I spent much time growing up in the suburbs and eventually moved back to the city and until 2004 when out of touch reporters decided Kerry was out of touch I had never heard of cheese whiz being the standard cheese steak cheese. Provolone it was, though nobody actually gives a shit what you put on it.
But pundits, pleez note: Whiz wasn't first historically, and it's no runaway favorite regionwide.
At John's Roast Pork, which serves up taste-test winners on Snyder Avenue, the processed cheese sauce isn't even served.
"I'm a cheese eater, sweetheart, and I love cheese, but Whiz is not cheese," says owner Vonda Bucci, 75. "It's a lot of grease and coloring."
"We won't do it. We will not carry Cheez Whiz," said Jack Mullan, 50, co-owner of popular Leo's Steak Shop in Folcroft. And customers never complain.
A recent Philly.com poll asked, "What cheese belongs on a cheesesteak?" and Whiz finished third. American edged out provolone after more than 5,700 votes were cast.
Even Geno's owner Joey Vento, 68, downplays Whiz. "To be honest with you, I've never eaten Cheez Whiz, and I'm the owner," he said. " . . . We always recommend the provolone. . . . That's the real cheese."
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Hoping drivers will ditch their rides and rent one instead, Baltimore transportation officials said they are putting the final touches on the first citywide car-sharing program.
After a two-year effort, officials at the Baltimore Parking Authority said they are creating a nonprofit organization to start a car share, giving drivers quick and easy access to a pool of rental cars. Organizers said they’ve written a business plan that includes low hourly rates, free memberships and cars in the city’s most popular neighborhoods.
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The new nonprofit will be modeled on a car share in Philadelphia started in 2002 by five volunteers with what co-founder Clayton Lane called “pocket change.” Now with 40,000 members — and growing by 3,000 each month— the program is the world’s largest regional car share, he said.
ITHACA — Ithaca is about to get car sharing, a program that allows short-term use of cars and trucks, potentially saving residents and businesses the high cost of owning a vehicle.
After about three years of planning, Ithaca CarShare is set to launch June 1 with six Nissan Versa hatchbacks and a Ford Ranger pickup. The organization expects to add more vehicles in August.
Ultimately, for mass transit succeed you need a sufficient number of neighborhoods which are walkable. It isn't enough to go from A to B, you need to get around once you've arrived.
Yglesias sends us to Walkscore. It seems my move is taking me from a 95 location to an 89 location.
Like Scott, I think the Bobby Kennedy gaffe was less of a big deal than some are making, but it has finally gotten some people to point out that the various historical comparisons the Clinton campaign is making are in the "isn't it great that people are so stupid that they'll swallow this horseshit" category. It did not take her husband until June to effectively have the nomination, and the 1968 primary season started much later than this one.
We've had little but dumb arguments like this from the Clinton campaign for some time. I'm not entirely sure if they're stupid enough to believe them, or if they just assume we're stupid enough to believe them. Either way I'm tired of having my intelligence insulted.
KABUL -- Five nights a week, millions of Afghans put aside their dinner dishes, shush their children and turn on the TV to gape at Indian soap operas acted out in impossibly lavish settings by stars in sequined gowns and wedding jewelry.
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This spring, the off-screen plot has taken a contentious turn. The Ministry of Information and Culture banned the evening dramas last month, and government prosecutors have now charged one resisting TV station with offending public morals and endangering national security.
"These are serious charges that carry prison terms," said Saad Mohseni, co-owner of Tolo TV, which still airs the two most popular Indian soaps. "They are trying to go after us from every possible direction. The things they object to in the serials are happening every day in our own society, but we bury our heads in the sand."
When I discuss mass transit with people who don't have a lot of experience with it, I realize they tend to simply see it as an alternative way to go from A to B. As in, if there were a commuter rail system built parallel with the highway, then I could either take the train along that path or take my automobile. And commuter rail systems are frequently a lot like that.
But a comprehensive mass transit system isn't simply about establishing parallel competing transit nodes, it's about having a transit system that allows for a completely different kind of urban space and a completely different way of life.
The extreme example which might help highlight this idea is Manhattan. It's pretty easy to see how Manhattan simply couldn't exist in anything like its present form without a comprehensive subway, bus, and commuter system. The island couldn't support anything like that kind of population and employment density without it. Picture it as it is with one car per person and all of the parking lots to go with it. Doesn't work.
But that's true at density levels much lower than Manhattan, which also can't be supported, at least with decent quality of life, without a comprehensive mass transit system. I was just in Barcelona, which has an absolutely crazy ever expanding amount of public transit. The city's roughly at the scale of central Washington D.C., covered mostly in 6-8 story buildings, generally apartments or offices on top of street level retail. Tall office towers and apartment blocks, to the extent that they exist, are on the outskirts. City population is about 1.5 million, and roughly double that for the whole region.
Expanding the transit system there is less about giving people a better way to get from A to B, it's about making it fast and easy to get around everywhere, reducing the number of cars and the need to make space for cars, and overall creating a nice urban space which can only exist if you have fewer cars.
Obligatory disclaimer: not everyone wants to live in the city! I know! But the problem with a lot of US development is that it combines the worst of both worlds. You have cities which don't have enough transit and have too much car-friendliness which reduces the quality of urban life. And you have suburbs which are dense enough to have some of the negative aspects of urban life, but which aren't built to take advantage of any of density's benefits.
I hit this before, but here are some more numbers relating to the "JEWS ARE ALL REPUBLICAN VOTING CONSERVATIVES NOW" idea that has penetrated our media for the last few years, most recently here, even though it isn't, you know, true.
If I were a star reporter working for that elite paper of record known as the "New York Times" and I sat down to write a story based on the idea that "in recent presidential elections, Jews have drifted somewhat to the right," it might occur to me to first whip out Teh Google and see if this premise was actually true.
But that's why I'm just a simple blogger with no ethics, credibility, or standards.
Among the planned service enhancements are after-midnight regional rail service on Fridays and Saturdays on the R5 Paoli/Thorndale, R6 Norristown and R7 Trenton lines, which would run an hour to two hours later than current weekend service.
Additional late night service probably doesn't bring in much revenue for transit authorities so I understand why they're pretty resistant to such things, but from a broader perspective it's good policy. It'll help reduce the number of cars in center city, help cut down a bit on drunk driving, allow younger people without cars or those too inexperienced to drive to the city to attend all ages shows in town and still be able get back home (or close enough to home that mom&dad will pick them up), etc..
I admit to being a bit more sensitive in those rather dark post-9/11 to election of 2006 days to the political content of various things than I should have been. I was a dirty fucking hippie after all, booted out of the party by Peter Beinart (excuse link to freeperville, only place I could find it), called a crazed, ignorant ideological cannibal by Jon Chait, and witnessed how our mainstream media though it cute and funny that French Fries were renamed "Freedom Fries" in the House cafeteria and giggled as people destroyed their Dixie Chicks CDs. So, yes, I can imagine that I was a bit sensitive about such things at times.
But, you see, their side ran the fucking world then. And, mostly, they still do. It's why I gaze with fascination at their continuing attempts to maintain cultural purity. How about taking responsibility for the mess you created, instead?
To be clear, I think that some medical stuff should be told to the public. If a candidate has a condition suggesting they have a nontrivial chance of not surviving or otherwise being unable to finish out a term that should be made public. But, you know, we don't need to know their resting heart rates or cholesterol levels or whether they have various problems that might require the services of a urologist. Most of it is irrelevant.
I'm not one who really agrees with this idea that presidential candidates need to release all of their medical information to the world, but since that does seem to be the prevailing standard it probably would've been appropriate for McCain to let Republican primary voters that he had some cancer scooped out of him in February.
A couple of weeks later and apparently the primary stupid is still going on.
It's weird partially disconnecting myself from this blog for awhile. At first it feels like I've killed one of my senses or something. My life, practically 16/7 of it anyway, normally involves digesting this steady stream of information from the internets and the teevee, and it's strange cutting it off.
Anyway, things should go back to being their normally sucky ways. Thanks to all who helped keep this thing humming while I was away.
They just put shrinkwrapped stacks of Benjamins onto airplanes, and then handed it around.
A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.
The audit also found a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets, which in the early phases of the conflict were often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash. The audit was released Thursday in tandem with a Congressional hearing on the payments.
In one case, according to documents displayed by Pentagon auditors at the hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a cash payment of $320.8 million in Iraqi money was authorized on the basis of a single signature and the words “Iraqi Salary Payment” on an invoice. In another, $11.1 million of taxpayer money was paid to IAP, an American contractor, on the basis of a voucher with no indication of what was delivered.
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When the results were compiled, they revealed a lack of accountability notable even by the shaky standards detailed in earlier examinations of contracting in Iraq. The report said that about $1.4 billion in payments lacked even minimal documentation “such as certified vouchers, proper receiving reports and invoices,” to explain what had been purchased and why.
Another $6.3 billion in payments did contain information explaining the expenditures but lacked other information required by federal regulations governing the use of taxpayer money — things like payment terms, proper identification numbers and contact information for the agents involved in the transaction. Taken together, those results meant that almost 95 percent of the payments had not been properly documented.
The months of supply has risen to 11.2 months, and will probably be over 12 months sometime this summer. I don't have monthly data back to the early '80s, but the months of supply will probably be close to an all time record by July.
Yesterday, atrios noted that a world with eight dollar per gallon gas would be "different."
This led to spirited discussion in comments, essentially about how much "difference" Americans would tolerate before they moved, or started a war over oil.
Stirling Newberry posted a longer term look at this question a little while ago. The post looks at things in a time frame a little longer than the AC everywhere timeframe that has made Houston livable for five million people.
And it argues that the reactionary period we've been living through is unsustainable.
Conservative media figures have long operated in a fact free zone, in which they're entitled to make up their own reality and foist it on the rest of us. That's fine to the extend that they're paddling around in their own little goldfish ponds, but the rest of the media who are supposed to have these high standards and ideals I keep hearing about let them swim in their pool, too.
According to reputable and highly placed Internets sources, Barack Obama will name Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Also, he will not name her as his running mate.
I'm up too late. You might want to go play at one of my favorite blogs that has a little something for everyone (especially if you like squid and other critters), Biomes Blog.
What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant - someone to show up at "vegan potlucks" throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to "investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines."
I'm getting ready to talk to Anthony Romero of the ACLU at Virtually Speaking. They have a conference coming up on June 8 in DC which includes Glenzilla, so has to be good.
So I don't have time to fail at being witty. It looks like, wonder of wonders, Dad is actually taking an evening off.
At Sunday's game, they'll give 2,500 fans a miniature bathroom stall with a pair of lower legs and feet - one of which is springloaded so that it taps. A Saints press release notes that, "It doesn't matter if your tapping style is
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