Cars

Ephraim mentions his ’57 Chevy and it got me to thinking about cars. Cars I’ve had, that is.

The first car that was mine to drive was a ’49 Chrysler New Yorker that my parents got at auction in 1961 for $65. What a tank.

The first car I ever bought was a ’55 Pontiac convertible. I got it for $225 (and I overpaid). I sold it less than two years later for $25. But, for a while, it was really cool. Funny to think that when I got it, it was less than 9 years old. Even so, the floor had rusted clear through and the hood release didn’t work. The whole hood blew off once, completely over the back of the car — with the top down!

The first new car I ever bought was a ’66 VW Bug. $1760 out the door, tax, title included. Had it for five years but blew the engine twice. The electrical system was so bad in the Bugs until 67 (they had just a six volt battery) that we often started this car by pushing it by hand, jumping in, putting it in gear and popping the clutch.

The worst car I ever bought, though, was a ’72 Chevrolet Vega. What a piece of crap. Burned as much oil as gasoline — we actually took a case of oil with us once on a cross-country trip. So I traded the Vega in on a ’76 Dodge Aspen, almost as bad, but we got more than 120,000 miles out of the Aspen and must have had it for 11 or 12 years. The Aspens had carburetor problems. This car would be running fine, then start lurching and eventually stall when the carburetor float filled with gasoline. Let the engine cool and it would be fine.

My current car is an ’01 Lexus RX. Very nice. Still worth about half of what I paid for it after 79,000 miles. It’s the nicest car I’ve ever had, but not any fun. I wonder where I can get another ’55 Pontiac.

Anyone else care to share?

New Mexico Looks Again at Show’s Use of Children

The New Mexico attorney general has reopened an investigation into whether the CBS reality show “Kid Nation” violated the state’s child-labor laws and other state regulations governing the welfare of children, a spokesman for the attorney general said on Thursday.
…

“Kid Nation,” which is scheduled to have its premiere on Sept. 19, is a reality show that takes 40 children ages 8 to 15 to a New Mexico desert ghost town south of Santa Fe for 40 days and challenges them to build an adult-free society. Several children were injured during the production; four children drank bleach from an unmarked soda bottle and another was burned on her face with hot grease while cooking in an unsupervised kitchen.

The New York Times

August 24th

Ron, i.e., Rupert Grint, is 19 today.

New baseball hall-of-fame inductee Cal Ripken Jr. is 47.

Steve Guttenberg is 49. According to IMDb, Guttenberg doesn’t have a single award of any kind to his credit.

Marlee Matlin is 42. She has a best actress Oscar for Children of a Lesser God.

Dave Chappelle is 34.

Update

The software package arrived Thursday.

No sign of the neighborhood phantom Thursday evening, but we had an evening-long series of thunderstorms that may have dampened his plans.

What a light and thunder show, eh Albuquerqueans?

With all that rain I was thinking of my neighbor. He collects water from the canales (known elsewhere as gutters) and uses it to water his plants. I find that pretty impressive. I mostly use the water from my roof to splash down and wash soil from the yard into the street.

I’ve been seeing a roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) from time-to-time in the backyard. Beep-beep. No snakes or rodents when they’re around.

That scream you may have heard earlier this morning was when I bent over to adjust the rug under my desk chair and seriously screwed up the disc-nerve arrangement in my spine. And they had been getting along so well. I don’t know if I cried out more from the pain or from the sudden realization that it will be several hours-days-weeks before I can move easily again.

Here’s an item about TV news that I posted a year ago today — Live, local, trivial.

Washington’s hottest August

The invading British burned the public buildings of Washington on this date in 1814.

On August 24, 1814, as the War of 1812 raged on, invading British troops marched into Washington and set fire to the U.S. Capitol, the President’s Mansion, and other local landmarks. The ensuring fire reduced all but one of the capital city’s major public buildings to smoking rubble, and only a torrential rainstorm saved the Capitol from complete destruction. The blaze particularly devastated the Capitol’s Senate wing, the oldest part of the building, which was honeycombed with vulnerable wooden floors and housed the valuable but combustible collection of books and manuscripts of the Library of Congress, then located in the Capitol building. Heat from the intense fire reduced the Senate chamber’s marble columns to lime, leaving the room, in one description, “a most magnificent ruin.”

Source: U.S. Senate Art & History

After 26 hours in Washington, the British moved toward Baltimore, where they met with resistance and the Star-spangled banner still waved.

21

In New Mexico, until you are 21 your driver’s license is vertical (“portrait” in computer talk). Once you turn 21 you can trade it in for the normal horizontal license adults receive (“landscape”).

I’ve been told that some establishments refuse service to anyone who does not have the horizontal license. That is, even after you turn 21, if you haven’t gone to MVD and gotten a new DL, they won’t admit you or serve you. If you don’t head over to MVD on your 21st birthday, you could be turned away from your own celebration.

I guess a private establishment is entitled to set its own rules if the rules are in fact administered across the board with no exceptions. But this sounds a little like a class action lawsuit in waiting to me.

Did you know?

“Happy Birthday to You” is copyright protected through 2030. The rights are owned by Time Warner and it brings in around $2 million a year.

If you sing it in public without permission (which means paying Time Warner for the privilege), it’s a copyright violation.

I wonder if I could get a job as a copyright bounty hunter. You know, hang out at Chucky Cheese and similar places, and when the kids all sing “Happy Birthday” demand payment for Time Warner and then get a percentage.

I’d been wondering about this

The MAGIC gamma-ray telescope team has just released an eye-popping preprint (following up earlier work) describing a search for an observational hint of quantum gravity. What they’ve seen is that higher-energy gamma rays from an extragalactic flare arrive later than lower-energy ones. Is this because they travel through space a little bit slower, contrary to one of the postulates underlying Einstein’s special theory of relativity — namely, that radiation travels through the vacuum at the same speed no matter what?

Scientific American

Maybe Einstein’s theories are like “his” videos. They “were never designed to make [us] smarter, only happier.”

Time’s 50 Best Websites 2007

NewMexiKen must have been 51st.

“Our 2007 picks are the best examples of what’s new and exciting about the Web right now. Here we honor sites with exceptional style and smarts, sites that offer new and improved ways to access and share content, generate our own and otherwise enrich the online (and off-line) experience.”

Time’s 50 Best Websites 2007

25 Sites We Can’t Live Without

Best line of the day, so far

The evidence also shows great, gaping weaknesses. Giuliani’s penchant for secrecy, his tendency to value loyalty over merit and his hyperbolic rhetoric are exactly the kinds of instincts that counterterrorism experts say the U.S. can least afford right now.

Giuliani’s limitations are in fact remarkably similar to those of another man who has led the nation into a war without end.

Amanda Ripley, reporting on Giuliani’s terrorism credentials in Time.

Pennsylvania to Impose $25 Tax on Driving Across State

Motorists traveling across the state of Pennsylvania on Interstate 80 could pay a $25 tax by the year 2010. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission on Friday asked the US Department of Transportation for approval to turn the free and paid-for interstate highway into a toll road for the purpose of raising money for mass transit and other public spending projects. This would be the first conversion of a free interstate into a toll road since the interstate highway system was developed fifty years ago.

TheNewspaper

What do you think of the idea of turning freeways into toll roads?

August 23rd is the birthday

… of Barbara Eden. “Jeannie” is 73.

… of Linda Thompson. The folk/rock musician, who with then husband Richard made one of the great rock albums — Shoot Out the Lights, is 60 today. She was voted best female singer of 1982 in Rolling Stone.

… of Shelley Long. The star of Cheers and numerous films is 58. Long received six Emmy nominations for her portrayal of Diane Chambers, winning once.

… of Kobe Bryant. He’s 29.

Gene Kelly, the wonderful singer/dancer/actor, was born on this date in 1912. Kelly is most famous for Singin’ in the Rain but received his sole Oscar nomination for best actor for Anchors Aweigh. He died in 1996.

It was on this date in 1864, in Mobile Bay, that Union Rear Admiral David G. Farragut said “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

Suspicious Behavior

NewMexiKen is reading Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood, an excellent memoir of life in the NYPD. So, of course, I too want to be on the lookout for suspicious behavior.

And conveniently enough, it has appeared in my neighborhood.

I live at one end of a very quiet street. After 8PM or so, I reckon fewer than a half-dozen cars routinely pass down my street before morning. It’s also an unusually dark street because we purposefully have no street lights and bright porch and yard lights are prohibited. (We like the sky.) Indeed, last night for example, the only real light was the glow from the city and the moon.

The house opposite mine is for rent and has been vacant for more than two months. Sunday and Monday nights after 9PM a dark sedan parked in front of the house (that is, opposite my driveway). A single individual, apparently male, got out, very quietly, and faded from sight. I thought he might be checking the vacant house, but no light came on inside or out. After 15 minutes (I was reading, only vaguely aware of the car and man and not keeping close track), he got back into the car and drove down the street. First night, I gave little thought to it. Second night, I thought that it was at least curious.

Last night, the third night, around 9:45 the car pulled into the driveway of the vacant house — which activated the motion-detector flood lights. I began to watch. When the floods finally went out (after about five minutes), the man got quietly out of the car and disappeared from sight. He was gone about 20-25 minutes, then came back, quietly got in the car and drove off.

I should add that I was reading in my bedroom in the recliner all three evenings (it’s the best chair and the coolest room). I keep the French door to the front courtyard open, so can see the street (dark as it is). I certainly would not have noticed this if I had been at the computer or watching the TV in the living room. (Both of which are in the back of the house.)

So what do you think he’s up to? Suspicious, no? Should I do anything?

This morning I saw my next-door neighbor and told him this story. He usually knows everything that’s going on around here, so I’m certain he’ll be observant if it happens again tonight.

¡Sí Se Puede!

The United Farm Workers of America (UFW) was formed on this date in 1966, initially as the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee.

UFW Poster

One in four read no books last year

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year — half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn’t read any, the usual number read was seven.

AP via Yahoo! News

NewMexiKen has read seven Harry Potter books alone since April.

Additionally:

Liberals read more books than conservatives. The head of the book publishing industry’s trade group says she knows why — and there’s little flattering about conservative readers in her explanation.

“The Karl Roves of the world have built a generation that just wants a couple slogans: ‘No, don’t raise my taxes, no new taxes,'” Pat Schroeder, president of the American Association of Publishers, said in a recent interview. “It’s pretty hard to write a book saying, ‘No new taxes, no new taxes, no new taxes’ on every page.”

AP via Yahoo! News