So I get really upset by unsafe driving, and the inevitable consequence of unsafe driving, traffic accidents. If it were possible for you to drive dangerously but for everyone else to be safe, then that would be a personal choice I'd be willing to let you make. One might claim that good defensive driving will inure someone from the consequences of another driver's unsafe choices. Keep safe following distance, be aware of the traffic around you, and if someone does something dangerous, you have a safe way out. While this may be true (ignoring the truly reckless driver who simply collides with you on purpose), even if you are not involved in an accident, it can have negative effects on you. I have observed many relatively minor accidents causing huge congestion on LA's freeways.

But here's where I start to wonder. How huge is that congestion in real terms? How many person-hours does a fender bender in rush hour traffic actually cost? Would people drive more safely if they knew this?

I also wonder if people realize their driving habits are unsafe. I recently accepted a ride from a friend of mine who I had always considered thoughtful and to have good judgment. She drove like a maniac, leaving no following distance, changing lanes erratically and generally not paying attention to the traffic around her. Of course, nothing bad happened during the ride. We arrived safely and probably got to our destination quite a bit sooner than we would have if I were driving. Because consequences can be so severe for something going wrong on the road (e.g. death), it seems smarter to me to err on the side of caution, but maybe I'm being overcautious.

How severe of a problem is, for example, tailgating? I think it would be neat (and here comes the call for action) to 1) look into the questions about the cost to society of (minor) traffic accidents and 2) develop some kind of simulator for tailgating. The simulator idea could even be kind of fun. Let the user select a speed and following distance. Then display a view out the front of your car of the car in front of you. It could be scaled for distance. After a random, short interval the car in front would suddenly brake. The user would then have to click a button marked "brake." Based on the user's reaction, the simulator would calculate if a collision occurred and then display the personal cost of the accident followed by an estimate of the cost to society of the accident. Of course, if there was no accident the user wins this round and tries again.

A lot of research would need to get done in order to make something like that useful. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. Leave a comment if you know the answer to these questions, or if you have a hint where I should look.

Ok, so here are a couple of fun LA moments from my life:

I was going out for breakfast with a couple people on Sunday two weeks ago, but for some reason traffic on Fairfax was moving super slow. It turns out the road was closed and everyone was being diverted. We went up a side-street paralleling Fairfax. As we stopped at a stop sign, I looked over toward Fairfax and saw a giant elephant just kind of walking around in this suburban neighborhood. There was also a film crew.

Also, I just got an email announcing that this Wednesday they are going to be using the building where I work to shoot part of an episode of nip/tuck. Fascinating.

Google whack: cromulent minuend.

So I've got my ubuntu server up and running. So far it's just acting as a file (samba) and print (cups) server for my local network. I got brave, though, and poked through my firewall/router to let ssh traffic through. I registered at no-ip.com and I think I have their ip updater client running, so now I can ssh to benvis.no-ip.org and poke around my files from an offsite computer. I was thinking of trying to setup my laptop to automatically back itself up to the ubuntu server, and I came across a nice how-to backup a windows pc to an ubuntu server over ssh. I'll be working through it later, but I thought I'd let the tubes know what I was up to.

There you have it, folks. Proof positive that spam is evil.

I was involved in the production of this video which was presented at the USC Neuroscience Graduate Program 2007 retreat.

Through no real fault of my own, I am now the owner of an iPod Nano.

Maybe it's because I'm a control freak, or maybe I'm just a bad person, but I don't really like software that Just works^TM. I want to be directing software to work, not watching it just kind of do its own thing. As such, iTunes and me don't get along. A brief googling (they hate it when you do that) turned up no real advice. Pretty much, everyone pats you on the butt (via html, of course) and says don't worry sweetie, it'll be alright. It just works!

So has anyone figured out how to bend the iPod to your will? I am willing to do the learning to make it work, and here's what I want to make it do:

I want to rip cds and put them on my ipod. I want to download podcasts (is that the right term? Npr shows are always saying I can download them somehow). I want to be able to do the downloading and ripping on whatever computer I feel like using without having to mess around. Any suggestions?

I'm in Galway, Ireland. I've been doing a lot of driving (on the left!) lately, but soon we're off to the Aran Islands, where there'll be no driving for me.

I'm leaving for Ireland (the republic thereof, to be specific) tomorrow. I'll be back in two weeks. Leave me a comment and I'll drink an Irish Stout just for you!

So, Brik Wars sounds like a whole lot of fun. Or at least it sounds like a whole lot of attempt to recapture happy moments from childhood. Either way, it makes me want to go out and buy LEGO stuff. Man, now I just need to get my old lego collection out of my Mom's attic. She'd probably appreciate that. And if this doesn't look like fun to you, then you're probably not half the nerd I thought you were:

I haven't been posting about Cal Rugby mostly because I'm no longer in the area. I tried to go to the UCLA tournament, but I'm kind of stupid so I showed up about 10 minutes after the tournament was over. I can, however, offer a brief summary of the season.

Cal took the national championship in a finals match against BYU with a final of 37-7. Cal took the 'Rugby World Cup' (awarded to the overall point leader in two matches against University of British Columbia) with two wins over UBC. Cal lost only one game by only 6 points, and that wasn't against another school but against the 2006 Rugby Super League champions.

In all, it was another excellent season. Goooo Bears!

Do you love to knulla? The owner of this particular automobile probably does.

I saw that outside a burger joint in Santa Monica. Camera phone + bluetooth laptop = win!

A hipster walks into a bar...

From Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade : A Duty-dance with Death

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922 - 2007

This game reminded me of the oldschool game called Harmony. Good times.

I was going to post about Senator Chuck Schumer (D New York) and his imaginary middle-class friends, the Baileys. I got sidetracked, though, by the New Yorker caption contest.

Are you bothered by the radical liberal slant of the media? Or maybe a better question is: are you bothered by the radical liberal slant of people on the internet? People in general? The Bible itself? Well, now there's a place for you to write stuff: behold, Conservapedia. Note most of the touted 4,500 articles are a sentence or less in length and contain no citations (so there's plenty for you to do). For some reason, I'm reminded of Bender from Futurama: "Yeah! Well, I'm gonna go build my own theme park. With blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the park!"

The debate pages are kind of interesting. As an example, the "Should Creationism/Intelligent design be taught as a scientific alternative to evolution in public schools?" debate manages to be pretty even-handed.

As part of the general effort to recruit new students, we had a graduate student research symposium today. After the symposium, we took the recruits on a photo scavenger hunt. It started on USC central campus, but then we hopped on the train up to hollywood and took wacky pictures. I mention this only as a vehicle to brag about my second celebrity siting. In front of the Kodak theater were David Beckham and Posh Spice. Woohoo.

I might even post some of the photos from the scavenger hunt if I can get them from the camera owner.

Update: here's the celebrity photo.

So thanks to Samay and a few other people, I was inspired to head over to LACMA (that's LA County Museum of Art) to check out an exhibit of Magritte and Magritte-inspired work. There was a pretty long line to get tickets (at seventeen bucks for students, 20 for general), and an even longer line to actually get in. this was at, oh, about 1:40 pm. Take note of that time before you click the next link.

About five minutes later, people seemed to be exiting the exhibit en masse. On their lips were incredible rumors of some kind of arthropod invasion. You can imagine what I did upon seeing that lines already close to my threshold for waiting were growing ever-longer in concert with the mass exodus AND the fact that nobody was getting in the door. It's true. I gave up and went to look at art with no waiting and no cost of admission.

Now, today, it's all over the news. Be warned. The ladybugs are back, with a vengeance.

ps I linked to LA Times because they, at least, got the story right. For some reason the A.P. thinks this all happened on Friday.

So I got a Nintendo Wii a few weeks ago. I have, in addition to wii sports, the newest Zelda game, plus two gamecube games. I'm posting about it now because I got it hooked up to these here internets and now have a ravenous hunger for friend codes. I don't even know what that means, really, but it grips me.

Remember, if your clothes catch on fire, Stop, Drop and Roll. Like a cookie monster. Unless you're in hell. I've heard it doesn't work there.

Witness my new-found prowess with photoshop and illustrator! Behold: my gorgeous poster.

Ok, here's the photo of the disasterous failure of the glass martini shaker.

And here are the dire results.

PS Thanks for the image shack idea, Ken. Also, from my initial observations, the bartender does pour into the pint glass first. This is consistent with my hypothesis, although it doesn't rule out many other hypotheses.

Google image labeler is a lot of fun, and it's right up my alley. Try to cooperate with an anonymous stranger on the internet. Also, "accretion" seems to be a popular choice.

And yes, I'm aware I'm voluntarily spending my free time enriching google share-holders. On the other hand, I just noticed I own like, 2% of one share of google.

Bed Bath and Beyond sells a very pretty etched glass martini set. Features include 4 uniquely styled martini glasses, glass olive toothpicks, and a glass shaker that explodes the first time you use it.

That's right. It shattered in my hand, producing minor lacerations in three places on my fingers. It wasn't serious, but it was kind of a downer on new year's eve. I'd stay away from this one. Also, I have pictures. Any recommendations for how to get them up on the webertron?