MP3 and Text of Martin Luther King’s Speech.
Category: Culture
World Snowmobile Racing Championships – Eagle River
But the wintertime blues disappeared Friday night, Day 2 of the 43rd annual World Championship Snowmobile Derby, which residents herald as the Indianapolis 500 of snowmobile racing.
Jimmy Blaze followed a fireworks display, which opened Friday Night Thunder, by defying physics and doing a back flip on a snowmobile to the whoops and mitten-muffled applause of the 10,000 people who crammed on a snow-covered hill at Eagle River Derby Track. The temperature had dropped to 25; the wind chill made it feel like 11 and a steady snow fell.
Hundreds of the young men and women in parkas bearing the logos of their favorite sled manufacturers, like Polaris and Arctic Cat, arrived by snowmobile. Families, too, planted camping chairs in the white bowl, but while mothers and fathers watched the racers hit 100 miles an hour on the track’s icy oval, their snowsuit-bundled children found a steeper hill for body-sledding.
Detroit International Auto Show Coverage
There’s an extraordinary amount of coverage online. I find the styling exercises interesting – sort of a look into the soul of these companies, or, at the very least their views on what the public wants:
- Autoblog
- Fastlane
- Detroit News
- Automobile Magazine
Joe White looks at the challenges facing Ford and GM. Interestingly, Ford is showing a very large truck concept, the Super Chief that can run on traditional gas, ethanol or hydrogen.
The Lives We Live
Changing planes at O’hare recently, I stood next to an early 20’s woman trying to fly standby to Dayton, Ohio. I discovered that she structured work to support her travel wants.
My fellow traveller said that she joined the Air Force out of High School to “see the world”. The Air Force promptly sent her to Dayton, Ohio for the length of her tour. Now in the AF reserves, she works part time for United Airlines loading bags at the Dayton Airport and for the local Marriott hotel (also part time). These jobs provide incredible travel benefits – unless one cannot obtain a timely seat.
The recent fruits of her work?
- 7 Days skiing in Switzerland while staying at a local Marriott.
- A few days on Oahu, again at a Marriott
- Hong Kong, checking out that city’s Marriott
I assume these benefits make up for the cold nights loading bags on to 737’s at DAY.
Merry Christmas!
Barry Ritholtz says stuff doesn’t make us happy.
Boomers Impact on Car Design
But to the rapidly aging Baby Boomer population, a plunging windowline and promises of 120hp/liter aren’t what matters: strong door hinges and louder warning chimes are. So says Automotive Body Repair News (ABRN), which examines (and predicts) the effect of a growing senior populace on the face of car design.
Advances in active and passive safety top the list of retiree-friendly developments, along with primary and secondary controls that are easier to operate for those with decreasing motor and visual skills. Among the ideas already gaining traction are:
10+100 Creative Commons Christmas Songs (MP3’s!!)
So, it’s Christmas today (or it will be tomorrow, depending on where you live). Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a bunch of freely and legally available Christmas songs you could listen to all day? Burn on CDs and hand over to your relatives? Share with your friends without the fear of being sued to death by big record labels?
Well, here’s a list of 110 111 songs which are all explicitly released under a Creative Commons license (no, I did not consider songs which are merely “podsafe”!) and thus can be shared, listened to, and sometimes even modified freely. There’s a great variety in style, mood, and genre of the songs: some traditional, some contemporary, some happy, some sad, and some just plain funny
An Exotic Holiday Feast
In The New American Cooking, cookbook author Joan Nathan showcases some of the more unusual items that are turning up on America’s tables — plantains, pomegranates and other once-obscure ingredients.
NY City Transit Strike Links
- Most Inconvenient Commute Contest
- Transit Work Strike Blog
- New Surreal city
Outdoor Christmas Lights!
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Driving around on these cold December evenings provides one aesthetic benefit: Madison’s prolific Christmas lights. Here are a few scenes I’ve snapped recently.
The Year in Ideas – 2005
These are the ideas that, for better and worse, helped make 2005 what it was. You’ll find entries that address momentous developments in Iraq (“The Totally Religious, Absolutely Democratic Constitution”) as well as less conspicuous, more ghoulish occurrences in Pittsburgh (“Zombie Dogs”). There are ideas that may inspire (“The Laptop That Will Save the World”), that may turn your stomach (“In Vitro Meat”), that may arouse partisan passions (“Republican Elitism”) and that may solve age-old mysteries (“Why Popcorn Doesn’t Pop”). Some mysteries, of course, still remain. For instance, we do not yet have an entirely satisfying explanation for how Mark Cuban, the outspoken Internet mogul and N.B.A. owner, came to be connected with three of the year’s most notable ideas (“Collapsing the Distribution Window,” “Scientific Free-Throw Distraction” and “Splogs”). That was just one surprising discovery we made in the course of assembling the issue. In the pages that follow, we’re sure you’ll make your own. Go to the Issue