Summer Musical Balance Update

Brian J. Noggle

This spring, my musical balance was awobble as I bought some pop music. I’ve been accumulating more music this summer, and my normal musical balance has been upended a bit as well.

As you might remember, gentle reader, my CD purchases tend to even out between heavy metal and jazz songbirds. However, I seem to have broadened my purchases a bit as I have bought some male jazz performers as well.

Since March, I have bought:

So, we have 5 female jazz singers; 4 metal bands with women lead singers; 1 jazz male singer, 2 male jazz trumpeter, and 1 Japanese pop cellist.

Also, when I played one of the Chris Botti albums whilst reading in the evening, my beautiful wife said, “He’s not a woman.” So apparently she has discovered my musical predilections–pretty women on the cover or performing. Although not exclusively.

So who can resist CDs with these lovely women on the cover?

Continue reading “Summer Musical Balance Update” →

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Clearly, YouTube’s Algorithms Have Mistaken Me For Someone Else

Brian J. Noggle

So on one of my work email accounts, I’ve been testing links to YouTube videos with the normal symphonic heavy metal things (as I mentioned), and so it presented me with the work of Olivia Holt:

A Disney and other things actress.

She’s a little poppy for either my metal or jazz tastes.

Clearly, Google thinks I share musical tastes with the revered Charles Hill. While we have some overlap, no.

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Good Book Hunting, Saturday, August 21 2021: ABC Books

Brian J. Noggle

ABC Books hosted an author signing today, so I ran up there after a martial arts class. Mrs. E. says she appreciates the support. I’m kind of like that first guy to arrive at a party, a relief to the host. I was actually there a bit before the author and his wife. Which gave me plenty of time to browse before the main event.

Which did not lead to too much profligacy.

I got:

  • Lake Honor, Gone in the Night, and Shadow Valley by Alan Brown and Brian Brown. A father and son team, they wrote mysteries based on real cases (Lake Honor and Gone in the Night) and a completely original one. Originally from the Ozarks, the Browns live in the St. Louis area now, not far from the house we lived in Lemay for a time.
  • The New Black Mask Quarterly #1 which features an interview with Robert B. Parker and a piece of The Promised Land. I am pretty sure that I bought the first copy I own of this off of eBay for more than the $4.95 this cost (there’s a current listing for $15 plus shipping and handling). Like when I bought a copy of the men’s magazine Gallery with Robert B. Parker’s “The Surrogate” in it for $100 on eBay and found another copy in the dirty magazines room of Downtown Books in Milwaukee for $1 after pawing through stacks to the ceiling for an hour.
  • The Mizzou Fan’s Guide to the SEC as a gift for my mother-in-law (I’m back, baby!).
  • Tom Moore’s Bermuda Poems by William Zuill. A short chapbook of poems. It looks to be in a line of books about Bermuda published by Bermuda.
  • Introducing Machiavelli by Patrick Curry and Oscar Zarate. It’s a comic-booked intro that’s longer than The Prince itself. Probably akin to the Marxist tracts Sartre for Beginners and Einstein for Beginners.

So it’s only five books to lose in my stacks for a decade.

I am most likely to read Introducing Machiavelli or the poetry first, but I’m working on quite a stack of incomplete books currently, so it might be a while.

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Select Parents Can Talk About This For Ten Minutes

Brian J. Noggle

Two employees file lawsuit against Springfield Public Schools over equity training:

A spokesman for the school district called the lawsuit a misinformation campaign, designed to undermine the district’s efforts to provide equity for everyone.

That’s what stakeholders, that is, parents and taxpayers, want to talk about but the school district doesn’t want to hear. Or maybe it’s just the school board doesn’t want to hear it because they don’t have any power over the administrators of the district.

Anyone want to wager whether the Daily Dammit, Gannett! finds something on social media to get the word Trump into its headline?

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Something Unheard Of, Sort Of

Brian J. Noggle

So, as I might have mentioned, I often have a game of Civ IV running in the background so I can play a couple turns whilst waiting on a build or something. It’s been that was for over 15 years and many PCs, as I mentioned. But I’m really trying to find things for little work breaks that are not reading the news or blogs because that’s not optimal for my frame of mind.

Given that I’ve also taken to playing it a bit at night when my boys have taken over the den with video games, and suddenly I’m getting a little tired of Civ IV. After only fifteen years, right?

So I did something crazy. I opened up the Steam store to look for something else to play.

And immediately, I got list after list in category after category of games, some of dubious provenance–Chinese or Japanese characters in the screenshots and whatnot. Screen after screen, with prices ranging from free to under a buck to sixty bucks for new big releases in known franchises.

So I scrolled, and I paged forward, and I tried different categories, but I found it hard to decide. I’m sure my boys are used to picking games from a list, and are probably not hesitant to download and try a bunch of things before deciding what to play long-term (and since they play online with friends, critical mass sometimes contributes to their decisions).

But you know me, gentle reader. I like to browse. I like to pick up books, music, and video games turn them over in my hands. In the case of the video games, look at the box, read it, look at the screenshots on the back. The listings on Steam have all of these things and videos, but just the packaging indicated whether it was a cheap game (just cellophane on a sleeve) or something more elaborate (a box). But I did not get that.

And let’s just reflect upon those games that I have bought in boxes. A lot of times, I install them, run them once, maybe play the training level, and then wander off. It’s certainly true for RPG, real-time strategy, or first person shooters that I’ve downloaded. I’m not looking for games to fill up large blocks of my evenings; I want something I can switch windows, play a bit, and switch back. What I’m probably looking for, then, is casual gaming, but aside from downloads of PopCap games back in the day, for some reason I want something a little meatier.

Clicking through the menus and screens, I got the anxiety of an old man, afraid to click on things. Well, maybe not quite that bad–maybe it was just the indecisiveness of a person in a bookstore with a gift card.

But, eventually, I did settle on a game. Master of Orion. Widely characterized as Civilization in space. And it’s from 1993.

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Springfield Public School Board Does Not Want To Hear From You

Brian J. Noggle

Springfield Board of Education makes changes to meetings

What kind of changes? Fewer chances for parents and taxpayers to speak up.

Springfield’s Board of Education will make changes to the way it takes public comment at future meetings.

The announcement came during Tuesday’s meeting: Public comments will be limited to ten speakers per meeting in the future.

Each speaker will need to sign up ahead of time, and each will have three minutes to voice concerns or ask questions.

The changes have come after several marathon meetings in recent months. On Tuesday, the meeting lasted nearly four hours, with 28 people signing up to speak.

Remember when the only controversial decisions school boards had to deal with was whether to ban Slaughterhouse Five once every couple years?

Now, schools are making political judgement calls regarding education all the time, and they don’t want to be told to stop.

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I Don’t Have To Guess

Brian J. Noggle

The Sun posts this question:


Can you guess who this 80s pop hunk is out shopping in Italy?

I don’t have to guess. That’s Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran.

We heard a Duran Duran song on the radio within the last week, and I mentioned two things: One, that the band did not actually have anyone named Duran in it, and that I really wanted to look like Simon Le Bon in the 1980s–and I followed that up with my common comment that the older we get, the closer I get to looking like Simon Le Bon.

Which is not exactly true. I’m looking more like Jason Statham (I tell myself) than Simon Le Bon these days. But as we both get older, we both look the same: Older.

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I Disagree With The Methodology

Brian J. Noggle

The Daily Dammit, Gannett! had a story about some small company’s social media hireling mentioned Springfield in an article entitled Springfield isn’t the worst place to be should zombies descend. One company’s research explains why.

The company is Lawn Love, which looks like it’s a referral service for lawn and exterior care providers. The blog post, er scientific analysis is 2021’s Best Cities for Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse.

I guess Springfield, Missouri, came in 56 of 200.

But let’s look at the methodology:

We ranked the 200 biggest U.S. cities from best to worst (1-200) based on their overall scores (out of 100 points), averaged across the weighted metrics listed below.

Public Health

  • Share of Population in Good Health (Weight: 3)
  • Physical Activity Rate (Weight: 3)
  • Share of Population Who Jogged in Past Year (Weight: 2)

Vulnerability

  • Natural Hazards Index (Weight: 1)
  • Number of Military Bases (Weight: 1)
  • Hospitals per Capita (Weight: 2)

Infrastructure

  • Average Home Square Footage (Weight: 2)
  • Share of Available Homes with Basements (Bunkers) (Weight: 3)
  • Share of Homes with Complete Kitchen Facilities (Weight: 1)
  • Share of Homes with Complete Plumbing Facilities (Weight: 1)
  • Off-Grid Lifestyle-Friendliness (Weight: 2)

Supplies

  • Supermarkets (Costco, Sam’s Club, Target, Walmart) per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
  • Shopping Centers and Department Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 2)
  • Pharmacies/Drug Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
  • Hardware Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 1)

Protection

  • Hunting-Gear Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
  • Weapons and Ammunitions Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 3)
  • Outdoor-Gear Stores per 100,000 Living Residents (Weight: 2)

Mobility

Although the “methodology” mentions the number of gun stores, it does not say anything about the number of guns already in private hands, nor does it talk about population density (the fewer people nearby, the fewer potential zombies). In both of these cases, Springfield is already high on the list. Or the number of preppers in the area, nor the neighborliness or Christian values of an area–which would lead to better bonding of groups of survivors, but probably less intrigue than you get in the popular culture.

It’s why your zombie apocalypse movies and television shows take place in urban environments, where different people get thrown together and are suspicious of each other.

But, yeah, the number of basements here is indeed low, which really surprises me since this area gets its shares of tornadoes.

Also, good on that particular content writer, cranking out that blog post for maybe $50 and getting it picked up by at least one newspaper. Unless, of course, it was done the easy way–being the reporter herself or a friend of the same.

Also, as a reminder, it was I who wrote the book on surviving a reanimated skeleton apocalypse. Okay, I exaggerate: I wrote a blog post called A Brief Dissertation On Where To Shoot An Evil Reanimated Skeleton.

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Özel Türkbaş Warned Me There’d Be Videos Like This

Brian J. Noggle

Well, no; one can only wonder what the woman behind the LP How To Make Your Husband A Sultan: Belly Dance with Özel Türkbaş would think of this:

I certainly like the music more than the traditional Middle Eastern belly dances.

Apparently, Diana Bastet, probably not her real name, has videos stretching back ten years with dances to various songs with various degrees of production effort as well as some belly dancing workouts. The About page on YouTube says she performs at festivals, but certainly not church festivals, and probably not on this side of the pond.

I found this video because one of the applications I am testing now allows you to link to YouTube videos, and of course, I’m linking to symphonic metal videos.

I did not use any of Bastet’s work as test data, however.

You can see more of Ms. Bastet in motion on YouTube. I have added some photos, which are strangely not blurry, below the fold.

Continue reading “Özel Türkbaş Warned Me There’d Be Videos Like This” →

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Ackshually Patrol

Brian J. Noggle

At PJ Media, Wretchard writes:

The visuals of Elon Musk working on his fleet of spaceships to Mars while earth writhes in fear of the pandemic, global warming, and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan gives off a When Worlds Collide vibe. That 1951 movie concerns the desperate efforts to build a space ark to transport a group of men and women to another planet to avoid the coming destruction of the Earth by a rogue star.

C’mon, man, it was a 1933 novel, man. Which I read in sixth grade.

I bought the sequel, After Worlds Collide, in 2007, and I intend to read it sometime before the time between then and 2007 surpasses the time between sixth grade and when I bought the sequel. Given I bought the sequel 14 years ago, I’d better get on it.

I am pretty sure it’s in the right most bookshelves in my office in the front, which will help me should I remember I mean to read it.

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Revisiting a Checklist / Quiz

Brian J. Noggle

Back in 2012, I posted about some listicle probably long dead about 8 films that a geek should love. Back then, my results were:

  1. Office Space
  2. Cube (I didn’t like it. Geek demerits for me.)
  3. WarGames
  4. Blade Runner
  5. THX 1138
  6. Dark City
  7. Moon
  8. They Live

I am pleased to say I’ve gotten up to 88% in the nine years since.

  1. Office Space
  2. Cube
  3. WarGames
  4. Blade Runner
  5. THX 1138
  6. Dark City
  7. Moon
  8. They Live

I’ve also read the synopsis of Moon, so I know its story. And I’ve seen it in the wild on DVD for a couple of bucks because I already know the story. Perhaps my imperfect score on this list will prompt me to pick it up the next time I see it at an antique mall or garage sale.

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Movie Report: Labyrinth (1986)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverOn Friday, I took both my children to the bowling alley. We took the back-up truck, which I generally treat as a pickup most of the time, with both of the seats folded down. So to transport the two boys, one of them unfolds the back seat, which leaves one up and one down. As we reached the end of the driveway, I told the oldest son that I was going to play the Labyrinth game with the bowling ball in the back, trying to take turns and accelerate so that the ball rolled up over the other seat, still folded down, and into his lap.

So when it came time for a movie in the evening, of course I picked this film out.

A couple years ago, probably when the Dark Crystal sequel same out, I realized that I had missed a lot of the puppet fantasy movies from the early 1980s: this movie and Dark Crystal especially, so I ordered DVDs of those two and Legend with Tom Cruise. I had seen the latter a couple of times because it was on Showtime in the day, but I did not have a hard copy.

This film is PG, which from the 80s means kind of a scary G. It’s basically a David Bowie musical with a young Jennifer Connelly as a teenager stuck watching her younger brother when she’d rather be–I dunno, living in her fantasy world of princesses and goblins. When the baby won’t stop crying, she recites a curse from one of her favorite fantasy books, Labyrinth, the goblins appear and do take the baby away. The Goblin King, played by David Bowie, appears and offers to trade the girl all her dreams for the boy. She resists, so he offers her the chance to find and take the boy from the castle beyond the goblin city past the Labyrinth. So she does and goes through a series of set pieces with Jim Henson Muppets puppets. I call it a David Bowie musical because he has a number of songs that he performs in toto in the film. And, to my delight, he revisits a bit from the Cary Grant film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer in the song “Magic Dance”:

I also used to do that bit with my much younger boys.

At any rate, it’s the kind of thing that I would worry might give my children nightmares in their younger days, as they were susceptible to some fears you might find in the film, but now that they’re teenagers, the “cringe” as they call it outweighed the nightmare fodder. Well, for the first night anyway.

So it’s a bit on the child side for teenagers; in the 1980s, certainly by this time, I was watching R rated movies on Showtime for the plot and adventure. But I am still likely to subject my boys to The Dark Crystal and Legend soon to complete my retro viewing. And then perhaps onto Excalibur which I have on VHS unwatched.

   

At any rate, did someone say Jennifer Connelly?
Continue reading “Movie Report: Labyrinth (1986)” →

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I Know His Name Is Jaromir

Brian J. Noggle

Jaromir Jagr has ‘no choice’ but to keep playing as he nears 50.

It’s mostly to honor his father:

“As long as my father breathes, I take the club as my responsibility,” he said. “He held it for 20 years. As a son, I would be embarrassed if I left.”

Which is better than having to work for a living because he spent his athlete millions on hookers and coke.

It kind of mirrors, in a way, his former teammate Mario Lemiuex, who took an ownership stake in the Pittsburgh Penguins when they went bankrupt and then un-retired to play six more seasons for his own hockey club.

(Jaromir Jagr, as you might recall, is the source of that one thing Daddy always says.)

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The Maury Poviched Feline Patrimony At Nogglestead

Brian J. Noggle

Way back when we first moved to Nogglestead, a couple of our cats got into some inappropriate urination. Although one of the tabbies had, from time to time, used the bathroom in a dark closet, he started doing things like urinating on my desk. Instead of getting rid of the cats, we put them into our back yard which is sheltered enough from predators that they would be safe, if not comfortable. We had food and water out for them all day and night, which brought all manner of fauna by for a snack.

Including two neighboring cats. One, we nicknamed Valjean because he was stealing the other cats’ food.

Another cat, more skittish and standoffish came by. We named him Jigsaw because of the coloring on his face resembling a Jigsaw puzzle. Also, because Jigsaw sounds mean.

Our cats and Valjean did not like Jigsaw; I once saw Jigsaw and Valjean tussle where Jigsaw ran the length of our deck and launch himself over our fence to get away, and Valjean went running after him, flying several yards out and ten or twelve feet down, to get that cat.

So, in the mythos of Nogglestead, Valjean was a good cat, and Jigsaw was not.

From time to time, we saw (and continue to see) similar-looking cats in the fields around us, and we say they’re Valjean’s line.

Over the years, we let in a couple cats that showed up around Nogglestead.

The first was about six years ago. It was spring time, and the windows and doors were open. For a couple of evenings, this cat showed up and whined at the open windows and doors of whatever room I was in. I put out some food for him, so he hung around. After a couple of weeks, my beautiful wife decided he should be neutered; she used to volunteer and support a trap/spay/release organization in St. Louis. Since the beast was going to have to stay in the house for a couple of weeks from the neutering, we decided just to have him declawed and a housecat. We were down to four cats at the time, and we have six bowls for moist cat food, so we were hiring.

A couple of years later, a similar-looking cat appeared, and he came when my wife called it. A skinny little thing, he was already front declawed and neutered. Because he seemed nice, my family wanted to, and did, take him in pretty quickly. He’s a bit of a biter, though–nipping at your feet and ankles when you’re walking. One constantly finds him at your feet as well, so we postulate that another family threw him out for it.

So we have these two cats we brought in, which undoubtedly has given us the neighborhood reputation of being cat rustlers. The cats look the same, and they look like the other cats we’ve seen around the neighborhood. So we’ve posited that they’re progeny of Valjean.

However, I’ve recently been using our cat pictures as test data, and I’ve got photos rotating on another monitor again, which led me to a shocking discovery that has proven that everything I believed to be true was a lie.

Continue reading “The Maury Poviched Feline Patrimony At Nogglestead” →

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Got The Magic Words In The Headline (II)

Brian J. Noggle

Plymouth shooting gunman ‘is America obsessed gun nut who shared Donald Trump quotes’

Undoubtedly, his favorite was the one where Donald Trump said if you cannot get laid, you maybe should try injecting some lead into random people; it couldn’t hurt.

You might be forgiven, casual news glancer, if you started to connect Donald Trump and QAnon and Republican with anything bad ever happening anywhere on the planet.

Forgiven? Heck, you will be rewarded with up-twinkles.

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Got The Magic Words In The Headline

Brian J. Noggle

Man killed his kids with spear gun because of QAnon conspiracy theories, FBI says:

A California father confessed to killing his two young children after researching QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories that led him to believe they had “serpent DNA,” according to an FBI affidavit.

Matthew Taylor Coleman, a 40-year-old surf instructor, has been charged with killing his 2-year-old son and 10-month-old daughter, the Associated Press reported.

The man killed them because he was crazy. Also, estranged from their mother.

But, gentle reader, if you got the impression from the headline that he killed them because he felt the 2020 election might have had some notable irregularities and because Donald Trump told him to inject spears into his children, well, the Right Thinkers are guiding you to the Right Way.

Full disclosure: I do not spread QAnon conspiracy theories. I spread QAoui conspiracy theories.

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Brian J. Is Back On The Comics: Sad Sack Laugh Special #38, 1967

Brian J. Noggle

So I had a little time to kill a couple of weekends ago when my youngest was playing miniature golf with his church youth group. The Fun Acre miniature golf course is, really, about an acre wedged between a strip mall and residential homes on a side street off of Campbell Avenue. It’s been there forever; the aged proprietor still mans the small shed as he did when Steve Pokin of the Daily Dammit, Gannett profiled him in 2014.

Whilst the youngster played a round with which he would ultimately be disappointed, Daddy went to the antique mall that abuts the looking mostly for cheap DVDs (LPs are now heading past $10 each, so buying them at antique malls is generally out).

I also stopped up the road at Nameless City, which has a couple of roleplaying games left but also still has a couple of tables of dollar comics. As you might remember, gentle reader, I used to hit up the Comic Cave (and sometimes got a discount for being a good customer). I liked the dollar comic boxes because they were organized; you could easily find runs of comics, even kinda new comics, for a buck each (which ultimately led to the store’s downfall–the proprietor would “subscribe” to a comic on your behalf, where he would pay the annual subscription and you promised to come buy the issues every month, and so many of you did not live up to your part of the bargain that I got your unclaimed comics for a buck each, and the proprietor could not afford to keep the shop open).

So when I am pawing through the jumbled boxes at Nameless City or Vintage Stock, I’m generally looking for interesting looking stories with low numbers, generally non-Marvel and non-DC, or I’m looking for issues in series I’ve kinda collected over time. Which leads to a lot of one-off, incomplete stories to read, but sometimes I can patch together a small run if I paw through enough boxes.

At any rate, to make a short story long, this trip I found something interesting: A 1967 Sad Sack Laugh Special from Harvey Comics:

As I mentioned, I got a large number of hand-me-down Harvey Comics from the 1960s from my aunts/great aunts. Old issues of Hot Stuff, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Good Witch, and, likely, Sad Sack.

Basically, Sad Sack is similar to Beetle Bailey but appeared eight years before the more popular slacker/soldier. This particular volume collects multi panel newspaper comics into a single flat-spined comic book. You know, the archetype of the reluctant soldier skating by probably proved more popular during wartime, after the war with the returning GIs, and through the draft era. This particular volume, though, comes from the late 1960s, where presumably GIs in Vietnam could have read it, although I expect the schtick and motif were getting long in tooth by then. But, hey, Gomer Pyle, USMC was still on the air, so what do I know.

Sad Sack had a long history–although the newspaper cartoon only ran for 12 years, Harvey kept pumping out comics for 37 years, and Sad Sack appeared on radio in the 40s and in a movie in 1957. Mostly forgotten today except for some of us who inherited a stack of comic books almost 40 years ago.

I was pleased to find this book for a buck for the nostalgia it provided–it even smelled like those old comics, a bit musty which you don’t get from newer comics on slicker paper (and probably won’t in 40 years). The humor within is what it was, which is a bit amusing in spots particularly if you served, but probably not something that would reach today’s audiences.

But for the secondhand nostalgia.

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I Remember Then

Brian J. Noggle

Over at Rural Revolution, they’ve got enough bookshelves to arrange their books by category.

There was a time, once, at Nogglestead, where we did the same thing. But that was eleven years ago.

I look back at those photos, like this one:

Or this one:

And think, “I used to have room atop the bookshelves for something other than more books?” Look at those organized shelves in the common area, only single stacked.

I am pleased to say that I do not have books stacked on the floor in my office at this time, and only a small stack of audio courses/audio books out in the living room.

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Round and Round We Go

Brian J. Noggle

I drive through this coming interchange every time I go into Republic: MoDOT announces new roundabout near Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield:

MoDOT has plans for a new roundabout near Republic, which as drivers talking.

“You are essentially entering into a guessing game,” said local Param Reddy.

That roundabout will be installed at the intersection of route ZZ and Farm road 182, right by the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

MoDOT officials said it would cost around $1.3 million and start construction in Spring of 2023.

As you might know, gentle reader, I oppose roundabouts for a couple of reasons, and this one will illustrate why very well.

This is the intersection in question. ZZ runs north and south and is a pretty straight state highway with good visibility in both directions. Farm Road 182 is hilly and curvy. The intersection itself is within the bounds of the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield, so the speed limit on 182 drops to 20, but this is rarely observed. Farm Road 182 has stop signs, but ZZ has no control device.

I have come to this interchange a couple of times where I’ve had to wait behind cars at the stop sign for a couple of minutes, but rarely more.

The area is developing, so perhaps a control other than the stop sign would be in order eventually, but not a roundabout.

  • The roundabout is expensive; it will cost at least $1.3 million at least, and its construction will add delays to the intersection.
  • The roundabout slows down traffic on the highway even if there’s no merging/crossing traffic. Instead of continuing north or south at speed, drivers on ZZ will often have to slow down unnecessarily when no traffic is present on Farm Road 182.
  • The roundabout is inflexible. A stop light can be set to flashing yellow or enabled with sensors to know when to change based on the presence of vehicles. Not the roundabout. It’s the light rail train of interchanges. You cannot adjust it. You can only endure it.

I continue to believe that traffic engineers hate people who drive cars, and I’m starting to think that they’re all from the city and ride ebikes to work. Someone from the country who needs to go ten or twenty miles or more when driving doesn’t need a bunch of European traffic fads. We need consistent speeds to get from one point to another.

But I did not go to expensive Traffic Engineering School, which seems to lead to this thought process:

  1. Roundabouts.
  2. Diverging Diamond Interchanges.
  3. Diverging Diamond Interchanges with roundabouts at each end.
  4. Diverging Diamond Interchanges with roundabouts at each end and smoke machines! That will slow the traffic down.

If it saves just one life, it’s worth it! Although I’m not sure that in the ten years that I’ve lived at Nogglestead that one life has been lost at that intersection. Maybe, but it’s not Blood Alley by any means to warrant this imposition.

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