President Obama arrived in town on Wednesday afternoon. See today’s header for a picture of Air Force One on the Saint Louis tarmac. He gave a speech about healthcare (of course) and then appeared at a fundraiser for our Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill. McCaskill was an early big supporter of Obama’s presidential campaign.
The interesting thing about this event is that McCaskill isn’t up for relection until 2012, while Robin Carnahan, the Democratic candidate for Kit Bonds open senate seat, is campaigning now for election. We have not had our Democratic primary yet, so the President might be withholding support out of a sense of decorum. But as near as I can tell, Carnahan doesn’t have any challengers, at least no serious ones. It is a mystery to me? I can’t believe that Barack would want to see Roy Blunt Jr. in that seat. Maybe it is a demonstration of monetary muscle? Time will tell.
Our week-long run of fine springtime weather is about to go into abeyance, at least for a while. It was warm enough on Wednesday that I left my coat at home, what with a high in the seventies. We are now facing up to five days of rain springtime showers. I’m sure that I am not the only one that wishes that this does not continue into next week.
Earlier this week Missouri had planned a severe weather drill in preparation for the coming spring storm season. The threat of thunderstorms that day slid the drill until today. Today’s forecast also looks a little dicey for pretending a tornado alert. So without proper training for severe weather, what are we suppose to do?
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout, PANIC! PANIC!
Karen, of CliffsVic, clued Anne and I into this delightful answering machine recording. It is from a Queensland, Australia school and was put together by the faculty. It is a response to a lawsuit from parents of students who did not do enough work to get a passing grade. These parent’s idea of taking responsibility was to lawyer-up. I’m pretty sure that the teachers didn’t consult their lawyers and even more importantly the school district’s lawyers.
Google rolled out a new feature for its Google Maps application on Wednesday. They added bicycle route planning to their mapping application. This event was timed to be in conjunction with the National Bike Summit, which is occurring this week in Washington. This application takes into account automobile traffic and hills when planning a bike route. I tried it out today on some routes that I am familiar with and frankly, I found the initial offering somewhat wanting.
One attribute of this bike friendly application is that it specially marks bike routes and bike paths. In the Saint Louis area, this process was somewhat hit-and-miss. In Forest Park, it inaccurately marked parts of the bike trail network as roads and visa-versa. It also planned routes on seemingly picturesque sounding roads, like a section of the Old Route 66, what everyone here refers to as West County Manchester, a four lane secondary that up until the completion of the New I-64, had been brevet promoted to a primary route. My hope is that with local feedback like this, Google will improve this application. Until they do so, I would not place too much faith in its directions.