People are stupid.

Seriously. People are stupid.

Today leaving work, I was maybe three or four steps in front of a woman. We were going through one of those foyers where there are two sets of doors to pass through, placed possibly 10 feet apart or so. Going through the first set, I held the door for the lady, and she walked up to the already opened door that I was holding and she pushed the handicapped "automatic door" button. Then at the next set of doors, I again held the door for her and she again hit the power door button.

What the hell?

And what is with the drivers who get pissed off when you are walking through a crosswalk - like you delayed them 13 seconds or so. They floor it and accelerate at top speed for 41.7 feet where they need to stop at the next light. Great use of fuel there buck-o! And I am sure it is really good for your car too genius. Seriously - with downtown Portland's blocks being less than 200 feet there is NEVER any reason to try and accelerate hard - you'll just end up stopped again.

Of course I have always wondered what is the motivation for people to pull into the intersection so that they get stuck there when the light turns red. Blocking the intersection really doesn't help you at all - and yet annoys everyone else.

Maybe people are not so stupid, but more like oblivious to what is around them. Oblivious to other people. Oblivious to just about anything except themselves and their own shallow little world.

Whatever...

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Free Topographical Maps

The Libre Maps project has purchased and made available for free all of the USGS Topographical maps of the USA. All 50 states. The maps have always been free sort-of, there was just no where until now to actually GET them for free. The Libre Maps project raised enough funds to buy the many gigabytes of data and the Internet Archive is hosting them. These are great 24k scale topographical maps folks. The same types you pay for in sporting goods stores. And many applications on your computers can work directly with them and your GPS. You can get water and tear resistant paper and print them out.. All good stuff... For the lazy in the audience, here are Oregon's.

Every bit of plastic ever made still exists.

If you have ever crate trained a pet dog, you will have found that dogs will do everything within their power to not shit where they sleep. A dog will hold it until their face turns blue. Unless of course they are already blue, then they will just get a darker shade. And if you (and the dog) have had the misfortune of getting stuck a little to long, and the dog HAS had to go in their crate, the minute the poor canine makes eye contact with you - you know it. The dog will feel as though they have betrayed the universe by pooping in the crate. Well, humans are assholes. We could learn a thing or two from our dogs. We only have one earth. Only one. No "fall back" or "plan B" exists despite what you may see in the Star Trek movies or read in the Cristopher Stasheff or Orson Scott Card novels. I imagine that some day some poor wasted species - a distant relative to the Human - who has had to survive underground or in bubbles without being able to breathe ...

Not safer, just stupider.

The first definition of stupider is "Slow to learn or understand; obtuse." I think that there would be good cause to add to it "See American". Today, while passing through the security checkpoint at Portland International (PDX) I witnessed the TSA personnel sending people to the back of the line for not taking off their flip-flops. They shouted endlessly about removing liquids, regardless of size. And they generally treat every one of us like we were infants incapable of understanding simple instructions. But perhaps they might be on to something.

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