Friday, March 21, 2008

A Different Vantage Point

The movie Vantage Point is about an assassination plot on the President of the United States told from the viewpoint of a number of different characters. The action takes place in Salamanca, Spain. I visited Salamanca 25 years ago and spent several hours visiting the old university town and its magnificent Plaza Mayor.

My travelling companion and I stopped and enjoyed a "cold one" at one of the may cafes around the plaza and took several photos of the picturesque site.

What makes this a different "vantage point" is that these pictures show how I remember the Plaza mayor--as a very large open space. This last picture was taken with a very wide-angle lens (21-mm) and thus distorting relative sizes. This is quite evident when you see the actual plaza in the movie. It wasn't nearly as large in the movie as I remember it. I guess it is a matter of vantage point.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

March Madness

Tennessee over Wisconsin, UCLA over Texas, then UCLA over Tennessee. You can't win the pool being safe.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Clemson Wins ACC Championship!

There is no reason to play the ACC championship game this afternoon. Clemson should be declared the champion. After all, in the first meeting between the two teams (the primary) Clemson was ahead 50.3% to 49.6% with one second left in the game. In the second meeting (the caucus) Clemson was ahead 55% to 45% with seven minutes left in the game. Why play a third game? We should forget about all this internecine squabbling, declare Clemson champion, and get on to the Big Dance.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Stamey's Gets Some Blog Attention

Al Dente blog liked it. I agree that Stamey's is very good, the second best in town. (from the blogfather)

Nightmare Headline!

Could it get worse?

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

More Global Warming Doubts

Rand Simberg points to more fodder for Global Warming skeptics.

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center.


He also points out good reasons to be skeptical of this and similar stories as well.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Rove's Humor

Thanks to a post from Sue Polinsky about a speech Karl Rove gave at the U of Iowa, we see Karl's sense of humor:

Radio Iowa also reports one audience member told Rove that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named him the "worst person ever."

"Ever?" Rove joked. "Yea, worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin, worse than Mao and worse than the person who introduced aluminum baseball bats.

You got to love that.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Car Lust

I enjoy the Car Lust blog so nuch I put it on my check-every-day list. With their call for open entries on favorite cars, I hereby propose my favorite. I'll eschew my Corvettes and go with my most fondly-remembered car.


When I was finishing college, My mother promised me a new car for a graduation present. I lusted for a Corvair Monza Spyder. My mother's uncles owned the Studebaker dealership in town so we had always had Studebakers. She was at the dealership one day and mentioned to one or the salesmen that I wanted a Monza. He told her he was taking a year-old Studebaker GT Hawk in on trade for a new Avanti and I might be interested in that car. I went by to see it when it came in, and it was love at first sight.


(Side note: The dealership also handled Mercedes-Benz. When I went to see the Hawk, they had a 1955 SL300 gullwing Mercedes on the floor as well. The Monza would have cost $2,500 or so, and the Hawk was about the same. The Mercedes was, as I recall, $5,500 but it might as well have been a million since it was way out of our budget. Some years later gullwing coupes were worth $500,000 or more. Another lost opportunity.)


I drove the Hawk for four years. Things began to go bad on it that were difficult to get fixed since Studebaker had left the car business in 1966. The last summer I owned the car, 1967, the windshield wipers didn't work, and it was only because that was the driest summer in years in Maryland that not having wipers wasn't a critical problem.


In late summer of '67 I bought a new Plymouth Belvedere and sold the Hawk to another lieutenant at Aberdeen Proving Ground, for $500. He was moving to Colorado, and a week or so after he left I got a letter from him. I was expecting the worst, but he was a happy camper. He had taken the car in for service when he got to CO and had been offered $1,200 for it on the spot. He was thrilled, and I was happy to have had my Hawk "fix".


The above photo was taken at Rehobeth Beach DE and includes my first wife Ann, our friends the Bianchi's, and Punkin the dachshund.


I've owned a number of interesting cars: two Corvettes, A BMW, a Lotus, a Jaguar, and several Mercedes, but the Hawk is my all-time favorite.