You Too Can Be a Smart Traveler

It'll be nice when JA comes back and we can forego these archived Kits.

:-)

Rule 5 also applies to the Riverwalk in San Antonio and any other Tacky Tourist Drinking Districtâ„¢ where motorboats and ducks share the water.

My dad, who was stationed in Europe for three years, had plans to write a tourist guide telling where all the clean restrooms in every major city were located complete with a 1-4 potty rating system. He decided to keep this information to himself instead. I think he is missing out on a goldmine.

The French are so sophisticated but you go into some of their cafes and check out the WC and it appears that someone has ripped out the toilet entirely and left only a hole in the floor. But I left that out of the kit on account of it straying too close to Weingarten Country.

whoa...somebody named Achenbach posted a message to the Achenblog. you think they mite be related.

I have been in France with my mother, by myself, and with my husband. Hubby was by far the most amusing, since he actually follows rules 1-4 (the Ugly American Rules), although not 5-6 (the Fussy American Rules). He caused me to mourir de honte (die of shame, figuratively) by asking random passers-by on a Paris Street, "WHERE'S THE EIFFEL TOWER?!" He also almost got us arrested by insisting that we get on the first class car of the Paris Metro, when we had second class tickets. He refused to believe that the distinction exists--and argued with the gendarme, too. Mon dieu.

On the other hand, in Manhattan, he knows where the FREE parking is. (He showed me, and I'm not telling.)

Hey! When's Joel getting back?

Joel? Who is this 'Joel' person? Have we met?

Yeah, I don't like this poseur pretending to be The Late Great Achenbach, who we all know is buried in Paris next to Jim Morrison.

One thing I know about France, that pedal next to the funny-looking low toilet does NOT flush it.

bc

Pictures, Joel, we want pictures!

Welcome home. Is Washington as hot as Paris in August?

Thanks, S'nuke. I hadn't thought of that one. No offense to my Southern brothers and sisters, but the native Southerner's pronunciation of Hawaii is right up there with " I thought I would die...", pen, and other such stuff characteristic of this iteration of the King's English. College in Hawaii might be the motivation she needs to compete for a slot in the class of '15. Talk about looking down the road...

Welcome back, Joel. I trust that you had a safe and enjoyable trip.

that ask post was me...don't ask!

I took that nerd/geek/dork test and scored a 65%. Changing one answer boosted me to 73%.

There are also those French toilets where the plumber got all confused and attached a drinking fountain bubbler where the flush valve should be.

Now the Japanese make a fine toilet. Those are worth hogging for hours:

http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2006/05/toilet-talk.html

I've always thought/believed the free parking in Manhatten was actually in Brooklyn.hehehe

The Tacky Tourist District in San Antonio lives and breathes and grows legs. The bad public works project that I opposed two years ago was touted--surprise!!!-- heavily just below the banner of this morning's paper:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA080806.1A.gateway.22daa69.html

Instead of just focusing on a stretch of rock near the San Antonio Zoo and Alamo Stadium to create a dramatic entryway into the city, the nonprofit Gateway San Antonio extended its vision to go from San Antonio International Airport to downtown.

And now the project -- most or all of which would be funded with private donations -- includes waterfalls, historical scenes, landscaping, multicolored lighting and twisting steel shapes that echo the San Antonio River.

Two years ago it was shot down because the feeling (mine and others) was that it was a giant advertisement for the zoo--promoting non-native wildlfe and scenes, costing way too much (now the group is seeking $15 to $17 million in funding), a distraction to drivers whoizzing by at 65 m.p.h. Now Henry Cisneros (incredible!) is joining the Bad Tasters.

And the holy, sweet ironies of it: First, the project is touting the zoo, which pours its feca1 caliform into the San Antonio River (see my rants under yesterday's Kit). This proposed sum to be spent is egregious in a city where many people work in the tourist industries and hotels and make minimum wage--and where a disturbing number of citizens can't read or read particularly well. Tragedy, in all in various guises, makes the front page of our newspaper every day.

Has Joel been gone? I hadn't noticed...

Jack, with a double major in astronomy and marine biology, your daughter could become a world-class expert on starfish. *rimshot*
(Hey, don't throw rocks at me--that set-up has been sitting there for hours, and nobody took the shot. C'mon, peeps, I can't do ALL the pun heavy-lifting here.)

I think parking in Manhattan is like buying heroin. The first time is free just so they get you hooked.

The first time I went to Manhattan, it was on a Sunday and I found a free space right in front of the Parker Meridian. We spent a few hours strolling Fifth Avenue. My wife fell in love and we have been back over a dozen times and never got to park free again. I've spent more for self-parking in the Theater District than for a hotel room in Tulsa.

Jack my brother did his grad work at U.of Hawaii.

ROFL, Mudge. Thanks for the levity. "Yeah, you bet my daughter is an expert...(FIM)"...

Madonna requests hermetically sealed throne covers whenever she goes on tour.

Well, if you can't beat, join 'em, I guess.
It's hot, we got only .12 inches of rain on Sunday, I'm feeling bored and blase. Why not juice up my old art skills and enliven things around here a little bit?

I'll paint the dying grass flourescent green. I'll go over to Sherwin Williams and order up a number of gallons of paint to redo all my interior walls periwinkle blue. (We have a covenant in the neighborhood, so that's taboo on the outside or trim--although many residents have wriggled around them.) Who cares if my wild color scheme drops the value of our house about $40,000? It's all in the name of personal expression, right?

Maybe I can drop by some party store and buy a giant inflatable of Popeye the Sailor Man in a Christmas motif, to compliment and compete with the Tiger and Eeyore inflatable Christmas figures my Las Tres Hermanas neighbors put on their lawn all of Christmas season. Word must have gotten back to Las Hermanas about how I complained at a homeowners' meeting several years ago about their 15-foot snowman inflatables looked too much like those on the lawn of the local carwash. I am so grateful that they scaled their inflatable back to 7.5 feet. Besides, I think Winnie the Pooh is more Christmas-like, don't you?

(We won't even talk about the giant spiderwebs with a 10-foot span handing from their entryway at Halloween or the corpse that lays on their chaise lounge in their back yard at Halloween? And you thought all the fun was downtown?)

I shall call an enamel artist to come paint my master bedroom bathroom toilet bowl with a picture of the rotating planets of our solar system. Given that I'm such a lousy housewife, perhaps the swirl of the waters past Saturn and Neptune will make the pond scum growing on the bowl less obvious. I plan on seeing that toilet seat artist here in town over in Alamo Heights. I'm hoping he'll create a personalized lid cover--"Bill and Linda. 20 years and still going strong."

Next, it's off to the tattoo artist, where I'll have a tattoo of the Virgen de Guadalupe inked into my forearm--an even bigger one than local author Sandra Cisneros sports. I'm quite a bit taller than Sandra, so the image will just be bigger--genetics rule! Next to last stop--I'll stop at the hairdressers--not at my usual discount hairclippers, but a high-end salon where I'll have my hair dyed pink.

Lat stop: Riverwalk--to fill a gallon jug with purified wastewater, and then I think I'll invite Henry Cisneros over for a nice pot of coffee a al Riverwalk. Oh, the fun I'm going to have!

I remember going to Sainte-Chappelle after hearing how beautiful it was and standing on the ground floor (no windows) thinking "This is it?! This can't be it." Thankfully, I then walked upstairs and was pretty much rendered speechless. I didn't get wiffle ball itch, though - I must have missed that gene.

I know just enough French to ask "Where is the bathroom?" without being able to understand the answer. This was made painfully obvious when my friend (who speaks NO French) needed to use the bathroom at Napoleon's tomb and still couldn't find it after I asked three different people. (Was it downstairs and to the right or upstairs and to the left?) Finally, a nice guard asked us in English if we were German, and after clarifying that nein, we were not, he pointed us in the right direction using English.
(We also had a nice bilingual conversation that translated to something like,
"I speak small English."
"Yes, and I speak small French."
"Why are you here?"
"I am studying and we are travelling at the end of - at the week - um, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.")

I loved Paris.

Boss! Welcome back! I'm suprised you didn't write about those nifty automated bathrooms scattered throughout France. You pay about 1/2 Euro to use a very clean toilet and sink. But, some tourists who think they're clever have tried to let their companions use the facility. And the companions get soaked from a shower of water and disinfectant spraying from the ceiling. Hilarity ensues. This could have been a kit all on its own.

And why drink water anyway? Wine is so cheap there.

Good to have you back home boss.

A gift for Monty Python fans out there, plan your summer 2007 excursion. This is a proposed festival in Toronto next summer. Can't speak for the festival but there are lots of clean bathrooms in Toronto (with Toilets). Just scroll through the usual sniping about various levels of government not coughing up money for the arts.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1154728213711&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Hey yellojkt, you got a source for the fancy Japanese toilets? I forwarded your blog item to my husband, and he wants one for Christmas.

I'm thinking about painted toilets... And musical toilets. Musical chime toilets that tinkle (as it were) when the toilet is flushed -- not when it's "used." That would be gross. Hmmm, maybe a set of small windchimes next to the float in the tank, they'd only be able to ring when the water level is low, then stop ringing when the water comes up again.

ah, European restrooms.

My sister's toilet has a ledge at the back, and the hole for drainage at the front. Now I know Germans are not the design geniuses everyone says they are.

My hotel in Prague had two buttons to flush the toilet: big and small. No explanation needed.

When I got off the train at the wrong stop and was stranded in Cheb (in the middle of nowhere in the Czech Republic) the toilet had no plumbing. Just a hole with a bucket underneath. And they charged!

In Vienna I went to the musical toilet at the underground metro station by the Opera. Funny.

In Wurzburg, the toilet at the Ratthaus had an interesting cleaning device: after you flush, the seat rotates through a cleaner. Since the seat is not round, it makes the toilet look like it's dancing.

Hey, Yello, followed your link from the last boodle and ended up going through all your pictures on Flickr. They are great. I agree with your son. I want a SmartCar, too.

I'm very impressed by Joel's ability to simulate travel experience without going anywhere. It's been a nice game the past couple weeks, pretending that he's been away and there have been "guest Kits." Yeah, right.

I am thrilled to be home. I wrote three columns that will run the next three sundays and will be more than anyone needs to know about How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Basically it was a 3.5 week shopping trip (not for me, of course -- i dont shop), with a side trip to work on a freelance story, and oh yes, a road trip that i've written up for the travel section. So you'll hear all about it. Maybe I can figure out how to post photos to the blog, too.

Thanks very very much to all the guest kitters and all the boodlers who kept the blog going the last month.

Welcome back Joel.

a bea c, I read recently that the Smart Car was not available in the US. There are quite a few around here, they are cute but tiny, I would be very nervous on the highways. Of course they may actually fit completely under a transport truck.

Well, the boss gets back, and the whole conversation goes in the toilet. Cie la vie.

And, of course, welcome back, Joel. Now you can type away and rest your arms after all that waving, shaking, and wiffle ball batting.

I like the blog illustration. I assume it's been up for weeks and weeks but I just saw it now so. Yeah. Nice.

I thought there was a three week delay for the columns? (Help me out: someday I'm going to understand this.)

One more rule to add to this kit

If you are looking for a fellow American, look for someone chewing gum or wearing white tube socks. Your chances improve exponentially when both are combined in the same person.

Okay, I did the sophisticated mathematics required to calculate Sunday minus three weeks and now I get it. Never mind!

Joel is trying to convince us that he deserves to get paid for sipping bitter coffee from little ceramic cups for a month. Never mind that we did all the heavy lifting on the Boodle for the whole time. I bet pageviews even went up in his absence. Where's our royalties?

The toilets are made by Toto, a huge Japanese firm. I had a link to a WaPo article on the blog. No idea about local sources. You may have to call Will Smith and ask if he and Jada have one in their Baltimore condo.

I think we are being ignored on our request for photos. Get Hal the Schemer to show you how to set up a Flickr account if there isn't enough storage space on the WaPo servers. They only cost $25 a year.

I have seen articles about possibly bringing SmartCars to the US. Except they would be bigger. Which defeats the point.

For those of you not wanting to wade through the entire set of my Paris pictures, a good shot of a SmartCar is here:

http://flickr.com/photos/yellojkt/148487110/in/set-72057594138056503/

I just want to know how many pictures of the Eiffel Tower Joel has.

I saw SmartCars on the Autobahn. If they are safe at no speed limit, why not here? We just need to learn to drive, I guess.

I know I said I want a SmartCar, but where would I put the ABCkids, their car seats and lunch boxes? I think I'll have to keep my Mazda 5 for a while yet.

SmartCars are available in the U.S. through ZAP!: http://www.zapworld.com/

They are supposed to be available in dealerships in a year or two, IIRC. Through Daimler-Chrysler? I forget.

I can't wait to see Dr. Z in a SmartCar.

:-)

And I wonder if JA's CERN piece will focus on the European approach to atom-smashing: Offer the protons a little red wine, get them singing various philosophy songs, etc...

A lady at our office got a Smart Car last fall. When it arrived, she allowed us to look, and gave rides. Honestly? Surprisingly roomy inside. I'd get one but the wheel base is too narrow to make it up the hill on my driveway (which my husband mucks up with his truck) through the snow in the winter.

Now if my husband would just build a garage at the bottom of the hill, and install a covered escalator to the house...

You can see why he won't.

Tweaked the headline of one of today's columns at the NYT a wee bit:

SINFUL TRIPS TO PARIS

By John Tierney
Published: August 8, 2006
Come August, there are two kinds of people in the world: those with country homes, and those without country homes. If you, unlike me, are in the first group, we need to have an inconvenient talk.

We need to talk about your "carbon footprint," a concept you may have learned from Al Gore. If you've seen "An Inconvenient Truth" or read the best-selling book, you know how strongly he feels about everyone's duty to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. He advises you to change your light bulbs, insulate your home, and cut back on driving and air travel. If you must make a trip, he notes helpfully, "buses provide the cheapest and most energy-efficient transportation for long distances."

Fine advice, and it would be even better if he journeyed to his lectures exclusively on Greyhound. But he seems to prefer cars and planes. When you tally up his international travel to inspect melting glaciers and the domestic trips between his homes -- one in Washington and another in Nashville, not to mention the family farm in rural Tennessee featured in the movie -- you're looking at a Godzilla-sized carbon footprint.

No matter how many fluorescent light bulbs you install in your second home's basement, you could save a lot more energy by eliminating the whole place. Even if you dutifully shut down each home when you leave it -- turning off the electricity, draining the pipes and turning off the heat, etc. -- you're still expending extra energy commuting between your homes. A trip to a weekend house can easily burn more gasoline than a commuter uses all week.
***

What i wnat to know, Joel, is why you didn't take the bus to Paris--given that environmental issues and global warning ocuur in your writing over and over again?

You might want to make a trip to the White House in mid-August when the Vacationer-in-Chief returns to the White House. Fifty-nine (yup, count 'em!--59) trips during his six years in office to Crawford, Texas?
Accounting for more than 365 days away from the job of President?

Why that's almost as much as some government employees have spent on the Boodle since it was opened for comments last year--as Gadflys Anonymous pointed out yesterday!

I think Warren Brown said recently that DaimlerChrysler was going to stop production of the SmartCar but rising gasoline prices made them change their mind. I can top yellojkt's picture, if I can remember how to get to Flickr and post the photo I took in 2000...

They have amphibious buses now? Who knew?

:-)

Or the Americans attitude to atom-smashing?

Oh, the memories of working behind the scenes (since I was employed by the Modesto Chamber) with John and Sigrid Eilers of Linden and Modesto attorney Richard Harriman to prevent the Superconducting Supercollider from being located in California's San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.

Or making the trip by train across the snowy Sierras and Rockies to Denver in early December 1987 to attend the Superconducting Supercollider conference. Having an unknown figure come into the California press conference to call the Californians' efforts "damage control?" Or the very shadowy figure at the back of the quite dark, outlandishly sized ballroom during the presentations, to whom I spoke in whispers--he being able to name the five states that would be finalists for the SCC months before the states' names appeared in the press?

And really tasting Texas wines in some quantity before ever moving here--I can tell you that the wine flowed by the oak-barrelful that night Texas hosted its guest reception at the big Denver hotel trying to lure the SSC here to the Lone Star State.

I think California spent a little over a cool million trying to convince scientific minds that California wasn't prone to earthquakes. Oh, gummint in action!

And of course, it went to Texas, since Bush Big Daddy was up in or near the Oval Office. And the big hole in the ground they dug near Austin and never completed.

Farmers lost their lands in Texas, but "Thank God," they're still growing cherries in Linden--and all the other crops in the two-county area had the SCC been sited there--in the Golden State.

Heheheh. Got it!

It's pretty obvious which one I'm talking about.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/60157275@N00/?saved=1

I wonder how life at my house would be with a SmartCar. I don't think the kids would appreciate riding strapped to the top of the car. I'm sure they'd get a kick out of it in the spring, but they'd miss listening to Laure Berkner.

I'll have to keep my Mazda 5 for a decade or so.

Love the paint job on that SmartCar, slyness. I'm also going have to pick up the pace and post my Grand Canyon pictures. I am very jealous of your Sedona pictures. We did not have time to swing through there this year. After the trip, my wife told me that a friend of hers likes Sedona better than the Grand Canyon. Now I need to go back and check it out for myself.

what do you call a pig with three eyes?

piiig

Sooey?

Is it just me or did the formatting just go wonky.

Yellowjkt, do the Japanese have anything special for dogs, too?

I can never find enough clean dirt or grass for proper paw-wiping after I go. And then we are always too far from a trash can.

Yikes...I'm all disoriented...this is like a generic page format with no ads, no header, no nuthin'. What, did Hal the Schemer go HTML shopping at the Dollar Discount Web Store again?

I think its me Curmudgeon, I am a little jinxed lately. We are moving in 3 weeks after a long closing period. In the last two weeks, monsoon rains have resulted in us discovering we have a leak from the front stoop to a cold storage room. Not a big deal but needs fixing before we move, also it soaked the new rug we put in place before we sold the house. Washing machine dying, dog ate the bottom of a bedroom door and the bathroom door would open and had to have the door knob ripped off as we could not locate a way to remove it. All of this is little, but none of it need on top of the moving and sick mom stress.

However, my girls made it home safe and sound, loved the western hospitality (kudos SoC and dr).

*lighting a small stack of CPUs and praying to Linus Torvald and Tim Berners-Lee to save us from this anti-formatting*

:-)

SCC could I ask for a general waiver, I tend to forget ed, s, ing etc when I write (brain and hands work independantly).

Sorry

what happened? all of a sudden I found the post that prevously wouldn't post. Formatting took a lunch break.

Scotty, I guess I'll have to google those guys after all. I did the eeny-meeny-miny-moe for answering the quiz yesterday, but seein the same names twice in as many days is making me curious. And, if they can make this place look normal, they must be worth knowing.

Doesn't anyone remember the last time we mentioned CERN on the blog. It was immediately before time went nuts.

Well CERN was mentioned again.

WaPo had better beef up the security 'cause who knows what will happen when JA's CERN article comes out (even if its a Natty Geo piece).

Welcome back, Boss. I thought Sainte Chapelle was tailor-made for a good Wally-Ball game.

Apparently this isn't too far off the mark of the usage many cathedrals had during the French Revolution. This is from Wiki on Notre Dame:

"In 1793 during the French Revolution, the cathedral was turned into a "Temple to Reason" and many of its treasures were destroyed or stolen. Several sculptures were smashed and destroyed, and for a time Lady Liberty replaced the Virgin Mary on several altars. The cathedral's great bells managed to avoid being melted down, but the cathedral was used as a warehouse for the storage of food."

I'm going to skirt Weingarten Country as well, but no discussion of strange toilets is complete without reference to East European toilets: (1) the paper; and (2) certain practices due to narrow piping.

Glad the girls enjoyed the West, dmd. Sorry to hear about all the house problems. Is the basement leak in the house you're moving to, or the one you're in?

TBG, link for you and the kids about one of the BNL's members solo album.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1154901009113&call_pageid=968867495754&col=969483191630

Incidentally, my guess is Lieberman by a close margin.

*quickly extinguishing CPUs before the smoke alarm goes off*

:-)

Thanks, yellojkt. Glad you liked the Sedona pictures. I would advise you not to go there in June, July, or August, but it is an awesome place.

Three years ago, my wild-and-crazy older child did an internship in Paris over the summer. The heat was pretty intense, I gather. She and the other intern escaped to the French Riviera one weekend, where they did as the French and went topless. To her eternal chagrin, I got a copy of the photo. Now I can blackmail her.

Leak is in our old house, it is find most of the time we have just had some incredible downpours driving rain agains the house.

Funny observation from my 10 year old. When we asked if she liked where they were she said yes but its weird everyone drives a truck.

In HS I was on an exchange with a school in Scarborough. Exact same comment from most of them: never seen so many pick-ups!

My friends at Daimler Chrysler tell me that the SmartCar that's sure to come to the UD will be the next-gen smart car.

They're trying again to see how much money it's going to cost to convert the existing smarts to US spec, but the reason it was dropped in the first place it because they didn't think they'd sell enough to amoritze the cost of US certification.

Obviously, now their US market is bigger than they originally thought.

bc

Yuck! What's that stinky burnt-plastic smell? I think it's coming from scottynuke's cubby...

I was using the incense-scented CPUs, I swear!

Oh man, he set the sprinklers off! Now there will be he11 to pay!

Q: WHAT'S the difference between outlaws and inlaws?

A. outlaws are wanted!

An outlaw will treat you badly; an inlaw will also treat you badly but tell you the whole time that it's all your fault.

wilbrodog, I think dogs in Japan go the same places that dogs in other major cities go: anywhere they want. The Japanese are so fastidiously clean, I am sure an entire industry is devoted to the pet waste removal issue. I saw my dog's exact twin on a street corner in the very crowded Akihabara district. I took a picture that I will someday post as proof.

Slyness, my mother was once talking about the topless beaches in Italy and started mumbling something about "when in Rome..." before I shut her up. If there are pictures, I never want to see them.

bc, et. al., I think the people that were gray-market importing SmartCars are pretty mad at D-C for something or another. And vice-versa. They will make parking in Manhattan easier.

dmd, glad everybody is reunited and had a good trip.

Loomis, I have used you as an unattributed source on my blogpost about Riverwalk.

http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2006/08/riverwalk-rocks.html

I think I have hit my blogplugging allowance for the week.

How appropriate. My F-i-L will be here next week. My husband has excused me from all activities except dinner (I cook).

I would like to see Warren Brown augment his reviews of "practical" cars with reviews of "virtuous" cars. He claims that he only reviews cars that are ready for prime-time. I would like to see him review cars that could be ready for prime-time with some more work and capitalization behind them, plus ready-for-the-road cars in which virtue may outweigh performance. He does some of these cars (the Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris, as recent examples), but he balances them with ludicrous stuff like the Maybach and $70K SUV's. His faint praise for virtuous cars is palpable. He focuses consistently on compromises in the design, rather than positive design choices made to acquire virtue. Virtue is not the same as self-denial.

I liked the quote in the article about the Tesla Motors electric car (which I will paraphrase), that the problem with electric cars is that most of them are designed by people who think we shouldn't be driving at all. Interestingly, this article was not written by the Post's own automotive columnist. Of course, the problem with the Tesla as a virtue car is that it's a $100K car that is still vaporware. They need a regular-people version for $20K (with lesser performance, fine), and they need it available now.

Toyota has shown that it is possible to build an all-electric car with a range of 40-50 miles, capacity for four persons, and good road-worthy performance at a reasonable price -- it's a Prius that hasn't used up enough of its electric charge to demand that the gasoline engine start, yet. The only production electric cars that are on the market are the golf-cart-type cars, under-40 mph and under-40 miles. My commute is 7 miles, but at 45 mph, so these things are useless to me.

Welcome back, Joel. Hope you enjoyed your vacation in Paris. I'm sure the experience will come in handy at some point in your writing. I'm always interested in how people live in other countries.

You may have guessed Lieberman but I voted for Lamont this morning....uh oh I lose again. Just like the last 6 horrible years. Politics as usual it is!

I've found that museums are reliable homes of cleanish restrooms, as are "reading rooms" (whether sponsored by the CIA, the Christian Scientists, or other groups hoping to lure the distressed to join a "movement"). I managed to hold it all through Morocco until finding a well-armed US Govt-back reading room in Rabat -- ah!, American Standard!

On manners, Joel left out a critical survival tip: tailgaiting and other aggressive driving practices, especially in sourth Europe, must not be interpreted as road rage, and, unlike here at home, in no case justify shooting the perpetrator. Every European is born with a dead-but-not-necessarily-separated-from-state god-given right to hurry at break-neck speed to wherever it is they are going to next to endlessly wait and be ignored. We Americans cannot let minor fixations like road safety get in the way of this instinctive migration, as it could upset the delicate balance between frantic futile motion and exasperated stagnation that every European needs to have to survive and have adequate things to complain about; it could also cut into tobacco company profits, which depend upon lengthy periods of inertia for both the waiting and those making them wait.

Finally, if you're thinking of growing a mullet, northern Europe is the place for you. Wife-beater shirts are also big there, but, unfortunately, natives sporting both cannot, unlike here at home, be relied upon to provide NASCAR rankings updates.

What makes you think that's just "water"?

While visiting Paris a couple of times we noted the sidewalks have little arrows that direct you to have your dog relieve in the gutter. Then every hour or so water gushes out of pipes up the slope in the gutter that flushes everything down the hill.

Is time about to warp? The reply of the 2:49 comes before the answer.

I pray it is water.

SCC, comes before the information.

All I want to know is why the new Achenblog logo features Keanu Reeves.

My carbon footprint this summer has been both Bunyanesque and bunionesque.

Kbert, the column is written 4 weeks in advance and then spiked by the editor on account of it not being funny enough. Then, 3 weeks in advance, a second column is written and edited and it moves "to the desk" which is actually a collection of human beings, the copy editors. It goes to press a little over 2 weeks before publication. But this means that my columns from France will run when I am technically at 15th and L in Washington.

et tu, brutto?

Actually, I think he might have been referring to the "water" in Rule 5.

:-)

Tim, there are a couple of things about Warren Brown's reviews to remember:

1. The guy's not an engineer. It's probably not a good use of his talents/skills to assess raw technology for development potential. Sure, I could debate roll centers, camber gain, the relative merits of MacPherson struts and SLA suspensions, composite materials construction, torque splits, power under the curve, polar moments of inertia, regenerative braking systems, various types of chassis construction, lithium-ion batteries, flywheel energy storage systems, and all kinds of other technical stuff, but I don't think that's Warren's stong suit. He's focused towards the typical consumer, which makes sense. That Tesla piece was written by a business guy who attended the Press function here, that's all.

2. The Old School of automotive journalists live an interesting existence. Manufacturers loan them cars (I've heard of some auto jounrnalists who don't even own cars, they just make calls and pull cars from the various press fleets), those that they want tested, typically. There are nice cushy press functions where Name Auto Journalists are flown to nice locations for new model introductions - e.g. BMW does many of their releases in Sunny Southern Spain during the winter - and put up in nice accomodations during their stays. It's a comfortable gig for the most part, except when somebody accidentally totals a Porsche or Ferrari when they run out of talent or brains during a track test (arranged by the manufacturer, natch). Dan Neil at the LA Times cheezed GM off a while back, GM pulled their advertising from the LA Times, and cut him off from their press pipelines. Newspapers hate getting ad revenue pulled, and writers need stuff to write about. So, writing daring automotive journalism is not great for long term emplyoment.

3. Here's what sells car mags and makes people pick up auto articles: Exotic cars/trucks (the ludicrous) and top-car-for-whatever lists. I'm very surprised that Warren does not do the list thing yet.
Remember I said "yet".

I've written some highly technical articles about suspension tuning and performance differentials, and how-we-built-this-car-and-you-can-too type stuff, and it's really fun and lets me get my hands dirty, and put my money where my mouth is (I build 'em and I drive 'em too), but it pays next to nothing.

bc

In Germany they have bag dispensers with signs instructing dog owners to pick up the mess.

In Vienna, they have dog playgrounds complete with slides, tunnels, etc. I read somewhere that in Vienna there are more dogs than children under the age of 10.

Joel referred just now to copy editors as "human beings." I'm not entirely sure I agree, but even so, that's just about the nicest thing anyone's ever said about us. I think I'm getting all verklempt.

Unless he was being drily sarcastic again. Yeah, that hadda be it.

'Mudge;

"collection of human beings" could also have a sorta Frankenstein (That's FRAHNK-EN-STEEN!) connotation. *nods*

:-)

The rampant and thinly disguised conflicts of interest and petty graft in the automotive press is what finally turned me off of car magazines. Plus the general realization that most of the articles were car-pr0n (people doing things I can't do with cars I will never drive).

Car and Driver once did a Car Of The Yearâ„¢ spoof where a fictitious Eastern European P-O-S won because it had bought the most ad pages. The whole article was very humorous but had a pot-calling feel to it.

I still read car mags when I'm stuck in the Jiffy Lube lobby or someone has already grabbed the New Republic at the library, but for the most part I treat them like Maxim With Wheels, pretty to look at and interesting to read, but not a lot of content useful to my lifestyle.

Mudge, positively arid sarcasm.

bc

Dessicated, in fact.

bc

On a completely different topic, I noticed that this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners were named. This contest is simply for the worst opening sentence of a novel or story.
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

This year's winners are:
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2006.htm

And, oh there are some gems in there.

Enjoy, and if someone's already published these to the Achenblog, I apologize.

bc

I sometimes wish Warren Brown would pay less attention to the cars we can only dream about. I don't care that much about the minor lack of "get-up" in that $70K Mercedes he reviewed on Sunday. I know he has said in the past that he won't deal with "junk", but at least tell us why he thinks it is junk. I generally concur that the car mag business is one big circle-j**k. Capitalism at it best!

bc, I don't understand 90% of what you said there, you show-off. Maybe 95%. What I had in mind for Mr. Brown was not a technical engineering review, but maybe "Here's a car. It exists. It will do the following things for you. To make it a really practical vehicle, here are the other things it would have to do for the consumer."

I had forgotten that the manufacturers are really the ones who decide which cars get reviewed. That certainly does create a conflict of interest, as yellojkt noted, and pretty much rules out what I said I would like to see. Still, a guy can dream. Of course, this is like a shoe-fetishist dreaming of sensible shoes, but that's just the way I am.

Like ScienceKid #1, my favorite examples of evolutionary success are those critters -- like crows -- that are as common as dirt, because they have solved all the problems that they faced in a robust, no-nonsense, generalized fashion. That's what I'd like in a car, too. I am so dull.

Just got back from being out, we got a ride on one of the local police marine unit boats, very fun. Its a tough job I have.

SoC your exchange was to Scarborough? Too funny.

http://www.sachamber.org/visitor/riverwalk_history.php

Other events produced by the Paseo Del Rio Association include Las Posadas (first produced at street level by the San Antonio Conservation Society in 1965, then combined with the Paseo del Rio Association's fourth annual Fiesta de las Luminarias in 1971); St. Patrick's Day River Dyeing (1967); Fiesta de las Luminarias (first produced in 1968); Great Country River Festival (1969--not so sure this one is still around); Fiesta Mariachi Festival (1972); maybe annual Miller Lite River Walk Mud Festival (1987);
and River Walk Mardi Gras (1990).
***

http://www.journal-topics.com/travel/index060215.html

Yellojkt,
There are lots of things found in the drained river every year--in addition to the muck from the zoo--cell phones and chairs from outdoor dining establishments were high on this last January's count. Thank you so much for the lack of attribution. Too bad I couldn't have joined you when you were here, but after the laser surgery was under doctor's orders not to consume alcohol. No problems in that department for you, I see.
***

The River Walk hosts a number of festivals throughout the year. During the first full week in January, the floodgates are closed, the water is drained and the bottom of the canal is cleaned. S.A. has even created a Mud Festival for that event including the election of a king and queen of mud. In the course of cleaning, objects are recovered from the bottom including cell phones, combs, cameras and silverware lost from dinner cruises. And, according to our guide, frequently recovered items include wedding rings tossed into the water by the newly divorced.

I got an headache from all that bad writing.
There are some nices in there, I do agree, but it seems 2005 was a little better in some categories. The romance one was a letdown after 2005's comparsion of sex to car maintenance.

Not enough puns that wasn't telegraphed a mile away and I hadn't seen 100 times before. Refrigator magnates, heh, one of the rare good puns.

Some of them flashed me back to a chain of nightmares I had where bad writers took over my dream with their stories.

I remember this highly depressive writer telling me particularly purple prose about the tragedy of spilled coke, which I did write down in my journal along with my violent gag reaction. That guy came back for encores, too.

That guy was still better than the Hannibal-meets-Julia Childs who did a "from scratch" TV cooking show in my skull.

I'm glad I never had a revisit from a horrible fanasty-filfullment writer that wanted to ditch her kids and run off with her sister's husband to Wyoming and all would be pretty ribbons and rainbow tulips for life.

I gotta ask a shrink sometimes, is hearing voices okay when you only hear them asleep? And what if they don't even speak really but also just write down what they want to say, cause you're deaf and all?

And since I haven't heard them for 10 years, am I sane again, Doc? And if they come back, can I beat them to death with a volkswagen? Doc? Doc?

(And you guys wonder why I never drink...).

I dunno, Wilbrod, hearing voices --or even no longer hearing them, even asleep -- still might be better than going over to K Street every other month or so to have drinks and $1.99 cheeseburgers with your imaginary friends you met on the Internet.

In other word, my unconscious subconscious was actually a "creative writing" blog for bad writers before I shut it down somehow.

Nowadays I dream of sculptors that work with ice and snow, and don't talk as much. Restful company, if a bit chilly.

You're the caretaker, Curmudgeon. You've always been the caretaker.

I agree, Curmudgeon... cheeseburgers are bad for the arteries after all.

And if you haven't had those imaginary friends invade your dreams, you're still better off.

I had a brief dream where ***(boodle handle censored, but I've seen his picture) seriously scared Joel at his home with a "Number One Fan" thing.
It didn't wind up like King's "Misery" but you could see it was exactly what Joel was thinking as he talked him out of helping with the yard work with those really, really big hedge clippers, and just go home, pal, chill, he can handle it, just leave him alone.

Maybe I got Joel's nightmare by accident. If he had any really weird nightmares that didn't belong to him, e-mail me. I want mine back.

Wilbrod, I find that 200 mg of soy daily help with the nightmares associated with menopause. I still have vivid dreams, but not nightmares. Wonder if it would work for a man?

Of course, if we postulate dream transmigration, then could be like that Northern Exposure episode where everybody get somebody's else dreams... not always a direct exchange (but usually). In that case, I'm afraid to ask who may have been having my dreams instead.

eeep - i hope someone isn't accidently getting MY dreams! that would be embarrasing!

oh, and 'snuke - i'll gladly forgive you for NOT wearing a red sux hat! *grin* but i will NOT forgive you for eating up all that delicious lob-stah and not sharing!

Only if the guy was going through menopause, and Japanese men who eat a lot of soy have smaller brains and are more prone to Alzheimer's.

All the more reason to eat red meat. Arrrr!
And that metabolic syndrome, in a red-hot release today in Cell Metabolism, can be cured by increasing some protein in the body by pumpin' the body with lots of meat and fat and cutting carbos a la Atkins/South Beach. Jargon follows:

http://www.cellmetabolism.org/content/article/abstract?uid=PIIS1550413106002348

I gotta research the TOR thingy but the "big sell" was this was supposed to prove the Atkin diet works to help control your lipid and insulin resistance. This is fruitflies, come on, humans don't have diapause, just menopause.
I should learn enough not to trust any science writer that can't even write down any details, just the "significance."

Having grown up in N. CA with parents from Kansas, Mudge, I had to resort to Google to understand your "verklempt" coment

Verklempt - choked with emotion (German verklemmt = emotionally inhibited in a convulsive way)
This is not FAKE Yiddish - unless you are one of the linguists who consider Yiddish a "fake", i.e. non-transformational language.

You didn't "fake it" did you?

OY, vey. When that schmuck of a doctor told me I had cancer I got all verklempt.

Hey, mo.

another thing about traveling over-seas - you must dispense of ALL concept of "personal space" - get rid of that "dirty dancing" sound bite "this is my personal space, that is your personal space, i don't go into yours and you don't go into mine" cuz they don't HAVE personal space overseas (except in england)...

hey mudge!

I think Mudge has a few embarrassing little dreams he'd like to return, Mo.

NYT: The Ghost of katherine Harris

If Joe Lieberman loses the Connecticut primary today, will he try to invalidate the results by charging his opponents with voter suppression -- namely, short-circuiting his publicly available campaign web site?

One has to wonder now that the Lieberman campaign has just announced that it will file a formal complaint with federal and state legal authorities over the collapse of its web site. Mr. Lieberman's campaign manager is blaming it on "a coordinated attack by our political opponents" and comparing to voter suppression.

With Ned Lamont ahead in the polls, with nearly 6 hours of voting to go, and with the evening news shows in mind, the Lieberman allegations of dirty tricks seem awfully well-timed. Voter suppression is also a rather hefty charge -- while the web snafu could certainly foul up the senator's get-out-the-vote operation today, are people actually being barred from voting?

Mr. Lieberman, as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, knows a thing or two about allegations of suppression after those long weeks in Florida. It's unclear what effect the formal complaint would have on certifying the primary results tonight or tomorrow, or whether it would fuel talk of a recount -- which is certainly being whispered about now.

All of this may end up an asterisk on the day, to be sure, mere political noise in the quiet of early afternoon. But, again, as Democrats know from Florida, it is hard to predict these things.

Sean Smith, the Lieberman campaign manager, specifically sought to bait Mr. Lamont this afternoon.

"We call on Ned Lamont to make an unqualified statement denouncing this kind of dirty campaign trick and to demand whoever is responsible to cease and desist immediately," Mr. Smith said. "Any attempt to suppress voter participation and undermine the voting process on Election Day is deplorable and has no place in our democracy."

Mr. Smith said the campaign has notified the United States Attorney's Office and the Connecticut Chief State's Attorney, and has asked State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal for his review.

Oh, poor, poor, lost bh. Boychick. Where to begin. Do they shut off the TVs in Northern Cal and Kansas on Saturday nights? You're getting a case of shpilkes in your geneckteckessoink, I do believe. Well, a bi gezunt.

On Saturday Night Live, Mike Myers had a routine in which he portrayed a (very) Jewish talk show hostess named Linda Richman, who was hung on on "Barbra." (There is only one Barbra. If you have to ask...never mind.) And every now and then he/she/Linda would get a little teary, "verklempt," and have to stop talking for a moment to collect herself, and urged the audience to talk quietly among themselves while she did so. She also occasionally gave the audience topics to discuss ("The French Revolution was neither French, nor a revolution. Discuss.") while she collected herself.

My command of Yiddish (a bissel), by the way, is probably as good as my Deutsch or Latin, and a helluva lot better than my French or fractured Spanish, I should live so long.

Alas, I'm too meshugge to study yiddish, every time I try, I can't stand all that kvetching from yentas about what a schmeliel I am when I'm not schmucky.

I should live so long to be called a mensch. Ah well, if my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather.

So to save my self-esteem, no more Yiddish for me, it's all katzenjammer to me anyway.

uh, oh mudge! i'm truly truly sorry! and for the record, that one was just a dream! i've never done that in real life!

Um...wouldja like to try?

HAHAHAHA! now, now 'mudge! don't be a naughty boy - that's bc's job!

Mo, FYI on your dream, naughty boys, and bc...

I'm having a psychic flash that it includes the ostrich feathers, chains, whips, weird pop/rock video set, jarring random appearances of bizaare items etc. At least some are edible.

Please just tell me it ain't that bad as I think, Mo.

It's probably just as well; I gotta run for the bus anyway, and wouldn't have been able to...ah...devote my full attention anyway.

See y'all tomorrow (unless I can spring my home computer from the clutches of the repair geeks tonight).

Talking about personal space, I read today that Calgary (721 sq km)covers about the same amount of land as New York(830 sq km), with 1/8 of the people (1 million as of last week v. 8 million). Well not quite the same but hey I am reading this (ALberta Construction Magazine Jul/Aug 2006). Its the Green Revolution in Construction issue.

Included was a whole article called "The Green Flush", a David Suzuki peice on building green, green power solutions, and several peices on green municipal transportation.

If Yiddish is "fake", then it's fake just like English is fake, right? The ancestral languages are still present (in modified forms) and producing their own literature, so English is really just a dialect, yes?

i'm all blushing over here!!

Isn't Jacksonville, FL still one of the (geographically) largest cities in the States o' 'merica?

I believe you are correct, Bob. IIRC, Jacksonville and the county it is in share the same geographical borders.

I know that in Calgary's case they are not talking about metropolitan area, but the city limits. I also have to assume they are strictly going with City limits for New York.

And yes the million people for Calgary is as accurate as it will ever get. We had a census in Haute Maine this year (though the Alberta portion is incomplete for want of census takers - seriously job opportunities abound).

Odd year for a census, dr, here in the US of A census taking is mandated by the Constitution every ten years, on the year ending in zero. It's required so that Congressional districts can be rebalanced. How about with you all?

Borough of Juneau, Alaska (pop. 31,000)
8,430.4 km² (3,255.0 sq mi)

(I found the foregoing after looking up what Phoenix's area was - that is a large city in area too - 1,230.5 km² (475.1 sq mi))

Slyness all you ever wanted to know about our census, every ten years 1996, 2006 etc.

However I think there is also a smaller version in between. See 2001 census.

http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/home/index.cfm

It seems every 5 years federally.
As to the years, who knows why, but its possible that its just what we do here, slightly off kilter. We like stuff like that.

They ask such cool questions too. The long form asks how many toilets you have in your residence.

dr, wasn't the online census available in Alberta? Here is was either mail or online, honest question what do the census takers do?

Sorry dr is correct Canadian census is every five years.

I didn't know they had awarded a Nobel Prize to a writer whose short stories were all written in a fake language.

Spanglish. Now THAT's a fun fake language. I have to laugh when I hear "vacunar la carpeta" which, literally, means vaccinate the folder, but in Spanglish it means vacuum the carpet.

dr,
Funny that you should mention Canada as off kilter.

Best band I ever heard at Disney Epcot was Off Kilter performing at the Canada pavilion. A rock band with bagpipes. Go figure. But a big surprise at Disney and the evening's delight.

http://allearsnet.com/tp/ep/okilter.htm

Once they'd been accepted as World Showcase performers, the Canada pavilion was chosen as the appropriate venue for the new and, whose members had already decided to wear traditional plaid kilts when they performed. "Canada is as multicultural as the U.S., if not more so," Holton explains. "It seems to be the best place for us, since we are not just Celtic, not just high energy rock, but just about any type of music."

dmd... thanks for the Kevin Hearn link. That's cool. I haven't listened too much to his solo stuff. I do have Steven Page's solo album, but I've gotten too old to listen to one singer sing all the songs on an album.

That's one thing I've always liked about BNL: the variety of voices and sounds from song to song.

I'm sitting in our converted Victorian rail car in the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel in Tennessee. Nice, but hot. Did I say that it's hot out?

We stayed last night in Middlesboro, Ky, just through the tunnel from Virginia and Tennessee at the Cumberland Gap.

We stopped today in two pretty cool Tennessee locales: Oak Ridge and Dayton.

We visited the Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge. We didn't prepare ahead of time for a visit to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Do you think anyone could create such a "Secret City" today? Where thousands of people work on a Manhattan Project? Without telling anyone?

Dayton, Tennessee, is where the Scopes trial took place. There's a museum in the basement of the courthouse and you can also visit the actual courtroom (which of course is still used).

We parked outside the courthouse and couldn't find an entrance to the museum. We asked some produce vendors outside and a woman directed us to the entrance. She said, "You can see all about the monkey thing."

When we returned to our car, she asked, "So? Did you learn that we're not from monkeys?" My son explained that his dad teaches biology. She asked, "What does he think about it?" I answered, "He teaches biology. That should explain it."

She was appalled that we think she "came from monkeys."

It was really pretty amazing being there at the courthouse where it all took place, but you'll learn more here than you will at the museum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial

So tomorrow it's Lookout Mountain and, of course, we're going to See Rock City.

Oh yeah. It's pretty hot out.

dmd... also: did you know that Kevin Hearn and comedian Harland Williams are cousins?

That just cracks me up for some reason.

Loomis - I've seen (and thoroughly enjoyed) 'Off Kilter'! When I was living in Del Rio TX, my honey & I took a long weekend over to Houston (1993 or so) to catch a couple of baseball games (the Cardinals were in town, that's her team) and to check out the local scene. The 'Six Flags' park was more-or-less in the same parking lot as the Astrodome, so that was how we spent one day, and "Off Kilter" was performing in the park. I saw them twice, had a great time. I bought them drinks in a local watering hole the next day.

[For those who might remember my "Lee Smith is a great guy" anecdote, yes, it's the same trip!]

TBG, that's a very depressing anecdote about the produce vendor!

Depressing, SonofCarl, but par for course in the South. Here we are, the land of NASCAR and Eric Rudolph.

TBG - I think that it was not unknown that "special research" was going on in Oak Ridge, or Los Alamos, just like it's not a huge secret (to those who live in the vicinity/vicinities) where the "undisclosed location(s)" that various high-ranking officials skedaddle to occasionally are located. There's more than enough technological prowess and money to make it impossible for the government to keep ANY large-scale secrets (look at it this way: Wal-Mart moved more dollars last year (by a LOT) than the entire U.S. defense industry).

If anybody with grown-up money didn't want these things to be low-key, then they wouldn't be! It turns out that (for the most part) reasonable folks tend to make reasonable decisions about what knowledge ought to be widely disseminated. But unreasonable people are constantly making unreasonable decisions (in both directions) about the very same things. Oh, well!

TBG, I did not know that about Harland Williams. Harland is very funny.

Slyness, I had to google Rudolph - had forgotten about him. Most interesting to me is the fact that if you asked me 10 minutes ago who was the Atlanta Olympics bomber, I would have said Jewell, the security guard. A little reminder to myself on how how much an accusation sticks.

Yes, totally unfair, isn't it? Small connection to that case: every summer, my pastor takes a group to the southwestern NC mountains to go whitewater rafting. His favorite camping ground is where Rudolph left his truck when he evaded federal authorities. That year, the group had to go to Tennessee to find a campground, because the feds had taken over. It's beautiful country, but when you're there, you can understand how Rudolph could successfully hide for several years.

TBG, I hope you have time to go to Sliding Rock. You can cool down there!

Loomis, thank you thankyou thankyou. I saw these guys at Epcot in 2001 and they are unique. I had forgotten their name, but never their music.

However don't be telling the folks over at the British pub that you enjoyed their music. When we did, all we got was a rather surly, that's not real Celtic, to which we replied, no its better its Canadian (boorish of me, yes?). Beer service was less than good but the Guinness was tasty.

... The West's big enough you could "hide" an military installation, just get the regular shipments in and have the supplier use only personnel with security clearances and no frigging' clue what's going on to drop stuff at the gates.

The "undisclosed location" is in Wyoming, no question. Everybody wants to hide at or near home if they can, don't they? Besides, there's Yellowstone in Wyoming, and that's a lot of untouched land to back up an undisclosed location.

Any busybodies get reported eaten by grizzlies.

Not that I subscribe to the conspiracy theory, but you gotta breathe the real rural West to understand why those conspiracy theories keep recurring. It looks possible to a lot of people.

Slyness... we stopped at Sliding Rock a few years ago on our last swing through the area. But in was in June and brrrrr... it was so cold.

I bet this time of year it will be the perfect temperature to accompany 90+ degree weather.

TBG;

If 'tis still hot tomorrow (did you say it was hot?), haze and such might severely limit the view from Lookout Mountain. Yes, I've been there. Saw Rock City too, sorta, as I was trying to concentrate on watching the road. Drove past the CCC too, just to say I saw it. The whole area's well worth the visit, though. Just make sure you keep track of your state lines, or you'll blink and be in Georgia.

:-)

I remember seeing the guys in kilts rocking out on my way to meet my group at the pub in Britain. I wish I could have stayed and listened more; they were very good.

TBG,
Delightful true story about your visit to Dayton, Tennessee and the courtroom where the Scopes trial was conducted.

Since this op-ed is from "behind the velvet ropes," meaning today's NYT Times Select, I give you the opening three grafs.

The Culture Crusade of Kansas

By THOMAS FRANK (Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of "What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.")
Published: August 8, 2006

The nation breathed a sigh of relief last week after the conservative majority on the Kansas school board, world famous for its war on the theory of evolution, went down to defeat in Republican primary elections. Conservative candidates for several state government posts foundered as well (but others won). It seemed as though moderation had finally returned to this middlemost of American places. Even better: perhaps the country itself had turned the corner in its long and frustrating war over culture.

I was as pleased as anyone else to hear the news. Could the conservative uprising in my home state finally have run its course? Fourteen years ago, the armies of the right came pouring out of Kansas' evangelical churches to protest abortion and all the other liberal plagues upon the culture, and they've had a big role in the state's Republican Party ever since. But it must be difficult to stay angry that long, especially when the crusade you signed up for is now a hairsplitting fight that your leaders have picked with the biology professors of the entire world. Could the faction's rank and file simply have given up, grown disgusted with the absurdity that their grand cause has become?

Perhaps, but I think it is far too soon to write the obituary for the godly radicals. Their faction may have chosen lousy candidates this time around, and their public appeal may have dissipated thanks to the preposterous issues (evolution, stem-cell research) against which their leaders have lately been hurling themselves, but the movement is deeply ingrained in Kansas culture. The conservatives will undoubtedly be back.

TBG, speaking of seeing Rock City -- there's an extremely funny and insightful storytelling recording by Donald Davis (all his stuff is funny and insightful) called See Rock City, available from August House. I highly recommend it, as I do all of Donald Davis' stuff. He's the best.

What was I thinking? I used the wrong prefix.

So far as I can determine, the Kansas folk realized that the FSM movement was not to be ignored lightly. Even the Doverians of Pennsylvania backed off!

Ridicule and reason, wielded properly, are annoyingly powerful.

On the other hand:

Say what you will about literal Genesites, Native American mud-people mythicists, or quirky FSM'ers. My man Charlie Darwin has whispered in my ear, and he said, "Bob, if faith without evidence didn't convey some reproductive advantage, it wouldn't be so widespread!"

I have to trust the man on this, he's never steered me wrong.

Hi Joel,
You should come to Spain next year. I would like to know your opinion about us. Haha. I hope you had a good time in France.
Un saludo!

Good morning, friends. Getting ready for the walk. We had so much rain yesterday, plus it was hot. Went out for a little while, so glad to get back in. I hope I don't complain about the cold when it finally gets here. See Lieberman lost, and so did McKinney. Haven't read the details yet.

In my small town newspaper this morning, a letter to the editor praising the work of Senator Dole and Senator Burr for moving forward on the Lumbee Indians. The Lumbees have finally gotten the recognition they've been denied for so many years. These two Republicans are taking the credit, and the Republican Party has been the stumbling block for the Lumbee Indians in the form of Jesse Helms for years. Sounds like a lot of political grandstanding to me.

I do hope your day is good, in spite of the heat. I will try to get out today and get some work done. Need to go to the library, that tab has to be paid. And I'm sure they want their books back. Have to get prescriptions and this is Bible study day. A lot to look forward to in a good way. Of course, I know you folks have much more important things to do, yet I believe in your busy going about lives, one should remember that God loves us so much more than we can imagine through Him that died for all, Jesus Christ.

Nani, we're desperate for one of those stories. Can't you tell? And where, oh where, are you Error?

Bob S., reproductive advantage, indeed! Thanks for the first chuckle of the day.

Bob;

"Ridicule and reason, wielded properly, are annoyingly powerful."

I think we have yet another Achenblog slogan.

:-)

Our chief weapon is reason! Reason and ridicule! Our two weapons are reason and ridicule...and British sketch comedy.
Amongst our weapons.... Hmf... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as reason, ridi.... I'll come in again.

Shall I fetch...

THE SOFT CUSHIONS?!?!?!?! *jarring chord*

:-)

Didn't Lieberman learn anything about class and honor from his 2000 running mate?

Sheesh. What a baby.

On a slight tangent, but to Cassandra's comment ('morning, Cassandra), Lieberman loses the Conn Dem primary to anti-warrior Lamont.

1. Should Republicans be concerned?
Yup, if you're not in an district where you have to fight to be more conserveative than the next guy to win, you're going to be facing some unhappy voters in Novemeber.

2. Should Democrats be concerned?
Yup, here's the opening Democrats needed to spilt their party, dilute their current advantages, and once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

As long as Lieberman's going to run as an Independent (trying not to think of him as joining *my* club) , he should completely sell out and market sponsorships for his campaign. He's not beholden to the DNC anymore, is he? Let him wear a NASCAR driver's suit and a hat with sponsor logos (paid for by sponsor advertising, natch) all over it, and start sound bites with something like, "The AETNA/ESPN Independence Campaign powered by Colt and United Technologies ran pretty good today, we got some good campaigning done in the southern end of the state and picked up a big push going through Bridgeport, Stamford and Danbury, but we're going to need to make some adjustments to fight a loose condition going through Waterbury, Hartford, and New London on the run back to New Haven. I'd like to thank General Electric and Playtex for their support, we couldn't have held up our end of the deal without them."

bc

bc

SCC: "conservative". Bah!

bc

If Lieberman chooses to run as an independent, that will cement his standing as a closet Republican.

Interesting that Lieberman chose to deliver his concession at the Goodwin Hotel last night, just up the hill from Bushnell Park. There's history there, folks--in ways I shall spare you this morning.

Did anyone hear Lieberman and Lauer on NBC this morning? Lieberman's responses were a mouthful of garbled mush, political pablum.

fyi, new kit...on Lieberman. Please weigh in! bc I love the NASCAR sponsorship notion...

Yes, Loomis, I saw that interview, and agree. People tend to bad-mouth the morning show hosts for too much pablum (agree) and too many softballs (agree), but I thought Lauer put it to him pretty good (as in fact Lauer usually does). And yes, Lieberman waffled.

The problem with Lieberman's otherwise reasonable claim want to make politicis less divisive and less confrontational is, he's talking to the wrong side of the aisle. It isn't the Dems (either pro-war or anti-war) who started the whole confrontational, divisive thing, it was Rove and his Conserv. minions from Hell. So as far as I'm concerned, his "let's-be-bipartisan-and-all-work-together" line is crap and directed at the wrong people.

Just for the record, the claim that Yiddish is a "fake" language is pretty dumb. Yes, it was cobbled together a couple centuries ago from a Germanic base with a Hebrew alphabet, and incorporating bits and pieces of Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, etc. But so what? Big fat hairy deal. English was cobbled together from a heavily Germanic base with imput from Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, the Norman French, Romans/Latin, blue-faced Celts, and John Cleese; it just happens to be somewhat older than Yiddish. So freakin' what?

i've been in CT for a bit over 4 years, what's the history of Bushnell park besides the great flood and reassignment of roads? I wasn't aware of anything dramatic but you have my interest up....

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