Mister Schwarzenegger: turn off them cellphones!

During the 2004 year end, we moved to San Jose. Our place is about a mile from my first job in the United States: VLSI Technologies, (now part of Philips). Moving to San Jose was sort of a home coming. But also a necessary few steps back.

Every day, I commute up the South Bay to Menlo Park. And (for several reasons) during rush hour. It allows me to enjoy the American way of driving to the fullest. A few years ago, the Bay Area commute was worse than the Los Angeles daily grid lock. Tata and Wipro have swung the pendulum the other direction and made sure Los Angeles is back the traffic king of California. Nevertheless, the daily commute is not ride around the track: there was a reason Ray Charles went to drive in the desert.

Many mornings, another well trained driver reminds me to write a letter to the gubernator to take some action. For years, before the evening news in Belgium was about to commence, Flor Koninckx, colonel of federal police, did his little spiel on road safety in a 5 minute segment called 'Kijk Uit'(Watch Out). Arnold, here is your chance to put your acting skills to good use: start creating 5-minute road safety infomercials and make the popular channels broadcast them.

Episode 1: Turn of Your cellphones!

Episode 2: (Since episode 1 was not a succes, plan B:) Handsfree dialing - I make it mandatory!

Episode 3-10: repeat of episode 2 - believe me: 95% of careless driving relates to driving with one ear on the phone. It is furthermore impressive to see how many people are on the phone between 5 and 6PM. Guilty as charged. It is also the time I call my wife. Albeit, on a handsfree mobile. Not only does it allow both hands for driving (manual transmission anyone?), but is avoids tunnel vision.

Episode 11: A Hummer (or any other SUV) is not sexual, nor does it allow you to act like a dick.

Episode 12: Keep a distance! - It drives me nuts how people drive up to the car in front, only to tap the break and back to the gas pedal. You become insensitive to the stop lights going on. Will you react at 65 mph the same way, when it really is necessary? So far, I still get a small heart attack when at full speed in the car pool lane, break lights go on in front of me.

Episode 13:No CHP allowed during rush hour! - You would only hope the men and women of the law would have more common sense when they start pulling over people in plain rush hour for minor traffic violations. My wife was pulled over to check if there was actually a baby in the car seat. She had pulled to car seat cover down to protect her from the sun. Apparently, it is a classic carpool-lane-trick in the book. What the CHP doesn't seem to get that the act of pulling someone over creates typically huge traffic jams: one because the act of pulling over slows down traffic, two, a cop on the side of the road is always trouble. So, here's my advise, when you really really need to make your quota for the month, pull them over at the next exit, and off the highway. Traffic will get back to normal, once you get out of sight.

Episode 14: Asian special - An at the end of the episode: a raffle for a free trip to Buenos Aires. The survivor is allowed to return. [Mark Burnett - here's a suggestion for your next Survivor.]

Episode 15: Driving uphill - Your car will slow down you know, unless you put your foot down a little more. And no, the road doesn't end at the end of the hill. So no need to jump on your break. We have lots of hills in Austria. I can relate.

Episode 16: Rental trucks - Afraid the big wheeler in the car pool lane is out of control? No worries, it's only a rental truck. The driver has no clue his loading bed carries a ton of concrete and thinks of fig cookies when you bring up Newton.

Technorati: driving cellphone

A Doobious ruling (and a farmer called Filburn)

This week the Supreme Court ruled against medical marijuana. la-li-la. I thought great for tourism to Amsterdam. (Sure, Belgium has decriminalized marijuana for several years. But tourism destination of choice for sex depraved or drug curious yanks is and will remain Amsterdam and specifically the streets at the end of the Kalverstraat.)

In the evening, I tuned into the Gene Burns program on KGO on the ruling of the Supreme Court. Gene is an authority on constitutional law. His introductory piece deep dived into the majority opinion of the Supreme Court ruling. Boy-o-boy, this ruling has much less to do with a doobey, than it has to do with personal freedom. Here's the story of a fellow named Filburn.

When you first heard the news about the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the medical marijuana case of Gonzales v. Raich, you probably didn’t give much thought to a Ohioan farmer named Roscoe Filburn. Yet, Mr. Filburn’s fight to use the wheat grown on his own land is intimately tied with this landmark case on the legality of state’s rights to legalize medical marijuana. Gene thinks it goes to the very heart of the structure and state of American government today—the Founding Fathers would not be pleased to see the rise in power and control in the federal government.

Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio dairy and poultry farmer, who raised a small quantity of winter wheat — some to sell, some to feed his livestock, and some to consume. In 1940, under authority of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the central government told Mr. Filburn that for the next year he would be limited to planting 11 acres of wheat and harvesting 20 bushels per acre. He harvested 12 acres over his allotment for consumption on his own property. When the government fined him, Mr. Filburn refused to pay.

Wickard v. Filburn got to the Supreme Court, and in 1942, the justices unanimously ruled against the farmer. The government claimed that if Mr. Filburn grew wheat for his own use, he would not be buying it — and that affected interstate commerce. This case is heavily cited in the majority opinion ruling against Diane Monson and Angel Raich, two Californian women who, despite growing marijuana in their own yard, were forced to shut down their medical distribution of the drug.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal authorities may prosecute people using doctor-recommended pot, concluding that medical marijuana laws in California and nine other states don't make such users immune from federal laws against marijuana possession. It’s a dramatic overreach of federal government powers, but the precedent was already set in Wickard v. Filburn and the rest of FDR’s forceful New Deal agencies.

People ask Gene why he is a libertarian—this ruling does most of the explaining for him. Over the decades since the Great Depression, both political parties have attempted to grab the reins of federal control for their own reasons—the Democrats for huge, inefficient social economic programs and Republicans for “values” issues. Nevertheless, the end result has been a government that is far too strong, going against the design of the Founding Fathers.

Never mind that marijuana should be completely decriminalized, an issue for another day
[Source: KGO810 Program summaries]

Technorati: constitution marijuana