How to get around London in Style and Speed

Depending on who you believe (see here, here, and here), the average driving speed in London is between 6 and 12 mph, using surface transportation, and about 20 mph below ground. You might think that the best way to speed things up would be to take a helicopter, but one limousine company can offer you a way to get there fast.

That’s right. A fire engine limosine, courtesy of stretchlimos.co.uk. Here’s the real question. Can you get them to use the sirens? Yes, with a pang of guilt that you too could contribute to someone not believing that in fact that fire engine behind behind them is saving lives, speeding through the streets of london, in an imposing fraud, perhaps sirens a’blazen. Or, perhaps you can roll up to The Old Lady’s house in search of some traces of smoke. Who knows? Maybe the Queen herself could find it faster to get around town than that old horse and carriage.

How do you spell Soviet Union today?

M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

The Wall Street Journal recently reported one of the most peculiar incidents I’ve read about in a long time: a Mississippi Supreme Court justice was ordered by the majority not to publish a dissenting opinion in what seems like a relatively pedestrian case. Dissenting opinions are nearly as important as majority opinions because first they inform us of what the other side of an issue is, and second they often turn into majority opinions of the future, either due to changes in courts or changes in law. It would be one thing for the court, by the way, to not want to reveal specific details of a case, but an entire opinion is beyond the pale.

Oh Say Can You STEAL?

America’s National Anthem is, well, a symbol of America. And so it is no small matter when someone steals it. According to NPR’s Morning Edition the Chinese have done just that, and they did so by playing a version that was arranged by a private individual named Peter Breiner. He found out about it from friends who heard them play it in that tiny itty bitty venue – an Olympics medal presentation.

File this one under the department of “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up”.

Another TSA Moron Story

We interrupt this serious consideration of our future presidents with Yet Another story of a stupid (and yet unnamed) TSA employee. In this case, an inspector attempted to break into planes on the tarmac. According to one report, the inspector “breached” seven out of nine planes. But in process he may have damaged sensitive avionics. This caused a delay O’Hare International Airport while the airline took corrective measures. This was stupid but not tragic because nobody was hurt– this time. It could have been both stupid and tragic had the inspector touched something he shouldn’t have, broken something, and contributed to the loss of life. Wouldn’t that have been rich?

The really stupid part is that it is not a secret that the overwhelming majority of effort to secure airplanes on the tarmac is devoted to keeping the wrong people off of the tarmac in the first place. That is largely not the responsibility of the airline, but that of the airport and the TSA. Once the inspector was on the tarmac and unsupervised, the game should have ended. It didn’t.

Taxis in NYC

Anyone who has ever been to New York City knows it’s a trip, and anyone who has ever taken a New York City taxi has had an adventure. We had one such adventure yesterday. We were with my grandfather in New York City. A few of us don’t walk well, and so we needed a cab to go a relatively short distance.

What you’re looking at is 2nd Ave. We were at the green dot and wanted to go to the red dot. That’s between three and four blocks. And so it’s a bit hard to imagine, but the taxi cab got lost. He figured out that he was lost when both my grandfather and I started yelling at him, “You’re going the wrong way!”

Meter off.