Anyone going to the Blog Meetup in London? This month’s one is held at:
Browns, 47, Maddox St Mayfair, London,
on Wednesday, December 18 @ 7:00PM
I’m going to be in London that day anyway, so I’ll be there if it actually gets a quorum.
Update: Cancelled due to lack of support. Probably because it clashes with the LOTR premiere…
For reasons best known to itself, this humble weblog is listed at #3 in Popdex : the website popularity index. I suspect this is a statistical quirk, perhaps helped by the fact I’m apparently referenced by three different versions of A Small Victory. If you’ve wandered in from Popdex, welcome anyway, and have a look around!
I suppose I’ve only got myself to blame for getting myself a verse on one of Silflay Hraka mutated carols.
Where Worlds Collide has been plotting
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,
To start out with some trainspotting,
On Christmas day in the morning!
Of course, there are no trains running on Christmas day, except of course for the model ones…
Carnival of the Vanities #12 is hosted by the Id of the Blogosphere, Amish Tech Support. Go there now!
Yes, I know it’s in bad taste, but I have nominated my nine people for the Blogosphere Death Pool, who I think might encounter the hooded skelington WHO SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS. My celebrity victims are:
Margaret Thatcher
Norman Tebbit
Rev. Ian Paisley
Pope John Paul II
Robert Mugabe
Rupert Murdoch
Vladimir Putin
George W Bush
Yngwie Malmsteen
Entrants get points based on their age if any of their nominees ring down the curtain and join the choir invisible during 2003. One of the rules is that I’m not allowed to kill them myself (unless the names are Saddam Hussein or Yasser Arafat)
This review, “Bumper Mentality” of a new book called “High and Mighty” (nothing to do with Uriah Heep) paints a very dim picture of SUVs and their drivers.
Ask a typical SUV driver why he drives such a formidable vehicle, and he’ll invariably insist that it’s for safety reasons–the kids, you know–not because he’s too vain to get behind the wheel of a sissy Ford Windstar. Automakers themselves know otherwise–their own market research tells them so. But Bradsher makes painfully clear that the belief in SUV safety is a delusion. For decades, automakers seeking to avoid tougher fuel economy standards have invoked the fiction that the bigger the car, the safer the passenger. As a result, most Americans take it on faith that the only way to be safe on the highway is to be driving a tank (or the next best thing–a Hummer). Bradsher shatters this myth and highlights the strange disconnect between the perception and the reality of SUVs.
The occupant death rate in SUVs is 6 percent higher than it is for cars–8 percent higher in the largest SUVs. The main reason is that SUVs carry a high risk of rollover; 62 percent of SUV deaths in 2000 occurred in rollover accidents. SUVs don’t handle well, so drivers can’t respond quickly when the car hits a stretch of uneven pavement or “trips” by scraping a guardrail. Even a small bump in the road is enough to flip an SUV traveling at high speed.
Sounds like the “SUVs are safer” meme spread by the car industry’s advertising is a Big Lie worthy of Joseph Goebbels. And as for anything else:
While failing to protect their occupants, SUVs have also made the roads more dangerous for others. The “kill rate,” as Bradsher calls it, for SUVs is simply jaw-dropping. For every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. Government researchers have found that a behemoth like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord only kills 21. Injuries in SUV-related accidents are likewise more severe.
While this article focuses on America, we have a plague of the things here in Britain too, sadly not even European levels of fuel taxes are a deterrent.
(Link from Boing Boing)
Update: Michele is not impressed. Not that I thought she would be.
This week’s Carnival of the Vanities (#11) is hosted by A Small Victory. Enjoy!
Patrick Crozier has been assimated into the Moveable Type borg – His UK Transport can now be found at www.transportblog.com.
Congratulations to Andrew Ian Dodge and Sasha Castel!
Now up at Silflay Hraka! Bigger and better than ever!