Category: default || By jt3y

Things I found on the Internet while looking for other things:

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DaimlerChrysler, German-based parent of the old Chrysler Corp., is planning to create a cheap entry level brand to attract younger car buyers, according to the Detroit News:

A Chrysler source familiar with the matter said the vehicles would be sold in Chrysler Group dealerships, but marketed separately, similar to what Toyota Motor Corp. has done with its youth-centric Scion brand. Chrysler has been exploring the new brand for more than a year and likely will decide whether or not it will launch it by year’s end, the source said.

Hmm. A youth-oriented brand sold separately but marketed through Chrysler dealerships ... wasn't that called Plymouth? And didn't DaimlerChrysler kill it a few years ago, after years of neglect?

Where does one get a job in a corporate planning department? It seems like you can screw up with impunity and not suffer any consequences.

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I thought all of the old radios and TV that I own were just junk. It turns out that they're examples of highly valuable antiques, and some people have made a living off of them, at least according to The New York Times (free registration required):

Mr. Arnold and many of his clients have been connoisseurs of vintage appliances for decades, long before the current craze. They found them in junkyards, at auctions and in the kitchens of dearly departed old ladies down the street. In 1995, eBay arrived with its vast inventory of consumer-society castoffs. The demand for almost-antique appliances hasn't slowed since.

Make sure to check out the vintage Westinghouse electric roaster in one of the photos. I think every family in Western Pennsylvania had one of those in the 1960s and '70s; I still see them at church potlucks and carnivals.

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Speaking of Westinghouse, did you know that there was a Canadian Westinghouse Company, based in the steelmaking town of Hamilton, Ontario? (If you've ever driven from Niagara Falls to Toronto on the QEW, you've gone past the massive Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, which will bring back fond memories to any Mon Valley resident).

A subsidiary of Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Canadian Westinghouse built both electrical appliances and until 1953 also controlled the Canadian interests of Wilmerding's Westinghouse Air Brake Company.

According to the Hamilton Public Library, Hamilton was stung by the same series of Westinghouse mergers, spinoffs and shutdowns as Pittsburgh in the 1980s and '90s:

Westinghouse Electric (now CBS Corporation) moved its headquarters from Pittsburgh to New York City, amid protests from disappointed Pittsburghers. The two Steeltowns, Pittsburgh and Hamilton, had yet another thing in common: the loss of a company that helped make the cities what they are ...

The "Westinghouse" of current days bears little resemblance to the comparatively small air brake manufacturing company started by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1869. Only the name of the Hamilton turbine plants serves to remind us of the company that helped build Hamilton into a powerhouse of industry.

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What are the 50 best English-language magazines, in the opinion of the Chicago Tribune? The answers may surprise you.

The top 10 include Wired; Real Simple; The Economist; Cook's Illustrated; Esquire; The New Yorker; American Demographics; Men's Health; Jane; and Consumer Reports.

I don't get any of them regularly except the last, and the only others I occasionally read are Wired and The New Yorker.

Not surprisingly, Chicago Tribune readers found the newspaper's list a little, shall we say, pretentious, and compiled their own list. Their top 10 is more prosaic, and includes National Geographic, ESPN, Discover and Christian Century. Popular Science and Reader's Digest also made their top 20.

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Ever wonder how Camp-Hill Corp. in Our Fair City --- the last remaining open part of U.S. Steel National Works --- makes steel pipe? Here's your answer, from the USS Tubular Web site.
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There seems to have been a crime wave down in Masontown, according to the Uniontown Herald-Standard (subscription required):

While Masontown officers were attempting to aid a raccoon that had a jar wedged on its head early Friday, John Dominick, 24, of 163 Penn Ave., McClellandtown approached them and began to kick the animal repeatedly, police said. Dominick was arrested for disorderly conduct and public drunkenness and was placed in the holding cell at the Masontown police station. He was later released. Officers then successfully removed the jar from the raccoon's head, and it was released without injury.

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Garry Trudeau talks to Rolling Stone about knowing George W. Bush in college:

Even then he had clearly awesome social skills. Legend has it that he knew the names of all forty-five of his fellow pledges when he rushed Deke. He ater became rush chairman of Deke -- I do believe he has the soul of a rush chairman. He has that ability to connect with people. Not in the empathetic way that Clinton was so good at, but in the way of making people feel comfortable.

He could also make you feel extremely uncomfortable. He was very good at all the tools for survival that people developed in prep school -- sarcasm, and the giving of nicknames. He was extremely skilled at controlling people and outcomes in that way. Little bits of perfectly placed humiliation.

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Bob of Subdivided We Stand recently outed me for being a comic strip buff, and hanging out around the newsgroup rec.arts.comics.strips.

You may be interested to know that you can build your own custom page of comic strips at the Houston Chronicle's Web site.

Here's mine. I'm not sure what it says about me; I'll let you judge for yourself.