My faith in humanity has gone way up today. Returing to San Francisco from Oakland this morning, I tried out the "Casual Carpool" - an extraordinary FREE ride to San Francisco. Basically, there are certain street corners in Oakland where you simply show up around 7-8 in the morning and you find a line of cars casually lined up like taxis at the airport. You simply walk up to the front of the line and hop in someone's car, and off you go!

Why in the world would complete strangers do this? Because if you have three people in a car you get to use the HOV lane and NOT pay any bridge toll! It's a fantastic win-win situation - the driver gets there faster without paying a toll, and you get a free ride! Society benefits as well because it's a traffic reducer. Totally fantastic. There is even a website with maps to the designated corners: Check it out.

I had meant to post this photo a while ago as a testament to civic pride, but I forgot about it. Tonight's extraordinary Game 7 of the American League Championship reminded me of it, as does Andrew Sinclair's discussion.

Anyway, for those to whom it's not obvious, this is the famous sign on Storrow Drive in Boston that used to say "Reverse Curve", but now refers to Boston's desperate plea to win a world series, prevented from happening since 1918 by a vile curse. The game has just begun...

The word "Aussie" is used to describe someone from Australia, though in the last few years I've seen a massive increase in the use of "Ozzy" written in it's place... My theory is that this is a mistake that found its way into writing due to the way it is pronounced, possibly compounded, subliminally, by the simultaneous rise in popularity of Ozzy Osborne.

Curiously, there has also been an increase in the reference to Australia as "Oz", which is a perfectly appropriate analogy to a mysterious land of wonder far, far down under.

The question is, did the mutation of "Aussie" into "Ozzy" provoke this geographic moniker or was it the other way around?

In n' Out Burger is revered by Californians at an iconic level. They make some pretty good burgers, and as fast food goes, they're certainly among the better. Anyway, turns out the also have some extraordinary customer service: The drive thru line was getting really long last night at the In n' Out Burger in the strip mall zone outside Fairfield, but the In n' Out staff went outside and started taking orders car by car, then relaying the orders inside to speed things up. Impressive.

I've been driving a lot more than usual lately and find myself stuck in traffic on the 101 Freeway in San Francisco, often at a dead stop. Amazingly, when you're stuck at a standstill on that eleveated roadway, you actually keep moving quite actively because the entire freeway shakes and bounces like crazy. It feels as if someone's standing outside the car and having it back and forth, especially when a large truck goes by...

My guess is this is a deliberate design feature to absorb vibration, but it's rather frightening. I can only imagine what happens in an earthquake.