I just got word that one of my friends from my days of covering ATV racing may never walk again. He was involved in a wreck at the start of the second moto at the Unadilla ATV Motocross national. The crash fractured vertebrae and damaged his spinal cord in the T10 to T12 region. He was in surgery for six hours where the doctors tried to repair the damage and just got out of it this morning. That is when the news was relayed to me that he may never get to walk again.

This is one of those times I want to believe that the one-percent chance he is given to walk again will come true.

I realize that many may say he was taking an unnecessary risk by racing motocross professionally — and those who say that may be right. I raced and was severely injured. But I don’t know how to reconcile the joy I felt while racing to the inherent risks the sport forces upon the body. People have died racing motocross, people get injured, but still thousands of people do it each day.

Why? It used to be a lot easier for me to answer that question before I broke my leg. Now with Jeremiah’s injury, it just got even harder. Still, it is a sport I will watch and follow for the rest of my life. And I guess I will just have to accept that with motocross there will be incidents like these.

Jeremiah Jones was a professional ATV racer, former national champ and one of the fastest guys I’ve ever had a chance to watch race. He is also one of the nicest people I know. I am completely heartbroken for his wife and son. I can’t imagine what his family must be feeling. Jeremiah, Brenda, Jim, Jamie and Jeremiah Jr., I can only offer my condolences and support. It will be a struggle, but hopefully the pain will ease over time and life will slowly get better.

I don’t know.

I just had to write something.

8/4/06 Update: He is going to be moved to a rehab center in Atlanta and the medical flight is really expensive. If you want to donate to help pay some of the costs, click here where you can donate money or order a bracelet. I believe the donations are tax deductible. He is also reported to be able to feel pressure when applied below the waist, but still cannot move anything.

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It looks like the major studios are getting wise to the idea that it is very convienient to download videos off the internet and store them on your hard disk.  Sadly the convienience kind of goes away when it costs 35USD and takes an hour to download.  It doesn’t really make much sense when it takes 15 minutes to download them for free off the usenet…  But honestly why would it cost 35USD, for something I can buy on a DVD for 15USD and I don’t have to find a place to store it.

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I never thought Jessica Simpson would take a political stand, one way or the other.  This may even justify purchasing “The Dukes of Hazzard” on DVD…which I would do if I hadn’t already gotten it for Christmas.

Maybe I will start giving it to people for Birthdays and other occasions.

In any event, it was funny to see the comparison to Bono who doesn’t have a problem attending fundraisers as long as he gets to inject his political rants somewhere along the way.

If you had the opportunity to have a national or global stage, what would be your message?

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I will try and do my best to add some fuel to the fire that is the rampant rumor mongering surrounding every Apple product release. It looks like Apple is planning to update the iPod for the second time in the last six months. What is even better is it looks like they are finally moving from the standard iPod click wheel to a screen that covers the entire face of the music and video player. I think this is an obvious improvement to the iPod’s capabilities, but I am still waiting for Apple to leverage their considerable weight in the mp3 sector into a general purpose device that can run third party software. Apple has the engineers to pull off a new PDA-like device (they invented that term, anyway), and there have been rumors about Apple buying out Palm. Is it at all possible that Apple will reenter the PDA market with a new Newton? I would like to see Apple transition the iPod into a PDA, but I’m not sure people want that or that it would be a good move economically for Apple. My guess is that iPods are so popular because there really isn’t anything nerdy about them-nobody would buy a digital Rolex with an LCD screen, no matter how feature-rich it is, and I think that the iPod will be stuck as a music and video player for exactly the same reason… But there could be something cool comming from Apple in the near future.

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In 1999, Honda released the Honda Insight – the first hybrid-driven automobile available for mass market consumption in the United States. This was followed in 2000 with the Toyota Prius, the first four-door sedan.

These success stories were followed up with the Honda Civic and the Prius II in 2004 which won “Car of the Year” honors.

Late in 2004, The U.S. automobile industry finally catches on…sort of. Five years after foreign competitors beat them to the market, the U.S. auto industry finally releases a hybrid vehicle – and of course, it’s an SUV.

What is wrong with American car companies?

What is it that makes them think a car consuming more gasoline is what the consumers are demanding?

Perhaps American oil companies enjoy watching SUV after SUV roll off of the assembly line, but these gigantic gas-guzzling monstrosities do nothing for the American people other than use up more of our limited natural resources. These road-hogging behemoths waste more fuel, more oil, more metal, more rubber, more everything – and the American consumer pays MORE for these vehicles up-front so they can continue to pay MORE at the fuel pump and everywhere else…

The logic here is flawed and while American oil companies gleefully run to the bank with record-setting historic wads of money, the American auto industry is taking it in the eye like Clubber Lang – in the re-match.

It is time for American auto industry to stop trying to screw over the consumer and start mass-marketing and selling hybrid cars. And since they can’t figure it out, the government is stepping in an helping by offering tax breaks for hybrids.

It’s wonderful that we live in a place where politicians scream about free handouts to the impoverished and at the same time freely subsidize large corporations with tax breaks for their products.

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I have been trying to come up with something to supplant the posting with all those boobies on it, but every time I come to eightandfive.com I fooloshly click the link and I am left speechless.

So I decided to try to find something equally vulgar and decided that perhaps this web page will suffice.

I hope it’s not too vulgar.

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The other day I was fixing the bone crusher, (which is a weapon that sort of looks like a hatchet made out of a bone, that the package says is supposed to be made of stainless steel, but is actually made of some hard resin, which broke into three neat pieces within five minutes of having been taken out of it’s package, by a forty-five year old M.D., who was playing a shirtless Spartan woman in Lysistrata) when I stabbed myself through the tip of my pinky finger and into my middle finger with the sharpest knife I own. The thing is that right before I thrust the knife down the shaft of the bone crusher and into my flesh, I thought to myself, “I’m gonna stab the shit out of myself.” And then I did. Not a second latter. And it hurt, and I knew that it would, but I did it anyways. I think there’s more to this little mystery than even I can guess.

-Sarah Jo

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BOOM

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It turns out that if you encoded an MP3 file in punch cards it would form a 5 foot 9 inch stack. Does this mean that I am going to have to convert my music collection again. By the way, if you were sent back in time and had to listen to all of your MP3s on punch cards in Babbages living room, or better yet on an IBM 360, what MP3 would you bring?

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