Batman is easily my favorite superhero, and there is a new Batman movie is coming out this summer. So, obviously, I was excited to see the trailer:
Looks pretty good. I’ve never been a huge fan of Bane as a villain (I would rather see Two-Face get a full movie to himself) ,but the potential for social commentary with this one looks huge.
Then, I saw this mash up on Facebook that Brad Hansen (a friend of mine from college who’s now out in LA) made (his youtube is here and imdb here):
Love it. Especially impressed by the quality of syncing the words to the various animals. Plus, the Zazu shot is hilarious.
A potential multiple choice question for becoming a Minneapolis Police Officer:
It’s 3 degrees out and snowing. It has been brutally cold for several days. While driving along a narrow residential side street in your squad car, you come across a small SUV double parked in the street. It has signs on it that say “Auto Rescue: Tires Changed, Jump Starts, Lock Services”. It is parked next to a small legally parked car with it’s hood open. There are two people standing in front of the car, one holding jumper cables. You should:
A) Park in the open spot 3 car lengths back, get out, and see if you can help jump start the car.
B) Pull up behind the SUV and put your lights on so no one hits them. Help to direct traffic around the SUV while the one lane is blocked to keep traffic flowing.
C) Park your squad car in the middle of the street, so it will block traffic coming from both directions instead of just one. Stay in the warm car. Announce over your car’s speakers that the SUV driver needs to move their vehicle because they are blocking traffic. If the stranded motorist yells back that the SUV driver is giving her a jump start, repeat over the speaker that they need to move their vehicle because they are blocking traffic. Note that no cars have pulled up behind you, in the lane that was already blocked by the SUV, though there are 3 cars now backed up in the oncoming lane, which only you are blocking.
D) A and B.
30 seconds. Think it over. As I saw tonight, the answer is apparently C. Yes, that’s right C. And they’re lucky you didn’t give them a ticket for being double parked. Actually, he may have, I had walked further on by that point.
While we’re ripping on the Minneapolis police, on a more serious note, we’ve had a string of at least 10 violent, armed robberies on a main bicycle/running/walking thoroughfare recently. And the police didn’t make any statement about this until there were 10 of them. No warnings, no reaction at all. People I know who work at a local running store, and bike on the route in question all the time hadn’t even heard about it. (The following bit largely echos the sentiment of this post on The Deets.) Then the police did finally issue a warning. And it’s every bit as absurd as one might expect. Do they give a description of the attackers? Not really. Three young males, that’s about it. What is their first bit of advice? Tell people to avoid going out after dark. This trail is a main route for bicycle commuters. Dark in Minnesota in the winter comes at about 4:30pm. The work day ends at 5:00pm. Anyone else see an issue here?
Another bit of advice from the police: “Pay attention to your surroundings. If you see people ahead of you, that make you nervous or uncomfortable, exit the Greenway at the nearest ramp.” Apparently the police have never been on the Greenway (which would explain a lot). There are very, very few entry/exit points. It’s down in a hole that used to be a rail line, with bridges over it every block. The sides are pretty much shear brick walls at several points. There are several places where there’s no entry/exit for a least a quarter mile, and one I can think of off the top of my head that’s closer to a half mile. (I hate running on the Greenway for just this reason, and avoid it even when there isn’t crime for this reason. There’s also no water stops, but that’s another rant.)
Well, at least they tell the exact location of the attacks so people know where to watch out, right? Nope. “…on the Midtown Greenway. They’ve occurred in both the 3rd and 5th Precincts at different locations along the trail.” All of the Midtown Greenway that is in the city of Minneapolis is in the 3rd and 5th Precincts. It’s 5 miles long and spans the entire city, from one side to the other:
Not that a big group of bikers all biking together one time really does much. I would think something like a “riding buddy” program would do more, so people don’t have to ride alone.
Or have a regular police patrol or something. There’s a good 10-15 cops standing in the intersections down town “directing traffic” every night during rush hour. And by “directing traffic”, I mean standing in the middle of busy intersections waving their arms and blowing their whistles, telling drivers to do exactly what the traffic signals are already telling them. Absolutely, 100%, exactly what the stop lights are already doing. Except making people more nervous because there’s a cop waving his arms and blowing a whistle that you have to drive around in addition to the usual traffic and pedestrians. Why not put a couple of them on bikes and run them up and down the Greenway in a loop. They might not stop anything in progress, but being there, and on bikes, would at least show a good faith effort, and allow them to respond faster so there would be a better chance of catching the people doing this.
Generally when people lose faith in the police and try to police themselves, it doesn’t end well.
