Check out the view
The view from the house my Dad’s building in Arizona.
links for 2007-05-19
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Similar to the map I created, but mine shows our actual stops along the route.
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Note how many of them have same initial letters. And some of them that are just too similar.
links for 2007-05-18
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“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly. They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to f
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Award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch on the need for–and impossibility of–reducing the size and scope of government.
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FRONTLINE investigation has found that the National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and sifting Internet communications of millions of Americans; the FBI conducted a data sweep on 250,000 Las Vegas vacationers, and along with more than 50
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Funny quiz – you decide, did Hitler say it, or did Falwell?
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Great childrens (and adults!) book on how to build your neighborhood into a community.
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Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on “normalization.” This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as “the way things are done.” There is usually a division of l
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Stephanie has a less technical version of one of these old toys – it’s a light that spins around and casts the images of beetles driving on the wall. Very fun.
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Nice photo set of the Smart Car ForTwo – Stephanie already has her deposit in for one of these.
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I am so buying this book.
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A blisteringly smart excerpt from Al Gore’s new book – which I will be buying Monday, thankyouverymuch.
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Styling buttons with css. excellent.
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Stephanie pointed me at the this page, and I spent forever reading my favorites. God I’m going to miss this show.
Random Facts About My Head
Attention, Everyone:
My head measures 21 and 7/8ths inches around, which means I wear a 7 M sized hat, according to the Hats In the Belfry website.
That is all.
UPDATE: That is not all. Furthermore…
Although I would never wear one, I really love these hats.
Gardening
You’ll have to pardon me – this is on of those posts that’s just making notes for myself to refer back to later. Last night I planted in the front flowerbeds:
1 purple lavender
1 orange symphony
1 summertime pink charma
2 Dianthus – Confetti Deep Red
2 Dianthus – Spangled Star
A seed packet of Butterfly Flowers
2 Broadway Lights Daisies
3 Shasta Daisies
2 Coreopsis – Rising Sun
2 Pensteman – X Mexicali
1 Delphinium – Summer Blue
1 Delphinium – Blue Mirror
4 Delosperma – Cooperi Yellow
Over the weekend we planted – Lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, sugar snap peas, rhubarb and green onions.
Still to plant – seed packets of Columbines and more Blue Mirror Delphiniums.
Things I still plant to buy and plant – hostas and Pachysandras in the back at the corner of the house near the deck, to fill in so we don’t have to mow in the awkward corner, and Clematis next to the deck to climb up the trellis. Also, I need to plant the copper pipe trellis from the garage, and start some Clematis growing on it at the side of the house. And I need to finish weeding the side bed, and get some small fencing for around the vegetables, so the bunnies don’t eat them when they start to grow.
links for 2007-05-17
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“We should all have the right to live with the same dignity, opportunity, safety. It shouldn’t matter what anyone’s sexual orientation is.” — Cyndi Lauper, True Colors Tour, 2007
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A great cache of Beetle commercials.
Get Your Kicks on Route 66
At the end of June, Stephanie and I are going to take her new Beetle, Phoebe, on the annual road trip caravan to Roswell, New Mexico – Roswell 2k. This year there’s a Route 66 version of the trip, which we’ll be joining in Chicago, along with several of Stephanie’s Beetle-owning friends. So we’ll drive with around 30 other Beetles, all the way out to California on Route 66 (the Mother Road, Main Street of America, the Great Diagonal Way), with a few days in Roswell for the car show, and a trip to the Grand Canyon along the way. Should be an amazing trip, and I plan to photo/blog the whole thing. It appears that Stephanie’s friend Lisa, who webcam documented entire previous trips, will have the live cams up and running again this year. Should be a blast.
What’s cool is that in 1998, almost 10 years ago now, I helped a couple friends move out to Arizona, and we traveled part of Route 66 then. The photo below is of that trip. The U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, Texas has since been renovated and is open as some sort of attraction; when we were there it was closed and boarded up.
We’re doing some reading to prepare for the trip; we’ve got a few books here and there, and I picked up a DVD from the library at lunch. I also bought a copy of Kerouac’s On The Road for the trip; I figured that would be appropriate reading. I think I’ll pass on reading the Grapes of Wrath, though.
I’m also putting together a Route 66 Music Mix for the trip, too.
Our Route 66 Itinerary [Google Mapped]
My Past Falwell Greatest Hits
Joke posts about Falwell I posted in the past that are getting traffic now that he’s died. No guarantees on the quality of the jokes…
The Theological Significance of Tinky Winky
5 Reasons Tinky Winky Can’t Be Gay
The Top 13 Reasons Jerry Falwell Thinks Your Favorite TV Character is Gay
The Batty Hymn of the Repugnant
Top Ten Jerry Falwell Pet Peeves About TV
And while we’re at it, some of Jerry’s Actual Greatest Hits—quotes from the man himself.
“AIDS is God’s punishment to gays.” – Jerry Falwell
“If you’re not a born-again Christian, you’re a failure as a human being.”
“I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”
“Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.”
“There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
“AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh’s charioteers.”
“Textbooks are Soviet propaganda.”
“The whole (global warming) thing is created to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability.”
“(9/11 is the result of) throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad…I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America…I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.”
“The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”
“It appears that America’s anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men’s movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.”
“When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together.” – 700 Club, 1-21-93
“You know, one of the great misnomers in our society is the term `gay.’ That somebody who is involved in something that is leading to suicide, where the V.D. rate is 11 times that of others, which are almost driven and ashamed and fearful and confused and psychotic and all the others that we read about plaguing this part of our society. The term gay is the most serious misuse of the English language. They’re not gay, they’re very, very depressed and miserable.” – 700 Club, 5-6-82
“When you see the rise of blatant open homosexuality and lesbianism, what you also know is God has given a society up…and we’re at the mercy of the elements, the mercy of war, the mercy of economic disaster.” – 700 Club, 4-26-93
“The radical left is doing everything they can to destroy the moral fiber of America. They want to do away with the family. I am absolutely persuaded one of the reasons so many lesbians are at the forefront of the pro-choice movement is because being a mother is the unique characteristic of womanhood, and these lesbians will never be mothers naturally, so they don’t want anybody else to have that privilege either.” – 700 Club, 5-18-93
“[Vice President Gore] recently praised the lesbian actress who plays ‘Ellen’ on ABC Television…I believe he may even put children, young people, and adults in danger by his public endorsement of deviant homosexual behavior…Our elected leaders are attempting to glorify and legitimize perversion.” People for the American Way, “Hostile Climate”, 1998