The ear-splitting howl of a modified muffler somewhere in the distance provides a fitting soundtrack for this post. While I have no official noise studies to prove this, I’m going to go ahead and say that Malaysia has the highest percentage of modified cars and motorbikes—modified to make them louder. [Read more…]
Archives for April 2015
The Diffidence of “Buy American”
Japanese-made cars are all I’ve ever known. From the time I first started driving at the age of 15 until now, all the cars I’ve had were made by either Honda, Toyota, or Acura (the luxury vehicle division of Honda). Until my 20s, all of them were made in the 1980s. Born in 1986, those were rather old cars for someone to be driving. [Read more…]
California, the Drought, and the Damage Done
Droughts in the land occupying the space between the 1850-drawn borders that today we call California are nothing new. Anyone who says otherwise is either uninformed or under the influence of an agenda. Armed with a measly 163-year old rainfall record, some are quick to reason that California’s most recent and widely published drought is the result of our own post-industrial revolution vices. They are dangerously wrong. [Read more…]
Local News Blues
Recently, I learned that my favorite lead female anchor for the local news station where I grew up decided to retire. She’d been anchoring since 1984, which means I have never known a time when she did not deliver the local news. As is standard American habit these days, I spent the better of my youth on the couch with my parents watching the news every weekday night at 10:00pm on the dot. [Read more…]
