Here’s someone who could have enjoyed fomer UT President John Shumaker’s proposed “Rocky Top Cafe” in China.

There’s plenty of people on the roads this weekend. Fittingly, the New York Times has an interesting information on U.S. road safety:

The United States, long the safest place in the world to drive and still much better than average among industrialized nations, is being surpassed by other countries.
Even though the nation has steadily lowered its traffic death rates, its ranking has fallen from first to ninth over the last 30 years, according to a review of global fatality rates adjusted for distances traveled.
. . .
Many safety experts cite several reasons the United States has fallen in the rankings, despite having vehicles equipped with safety technology that is at least as advanced as, if not more than, any other nation. They include lower seat-belt use than other nations; a rise in speeding and drunken driving; a big increase in deaths among motorcyclists, many of whom do not wear helmets; and the proliferation of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, which are more dangerous to occupants of other vehicles in accidents and roll over more frequently.
. . .
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta has laid out an ambitious target of reducing the nation’s traffic death rate to 1 death per 100 million miles traveled from 1.5 deaths by 2008. That would translate into roughly 12,000 fewer deaths per year, given projections for increased road use. Last year in the United States, 42,815 people died in traffic accidents, the most since 1990.
. . .
Getting to his target would require a radically faster pace of improvement. As of last year, the death rate in the United States had fallen to 1.51 deaths per 100 million miles traveled from 1.58 in 1998.
Since 1970, the United States traffic death rate has fallen from nearly 4.8 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. By 2000, the rate in Britain had fallen to 1.2 deaths per 100 million miles from 6.1 in 1970. The new figure is the lowest traffic death rate compiled by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects a variety of statistics from industrialized countries.
Australia’s death rate has fallen from 7.13 in 1971 � the country did not estimate distances traveled the previous year � to 1.45 in 2001. Canada’s death rate is slightly less.
. . .
Other nations have much higher rates. Turkey’s was close to 11.74 deaths per 100 million miles in 2001 and the Czech Republic was 5.21. The economic organization’s median figure in 2001 was about 2.1 deaths.

I wonder if any of these international traffic studies attempt to factor in the proportion of female drivers.

Here’s an assignment I never had in parochial school:

Author J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, is an American classic that has been required high school reading for decades.
The book is has been known as a “coming of age book,” but it’s also remembered for its use of the “F” word.
“My teacher decided that it would be best to have the students go home and say in private the phrase ‘F-U,’ 10,000 times in different dialogues and different ways and tones and stuff, so that we’d become desensitized to it and wouldn’t have to worry about it,” said Chantilly High School student Jeff Daybell.
Most of the students in English teacher Rich Tucker’s class weren’t bothered, but Daybell — a Mormon — said he was offended.

Oversensitivity to profanity–that’s a real problem these days.
Via Cam Edwards.

I think I finally fixed a few bugs which were plaguing this site:

• I deleted an extra line break in the template which was causing the main window to mirror the pop-up window when you hit the trackback link.
• With a tip from the girlie matters, I added a href target to the Movable Type GlobalSanitizeSpec setting so the URL in the comment pop-up box will now open in a new window
• With help from Garry and this page, I got rid of the peekaboo-like bug which was hiding the name/e-mail/URL fields in the comment box when viewing with Internet Explorer 6.

If you notice any other bugs when viewing in a particular browser/operating system configuration, let me know.

Where principles reign:

During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress, Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to vote for the Medicare bill. But Smith refused. Then things got personal.
Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan’s southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father’s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.
. . .
Republicans voting against the bill were told they were endangering their political futures. Major contributors warned Rep. Jim DeMint they would cut off funding for his Senate race in South Carolina. A Missouri state legislator called Rep. Todd Akin to threaten a primary challenge against him.
Intense pressure, including a call from the president, was put on freshman Rep. Tom Feeney. As speaker of the Florida House, he was a stalwart for Bush in his state’s 2000 vote recount. He is the Class of 2002’s contact with the House leadership, marking him as a future party leader. But now, in those early morning hours, Feeney was told a “no” vote would delay his ascent into leadership by three years — maybe more.
Feeney held firm against the bill. So did DeMint and Akin. And so did Nick Smith. A steadfast party regular, he has pioneered private Social Security accounts. But he could not swallow the unfunded liabilities in this Medicare bill. The 69-year-old former dairy farmer this week was still reeling from the threat to his son. “It was absolutely too personal,” he told me.

Don’t forget the 15-minute roll call which was held open an unprecedented three hours while two Republicans were hammered into switching their votes.
Victory at any cost.