Friday, December 17, 2004
It’s a Wonderful Life, but …
The more I think about it, the more I think that — George Bailey notwithstanding — America is becoming more like Pottersville than like Bedford Falls.
Archive for December 17, 2004
The Year Quiz
The Week gives us a 37 question Year in Review Quiz.
See how you do. NewMexiKen scored 25 correct out of 37, a barely passing 67%.
5 CommentsThou shalt not
A local Alabama judge presided over a drunken driving case wearing a robe with the Ten Commandments embroidered on the front in gold. The lawyer for the defendant objected, on the grounds the robe might prejudice jurors against his client. Judge Ashley McKathan overruled him, saying, “you can’t divorce the law from the truth.” He said the jury probably couldn’t read the embroidered “Thou shalt not’s” on his robe, anyway. “I had a choice of several sizes of letters,” he said. “I purposely chose a size that would not be in anybody’s face.”
From The Week Newsletter
Roll your own
Send in your photo and get it back as an iPod ad. Samples.
Or make your own video iPod ad as this guy did (video with music).
Mountain Lions Move East
From The Washington Post:
The presence of the mountain lions, many of which have been found with freshly killed deer in their stomachs, is a startling signal that modern suburban and exurban America — without intending to do so — has transformed itself into superb wildlife habitat. With deer nearly everywhere, the big cats, it seems, are finding haute cuisine in the land of big-box stores.
Last year, one ran through downtown Omaha. Last month, one was shot in the suburbs of Sioux City. This month, a radio-collared mountain lion was spotted in the outskirts of Grand Forks, N.D. One was photographed in mid-October on a farm near Marshalltown in central Iowa, a confirmed sighting that deeply disturbed people at the recent meeting here.
…First, there are probably more mountain lions in the continental United States now than before European settlement (more than 31,000, by one recent estimate). The resurgence began in the 1960s, when several western states, where mountain lion populations had been reduced but never wiped out, changed the legal status of the cats from varmint to big game, with limited or no hunting.
Four stages of life
- You believe in Santa
- You don’t believe in Santa
- You are Santa
- You look like Santa
Aviators
Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully made the first four sustained flights of a heavier-than-air machine under the complete control of the pilot at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, on this date 101 years ago.
