a constant feeling that something should be going really wrong, if for no other reason than to justify why there are so many damn cops.

Next time you find yourself in the great Garden State, I suggest putting on Police and Thieves by The Clash and taking a nice drive through one of these two lovely Jersey Shore communities. You will find yourself weaving through a sea of police cars much like you would taxis in NYC, and saying things like "They must be looking for someone..."

But you will be safe... Very safe.

Experts say 'most dangerous city' rankings twist numbers - CNN.com

For their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.

Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize 2007

Acidus had a project mentioned offhandedly on the Daily Show a few months ago but Virgil has seriously raised the bar by actually getting his picture on the Colbert report! We now have a new standard for leetness around here. If you haven't been personally denounced by Steven Colbert, you just aren't that important...

WikiScanner on the Colbert Report

The 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death has passed, and news reports have stressed his continuing influence on music, culture, and race relations. But those reports have missed Elvis's greatest achievement: as a cultural immune response to totalitarianism.

This is a must read essay.

The King of Anti-Fascism

How will better matchmaking and collaborative filtering bring you better choices?

Can liars and cheats be made more accountable?

How can the barrage of advertising, spam, events, and interesting ideas be filtered more effectively?

What are effective ways to evaluate products and business partners?

How can higher-quality news media and public discourse be achieved?

Who do you trust? What do you believe?

The Reputation Society

Excerpt
Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

By Lee Iacocca
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Had Enough?

Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less
build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course."

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are
not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have.

My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to-as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey,America, wake up. These guys work for us.

Who Are These Guys, Anyway?

Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them-or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy.

And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation... [ Read More (1.9k in body) ]

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he would close down the U.S. military prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "this afternoon" because it has become a major problem in "the way the world perceives America."

"Essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like a military commission," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Making it clear that he "would not let any of those people go," Powell said, "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our more federal legal system." He said he sees no problem in detainees having the right of habeas corpus and getting their own lawyers. "Isn't that what our system is all about?"

And the crowd cheers...

Powell Calls for Closure of Military Prison at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com

Slashdot has links to two articles worth reading in Information Week about reputation and identity on the Internet.

"The idea of a transferable, semantic reputation is identity nirvana," says Fred Stutzman, co-founder of ClaimID, one of the many startups trying to help Web users create more complete and flexible online profiles.

Slashdot | Online Reputation Is Hard To Do

Imagine you could make fuel out of poor people. The only downside is that the poor people have to be converted to a combustible liquid in the process. Imagine that although there are many alternatives to using poor people as fuel, those alternatives cost way more. In fact, the alternatives are so much more expensive, widespread use would impact your standard of living by about twenty percent.

Obviously using humans for fuel would be wrong and you wouldn’t do it. But I’m not done confusing your moral compass.

Now let’s say the people who are used as fuel are volunteers, of a sort. For every twenty people who volunteer to become SUV fuel, only one will be randomly selected. The other nineteen get a host of benefits including pensions and paid educations. Let’s say human fuel is so economical that one human converted to fuel pays for the benefits to the other nineteen. And the one poor person fuels an entire town’s energy needs for a year.

In this scenario, you’d be powering your car with liquefied poor people, but your conscience would be cleared by the knowledge they all volunteered. It’s a free country. They took the chance of being one of the nineteen lucky ones, but it didn’t work out. Some volunteered because they thought it was their best chance for upward mobility. Some thought it was their patriotic duty. But it was their decision. No one forced them.

Let’s say the politicians argue that in the long run, this policy of using poor people for fuel will save lives. The thinking is that we’ll eventually develop other fuel sources, but for now we need the strong economy to pay for health care and a strong national defense against terrorists and whatnot. All of the volunteers are hailed as heroes.

Under those conditions would you use poor people to fuel your car?

Bonus question: Are you already doing something close to that?

Be all that you can be.

Scott Adams: Fuel