Michael Bates: May 2008 Archives
The Austin Chronicle: News: 'Chronicle' Endorsements: June 14 City Council run-off
The Austin alt-weekly chooses between two good, neighborhood-friendly, urban design-conscious council candidates.
The Austin Chronicle: News: Council Packs More 'P' Into Every PUD
Austin City Council is considering a revision to the city's Planned Unit Development ordinance, involving a council subcommittee at the beginning of the PUD process, rather than keeping the council out of it until the very end. The development lobby is unhappy.
Addled Writer: It's blinding!!
Photos of Manhattanhenge, aka the Manhattan Solstice, when the setting or rising sun, normally blocked by buildings, is aligned with Manhattan's east-west street grid. It happens again on July 12 at sunset, and at sunrise in December and January.
DR.Oogle Dentist Guide: Tulsa Family Dentists Ratings
Searchable by name and sorted by subspecialty.
Oklahoma voters need a way to dump lousy school board members. Case in point: Dennis McCord, president of the Welch School Board, who has been banned from school property by the superintendent for being a Sports Dad from Hell, cussing out coaches and threatening the superintendent over his kids' playing time. Despite censures from his fellow board members, McCord refuses to resign and nothing can be done to force him out, short of a criminal conviction. (Via Welch alum Tyson Wynn.)
The McCarville Report Online: Are Cargill, Adkins Next To Quit?
Republican State Reps. Ron Peterson (Broken Arrow) and Susan Winchester (Chickasha) have announced they won't run for re-election. Tulsa State Rep. Dennis Adkins and disgraced former Speaker Lance Cargill may follow them out the door. Filing period is next week, June 2-4.
Urban Review STL: Downtown Business Not So Good for Good Works
Successful St. Louis business on the Loop tries to expand downtown but fails. Could lack of on-street parking in front of the downtown store have been a factor? "On-street parking does a number of very beneficial things for an area. First it reduces four traffic lanes down to two -- much friendlier. This also helps to slow down the traffic on the street. People parking and getting in/out of their cars & feeding the meter creates activity on the street. And finally having parking in front of the store decreases the perception that downtown has a parking shortage."
DoubleShot Coffee Company: Ethiopia... Yirgacheffeâ„¢, Sidamoâ„¢, Harrarâ„¢
Ethiopia trademarks the names of its coffee-growing regions, and there are repercussions for coffee shops and coffee drinkers.
Weekly Standard: The evolution of a congressman
Iowahawk parodies the decline and fall of a Republican congressman (1994-2008) in letter form. Pitch-perfect as always.
Emily Gould - Exposed - Blog-Post Confidential - Gawker - NYTimes.com
Gawker gossip learns lessons of blog discretion.
Neatorama: The Worst Cities in America
Not the worst 10 or 50, but the most worst on many different lists. Tulsa makes the list as Pollen Capital of America. (Via Evangelical Outpost.)
A month before Rebecca Walker gave birth to her first child, she says that her mother, author Alice Walker, "wrote me a letter saying that our relationship had been inconsequential for years and that she was no longer interested in being my mother." "Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating." (Via Michelle Malkin.)
Capitol Weekly: Debate intensifies over Richardson home default
Democrat California congresswoman defaults on second-home mortgage, leaves bank with $200,000 loss after auction sale. (Via Clayton Cramer.)
Clayton Cramer's BLOG: Campaign Activities
One more quote worth requoting about special interests and political influence: "The one area which is a real problem is that if an obscure issue comes up, interest groups are likely to have the expertise, the money, and the motivation to present their position in a way that the general public won't. A politician who doesn't know much about this obscure issue may find himself swayed by an interest group's arguments in a way that is not good for the public interest."
Clayton Cramer's BLOG: Campaign Activities
Good lessons learned during a run for the Idaho State Senate: "[I]t is pretty clear that special interest group money does influence legislation--but not in the corrupt 'buy off politicians' way that a lot of people assume. It is considerably more subtle than that." Is ideology a protection against undue influence? "The less rigidly you adhere to a set of standards or ideas about the proper role of government, the easier is to bend to the wishes of the moment. This is one of the reasons that politicians that are proud of their 'pragmatism' worry me a bit."
Oxford American: The Cult of House Worship
"There was a time when church-building and public building were rivals to residential construction. But in America, Domus has become one of the most potent gods in the pantheon of Mammon, and his temples far outstrip anything we build for church or state.... McMansions have become McVersailles and McBlenheims, McTaj Mahals." (Via World on the Web.)
Los Angeles Times - China's powerful weakness
Francis Fukuyama considers the Chinese central government's lack of control over local bureaus: "Americans traditionally distrust strong central government and champion a federalism that distributes powers to state and local governments. The logic of wanting to move government closer to the people is strong, but we often forget that tyranny can be imposed by local oligarchies as much as by centralized ones. In the history of the Anglophone world, it is not the ability of local authorities to check the central government but rather a balance of power between local authorities and a strong central government that is the true cradle of liberty." He cites England, pre-revolutionary France, and the Jim Crow South as contrasting examples.
Salon: Barack Obama's "Appalachian problem"
"The reality is that when Democratic candidates run competitively in rural America, they win national elections. And when they get creamed in rural America, they lose.... Democrats should not be surprised when rural voters drift toward those institutions that stick around, like the churches, which often reinforce socially conservative ideas, and when rural voters prefer those politicians who actually ask for their votes." (Via Ace.)
Links to the best articles from free-market think tanks coast to coast.
Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works: The lies of when
Julie fills in the blanks: "I will ____ when I ____." "There is no when. It never comes. There is only now and what was."
Wiktionary: IPA pronunciation key
A handy table showing International Phonetic Alphabet symbols and words in 16 languages which use the sound that corresponds to each symbol.
The Diplomad: Bush 3 vs. Carter 2?
Me, too: "Is the November presidential election coming down to a choice between Bush's Third Term (McCain) or Carter's Second Term (Obama)? Hmmm . . . as somebody who was around in and remembers the 1970's, I'll sign up for the Bush Third Term option any time . . ."
Metro Transit - Hi-Frequency Network
A network of 11 key bus routes and one light rail route provides service at least every 15 minutes from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., linking downtown Minneapolis, St. Paul, the airport, the Amtrak Depot, the U. of Minnesota campus and other colleges, and Mall of America.
Loving v. Virginia and the Secret History of Race - New York Times
Central Point, Va., and the Supreme Court case that overturned the last ban on interracial marriage in America: "By the time that Richard and Mildred [Loving] had begun to date in the 1950s, they had lived their whole lives in a community that had made an art form of evading Jim Crow restrictions on relationships." (Via Far Outliers.)
David Cook Wins American Idol (Wizbang)
Tulsa boy makes good.
The Conservative Resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention - Google Book Search
By James C. Hefley. "The book is helpful to anyone who wishes to understand how a major church body was turned in a more conservative direction by a grassroots movement that got out the vote to defeat one of the most powerful religious establishments in America."
Sippican Cottage: Ten Dreadful Things That Have Become Housing Standards
"They are ugly; or nonsensical; or counterproductive; or wasteful; or mostly an ephemeral fad being written into concrete -- always a bad idea. The decorative stuff is going to be painted over shortly or thrown in the dumpster too quickly, and the permanent installations are going to make the owners miserable for generations because they're too expensive to get rid of." Snout houses are offense #1: "Stop nailing your house onto the a** end of your garage.... You are building a house for your car and living in a shack out back." (Via Dustbury.)
CNBC: Pickens: Oil Going to $150, So Move to Gas
T. Boone Pickens is a peak-oil believer? "The President wasted his time to go to Saudi Arabia.... They can't give any more oil...they're stacking up the money as fast as they can stack it up.... Eighty-five million barrels of oil a day is all the world can produce, and the demand is 87 million. It's just that simple." (Via Crunchy Con.)
Roadside America: One-Log Homes - The Green Dilemma
Earth-friendly lifestyles? "It's all feel-good marketing crap. You're really just another planet consumer, unless you're ready to lie down in a mulch pit right now, and let Nature take over. And even then, the toxins in your body will probably kill whatever tries to grow from your remains."
ShoeboxBlog: Tiny Little Movie Review: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
"If Surly Troll and Swordsman Mouse were Oscar categories, you'd see [Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin and Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep] accepting trophies."
EdWare - Counties of Ireland: Mini Quiz
Learn Irish geography: See the name, click on the county.
Yet Another Small Town Moment: Who was "Red" Burpo anyhow?
A touching remembrance of the town mechanic: "Every small town in the world must have one of these guys...long ago retired from the rat race of small business, the old motorhead now spends the salad days of his winding down life clock watching the world drive by, anticipating a stray customer or acquaintance of old to drop by at anytime to shoot the breeze, share a stick of Clark's Teaberry or perhaps even seeking advice of an auto maintenance matter."
BaylyBlog: What 13-letter word ending in "animous"...
PCA's Heritage Presbytery fails to stand against the death-by-dehydration of a disabled Delaware woman.
Crummy Church Signs: Just say whatever comes to your mind...
There's hope for us all: "The great oak was once a nut that stood its ground."
Reviews of Wichita barbecue joints. B&C is a personal favorite.
Neatorama: 25 Strangest Collections on the Web
Mangles, banana labels, Soviet calculators, barf bags, and 21 more. (Via Mister Snitch!)
The NRCC Blog: Republican Solutions and a Positive Agenda
Oklahoma Cong. Tom Cole, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, posts a blog entry and gets an earful from dissatisfied Republicans in the comments. (Via Michelle Malkin.)
A blog devoted to the theory of the abiogenic origin of petroleum -- the idea that hydrocarbons aren't really "fossil fuels" after all.
Grist: An interview with peak-oil provocateur Matthew Simmons
Matthew Simmons, who deals in energy company mergers and acquisitions, and who predicted in 2005 that oil would be at $200 per barrel by 2010, says hybrids aren't enough: "We have to find, for instance, far more energy-efficient methods of transporting products by rail and ship rather than trucks. We have to liberate the workforce from office-based jobs and let them work in their village, through the modern technology of emails and faxes and video conferencing. We have to address the distribution of food: Much of the food in supermarkets today comes from at least a continent or two away. We need to return to local farms. And we have to attack globalization: As energy prices soar, manufacturing things close to home will begin to make sense again." (Via 2Blowhards.)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The worst cities for allergies
Oklahoma City's 11th worst, Tulsa's 19th.
Joyce Lee Malcolm writes: "As a horse owner and backyard rider even I know that until a horse is four years old his bones are still developing. The racing industry needs to grant these animals another year before pushing them onto the track.... And the trend toward speed rather than stamina should stop. These horses are now designed for shorter and shorter racing careers, their solid torsos balanced on long, fragile legs. Like American cars built of fiberglass for better mileage, their bones are light for speed, but woe betide you in an accident."
Divine Vinyl: Turned On To Jesus - purgatorio
The latest collection of odd and intriguing Christian record album covers, this time including a bio and photo of pencil-thin-mustachioed Bill Bright on the sleeve of a 45 of one of his talks.
WORLD Magazine | To Narnia and the North!
"The untamed terrains of Northern Ireland, much more than the pastoral landscapes of England, imprinted themselves on [C. S. Lewis's] youthful imagination and later emerged in the fantastic stories of the mature author."
FT Alphaville: The Travis Bickle Effect
Nobel laureate economist Robert Mundell: "Taxi Driver is the most important movie ever made from the standpoint of creating GDP. It's the movie that made the Reagan revolution possible. That movie was indirectly responsible for adding between $5 trillion and $15 trillion of output to the US economy." (Via Club for Growth.)
Veritas et Venustas: The Best Way To Develop Atlantic Yards & Hudson Yards
Megaprojects don't produce good places, and they can't find financing. Instead "we should develop [redevelopment zones] the way New York was traditionally developed. That means platting the streets and blocks, and selling lots on those blocks.... It's time to get back to the time-proven methods that have built the best neighborhoods and communities, building at the scale of the block and the lot." (Via City Comforts.)
iowahawk: It's Time to Call it Quits
Guest opinion by Sen. Clinton of N.Y.: "But even Senator Obama must know at this point that, even if he somehow pulls off a miracle by sweeping the remaining primaries and locking up all the contested superdelegates, he simply cannot escape the inevitable mysterious accident that will clear the Democratic nomination for Yours Truly."
Bear cubs take over new backyard playground on the outskirts of Anchorage. (Via Mister Snitch!)
IMAO: lolterizt! Part 47 - lolhilry! Edition
l337-speak caption fun with the former First Lady: "flop swet: ur soakin init" "wishn it wuz blud n bby fngrs" "PALPATINE '08"
City Comforts, the blog: Adaptive reuse of parking structures
Old garages, maybe, but modern structures don't have enough headroom, large enough level floor plates, or sturdy enough floors for other uses.
The States : Frank Chimero : Illustration & Design
Oklahoma, the Towel Rack State: "Each state in illustrated form.... The illustrations for the states don't necessarily have to deal the thematics of the state's culture, it's just a nice exercise for my creative muscles." (Via Strange Maps.)
Puritan Library | Puritan Books, Online Resources & Links
A wealth of devotional and theological literature from the English and Scottish evangelical tradition of the 17th and 18th centuries: Links to online books by over 40 authors (including John Bunyan, Jonathan Edwards, Richard Baxter, John Owen), to books available for purchase, and to blogs, podcasts, and scholarly papers about the Puritans. There's even a 16-session audio course on the history and theology of the Puritans by J. I. Packer. (Via BaylyBlog: "Forget most things published today and download these men. It will cost you nothing.")
The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher
A book from the 1640s about faith, works, law, and assurance of salvation was rediscovered in the early 1700s, becoming a source of controversy. In 1720, it was condemned by the Church of Scotland as antinomian and heretical.
Tulsa urbanized area map - census.gov
The U. S. Census Bureau defines "urbanized area" in terms of a continuous area with a minimum population density. This map shows the Tulsa urbanized area as of the 2000 census; it includes most of Broken Arrow, Coweta, Catoosa, Jenks, Bixby, Sapulpa, and Sand Springs, but not Owasso, Claremore or Glenpool, which constitute their own urban clusters. The urbanized area population was 558,329 spread out over 677 sq. mi. for a density of 2135.9; Tulsa was the 64th largest in the nation.
VistaPrint - Business Cards - Full Color Printing - Digital Printing Company
Found an enthusiastic endorsement for this online printing business: "Last night I fell across a site where I can make my business brochures. No complicated formatting...just stick the text one of the hundreds of templates and you're done. I worked for three hours on it and went to sleep at 3:00am. I really love the way they came out. Bright and funk-a-deli."
What's New: Happy Birthday Tiny Moore
Born May 12, 1920, master of the "biggest little instrument in the world" -- the electric, five-string, solid-body mandolin. He spent many years with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Billy Jack Wills's Sacramento-based band, and later with Merle Haggard's band.
A paper by Martha J. Bianco of Portland State University's Center for Urban Studies says don't blame Judge Doom. As automobiles became more widely available and streetcar ridership declined, buses were more economical than streetcars for serving lightly-traveled routes. (Via LA Map Nerd's comment on Matthew Yglesias's blog.)
The pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York on the "most crying need in the church" -- being effectively present in our largest cities: "Christians strengthen somewhat away from the cities and they have made some political gains, but that is not effecting cultural products much. It is because in the center cities (NYC, Boston, LA, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC) the percentages of people living and working there who are Christians are minuscule." (Via JollyBlogger.)
Matthew Yglesias (May 07, 2008) - SoCal Tragedy (Domestic Policy)
The tragedy is that an area with such beautiful year-round weather is so hostile to travel on foot. But many commenters point out walkable neighborhoods within the LA metroplex: "The places that were developed first: Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica, the beach cities, Manhattan, Redondo and Hermosa. Places like this are very livable even now. The places that came later, like the San Fernando valley and further east, are a nightmare. And places like San Bernardino and Riverside and Santa Clarita are almost certain to become ghost towns as energy costs rise out of sight." And someone calling himself LA MapNerd debunks many of Yglesias's geographical assumptions. (Via City Comforts.)
Parking Space as Living Space? - Westchester - New York Times
Where to build needed moderately priced housing in expensive Westchester County, NY? On the overly-capacious parking lots of office parks. Says developer Robert F. Weinberg, "Here we have already cut down all these trees, put in the sewer and water lines, so there's no hole to be dug, no addition of parking lots and no extra runoff. It makes sense economically and environmentally." A great way to put housing close to work and increase density without increasing infrastructure costs. (Via City Comforts.)
Potomac Watch: A Louisiana Lesson for the GOP- WSJ.com
Two special elections, two different results: "With Democrats actively recruiting conservative candidates, it's no longer good enough for the GOP names to fall back on cultural credentials, to demagogue immigration, or to simply promise lower taxes. Voters care about the size of government, but they are equally worried about the cost of doctor visits and gas prices. The winners will be those who explain the merits of a private health-care reform, who talk about vouchers, who push for energy production. And given its reputation on ethics, it's clear the GOP has to recruit Mr. Cleans, who also make voters believe they are more interested in solving problems than bringing home pork."
Burma's Unnatural Disaster - WSJ.com
Dictatorship deepens disaster's impact: "Even before Cyclone Nargis hit early Saturday morning, nongovernmental organizations such as World Vision were warning of the impending disaster. Radio Free Asia and Voice of America broadcast news of the storm's approach. Burma's ruling generals, by contrast, did nothing to prepare their people for the cyclone." (Hat tip: John Eagleton.)
Some of the same Democratic senators who voted against oil exploration in ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico are "demanding that President Bush tell OPEC nations to increase their oil supplies or risk losing arms deals with the United States." (Hat tip: John Eagleton.)
The Biofuels Backlash - WSJ.com
"St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, and for 30 years we invoked his name as we opposed ethanol subsidies. So imagine our great, pleasant surprise to see that the world is suddenly awakening to the folly of subsidized biofuels.... To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption." (Hat tip: John Eagleton.)
Urban Review STL: Lead with your strong side
Steve Patterson applies lessons from stroke rehabilitation to city revitalization: "St Louis' strong side is great urban architecture on a nicely scaled grid of walkable streets. The suburbs don't have those strong areas. Yet here we tend to lead with our weak side -- suburban anti-city stuff. The more of this we have the less of the strong side we have.... Had St Louis built up its strong side rather than coming from a weak position we would have focused on traditional storefront shops along streets. Instead we went with the suburban mall model sans the acres of free parking and it flopped big time. St Louis, like me this morning, was trying the quick route. I recovered fairly quickly but a city's mistakes are harder to recover from."
City Comforts, the blog: Break-up superblock, provide space for micro-retail
Instead of banning big boxes from downtowns, wrap them in small (maybe 30' deep) retail spaces at street grade, to give opportunities for startup retailers. An idea like this was being kicked around on TulsaNow's public forum as a better alternative to the usual blank walls on a downtown Wal-Mart.
The Conservative Revival - New York Times
David Brooks on the revival of the British Conservative Party after a decade in the wilderness, with a Burkean emphasis on the "little platoons" that make society work: "These conservatives are not trying to improve the souls of citizens. They're trying to use government to foster dense social bonds. They want voters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control." (Via Crunchy Con.)
RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog - Not Quite Yet
A map of Clinton's performance in the bordering regions of surrounding states points to the potential for big Clinton wins in Kentucky and West Virginia. "I think it is too hasty to declare her finished just days before two of her three best states. Am I on to something here, or is this merely my contrarian streak running amok?"
A comprehensive survey of the sources of the legends of King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table, a summary of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, and many links to other resources.
List of U.S. Army acronyms and expressions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Telling your SNAFU from your TARFU, JANFU, FUBAR, and BOHICA.
Orson Scott Card: J.K. Rowling, Lexicon and Oz
Author of Ender's Game takes apart Rowling's plagiarism claim against the Harry Potter Lexicon, a print version of an online reference work which she had previously used and praised. (Via Mister Snitch!)
In Defense of RINO Hunting - WSJ.com
Pat Toomey defends against Okla. Rep. Tom Cole's claim that the Club for Growth is "stupid" to target liberal Republicans for defeat: "Winning for the sake of winning is an excellent short-term tactic, but a lousy long-term strategy.... A Republican majority is only as useful as the policies that majority produces. When those policies look a lot like Democratic ones, the base rightly questions why it should keep Republicans in power." Tom Coburn's 2004 defeat of Kirk Humphreys is mentioned. (Hat tip: John Eagleton.)
The Anonymous Blogger: Final Tuesday Night Trivia
Sad: The Baggot Inn in Greenwich Village is closing and with it the era of T.N.T. (I played once, while in the area on business in 2005, and our team won. Great fun.)
Russ McGuire encapsulates the attitude that comes with dominance and incumbency: hostility to change, flexibility, and decentralization.
Hot Air: Dems go to opposite extreme on war funding
"Nancy Pelosi has decided to push through a supplemental war-funding bill that will keep operations in Iraq going until 2009, without withdrawal timetables.... MoveOn says that Democrats have no choice but to capitulate on the war, despite having a majority, but they never explain why. The truth is that a precipitous withdrawal has never been a popular position, and it has grown even less so over the last year."
SpecGram--The Original Language of Winnie-the-Pooh--Aureliano BuendÃa
From the March 1998 issue of the Speculative Grammarian, a convincing case that Winnie-the-Pooh was originally written as a roman d'aventure in Gallo-Romance or Old French. (Inspired by this Dwyeropolis entry about the origin of the article in Romance languages.)
Crummy Church Signs: It's sort of a 50:50 relationship
It's Rev. Wes Kinney Day at Crummy Church Signs. Kinney is a blogger, a frequent contributor to Crummy Church Signs, and the pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Valliant, Okla.
PdaNet -- Use your Treo smartphone as a Wireless Modem for your PC
When Wi-Fi's not available. $34.
Violins and Starships: If I Could Reach a Million
Lynn has 15 pieces of advice she wants a thousand thousands to know. "Don't panic!" is number 5. "If the shoe hurts don't wear it," is number 15.
Skills for Men - Things Men Should Be Able to Do - Esquire
A list of 75. (Via Okiedoke.)
Dark Roasted Blend: Nightmare Playgrounds
Creepy sculptures and sad equipment on real, in-use playgrounds, mainly in the old Soviet Bloc. (Via Mister Snitch.)
Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready! - By Hanna Rosin - Slate Magazine
"A Christian friend who'd grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: 'Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear,' he wrote. 'Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal insistence on the sanitization of reality.'" (Via Dawn Eden.)
InsideCatholic.com - Meeting Reverend John Hagee
In the comments, Catholic convert Deal Hudson defines the issue that "pushed [him] away from evangelicalism": "When I was a Southern Baptist I experienced a lack of appreciation, even hostility, toward my desire to study philosophy, the arts, music, novels, all of the best that culture had to offer." (Via Rod Dreher.)
The Associated Press: Ex-Iranian president: Fomenting violence abroad 'treason'
Iran former President Khatami hints that current regime is sponsoring bombings and sabotage abroad. (Via Ace.)
Lynne Cooper Harvey, known to Paul Harvey's listeners as "Angel," died Saturday of leukemia at 92. Angel was a broadcaster in her own right: "Working at a CBS affiliate [in Tulsa during World War II], she became one of the nation's first women to run an entire broadcast, from 4 p.m. to midnight, five days a week, doing everything from announcing state and local news to playing records." (Via Joe Kelley.)
Throw caution to wind, France told - Telegraph
"A French doctor is urging his countrymen to give free rein to flatulence, sweating and other bodily taboos to reduce the risk of cancer.... 'Eliminating' the two litres of gas produced a day by the average Frenchman 'is a natural process', he writes, adding that retaining it can be harmful to the intestines. The French, he adds, should 'dare to fart'." (Via Conservative Grapevine.)
Fairness, idealism and other atrocities - Los Angeles Times
What P. J. O'Rourke would say to college graduates, given the chance.
Jojoba oil could fuel cars and trucks - 06 March 2003 - New Scientist:
Grows in the desert, not used for food: A better bio-fuel source? (Via Clayton Cramer.)
Clayton Cramer's BLOG: The Gun Show Today
Cramer on the campaign trail: "Everyone has a story, and some are more interested than others in talking. I am pleased to report that I only talked to one person suffering from conspiracy theories: Catholic/Masonic/Illuminati/CFR one worldism--five members of the Supreme Court are Catholics! 'I've never been much interested in politics,' he told me, but Ron Paul running for President got this guy involved. (Why am I not surprised?)"
The Queen enjoys train ride in disguise - Telegraph
Peep, peep! "[T]he 82-year-old monarch did her best to blend into the crowd as she enjoyed a ride in the cab of a miniature steam train this weekend. Travelling incognito, the Queen wore a raincoat, headscarf and glasses as she took the one and a half mile trip around the grounds of [Exbury Gardens], a stately home in Hampshire's New Forest. The Queen had earlier named the little engine [Mariloo] in a private ceremony before climbing aboard the bright blue locomotive."
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Back Boris for Mayor of London: The boroughs
This interactive map of the 33 boroughs of Greater London lists average wait time for a bus for each; it ranges between 5 and 7 minutes. Each borough's population ranges between about 150 and 300 thousand, with most in around 200K -- so you could think of Greater London as 20 Tulsas in population all stuck together, but compressed into a sixth of the area that 20 Tulsas would take up. (Yesterday was local election day in Britain; the instant runoff votes for Mayor of London are being counted today.)
The Judge Report - My Conservative Manifesto VII
Good food for thought on the eve of the Oklahoma Republican convention. Robert N. Going recalls Barry Goldwater's nomination in 1964 and his platform: "A foreign policy that would not seek accommodation with communism, but a roll back of the soviet occupation of eastern Europe. In military matters you don't commit to war unless you intend to win it, and use every means at your disposal to do it."
A Google maps app that makes it easy to search for locally-owned coffee shops. You can narrow your search for places that offer wi-fi, ban smoking, among other features. But only a handful of Tulsa's indy coffee shops are listed -- so go add one that you know about. (I added Shades of Brown.)
AmericanHeritage.com / "THE CITY AT THE NATION'S FRONT DOOR"
From bucolic getaway to bustling waterfront to New York's "sixth borough," the story of Hoboken, New Jersey, the Mile Square City. (Also, home to Mister Snitch!)
"When Afghan farmers plow under their poppy fields to grow grain because cereal is becoming more lucrative than heroin; when The Wall Street Journal suggests 'it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food' -- and they're not smiling; when CNN reports that 'riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention'; then this is the world's big story.
