hov lane is 2+ or toll
Posted: June 11, 2007 Filed under: War and Peace Leave a commentwe had an experience yesterday that we decided encapsulates the mentality of utah drivers.
on the way back from dinner in salt lake, we were in the fast lane, alternatively called the commuter lane or hov (high-occupancy vehicle) lane. we’ve noticed that people here tend to think of the lane as being designated for cars with more than 2 people in them, and they fail to recognize that the point of making such a lane is to reward people for commuting by letting them go faster.
so when we came up behind a car going 63 in a 65 zone, jarom waited until there was room in the lane to the right and flashed his brights at the car ahead. I had been taught that this is a request for the front car to move out of the way. either the car ahead of us was unaware of this practice or felt no need to hurry, since they were driving approximately the posted speed. of course, it became clear that they wouldn’t move, so jarom passed them in the right lane and moved back over in front of them.
for the next 45 seconds the guy in the car flashed his brights at us, until we could hardly see him in the rearview mirror.
why?
oh yeah. because it’s utah.
Lal Bihari
Posted: June 8, 2007 Filed under: Of Mice and Men Leave a commentLal Bihari (or Lal Bihari Mritak, born 1961) is a farmer from Uttar Pradesh, India who was officially dead between 1976 and 1994. He founded Mritak Sangh or the Association of the Dead in Uttar Pradesh, India. He fought Indian government bureaucracy for 18 years to prove that he is alive.
When Lal Bihari tried to apply for a bank loan in 1976, he found out that he was officially dead: his uncle had bribed a government official to register him as dead, so that he would get the ownership of Bihari’s land.
Bihari discovered at least 100 other people in a similar situation, being officially dead. He formed Mritak Sangh in the Azamgarh district. He and many other members were in danger of being killed by those who had appropriated their property. Nowadays the association has over 20,000 members all over India. By 2004 they had managed to declare four of their members alive.
Over the years Bihari tried to attract attention to his situation by various means. He organized his own funeral and demanded widow’s compensation for his wife. In 1980 he added the word “mritak” (“dead”) to his name and signed his letters “late Lal Bihari”. He stood for election against Rajiv Gandhi in 1989 and lost, to prove that he is alive. In 1994 he managed to have his official death annulled after a long legal struggle.
In 2004 he ran for a seat in the parliament of Lal Ganj.
Bihari continues to support other people in similar situations. In 2004 he sponsored fellow Mritak Sangh member Shivdutt Yadav when he contested election against Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Film-maker Satish Kaushik will be making a movie about his life, death, and life. Bihari was awarded the Ig Nobel Peace Award in 2003 for his considerable “posthumous” activities.
(from wikipedia, link here)
dinner and a show
Posted: June 7, 2007 Filed under: War and Peace Leave a commenthormones, o hormones.
last night we went to dinner at red robin and were seated by the glass facing the inside of the mall. on a bench about 10 feet away were two very young teenagers, all over each other like there was no tomorrow. we were both more than a little taken aback, especially because whenever we happened to glance in that direction it was clear that the makeout session had entered a new level of make-out-ness.
this made us decide never to have teenagers, or at least to never let them out of the house alone.
even weirder was that their friends were just sort of standing around. after a while they left, but one just sat on the bench playing his gameboy. awkward.
we thought about finding mall security after we were done, but by the end of dinner we just wanted to leave.
hormones!
Jarom
Mika
hilleries 