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There are many interesting company names and often those names have interesting etymologies. For instance:
- IKEA is a random collection of letters, based from the first letters of founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the Swedish property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
- Lego is a combination of the Danish phrase "leg godt," which translates as "play well."
- Cisco is short for San Francisco, where the company is based.
It’s hard to imagine what the founders of Pot-O-Gold Waste Services were thinking when they came up with their name. If there’s anything that you would not want to find at the end of a rainbow, it is a chemical toilet, even if it is colored gold.
Anyway this chemical toilet was found at Twin Lakes Scuba Park, venue for the Rice University Aquatics Open Water Swim Festival.
Twin lakes is located in Manvel, TX. Manvel has the dubious honor of having no interesting facts whatsoever to report about it. Even Alvin, TX, just down the road boasts the following notable residents:
- Nolan Ryan, former Major League Baseball pitcher.
-Austin Miller, actor and singer.
-Joe Ferguson, football player for the Buffalo Bills.
-By the End of Tonight, an instrumental rock band.
Not exactly world famous then, but they would qualify for a spot on Dancing With the Stars. So short of decent commemorative days, Alvin has declared March 5, 2007, as "Austin Miller Day"!
However I’m pleased to report that at least they have a Five Guys Burgers in Manvel so there is at least one reason to stop.
Actually two reasons, since Twin Lakes Scuba Park is a very nice venue for an open water swim. Some people even tried to have a picnic out in the lake because it was so nice...
And the water tasted great...
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An Englishman called Bartholomew Gosnold took an expedition to an area called various things (including the Promontory of Vinland) in 1602 and named it Cape Cod. He died 5 years later so who knows what it might have been called. Given the large number of English town names (Barnstaple, Sandwich, Bourne) here then it might have been called Canvey Island. Cape Codders should feel happy then.
Cape Cod is technically and officially an Island since in 1914 the Cape Cod Canal was formed making the only access via the Sagamore or Bourne Bridges.
This is the Bourne Bridge (the way we got onto the island) taken from the Cape Cod Canal.
Cape Cod is a very popular summer destination, but fortunately in April it’s still fairly quiet. Perhaps not surprising as it’s also still a bit cold (a bit like an English summer day!).
Cape Cod is home to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), pictured here in an aerial shot:
WHOI is the largest independent oceanographic institution in the USA. WHOI is well know for many things but perhaps the most famous is one of it’s scientists, Robert Ballard, who discovered the remains of the Titanic in 1985, 12,500 feet down. And there couldn’t be a more appropriate day to write about the Titanic than on this, the 99th anniversary of the sinking of the ship.
These days if you want to see real bits of the Titanic you can go to the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas where they have an exhibition showing for the next 10 years. Being Las Vegas you can quickly move from historic exhibits to near-naked floor shows without getting a crease in your trousers, as you can see from this advert on their website:
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Question: What do all these songs have in common:
- La Cienega Just Smiled - Ryan Adams
- Melrose - Tangerine Dream
- Hollywood - Thin Lizzy
- Lost in Hollywood - System of a Down
- Ventura Highway - America
Answer: They are all songs about roads in Los Angeles.
But why do so many people write about roads in Los Angeles?
It could be because Los Angeles is a wonderful place and people have such good memories of it that they want to write a song.
As we know from previous visits (http://sevenflagsovertexas.me/index.php/blog2/item/62-in-and-out-and-about-in-la) Los Angeles, and California in general, has long had a love affair with the motor vehicle. The reason why In-N-Out and other drive through fast food places became popular is largely to do with the fact that everyone was driving wherever they went. So its not really surprising that when someone thinks of Los Angeles they think of a road.
So with decades of cars and roads you would imagine that Los Angeles would have a really well designed road system that gets people quickly and easily to where they want to be. Perhaps it would be busy in the morning and evening rush hours, just like it is in other large cities, but otherwise stress free allowing one to drive happily in one’s convertible to somewhere like Santa Monica beach.
Sadly this is far from the truth. Having now driven through Los Angeles at most times of the day and night I can confirm that the main roads are permanently jammed. The above picture shows the scene in Northern LA at 6:30am. Admittedly this could have been down to rush hour but the situation never changed for the 2 hours it took to get through to freedom on the south side around Anaheim (home of Disneyland).
Its no surprise that marijuana is available in California for medicinal purposes. How else can residents of LA get through a week of driving to and from work in this traffic? And, like Houston, there’s no chance of walking (unless for a drunken bet).
So the conclusion is that Adams, Froese, Lynott, Tankian and Bunnell all wrote those songs while they were stuck in traffic.
I suppose there are some benefits to LA traffic then.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
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Here’s some attendance figures for sporting events in 2010:
- Six Nations Rugby - 70,351 (average)
- FA Cup - 88,335
- FIFA World Cup - 49,670 (average)
- Regular College Football Game between Texas A&M and Oklahoma University - 81,259
At only $80 (!) a ticket for seats in the nosebleed section, its not surprising that College Football is big business. Coaches get paid amounts that would make many Premier League managers happy. Mack Brown of Texas got paid $5.1M in 2010 (compared with Roy Hodgson of Liverpool who got £3M for the same year). Bob Stoops of Oklahoma was second with $4.3M and Mike Sherman of Texas A&M is way down the list at 28th with $1.8M.
As we saw today, the amount the coach gets paid is no guarantee of success (tell that to Texas, who had a 5-7 win-loss season this time around compared with 9-3 for arch rivals A&M). The Oklahoma Sooners (Sooners is a nickname given to the early participants in the land rushes which initially opened the Oklahoma Indian Territory to non-native settlement) lost only 2 games this season and one of them was this one to A&M (33-19 to be precise).
A college football game is a major event which you can tell just by looking at the schedule for the day:
Somewhere towards the end of the BBQs, hospitality tents, food and drink samples, games and military marches there’s the game that you came to see.
Military marches at a football game? This is limited to a few colleges that have their own Corps of Cadets like A&M. Over 2,000 Cadets attend A&M and they live their life immersed in military traditions and rules.
Here’s one such tradition. The mascot, Reveille. This is Reveille #1 from 1933 (not a dog you will ask to fetch much these days):
A&M are now on Reveille #8 seen here during the Corps march to the stadium just before the game starts:
And here’s some more of the 2,000 Corps who marched that day:
All college teams have their own band, but few of them will compare to A&M’s Corps band. They do everything with (not unsurprisingly) military precision. Here they are forming the A&M logo (large T with a small A and M on each side):
Now if you watch an A&M college game you might notice that a lot of people stand up most of the time. This is not because there’s a lack of seats or a high proportion of hemorrhoid sufferers. They are remembering King Gill, whose statue stands just outside Kyle Field, the A&M football stadium:
King Gill is known as the first “12th Man”. Back in 1922 King (a former A&M player) made himself available in case there was a need for a stand in. He didn’t actually play that day but his readiness to play was noted and he became known as the 12th Man. Since then all A&M students stand throughout the game to represent their readiness to join the team should they be required.
The “12th men” these days do sit down at one point though - during the opposing team’s band display!
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It is claimed that Albert Einstein came up with this riddle when he was young and still living in his Native Germany in the late 1800s. The actual details may have changed over the years but the idea is always the same:
“- In a street there are five houses, painted five different colors.
- In each house lives a person of different nationality.
- These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.
The riddle is: Who owns the fish?”
To solve this you need these clues, some paper and a lot of spare time:
1. The British man lives in a red house.
2. The Swedish man keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Danish man drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The Blends smoker lives next to the one who drinks water.
If you can solve it then you are, according to Einstein, in the top 2% of intelligent people in the world.
[The answer can be found at the end of this post...no peeking now...]
In 1933 Einstein emigrated to the USA and settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked at the Institute for Advanced Study (other famous residents there include Von Neumann and Oppenheimer) until his death in 1955. The entrance to the Institute bears his name now (Einstein Drive) and if you drive down that road you will get to the institute itself:
Sadly this was as close as I dared get as, unlike Princeton University campus, the area is private and I’ve learned not to argue with those in positions of authority in the US.
Unfortunately during my visit Mercer Street was closed to traffic otherwise I would have been able to see Einstein’s old house, now a US National Historic Landmark:
Little did Einstein realize that over 50 years later people would still associate the word “House” with the Princeton campus. Today the Frist Building is used to portray the fictional Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in the TV series “House”:
Perhaps this link could form the basis for a new theory of relativity?....
[For those of you who want to check your solution, the answer to the riddle is: The coffee-drinking, Prince Cigar-smoking German in the green house owns the fish.]
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The beer that made Milwaukee famous was Schlitz, but to be fair that was according to Schlitz themselves:
As an aside, there’s no truth to the popular rumor that their beer caused digestive problems which led to the phrase “I’ve got the Schlitz today”.
As you can see from the above advertisement it has been a few years since the famous sales slogan was popular, back in the days when it was not considered unusual to show men as the workers and women as the people who filled the refrigerator full of beer.
I strongly recommend if you plan to visit Milwaukee (Although I’m not sure why anyone would plan to visit Milwaukee) don’t go in December. If you must go at this time make sure you go prepared - plan as if you are trekking across the Arctic with Ranulph Fiennes - During my visit it was -20 degrees centigrade (including wind chill factor).
These days the only major brewer in Milwaukee is Miller but as with the rest of the US there are lots of smaller breweries including the Horny Goat Brewing Company.
The Horny Goat has a very small list of brews, as can be seen below, but they are all good (yes, I did try them all):
I’m not sure the Horny Goat will ever become famous though. Its location is second only to Area 51 for places in the US that are hard to find on a map. It turns out that they call this location the Horny Goat Hideaway - very apt.
My guide for the early part of the evening managed to deliver me to the location and for a while I thought I was being taken to have some concrete shoes fitted as we turned off I41 and into an area that would have made people from Salford (pre-upgrade) shudder:
But despite appearances, there was indeed a bar in this area (that’s it on the left of the picture below, in an old pump house):
With hindsight, although the beer was good I’m not sure I can recommend going to a bar in the middle of nowhere, alone with no form of transport, especially when its -20 degrees centigrade outside. But what else can you do? Who’ll fill your refrigerator with Hopped Up ‘N’ Horny while you are out at work?...