Elk in Estes Park

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a couple of photos I took up in Estes Park, Colorado. NBC News had a nice story on the elk that inhabit the town and its environs. Here is the video below:

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The Defendant Did Not Speak in His Own Defense

There is a sad, but odd story out of Queens, New York this week. The New York Daily News reports that while the body of a 59-year-old man sat dead in his van, the city continued to place parking tickets on the vehicle over a period of several weeks.

The daughter of the deceased is asking how this could happen. That seems like a reasonable question to me. The window was slightly open, so you would think that a decomposing corpse would have drawn some olfactory attention. The body was so far gone that the only thing left was skeletal remains and the heart.

The photo is not the actual vehicle in this incident, but is here for illustrative purposes only.

A New Toy Yoda

Okay, I know this isn't new, but it did strike me as funny. The Hooters waitress in the picture thought she won a new car. She doesn't look very happy with her prize...a brand new toy Yoda!

How the States Got Their Shapes

I have always been fascinated by maps and geography. When I found the book How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein in my local book store, I thumbed through it and though it was worth the purchasing. So I bought the book and brought it home to read.

It is a very interesting read, while being something you can take on in pieces as the mood hits you. It is chock full of historical side notes and maps that explain how the 50 United States ended up with their unique shapes. It is not a heavily-footnoted, scholarly work, but rather in the tone of a Reader's Digest publication, suitable for all ages.

I enjoyed the book very much, and it covers many trivial matters that shaped our nation. Examples are the arc on the Delaware / Pennsylvania border, the notches along the Tennessee / Kentucky frontier, and the Missouri boot heel. But I have one major quibble. The one anomaly I had hoped would finally be explained to my satisfaction was totally ignored.

That still open question (at least in my mind) is one that I have not even found an answer to yet using Google. The issue is the fact that the eastern border of New Mexico has a notch at northernmost part where the state shares a border with the Oklahoma panhandle. You see, the NM/OK border is at 103 degrees west longitude. But most of the eastern border of New Mexico is shared with Texas, and is situated a couple of miles or so west of the 103rd meridian! Stein doesn't address this anomaly at all!

Now my suspicion is that it has something to do with the borders negotiated by Texas with the US government when it agreed to become part of the United States. But I would love to know the story behind this border zig and zag. This map from Google shows this border. If you know why this is, please feel free to let me know.

All that said, Stein's book is still highly recommended. And if you wonder why Case Western Reserve University in Ohio is named that, the book covers that as well. Just say that it has to do with when Cleveland would have been located in Connecticut!

Lunchtime!

I am a man of simple tastes. I enjoy a wide variety of food, but sometimes it's the fairly simple things that hit the spot. Today, I decided to fire up the propane grill and heat up a couple of hot link sausages. I steamed some whole wheat buns for them, made some onion dip for my potato chips, added a bunch of grapes and a Coca-Cola and enjoyed a delicious lunch.

I remember when I was a boy, my dad telling me that my eyes had gotten bigger than my stomach, when I took more food than I could eat. That was the case today, as I just couldn't finish off the second sausage. It was good all the same.

Merciful Shopkeep

A store keeper in Shirley, New York showed extreme compassion for the man who tried to rob him. The robber came in wielding a baseball bat, but when Mohammad Sohail pulled out a gun, the man began to cry and plead for mercy. He told Sohail that he had no money and was just trying to feed his family. Sohail gave the man $40 and a loaf of bread with the condition that he never rob again. He also doesn't plan to press charges if police find the robber.

While the robbery was wrong, this is just another tale of hardship from the economic disaster we are dealing with. For the full story, CLICK HERE.

Sauce for the Goose?

Remember all the wailing and crying from the GOP about giving President Bush's judicial nominees "an up or down vote"? Well, wouldn't you know it. A group of conservative luminaries are asking the Republican Senators to filibuster President Obama's nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. What a bunch of hypocrites! The shoe is on the other foot now, and it doesn't feel so good to them!

Houston Freeway Videos

Freeway Jim, mentioned in my last post, also has a great video of driving through a few of the terrific stack interchanges in Houston (another of my favorite places). Below is his video, again courtesy of YouTube:



And below is Jim's downtown Houston freeway tour. The building to the left of the freeway at 2:20 into the video is where I worked at Houston Traffic Central, a radio traffic reporting service that provided reports to most of the radio stations in town back in the late 1970s. The shorter building just to the left of it was where I worked at KULF, AM 790. The radio station was in the penthouse suite. This particular section of road is I-45, and is locally known as the Pierce Elevated, since it runs above and beside Pierce Street.

Great Freeway, Great Video

It has been a little while since I have been able to post anything the least bit roadgeeky. Today while noodling around on the web, I came across a YouTube road geek who calls himself Freeway Jim. One of his videos is a trip westbound on Interstate 68 from its eastern terminus at I-70 in Hancock, Maryland; through to Cumberland. I have photos I took along this stretch of road last year posted here. However, Jim's sped up video gives you an idea of what it is like to travel through the beautiful scenery along this stretch of highway in rural western Maryland.

When I lived in Cumberland, I didn't have much in the way of money or possessions, but it was some of the best years of my life. This part of the country will always be a special place for me.

Below is Jim's video courtesy of YouTube:



Yet another YouTube citizen has a nice, real time video of I-68 Eastbound from about the point where Jim's video ends. It starts in the western part of LaVale and goes through the city of Cumberland. I have included it below. Items of note:

As the video begins, you are eastbound on I-68 on the side of a mountain. Just off screen to the left, on top of the mountain, is Sacred Heart Hospital. That is where my oldest son was born back in 1975.

At 0:17 on the video, the Exit 42 ramp is a long and very steep one that trucks should not take. You cannot really get a sense of how steep it is from the video. This is the exit to US 220. If you turn left at the bottom of the ramp, you are routed onto Greene Street into the city of Cumberland. If you turn right, it is McMullen Highway (both are US 220) and head southwest through Potomac Park, Bowling Green, Cresaptown, and on to Keyser, West Virginia.

At 1:46, the camera pans to the right across the Potomac River. Those houses are in Ridgeley, West Virginia.

At 1:35, you can see the road sign warning about the sharp turn at Moose Curve, which is visible in the distance. It is so named because of the Moose Lodge that was at the side of the road there.

At 1:55 TO 2:04, you are actually in Moose Curve. The old Moose Lodge is the red brick building right in front of the camera.

The radio station playing on the car radio is WKGO (GO 106). That was the first commercial station I ever was on the air at. It is the FM affiliate of WTBO (AM). My first job in radio was to be a DJ at WTBO, and I had to come in early to do local breaks on a college basketball game that was on WKGO.

G. Gordon Lunatic

Convicted Watergate criminal G. Gordon Liddy, who somehow got himself a radio talk show, has clearly revealed his hatred and disdain for females. This piece of garbage made the following comment on his radio show in regards to President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sotomayor:

"Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate," Liddy said. "That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

So women are not capable of rational decision making, according to this felon, all because of their natural cycles. What a misogynist!

This is just more of what I have written about before...the fact that there is nothing too bizarre and off-limits for the right in their pathetic attempts to regain power. If someone wishes to discuss the pros and cons of a nominee, they should do that by talking about substantive issues. But this is basically an attack on all women based on their gender, and should be repudiated by those in the GOP. So far, all I have heard is dead silence. Do we have to wonder what the uproar would have been if a Democrat had made this comment about Sarah Palin?

Thank goodness that dinosaurs like Liddy are a dying species. We can only hope for their eventual fall into extinction.

To read more and hear the excerpt from Liddy's radio show, CLICK HERE. Thanks to John Walkenbach's J-Walk Blog, where I first saw this story.

Does This Make General Mills a Pusher?

The FDA has informed General Mills that given its claims of the cholesterol reducing properties of Cheerios, the breakfast cereal must be classified as a drug. The claims about heart health are okay though, since soluble fiber from whole grain oats has already been approved by the FDA as a heart healthy food. But the cholesterol claims must be abandoned or the cereal will be regulated like a new drug.

What in the world would the Cheerios Kid and Cheerios Sue think of this?