Month: January 2006

Strike Two for SUVs

Not only are they massively fuel-inefficient, they are NOT safer for the kiddies:

Children are no safer riding in sport utility vehicles than in passenger cars, largely because the doubled risk of rollovers in SUVs cancels out the safety advantages of their greater size and weight, according to a study.

Researchers said the findings dispel the bigger-equals-safer myth that has helped fuel the growing popularity of SUVs among families. SUV registrations climbed 250 percent in the United States between 1995 and 2002.

“We’re not saying they’re worse or that they’re terrible vehicles. We’re challenging the conventional wisdom that everyone assumed they were better,” said Dr. Dennis Durbin, a pediatric emergency physician who took part in the study, published Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics.

Good. Maybe people will finally stop clogging the roads with them and I will once again be able to actually see more than one car in front of me when stuck in traffic.

What He Said

Ezra:

Bush’s actions were illegal. And that’s all there is to that. You can argue that they were justified, or righteous, or that the legislative structure is outmoded and wrong, but none of that changes the fact that they were in flagrant violation of the law of the land, a law the White House could have attempted to amend or asked the Supreme Court to invalidate. Which means that not only were Bush’s actions illegal, but he offered no attempt to make them legal. It wasn’t simply that he thought the law outdated, it’s that he believed it didn’t, and shouldn’t, apply to him.

Digby also indulges in some lovely irony, quoting some nice Rep. Henry Hyde rhetoric from the Clinton impeachment:

That none of us is above the law is a bedrock principle of democracy. To erode that bedrock is to risk even further injustice. To erode that bedrock is to subscribe, to a “divine right of kings” theory of governance, in which those who govern are absolved from adhering to the basic moral standards to which the governed are accountable.

I suppose this is another case of IOKIYAR, though.

You Can Take The Girl Out of New York

So Scott and I had a quiet New Year’s at home. We cooked up a yummy dinner (grilled wild salmon and pasta with asparagus and a lemon cream sauce), watched “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and various add-ons from the DVD, and then flipped the TV on at midnight to watch a rebroadcast of the ball dropping in NYC.

At which point I got incredibly homesick, and started crying when Sinatra’s “New York, New York” came on. This morning I’m still sad. There’s something in the air that makes me wish I were tramping the streets of the West Village, heading off for brunch in a noisy diner, and then just out for a walk, maybe clutching a carton of coffee to keep my hands warm.

We only got home to NY once in 2005, and I think that has something to do with why I’m feeling so homesick today. I need a city fix.

It comes down to reality
And it