Ramming speed

Recently, I took a drive from home (Buffalo Grove) to Milwaukee. I was driving comfortably on the tollway. I was driving 70 miles per hour in the middle lane. I had my Joe Bonamassa CD playing and Sharon was reading the paper. It should have been an enjoyable drive, but soon it turned ugly. Cars in the right lane were passing me and giving me dirty looks. Cars in the left lane were honking and flipping me off as they passed by. Meanwhile a truck pulling a 53 foot trailer was 6 inches from my bumper flashing its lights at me. Not wanting to be road kill( and refusing to become an "old man with a hat") I quickly sped up to match the "flow" of traffic at 93 miles per hour. As I rocketed down the highway at Clark Kent speed my mind drifted back to a simpler time - memorial day weekend 2007. We were in Seattle, WA driving down the expressway in our rented PT cruiser. This, by the way, is a vehicle that requires a three point turn to make a simple right turn. It's turning radius is about 983 feet. Anyway we were driving this vehicle at 70 miles per hour (probably the cruiser's top speed) in the middle lane and also got many dirty looks. But this time we were passing everyone else. I quickly slowed down to 60 as I realized that everyone was actually driving the posted speed limit.
In Illinois and Wisconsin we know that the posted speed limit is really more of a suggestion or perhaps a polite request. Why bother putting up signs at all? The state of Illinois could probably save enough money on useless speed limit signs to fund Metra for 3 years.
In spite of the lack of enforcement, I always told my sons to drive the speed limit or within 5 mph of the limit. Recently my son came home with a speeding ticket for going "only" 2o over the speed limit. He complained that he was just going with the flow of traffic and he was the only one pulled over. Not wanting to make him feel any worse about the $75 ticket and $40 traffic school I didn't say "I told you so". Until the next day. When I also sang him the "speed racer" song.
By the way, being able to say "I told you so" is really very gratifying.

Penny for your thoughts

While thinking about money (or lack of said substance) I came across some interesting facts about our coinage. For instance , our penny, is not made of copper. It is actually 97.5% zinc and only 2.5% copper. If you want something made of copper try the quarter. The quarter is 91.67% copper and 8.33% nickel. Speaking of nickel, our nickel is only 25% nickel with the other 75% being copper. As for our dime, it is made of exactly the same mixture as our nickel - 75% copper and 25% nickel. It seems kind of strange that the dime, which weighs less than 1/2 of the weight of a nickel is worth twice as much. Maybe we should swap the names. It certainly would correct the coin size to coin value symmetry theorem which clearly states"The larger the coin the larger the value". The dime really messes that up.
On a slightly related note the police officer nickname "cop" (short for copper) came about because the buttons on the police uniform looked like copper pennies. Still no word on where the nickname "the Fuzz" came from. If someone has that information please let me know.