John Muir told America about "God's country"

Watching the daybreak and sunrise. The pale rose and purple sky changing softly to daffodil yellow and white, sunbeams pouring through the passes between the peaks and over the Yosemite domes, making their edges burn; the silver firs in the middle ground catching the glow on their spiry tops, and our camp grove fills and thrills with the glorious light. Everything awakening alert and joyful…

John Muir,
Entry for "July 19" from
My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911.
California As I Saw It, 1849-1900

On July 19, 1869, naturalist John Muir set pen to paper to capture his experience of awakening in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. Published in 1911, My First Summer in the Sierra is based on Muir's original journals and sketches of his 1869 stay in the vicinity of the Yosemite River Valley. His journal tracks his four-month visit to Yosemite and his ascent of Mt. Hoffman and other peaks in the range. Along the way, he describes the flora and fauna as well as the geography and geology of the area.

Around the world, newspaper headlines trumpeted the shocking upset !!

At the time, the English were considered the "Kings of Football", with a post-war record of 23 wins, 4 losses, and 3 draws. Conversely, the Americans had lost their last seven international matches (including the 1934 World Cup and 1948 Summer Olympics) by the combined score of 45–2. The odds were 3–1 the English would win the Cup, and 500–1 for the U.S.

England won the toss and elected to kick off. Within ninety seconds, Stanley Mortensen sent a cross from the left wing to Roy Bentley, who let off a shot that was barely pushed aside by U.S. goalkeeper Frank Borghi. By the twelfth minute, England had six clear shots on goal but could not convert, with two shots hitting the post, one just going over the top, and another brilliantly saved by Borghi.

The U.S. struggled to move to the offense, and finally managed a shot on goal in the twenty-fifth minute, which was blocked by Bert Williams. The English counterattacked with three successive clear shots at the goal in minutes 30, 31, and 32, but failed to score. Mortensen twice went over the crossbar, and Tom Finney's header to the top corner was tipped away by Borghi.

In the thirty-seventh minute, Walter Bahr launched a shot from twenty-five yards out, but as Williams prepared to make the save, Joe Gaetjens (pictured above) dove headlong and grazed the ball enough to put it past the reach of the goalkeeper and into the back of the net. The crowd exploded as the U.S. improbably led 1–0, and they held on to win. Final score 1-0.

How do you jam 200,000 people into a stadium ?? . . . You don't. they just come rushing in.

The Maracanã Stadium got into global soccer history after the incredible 1950 World Cup final which Uruguay surprisingly won against home team Brazil in front of 200 000 fans, both official and unofficial (many people succeeded to illegally run into the stadium). This figure represents the largest crowd ever to attend a soccer match in history. After the game, desperation ruled all over the country and several people even committed suicide!

Finding Inspiration in the Lives of Others

Natalia Karp, a concert pianist who was spared from execution during the Holocaust after playing at a party for the commandant of a German concentration camp, died July 9, British news outlets reported. She was 96.

She arrived at the camp with her sister Dec. 9, 1943, and expected to be shot when she was summoned to appear at the birthday party of Amon Goeth, the murderous commandant of the Plaszow work camp in Poland.

Instead, he commanded her to perform.

"I had not played since 1939, and my fingers were stiff," Karp told the Independent of London in 2005.

"The guests were all looking at me, and Goeth called me 'Sarah' — the Nazis called all Jewish women Sarah — and told me to 'play now.'

"I sat down and started to play Chopin's Nocturne because I have always found it very sad," Karp said.

When she finished the melancholy Nocturne in C-sharp minor, Goeth declared, "Sie soll leben" — she shall live. She replied, "Not without my sister." Goeth complied.

Liberated the day after V-E Day in 1945, Karp and her sister made their way home to Krakow, Poland. On Polish radio, Karp gave her first major postwar performance in 1946.

She was born Natalia Weissman on Feb. 27, 1911, in Krakow to a wealthy industrialist and his wife, who sang opera arias around the house. At 4, she started playing the piano by ear, and her grandfather sent her to Berlin at 15 to study under pianist Arthur Schnabel.

She went on to a career as a concert pianist and performed into her 90s. Karp was well-known in Britain and performed with the London Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, among others.

When playing, Karp often placed a pink handkerchief on the piano. To her, the slight piece of fabric purchased for a few pennies in Warsaw after the war symbolized a luxury and femininity that she could only dream of while in the concentration camps.

A Mind That Wants To Know . . .

Clive Eric Cussler (born July 15, 1931 in Aurora, Illinois)is an American adventure novelist and successful amateur marine archaeologist. Clive Cussler began writing in 1965. His most famous creation is marine engineer, government agent and adventurer Dirk Pitt. The Dirk Pitt novels frequently take on an alternative history perspective, such as "what if Atlantis was real?", or "what if Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated, but was kidnapped?"

The first two Pitt novels, The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg, were relatively conventional maritime thrillers. The third, Raise the Titanic!, made Cussler's reputation and established the pattern that subsequent Pitt novels would follow: A blend of high adventure and high technology, generally involving megalomaniacal villains, lost ships, beautiful women, and sunken treasure.

Cussler's novels, like those of Michael Crichton, are examples of techno-thrillers that do not use military plots and settings. Where Crichton strives for scrupulous realism, however, Cussler prefers fantastic spectacles and outlandish plot devices. The Pitt novels, in particular, have the anything-goes quality of the James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, while also sometimes borrowing from Alistair MacLean's novels. Pitt himself is a two-dimensional, larger-than-life hero reminiscent of Doc Savage and other characters from pulp magazines. Clive Cussler has had more than 17 consecutive titles reach the New York Times fiction best-seller list.

As an underwater explorer, Cussler has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and has written non-fiction books about his findings. He is also the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a non-profit organization with the same name as the fictional government agency that employs Dirk Pitt. Cussler owns a large collection of classic cars, several of which (driven by Pitt) appear in his novels.

Cussler's web site claims that NUMA discovered, among other shipwrecks, the Confederate submarine Hunley. This claim is disputed by E. Lee Spence on his web site. Both claims appear to have some element of truth. Although Spence described finding the Hunley with a magnetometer back in the mid 1970s, the first expedition to bring back conclusive proof was the 1995 H.L. Hunley expedition that was partially financed by Cussler. The 1995 expedition appears to have relied, at least to some extent, on Spence's earlier work.

Cussler's work in marine exploration has often raised eyebrows and tempers alike. Not the born diplomat, he often steps on the collective toes of the academic community, local and national governments and at one point, as can be read about in his first non-fictional work, "Sea Hunters", the British Secret Service, Mossad and the CIA. Many have disputed the work of Cussler and NUMA, and while some of his finds do have their controversy over "who really got there first", Cussler has been the first to provide conclusive evidence of the location of several ship wrecks.

Following the publication in 1996 of Cussler's first nonfiction work, "The Sea Hunters", he was awarded a doctor of letters degree in 1997 by the Board of Governors of the State University of New York Maritime College who accepted the work in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis. This was the first time in the college's 123 year history that such a degree had been awarded.

A little out of the ordinary . . .

The duck-billed platypus arrived in America in 1922, direct from Australia. It was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo in New York City. For those of you who have never seen this unusual mammal, it has webbed feet, a duck’s bill, a beaver’s tail; is seal-like, yet hairy and it lays eggs. Go figure...

Happy Birthday Steve

Born on this day in 1947 - Steve (Steven Michael) Stone was an outstanding pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco Giants, Chicago White Sox and the Baltimore Orioles. Steve pitched in the World Series in 1979, won the Cy Young Award in 1980 and was chosen an "all-star" in 1980. Steve was a sportscaster for the Cubs for many years, with Harry Caray (shown above), Tom Brenneman and later with Chip Caray (Harry Caray's grandson). Steve's analysis and commentary was always interesting, informative, colorful, straight-forward and accurate. Warmest regards on your birthday, Steve -- Cub Fans everywhere miss you very, very much.

"The Virginian"

Novelist Owen Wister was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on July 14, 1860. His 1902 novel The Virginian helped create the myth of the American cowboy. Reared and educated on the east coast, Wister first visited the West in 1885. Set in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, The Virginian's tender romance between a refined Eastern schoolteacher and a rough-and-tumble cowhand, with its climactic pistol gunfight, introduced themes now standard to the American Western.

Could use a little "reality" here . . .

Privacy is becoming more difficult to preserve.

LONDON — Britain is attaching cameras to the caps and helmets of police officers, tightening a web of video surveillance that is the most extensive in the world.

The country has a network of about 4 million closed-circuit cameras, and privacy advocates complain that the average Briton is recorded as many as 300 times a day.

The Home Office said it was allocating $6 million for the plan, enough to buy more than 2,000 cameras for the country's 42 police departments. Judges and jurors will be able to "see and hear the incident through the eyes and ears of the officer at the scene," Minister of State for Police and Security Tony McNulty said.

The Home Office said it was exploring other uses for the devices, including fitting them with the ability to send live video to a command center, or special license-plate recognition software that would enable police to identify stolen or suspicious vehicles just by looking at them.

Jen Corlew of the civil rights group Liberty praised the guidelines for using the cameras, noting that police were to inform people they were being recorded and that video not being used in an investigation had to be erased within a month.

But Ben Ward of Human Rights Watch said privacy issues would depend on "whether the safeguards, including on notification and storage, are uniformly respected." Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern and predicted the U.S. would soon give police the same power.

(From the Associated Press)

Making History and "Who was that player?"

Trivia time

Ichiro Suzuki's inside-the-park home run Tuesday was the first in All-Star game history.

What player set the major league record for inside-the-park home runs in a season with 12 in 1901?

Trivia answer

Sam Crawford, then with Cincinnati.

The Hall of Fame outfielder also played for Detroit, where he was a teammate of Ty Cobb's, and finished his career with 51 inside-the-park homers, a record that still stands.

A Little Coffee Maker: Indonesia's kopi luwak is a rare delicacy of peculiar provenance -- beans plucked from the droppings of wild civets.

Bandar Lampung, Indonesia — TO connoisseurs of fine coffee, only one is good to the last dropping.

Human hands don't harvest the beans that make this rare brew. They're plucked by the sharp claws and fangs of wild civets, catlike beasts with bug eyes and weaselly noses that love their coffee fresh.

They move at night, creeping along the limbs of robusta and hybrid arabusta trees, sniffing out sweet red coffee cherries and selecting only the tastiest. After chewing off the fruity exterior, they swallow the hard innards.

In the animals' stomachs, enzymes in the gastric juices massage the beans, smoothing off the harsh edges that make coffee bitter and produce caffeine jitters. Humans then separate the greenish-brown beans from the rest of the dung, and once a thin outer layer is removed, they are ready for roasting. The result is a delicacy with a markup so steep it would make a drug dealer weep.

It's called kopi luwak, from the Indonesian words for coffee and civet, and by the time it reaches the shelves of swish foreign food emporiums, devotees fork out as much as $600 for a pound — if they can even find that much. The British royal family is said to enjoy sipping it. A single cup can sell for $30 at a five-star hotel in Hong Kong

A really, really, really big day !!

The world's tallest man married a woman about two-thirds his height and half his age, holding a traditional Mongolian ceremony with great fanfare at the tomb of Kublai Khan in Inner Mongolia.

Bao Xishun, a 7-foot-9 herdsman, met his bride this year after searching high and low, sending advertisements around the world. It turns out he didn't have to look far. Xia Shujian, a 5-foot-6 saleswoman, hails from his hometown of Chifeng.

Bao, 56, wore a specially designed light-blue gown topped with a gold vest, and he rode to his 28-year-old bride's camp in a cart pulled by two camels.

The "Rolling stop" just got more costly

At five spots in the Santa Monica Mountains, new traffic-sign cameras are rolling when drivers roll through intersections. Authorities plan to start issuing $100 tickets to motorists who don't come to a complete stop at five stop signs equipped with cameras. The cameras are owned by a firm that will collect $20 from each $100 citation.

In the "Pink's"

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner will carry 210 - 250 passengers on routes of 7,650 to 8,200 nautical miles (14,200 to 15,200 kilometers), while the 787-9 Dreamliner will carry 250 - 290 passengers on routes of 8,000 to 8,500 nautical miles (14,800 to 15,750 kilometers). A third 787 family member, the 787-3 Dreamliner, will accommodate 290 - 330 passengers and be optimized for routes of 2,500 to 3,050 nautical miles (4,600 to 5,650 kilometers).

In addition to bringing big-jet ranges to mid-size airplanes, the 787 will provide airlines with unmatched fuel efficiency, resulting in exceptional environmental performance. The airplane will use 20 percent less fuel for comparable missions than today's similarly sized airplane. It will also travel at speeds similar to today's fastest wide bodies, Mach 0.85. Airlines will enjoy more cargo revenue capacity. Passengers will also see improvements with the new airplane, from an interior environment with higher humidity to increased comfort and convenience.

Lady Day Sang the Blues

1936 - Billie Holiday recorded Billie’s Blues for Okeh Records in New York. Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw and Cozy Cole supported Holiday, instrumentally, on the track.

"His Master's Voice"

1900 - One of the most famous trademarks in the world, ‘His Master’s Voice’, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and later, RCA Victor, shows the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.

WYOMING

1890 - Wyoming, the state with the smallest population entered the Union this day. The 44th state was named after an Algonquin Indian word meaning ‘large prairie place’. Appropriately, the Indian paintbrush that covers much of the large prairie is the state flower and the meadowlark, frequently seen circling the prairie land, is the state bird. Another Indian term, Cheyenne, is also the name of the state capital. Wyoming is called the Equality State because it is the first state to have granted women the right to vote (1869). And, it's also known for the Grand Tetons, shown above.

Jelly Roll Morton

Legendary jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton died in Los Angeles on July 10, 1941. His musical innovations accelerated the development of jazz.

Heroes Fighting an Unrelenting Battle

Firefighters across the country continue to be plagued by an assualt of wildfires in what promises to be a long summer.

Providence . . . looking good!

Providence, R.I. ranks as one of the best for big and small businesses with a low salary to cost of living ratio.

This little vacation home in Aspen, Colorado can be had for $135 million

Owned by Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, former Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., this 95-acre estate boasts a 56,000-square-foot, 15-bedroom, 16-bathroom mansion. Several smaller buildings, including stables, a tennis court and an indoor swimming pool, complete the property.

For more information, contact Joshua Saslove at Joshua & Co., or Gregory Antonsen of Christie's Great Estates.

Breathtaking Temples and Monuments

A Roman road in a narrow gorge of Siq wadi entering Petra in Jordan.

Petra, where the Nabataean Arabs, ancient masters of the desert, carved breathtaking temples and monuments, 800 in all, out of the multi-colored sandstone.

Inspiration from Fjordland

Milford Sound in Fjordland National Park, New Zealand provides this haunting and beautiful image.

Elegance and Flip Flops

LAS VEGAS — On a day when thousands were convinced the calendar made this gambling town the luckiest place to wed on the luckiest day of the century, this may have been the quintessential 7/7/7 wedding: The groom wore green flip-flops with a beer bottle opener built into the sole. The tattooed bride with blue toenails and smeared mascara arrived at 2 a.m., hyperventilating and crying, the rings forgotten somewhere.

At the end of a brisk ceremony at the Graceland Chapel, an Elvis impersonator crooned "Viva Las Vegas" while the couple smooched. And if all that wasn't spectacle enough, a relative in a tuxedo T-shirt snapped pictures — even when the newlyweds toppled from a bench to the ground, a mess of legs and tangled tulle and satin.

"It was either this or the Caribbean," said groom Jon Andreano, 29, of Denver. "But there's nothing cooler than getting married by Elvis. This is Vegas. It's the way it should be."

Whether it was romance or superstition or luck — or that extra gimmick needed to drag their partner down the aisle — many places around the world reported a record number of couples tying the knot Saturday. It was a once-in-acentury calendar convergence that gave couples an anniversary date impossible to forget: 07/07/07.

And nowhere were more couples lining up than in Las Vegas, where it was 104 at 1 a.m. and the day topped out at 112. The "I dos" began at the stroke of midnight and continued nonstop at virtually every casino, hotel and chapel in town. Every limo was booked, every Elvis on the job. Ministers stumbled over words and read from cue cards as if they were third-string pinch hitters. Mandalay Bay held a mass wedding for 33 couples on its beach in the scorching heat.

'Poler' bear stops desert traffic

A bear climbed 100 feet up a Lancaster power pole in the sweltering high desert Friday and brought traffic to a halt as motorists stopped to gawk and take pictures. "Not a whole lot we could do except keep the people out of the area and let him decide he needs to come down and continue his way on to the mountains, and with the assistance of the Highway Patrol that's what we did," Game Warden Martin Wall told a local TV news station.
After a couple of hours of taking in the view from a crossbar supporting electrical wires, the black bear came back to earth, walked across California 138 and ran off into the desert scrub.

(From the Associated Press)

And the winner is . . . or is that loser ??

The Philadelphia Phillies are on the verge of becoming the first professional sports franchise to lose 10,000 games — and the final countdown to the ignominious mark is being, well, celebrated, in Philadelphia.

"Magical Misery Tour," the Philadelphia Daily News called its retrospective of a 124-year history that includes only one World Series championship, in 1980.

"Phabulous Phutility," the Inquirer called it.

The Phillies played their first game in 1883. And lost, naturally.

They lost 23 in a row in 1961, a major league record.

Fourteen times, they have lost at least 100 games in a season, finishing an astonishing 62 1/2 games out of first place in 1942.

And perhaps worst of all, in 1964, they had a 6 1/2 -game lead in the National League standings with 12 games to play, then lost the pennant by losing 10 in a row. But don't ever say they don't love their sports in Philly.

Folks are selling T-shirts to commemorate the historic milestone.

Everything Changes -- "You can get back to the place but not the time"

The Magic Castle and Yamashiro restaurant in Hollywood are being sold by the family that has owned them since the 1940s. The two are expected to keep operating. Vacant land on the site will probably be developed by the new owners.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
An early photo of Yamashiro, a replica of a palace in the Yamashiro Mountains near Kyoto, Japan. It was completed in 1914 by the Bernheimer brothers, who wanted a mansion to house their Asian art collection and brought hundreds of craftsmen from Asia to build it.

Realize Your Dreams

The Spaceship-like Chemosphere House

On its way to the Getty Center are the complete works of the late John Lautner, who engineered the spaceship-like Chemosphere house to sit on a single column above a canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Lautner's 9,000 working drawings and other files were being managed by the John Lautner Foundation since his death in 1994. "It's complicated to handle requests," says the architect's daughter, Karol Lautner Peterson, who approached the Getty and worked with De Wit to make the donation. "My father's wish was to have his archive available to architectural writers, students and homeowners."

Hidden Images: See if you can find 10 tigers here ??

Hot dog! San Jose's top eater wins contest by eating 66 dogs with buns

San Jose's Joey Chestnut won the Nathan's Famous hot dog contest today, taking the title from the Japanese competitive eater who has dominated the contest for years.

Chestnut scarfed down 66 HDB - that is, hot dogs and buns - before a throng of about 30,000 on Coney Island in New York. Takeru Kobayashi - who had previously held the title for six years straight - placed second with 63 dogs, competing despite a jaw injury.

The gorge-fest set a new record for Nathan's contest, and for Chestnut himself. Last month, Chestnut ate 59 1/2 hot dogs, besting the contest record Kobayashi set last year: 53 dogs in 12 minutes.

Shortly after the contest, Chestnut, who was draped in an American flag, told ESPN that winning the title "felt great."

"It's been held by Kobayashi six years," the San Jose State University student said. "And it comes back to the U.S. on the Fourth of July."

"Deep Purple Manhattan"

Photo by Haley Hyatt on Flickr

"Light beams in Grotta dei Lamponi"

Photo by Thomas Reichart on Flickr

Plato's Atlantis

The story of the lost continent of Atlantis starts in 355 B.C. with the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato had planned to write a trilogy of books discussing the nature of man, the creation of the world, and the story of Atlantis, as well as other subjects. Only the first book was ever completed. The second book was abandoned part way through, and the final book was never even started.

Plato used dialogues to express his ideas. In this type of writing, the author's thoughts are explored in a series of arguments and debates between various characters in the story. Plato often used real people in his dialogues, such as his teacher, Socrates, but the words he gave them were his own.

In Plato's book, Timaeus, a character named Kritias tells an account of Atlantis that has been in his family for generations. According to the character, the story was originally told to his ancestor, Solon, by a priest during Solon's visit to Egypt.

There had been a powerful empire located to the west of the "Pillars of Hercules" (what we now call the Straight of Gibraltar) on an island in the Atlantic Ocean. The nation there had been established by Poseidon, the God of the Sea. Poseidon fathered five sets of twins on the island. The firstborn, Atlas, had the continent and the surrounding ocean named for him. Poseidon divided the land into ten sections, each to be ruled by a son, or his heirs.
The capital city of Atlantis was a marvel of architecture and engineering. The city was composed of a series of concentric walls and canals. At the very center was a hill, and on top of the hill a temple to Poseidon. Inside was a gold statue of the God of the Sea showing him driving six winged horses.

About 9000 years before the time of Plato, after the people of Atlantis became corrupt and greedy, the gods decided to destroy them. A violent earthquake shook the land, giant waves rolled over the shores, and the island sank into the sea, never to be seen again.

So, is the story of Atlantis just a fable used by Plato to make a point? Or is there some reason to think he was referring to a real place? Well, at numerous points in the dialogues, Plato's characters refer to the story of Atlantis as "genuine history" and it being within "the realm of fact." Plato also seems to put into the story a lot of detail about Atlantis that would be unnecessary if he had intended to use it only as a literary device.

On the other hand according to the writings of the historian Strabo, Plato's student Aristotle remarked that Atlantis was simply created by Plato to illustrate a point. Unfortunately, Aristotle's writings on this subject, which might have cleared the mystery up, have been lost eons ago.

Number 868 says Number 714 is the "True King"

Sudaharu Oh played with the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants from 1959 to 1980. He hit more home runs than any professional player who has ever stepped into a batter's box: 868. More than Babe Ruth (714), more than Hank Aaron (755), and probably more than whatever number San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds — who at 751 is closing in on Aaron's Major League Baseball record — finishes with.

In a sport obsessed with statistics, Oh's 868 does not resonate with American baseball fans, is never mentioned alongside magic numbers such as the 56 of Joe DiMaggio's consecutive game hitting streak, or Ruth's 714 that was the gold standard for home run hitters until Aaron smashed it on his way to 755.

But Oh argues that the true measure of greatness is how a player performs in his era.

"You can't compare unless you are playing in the same conditions," he says. "The best measure is how much of a gap you can create between people playing in the same period," and by that standard he calls Ruth baseball's true home run king.

"What was great about Babe Ruth is that he hit so many home runs at a time when other players hit so few," Oh says.

Here's a dramatic photo showing the recent "Blast Off" of the Space Shuttle Atlantis

Space Shuttle Atlantis thunders off the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center.
(Chris O'Meara / AP)

I Guess You Can Find Anything on EBay

The Humboldt County town of Bridgeville sits on the Van Duzen River. The town, which was twice put up for auction on EBay, is for sale again. A real estate agent handling the sale said Bridgeville, population about 30, is on the market for $1.3 million. The hamlet has eight houses, four cabins, a post office, a restaurant, a machine shop and a cemetery.
(Robert Durell / LAT)

Can you imagine something like this happening today ??

1933 - Baseball great Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants hurled 18 innings of shutout ball to lead the Giants to a 1-0 win over St. Louis in the first half of a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds in New York. The Giants took the nightcap, as well, by an identical 1-0 score.

You know when it's Gehry

The Hotel Marques de Riscal by Frank Gehry is located about 75 miles from Bilbao, Spain, the site of Gehry's Guggenheim Museum.

Remember when . . .

You got your windshield cleaned, oil checked, and gas pumped, without asking, all for free, every time?
And you didn't pay for air? And, you got trading stamps to boot? I didn't think so. I can barely remember myself.

New Faces With New Technique

NEW FACES: Eighteen new parking meters are being tested in West Hollywood and 12 in Beverly Hills. Solar panels are the main source of power, with support from a backup battery. Officials say the new meters cost about the same as traditional machines.

The parking meters are outfitted with high-tech, solar-powered credit card reading mechanisms, courtesy of a partnership between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The meters also have traditional coin slots.

(Photo by Al Seib / LAT)

Disaster as a "Spectator Sport"

In Kevin Rozario's "The Culture of Calamity: Disaster & the Making of Modern America" the author makes reference to Don DeLillo's 1985 novel "White Noise." In the novel a Midwestern professor named Jack Gladney meditates on the power of images, especially apocalyptic ones, to pierce the veil of daily artifice. "Only a catastrophe gets our attention," DeLillo writes in a line Rozario uses to open his introduction. "We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else." (Photos from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake)