It appears the community including us will decide which New Mexico license plate design will be selected for Santa Fe’s 400th Anniversary next year.
You can see larger versions and vote here.
The plate will go on sale after Labor Day.
Day: July 22, 2009
Idle thought
If — as seems fairly conclusive — talking on the phone while driving is unsafe — no, let me put it this way, is less safe — what should the authorities do about it?
And what should we do about it personally?
Important news in Seattle isn’t necessarily important news on the Web
But it should be.
Since the Seattle Times broke some serious news here, maybe it will take a day or two for the national dailies to weigh in, but it’s a big story. Yes, I’m an airplane nut, but this is supposed to be the plane of the future and Boeing single-handedly keeps our foreign trade imbalance from going all the way through the stratosphere. So this is just big news on eight different levels. This is still easily the most exciting jetliner in a generation, but if Boeing blows this and has to go back to the drawing board, it’s a catastrophic loss. If they get it together and the thing flies, so to speak, airlines and passengers around the world will be happily flying this new plane with the bigger windows, cleaner air, greater roominess, quieter engines, etc., etc., for years to come. It’s either a world-beater or an epic loss for U.S. industry. National dailies need to capture that, even if blogs don’t care.
Sam Howe Verhovek at Slate Magazine reporting from Seattle. Here’s Timothy Egan on the same story:
[A] Seattle Times story that the 787 Dreamliner may not fly this year and could have serious troubles down the road. The implication is that it may not fly at all. … But it’s a big deal. Why? With the auto industry in bankruptcy, people oft say: We don’t make anything in this country anymore. In fact, we do. We make airlines for the world, at some of the best wages in the world. If the Dreamliner, Boeing’s next edition, doesn’t fly, it’s a huge blow to American industrial might, or what’s left of it. And it shows, perhaps, that you can’t build a plane by outsourcing all its parts to factories and engineers around the world, as Boeing has tried to do.
Here’s The Seattle Times story — Boeing 787 may not fly this year.
Note that the Verhovek-Egan exchange is part of a larger look by Slate at news on the web vs. in the newspapers.
Best supposed country music lyric of the day
“If the phone doesn’t ring, I’ll know it’s you, not calling me.”
Sam Howe Verhovek at Slate Magazine. It may or may not be an actual lyric. It should be.
What Pretending Is
“Do you know what pretending is?”
For what seemed a long while, I listened to the whir of a 5-year-old’s mind in motion. “Well, actually,” Timmy finally said, using his favorite (and only) four-syllable word, “actually I guess it’s like when you go away on trips. Sometimes I dream about you. I dream about how you’ll come home from the airport and bring me surprises and play with me. I get sad when you go away, and so I pretend you’re not gone. Is that bad?”
I told him no, it wasn’t bad.
Tim O’Brien, from an article in the new fiction issue of The Atlantic, posted at The Second Pass.
Kevin Spacey Tweets with Dave
In the zone
New Mexico weather forecasting should become more precise. The Weather Forecasting Office in Albuquerque proposes 40 zones to replace the 22 they’ve been using.
“WFO Albuquerque proposes a reconfiguration of the Public Zones that more effectively corresponds to climatological and topographical regimes currently in place over northern and central New Mexico.”
You can click on these links to see maps of the zones. (The maps are point of this post.)
The area involved is larger than all of New England including Maine.
The longest solar eclipse of the century
Earlier today, the moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse that crossed nearly half the Earth – through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. Today’s was the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting as much as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in a few areas. Despite cloudy skies in many of the populated areas in the path, millions of people gathered outside to gaze up and view this rare event. Collected here are a few images of the eclipse, and those people who came out to watch. (33 photos total)
Blogger doubt
Vanity Fair editors and staff have taken their pens to Governor Palin’s July 3rd resignation speech. I’m dubious about whether I should link to it — it’s interesting and amusing, but is it just piling on?
Redux post of the day
A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car. He later received in the mail a ticket for $40 and a photo of his car.
Instead of payment, he sent the police department a photograph of $40.
Several days later, he received a letter from the police that contained another picture, this time of handcuffs.
He immediately mailed in his $40.
Follow the link. There are several good stories.
First posted on July 22, 2007.
July 22nd
Bob Dole is 86 today.
Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 75.
Tom Robbins is 73 today.
He’s known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it’s perfect, sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said, “I’m probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.”
69. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?
One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and The Eagles Don Henley all turn 62 today
Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 54.
David Spade is 45.
Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on July 22nd in 1890. She lived until January 22, 1995. According to The Writer’s Almanac:
There’s a cocktail named after her and it’s popular in bars on the East Coast (order a “Rose Kennedy”). It has vodka, club soda, and a splash of cranberry juice — which gives it a “rose” color. It’s served with a wedge of lemon or lime and is especially popular at gay bars, reportedly, because it’s low in calories.
Line of the day (and every day)
“Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content.”
Driven to Distraction – NYTimes.com
And the research also shows that it’s the conversation, not the phone, that takes a driver’s mind off the road.
Distracted Driving Game
“New studies show that drivers overestimate their ability to multitask behind the wheel. This game measures how your reaction time is affected by external distractions. Regardless of your results, experts say, you should not attempt to text when driving.”
Best line of the day, so far
“You can learn a lot from a person’s Twitter account, like ‘I’m an attention whore,’ and…well, that’s about it.”