Michael Bates: April 2008 Archives
sporcle: Can you name the Counties of Ireland?
One of a massive collection of memory and trivia games, covering geography, sports, religion, history, and entertainment.
Photos compare the streetscape created by old and new buildings in Seattle: "This isn't about nostalgia for old buildings. The old streetscape reaches out to the passersby, while the new turns its back."
Valley Of The Moon ~ Tucson AZ
"Valley of the Moon is a unique area built by George Phar Legler in the 1920s for the purpose of appealing to the magical imagination of children and of bringing mental and spiritual relaxation for visitors to the site." A curious collection of concrete and rock sculptures, in the same genre as Ed Galloway's Totem Pole Park or Hugh Davis's Blue Whale. I visited during a special open house while on a business trip, probably in 1999 or 2000.
Urban Review STL: Finishing Ballpark Village...
The planned mixed-use office and entertainment area around Busch Stadium III in St. Louis is still just a muddy semicircle where half of Busch Stadium II was. Steve Patterson says put design standards in place and sell it off piecemeal, instead of waiting for someone with the resources to build it all at once. (Read the comments, too, and think about the situation with Tulsa's East Village/East End.)
History of Brookline: North Brookline
Swamps and farmland gave way to single-family homes in the 1890s and some brownstone apartments in the teens.
One of 17 pedestrian-only footpaths and staircases. This one leads up the northeastern slope of Corey Hill.
The history of Brookline's Coolidge Corner
The commercial heart of my college years. Here's the Town of Brookline's Coolidge Corner district plan (2.5 MB PDF) for balancing preservation and demand for new development in the district.
Neighborhood Conservation District Study for the Town of Brookline, MA
Includes links to many neighborhood conservation ordinances around the country, plus samples of detailed guidelines for two districts in the town. (2.5 MB PDF.)
Some funny and beautifully drawn comics about flora and fauna: the series "Wild Toronto," "Threat Displays of Non-Threatening Animals," and "Birds Are Gross." (Via Julie R. Neidlinger.)
Play Boy Flour shop: T-SHIRTS, POSTERS, MUGS
Not the magazine, but the brand of flour advertised exclusively on Bob Wills's daily broadcast on KVOO.
leeswing88.se: Bobby Koefer, The Legend
A tribute to the unorthodox steel guitar player, still swinging with the Texas Playboys, but a contributor to many other bands listed here. Most of the article is in Swedish, but a sentence like, "Billy Parker lämnade Ernest Tubbs Texas Troubadours och började på radiostationen KVOO, en station många förknippar med Bob Wills," is self-explanatory.
texasplayboys.net: Bob Wills Estate Contact Info
According to Cindy Wills, as of Feb. 2004: "The mailing address for the Bob Wills Estate is P.O. Box 448, Alvarado, Texas, 79106. Jeff Storie, the estate's lawyer, can be reached at 817-336-2400." In the following entry, Jeffrey W. Storie writes, "I am the manager of the Bob Wills Estate. You can reach me at following: Jeffrey W. Storie Intellectual Property Practice Group Decker Jones McMackin McClane Hall & Bates, P.C. Burnett Plaza 801 Cherry Street, Suite 2000 Unit 46 Fort Worth, Texas 76102 817-336-2400 ext 258 (0ffice) 817-336-2181 (Fax) mailto:jstorie@deckerjones.com"
Do's and don'ts with babies :: Hilarious pics
From Safe Baby Handling Tips by David and Kelly Sopp, a great gift for new parents-to-be from Wry Baby, home of all sorts of funny baby products. (Via Conservative Intelligencer.)
The Web's Resources for The Comedian Harmonists: Lyrics of their songs
Lyrics for the late 1920s- early 1930s close-harmony men's sextet.
Destiny-Land: Devo censorship? Lyric changes by MTV and Disney
MTV doesn't like the last word of the title of Devo's signature tune, and Disney completely rewrote their lyrics for a kiddie band called Devo 2.0
Hot Air: Feeding cars instead of people
"Every fill of the tank with ethanol uses the same amount of corn a child would eat in a year, and let's not even talk about the amount of potable water used to grow the corn in the first place. Given the above, which is the better use of the corn? If we produce ethanol from waste -- such as with switchgrass, which shows promise -- then no ethical problem would exist, although certainly the efficiency issues would remain. Until then, we should end the push to turn food into fuel, driven by the global-climate-change hysteria and pandering to the agricultural sector. Feed people ahead of cars. Is that really such a difficult concept?"
New York Times: Journeys | Oxford, England: A Pub Crawl Through the Centuries
The Lamb and Flag, the Eagle and Child, the Rose and Crown, the Kings Arms, Old Bookbinders, the Turf Tavern -- Cozy, centuries-old places to enjoy a pint.
Children's Records and More: Kenner Adventure Time Give-A-Show Record Set
There were 45s that went with the Kenner Give-A-Show Projector cartoons. You can listen to them at the link.
Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works: Old prayers from Planet Childhood
A footnote about a visit as an adult to Denver's Casa Bonita: "You can't revisit childhood, and you shouldn't try. Just let it stay sweet in the memory." Actually, you can revisit childhood, but only by seeing it through the eyes of your own children. That's the only way I could tolerate eating at Tulsa's Casa Bonita / Casa Viva.
West and Clear: The State of Fort Worth Preservation
It's better than Tulsa's. Fort Worth has three designations to protect significant historic buildings: Demolition Delay, Historic & Cultural Landmark, and Highly Significant Endangered. The blogger lists downtown Fort Worth buildings that are protected in one of these three ways, but notes: "There are many incredible historic buildings downtown, but a great many of them are completely unprotected from the wrecking ball.... People these days are more sensitive than ever about protecting and improving our natural environment, but far too many people don't even think about protecting and improving our built environment.... It is important for our community and our sense of place to preserve the quality structures that tie us with our history, and the fact that so many of Fort Worth's remarkable architecture is either not protected at all, or given the bare minimum of protection with the lacking Demolition Delay designation, is very unfortunate." (Via The Road Trip Destination Guide.)
TULSARAMA! 2007 by Michael Carmody
Wichitans come to Tulsa for last June's Belvedere exhumation and see downtown Tulsa -- Orpha's Lounge, churches, Greenwood, Cain's Ballroom, and University Club Tower.
Amazon.com: Steven Roemerman's review of Pelican Navigator Canoe - 13'6"
Tulsa blogger shares a touching "memory."
The New Nixon Blog: Busy Deep Throat
Why isn't Weather Underground bomber and Obama pal William Ayers rotting in prison or pushing up daisies? Because an FBI official named Mark Felt authorized illegal break-ins to gather evidence for his prosecution. That's Mark Felt, aka "Deep Throat," Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate source. The biggest irony: Richard Nixon testified on Felt's behalf when he was on trial for those break-ins.
davidthompson: Loving the Bomb
The original, odd, very '60s trailer for Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, plus a link to the continuity script. (Via Ace.)
For real, writes Brett Arends: "Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.... Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash."
The Club for Growth: Why Sanford Is A Pro-Growth Star...
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is willing to endorse primary challengers to incumbent Republican legislators: "I'm endorsing [Katrina Shealy] because she's an engaged conservative....Too often what we see are so-called RINO's, Republicans in name only, where somebody will carry the banner, but not walk the walk in pushing for that conservative philosophy." Had President Bush and the RNC been willing to do the same, 2006 might have turned out differently.
NETSTATE.COM: Oklahoma State Flag
The statutory definition of the design of the Oklahoma state flag, including Pantone Matching System (PMS) designators for the colors. (The field is French blue, PMS 285c; I used the color for my yard signs when I ran for City Council in 2002.)
List of Crayola crayon colors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A very nice table showing what the colors look like, when the colors were introduced, renamed, and replaced, RGB equivalents, and the equivalents in the 2004 "State Your Color" special edition. (A couple of Crayola memories: During her 2005 visit, Dawn Eden gave my kids "State Your Color" sets, which renamed standard colors for the 50 states -- e.g. "Oklahoma Panhandle Paintbrush" was the state name for "Sunset Orange". And on a family car trip to Florida in 1972, I successfully lobbied for a set of the recently-introduced fluorescent crayons.)
flightglobal.com: ESA considers cislunar space station for lunar exploration
Cislunar means between us and the moon. Do they intend to locate at the Earth-Moon L1 point?
Telegraph Blogs: Daniel Hannan: Deceptive localism from Europe
"Shall I tell you the worst thing about being a Euro-sceptic? It's that some of the schemes you're exposing are so monstrous that, if you give people the plain facts, they think you're being hysterical. After a while, you find yourself deliberately playing down the magnitude of what is being proposed in order to sound more plausible." (Indirectly via Ephemeral Isle's item about a transnational region called Manche.)
RecipeTips.com: Food Storage and Shelf Life
How long will different foods keep safely, how to prepare them for storage, whether to refrigerate or freeze them.
Episcopal Life Online: Presiding Bishop's Message for Easter 2008
Preventing cow farts is at the heart of the Easter message, according to the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church (USA): "When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?" (Via The MCJ's Katharine Jefferts Schori Relevance Tour.)
Prevention: The Low-Carb Diabetes Plan That Works
It's a diet plan, too: "By limiting your carb intake, eating less of the quickly absorbed carbs, keeping moderate amounts of lean proteins and healthy fats, and getting a reasonable amount of physical activity, you set the stage for safe and effective weight loss. The following is a plan tailored to fit your calorie and carb needs for you to lose weight--about 1 to 2 pounds per week."
Best coffee house? - CityVoter Oklahoma City
A poll which happens to have helpful links to seven OKC area java joints.
the good city: Philip Bess: Good cities are like pizzas
Quoting Leon Krier: "A neighborhood is to the larger city what a slice of pizza is to the whole pie: a part that contains within itself the essential qualities and elements of the whole. In the case of a city made of neighborhoods, this means that a neighborhood contains within walkable proximity to one another places to live, work, play, learn and worship."
Crunchy Con: Cash poor, culturally rich?
The connection between economic decline and historic preservation: "An American town that was doing well until the Civil War, more or less, and then was frozen for a hundred years, today looks vastly better than a town that was swamped by the modernist bulldozer. The paradox, of course, is that relative poverty froze the town at what was a beautiful era of architectural history. (I think one of our regular readers who lives in an old New England village remarked the other day that the reason her town is so lovely and walkable today is that it was poor during the era when cities were rebuilt to accomodate cars and the assumptions of mid-century modernity)."
Peggy Noonan's overview of the state of the Democratic presidential race includes this gem of an aside: "All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where 'seems slightly drugged' is a positive job qualification."
RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog - Delegates to Dean: Make Us
The very, very limited power of national political parties is why the head of the DNC can't mandate an end to the Clinton/Obama contest: "...[T]he imposition of the Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA) of 1972, and the 1974 amendments that limited the amount of money that candidates could collect from individuals... gave the national parties a new task - legal money laundering. This is their essential function today.... The powers of the state parties were handed over to candidates for office, not to the federal parties. The role of the parties now is essentially to serve the electoral needs of those candidates."
lgf: Saving America, One Gated Community At a Time
"The goal of Paulville.org it to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty." I'm reminded an article in The 80s: A Look Back about a town founded by famous libertarians that came to grief because no one would obey stop signs. One commenter offers them a place to get started: "Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has a compound available near San Angelo, Texas right now! Move in condition! Must see!"
Frequently asked questions about poetry. - By Robert Pinsky - Slate Magazine
Former poet laureate tells you why you're a jerk if you don't like incomprehensible, depressing, non-rhyming modern poetry. (An Edgar A. Guest poem, which he denigrates, is the best one on the page.) (Via WorldMagBlog.)
Western Swing on 78: Port Arthur Jubileers / Jimmy Hart & His Merrymakers
Several years before his debut with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, mandolinist, fiddler, and vocalist Tiny Moore performed with and then led a Port Arthur, Texas, band called The Jubileers (among other things). Digitized from Decca and Bluebird 78 RPM singles, here are nine of the sixteen sides they recorded, including six with Moore on mandolin, four with Moore as writer, and two with Moore as a vocalist.
YouTube - Stooges/Karloff Celebrity Charity Baseball Game
Classic '40s newsreel footage: Frank Sinatra captains one team, Jane Russell is the bat girl, Mickey Rooney stretches a bunt into a triple, Boris Karloff (as Frankenstein's Monster) is the home plate umpire, and the original Three Stooges are in the dugout.
YouTube - CKLW's 20/20 News Team
Radio news in the good old '60s and '70s -- a documentary segment about the tabloid style of news on Detroit/Windsor's Big 8: "Disk jockeys without music." Click here for CKLW soundchecks, jingles, and history. He's not in this segment, but CNN's Bob Losure was at CKLW prior to his stints in Tulsa at KRMG and KOTV. (Hat tip to KFAQ's Brian Gann.)
Polygamy and politics mix in 3rd District debate - Salt Lake Tribune
U. S. Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) defends polygamy: "Cannon said he is offended by polygamous sects that force members to remain part of the group, but there are 'lots of women who choose to be in polygamous relationships and who are very articulate about the benefits they get. I don't think it's the place of society to prosecute people who choose to cohabitate responsibly....' Cannon said that, if the Supreme Court's ruling in Lawrence v. Texas striking down Texas' anti-sodomy statute is the 'law of the land,' polygamy also should be allowed." (Via Politics1.)
Being James Brown : Rolling Stone
Behind the scenes with the Hardest Working Man in Show Business: "When James Brown enters the recording studio, the recording studio becomes a stage. It is not merely that attention quickens in any room this human being inhabits. The phenomenon is more akin to a kind of grade-school physics experiment: Lines of force are suddenly visible in the air, rearranged, oriented. The band, the hangers-on, the very oxygen, every trace particle is charged in its relation to the gravitational field of James Brown." From a James Brown improvisation: "Shake your boo-tay. Shake you boo-boo-boo-boo-tay. Plenty tuchis. Plenty tuchis. Mucho. Mucho grande. Shake your big booty. Mucho grande. Big booty. Cool-a. TUCHIS!" (Via, indirectly, this Roadside America item about the James Brown statue in Augusta, Ga.)
radio-info.com: KJMU 1340 Tulsa
A new format at 1340 prompts some reminiscences about AM 1300 when it was a news/talk station called KXXO back in the late '70s and early '80s, home to Hal O'Halloran and Glenda Silvey.
The Daily WTF: Oklahoma Leaks Tens of Thousands of Social Security Numbers, Other Sensitive Data
Don't put your SQL query in the URL, never trust your input: "Up until yesterday, April 13 2008, anyone with a web browser and the knowledge from Chapter One of SQL For Dummies could have easily accessed - and possibly, changed - any data within the [Oklahoma Department of Corrections'] databases." (Hat tip to Jim Reisert.)
news from me: Today's Video Link (Mel Blanc and Jack Benny)
An appearance by the Man of a Million Voices and the world's greatest deadpan comedian on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, January 23, 1974. Benny's in the guest chair, but the focus is on Blanc as he does some of his classic sound effects, like Jack Benny's ancient Maxwell car and the English horse.
Mark Evanier writes: "Benny was... a wonderful audience and utterly unthreatened by someone else getting the laughs or the spotlight. That was one of the reasons his radio and TV programs worked as well as they did.... As long as somebody got a laugh, Benny was fine with it.... There have been a lot of great comedians who wouldn't do that because they thought -- wrongly -- that their career hinged on them being the funny one. And not even the example of Jack Benny would dissuade them from that belief. There have also been some comedians who for emotional reasons couldn't stand still while someone else was funny. But Jack Benny could and did...and no one was more successful. Click and see."
news from me: The Original Home Video
I had one of these! Kenner's Give-A-Show Projector: "What this basically was was a flashlight that looked a little like a projector and which came with little six-frame filmstrips that told stories, mainly featuring licensed cartoon characters." Jon's Random Acts of Geekery has more pictures of Give-A-Show sets and lists of the cartoons in the sets. And here's a double-feature from Jon's most recent "Give-A-Show Fridays" post.
Roadside America: Trunkations: Your James Brown Pose: Make It Funky
"The Arts Council of Augusta, Georgia, has pointed a security camera at their city's James Brown Statue. According to an article in the Augusta Metro Spirit, visitors to the statue are being encouraged to dial a special number on their cell phones, pose, and then the camera will take a photo and post it to the Arts Council web site for the world to see."
Intersections: Mexican Coke vs. Pepsi Retro: Future soft drink war?
Either way, real cane sugar makes all the difference.
Pajamas Media: Muslims Leaving Islam in Droves
"In Iran as many as 1 million people have surreptitiously converted to Evangelical Christianity in the last five years.... One Iranian religious scholar believes youth are abandoning Islam because it is identified with the corrupt Iranian government.... After decades of Islamist war, evangelicals report thousands of sub-rosa converts in rural areas of Kashmir. Says one churchgoer: 'I am interested in this religion. I hate violence. I hate fundamentalists in Islam. I come here to seek peace.'... Following decades of terrorist rule, Palestinians are being quietly converted, holding in-home services to avoid detection. Says one evangelist: 'I've been working among these people for thirty years, and I promise you I've never seen anything like this.'" (Via Clayton Cramer.)
All things British in Oklahoma
A survival guide for the expat: Where to find British food, pubs, and restaurants around Tulsa.
Hemingway's Kansas City Star stylesheet
Ernest Hemingway encountered these rules on word usage, sentence length, dates, and abbreviations during his brief stint as a reporter for the paper in 1917-18. I'd write more about them, but I'm afraid of violating a style rule in the process. (Via Dawn Eden, whose link to a different copy of the style sheet is broken, even after it was fixed once.)
World On the Web: Living I'm Sorry
"Something I've learned about sin, however, having committed more than my share of it, is that it scars those around us, sometimes even cripples them.... When we damage a relationship, we have to take steps to help repair the damage, if we want the relationship to be what it was, or what it was supposed to have been. 'I'm sorry' is an important step, but it's only the first step.... I wish more of us, myself included, could live I'm sorry, not just say it."
Route 66 - Day 10, the end of the line [dwayne.blog-city.com]
Photos from the Wellston to Bethany segment of Route 66, including a picture of the Owl Court, a native-stone tourist court that is being restored on the Route 66 Bypass alignment on Britton Road in Oklahoma City.
City Room: Brooklyn Storefronts as Metaphor for a Changing Borough
A love of the small and local is on display in Paul Lacy's new book Brooklyn Storefronts: "Granted, 'you can't judge a book by its cover,' but a small, independently owned store is singular and so is a handpainted sign. When you see one, you have to wonder whether there will be something inside not found in the other stores, let alone the chains and franchises. Very often there is: a lovingly made dish made from a family recipe, a display of photographs or posters, a funny story, catchy tunes from another land: there are so many surprises." (Via City Comforts.)
Why the female flirt is wasting her time | the Daily Mail
"The male brain, it seems, is hopeless at picking up 'come-on' signals, according to a report to be published next month. This leaves men impervious to the seduction techniques of the opposite sex.... The researchers also found that women overestimate men's ability to pick up on sexual signals. They argue that many females wrongly believe that the men are well aware of their attempts to woo, but are just not interested in responding.... 'The average bloke either doesn't realise that we fancy him until we are giving birth to his children in the labour ward; or he presumes all women fancy him all the time.'" (Via Dustbury and Anna Broadway.)
BaylyBlog: Sexuality and the PC(USA), the EPC, the CRC, and the PCA...
Tim Bayly thinks its time to add a chapter to the Presbyterian Church in America's confession of faith (identical in most respects to the 1648 Westminster Confession of Faith) to affirm male headship in the church and the home. If they're going to modify the confession, maybe they could finally correct the magisterial reformers' blind spot about paedobaptism....
Urban Review STL: Boston's City Hall and Plaza
In the '60s, the City of Boston replaced busy, bawdy Scollay Square with this monstrously empty and useless plaza. But they have free wi-fi!
Incumbents automatically renominated -- Europhile skullduggery in the selection of UK Conservative Party candidates for European Parliament elections. (Via Samizdata.)
National Architectural Arts Center: Policy & Programming Report
What do you do with a quarter-million pieces of demolished architecture? Store it in a huge abandoned factory east of St. Louis and plan to open a museum.
The Social Affairs Unit - Web Review: Review of Luck and the Irish by Roy Foster
"This enlisting of economic stagnation in the service of moral immobility had been part of the conscious intention of the founders of the Republic of Ireland. Challenged by a journalist over the likely tendency of an economic policy of self-sufficiency to lower Irish standards of living, [Eamon] De Valera rebuked the assumptions underlying the claim:'You say "lower" when you ought to say a less costly standard of living. I think it quite possible that a less costly standard of living is desirable and that it would prove, in fact, to be a higher standard of living. I am not satisfied that the standard of living and the mode of living in Western Europe is a right or proper one.'"
Fascinating photographic documentation of St. Louis-area buildings, historic landmarks, restorations, demolitions, blight, and ruin.
Candy Chang: A Return to Main Street
Where does an urban hipster go when New York rents are too high? Candy Chang says they should head to the "abandoned downtowns of medium-sized American cities." "Thankfully urban renewal didn't bulldoze everything and we still have all these quaint, historic, pedestrian-friendly downtowns with mixed-use buildings and sidewalks and everything Jane Jacobs waxed poetic about New York's little neighborhoods. It's all there ready to be populated by cute hipster girls and funny poignant boys and corduroy'd academics and couples thinking about getting a dog and everyone else in Brooklyn..."
Washington City Paper: Editorial Workforce Reduction at WaTi
A memo announcing layoffs at the Washington Times, via Rod Dreher, who calls it "a masterpiece of Dilberty corporate-speak," and writes, "If you want to get an idea of the mood inside the journalism business these days, wait till midnight tonight, turn off all the lights in your house, shut yourself in your bedroom closet, put on your sunglasses, pull a paper sack over your head, and stare expectantly at the future."
The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007 - The New York Times
Fascinating visual and interactive way to browse Hollywood's biggest hits and biggest years over the past two decades.
mattheaton.com: "CPU Quota Exceeded" - Not anymore...
Bluehost has fixed the annoyance that forced me to eliminate the use of PHP on this site and nearly sent me to another hosting provider: "Each user's cap is now approximately double what we had it set to previously. I believe these changes should reduce the number of people that run into this problem by about 90%. We will continue to tweak our settings to stop only the most abusive of users on the system." Before the change I was unable to do a full site rebuild without hitting the limit. It's no longer a problem, and Bluehost is once again a good hosting value.
The Atlantic: "The Connection Has Been Reset"
Why the Great Firewall of China works, despite all the holes in it: "By making the search for external information a nuisance, they drive Chinese people back to an environment in which familiar tools of social control come into play."
