San Francisco Citizen

We’re in Cali, right? So you know what a freeway is. So don’t call a freeway a “highway.” In California, a highway is any old street. For example:

“CVC 21201 (d) A bicycle operated during darkness upon a highway…”

This use of highway in this context means any public street. I guarantee it. (But you can ride your bike on many sections of California freeway – see below.) So you can’t say that Frisco only has two highways (but if you do, people will know you mean freeway through context, I guess.)

What I’m saying is that you use highways to get to a freeway, how’s that?

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Libel and slander don’t necessarily mean what you think they mean 100%, sry. Your rule of thumb will keep you out of trouble almost all of the time, but things can get tricky when you get down into the weeds. So yes, you’ve got the dictionary definition right, but there can be exceptions, the same way the duck-billed platypus is an egg-laying species but also a mammal. The solution is defamation and defamatory. 

Let’s try it out. “Dear Sir, your words are defamatory. I shall contact my solicitor to begin an action for defamation.” That works, baby. (Or, you can call yourself an “editor” of an online entity what’s called “Beyond Chron” and then threaten to sue the real Chronicle. Like you’ll say “I’ll consider my options” of suing the real Chronicle for defamation, something like that. And then people will chuckle because they know you’ve already decided not to sue our local paper of record.)

And really, this difference doesn’t really matter. It’s like what’s a fruit and what’s a vegetable. There’s no reason to get into the distinction most of the time.

(But feel free to mock those who confuse these terms, or use the term “liable,” – I won’t take that away from you.

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Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference betwixt a shotgun and a rifle, especially from far away. So the term you use is long gun. Easy peasy. I saw the use of this term exactly once in our local Paper of Record, and I thought, wow, that’s how you do it. But then the hed was changed an hour later, presumably because readers were confused. Or maybe the issue had been cleared up by then, IDK.

Another thing is that a rifle can kill you from 500+ yards away and a shotgun can’t.

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An accident is something what occurs not on purpose and a collision is when two or more things hit each other, more or less. (And let’s not get into allision.) But you see, they’re not really substitutes for each other. Sometimes collisions are accidental and sometimes accidents involve collisions. Most accidents involving cars are the result of negligence and some are the result of recklessness. Most bike accidents are the result of pilot error, you know, just falling down, but some involve hitting or getting hit by a car and that may or may not be the bicycle rider’s error. You need to look at each case to find fault.

Now if a tennis pro who’s into crystals starts running people over on purpose in the Mission, well, that’s not an accident, but later on you might say that you have a trick knee now due to a traffic accident even though this guy targeted you, that’d be OK. If you have reason to believe that some car crash was committed on purpose, you can say, “That was no accident.” And then it could be attempted homicide or vehicular manslaughter or battery – it could be a lot of things, but not an accident. Anyway, if a collision was the result of negligence or recklessness, then it quite rightly can be called an accident. (And of course, I’m more of a San Francisco bike rider and more of a San Francisco pedestrian, measured any way you would like, by miles, hours, years, decades on these streets of San Francisco, than anybody who harps on you about the difference between accident and collision. Think on that.)

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A blog is a weB LOG – it’s the whole enchilada. A single entry into a blog is called a post. I am astounded at the number of people who don’t get this, even after a quick mansplaining. So, the post is the tree and the blog is the forest that the tree is in.

Now one time some lady who got rich off the Chron, through marriage I guess, paid some lawyer to send me a long-winded letter about how I was going to get sued for slander libel, ah defamation, that’s that ticket. Now he was only writing me concerning one post, but his demand was for me to take down my blog, you know, which at that time was made up of thousands and thousands of posts. You see, he was confused. (And then he said I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody about this matter, so of course I posted his letter on my blog the next day. (In poker terms, this is called going over the top.) Good times. And I kept the offending post up, ’cause it was all good. And of course I never got sued IRL. You gotta know how to handle Trump-like individuals, know how to call their bluffs.)

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A jumbo jet is a Boeing 747, mostly. You can also throw in the Airbus A380 – now some call it a superjumbo, but you can also call it a jumbo. Both of those aircraft are also widebodies, with twin aisles. And narrowbodies have just one aisle, typically with five or six seats per row. Moving down, you’ve got your regional jets and your corporate jets and then your general aviation jets. That’s it.

Oh, there are some widebodies that aren’t jumbos, like the Boeing 777, that can carry more passengers than a smaller jumbo, like the comical-looking 747SP. Certainly this stubby jet is huge, it’s just so short that it went obsolete pretty quickly. So then along came larger and larger twinjets with only a single deck, but they end up having more capacity than a “jumbo.” Oh well. I didn’t make the rules, I just ‘splain them on my blog.

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And if you aren’t sure, never say gas, say fuel. This will keep you out of trouble.

So a military tank might run on gas, but most likely not. The same thing with vessels. And some cars run on diesel of course, Usually, there’s no reason to be specific.

FIN

And here are some of your bikes operating legally on freeway areas, one in San Mateo County and the other in Marin: