Thursday, December 11, 2003

The '69 Camaro SuperSport Quick List: Five Cool Muscle Cars 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback-Hands down, the greatest car Ford ever produced was the Mustang.  Pick any year up to 1970, and you're covered 1969 Chevy Camaro-Badass car, smaller than a lot of the other muscle machines of the day.  The 70 and a half rounded edges remake was a gamble indeed, but the Camaro endured. 1969 Dodge Charger-Otherwise known as the General Lee model, this car was huge, as in, it weighed about as much as a house. 1969 Pontiac GTO-What was it about 1969?  The Goat was Pontiac's best Muscle Memory. 1970 Chevy Chevelle-Ride in one of these sometime.  Feel the power of just the stock engine.  Get much better acquainted with your local gas pump, too. 1:40:00 PM    Say what?[]

The Equation Of Time I have been talking to Linus a lot about why it's winter now, why the days aren't sunny as long, and so forth.  I'm not sure how much of it he's getting, but he knows the Earth moves around the sun and so forth. Then I read about the Equation of Time today, which more or less is a way of explaining why our normal "clock-based" notions of time don't always match exactly with solar time.  Although I have always known that the Earth's coordinated movements with the sun weren't in lockstep, I didn't realize many of the things in this article.  For example, even though December 21 is the shortest day of the year, the sun actually sets later on December 21 than it does on some days in January.  I had no idea about that.  And since I can't imagine how I would tell Linus that (or why he would care at this point), I'm just going to keep this special knowledge to myself. 1:10:18 PM    Say what?[]

Can Jim Baker Save The 2004 Election For Bush? Another great TPM piece today on James Baker, and the overwhelmingly important role he will play in not only the future of Iraq, but perhaps the future of this country as it relates to the 2004 election. This is another of those strange occurrences where despite my overwhelming contempt for Bush, things are so dire in Iraq that I have to root for Baker to come through in some meaningful way, even if it helps Bush.  But I just don't see any way that Baker can pay the piper to get the Europeans involved in Iraq (a necessity, it seems), while also keeping the monetary costs of that negotiation to the U.S. out of the election cycle. How can Bush spin Iraq as a success if these things are true? Bush alienated allies to satisfy the U.S. need to attack immediately The justification for attacking immediately (WMD) proved to be a lie The attack was premised on faulty intelligence, which led to the lack of an exit plan or organizing strategy after the war Iraq's reconstruction cost will be borne almost entirely by the U.S. Hussein is not dead No WMD or Al Quaeda link has been found No Iraqi democracy is likely to exist anytime soon after our departure, and We have to pay through the nose to get people involved who we snubbed in the first place? None of that even mentions the insurgency and the deaths related to that, or the fact that those attacks are likely to increase as we get closer to July, which will be when the election is heating up.  Think about that.  The attacks are projected, by the U.S. military, no less, to increase as we get closer to July 1.  Then after July 1, the Iraqis take over.  I don't know about you, but I don't think the notion that the U.S. paid well over $100 billion, almost a 1000 U.S. military lives and a dramatic loss in international credibility for a bloody civil war between religious factions and warlords in Iraq will make for rousing campaign rhetoric for anybody but Howard Dean. 12:21:43 PM    Say what?[]

Baby No More My daughter Lily will turn six months old next Monday.  She is just beginning to master the art of sitting, and has recently taken a keen interest in reaching for anything and everything.  She is, to my eyes, still a baby.  She is still immobile, though if you put her on carpet she can turn her body around almost 360 degrees.  She sleeps and eats like a baby, still.  She even looks like a baby, with very little hair and the classic turned-up baby nose. But having been through it once, I can see now that her days of being a baby are nearly over.  Her changes from day-to-day are so rapid that I can't really process them.  She is just on the cusp of growing into an identifiable little person in so many respects.  I mean identifiable in this sense: I look at pictures of Linus when he was still a baby, and of course I can see how he grew into the little boy he is today.  But I look at pictures of him after he started to change from a baby into a toddler, say at nine months or a year, and it's just completely different.  His face changed.  He grew hair.  He started to show glimpses of his personality. At some point, babies just stop being babies.  It happens so fast.  It's happening with her right now.  Rather, I think it's getting ready to happen.  In three months, I'll still be out busting my ass to shovel that snow, and I'll come in and there will be a little girl with long hair and a face I'll recognize the rest of my life crawling over to try to eat the snow off of my boots. I don't think we'll ever have a baby in our family again.  It's odd to move past that stage, and frankly it makes me a little sad.  But I know Linus, Jane and I all look forward to Lily's continued growth into the world as well.  We'll just take these last few weeks of babydom nice and slow, so we can remember it down the road.  Babies are special.  I know of no other being, thing or idea that can bring a smile to so many faces so easily.  Honestly, I doubt we even see the pull they have on our lives while we have them, because they also bring so much stress into your lives. But we take her to her great-grandmother's apartment, and all the old ladies and men just light up when they see her.  She, and other babies, are like a magnet for warmth and smiles.  After all the years and traumas and life those people have lived, they just can't get enough of babies.  When they do this, I'm sure they are thinking back to their own children as babies.  It always seems to me as if they are remembering the best years of their lives whenever they look at babies. 11:57:02 AM    Say what?[]

© Copyright 2004 DH. Last update: 1/2/2004; 9:25:08 AM.