The map from this month’s issue of The Atlantic is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in quite a while. The Oasis Of The Seas casts shadows on 20-story buildings, makes more than nine elephants worth of ice cubes every day, and produces enough electricity to power all of the homes in Utah’s second-largest metropolitan statistical area!? Is this really necessary?
"Hope Floats"
Signs that your company clearly sucks at life:
It has never occurred to me that I could call the government if I were to run out of gas.
Alan Peterson, Incident Management team leader for the Utah Department of Transportation, has been assisting drivers who have pushed their fuel tanks too far and run out of gasoline. In 2007 the team gave out about 721 gallons of gasoline to stranded people. This year so far, they have already given out about 524 gallons. [...] Last month, the team helped 150 motorists refuel.
If the end of the year sees double the current amount, that equates to 3 gallons of free gas every day. At the current price of $4.15/gallon, Utahns are [collectively] paying $12.45 every day because of a growing number of idiots (as of last month, we’re now up to 5 per day!) who disregard their fuel gauges. Is it really that hard to put gas in a car? Even using the lower 2007 numbers, 721 gallons divided by 52 weeks is 14 gallons/week. Let’s hear that again with gusto: The government is handing out a full tank of gas every week! My car doesn’t even hold 14 gallons, but I’d still like to know how to submit my name into the drawing. 
Although it may be a noble goal in their minds, I’m not sure why it is necessary for a city to spend so much of their time continually eliminating parking spaces. Aren’t there bigger actual problems to deal with?
While the theory that fewer parking spaces make people more inclined to walk or use other forms of transportation may sound good, eradicating parking does not actually accomplish this. There are still just as many or more cars today than there were yesterday, so there is just as much or need for parking. If people have been ingenious enough to create parking spaces from the unused space in the planter strip — keeping their cars off the road and leaving more land available for other purposes — it follows that the city should be singing their praises. It doesn’t follow that “if everybody pays, everybody wins”. Maybe it’s just me, but I think I have a different definition of “winning”.
The Defense Department mistakenly shipped secret nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan more than 18 months ago and did not learn that the items were missing until late last week [...]
Officials with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) sent four nose-cone fuse assemblies to Taiwan in August 2006 instead of four replacement battery packs for use in Taiwan’s fleet of UH-1 Huey helicopters. [...] It was unclear yesterday how the two very different items were mixed up at a warehouse at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
Utah for the win! Seriously, how do you mix up batteries and nuclear weapon parts? One has dimensions comparable to a breadbox and the other is the size of my under-counter refrigerator. Come on, people!