Blog closed

It was fun, but we're done, and we've taken our Adsense revenue and retired to Nice. Cheers.

Vintage Blue Tees

Now for a Bostodelphia clothing connection...a Bostonian moves to Phillie, goes native, and produces some wicked cool vintage inspired tees. (aside - does Philadelphia have any local adjectives like 'wicked' that immediately irritate Floridians?) Vintage Blue is producing clothing and totes with 40's and 50's inspired graphics.

Now, my collaborator and I are eco-conscious types, so we are keen to note that VB is using sustainable business practices and materials throughout. The proprietor is also a loyal citizen of Red Sox Nation. Looks like cheesesteaks from Geno's only goes so far, Phillies.

So go and get yourself a new shirt already!

Happy New Year's

Happy 2009 from all of us (er, all two of us) from Bostodelphia!

Squirrel Burning Power

Recently I was discussing bike lighting with His Steamy Eminence, Jake von Slatt. He believed that the best bike light would be capable of scorching a squirrel at 20 yards, give or take. Now, granted, he bikes with significantly less wattage than that, but we here at Bostodelphia do not believe in half measures.

A fairly recent entry to the halogen lighting market is the IR reflecting MR16 bulb. Instead of radiating heat in all directions, it reflects the infrared light forward to further heat the filament, increasing efficiency. A 20w MR16 is about equivalent to a 35w MR16.

Therefore, we propose to use such a high efficiency bulb, while overvoltaging it to 14.4V instead of the usual 12V. According to the lumens/watt table from this page, if these are really equivalent to a 35w bulb a pair of IR reflecting 20w MR16 bulbs will deliver a total of 4575 lumens, at a power draw of 49.6 watts and a system cost in the $75 range with NiMH batteries. This may actually achieve the squirrel scorching capability that so excites Jake. The highest output LED bike light on the market, incidentally, is the Lupine Betty 12, at 1500 lumens for $1175.

Little known election results

My son's preschool held a snack election on Nov 4. It was cheese crackers vs. graham crackers, complete with picture ballots. He was very pleased that his candidate, graham crackers, prevailed 5-4. The graham crackers were eaten that day, the loser today. Yes we can.

Hey Phillies fans...

Woooooo!

If you were unconscious last night:



Unabashedly:



And, gotta give props to this:



Philly rulez!

John McCain on the last 8 years

New ad on our good friend John McCain by the Young Turks. What more needs to be said?

All Sorts of Shit Going Down Today in Philly

Obama's pulled a whirlwind tour through North Philly. Followed by some fundraisers.

Palin's in town for a puck drop at the Flyer's game, and protests are planned. ACT UP will reportedly be protesting a Palin fundraiser beforehand.

Keystone State Skinheads will be celebrating "Leif Ericson Day" on the Schuylkill.

FBI helicopters with gunmen dangling from them have been and will be seen throughout the city all day, but that's just for a movie.

Re: Yoga for Real Americans

Blogging in response to YogaForCynics recent "Yoga for Real Americans" post, whose author is soliciting real American yoga poses:

I don’t know about you, but I’ve about had it with these stuck-up elitist “yoga teachers” goin’ on about how they spent all these years “practicing yoga” and “reading books” about it. I’ll learn yoga from a regular American like myself, not some fancy pants “intellectual,” thank you, and you betcha it won’t be somebody who says all all these weird words from other countries. This is America, so I say talk English or go do your cobra pose in Cuba or Iran or somewhere. Lemme ask you this: when they start sayin’ all that foreign crap like surya namaskar and supta baddha konasana how the hell do you know they’re not talkin’ about terrorism?

That’s why now I’m workin’ with my buddy Joe, who’s taught me some real American yoga poses like sittinonthecouchdrinkinbeernwatchingnascarasana and gettindrunknshootinanimalsasana as well as the restorative passedoutdrunkonthefloorasana. Anybody else know any good ones, you be sure to let everybody know about 'em down there in the comments section.

While not quite a pose, we offer YogaForCynics an honest to God American mantra ripped from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Plus it's another debate night, and the last Sunny clip we chose did such a job succinctly making McCain's maverick case than the man himself:



Update: Boo! Fox told YouTube to take the clip down and it ain't on Hulu as a clip. Anyway, the words were: "“gonna rise up, gonna kick a little ass, Gonna kick some ass in the USA, Gonna climb a mountain, Gonna sew a flag, Gonna fly on an Eagle, gonna kick some butt, gonna drive a big truck, gonna rule this world, Gonna kick some ass, Gonna rise up, Kick a little ass, ROCK, FLAG AND EAGLE!”

The writings of KungfooJesus

From the Digg discussion on the Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart. Sometimes you come across a post that just sums up a topic neatly.

KungFooJesus

Remember, we twice voted into office a president we'd like to have a beer with. The republicans are gaming on her to connect with people on a very familiar level. I hate to say it, but she did exactly what she needed to do in the Karl Rove presidential politics playbook. She repeated things over and over, made accusations that sounded bad without having to back them up, and did not go into specifics really on anything except McCain's healthcare tax credit.

The thinking is that the less hardcore information you give voters about your plans, the less chance there is to find something wrong with it. These are the same people that took a one-term Texas governor and turned him into a president, there are striking similarities between him and Palin. Folksy, approachable, want to have a beer with them (or in Palin's case, a bottle of wine and angry sex that brings up insecurities from your childhood), short political career ending with governor, and they debate the exact same way. Why? because this shit works. Granted McCain is a better candidate than Bush but the republicans game politics better than dems. period. it sucks.

South Philly for McCain Doorknob Flier Gets Cockblocked by Rolling Stone

I haven't seen them on my block, but Philebrity reports McCain supporters hanging doorknob literature trying to seduce South Philly machismo into voting for McCain. The text reads:

SOUTH PHILLY and JOHN MCCAIN

The people of South Philly have long been special to John McCain. He knows the struggles and he knows the strengths of the neighborhood. As he recalled in his first interview after being released from a Vietnamese prison camp:
We had a particularly bad spring and summer in 1969 because there had been an escape at one of the other camps. Our guys carried out a well-prepared plan but were caught. They were Ed Atterberry and John Dramesi. Atterberry was beaten to death after he escaped.
There is no question about it: Dramesi saw Atterberry taken into a room and heard the beating start. Atterberry never came out. Dramesi, if he wasn't such a tough cookie, would probably have been killed too. He's probably one of the toughest guys I have ever met -- from South Philly. "Star and Stripes"

McCain knows South Philly!

VOTE COUNTRY FIRST
VOTE MCCAIN/PALIN

Paid for by Al Schmidt

Philebrity credits "South Philly for McCain" as the source of the doorknocker. There may well be a "South Philly for McCain" chapter of the McCain campaign in Philadelphia, but all we could find was this Phillyblog thread about the opening of a McCain office in South Philadelphia. A quick Google of Al Schmidt indicates he's the executive director of the Philadelphia Republican City Committee though isn't listed on the Committee's relatively minimal website. There's this Citypaper profile of Schmidt when he assumed the role of Deputy Director for the city GOP, though most Google search results for him and the Committee turn up the executive director title.

Anyway, the tactic here is obvious. Dramesi's a tough as nails guy from South Philly! A lot of guys of all ages in South Philly like to think of themselves as tough as nails too. So, hey, they ought to identify with Dramesi and back McCain! Right?

Not so fast.

Before we get into it, it should be noted that this account may not have actually come from "Stars and Stripes," but rather an exclusive oral history McCain gave about his POW experience to U.S. News and World Report. Admittedly, that corrections a bit nitpicky, but the original and actual source of the quotation also includes the mention by the article's editor that at the time of the writing, May 1973, McCain had been assigned to attend the Navy War College that August.

It's unclear in the article what contact McCain had, if any with Dramesi as a POW. That said, about a year after this article, Dramesi and McCain do share a moment together. Rolling Stone writer Tim Dickenson uses Dramesi's perspective on that meeting as the framing anecdote for his unflattering profile on McCain, "Make Believe Maverick" (bold emphasis Bostodelphia's):

At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."

"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.

"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.

"Why? Where are you going to, John?"

"Oh, I'm going to Rio."

"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

"I got a better chance of getting laid."

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."

Later in the profile, Dramesi makes it clear he wasn't interested in removing any honor from McCain's service, though does find the celebration of McCain's POW experience a bit much, given that Dramesi doesn't find McCain an exceptional example of POW conduct. That aside, it's clear Al Schmidt and his South Philadelphia operators pulled a boner in choosing Dramesi as an icon to draw macho South Philly into McCain's camp. Dramesi clearly isn't interested in being a McCain campaign surrogate, so the only really lesson South Philly can take from Dramesi's character is this: Man up, and call out the McCain campaign on its bullshit. McCain might say he knows South Philly, but South Philly should know McCain is full of it.

Maverick Wild Card!

Who knew that John McCain watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? I think we at Bostodelphia can be confident behind a guy who's adopted Charlie Day's "Abort and freak out!" Wild Card philosophy as the cornerstone of his maverick policy.

Maybe if the guy knew how to check his e-mail he'd be able to keep up to speed on the economic crisis without going to D.C. to weigh in with his professed lack of expertise on our "fundamentally sound" economy.

Seriously, how can you back a guy who apparently needs to be remedially schooled on everything except how to militarily target other countries with Beach Boys' lyrics?

(I'm Thinkin' 'Bout Nailin') Sarah Palin

What's an election without catchy satirical songs?

Physicists' Online Typography Changes Fundmental Laws of Nature

Taken from a boston.com article related to the new supercollider:

Protons are actually pretty complicated objects, made of little bits and pieces, and in a collision of two protons it can happen that two of the little pieces find themselves very close together. Those pieces carry a lot of energy, and due to Einstein's E=mc{+2} one might imagine that a lot of mass in a little space could lead to a black hole. (bold emphasis Bostodelphia's)

Perhaps a copy editor will fix the universe for us, until then any speculations or calculations on just how radically the world apparently changed this morning?

Update: the article in question actually ran back in April, looks like we've been living in an altered plane of reality for some time now....

Update II: With the loss of energy in fusion reactions by a factor of 30,000,000, it appears that the sun has snuffed out. Damn you, Swain and Reucroft!

Boston vs. Philadelphia 2008 Round 10: Our Mayors Kick Sarah Palin's Ass

Sarah Palin's put in 20 months as governor of Alaska. What's that worth? There are 670,000 residents of our nation's largest state. How does that stack up with Our Fair Cities?

Let's compare the executive efforts of Mayors Menino and Nutter. Boston has 590,000 residents, with a hair under 6 million in the metro region. Philadelphia has 1.4 million with a metro population the same size as Boston. That's right: being a mayor here on the east coast is a bigger job than being governor of the whole state of Alaska. Menino and Nutter deal with a wider range of demographics, ethnicities, institutions, crime, education, infrastructure, and government issues before their second cups of coffee each morning than Gov Palin handles in a month.

As far as the city of Wasilla, pop ~5469, well, 'round these parts that would be referred to as a 'small town' and no one would mistake running such a place with running a real city.

Score for this round: Boston tag teaming with Phillie 1, Alaska 0.

Bonus round: Menino and Nutter have never suggested that their states ought to secede from the Union. Make that 2 points for B & P.

Jake Von Slatt on Wired Science

Go check it out, JvS made it onto Wired Science with a well-done video interview!

Link

Gaaaah! Get it out of my head!

A Ride on the Bedford Narrow Gauge Rail Trail

Here's a pair of pics from the Bedford-to-Billerica rail trail that's built on the right-of-way for an old narrow gauge line. To my knowledge this is the only narrow-gauge rail trail in the country, please correct me if I'm wrong.

At the start of the trail in Bedford there's a preserved bit of track:
Here's a shot of what much of the trail looks like. It's got a stone-dust bed that's pretty easy to ride on. The 28mm-wide slicks I use were the narrowest I'd want to use here due to the sandy patches.
The trail is 3 miles long. On the way to the end I took it easy with a 10 mph pace. On the way back I picked up the pace to 16 mph. Any faster than that and the handling on the somewhat loose surface got a little squirrelly - a consequence of the tire width.

College supplies: new PC, new clothes, new crossbow compound bow

Ah, autumn. Those bucolic days when hordes of undergraduates return to college, with their crossbows compound bows with built-in quivers on their backs. Check out what this Brandeis student has prominently displayed on the back shelf of his car...
Maybe it's just my lonesome opinion here, but displaying your hunting crossbow compound bow in a city (where there is no hunting of any kind) when your sedan has a perfectly serviceable trunk strikes me as evidence of severe insecurity. Or at least massive jackass-ery. In any case, this is not the kind of personality that makes me feel real comfortable toting around lethal weapons.