Swirling floaters in the toilet bowl of wisdom....

Here are a few gems I've collected over the summer. Enjoy!

I don't have a problem with bike riders that don't have their heads up their a$$ and won't pull in front of cars or impede traffic.But the others (they wear those turtle helmets and spandex) I will admit I would enjoy doing great bodily harm to them,but alas our laws wont permit this.I say if you are gonna use the roads get licensed,insured and put tags on em or watch out cause there are times that the cars can make your ride interesting and your spandex smelly.

...and I've said before that cyclists should carry guns.

Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

A Bridgeport man riding alone lost control of his bike when he hit a pothole (foreground) on Westport’s Beachside Avenue overpass at Greens Farms Road today and suffered facial lacerations and a road rash shoulder requiring medical treatment. Assistant Fire Chief Larry Conklin said the accident underlines the importance of always wearing a bicycle helmet. He said this cyclist not having worn one was a contributing factor to the severity of the injuries sustained.

...so can anyone explain how a helmet prevents facial lacerations and road rash on the shoulder? Inquiring minds want to know.

(LINK)

...Road building is historically a responsibility of state and local officials who are in a better position than Uncle Sam to determine the transportation needs of their motorists. But, as long as Washington holds the purse strings, Virginia and the other states will be denied control over their own affairs.

...According to Ronald Utt, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, each year Washington doles out more than one-third of its gas tax revenues for non-highway projects such as air quality, traffic congestion, bicycle path projects and thousands of hometown pork projects sponsored by members of Congress. Cycling the federal gas tax collected in Virginia to Washington and then back to Virginia also adds costly federal labor, environmental, and other regulations -- expensive hoops state road builders must jump through to get their money. And don’t forget that hundreds of millions of federal gas tax dollars are wasted each year funding bureaucracies in Washington that duplicate the work of state highway bureaus.

Centralizing in one place the $33 billion in federal gas tax revenues flowing into Washington each year makes it easy for interest groups and lobbyists to concentrate their efforts and sway Members of Congress to send money their way. If that $33 billion was instead spent by 50 separate legislatures, more money would go directly to serving the motorists who paid the taxes. It would be far more difficult for greedy interest groups and lobbyists to rip off money in the 50 state capitals, one state at a time.

In Washington, right off the top, 2.86 cents per gallon in gas tax revenues goes to mass transit projects. And perhaps the most outrageous raid on the federal gas tax occurred in the mid-1990s when 6.8 cents per gallon was siphoned-off to pay down the federal budget defecit.

...yet again, one man's essential project is another's pork. I'd dearly love to control where my tax money is spent, too, and I think I'd start with subsidies to tobacco farms (in Virginia, of all places) and all those tax breaks for the oil industry. I'd spend more on alternative transportation, like MASS TRANSIT, and let the interstates choke on their own fumes. You say that an interstate bridge collapsed and you need federal funds to re-build it quickly? Tough. Raise the money yourself.

Yes, I know it sounds cold, but imagine the consequences of a badly deteriorated interstate highway system. Remember, the original thought behind building them was that it makes moving troops around much easier. Eisenhower brought the idea back from Germany after the Second World War.

Today, the interstates are thought to be essential for commerce. In some respects, we enjoy a better life as a result of fast and easy transportation. We get tomatoes in mid-winter, brought by truck from Mexico or California. We get furniture made in the Carolinas. Our local big box stores are full of cheap goods made overseas, and they arrived here in the middle of the country via interstates.

So what happens if the interstate system breaks down? Instead of furniture from the Carolinas, maybe a small furniture building industry would grow here. Those foreign goods wouldn't be as readily available or as cheap, so maybe we'd see other businesses supply them, businesses that are local rather than global. Frankly, I'd miss tomatoes in January.

But there's an even better reason for moving the bulk of road spending to the various state houses. Purchasing a state senator or legislator costs much, much less than the equivalent federal civil servant.