Day: June 9, 2010

Ah, humpday news chum. These are some items collected over the last two days. The first few all have to do with transportation in one way or another:

• From the “Getting Framed” Department: Fast Company has a nice piece on cleaning up the graphics on license plates. I’m not sure how practical their ideas are, but who cares about practicality. I found this via LA Observed, IIRC, which was commenting on the California version that is loaded with personal information, including a bar code, religious preference, political party, and regional markings.
• From the “Give ‘Em an Inch” Department: USA Today has an article on I-19, one of the few Interstates that is all metric. Given everything else happening in Arizona, is it a surprise to anyone that they want to change this back to good old English American units? This has merchants upset, because all their advertising material has the metric exit numbers.
• From the “Living in the Past” Department: You yunguns out there might not remember it, but there were days when you would get full service when you got gas—and I mean real-full, not New Jersey-full, service—checking the oil, tire pressure, etc. Guess what? There’s still such a station in Missouri! At the Chippewa and Giles Service Station (Sinclair), George or Walter Wiesehan will pump the gas, check the oil and tires and wash the windshield. Customers can pay at the pump, but only by handing George or Walter cash or a credit card. The owner doesn’t want to install new pumps, “They’re $9,000 a pump, and I don’t need ’em”. He says the old pumps, installed around 40 years ago, work just fine. He swipes cards in a machine inside the station. The station was opened in 1957, and is one of only two Sinclair stations remaining in the St. Louis area.
• From the “Riding the Rails” Department: You may not believe it, but there is mass transit in Los Angeles. The LA Times has an interesting article on the street theatre that is the Blue Line. For those of us into history, it is worth noting that much of the old Blue Line route is the old PE Long Beach line.

And now, for the bizarre:

• From the “Being a Boob” Department: A Saudi cleric is advocating adult breast feeding, so that unrelated men and women become maternally related… and thus not subject to the rules about men and women not mixing. Specifically, Sheikh Al Obeikan, an adviser to the royal Saudi court and consultant to the Saudi Ministry of Justice said on TV that women who come into regular contact with men who aren’t related to them ought to give them their breast milk so they will be considered relatives. There is disagreement about the best (ahem) way to deliver the liquid.

  I should note that I’m not posting this to criticise Islam—I have no problem with the basic religion. However, as with any religion, the ultra-Orthodox sects (cough, Mea Sharim, cough) often have weird rulings like this. Some are true. Some are not (cough, hole in a sheet, cough). Although this is weird, I can see the logic, and it is no more of a stretch than the logic behind an eruv.