Cop Assaults Cyclist

Critical Mass, for those that want to know, is a worldwide organization where cyclists all go riding through the city on the last Friday of the month.  The idea is to promote the idea that cyclists are vehicles which belong on the road.  However, Critical Mass can also cause some problems.  Motorists typically don’t like getting stuck behind these group rides, which usually results in the motorists telling the cyclists to, “get off the road on to the sidewalk where you belong”.  This is exactly the kind of attitude Critical Mass is trying to change.

Moreover, Critical Mass rides use a technique called “corking“.  To ensure that the ride does not get split up by red lights, some riders block the traffic of the side streets so that the group can safely pass through the red light.  The diagram below is taken from Wikipedia.

 

The fact that Critical Mass, on the one hand, professes to be traffic and yet deliberately block traffic to run a red light is most contradictory.  Sadly, a worthy cause has taken its sense of advocacy to illogical extremes.  The best summary of this was put thusly:

…these CM type rides ignore one of the basic rules of the road for ANY operator of ANY moving vehicle…

As such, it is not surprising that there is animosity between Critical Mass riders and pedestrians/motorist/authorities.  This has led to several dustups (motorists and authorities).  The latest of these happened in NYC just days ago.  A tourist caught on camera a cop who literally attacked a bike rider.

Now the cop claims that the cyclist tried to run him over, which is clearly a lie.  The cop had to go out of his way to shove the cyclist to the ground.  The only more deplorable than the cop’s actions is the general attitude taken on a forum of cops and ex-cops.  In a nutshell, they find nothing wrong with what the cop did.  In fact they applaud him.  The are also convinced that the cyclist did something not caught on camera which would warrant such behavior; they do not think that a cop would go out of his way to physically attack an innocent person (yeah right).

Here is the forum where you can read how fellow cops feel about this.  I must, however, pass along the warning that I got when I found this link:

Warning, if you’re sensitive to racism, bigotry, religious hate and want to maintain your faith in the police force don’t read this forum.

The Ting Tings

I LOVE this song.

Tour de France Is Over

So the Tour de France is officially over.  I’ve never really bothered to watch the Tour de France before, but since I’ve started commuting by bike the Tour seemed a lot more interesting.  It’s hard to watch a three-week sporting event when each stage is about three hours (of T.V. time) in length.  Yes, we have the Versus channel and a DVR, but one television; Melanie was not having any of that.  Each night, the On Demand section of Versus has a five-minute highlight of the previous day’s stage, but it is hard to get a good feel for what happened.  Case in point, the Shleck brothers on Alpe d’Huez.  Much of what I have read said that this Tour lacked the super star cyclists, but there was so much young talent that next year’s should be a lot more interesting.

Cuil

Cuil (pronounced “cool”) is a new search engine created by a former hotshot at Google.  The search engine just went online today, and apparently you can search 121,617,892,992 web pages.  One of the biggest reasons as to why you might want to consider using this search engine over Google is privacy.  From their privacy page (their emphasis):

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

Scratchy update

Well, Scratchy had a bad reaction to the vaccines he got at the vet yesterday. He was lethargic when he got home and didn’t move at all for nearly 7 hours. When he finally did move, it was because he was vomiting. He vomited 4 times last night and this morning, I called the vet to see if it was normal. She said to try and feed him a bland diet (rice and chicken) but he wouldn’t eat it. So we had to take him in and they said that he had a fever and was reacting poorly to the shots.

As a remedy, they gave him a bunch of fluids and then they gave him a steroid shot so that it’ll counteract the effects of the drugs. Anyway, since we got him home, he’s been a bit friendlier. He’s not hiding in the bathroom anymore and he ate a bit of food. Noumi is eating up all the bland food because he loves it. LOL But Scratchy is eating his normal food. They are such strange animals.

Noumi has been really lonely without his friend and now that Scratchy is sleeping in the bedroom, Noumi is sleeping next to him. Anyway, that’s the Scratchy update. Next week is Noumi’s turn.

Iraq injury

A friend of mine has been in the hospital for the past month after being hit by an IED in Iraq. He’s doing well and he should have a full recovery but I thought I’d ask everyone to pray for Matt anyway.

Thanks!

At the vet with Scratchy

Scratchy has been vomiting a bit lately so I thought I’d take him to the vet. He got his annual physical (just like me yesterday… only not at the vet!) and he got a couple shots and he’s healthy…

And by healthy I mean that he’s 2.5 lbs overweight. The vet told me that’s the equivalent of us gaining 30 lbs. So we’re going to be cutting his food a bit now and possibly feeding him separately from Noumi since he seems to eat Noumi’s food once Noumi walks away.

Anyway, Scratchy was surprisingly nice at the vet office. He cried a bit in the car on the way there and back but once he was there, he was very sweet. He let the vet do whatever she wanted and didn’t complain. He even rubbed his face on her which is unusual. Well, I’m glad it’s over. Next week is Noumi’s turn. Let’s hope he doesn’t act like the spawn of Satan that he really is.

Montreal visit

Patrick and I went to Montreal this past weekend to visit with my parents, my sister, and my nephew. It was really fun. We drove on Thursday with Uncle David from Boston to Montreal. It was uneventful and we were grateful to get out of the car when we got there. That night, we had a big family dinner. Nat, Vincent, and Steve came over for dinner. It was fun.

Friday, Christine and I had planned on spending the day together. So we started off by shopping at the Dix 30. It’s a new shopping center that is super fancy. Christine got a bunch of new clothes that she was looking for and I got a Christmas present for Eric. :) After shopping, we dropped Patrick off at home where he made lunch for everyone (his spaghetti pizza that I’m sure he’ll post about later) and Christine and I took off to go see Mamma Mia! Hooray! There was a HUGE line at the movies but we quickly realized that it was for The Dark Knight. We got our tickets, got our junk food and saw the movie. It was so weird to see Pierce Brosnan singing.  Anyway, the movie was cute and fun. We went home to have dinner with the family. We had Winncie’s chinese food. It was goooooooood! That night, we just hung out at Auntie Diane’s house.

Saturday, we got up and went to visit Kelly and Alex. I took some pictures (which you can see in the post below). After the visit, we went to see Grandmaman at her house. We had cheeseloaf for lunch with apple sauce cake for dessert. Nathalie, Anne-Sophie, and Noemie came over and they played with Nathan. I dropped him on his head but he’s ok. :) Haha! Someone had to be the first to drop him on his head. Phew! Good thing it was me! After the visit, Nathan was cranky so we went home to put him to sleep. He took a nap before Gilles and Denise came over to see Mom and Dad. They had plans to go out for dinner. After their short visit at the house, we drove Nathan over to be babysat by Nathalie and the girls. We had planned on going to dinner and since Auntie Diane had extra movie tickets, we went to see Hancock as well. We ate at Les 3 Brasseurs at the Dix 30 and then went to the Cineplex Odeon right next door. It was a great movie. When we left the theater, our parents and G & D were waiting to see the next showing of the same movie. That was funny. We picked up the kiddo and went home to bed.

Sunday, the aunties planned a 7 month birthday party for Nathan since they wouldn’t get to be around for his real birthday party. It was fun. We had steamies, poutine, and cake. Everyone sang and Nathan/Christine opened presents. It was cute. After lunch, Patrick and I drove home to Boston. Strangely enough, there was TONS of traffic in NH but no good reason. As soon as we crossed into MA, the traffic was gone. It was weird.

Click on Nathan’s photo below to see some pictures of the weekend.

Visiting with Aubrey

While in Montreal, Christine, Patrick and I went to visit Kelly, Alex and their new baby daughter, Aubrey. I was charged with taking pictures of Aubrey since there really weren’t that many yet since Kelly and Alex are so busy. So I took a bunch of pictures and we hung out for a bit before lunch with my grandmother. Click on Aubrey’s photo below to visit her flickr album.

Singing video

Here’s a video of the family singing to Nathan (for a second time) on his 7 month birthday.