breakfast first

Oh damn, that's good stuff

Read this strip in the SF Weekly over lunch today (at Caffe Puccini). Zing!

California's SUV Ban

Here's an interesting article on how some of large SUVs may not legally be driven on many residential roads in California and other states where there is a 6,000 pound weight limit:

Here's what few people seem to realize: By weighing in at more than 6,000 pounds, big SUVs are prohibited on thousands of miles of road in California. Cities across the state—including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Santa Monica—use the 3-ton cutoff for many or nearly all of their residential streets. State law gives them the ability to do this for very straightforward reasons: The heavier the vehicle, the more it chews up the roads, endangers pedestrians and smaller vehicles, and makes noise.

"However," the the author goes on to state, "as I can attest from standing on my front porch, prosecution of the Golden State's ban on big SUVs isn't what you'd call robust. In fact, it's a contender for the least enforced traffic regulation in America." Too bad.

California's SUV Ban: The Golden State has outlawed big SUVs on many of its roads but doesn't seem to know it.

If I can't cuss freely, the terrorists have already won

Crazy story about a woman who was arrested and detained for three hours because she was eating a candy bar while entering a D.C. subway station. Well, it was probably her sassin' the transit cop that got her in trouble. According to the article, this sort of thing isn't uncommon there. But the part that disturbed me was a paragraph near the end:

In 2002, one of their officers ticketed a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy patient for cursing when he was unable to find a working elevator to leave a station. Unflattering publicity eventually led the police to void the ticket.

For cursing?! Seriously? I wasn't able to find an article online about that incident to get more facts, but that sounds, uh, fucking unbelievable. Oops.

If any D.C. transit cops read this blog (ha!), I recommend they check out Geoff Nunberg's essay "Obscenity Rap". (Warning: dirty words and linguistics inside!)