Yes, you, the one who flashed your brights and honked at me last night on Redwood Road. I was exercising my freedom to ride my bicycle down the center of the right lane because there was insufficient space for me to ride any farther to the right and there were two other lanes for you to safely and calmly pass me in.

Utah law clearly states:

bq. A person operating a bicycle on a roadway at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall ride as near as practicable to the right hand edge of the roadway except when … Reasonably necessary to avoid conditions that make it unsafe to continue along the right hand edge of the roadway including … A lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane.

According to the Utah Department of Tranportation’s Utah Bicycle Commuter Guide: An Introduction to the Fun and Rewarding Art of Bicycle Commuting,

bq. Riding in the center of a lane (taking the lane) may be the safest course of action in certain situations, such as when … lane width does not permit a motorized vehicle behind you to safely pass.

Now, you might insist that I should have been riding on the sidewalk, since there is an adequate one on Redwood. However, the Utah Bicycle Commuter Guide (and virtually every other bicycle safety document I’ve read) also states:

bq. Sidewalk riding is more dangerous than street riding (and in some areas is illegal) due to reduced sight distances and reaction times.

As it happens, even though you’re a fool, you couldn’t help but notice me because of where I was riding. In order to pass me, you made a (very discourteous) lane change, thereby putting over six feet of distance in between us. If I had been riding as far to the right as possible, you probably would’ve buzzed past me at high speed with inches between us and nearly killed me. So, even though you’re stupid, I was actually safer last night because I was following laws that exist precisely for my protection.

If you drive a motor vehicle or ride a bike and you don’t know much about bicycle safety laws, I would encourage you to read the relevant sections of the Utah Bicycle Commuter Guide or locate a similar guide for your state or country. Or, check out the links I’ve provided below, especially the “Sharing the Road” section on the first site. :syzygy:

See also

* League of American Bicyclists: Rules of the Road
* Ken Kifer’s Bike Pages: Bicycle Traffic Safety

I’ve been wanting to publish my testimony for some time now and have had an outline written for at least two years. I was inspired last week by Tim Challies’ Testimony Tuesday, so I’ve decided to start a regular Testimony Tuesday of my own. I’m going to write my testimony in installments and publish them every Tuesday until I’m done.

The outline I’ve got is currently divided into seven sections, but I may combine or split a few sections, so it should end up between six or eight installments long. I’m going to try my darnedest to publish weekly, but some of the sections require more work than others to write, so I may give myself two weeks for those.

The first installment has been published. You can get to it by clicking the link I just provided or by using the “Testimony” link on the navigation bar across the top of every page on the site. :syzygy:

I know I’m jumping on the bandwagon awfully late here, but I didn’t get the memo. A lot of people are re-branding today so I thought I’d give it a whirl myself. Behold, the new logo (and name!):

If you don’t get it, see the post over at SimpleBits and the Flickr Pool. :syzygy:

I read a controversial article the other day in TIME Magazine: “The Case for Teaching The Bible”, which makes a clear call for courses teaching about the Bible in public high schools. The author, David Van Biema, TIME’s senior religion writer, carefully couches his call with some guidelines, namely that such teaching must be entirely secular and constitutional. The emphasis within the teaching should be on the Bible’s impact on Western history, literature, and culture.

The article mentions a couple of groups producing texts for such classes, including The Bible Literacy Project, which, in cooperation with The First Amendment Center, published a document in 1999 called “The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide” and has more recently released a textbook called The Bible and Its Influence.

I think Van Biema makes a critical statement near the middle of his article, when he asks and answers his own question:

bq.. Doesn’t secular teaching about the Bible play into the hands of the religious right and the secular left?

Yes. Both. Which may suggest that each is exaggerating its claim.

p. In other words, the religious right wins by getting the Bible into schools, but loses because of the secular spin, and vice versa for the secular left. There are strong reasons why both groups should oppose this, and, on the other hand, good reasons why they should cooperate to make sure it happens.

Van Biema’s careful criteria for Bible literacy courses in public schools, as provided near the end of his article, goes something like this:

* The Bible literacy course shouldn’t be mandatory.
* The course should be coupled mandatorily with a world religions course, even if that would mean just a semester of each.
* No one should take the course but juniors and seniors.
* The Bible’s harmful as well as helpful uses must be addressed.
* The course should have a strong accompanying textbook. It shouldn’t use the Bible as its primary text.
* Teacher training is a must: at a bare minimum, about their constitutional obligations.

I personally agree with Van Biema’s criteria and his conclusion and would welcome the academic teaching of the Bible in public schools.

As an aside, in trying to think about this from the perspective of someone who is not Christian, I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to have secular teaching of the Quran in high schools. The more I think about that, the more I wish I could’ve taken such a class in high school. I think it would’ve prepared me better (and, if offered today, would prepare our children) to deal better with and think more rationally about current events in the middle east. :syzygy:

As far as I could tell, [WordPress] doesn’t have any kind of global sitenotice feature like MediaWiki, but I needed one to promote my upcoming ride in the 2007 MS Bike Tour, so I wrote my own quick-and-dirty plugin.

I’m in the process of submitting this to wp-plugins.org so I can start some more serious and stable development, but if you’d like to try it out in the meantime, feel free to download the alpha version:

* sitenotice-1.0alpha1.zip
* sitenotice-1.0alpha1.tar.gz

To use the plugin, you’ll need to add a new template tag to an appropriate place where you’d like the sitenotice to appear when it’s enabled (I have mine right at the end of my header.php template file). The new tag is <?php get_the_sitenotice(); ??>. The plugin adds a new admin panel called “Sitenotice” to the WordPress options menu, from which you can edit the sitenotice message and configure other features.

This is alpha software, so if you install it, realize you’re using it at your own risk. If you do try it out, let me know if you have any feature requests or find any bugs I should squash! :syzygy: