Driving

For some reason, the number of car accidents on the 680 corridor between Crow Canyon and Stone Valley seems to have increased exponentially in the past few weeks. I witnessed a collision 2 weeks ago, and have seen at least 5 more after-the-fact in the intervening days. I have a few ideas about why this is occurring:

1. We're back on standard time. The population is so utterly confused about what time it is that they forget to have their morning Starbucks (because it's LIGHT ALREADY), and then they drift off....into the car next to them, or in front of them. You get the general idea.

2. It's been raining off and on. At night, the glare off freshly rained-on pavement can be overwhelming, so drivers are just shutting their eyes while they drive. No shoes, no vision, no problem.

3. They forget to get the optional turn signal package installed on their vehicle. You know, the one where all you have to do is flick your hand slightly to let other drivers know you want to change lanes or make a turn? Some people apparently didn't get that option on their car, and they simply swerve in and out of the lanes expecting the rest of us to be prescient.

All of this has led me to a great distrust of my fellow commuters, a trust which is going to be really hard to earn back.

Totally useless post

I just have to get this off my chest: NO ONE should be surprised that Kim Kardashian's marriage is ending after 72 days. I don't follow the show that closely, but the few clips I did see while channel surfing usually had her a Kris Humphries arguing about money or something else. The vendors who supplied her with millions of dollars worth of free or discounted items should sue for reimbursement; it's not like she can't afford it. Perhaps the 'Occupy' protestors should start picketing her house, as she is exhibit A for shameful consumerism and waste.

Why I just love driving in the Bay Area

My commute today took me on 580 west from Dublin to El Cerrito...it's about 35 miles. It takes me an hour to get there.

Thanks, that was really helpful

I am taking a Business Law class through DVC right now, and it is all done online. The class is compressed, and therefore every two weeks I must read 4 chapters in the text, and answer a discussion question. The discussion questions come from the book, and our professor wants us to cite multiple sources in our answer, refer to ourselves in the third person, and basically give some convoluted answer. Here is my first post, which was answering the question "If providers of social networking sites are failing to protect their minor users, why should they be immune from negligence claims?"

Social networking sites should be immune from negligence claims because they do have measures in place to protect minors.

When signing up for an account on Facebook, for example, one commits to them to ‘not provide any false personal information on Facebook.’ (1) Also included in Facebook’s terms of service is a commitment to “not use Facebook if you are under 13 (Facebook).” MySpace also has a similar minimum age requirement for its users, and reserves the right to terminate a user account if it is discovered that the user is under 18 but representing that they are over 18, or vice versa (MySpace). In the case of Doe v. MySpace, the plantiff was 13, however, she chose to provide a false age to the social networking site, thus eliminating one layer of protection the site would have provided to a user under the age of 18. Defense counsel for the site can put forth an affirmative defense of Assumption of Risk (Miller & Jentz, 116); when the minor joined the
site, he or she agreed to the terms of service, and in the case of Doe v. MySpace, Julie was in clear violation of those terms, and would have had knowledge of the risk she was taking.

An additional consideration for exempting these sites from negligence claims pertains to the idea of contributory negligence3. Julie Doe was still under the care of her legal guardian, her mother, whom it appears
was unaware of Julie’s online activity until after the sexual assault occurred. Julie herself was negligent when she agreed to meet with a 19 year-old man alone. In this instance, the minor using the social site initiated face-to-face contact, which was not the responsibility of the creators of MySpace. Most social networking sites attempt to remove offensive or criminal images, language, or videos; these sites, however, cannot remove or prevent crimes that occur outside of the digital domain.

Section 230 of US Code 47 states that the U.S. government has to goal “to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies that empower parents to restrict their
children's access to objectionable or inappropriate online material. (47 U.S.C)” While it appears that the idea is to assist companies in developing so-called ‘child filters,’ this does not guarantee that minors will (1) circumvent the filters put in place by social networking sites; or (2) that the filter will be effective at blocking all
potentially dangerous images or interactions.

References
1. Facebook. (2011, 26 April). In Facebook Terms, section 4. Retrieved from http://www.facebook.com/terms.php?ref=pf
2. MySpace (2009, June 25). In MySpace.com Terms of Use Agreement. Retrieved from http://www.myspace.com/Help/Terms
3. Miller,R.L., & Jentz, G.A. Business Law Today (9th ed.). (2011). Mason, OH: South-Western, Cengage Learning.
4. 47 U.S.C. § 230


After this post (I got 17 out of 20), the professor advised all those of us who got 17 or less to reread the syllabus. Ok, I did that; it basically says, don't copy from the text or other students, write in the third person, and use a lot of references. I did that, but clearly it was not enough, so I emailed the professor to ask him about additional sources of precedent, and all I got back was that I should look at the students who did well, and if "that is too hard," I should refer back to the examples.

I love circular reasoning - especially when the students who got 18-20 points weren't really better than me, and had grammatical errors (which he claims to dock points for). Thanks for the help, Dr. Churchill - P.S. your syllabus is full of formatting errors.

*Yawn*

Today is a day of mixed emotions for me - it is the day my ex got married. Now, don't get me wrong, I definitely got the better end of the breakup, but I have OCD, so I sometimes ruminate about the how and why of our relationship, and why it is that he found someone to marry, but I have not. There are people who will tell me to 'let it go', or 'get over it,' but I prefer to think of it as learning how not to make the same mistake again. Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and quite frankly, I need to be smarter and not date anybody if it's at all reminiscent of my year with him.

I enjoy doing things as a single person - I don't have family responsibility and can spend money on shoes, but I have a righteous goal of getting married. There are many things I feel I need to work on (just in case the Lord decides to start implementing Old Testament punishments again); like many of us, I am a work-in-progress.

So, that was the reflective part of the day, and then there was the lazy part of the day with new roommate Lisa D, who is AMAZING! We went to the gluten-free bakery, got tons of food at Safeway, and then proceeded to watch a few episodes of Vampire Diaries. We keep having a debate about getting a 10'x8' poster of Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, but we really aren't sure where to find it. We also came up with a great plan to get Lisa on SYTYCD; her story involves a pet monkey and a footie pajama onesie. Stay tuned to Fox...

The last thing I did tonight was hit the corn maze with some of the LDS mid-singles. It was highly entertaining, especially when they decided to trust my map reading skill implicitly. I could have been leading these people to a chainsaw massacre, and they happily would have trotted along behind me. Actually, there was a guy in a full Gilly suit with a leaf blower wandering around, but he was more interested in screaming bands of teenagers than in our Mormon posse. The midsingles are a fun, nice group of people, and I hope to participate in more activities in the future.

Station 45

So, I am working out here at the Fire Station, which I always find fascinating. Because I am in the basement, I can hear all the radio calls going out. You would not believe how many calls they get for old people who have fallen down. No wonder LifeAlert does such a good business!

Two calls that stand out to me today are (1) a bike versus a car in Moraga, and (2) a 5 year-old with a bloody nose at school in San Pablo. I understand the need for an ambulance at the first, but for a bloody nose? Maybe a lifetime of chronic bloody noses has desensitized me, but I would just tell the kid to lean his head forward, plug it with a tissue, and maybe put some ice on it. It's not like it's a femoral artery or anything...

I haven't written in weeks! Things have been crazy busy, and I just haven't been inspired I guess. Life has a way of catching up to me sometimes, and yesterday was one of those days. My boss looked at me and said I looked like I was 'spinning out.' Between juggling 3-4 clients this week at work, reading 4 chapters (100 pages) in my textbook, and trying to have a social life, I think I am starting to spin out.

General conference was last weekend, and it was amazing, although I have to say that it's much harder to pay attention when you have 5-10 friends watching it with you. It still found it to be a much needed recharge, especially the overriding message of the Book of Mormon.

I also ventured into lasagna making - Paula Deen did not lead me astray with 2.5 lbs. of meat and a pound of cheese. That got gobbled up pretty quickly, as did the gluten-free beignets. YUM!