Someone once described the Internet as being like a giant library, where all the books were dumped out on the floor. Google has gone a long way toward --- well, if not organizing the library, at least stacking the books in neat little piles.
I have no idea how many times a day I use Google at work, but it's got to be more than a dozen. It's become a public utility for me, like Duquesne Light. Just as I'm shocked (no pun intended) when my electricity goes out, I'd be just as stunned if Google suddenly went out.
I don't call directory assistance any more to get phone numbers, unless my dial-up connection is down. I just Google the name of the store or business (or, if it's a person, I use Verizon's site). Sometimes I come home and find a hang-up call on my answering machine. Press *69 and get the number, and then Google it: Oh. Why are they calling me?
The true sign of acceptance of a technology, I think, is when people start using it for frivolous purposes. Take telephones. Telephone calls were originally considered a special event --- if you had to tell something to someone, you wrote it in a letter and mailed it. No one in the 1920s thought of just picking up the phone to chat. You certainly didn't call across the country just to shoot the bull. And if you got a long distance telephone call, brother, something terrible had happened.
But a concerted marketing effort by Bell Telephone after World War II convinced people that they could afford to use the phone just to say "hi." "Let your fingers do the walking." "The next best thing to being there." "Reach out and touch someone."
Now, people have cell phones, and you can't get them to shut up. "Guess where I am right now? Yep! The bathroom!"
I use Google for similarly frivolous purposes. A while ago, I purchased the first two volumes of "SCTV" on DVD --- a frivolous enough thing in and of itself, but "SCTV" is just about the only TV show I would purchase on video. On one episode, there's a parody that turns "The Nutcracker" into a Neil Simon play set in a grand hotel, a la "Plaza Suite." Naturally, "SCTV's" version is called "Nutcracker Suite," and it features Dave Thomas as Neil Simon, Andrea Martin as Marsha Mason, Rick Moranis as Richard Dreyfuss, Joe Flaherty as Alan Alda and Eugene Levy as Judd Hirsch. It's better as a concept than in execution --- the sketch is a little long --- but it's entertaining enough.
"SCTV's" budget was so low that many sketches were shot on location, rather than on sets. In "Nutcracker Suite," there's a brief shot of the exterior of the hotel, and the marquee, which says "Hotel Macdonald." Hmm. Google came to the rescue, of course; sure enough, it's in Edmonton, where "SCTV" was taped for several years, and the reception desk and entrance are recognizable.
The same episode has a fairly well-known running sketch (at least to "SCTV" fans) where John Candy, playing blustering, blubbering, blowhard producer Johnny LaRue is forced to do a man-on-the-street interview show on Christmas Eve as a punishment. Again, it's got to be in Edmonton, but on what street? I got a glimpse of a restaurant sign in the background, Googled the name, and there it was: The Red Ox Inn. It looks exactly the same as it did when that episode was taped, more than 20 years ago.
The mind boggles. Millions and millions of dollars has been spent to install a technology infrastructure, so that I can sit in my stocking feet and looking up the address of a bar in Edmonton, Alberta, 2,000 miles away.
Actually, I just checked. It's 2,170.9 miles away. And don't get me started on how much I like online mapping programs.
...
To Do This Weekend: It's high school basketball playoff time --- is that "February Madness"? WPIAL Class AAAA boys' basketball quarterfinals, McKeesport vs. Mt. Lebanon, 12 p.m. Saturday, Ringgold High School, Carroll Township, Washington County. Class A boys' quarterfinals, Serra High vs. Leechburg, 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Woodland Hills High School, Churchill. Class A girls' quarterfinals, Serra vs. Duquesne, 12 p.m. Saturday, Woodland Hills High School. ... Julius Falcon Combo plays the ballroom at The Palisades, Fifth Avenue at Water Street, 9 p.m. Saturday. Call (412) 678-6979.
Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mon-Yough Valley, and all the barges in the river. Let's go to press!
Flash! Dateline, Mexico City, where we learn that the end has finally come for one of Fayette County's most notorious natives:
A fugitive child molester from Fayette County who violated a court order by trying to organize trips for youth choirs has died in Mexico.
John Shallenberger, 87, of Connellsville, had been wanted by Pennsylvania authorities since 1996, when he placed an advertisement in an alumni magazine, seeking young people to join him in Mexico where he claimed to be serving as a Christian missionary. ...
Shallenberger, a former choir director in Connellsville, was convicted in 1975 and 1985 of sexually abusing young boys during choir trips. He was ordered to stop organizing choir tours and recruiting children to sing on those tours. (Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette)
After declaring that he was "not spending the day here," a district judge allegedly told defendants awaiting some 30 traffic hearings that they were all not guilty and ordered them to leave.
"What are you, a bunch of morons?" District Judge Ernest Marraccini asked the defendants when they balked at his order, according to a misconduct complaint filed yesterday by the state Judicial Conduct Board. (Jim McKinnon, Post-Gazette)
Elizabeth Forward Middle School students didn't get to meet Bill Cosby, but they got the next best thing.
To help celebrate Black History Month, the students sat down Thursday afternoon to listen to a presentation by Gregory Gibson Kenney, an actor and historical impersonator. Through the educational performance company EDUCATE Us Productions, Kenney takes on the roles of black historical figures. (Celanie Polanick, Daily News)
When there's a heavy rain in McKeesport, there's a traffic jam on Route 48 as workers from Tom Clark Chevrolet drive the new and used cars to higher ground. They learned about the potential for flooding in their car lots in June 1996 and they aren't going to make the same mistake twice.
The city has been trying to get through a flood control project to stop the flooding of Long Run Creek, which caused the problems for the Chevrolet dealership. (Ann Belser, Post-Gazette)
Every major city in the state ranks among the top quarter nationally for economic stress factors such as poverty, older housing and unemployment, according to research results released last week by American City Business Journals ...
Leading the way in hardship locally among smaller towns was McKeesport, which, out of 2,886 cities nationwide in that category, ranked 100th. (Dan Reynolds, Pittsburgh Business Times)
Irwin volunteer firefighters were still buzzing Sunday afternoon about an unsolicited $5,000 donation they received from the Penns Woods Civic Association when an alarm sounded signaling a fire at Irwin Manor, a senior citizens high-rise.
Only their newly refurbished ladder truck was equipped to fight the blaze in a sixth-floor apartment of the seven-story building. ...
"Irwin fire department is grateful for the donation. It is an unexpected neighborly gesture that is deeply appreciated," said (deputy chief Shawn) Stitely. "After all, the Norwin community always has been about neighbors helping neighboring in time of need." (Norm Vargo, Post-Gazette)
I've been going to the annual Pittsburgh Auto Show since I was a freshman in high school. And for the last several years, I have come home disgusted. Two years ago, you could have seen a wider variety of cars walking from dealership to dealership on West Liberty Avenue. Last year's show was slightly better, but still mediocre.
Well, the show may finally have hit rock bottom this year, which would be a good thing, I suppose, because there would be no place to go but up. As with 2003's auto show, there's an empty feeling at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center (motto: "Home of the $7 nachoes!"). The 2005 Pittsburgh Auto Show has very few concept cars and not even a particularly wide variety of current production cars for inspection.
This may come as a shock to some people, but most of the current cars at the auto show are taken straight out of the inventories of local dealers. I'm not naive. I know this. But one car still had a parking receipt stuck to its windshield, for goodness' sake!
(Also, I swear that one of the cars was taken straight out of a dealer's service bay. In fact, it still had a half-eaten doughnut on the dashboard, and I think I saw someone's feet sticking out from under the bumper. By the way, Mrs. Kowalski, the brakes on your Dodge will be done Friday. ... OK, now I'm exaggerating --- a little.)
It may be a measure of just how low the Pittsburgh market has sunk in importance that we now get concept cars that debuted two and three years earlier at auto shows in bigger cities. And damned few of them. For this I paid $7 to park and $6 admission? And that was with a discount --- the normal admission price is $8!
Maybe I'm just cranky because the quality of the swag has dropped so alarming over the past few shows. We used to get yardsticks, bandage dispensers, ballpoint pens and little fuzzy googly-eyed doo-dads with auto company logos on them. What were the giveaways this year? Trash bags from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and "Froggy 98" bumper stickers. Harrumph!
The only thing that redeemed the show was a chance meeting with a General Motors executive who didn't identify himself. We thought he was a low-level sales drone at first, but a friend and I did some careful questioning, and learned that the fellow was too well-informed. (I "Googled" him this morning, and I think I know who he was, but since I didn't identify myself as a writer, I'm not going to identify him. Suffice to say, he was legit.)
He said that GM is getting ready to move into alternative fuels vehicles in a big way. The company's experiment with pure electric cars --- the much ballyhooed EV1 --- was an expensive flop because consumers found them too slow and too inconvenient to recharge, he said.
And GM has decided that so-called "hybrid" vehicles --- half-gasoline, half-electric --- are not where it wants to be in the long-term. Instead, he said, GM wants to go directly into cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The company is already testing them in Europe, North America and Asia and is getting up to 350 miles on one fuel stop.
General Motors' president, he said, has promised to make gasoline engines "obsolete" by 2010, and while many inside the company say they're skeptical that they can meet that goal, it's where GM has decided it wants to be.
Even the company's current cars and trucks are compatible with alternative fuels, he said --- very quietly, GM has built 2 million cars and trucks that have engine computers and components that will run on a mix of up to 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. GM is also heavily involved in producing diesel trucks that will run on so-called "biodiesel" fuel, made from soybeans.
Now, our source said, GM is trying to prod the oil companies into installing the infrastructure necessary to sell ethanol, biodiesel or hydrogen for those fuel cells. General Motors, he said, is particularly worried that if it doesn't move quickly, the Japanese will get a jump on the alternative fuels market.
Given that our current model of fueling vehicles --- purchasing oil from crazy dictators and people who blow themselves up --- is not sustainable for very much longer, this is good news. And it's also nice to hear that Detroit is finally trying to out-think the Japanese, rather than just reacting to them. But I remain skeptical that "Generic Motors" is really taking a long term view of things, and not just a view of the next quarterly earnings report.
Well, I'll believe it when I see it, but our source was very enthusiastic, and he's convinced that alternative fuels vehicles are coming to GM showrooms --- and fast. Talking with him almost made the admission fee worth it. Scratch that --- it did make it worth it.
Unfortunately, I can't promise you'll bump into this guy at the Pittsburgh Auto Show. So, here's my advice: Stay home this year.
They have a lot of diners in central Pennsylvania --- real, honest-to-Charley roadside diners with bottomless cups of coffee, pancakes served any time, and scrapple. And while that's not enough of a reason to want to move up there, it's certainly tempting.
I had to do some research up at the York County Heritage Trust and a couple of interviews for the book project, so I loaded up the old family truckster Friday morning and hit the Turnpike.
Do you know it now costs $11 to drive the Turnpike from Monroeville to Harrisburg? Good gravy. I felt like the guy in Abe Lincoln's joke who was tarred and feathered, and then run out of town on a rail --- were it not for the principle of the thing, I'd just as soon walk.
York is a funny old town. It's very, very busy --- or at least it seemed to be. The downtown area of Pennsylvania's Red Rose City is a strange mix of 1800s buildings and half-hearted '50s and '60s urban renewal projects. The parking garage where I left the car is right out of 1968, and most of the streets are one-way thoroughfares, which is another sign of '60s traffic planning (see also Greensburg, McKeesport, Washington, etc.). The central core of town has been thoroughly rehabilitated and gentrified --- it's all lawyers' offices, chi-chi coffee bars and antique stores, and there's a beautiful old hotel called the Yorktowne. But walk a few blocks away and you're in neighborhoods full of rusty cars and falling-down rowhouses.
York also apparently used to have a perfectly decent town square at the corner of Market and George streets. I say "apparently" because at some point they yanked it out and straightened the streets to get more traffic through the intersection. That's left the great old buildings on the corners with these absurd plazas in front of them between the new curbs and their old front doors, which are now set way back from the streets. Friday afternoon, someone was holding some sort of a protest rally at the intersection, and people were honking --- in support of whose rights or causes, I have no idea.
I would have liked to have spent more time poking around town, but unfortunately, I was on a tight deadline. York had been the headquarters of the McCrory-McLellan-Green five-and-ten stores, so I decided to see what was left.
Damned little, as it turns out. The entire McCrory archives fit into two small boxes at the Heritage Trust. The company had a big headquarters building and warehouse out in the east end of town, but the warehouse has been subdivided and the office building was torn down to make way for a Home Depot. There's also a shiny new Wal-Mart next door, which represents some sort of irony.
McCrory's had a long, ugly slide into oblivion (and two lengthy bankruptcies) as its owners drained its profits and funneled them into other enterprises. Still, the company hasn't been gone for that long (about three years), and it's a shame that an enterprise that was founded in 1882, and once numbered 1,300 stores, has left so little behind. Sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.
I had to be in Harrisburg early the next morning, so I headed north to look for a motel. I hit Elizabethtown at just about 8 o'clock and started flipping around on the radio, I hit on an FM station in the non-commercial end of the dial playing The Vogues' "Turn Around, Look at Me." Well, this was a nice break from the NPR sermonizing or Jebus preaching you normally find at that end of the FM band, so I kept listening.
The DJ came on. "From Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, those are the Vogues, and these are the Platters," he said. It turns out it was the radio station at Elizabethtown College, and they have a Friday night oldies party. And, it just so happens that Elizabethtown has a motel called the Red Rose.
Red Rose! Yeah, I know, it's as in "Red Rose City" (Lancaster is the "White Rose City"), but any Pittsburgh oldies buff would think of "Red Rose Tea" (the song, not the tea) first. What are the chances I'd be driving through a town I'd never heard of, listening to the Vogues and driving past a "Red Rose Motel"? It had to be fate, right? Or kismet?
No, it was probably just coincidence. The Red Rose Motel turned out to be old, but clean and well-maintained, with little tourist cabins bedecked with knotty pine paneling and steam heat. And the price ($41 a night) wasn't bad, either. I had dinner at the Elizabethtown Diner. The special turned out to be homemade macaroni and cheese casserole, stewed tomatoes, brussels sprouts, mixed vegetables, salad, and roll and butter for $7.95.
Normally, I can't stand stewed tomatoes.
I ate every bite.
On the way home Saturday night, I decided to try and beat the Turnpike Commission out of its $11, and took Route 30 home. We had taken a family trip across the state on Route 30 when I was a kid, and I remembered it being a little shabby, but relatively smooth sailing, except for some congestion where it goes through small towns like New Oxford.
Not any more. Every square foot between York and Chambersburg has been developed with really crummy strip malls --- the kind of crummy-looking cinderblock affairs that feature a Dollar Tree, a nail salon and a video store.
If your strip mall is anchored by Dollar Tree, you've got problems, you know. Do banks really lend money for these kind of real-estate projects, which are doomed to fall apart and wind up empty in a few years?
Never mind, I know the answer. Which explains why I'm getting 1 percent on my savings account.
Anyway, it was 75 to 100 miles of misery through what James Howard Kunstler calls "jive-plastic" buildings before the clutter finally went away and the highway opened up. My pain was alleviated somewhat when I found a public radio station out of Hagerstown that was carrying Garrison Keillor's program.
Keillor was interviewing a historian from Springfield, Ill., who was working as the curator for a new museum and library dedicated to the life of Abraham Lincoln. So there I was, listening to a story about Abe Lincoln while driving the Lincoln Highway through Gettysburg.
Maybe there's something to that fate thing after all.
After writing Thursday's Almanac, I got to thinking about Madman Muntz.
Some of the folks who read this drivel know that I collect old radio and TV junk ... er, I mean, antiques ... from the era when electronics were actually made in the United States. One of the most colorful figures in TV manufacturing back in the 1950s was Earl "Madman" Muntz, who started his career as a used car salesman in California.
He got the nickname "Madman" for doing late-night TV commercials in which he'd come out wearing long underwear, a straight-jacket and a Napoleonic hat, bragging about how ridiculously low his prices were. "I wanna give 'em away, but the wife won't let me. She's cr-a-a-a-azy!" he'd say. Politically correct, he wasn't.
When TV took off, Muntz decided to get a piece of the business. In order to compete, he had to sell his sets at a price as low as possible. Nowadays, TVs are largely machine-assembled from microchips, but in those days, TVs were still largely hand-assembled from individual components. If you could eliminate a lot of the individual components, you could save money both on parts and labor.
So Muntz set up his factory out in California and started making TVs. Legend has it that whenever his engineers were working on a new design, he'd pop into their offices with a pair of wire cutters. And with the set on, Muntz --- who wasn't an engineer --- would cut components out of the circuit, one by one. Chop! There went a resistor. Snip! There went a capacitor.
Eventually, Muntz would cut a component that made the picture or the sound go out. "Put that back in," he'd demand. That way, supposedly, his sets had the minimum number of parts necessary to work --- and could be sold much cheaper than the sets that Zenith or RCA or Motorola were selling.
Pretty clever. And a Muntz TV worked about as well as an RCA or Zenith or Motorola set, for a much lower price.
As long as you lived in an area where there was good reception, that is. But because Muntz had clipped the circuits down to where they were working without any margin for error, his sets didn't work so well in fringe areas.
And some of the components that he chopped out didn't cause immediate problems when they were removed, but they had been put into the circuits by previous designers to prevent long-term damage. Those resistors, for instance, might have been designed to prevent other components from wearing out too fast. Eventually, of course, those other components would fail from too much voltage or too much heat.
Consequently, although Muntz sold a lot of TV sets, they eventually got a reputation for being "junk." So despite the fact that Muntz TVs were very heavily advertised in the Press and Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh, I've haunted a lot of radio shops and swap meets, and I have yet to see a Muntz TV. I find lots of RCAs and Zeniths and Philcos and Motorolas and some Westinghouses, but no Muntzes. That leads me to believe that the owners of Muntz TVs got disgusted with them breaking down, and pitched them rather than fixing them.
On the other hand, some of those RCAs and Zeniths are ridiculously overbuilt and overdesigned, and yet they still work pretty well, 30 or 40 years after they came off of the assembly lines.
Our government is a lot like those early TV sets. For 200 years, "engineers" have been adding components to the various circuits. So many components have been piled on top of others that people have forgotten why they were installed in the first place.
That's left lots of room for amateur engineers to chop things out of the circuits. Snip! There go some Pell Grants. Chop! There go some veterans' benefits. Crack! There goes some public education funding. And now, the clippers are poking around in the Social Security circuit.
Just like Muntz and his TVs, eliminating components here and there doesn't make the entire picture disappear or malfunction. The other components in the circuit can carry the load ... for a while, anyway.
We don't know when the damage to the other components is going to become evident, but it's going to happen sooner or later.
An interesting thing about Earl Muntz: His TV business eventually went bankrupt. Stock in Muntz TV that had been worth $6 million dropped to $200,000.
Is it any wonder that when I hear that the President's plans for Social Security may add $4.5 trillion to the deficit, I some how imagine him dressed in long underwear and wearing a Napoleonic hat, running around in front of a row of used cars? "I buy 'em retail and sell 'em wholesale," he's saying. "It's more fun that way!"
It was funny when Earl Muntz did it. It's not so amusing right now.
...
No, there was no Friday Almanac because I was out of town. I know, try to contain your sorrow.
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