Today's Reading -- 17 April 2009

Happy Friday. Late today, this business of getting home from work at 4:00 AM has thrown me off schedule on many fronts. And has not improved my disposition either.
Let me pose a question. Why are traffic signals in so many places so wretchedly done? I have a couple of routes open to me coming home. Two involve the use of one or two Interstates, the third involves driving along a couple of high-volume perimeter streets. I took the latter last night. At 3:30 AM, I and several other cars found ourselves stopped at EVERY traffic light. EVERY one. We stopped for a l-o-n-g time in front of a building that houses a big-name insurance operation, and watched the lights cycle through to let a vast crowd out of that building. Which had, of course, no cars. Likewise we had a L-O-N-G wait to let cars in and out of a shopping mall. Which has been closed for several YEARS, and in any event would have had little or no traffic at 3AM. Many, very many, more examples of this. And this is not the only place I've seen it. WHY is it so impossible for these signals to be turned OFF during off-peak hours? WHY do they not yank out, by the roots, the ones in front of long-empty shopping centers? And WHY by all the stars in the sky, do they persist in running these things strictly by timers without regard to the needs that any fool could see?
And why, pray tell, are such hideous examples of regulatory blundering so much more evident in areas that are Democrat strongholds? Is it that they really don't trust people?



This ''morning's'' reading is chapters 22, 23, 24 of 1st Samuel.

This evening's reading is verses 1 through 18 of the 16th chapter of Luke.