This guy is like Sheldon Brown's nightmare.

1. "Never take bike advice from anyone who owns bike shorts, clip shoes, a messenger bag, or a fixie. That's like taking car advice from someone who enjoys rebuilding carburetors." Right, don't learn about bikes and riding them from people who do so. Also, don't learn about your car from a mechanic or racer.
2. "'City bikes' and 'road bikes' are designed for some Jetsons-slick hypothetical future city that I've never seen. Or maybe for the bike paths in Los Altos or something. Here in real cities, roads are shit, and if you want your wheels and tires to survive curbs and potholes, you need a hybrid. They're a little heavier and a little slower. Are you racing? No? Then you don't care." False. I have ridden the same set of 700x23's (that is 23mm across) for years. Try Mr. Tuffy. Also, one can put hybrid tires on a road bike or road tires on a hybrid. He is conflating the tire with the bike here.
3. "So, get the cheapest hybrid you can stand. Shocks are a waste of money. You should be able to get a pretty nice brand new hybrid for $370 or so. You can probably get a used one for a hundred bucks." While IMO he is correct about shocks in a city, cheap aluminum hybrids usually fall apart within five years. If you can afford only $100, a 70's road bike will ride better, longer.
4. "If you feel like you want a lighter bike so that it's easier to carry up stairs: don't bother. That's optimizing the wrong thing. You'll get used to it (by which I mean: become stronger)." People don't get lighter equipment so they can carry the bike more easily up the stairs, they get lighter equipment so they can climb hills more easily. He should run up a hill with a 40# backpack on.
5. "Get a bike that's the right size for you, and has properly adjusted handlebars and seat. The shop will adjust it for you. If they won't, or if they tell you it doesn't matter, go to a different shop." This is actually true. Should be point #1.
6. "Get a u-lock. Lock through the frame and the back wheel. Your bike will be stolen, so don't get too attached to it. This also means, don't waste your money on junk like baskets and lights. Just get a backpack." Yeah, you don't need a basket because you'll never want to carry anything substantial and don't bother with a light because everybody can see you at night anyway, and you'd hate to waste a $10 on your light being stolen (because you didn't unclip it when you locked up). It certainly won't save your life.
7. "I always replace my front wheel and seat quick-releases with $2 worth of hardware store bolts, and then bend the ends over. This might have some negligible effect on theft. I refuse to be one of those people who lugs around 3 chains and disassembles their bike every time they park, so that's the trade-off I make." Your local bike shop can do this for you properly. Having your front wheel come off while riding is awfully dangerous.
8. "The bike-nerd at the bike shop will try to give you smooth, high-pressure (110psi+) tires, because they are more efficient. But if you don't air them up weekly or more often, you'll get pinch-flats every time you hit a pothole, which is always. Also, the gas station air pumps often only go up to 60psi anyway. Get knobby low-pressure (60-80psi) tires and they'll last a lot longer. (If you do end up with stupid tires, you might want to get one of these.)" Bunk. There is no evidence that knobby tires last longer, and they are certainly inferior w/r/t traction.
9. "Likewise, make sure the tubes you get have the kind of connectors that the gas station air pumps take. Bike shop nerds like to fuck you with goofy connectors sometimes, out of sheer mean-spiritedness." He means select schrader valves over presta valves. Whatever. There is a good reason presta valves were invented, and there are cheap little converters that you can leave threaded on to one of your stems if you are worried about it. Your local bike shop will probably give you one for the asking.
10. "Bike maintenance: don't do it, ever. It's not worth your time. Just take it to the shop. Getting them to replace a flat for you costs $20 and takes 10 minutes, including the tube, and you don't get dirty." I'm with Cabbotage@12. This is absurd.
11. "Safety: I follow the Zodiac approach: always assume the cars can see you perfectly, and are trying to kill you. If an intersection seems iffy, use the sidewalk and crosswalks. If big streets like Market and Van Ness freak you out, there are always less traficky ways to go, or just stay on the sidewalks." Cars do not expect fast moving vehicles on crosswalks as they intersect them (say, leaving a building's garage). There are occasions when the sidewalk is best, like fast narrow suburban streets, but you need excellent visibility - not something you'll get downtown.
12. "Grocery shopping: yes, you really can do it with a single backpack. The trick is, shop small once a week instead of big once a month." Or, you know, just to get a little crazy here, a rack and bag that attaches to your bike. Wtf.
13. "If you try to dangle bags on your handlebars, you will die." They are called handlebar bags. You can pick them up at your local bike shop. They are a very effective means of carrying gear, and used routinely by people who deliver heavy things by bike for a living.
14. "Cross train and trolley tracks at a 45° angle or more or you will die.". If "die" == "fall" && "45" == "20 to 60".
15. "You really do need to tuck in or roll up your right leg. (You won't die, but you'll shred your pants.)" Fair enough. There are also reflective straps that'll do the same thing and increase your visibility.

ARGH!

Dargaud@3 - I'm a dev myself, and have that exact same feeling at least once a year, more so when it looks like yak shaving. My un-insightful but entirely effective (for me at least) technique is to make a comprehensive list of changes and arrange them in to a partial ordering / dependency tree. After checking that everything is current in source control and I've created a new branch, start at the hardest of the leaf nodes.

The idea here is fine, perhaps noble. Really though I'm more interested in those who made this video. It was perfectly executed. Definite shades of Errol Morris.

Don't these people have any idea how much lead is thrown up when the slug impacts the backstop?

Dear World,

We are are pure goodness and light. Our competition is evil.

Love, Google

This man, and all of you who support him, are clearly confused. Cars are primary, not people.

Our public spaces need to modified without limit to ensure the optimal operation of motorized vehicles. What are you doing outside anyway? Highly suspicious.

I'm just now checking back on this thread and noticed that a couple of people have asked for citations.

One very good place to go for toxicity information is the EPA's IRIS database. Here's the listing for elemental mercury: http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0370.htm, about 23 pp with tons of citations. They estimate the concentration that one can encounter every day without ill effect at 0.0003 mg/m^3.

If you're looking for more, a quick search on Wikipedia pointed me to several papers on the health effects of mercury vapor exposure:

1. Case control studies have shown effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers with chronic exposure to mercury vapour even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg/m3.
^ Ngim CH, Foo SC, Boey KW, and Keyaratnam J (1992). "Chronic neurobehavioral effects of elemental mercury in dentists". British Journal of Industrial Medicine 49: 782-790.
^ Liang YX, Sun RK, Chen ZQ, and Li LH. "Psychological effects of low exposure to mercury vapor: Application of computer-administered neurobehavioral evaluation system". Environmental Research 60: 320-327.

2. A study has shown that acute exposure (4-8 hours) to calculated elemental mercury levels of 1.1 to 44 mg/m3 resulted in chest pain, dyspnea, cough, hemoptysis, impairment of pulmonary function, and evidence of interstitial pneumonitis.
^ McFarland, RB and H. Reigel. J Occup Med. 1978 Aug;20(8):532-4.

3. Acute exposure to mercury vapor has been shown to result in profound central nervous system effects, including psychotic reactions characterized by delirium, hallucinations, and suicidal tendency. Occupational exposure has resulted in broad-ranging functional disturbance, including erethism, irritability, excitability, excessive shyness, and insomnia. With continuing exposure, a fine tremor develops and may escalate to violent muscular spasms. Tremor initially involves the hands and later spreads to the eyelids, lips, and tongue.
^ WHO (1976) Environmental Health Criteria 1: Mercury, Geneva, World Health Organization, 131 pp.
^ WHO. Inorganic mercury. Environmental Health Criteria 118. World Health Organization, Geneva, 1991.

It's one thing to dismiss the amount of elemental mercury in a CFL by saying that it's "the size of a period at the end of a sentence," and another to actually quantify it.

First let's set a baseline: one tenth of one mg of mercury vapor spread across a cubic meter is enough to cause puking, shaking hands, drooling, memory loss, and weakness. And that's what happens to adults. With kids the effects can be permanent. Oh yeah and it's mutagenic.

One CF light bulb contains about 5 mg of mercury vapor - 50 times the dose that will cause the effects mentioned above.

Yes, this is only a cause for concern when a bulb breaks (not just burns out), but that does happen.

Finally, the big advantage of CFLs is that they consume less energy for the amount of light produced. The "waste" from incandescent lights is in the form of heat. Well, if you're paying to heat your home anyway, then it's not really waste at all.

CFLs make sense in many situations – small outdoor areas, public rooms, lights that are left on for very long periods – but not in all situations. Sometimes incandescent make more sense.

Regeya@41, Inconsolata is basically a reproduction of Consolas, but without many of its features and about half of its glyphs. You might want to check it out some time, if your OS supports ClearType.

Thanks for turning me on to Vibrant Ink. I just tried it and it's easy on the eyes (I don't like the feeling of staring in to a light bulb for hours on end, like I get with a white background) while remaining readable.

I live in my IDE, and IMO the very best monospace font is Consolas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolas).

This one has it all:
* uppercase-sensitive forms;
* sub and superscripts;
* arbitrary fractions (well, my editor doesn't care about those, but it's still cool);
* most importantly: it's ClearType enabled, and when it's on this is about smoothest font there is. With the resolution at 1600x1200 it's like reading a finely printed book.

Tim, I think that many coders use monospace fonts because it makes the number of spaces clear (you might not see two spaces in a proportional font, but your compiler will if whitespace is significant) and because continuation lines don't line up when your statement is longer than the width of your editor.

Also the proportional fonts tend to place the braces tightly. If you use the One True Brace Style, seeing "}}}}}}}" at the end of a line in Times New Roman will immediately give you a headache. And don't even try counting them.

I love how the police report (http://www.kgw.com/news/pdf/Waterhouse_complaint.pdf) refers to the homeowner and friends as "hostile tweaker types". And, they state that he was tasered when he was trying to run away, which is clearly not what's going on in the video. I wonder why they didn't grab the camera and destroy the recording?

It should be mentioned though that the police *did* have a right to search the car, as they were chasing somebody apparently hiding under it. No warrant is required for "hot pursuit" searches (http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/6211B4F6-20A1-4E39-A95C2F3796EAE33D/alpha/H/ explains it better). IANAL, but from what I remember the use of physical force is greatly restricted in these situations.