Secrets of the City

I’ll put it in the navigation this weekend.

If driving fast cars you like,
If low bars you like,
If old hymns you like,
If bare limbs you like,
If Mae West you like
Or me undressed you like,
Why, nobody will oppose!
When every night,
The set that’s smart
Is intruding in nudist parties in studios,
Anything Goes thread.

Stomping on Everything in the River of Life

Great idea to have a separate category like this. I’ll look forward to seeing all my posts here in the future.

i have a question

coffee: for or against?

For coffee. against lattes and all the fancy coffee drinks. When I’m waiting in line for a lousy cup of coffee, these finicky, effete coffee drinkers drive me crazy.

Old and busted: Coffee.

New hawtness: Tea.

Seriously.

At dinner, I pointed out where the restaurant undercharged me for one drink.

Stupid, or not?

Well, Rat, it was honest of you and it shows integrity. Not stupid.

This might be of interest to the east-coasters who are considering moving here: I lost my wallet last night. When I got home last night I reached for my wallet and it was gone. I mentally re-traced my steps and figured it probably happened at the restaurant when I was distracted by the waitress while we were leaving (insert your snide comment here).

Since about 2 hours had passed, I wasn’t very hopeful that I’d ever get it back, but I called the restaurant and asked if anyone had turned in a wallet. She said “yes,” and asked my name. I told her and she said “yes, we have it here.”

As I drove to the restaurant, I was thinking how lucky I was to get it back because I would avoid the hassle of getting new drivers license, credit cards, insurance cards, etc., so frankly, I didn’t even care if any money was still in it.

When I got there, the place was packed (as usual) and I had to swim my way to the front of the line to tell them why I was there. The greeter was very friendly and said she would retrieve my wallet for me from the back room. When she brought it up and handed it to me I quickly opened it just to see if it was reasonable intact, and everything was there. Even the $40 I had in there.

I asked her who found it and she blushed and said “I did.” I said thanks so much, took the $40 out of the wallet and handed it to her. She blushed some more, took the money and thanked me.

Would that happen only in Minnesota? No, but it’s nice to know that it does happen here and people are blushingly honest when it would have been real easy, especially for someone who doesn’t make a lot of money, to just pocket the cash and toss the wallet in the trash.

Mazheimers

Rat, if the question is whether it’s smart, a lot depends on whether you ever intend to return. Lots of places I go, I’m a regular and I wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of them. Some places I go once and I’ld be glad to clip ‘em on principle. The ethical question is how you treat the others.

Mazheimers

Probably. At least according to the mrs.

Throw the wallet in the trash? WTF?

Try it like this:

* Take the drivers license, SS card, and credit cards. And any business cards from people that might be friends or business associates.
Use the information on them to get one of the wallet droppers cc bills sent to a PO box.

* Then apply for new credit cards, a car loan, and maybe a condo mortgage using the information (and good credit history) of our wallet-dropper. Use the friends/business associates business cards as reference information. Im sure they won’t mind much.
Use the credit cards to buy a few big screen plasma TVs from Worst Buy, sell the 300C/Escalade/whatever over on E. Lake for cash at 25 cents on the dollar. Worst Buy will be happy to deliver them to anywhere, including a pawn shop.

* Use the information from the stolen wallet to get the title of the wallet-droppers house changed into your name. Then sell his house out from underneath him. Or better yet, take out one of those predatory 20% “home equity loans” for twice the market value of the house and use the cash to (you guessed it) buy more Humscalades and big screen plasma TVs you can sell for cash. Extra bonus points if the “Home Equity Banker” gives you a kickback once he forecloses on the wallet-droppers house.

* Use some of that cash to pay for webhosting and site design to set up a fake camera store that “sells” Canon digital SLR’s at about 30% below everyone else. Use that site to collect more credit card numbers and valid name/address information. This is your goose that starts laying the golden eggs.

* At some point (hopefully before being picked up by the FBI, Secret Service and/or Postal Inspectors) cash out and move your money to Switzerland or the Cayman Islands and yourself to a country in the Balkans with mild winters, cheap land, and very liberal extradition laws.

* Or avoid all of that work and just sell the identity/credit information to the Russian mob on the internet. You won’t make nearly as much but it’s a fast, easy buck.

I see this kind of stuff happen every.single.day at work and see how it completely FUBAR’s people’s lives.

Maz, no matter how sweet and kind the waitress was cancel your credit cards and pull a credit report at 90 and 180 days.

It’s a regular hangout. Small corner bar in Nordeast. It’s noticably less crowded since the smoking ban. I wouldn’t want to shortchange them. It’s only $3.

Maz, no matter how sweet and kind the waitress was cancel your credit cards and pull a credit report at 90 and 180 days.

lol. you sound a little freaked out, zenrhino……

it’s just money.

Mazasapa –

Sorry to disappoint, but the same thing happened to me a few years ago in NYC’s Greenwich Village. The circumstances were a little different. It wasn’t my wallet that I left by mistake. It was my cellphone/PDA, but except for the cash, it contained all the same info (credit cards, passwords, Soc Sec #, etc.) And, it wasn’t a restaurant (it was the theater where The Fantasticks had been produced for, what, 40 years). I didn’t notice it was missing until I got back to the hotel after the perfomance, and by that time the theater had closed, so I had to call up the next morning, and sure enough, a cleaning worker had found it between the seats and turned it in.

Maybe it’s just me, but did I detect a sort of “more-principled-than-thou” parochial conceit in your post regarding the us folks back East?

Don’t take it personally, Humphrey. He’s that way with all of us.

Well, that’s a relief. If he’s a bit zenophobic about blue-state Easterners, I hate to think of what The Maz has to say about the rough-around-the-edges inhabitants of red-states like Texas.

Any way, us Nu Yawkers are getting tired of being downwind from Midwestern weather patterns and having to breath all that pollution from your coal-fired generating plants and drink your acid rain from our reserviors.

So the next time any of you folks back there in MSP start feeling a cut above Easterners in the categories of honesty, ethical culture and friendliness, just remember that it is the Midwest that sends its climate-changing pollution into the skies to kill fish and create dead lakes in New York’s Adirondack and Catskill mountains.

set up a fake camera store that “sells” Canon digital SLR’s at about 30% below everyone else.

I fell for that one once. I felt like such a sucker.

I meant no disrespect to the folks back east. I thought I was providing comfort to those city foks who’ve had the misfortune of being transferred out here, that we’re not the wild wild west.

I lived in connecticut for four years and spent a lot of time in the city on weekends during that time, so I’m not exactly the xenophobe you think. However, I wonder if Humphrey got his climatological PhD the same place Al Gore did. Regarding acid rain and the like, there’s a whole lot of real estate between here and NY … think Cleveland for example. You guys never were very good with u.s. geography were you.

Humphery, don’t think of it so much as “climate-changing pollution” but as a market opportunity to sell snow shovels in Rochester.

And Thugga, buying Canon is nothing to be ashamed of. Long as you don’t do it twice.

Uzguys gotta understand that everything west of the Hudson is the Midwest. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, MSP, Bismarck, Salt Lake City …. they’re all in the same county, right? They’re just fly-over cities that get pointed out by airline pilots on clear days before lowering the landing gear for LAX.

And yes, the acid rain from Minn & WI does reach NY, and NE and the Canadian Maritimes, along with the acid rain produced in IL, Mich, IN and OH. It’s all the Midwest folks, and it all ends up downwind from your dirty coal-fired power plants. You get cheap energy and a sense of self-righteousness when you’re driving your ethanol-powered cars. We get your acid rain.

But pulleeze, Maz, don’t try to fool your buddies out there in MSP that you’ve braved the big city because you lived in leafy Greenwich, CT, and ventured into NYC on the weekends with the rest of the bridge and tunnel crowd from NJ to do the clubs down in SOHO and the East Village. Fairfield County in CT is about as close culturally (and ethnically) to NYC as Stockholm is to Baghdad.

Here’s a link to our energy utility regarding their toxics release inventory. I only provide this info so you can update your personal database of knowledge of the midwest.

I used to stay at a place on 46th street and walk up to the 80s where the nightlife was best during those years. A co-worker of mine was an assistant DA in manhattan. When he heard of my late-night solo walks from the 40s to the 80s, alone, he was a bit surprised. He said the only reason I hadn’t been mugged doing that was because the thugs must have thought that I was either an undercover cop working as mugger bait or that I was too crazy to f*ck with. I told him that obviously, it was the latter.

Maz, using the PR webpage of your local electrical utility as a credible source on data regarding acidity toxin releases is a little naive, don’t you think? Isn’t that a like relying on a report from the foxes on the hen count in the chicken coop?

How about this data:

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of the primary sources of acid rain. According to the EPA website, the electrical generating plants in Minn alone released 100,000 tons of SO2 into the atmosphere in 2005. That’s 200 million pounds of SO2!!

Another source of acid rain is nitrogen oxide (NO). According to the same report those same electrical generating plants emitted 84,000 tons of NO in 2005.

In addition, those same generating plants released 400 million tons of CO2 (that’s the stuff that causes the greenhouse effect and global warming) into the atmosphere.

If you want to look up this data for yourself, you can find it at: http://cfpub.epa.gov/gdm/index.cfm?fuseaction=emissions.wizard

To be fair, Penn and OH are the real culprits. Together they pumped 2 million tons of SO2 and 400,000 tons of NO into the atmosphere in 2005.

Maz, using the PR webpage of your local electrical utility as a credible source on data regarding acidity toxin releases is a little naive, don’t you think? Isn’t that a like relying on a report from the foxes on the hen count in the chicken coop?

How about this data:

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of the primary sources of acid rain. According to the EPA website, the electrical generating plants in Minn alone released 100,000 tons of SO2 into the atmosphere in 2005. That’s 200 million pounds of SO2!!

Another source of acid rain is nitrogen oxide (NO). According to the same report those same electrical generating plants emitted 84,000 tons of NO in 2005.

In addition, those same generating plants released 400 million tons of CO2 (that’s the stuff that causes the greenhouse effect and global warming) into the atmosphere.

If you want to look up this data for yourself, you can find it at: http://cfpub.epa.gov/gdm/index.cfm?fuseaction=emissions.wizard

To be fair, Penn and OH are the real culprits. Together they pumped 2 million tons of SO2 and 400,000 tons of NO into the atmosphere in 2005.

I’m impressed that you would take the Bush administration at its word.

You got me there, Maz.

You’re absolutely right. Nobody in her/his right mind would (or should) believe those lieing Bushie bastards who will fabricate or manipulate any and all facts to meet their ideological dogma.

Taking the WMD Big Lie Factor in account, I think we can safely assume that Minn is spewing two to three times the amount of SO2 and NO reported by the EPA into the atmosphere.

Thanks for catching that oversight on my part.

By the way, I’m a conservative Republican who believes in balanced budgets, a strong military, a non-interventionist foreign policy, free and fair trade, strict enforcement of the First Amedment, amnesty and citizenship for most illegal immigrants, individual responsibility, an absolute right to privacy in all aspects of our lives (except when that right conflicts with the rights of our fellow citizens), aggressive law enforcement overseen by an independent judiciary, and science-based education. During the last six years, I have also concluded that there should be an IQ test for all presidential candidates.

Are you smarter than George W. Bush, Humphrey?

I’ll bet Humphrey would get a kick out of the knowledge that George Bush’s IQ is higher than John Kerry’s. True. Last election some lefty academic types, if I’m not being redundant, researched the IQs of George Bush and John Kerry for the purpose of embarrassing Bush by revealing their relative IQs (they assumed of course that Kerry’s would be higher). Well surprise surprise. Turns out they determined that Bush’s IQ was higher than Kerry’s.

ha ha

When confronted about it on a TV show (confronted is probably too strong a word here) Kerry said “Oh, really? Good for him” and went on talking about whatever it was he was talking about. Totally downplaying the fact, yet it apparent, he had already been told of the results of the “investigation.” heh.

Are you smarter than John Kerry, Maz?

Last election some lefty academic types, if I’m not being redundant

Sad that there aren’t more conservatives in academia. Seems they aren’t interested. It’s a shame that they don’t care about in the pursuit of ideas and knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

You need the free flow of debate in the colleges.

Coincidentally, my IQ, measured as a h.s. senior, was 136 and my SAT was 1350 … and while reading that article I discovered that’s virtually identical to Al Gore’s. yikes! And here I’ve been ridiculing his academic credentials here for the past few days.

I don’t remember my SAT score. Dont know if I got scored on an IQ. If I did, I don’t remember that, either.

I come from a large, competitive family and so those scores, as well as our bowling averages and the number of letters after our names, are tossed at each other frequently to irritate each other.

I grew up in a family convinced that Franklin Roosevelt saved this country. Though he’s long before my time I vote for hm every General Election.

Try to get that out of your bones.

lol

So it’s okay that East Coast cities pollute since it all goes out into the ocean?

apparently.

“You get cheap energy and a sense of self-righteousness when you’re driving your ethanol-powered cars. We get your acid rain.“

– - –

You’re welcome.

.

No shit, huh, bobby_b? Does anyone else find it slightly hilarious – though also enormously annoying – that Humphrey accused Maz for self-righteousness, but then he pulled out the “you’re just fly-over cities, mmwah”, acid rain and “you didn’t REALLY experience the city” shit?!

“It’s all the Midwest folks, and it all ends up downwind from your dirty coal-fired power plants.”

The MN House will today consider a version of a bill that the Senate has already passed that will significantly increase Minnesota’s use of cleaner renewable energy sources for our electrical utilities. Pawlenty has said he will sign the bill, if it hits his desk. So we are working on that, Hump.

“In addition, those same generating plants released 400 million tons of CO2 (that’s the stuff that causes the greenhouse effect and global warming) into the atmosphere.”

Every FFV that uses E85 instead of gasoline saves an estimated four tons of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere every year.

So yeah, we do get a little self-rightous driving our ethanol-powered cars.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep working on finding cleaner energy sources than gasoline or coal. We’re on it, Hump. Let me know when the East Coast gets it air pollution act together, will ya pal?

By the way, I’m a conservative Republican who believes in balanced budgets, a strong military, a non-interventionist foreign policy, free and fair trade, strict enforcement of the First Amedment, amnesty and citizenship for most illegal immigrants, individual responsibility, an absolute right to privacy in all aspects of our lives (except when that right conflicts with the rights of our fellow citizens), aggressive law enforcement overseen by an independent judiciary, and science-based education. During the last six years, I have also concluded that there should be an IQ test for all presidential candidates.

Thanks, but WDRGAF

The Albert Lea Tribune does a fine job of breaking down what I was telling Hump on our pending “green energy” reforms in Minnesota.

wait, are we going to have an IQ/SAT pissing contest in here?

I hope so, Wayne…I’m just dying to brag about what my IQ and SAT scores were (and how old I was when I took my SAT’s…).

Oh wait. I’m not. I already know I’m intelligent…therefore, I don’t feel the need to puke it all over everybody else.

If maz is smart, then smart is the new stupid.

Context people. Read the bleeping thread.

Who needs context when you’ve got heroin?

I’ve got a lust for life!
Lust for life!

(Runs down the street, smacking into a Scottish police officer.)

Well that’s like hypnotizing chickens.

I got a 21 on the ACT in 7th grade and then a 26 as a sophomore. I’d like to take it again to see what I’d score because I am much, much smarter now than I was 10 years ago, but in a different kind of way. It would be interesting to see if that is at all reflected in the ACT.

Oh wait. I’m not. I already know I’m intelligent…therefore, I don’t feel the need to puke it all over everybody else.

exactly!

Oh and having taught SAT Prep classes as a summer job in college, I can say that the SAT et al are in no way tests of intelligence, but rather tests of your ability to take that particular test. It’s a specialized skill that is largely useless elsewhere and utterly irrelevant to real life.

I’m going to find out how I’d do on the SAT if I took it now soon, because I’m going to take the GRE! It’s practically the same thing! Barely more advanced and painfully easy for anyone who managed to graduate from undergrad.

It’s a specialized skill that is largely useless elsewhere and utterly irrelevant to real life.

Like algebra!

Ahh, no. ):

MNSpeak was kinda better when Matt was here.

Heh. Grote has been pretty funny of late.

Speaking of late, this AutoWeek story on E85 originally ran on 1/29/07, but was available online only to subscribers. It’s free now.

WCCO’s coverage of the carbon monoxide leak at the Shoreview Green Mill was better than the other outlets, in part because weekend anchor/reporter Terri Gruca’s recent experience covering the subject. Lots of good info on her blog.

Kate Perry again gazes deep into the Strib’s navel and writes of the ethics of their recent flu coverage.

Heh. Grote has been pretty funny of late.

Grote was funnier lately when Rex was here.

I hate to stand up for Wayne, but algebra is kinda important. Not because we need to remember all that BS, but because it helps us develop our brains’ problem solving capabilities at a young age. Personally, I found that solving algebraic equations sequentially is conducive to me learning on a more global basis. To this day I still do and learn things step by step by step.

And now, in the interest of balance, I have to issue Wayne a put down: You’re a commie bastard.

“Oh and having taught SAT Prep classes as a summer job in college, I can say that the SAT et al are in no way tests of intelligence, but rather tests of your ability to take that particular test. It’s a specialized skill that is largely useless elsewhere and utterly irrelevant to real life.“

– - –

I have an uncle who argues that fat people have more fun. He’s really, really fat.

Algebra is totally important. But kevin, you’re a fascist pig ( :

And bobby I don’t see your point unless you’re either calling me fat (only portly, thank you) or insinuating I didn’t do well on said test (which it should be obvious is not the case because I was teaching it).

I’m starting to become fond of this bobby_b.

Algebra sucks. It had no positive effect on my life whatsoever, proving the prediction I made to my 8th grade teacher correct.

Which further proves that I am amazing.

Well, I’m certainly sorry that my passing reference to Geo. W and IQ in the same sentence has revealed so much Midwestern angst about intelligence and college board scores. I had no idea that you folks in Minn are so hung up on measuring each others’ adolescent cognitive capabilities.

Back here in the East we pretty much forget about SAT, ACT and GRE scores after graduation and focus the measurement of our self-worth on the square footage of our homes (adjusted, or course, for zip code). Those of us with children also use a competitive gradient based on their college admissions (5 points for Ivy League, 4 points for NESCAC, etc.).

By the way, I don’t remember the Bush/Kerry IQ comparison, but I do remember a news story that leaked out after the election about their comparitive academic records at Yale. The gist of the story was that Dubya had a higher grade point average than did Kerry.

Can you imagine that Bush was better at memorizing and regurgitating the liberal litany of Yale profs than was Kerry? It’s got to be one of those mysteries of the universe.

If this thread is going to call for a vote on algebra, I cast my ballot as a “Yea”.

Will there be a vote on calculus or trig?

I’d reply to your post more substantively Humphrey, but I’ve been banned. These folks get offended when certain people act all uppity and let on that they know more than the stereotype dictates.

hey bob, I was in Pennsylvania last weekend reading a Philly paper about how farmers there are having huge difficulty paying for corn to feed their livestock — because E85 was driving the costs way up. A UofM ag guy was one a couple quoted that ethanol was making corn very expensive as supply was not meeting the new demand and in turn increasing the number of acres farmers are dedicating to corn by 10 to 15%.

Just thought I’d point out this is exactly opposite of what you were stating on this board not so long ago.

Maz, I’m crushed.

Say it ain’t so.

“Just thought I’d point out this is exactly opposite of what you were stating on this board not so long ago.”

Yeah, we know what the U has been spinning lately. I’m working with one of the MSM on our response.

Does the UofM ag guy MNspeak? No? Then why would you listen to anything he says, spaceman? Why, man, why?

And why is Pennsyvania called the “Keystone State?”

I totally missed that we were having a brag-fest about standardized test scores. I’m in the category of — I used to be smart. ACT, not SAT, though. Sadly, ten years of TV reporting has sapped virtually all of my intellect. I suspect I’d get about an 18 on the ACT now.

I’d reply to your post more substantively Humphrey, but I’ve been banned. These folks get offended when certain people act all uppity and let on that they know more than the stereotype dictates.

Oh, bullshit — there goes maz playing the victim card, when, in truth, on a moderated forum he would have had his ass kicked off long ago for his inability to play nice.

Amazing how trolls turn into crybabies when called on their shit.

The gist of the story was that Dubya had a higher grade point average than did Kerry.

I know people have extremely selective memories but Kerry was in an advanced Honors Program while GW was doing blow off of whores asses.

It didn’t get much press because of this little speedbump on the Freedom to Breathe Act’s road to the Governor’s Desk, but Phil Morris got its butt kicked by the great state of Minnesota.

Again.

I’m on KARE-11 tonight, talking about the Supreme Court decision.

“It didn’t get much press because of this little speedbump on the Freedom to Breathe Act’s road to the Governor’s Desk, but Phil Morris got its butt kicked by the great state of Minnesota.”

– - -

It didn’t get much play around here at all, and my inner cynic (a wee little man who periodically shouts at me about people’s baser motives when I really want to believe in them) is shouting that perhaps it’s because the courts, all the way to the top, have now upheld Pawlenty’s Health Impact Fee.

And, the people who thought nice thoughts about that Fee back when are not the same people who generally write or chose stories for our news delivery machine.

.

“And, the people who thought nice thoughts about that Fee back when are not the same people who generally write or chose stories for our news delivery machine.”

Well, the Kare Bear Capitol Team (KBCT-TV) chose it, wrote about and delivered the story today, with an assist from alamn. The Strib online had it as a lead story for awhile, and it got mentioned in the WCCO-AM drive time news. Give the poor local MSM some slack — they are not nearly as immediate and up to speed as white belt hipsters like you and me, bobby_mcB

Always nice to live in a state whose Supreme Court decisions are upheld — not overturned, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

What, really, IS the significance of “white belt” here?

It’s what hipsters wear.

You’ve earned your white belt in MNspeaking, bobby. Wear it with pride, hipster.

Of the couple of American Idol guys last night that I watched at least 2 were sporting white belts.

And this whole time I thought the White Belt was a sociologist-coined term for the Upper Midwest…as in the spirit of Bilbe Belt or Rust Belt.

If the White Belt is the Upper Midwest, where would that place Chicago?

Somewhere below the belt, probably, but would it be as far down as the groin?

I want the Maz back. He’s more fun than these posts about fashion geography.