It was a slow car day, Andrew, but…
…a gaggle of Ducatis
& an Aston Martin DB7
Texas Flood
Deron Bauman, writing of Cooper Renner’s Love of Weather (and other matters), recalled “driving with Renner many years ago over one of the viaducts in Dallas that connect south Dallas, cut off by the Trinity River, with the city.
“It had been raining torrentially for a few days, as is it now,” Deron wrote, “and Renner looked out his window and said, ‘Stupid rain. Stupid river.’ ”
Here is a postcard picturing one of those viaducts and, swelling below it, what purports to be the Trinity River. The postcard is old. It may even be a BRE (Before Renner’s Era) artifact. And I will tell you this: Never in all the days I endured in Dallas, whence I fled in 1975, did the Trinity River manifest itself as anything other than a rivulet etched within bottomland. A site for gar-fishing and corpse-dumping.
Now regard the visual record and behold the large and mighty Trinity as it flows ‘neath the Houston Street viaduct.
Truly, it may be said: Whatsoever It was, there was More of It in the olden days.
Brer Rabbit Car Commercial
Beautiful Cars Crashed By Rich Idiots
Car: Lamborghini Diablo SE30 Jota
Value: US $0.3 million
Idiot at the wheel: Jay Kay — lead singer of Jamiroquai
What happened: Crashed while trying to make a turn
Reports of criminal negligence courtesy of The Wrong Advices via the Ballardosphere Wrap Up, Part 3, where you’ll find more in the same vein.
Bon Voyage
Some few years back, Alice Furlaud turned up a souvenir, a ticket for two passengers on the Andrea Doria, sailing March 31, 1956, from New York to Naples, and she set down a remembrance in the pages of the New York Times.
Usually, friends seeing you off on those grand old ships would have brought along liquor or candy. Baskets of cellophane-covered fruit might have been sent on board from Maison Glass. At that Andrea Doria send-off one friend brought us a miniature chess set. We lost a queen overboard the second day out and replaced her with a tiny papier-mache Easter bunny that had decorated a box of gift candy.
Cooper Renner embarks for the Continent from Galveston, Texas on April 28.
Babel
Has anyone seen it?
Howard Stern and Sanjaya
“We’re corrupting the entire thing,” Mr. Stern said on his Sirius Satellite Radio show Thursday, the day after Mr. Malakar secured a place in the top nine finalists. “All of us are routing ‘American Idol.’ It’s so great. The No. 1 show in television and it’s getting ruined.”
Confederate Wraith
My Sweet Lord
“Sharp little guy”
Timepieces
A nun’s beer
Sister Julie Viera samples them all for you (though not to excess):
Who knew that my favorite beer would be newsworthy? Papers across the globe are fascinated with my comment about beer in the Chicago Tribune interview. Maybe I’ll get some endorsement requests from Harp. Or maybe I’ll start a beer column on my blog and review beers that people send to me! I am kidding, though it is tempting.
I know it is surprising to many people, but even religious folk tilt a glass now and again.
Lamborghini Diablo
It is not everyday you see one of these on the street, even in Princeton.
Amy
The Pennyrile Region?
What’s happening in zipcode 62966 and environs, according to the Weather Underground folks:
Nowcast as of 7:04 PM CDT on March 30, 2007
Scattered showers and thunderstorms will continue to develop and lift northeast across quad state region through 815 PM. The strongest storms will be focused across the pennyrile region of west Kentucky. These storms have been severe at times…producing penny size hail and gusts to 60 mph. Storms will continue to be capable of small hail…winds gusting to 40 mph…very heavy rain and dangerous lightning. Areas of heavy rain will produce ponding of water on roadways and possibly localized flooding.
The pennyrile region?
Great Pyramid Built Inside Out
A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt’s Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out.
Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu’s tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.
But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.
Weekly Picture 77
Happy Birthday, Midtown, Mahattan, 3.29.2007
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The IG noted that MacDonald “admitted that her degree is in civil engineering and that she has no formal educational background in natural sciences” but repeatedly instructed Fish and Wildlife scientists to change their recommendations on identifying “critical habitats,” despite her lack of expertise.
At one point, according to Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a “nesting range” of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a “running battle” with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.
The Immigration Problem
as The Onion sees it. Hehehe.
One good turn deserves another
Dear Kottke,
You might (not?) like to know that Desktop Tower Defense has been updated. There are new creeps, towers, and difficulty modes.
Sleepless but amused (and still distracted),
Andrew
Bad Big Boy
Yesterday, baboon that I am — or Bad Big Boy, if you prefer — I let it slip my mind that Deron, our esteemed leader, was in the very process, the very process, of leaving 37 behind and becoming 38. By the time the event’s eventness reached my conscious mind it was 9:30 p.m. PDT (or 11:30 p.m. CDT) and I didn’t dare call to give him my felicitations.
Now 37 is a prime number, which is nothing to sneeze at, but there are few numbers (well, I mean, numbers that a human’s age might reasonably be expected to reach) that are as generally swell as 38. In sheer emotional and psychological terms, a 38-year-old can justifiably think him- or herself a full-grown adult (if one wants to be such a thing), of course, but just look at those numerals as numerals: the swelling arcs of the 3, the satisfying wholeness of the 8’s ovals. (Not to mention, that whole infinity thing when you turn the 8 on its side, or [forgive my being male] the rather Neolithic femininity of the 3 on its side.
So, there! Deron, happy belated 38th!
By the way
I’m recommending both vocal and instrumental (”St Vitus mix”) versions of James Yorkston and the Athletes’ “St. Patrick.” Utterly lovely without being icky.
Yet further preparations
Yesterday I found the hat which, my sister insists, looks best on my head. So I purchased it. I’m calling it the Malta hat, rather than the Big Boy. I hope this will please you all. One of the earlier contenders for purchase made me look, I swear, like Hermann Hesse’s photo on the back of the Picador reissues of his books.
Won’t you all be relieved when I’m actually gone?
Aperture v. Lightroom
Does anybody have any thoughts on Aperture versus Lightroom in terms of managing a digital photography archive?
Or perhaps an alternative?
Brit in Brooklyn
Adrian Kinloch takes good pictures.
(Via the Dizzies)