Question for the 'sphere

OK, there is one Quincy practice that I have yet to figure out.

When I come to a stoplight, it often occurs that a car will be there, stopped a good 20 to 25 feet behind the white stop line at the intersection, and sometimes even behind the sensors implanted in the pavement.

Why the heck do some people stop their cars so far back from an intersection? I don't get it. It can't be fear of the lane-cutting left-turners (of which there are many), because I see people do this in the right lane as well as the left.

Gee thanks, AP

The economic downturn isn't such a bad thing...it's "an opportunity to address concerns you and your partner ignored in the past"

and a chance for people to enjoy "more time with family and friends, learning new skills, focusing on their health and pursuing hobbies."

Gosh, maybe we should have recessions more often.

My ideas for how to spend any stimulus money that comes our way

Upgrade and relocate the city's sewer treatment plant. Get it out of that prime spot between the bridges and make that space part of the continuous stretch of parkland along the riverfront. The benefits would be environmental (a modernized sewer system, and one less in danger of being flooded in our ever-more-common "100-year" floods), aesthetic, and recreational.

Really want to get serious about downtown redevelopment? Pick half a block in the downtown core (Fifth to Eighth, Maine to Broadway), buy out every building owner, and flatten. Then build a three-story, free, covered parking garage. Or if not free, permit merchants to validate parking. Can't be farther west than Third, because lazy Quincyans will not walk uphill. The north side of Maine between Sixth and Seventh looks like a good place to me, or Hampshire between Fifth and Sixth. Maybe the west half of the block on Maine between Seventh and Eighth.

Make sure that every street in the city – every street – has a sidewalk along at least one side. Make it easier for people to walk in their neighborhoods. Make it safer for kids to ride their bikes. And the heck with this business of a sidewalk that goes partway down a block, then stops, then starts again three houses down.

Convert to solar-powered and/or LED streetlights.

The Cheney Doctrine

Following Dick Cheney's lead from his interview this morning, let me just predict that horrible, horrible things are going to happen to some of you in the next few years, and that if they do, it's not going to be my fault in the least little bit, because I just warned you about them. So there.

And if they don't, you will have forgotten about this warning long ago anyway, ha ha.

Now That's My Kind of Freed Hostage

From the Sunday Mail (U.K.) story about a hostage freed, along with the rest of the oil tanker's crew, when the ship's owners paid a two-million-pound ransom to Somali pirates:

"We had the chance to speak to a psychiatrist but we all went off and got drunk instead."

Story is here.

Note to editors of the 'Blueprint' section

As the Daily Mail (U.K.) so aptly puts it:

Its a little difficult to place sometimes, but if itd never been invented our sentences wouldnt be so easy to read and wed all get confused because we wouldnt know who owned anything.

But the apostrophe is obviously just too challenging for some.