Good News from New Orleans

The St. Charles streetcar line has been partially reopened, from Canal to Lee Circle.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/12/19/neworleans.streetcar.reut/index.html.

A Comment from a Colleague over Lunch

In response to the fact that I write this blog: You're one of those people, aren't you--one of those people who cares!

Been Hassled Fanning?

If you ever get stopped by railroad police and have to convince them that you're snooping around, taking pictures, etc, because you like trains, rather than because you're plotting to blow them up, it might be handy to have a card in your wallet that identifies you as a member of the BNSF's "Citizens for Rail Security". Sign up here, and you can print one out. It also has a phone number on it that you can call if you ever do see anything suspicious.

Wisdom from Unexpected Sources

Mike Nelson, of MST3K fame (and more recently, RiffTrax) was recently interviewed by Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka of SomethingAwful.

Deep in a discussion of bad movies and freaky fans was this interesting little tidbit on technology and manners:

Lowtax	People on the internet, there's something on there, as soon as you log on, that gene inside of you that makes you argue over unimportant really trivial things just kicks in and takes over your brain I think.
Nelson	It's like climbing in a car. I used to commute by bike to work. And I was convinced, if people were driving convertibles, and you could actually look into their eyes, they would not do the things that they did, to nearly kill me every time. It's just you're in your little isolated bubble, and you have all the power, and nobody will know when I cut you off.

You can listen to the whole interview, and learn Mike's nominee for absolutely worst movie of all time, here. (Be warned if you start getting drawn into SomethingAwful that there's a lot of not-work-safe material over there).