This is easily my favorite article of the year (lgt Radar Magazine).

In the late ’90s, pop-culture historian Bill Geerhart had a little too much time on his hands and a surfeit of stamps. So, for his own entertainment, the then-unemployed thirtysomething launched a letter-writing campaign to some of the most powerful and infamous figures in the country, posing as a curious 10-year-old named Billy.

The most interesting responses by far are from prominant serial killers. My favorite nugget of advice came from Charles Manson:

Find out why the L.A. Times hasn’t sent my newspaper —Charles Manson

I also have to admire Richard Ramirez’s logo & letterhead. That’s high quality brand management, usually something serial killers don’t take the time to maintain. 

The letters remind me of a book my friend Marty recommended to me years ago: Idiot Letters by Paul Rosa. Funny book.

Evie, the kids and I were driving home from a fine dinner at Chick ‘fil A and saw this truck on 71st St. here in Tulsa. I grabbed Evie’s iPhone and snapped a picture of it.

I recoginized the company’s name from the copyright notice at the bottom of Google Maps, like you see below. (Why stuff like this gets stuck in my mind, I can’t tell you…)

CNN.com published an article about the company in 2006, in the article they mention their fleet of trucks that drive around collecting map data

Inside a locked metal box in the back of the SUV, all the changes were recorded in a laptop computer hooked up to the SUV. The only unusual things visible from the outside of the SUV were a small white cone on top housing a high-powered satellite receiver and magnetic “Navteq” signs on the doors. The signs could be removed to allow the SUV to travel in areas where commercial traffic isn’t supposed to go.

One thing that I think is curious are the cameras that are in the cone on top. They’re not mentioned in the CNN article (or seen in the accompanying picture). Perhaps Navteq is also collecting picture data like Google’s Street View?

1. Haven’t we all faced this one as parents? Mom wants the kid to join one gang, dad wants the kid to join another gang, dad threatens to kill mom at the video store where she works. It’s a universal story. 
2. I think the University of Iowa is not going to have an incredibly hard time finding pot smokers (in a college town) to assist with their proposed clinical trial studying marijuana’s anesthetic properties.
3. Clue #1 that your Honor Code is not getting off to a good start: It is found out that the committee to draft said Honor Code has simply copied another school’s Code word-for-word without attribution.
4. Best random wikipedia find of the month: songs that mention Oklahoma

If you’ve never seen tilt-shift photography before, take a minute and look at this slide show from the magazine Portfolio. I first saw this technique years ago from this helicopter pilot’s page. He took these pictures over Mexico City.

It really is amazing how it makes everything look so model-like. Wikipedia has a good breakdown of why this happens.

There’s an old internet joke that goes Google: “French Military Victories” and you’ll get the typical Google suggestion – did you mean “French Military Defeats?” Of course we all know that since Napoleon there have been more Maginot Lines and Battles for Algeria than conquests, but did you know that the French did a pretty great job of taking down a very worthy adversary…. Greenpeace?

The French have always had an affinity for nuclear power (80% of their country’s power comes from nuclear plants). They are also a military nuclear power, in the early 1980′s the French were testing some new warheads on Moruroa atoll. Greenpeace was making life difficult for the testing, so the French Intelligence Service “Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure” (intimidating isn’t it?) decided to sink Greenpeace’s boat. 

Well, they did sink the ship, but they accidentally killed someone also… so not exactly the proudest moment for the French. It turned out to be a public relations nightmare, you can read more about the whole story on Wikipedia. 

I wonder if you can order Freedom Fries in the Greenpeace cafeteria?

• Apple TV  

We’ve loved our Apple TV since we got it a year or so ago. We have loaded a lot of family movies onto it, along with a lot of music. A whole lot of nights have been spent watching Sam dance to music on this thing. Since then, they’ve updated the software to version 2. The biggest change is now you can download movies to rent on the box. Evie and I have gone nuts for this and watched like 12 movies since its been available. We cancelled our Netflix subscription and end up watching one or two movies a week off the box (last night was 3:10 to Yuma). The HD movies look good, but Evie and I always disagree whether that’s worth the extra dollar.

• Monster Jam

My son Sam is absolutely nuts for trucks. We’ve spent hundreds on Thomas the Train rails & trains, only to see him choose to play with one dollar hot wheels trucks! One morning we were watching monster trucks on TV and his reaction made me get online to find out when the next show was coming to town.

We saw the show over at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, and it didn’t disappoint Sam. His only real problem was that we made him wear the ear phones you see below ($20 at the merchandise stand!) during the show. They put on a good show, but there was way too much product placement.  They interviewed one driver who said “We had some real problems with our truck last night, but we ran over to Advance Auto Parts and they had everything we needed to fix us up.” Yeah…. right…..

• Amazon.com Kindle 

I got my Kindle for Christmas from my parents. I wanted an e-book reader like this for a long time. The other main competitor is Sony’s eBook reader. I’m glad that I waited for the Kindle. The real feature is the wireless connection which allows you to go directly to Amazon’s web store and purchase books on the fly. It also allows for newspaper and magazine subscriptions, so I pay 14 bucks per month to get the NY Times delivered every morning. 

 In many ways, its a first generation product, it was really buggy for the first few months and you have to get used to the page turn time. It really reminds me of my first iPod. Back when I got my iPod in 2002, you couldn’t download podcasts easily, I had to use Music Match to connect with my Windows computers, the screen was an odd soft orange and black. Compare it now to my newest iPod, or even Evie’s iPhone the old model seems positively primitive. I when I have my 3rd or 4th Kindle, I’ll look back at this model the same way.