What a week, huh? For me as well, since it included a redeye flight across the country, only to be sitting in my office less than an hour off the plane.

Anyway, wanted to start this off with a little anecdote from the New York Times. In the Week in Review section:

"A new insurance industry study found that bans on use of handheld cellphones while driving had made no difference in accident rates.

Researchers said they were puzzled, since it was clear that using a handheld phone while at the wheel increases accident risk and that the bans sharply reduce use of the phones. "We would expect to see a decrease in crashes," said Adrian Lund of the highway Loss Data Institute. "But we aren't seeing it."

Amazingly, the last sentence of the blurb notes that one theory is the "hands-free phones...may be just as distracting as the handheld kind.

Ya think? Seriously, it is somewhat amazing that this hasn't become part of this debate at all. Many cities (and the entire state of Washington) have banned talking or texting on cellphones while driving. None have admitted that the distraction is your mind being focused on the phone conversation, not holding the phone to your ear. If that were the case, we'd have to ban stick-shift cars too.

----

To a review of the week. You all know that the president gave his State of the Union on Wednesday. It honestly doesn't nearly matchup with his visit to the House Republican's retreat in Baltimore on Friday. (By the way, how did the House GOP get so screwed that they only went to Baltimore, while the rest of the party is in Hawaii right now?)

Woke up at six am, crawled out of bed and went for a run - in the 22 degree weather. Still felt good.

Arrived at the new office at about 8:30 for the first day as a true, full-time employee out here in the real world. My official title is, well, that's sort of up for debate. Deputy New Media Director. It is something like that.

Anyway, after getting some introductions out of the way, I went to work on what is going to be my job for the next few months. It involves blogging and Twitter, and blogging and Twitter. With maybe some Facebook in there somewhere. Bear with me, there are several places you can check out what I will be doing, with more to come.

First, there is our pushback site, AstroTruth, which is a lot like Really?Seriously? at LCV. That is more closely tied to the main campaign site, Clean Energy Works, which you can also follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Currently, however, most of my work is going to be on a site focused on youth, called Consequence. Eventually the url for that will change to reflect the current year, so stay tuned. This of course, also has Facebook and Twitter.

As far as I can tell, you can't actually see whether I wrote a post or not, so you're just going to have to learn my voice. Also, if you know some youths that would be interested in the Challenge, turn them toward it. It is a great way to learn some campaign tools for the future.

Most of my days are going to spent writing, which is something I've grown accustomed to and am getting better at. The hard part isn't actually writing posts, it is searching for content, especially since this specific page is geared toward youth. News is one thing. Finding extremely targeted content like that is a different challenge. Today was a mild success. Tomorrow will be better.

The moment of the day came away from the typing on my computer and actually while I was filling out my forms. Obviously, I have filled out a lot of employment forms before, but never one for healthcare. That was a first and one I had to pause before I signed. It may seem very small, but given my lack of coverage since June, it was a big step.

Final detail: the days are going to be very long. I left at 7:30. Chalk up 11 hours on my first day.

A couple of cool/interesting things also happened in the world today:

I found this Huffington Post piece about the affect the treatment of a girl can have on the world incredibly interesting.

How the black community suffers from the stupidity of some black athletes.

A current and future black leader is changing the way governing is done in Newark, NJ.

Now here is a PAC we can all get behind.

A former Democrat turned Republican lost his entire staff. Including the interns. Interns NEVER quit.

And God the nation's first black president Morgan Freeman is taking over as the intro voice on CBS Evening News. He takes over for some guy I've never heard of - Walter Cronkite I think is his name. Can you tell I watched Deep Impact yesterday?

Alright, gotta go back to the National Championship game Fiesta Bowl. Stay classy.

I promise to have more substantial stuff soon, but for now, continuing with videos. This one is an ad that was released this weekend: