Now this is interesting:

Has anyone besides me taken a GPS to the Four Corners monument? (Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico) There, in a massive monument of stone, visitors can stand atop an Official USGS bronze survey marker with an inscribed crosshair marking the exact point of contact for all four states.

Only problem is, according to my GPS, the actual Four Corners intersection is somewhere thousands of yards to the west, off in an immense deep ravine behind the Navajo trading stalls. No doubt, it would have been extremely impractical to build a road and a parking lot at the actual site (millions of dollars, drastic alteration of the landscape, and yielding a far poorer view). Is the USGS into tourism as well as geoscience?

I bet the guys who set that monument were probably Works Progress Administration in the 1930’s, and never figured on visitors having a pocket device that would catch them fudging facts.

I went to the Four Corners several months before I got my first GPS, so I can’t vouch for this. But if I’m ever in the area again, I’ll definitely have to check it out! :)

UPDATE: Here is some corroboration:

Have you ever been to the Four Corners monument where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah come together? It’s a relatively remote tourist trap of a place that’s really only good for two things: Navajo fry bread, and standing in four states at once while saying “Hey, look! I’m standing in four states at once!” The surveyors who set the states’ boundaries declared the point to be at 36° 59′ N, 109° 02′ W. And unless you own a GPS receiver you’d never know that the concrete slab proclaiming to be the Four Corners point is actually completely in Arizona. The true Four Corners point is awkwardly situated a hundred yards or so away, as my friend Roy (who does have a GPS receiver) determined. Think of all the misguided pictures of sneakers on that slab! Oh the humanity!

“We will work with [the Germans] to convince the MOO-lahs that they need to give up their NOO-kyuh-luhr ambitions.” –George W. Bush

Andrew sends along this “freaky-looking” picture of Los Angeles and Hollywood. It’s like something out of The Day After Tomorrow!

In case you haven’t heard, it’s been really, really rainy out there.

I’m a little slow on the uptake with this one, but Bea was in the newspaper last week.

Woohoo! Yay Bea! :)

Registration is required, so I’ll post the article in full (temporarily) after the jump.

(more…)

From Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird:

[A] 21-year-old student at the University of Nebraska Lincoln was killed when, not belted in, he was ejected from the back seat of an SUV in a crash; the student was prominent for his libertarian political views, including a defiant stand in the student newspaper against mandatory seatbelt laws. (He described himself as one of “a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up.”) (January) [CNN-AP, 1-18-05] [Lincoln Journal Star, 1-5-05]

He’s right. There shouldn’t be seatbelt laws. Doesn’t mean seatbelts are a bad thing…

I’ve been hired for a summer clerkship by a government agency in downtown South Bend. Woohoo!

I was actually offered this position almost two weeks ago, but I was given 14 days to decide whether to accept it, and I didn’t want to post about it until I had decided. Well, the wait is over: I accepted the job yesterday.

Here’s a picture of me (and Robbie) on the day I was offered the job. I’m wearing my “lucky tie” (it’s a map of Manhattan), which has now been responsible for two of my last three job offers:

In keeping with my standard practice — which is going to be even more important now that I’m working in the legal world, where confidentiality is obviously a big deal — I won’t be posting much about my job once I start working there. But I wanted to at least let y’all in on my good news, and clue you in on where I’ll be working this summer (and next fall, actually; they require 10-15 hours per week during the school year, which will be a time-management challenge but will also look quite good on my resume, methinks).

Barry Bonds had a bout of roid rage this morning.

The Newington High School boys basketball team clinched the CCC South championship last night. Way to go, Indians!

Glenn Reynolds observes:

My experience is that I probably agree with the Left on more issues (certainly more “social” issues) than I do with social conservatives, but the Lefties, for the most part, have very little tolerance for disagreement on anything, while the Righties tend to stress areas of agreement. I suspect that this is a more effective strategy over the long term.

Alas, that’s been my experience too. (My mother has the opposite impression, which suggests to me that this may be a generational thing. More on that in another post sometime, perhaps.)

The Left hates President Bush’s “with us or against us” attitude toward foreign policy, yet that phrase almost perfectly describes the typical lefty attitude toward ideological disagreements. (Don’t believe me? Read Daily Kos. Or just read the comments on my Lieberman post.) The Left needs to change that attitude, and fast, or the Democratic Party will go the way of the Whigs in my lifetime.

Now it’s official: the Shiite has hit the fan:

Ibrahim Jafari, a Muslim scholar and leader of Iraq’s oldest Islamist party, was unanimously nominated as prime minister Tuesday by the Shiite-led alliance that carried the country’s historic elections last month, and his confirmation by the national assembly seemed all but assured.

The selection of Jafari opens the way for the first Shiite-led government in Iraq’s modern existence, and it signals a dramatic change for the Arab world, where Sunni Muslims are dominant. It also puts the United States in the position of providing its armed forces to protect a government led by an Islamist with ties to Iran.

Jafari says Iraq won’t be the next Iran, but some are skeptical:

The soft-spoken physician who spent nine years as an exile in Iran has lately been at pains to appear as a moderate on the issue of religion in government. He and other members of his United Iraqi Alliance slate have stressed that they have differences with the Iranian theocratic model and that Iraqis need a government that will represent all groups.

“Iraq is actually made of various populations from all nationalities, sects and religions,” Jafari said in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times here. “Nobody can rule Iraq unless he would walk alongside all Iraqis and represent all the Iraqi people.”

But some Iraqis and foreign observers note that Jafari heads Iraq’s oldest Islamist party, and they worry he will seek to impose a more religious government than he lets on. They note that he has been lukewarm to the U.S. presence in Iraq and has said he would like to see U.S. troops withdraw once Iraqi forces are trained. [Um, isn’t that President Bush’s position, too? -ed.]

They also recall that the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini initially disavowed political motives after an Islamic revolution overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979. “All the experts got it wrong in Iran too,” said a senior U.S. diplomat here with considerable experience in the region.

Boi From Troy, in Paris, reports that his mind is playing musical tricks on him:

Song going through my head as I walked on to the Ile-de-la-Cité: Cheer, Cheer for Ol’ Notre Dame

Could it be? Another Irish Trojan in the making? :)

The Queen won’t attend her son’s wedding to “Princess Consort” Camilla.

Today I came across this article about increasing the retirement age. At the moment, I express no opinion, though I reserve the right to do so later. Thoughts, anyone?

Now that Saddam is out of power, I knew the “axis of evil” needed a new member… but I was thinking maybe Syria or China, not Massachusetts.

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Roe v Wade. Apparently McCorvey was attempting to have the original case reheard due to changed circumstances.