bad Jan!

So, I unintentionally took three weeks off from cycling (1.5 for vacation, when I was still getting lots of exercise; 1.5 for late nights/early mornings catching up at work) and it's like it was three months of chain smoking. I rode ~ 4.7 miles on Sunday and around 2.5 this morning (my hilly neighborhood) and it's kicking my butt. I had no idea I'd get out of (what tiny scrap of) condition (I was in) so quickly. Let that be a lesson to me!

Still, it's a nice morning today. The coolness is back; the nasty ick that descended over a pleasant September last weekend has lifted. I saw a marmalade cat, some dogs, and a squirrel today, but no birds (heard a few jays). I did see a number of birds yesterday, including a hawk (very close to the road when I was driving), a flock of robins in the park, some "rock doves", and I think a mocking bird.

Hmmm. Need a birding icon...

p.s.

Sorry I haven't been posting much (or reading much) lately. Another habit I've gotten out of;and I do need to do less of it... at work (so I have more time for, well, work).

lovely photo

Doing my occasional check of the BBC News feature "Your Pictures of Scotland", I found this photo. Very pretty.

probably news to no one, but...

"Scottish police have opened fire 34 times at emergency incidents during the last seven years, new figures revealed yesterday."

probably news to no one, but...

"Scottish police have opened fire 34 times at emergency incidents during the last seven years, new figures revealed yesterday."

from the Scotsman, today (http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1414012006) [4.85 incidents per year]

"In the last five years, ... D.C. officers were involved in 640 shooting incidents – 40 more than the Los Angeles Police Department, which has more than double the officers and serves six times the population."

from the Washington Post, 1998 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/dcpolice/deadlyforce/police1page1.htm) [128 incidents per year]

Scotland's population is roughly around 5 million. DC's is roughly around 550,000. So if DC's rate (of 8 years ago) were translated onto a comparably sized population, their officers would be shooting 8,960 times to Scotland's 34.

Of course, DC is a single urban area, compared Scotland, much of which is rural and sparsely inhabited, so that's a bit unfair. But even in Scotland's two largest urban areas, covered by Lothian and Borders and Strathclyde police districts, there were 15 firearms discharge incidents in the seven years of the study [2.14 per year]; Glasgow and Edinburgh have between them about 1 million people, so twice the District's population. And yet DC police use their weapons about 60 times as often as Strathclyde and L&B officers...