Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Shiny old cars! Whee!

By Brendan Loy

Last weekend, Becky, Loyette and I went to "Harriman' Cruisin 2008," a street festival in the kinda sorta nearby town of Harriman. Basically, Harriman Cruisin' involves a bunch of car buffs parking their classic cars all up and down Main Street and letting people ooh and aah at them. Here's my photo gallery.

As the title and the above photo suggest, it's mostly pictures of shiny old cars, but there are a few miscellaneous shots of what is otherwise, frankly, kind of a depressed, Rust Belt-ish looking downtown area. (See, e.g., here and here.) In fact, if you look closely, you might see some small-town folk who look a little bitter and might well be clinging to religion and, er, antipathy to people who aren't like them. ;)

Anyway, we had fun. Old cars are neat. We even saw a Ford Model A! Here, again, is the link to the gallery.

UPDATE: As noted in comments, the above-pictured car is (I think!) a 1959 Chevy Impala. Here's an old "subliminal" TV ad for it, featuring Pat Boone and Dinah Shore:

Ain't YouTube great?

Miscellaneous silliness

By Brendan Loy

If only Scrabulous allowed lolspeak words:

That reminds me, apropos of my previous Scrabulous post... I just got a new external hard drive (actually an internal drive and an external enclosure), and, in keeping with my tradition of giving my hard drives silly names, it is now officially known as:

Heh. "Khaaan" joins, among others, "GENIUS HARD DRIVE OF DEATH" (the name that started the tradition, courtesy of Kristy), "One Hard Drive to Rule Them All," and "Sectumsempra II." (The original "Sectumsempra" had a technical issue and had to be returned.) So, with a Lord of the Rings-themed name and a Harry Potter-themed name, it seemed only fitting that I have a Star Trek-themed name.

Some readers might recall that I used to have an external hard drive named "Joementum," but it too had technical difficulties -- for which I blame Ned Lamont -- and ultimately it had to be replaced. In fact, "Khaaan" is, in essence, its replacement. Alas, I totally forgot about my original plan to name its replacement "Joementum the White." Oh well. (Hmm: replacing Lieberman with Shatner? Well, at least I'm staying within the Tribe.)

Hillary at the bar

By Brendan Loy

John McCain did "Hardball" at Villanova today, and a student -- in reference to the recent photos of Hillary Clinton doing (or possibly sipping) a whiskey shot at Bronko's restaurant in Crown Point, Indiana -- asked him, "I was wondering if you think that she's finally resorted to hitting the sauce just because of some unfavorable polling. And I was also wondering if you would care to join me for a shot after this?"

Heh.

That reminds me: I have a proposal for Hillary Clinton. As you all know, I've soured on her rather severely in recent months, and at this point, I'd be pretty hard-pressed to vote for her under any circumstances. However, there is one thing that might make me change my tune. Hilldog, if you'll go to The Backer, order one of their terrible yet potent Long Islands, and get yourself photographed and videotaped singing the "God Bless the USA" followed by the Notre Dame Victory March (yes, this would mean staying until -- ahem -- 3:00 AM), I might consider switching my allegiance. :)

P.S. Possible campaign ad: "It's 3:00 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. But Hillary Clinton is wide awake, if slightly tipsy, singing patriotic music while swaying back and forth in a circle of townies* in South Bend, Indiana. Suddenly, a cell phone rings -- the cab is here. Who do you want answering that phone? The elitist snob Barack Obama, who will jump in the cab at the earliest opportunity to get away from the 'bitter' townsfolk, and miss the Victory March? Or Hillary Clinton, the woman who respects your traditions, who'll tell the cabbie to wait ten minutes so she can stay right through to the end of 'Oh What A Night'? Make the right choice: Vote for Hillary Clinton on May 6. [slurred Hillary voiceover: 'I'm Hilllary Clinton and I (hiccup) approve this message.']"

*Why townies, you ask? Because the Domers are too "elitist," of course! ;)

Seattle Sonics soap opera gets new twist

By David K.

To be perfectly honest, I really don't much care for the NBA.  I'd rather watch an NHL game than an NBA game (NFL and MLB beating both, MLS coming in a distant last place).  When I heard that the Sonics had been sold to a group of investors from Oklahoma City, I didn't much care if they stayed in Seattle or went to Oklahoma (which, despite what we were told by this new group, was really what everyone assumed would happen).  There were exorbitant demands for public funding of a new arena followed by efforts of other local cities to come up with competing offers.  The mayor, the legislature and the governor all chimed in, and in the end, it looked like the Sonics were as good as gone.  But this week it got much more interesting.

First came e-mails that were obtained from Clay Bennett and the other owners of the Sonics that showed, despite their promises of a good-faith effort to work out a deal to keep the team in Seattle, that they pretty much intended to move the team all along.  It certainly showed what most of us believed all along, that these Oklahoma City investors were lying through their teeth, but it still probably is not enough to keep the team in Seattle, as basketball commissioner Howard David Stern seems to fully support the efforts to oust the team. 

The latest twist is probably the most unexpected.  Former owner and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz is planning to sue Bennett, alleging that he broke the good faith agreement that was part of the deal to sell the Sonics to the OK City group in the first place.  He is not seeking financial damages; he just wants to roll back the deal.  It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. 

Only 334 days till Selection Sunday!

By Brendan Loy

Joe Lunardi has published his initial, ridiculously early, meaningless yet fun, pre-pre-season 2009 Bracketology projections. (Hat tip: BK.) His #1 seeds are North Carolina, Duke, Texas and Pittsburgh. 2007 finalists Kansas and Memphis drop to #2 and #3, respectively, and UCLA plummets to a #7. w00t! :)

More importantly, Notre Dame is a #2 seed (without Gene Cross? Hmm...), Gonzaga is a #5, and USC is a #9. Frankly, those all seem high to me, but maybe I'm just a pessimist about my own teams. (Although, if so, it didn't prevent my irrational Zag-xuberance last year.)

Tennessee falls all the way to #9... where they're matched up in a brutal first-round game against #8 Davidson. (Stephen Curry FTW!) This year's mid-major superpower that almost beat UT, Butler, is on the bubble but out, as are the Washington Huskies. The UConn Huskies, though, are sitting pretty as a #2 seed. Oh, and the University of Hartford Hawks, after falling one game short in 2008, make their NCAA Tournament debut in 2009 as a #16 seed. Hurrah!

Yeah, so, we have a college football season to start -- and finish -- before I'll get really excited about any of this, but it's fun to look ahead. :)

I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approved this John McCain ad

By Brendan Loy

Scoring political points (for herself, and -- much moreso -- for the Republicans), or overplaying her hand?

Al Giordano: "The question is, how many Clinton supporters are there that aren’t signing up for the slash-and-burn-down-the-Democratic-Party strategy that is now naked and running around on TV? Those that remain silent will probably lose credibility later on because in times of moral crisis, silence is seen as complicity."

John Aravosis calls the ad "vile, sickening, and filthy," and urges his readers to "ask yourself if you'll ever vote for this woman again." (Hat tip: The Jed Report, which replies, "I know my answer to that question. As far as I am concerned, Hillary Clinton is no longer a Democrat.")

Random YouTube of the day: Captain Vegetable

By Brendan Loy

A bit of joyful bizarreness to brighten up your tax day, courtesy of Sesame Street circa 1982:

I dare you to not have that song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. :)

(Hat tip: Barb.)

Physics giant John A. Wheeler dead at 96

By Joe Loy

Only a vanishingly small fraction of us can ever hope to learn & teach so much before we subside back into the quantum foam. / Well done, Professor: and may infinities of angels, dancing on the singular pinpoints of Many Worlds, sing thee to thy rest. (Emphases added :) ~

John A. Wheeler, a visionary physicist and teacher who helped invent the theory of nuclear fission, gave black holes their name and argued about the nature of reality with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, died Sunday morning at his home in Hightstown, N.J. He was 96.

...As a professor at Princeton and then at the University of Texas in Austin, Dr. Wheeler set the agenda for generations of theoretical physicists, using metaphor as effectively as calculus to capture the imaginations of his students and colleagues and to pose questions that would send them, minds blazing, to the barricades to confront nature.

Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of Dr. Wheeler, “For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.”

... “He rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians,” said Freeman Dyson, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study across town in Princeton.

Among Dr. Wheeler’s students was Richard Feynman of the California Institute of Technology, who parlayed a crazy-sounding suggestion by Dr. Wheeler into work that led to a Nobel Prize. Another was Hugh Everett, whose Ph.D. thesis under Dr. Wheeler on quantum mechanics envisioned parallel alternate universes endlessly branching and splitting apart — a notion that Dr. Wheeler called “Many Worlds” and which has become a favorite of many cosmologists as well as science fiction writers.

Recalling his student days, Dr. Feynman once said, “Some people think Wheeler’s gotten crazy in his later years, but he’s always been crazy.”

Yes and Feynman (who, assuredly, should Know :) would agree: we should All be so crazy :}. More after the leap jump :}.