Lee.org

Update: You should get 3 things out of this post:

1. Cars are dangerous.
2. Motorcycles are 35 times more dangerous than cars per mile driven.
3. There is no riding “safely”. 2/3 of motorcycle deaths are not the motorcyclist’s fault.

So maybe drive a motorcycle as a pleasure-craft or occasional-transportation, but don’t make it your daily vehicle. I love you too much to see you dead like that!

————————————————–

I’ve been thinking about getting rid of my car. I’m going to school so I need to save a bit more; I don’t need my garage for storage any more; so far school has been all accessible by public transit. So I’ve been considering my options.

A friend old me how she loves her motorcycle. She said how it was like a shortcut: you can always find a place to park, they are inexpensive, even insurance is cheap, just $100 per year for her, and they are completely awesome.

I wrote this to her:

I thought about what you said about your motorcycle and how you love it. So I thought I’d give the idea of getting a motorcycle a chance.

And then I read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety

What got me was in the first paragraph. Mile for mile, a motorcycle is 35 times more fatal than a car. Now I know that cars are very dangerous, some 40,000 Americans are killed every year. Or as I like to say to people, “Hey, did you hear about the big car crash last week where almost a thousand people were killed? Yeah, it really happened! Well, not all at once, but yeah, almost a thousand Americans were killed in car accidents last week. Yes. Really”

It feels like an acceptable risk to be in a car, I mean, you’ve got to get around somehow. But if everyone rode motorcycles instead of cars (yeah, I know, that’s not realistic), then bikes would kill 1.4 million Americans every year! That’s insane! That’s more deaths than the top 3 killers in America: heart disease, cancer, and stroke COMBINED, almost doubling the number of people that die every year.

And what really bugged me is the Wikipedia article talks about studies that say some 2/3 of fatal crashes are where the car smashed into the bike without even veering; neither the rider or driver saw it coming and the rider had no chance to save themselves. Hurumph.

Sorry, but that’s not for me. I want to go the whole 9 yards, but nope.

Rock on,
Lee

I saw this sign at Cal Academy last month. It completely blows my mind!

Nancy Levine Aquatic Biologist
Sharks are fascinating creatures! Some give live birth, while others lay eggs. The egg cases shown here come from the Academy’s sharks. There is evidence of a different bamboo shark species successfully switching between sexual and asexual reproduction. I am studying whether our species has the same ability.

Just to be clear, she is talking about the possibility of human asexual reproduction!

“Hi, I’m not Johnny Cash”

I saw this sign at 24th St Mission BART Station in November 2011.

He is missed.

If you agree with this note, I encourage you to send BART a message. Contact them.

Dear BART,
Could you please make some way for train riders to better identify the difference between 16th Street Mission Station and 24th Street Mission Station.

Most especially, the signage at these stations cannot be seen from inside the train. This could easily and relatively inexpensively be fixed if you moved the signs so that they are under the lights instead of in the dark where they are now.

The conductors usually announce the names of the stations but a sign is a much more reliable and less stressful way to know where I am.

Here’s an hour-long track of good Christmas music by artists like Paul Simon, Natalie Merchant and others!

All Songs Considered Holiday Music Special 2011

Share and enjoy!

Hi, I’m Lee Sonko, the Head of the Kinetics and Electronics Department at the Crucible in Oakland. Right now we have a wide range of classes ranging from Mechanical Sculpture to Arduino Microcontrollers to Flame Effects. In the past 6 months we have had students (literally) from age 8 to 80.

Take a peek at our current offerings as an example.

Would you like to teach some of your art and science? Do you have an idea for a class? It’s not a full-time job but it pays some and it’s rewarding. If you think this might be for you, I’d love to hear from you. Contact me at Lee at Lee dat org.

Lee Sonko
Crucible Kinetics & Electronics Department Head

A friend asked the Lazyweb for help with Samsung Galaxy phone vs iPhone. Here’s my response:

I’m very happy with my Android Samsung Galaxy S. I’ve had it for almost a year now. My last phone was an iPhone 3G. My Samsung had a short battery life so I got a backpack battery for it; it’s a bit large but now no battery problems.

It took a while to get used to the Android. Some of the apps it came with aren’t as good as the stock iPhone apps. IE the calculator app. But there are free and cheap calculator apps that kick the iphone’s calculating ass.
More deets: http://lee.org/blog/?s=android

My vmail and email now belong to the Google, and I like it better than Steve owning them.

Android runs Flash in the browser. And it works great. That says just as many bad things about Apple as good things about Android.

I didn’t root my phone and I don’t feel I need to. There is just 1 tiny thing I would change if I were to go to the trouble of rooting the phone.

Your next phone should be an Android.

PS.
Oh but I have to say, the iphone 4’s High Dynamic Range camera takes pretty effing awesome pictures.

I saw this bumper sticker in Bernal Heights the other week.

“Don’t pay your credit cards till all our troops come home!”

Here is a terrific video piece about the art scene that I hang in.

The Art of Doing it Yourself by KQED Television

The Art of Doing it Yourself  airs Friday, December 16, 2011 at approximately 11pm, as part of the  PBS Arts Fall Festival.

Spammers evolve slowly. They were mud, now they are dirt. It’s a slow evolution.

NoSpamNX has been working well but nowadays it blocks 300 spams a day and lets through maybe 30. They all get caught by Akismet but Akismet also sometimes blocks legitimate commnets. 30 a day is too many for me to review by hand. :-(

So I installed Spam Free WordPress alongside the already installed NoSpamNX and Akismet. Hopefully it will keep it so the “gray list” of potential spams is small enough that I can review them by hand.

This new plugin uses an odd form of Captcha. It asks you to copy and paste a password. Please tell me if it gets in the way.