Swift Ice Hockey

Crap, I knew we shouldn’t have started talking about religion. Now the “The God Who Wasn’t There” ad is flouncing itself in my face.
Anyway, re: Top Gear: Much as I resisted it, and much as I hate to admit it, those guys have so much fun doing what they do that I’ve watched the show more times than I’d care to admit.

@Ewalda: Secretly, I’d love to blow shit up. And did you see the one where they turned a Reliant Robin into a space shuttle? Classic.

I don’t like seeing perfectly usable kit with long life being abused. Once, I saw when I was traveling, they brutalized a perfectly usable Nissan pick-up. Just to prove it could take abuse. Thing should have had a charmed life of 300,000 miles at least.

tj/Australian fire coverage from The Age.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/stayanddefend-policy-under-review-20090209-82d4.html

Excuse me. I am totally gay for Top Gear. Completely mindless fun.

redmanlaw: Just was watching some of the clips from Australian TV. Dreadful stuff.

Honest question: you don’t see scores of people dying when the Santa Ana winds whip up fires in SoCal. Any idea as to what went wrong here?

That is one of the most gloriously dumb things I’ve ever watched.

@chicago bureau: My Australian friend says that the fires this year have been unlike any others. Because so many people have died in the past trying to evacuate by car, the official advice has been to “shelter in place.” The 60-80 mph winds, the literally exploding eucalyptus trees, and the hot weather combined to whip these fires into infernos with insane rapidity. For some people, the fires were on them in minutes, and they had no time to shelter. It was like being attacked with flamethrowers. My friend still has family missing. THey’re expecting a death count of over 300.

@chicago bureau:
Aussies have a “stay and defend” policy. Not blaming the victims at all, they’re told that if they’re on the road they’re creating a clusterfuck for the first responders and they’re safer to stay in place and not be moving around and confusing the firefighters.

On the other hand, Californians (except apparently the nursing home where my grandmother lives in SoCal where they decided to stay there when eucalyptus trees explode above the Alzheimer’s unit she lives in) have a “get the fuck out of there with the family photos and dog and who cares if you keep the fire department from getting to the fire” policy.

@chicago bureau: The reason is simple. They had no warning the fire was near.

By the time they realised they were in danger, they had the choice of dying in their cars trying to flee, or getting inside their houses and waiting for the fire front to pass, and possibly dying.

Fuck all chance really.

One person that survived the fire inside their home described the ember attacks that burnt his home to the ground as “Like a heavy hailstorm, except hot embers instead of hailstones.”

His fire hose pump failed due to lack of oxygen in the air, so he went inside to hide and survive.