The Stonecipher Report

Some Valuable Recent Online Links Worth Reading

Pieces on Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Media Matters, and Other News and Blog Sites Provide Great Liberal / Progressive Info and Ammo – and Have Been the Valuable Basis of Recent Material For Radio Shows...

Posted By: Michael Sweeney

July 1, 2010

I know there’s been more radio than website content lately…and that might continue for the next couple of weeks, too, since I’ve got 6-1/2 hours of combined airtime next Monday-Tuesday…and then another 5-1/2 hours the beginning of the following week – lots of material to prepare for all that! And, connected to that, I thought I’d provide some summaries of and links to a variety of interesting recent online pieces that have definitely fueled some content on both The Stonecipher Report and the And, in the News… radio broadcasts.

[Plus – a quick note: My thanks to all of you who contacted me about the difficulties (with buffering and other streaming issues) in hearing both the iTunes AND whpk.org online live versions of the radio shows last week. I have informed station management and technicians, and they hope it will all be resolved by this coming week’s shows…]

Random Hits: I'm Looking for a Manitoban

We haven't done a random hit since my drive through Montana a few weeks back, but I've been meaning to get to it, and I was inspired today when I saw, yet again, a small Canadian flag right on the border of Manitoba and Nunavut on the Feedjit map.

That same flag has popped up in the same place several times over the course of the past couple of months, so I am guessing that someone up there is a regular reader of The Stonecipher Report.

First of all, whoever you are, it's great to have you.  Thanks for stopping by, not just once, but many times.  All of us here at TSR appreciate it.

Second, for the sake of my excessive curiosity, please email me at StoneTSR@gmail.com and answer a few questions for me.  And for the sake of the readers, I would love permission to post your responses.

Question #1: Who are you?  Do I know you?

Question #2: How did you come across The Stonecipher Report?  I suspect that if you're not someone I already know, that you stumbled across us when I posted Random Hits: Iqqluit, Canada.  Am I right?

Question #3: Do you really live where that flag is?  Because on Google Earth the precise spot your flag appears on seems to be surrounded by entirely unihabited and rugged land and hundreds of lakes, which presumably hold very cold water.

Question #4: What in the name of God do you do up there?  Not just for a living, but I mean in general...besides of course, read The Stonecipher Report.

Question #5: What's it like living up there? 

I figure that's plenty of questions to keep you occupied if you're kind enough to answer them, so thanks in advance, thanks again for checking out TSR and we all look forward to hearing from you.

- Stonecipher

An Update From Twin Bridges, Montana

Posted By: Stonecipher

July 9, 2008

After almost two weeks I finally got out of Idaho today.  The car is in tip-top shape and I'm back on the road, headed towards Butte, but I'll probably try to get a little farther tonight.

In the mean time I am stopped for a late dinner here in Twin Bridges, Montana.  I saw a billboard about 20 miles back that advertised a restaurant called "The Shack" and it mentioned there was WiFi.  This was a no-brainer.  First of all it's Montana and it's called "The Shack" and second, Wi-Fi.  This might be the only wireless internet signal for fifty miles in any direction.

Anyway, I was planning on just checking email, checking traffic on the side and reading some news while I ate, but I have been waiting for my waitress to drop the check for about twenty minutes now.  So I figured I would drop the TSR readers a line.

If you come by tomorrow morning looking for my article, you may only find this post instead.  The plan is to find a hotel with Wi-Fi, but the options may be limited here in The Treasure State.  We'll see.  I've got a few hours of driving left in me and two Red Bulls for fuel. 

The sun just set here, it's about 10:00 PM.  That's one thing I love about being on the Western edge of a time zone like we are here.  San Francisco was the same way, but being quite a bit farther north, Idaho Falls and Twin Bridges, Montana have even longer days during the summer.  It's great.

The drawback is that I'm about to embark on the scariest stretch of my trip from Twin Bridges to Butte: Two lane highway, no lights, probably no other traffic.  Anyone who knows me knows I grew up as a city boy and one of my greatest fears in life (aside from flying) is being in an empty cornfield at night, when no one else is around...that shit is scary.

While I will not encounter any cornfields on this trip it'll be sufficiently creepy enough to freak me out.  But once I'm in Butte it'll be all interstate and I'll be fine. 

By the way, still no waitress with my check.  The food was real good though, and the people are extremely friendly.  Not like some other middle-of-no-where spots where everyone stares at you because they've never seen you before.

Just to kill a little more time until I can pay and get out of here, here's a few thoughts from my drive this evening:

- I always wondered why Idaho's northern border with Montana was shaped the way it is.  It isn't a straight line, but there is no river or other body of water there.  Today I found out why.  It follows the Continental Divide.  Interesting, I had no idea.  The border was at an elevation of almost 7,000 feet.

- Montana is sort of like Nevada in that it has casinos all over, including in gas stations.  I knew that poker was legal here, and that many bars also have poker rooms, but I did not know that they were all over the place.  Actually, I haven't been in one of these gas station casinos yet, so maybe they aren't full blown casinos, but they advertised as if they were.  This will require some further investigation.

Update on my bill:  Still not here.  One bank of lights has been shut off.  This is getting amusing.

- Montana is gorgeous.  So is Idaho, but the up here the Mountains look geologically younger (pointy tops and jagged edges, but they're surrounded by rolling smoothed out hills.  My guess is they're sand dunes that eventually had grass grow over them, but I'm not sure.  I'll have to ask Stonecipher Sr. about that, he'll know.  Whatever the case, this place is physically stunning.

Alright, hope you enjoyed a few notes from Montana, and I hope I can get a bill or a free meal before they lock these doors for the night.

I'll report on the fate of my bill as soon as I have the chance.

Oh, and I hope there are no typos or anything, cause I am not spell checking or grammar checking, no time for that nonsense.  So hope it's alright. 

Ok...uhh...smoke coming out of the kitchen...

Not terrible yet, but more than there should be. 

Ok, time to sign off so I can get out of here before the place burns down.

Random Hits: Random Euraisian Hits

No specific spot for today’s Random Hit, but a quick look at the feedjit map this morning showed that The Stonecipher Report is big in Asia and Europe.

As of 9:00 AM PST our last 100 visits have come from all over the world, including the following Asian and Middle Eastern countries:

Thailand

Nepal

India

Kazakhstan

Dubai

Taipei

Kuwait

Japan

Israel

We also had hits from the following European countries:

England

France

Germany

Romania

Slovenia

Switzerland

The Netherlands

Deserving a special note within the continent of Europe, today, we swept the Scandinavian nations, going 4-for-4 with hits from:

Denmark

Norway

Sweden

Finland

It’s also worth noting that we received two hits, from two different cities in Tasmania.

Altogether, about 42% of our recent traffic has been from outside the U.S. I’m fascinated by that. The internet is so weird.

Random Hits: Rosario, Argentina

Last Friday night some friends of mine took me to an Argentinian Steakhouse for my birthday. It was absolutely delicious, and I recommend it to anyone.

If you’re going to be in the Bay Area, head to North Beach and check out El Raigon. I would also recommend having your friends pay for you. It tastes better that way, thanks everyone!

Anyhow, when I checked out the feedjit map today I saw a hit from Argentina and with some amazing Argentinian Cuisine on my mind, I couldn’t pass it up.

So today’s Random Hit is from Rosario, Santa Fe, Argentina.

Rosario is Argentina’s Second City, behind Buenos Aires and is best known worldwide as the birthplace and childhood home of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

Although it ranks fourth in population, behind Buenos Aires, Cordoba and San Justo; Rosario is the second most important city in the country due to the combination of it’s large population and it’s power as an export center.

It sits on the bank of the Parana River, which also serves as the border between the Rosario’s province on Santa Fe and Entre Rios Province.

Located about 200 miles to the Northwest of Buenos Aires, it is home to almost 1,000,000 residents.

Much like it’s Second City counterpart in the United States, Chicago, Rosario is home to two major teams who compete in the nation’s favorite pastime. In Chicago it is the Cubs versus the White Sox in baseball and in Rosario it’s Rosario Central and Newell’s Old Boys competing in soccer. The two teams have won four and five national championships respectively.  And much like the Cubs/Sox rivalry in The United States' Second City, the Rosario Central/N.O.B. rivalry is intense and heated.

The most bizarre thing about the city, however, is not what is inside, but what lies across the river: absolutely nothing.

The grassy lowlands of the Parana Delta stretch for dozens of miles to the east of the river. It is virtually empty between Rosario and the Entre Rios city of Victoria.

Rosario and Victoria are connected by a 35 mile-long highway, which was built in 2003. Prior to then, it was impossible to travel by car directly from Rosario to Victoria. And since the two have been connected Victoria has flourished.

In 2004, Victoria, which is home to about 29,000 people, built a large new casino and focused on promoting tourism. Today, the casino is a hotspot for gamblers nation-wide and it is helping the tourism trade boom.

Finally, another bizarre note about Rosario, the people in Rosario are known to play a word game called Rosarigasino. Historians say the game was created by prisoners in Rosario to communicate with each other without the guards being able to understand.

The way it works is you take the letters ‘gas’ and insert them into a word after the stressed vowel, and then repeating that vowel before adding on the rest of the word.

So in Rosarigasino, Rosario becomes Rosarigasino. Also, the entire novel "Don Quixote de la Mancha" was translated and published as Don Quijogasote de la Magasancha." Weird.

Thanks for checking out another Random Hit. And as always, send us an e-mail at StoneTSR@gmail.com if you reside in one of our random hit locations. We’d love to hear from you and even have you write a piece for TSR about your home town.

Random Hits: Elkhart, Indiana

Shout out to Elkhart, IN!"

For my first Random Hits post, I would like to give a shout out to the person in Elkart, IN who stopped by to check out The Stonecipher Report.

One of my stops on the campaign trail was Elkhart and it has a special place in my heart. The newspaper there is The Truth and one day during my visit the headline read, "Obama Takes it to the Bank" This was in reference, I believe to his games of P-I-G he played with some of the locals.

One of my favorite areas was where the streets are named after the stops on the Monopoly board. Including the railroads, but I don’t recall seeing a street named "jail."

My last stop in Indiana was Elkhart. The voters did not wish to tell me who they were supporting for President, but as my co-worker and I started to drive away someone shouted out the window, "We are voting for Obama!" My co-worker and I shouted, "Hurray!" and waved as we drove away.

Obama went on to win that county. Thank you, Elkhart, IN for that and for some good memories.

BossE Stone

Random Hits: Iqaluit, Canada

Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada is the big winner!

Iqaluit has the distinct honor of being the very first place featured on The Stonecipher Report's Random Hits Page.

Iqaluit was, in fact, the inspiration for the random hits page when it popped up on the feedjit map sometime on Friday here at TSR.

I couldn't help myself when I saw that little red dot waaaaay up there in Canada.  I was so curious to find out what was up there, if anything.  So without further ado, here's what I learned after doing a little research on Iqaluit, Canada:

Originally known as Frobisher Bay, on January 1, 1987 the town officially became known as Iqaluit in order to reflect the traditional name of the place given by the area's native Inuit population.

With only 6,184 residents as of the 2006 Canadian Census, Iqaluit is the smallest capital city in Canada.  It serves as the capital of Nunavut Territory.

If you've never heard of Nunavut, but you thought you still remembered your Canadian grade school geography don't worry, Nunavut has only been around since 1999.  On April 1st of that year Canada redrew it's map and separated Nunavut out of the Northwest Territories.

Iqaluit was founded in 1942 as an American Airbase.  The population grew rapidly in the 1950s during the construction of the Distant Early Warning Line (DEW Line).  The DEW Line was a system of radar stations, mostly located in far Northern Canada set up to detect Russian bombers during the Cold War.

The DEW Line, however, quickly became obsolete with the introduction of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM).  By 1963 the U.S. had no reason to stay in Iqaluit, but the town carried on.

Today, the City of Iqaluit has the interesting distinction of being the only Capital City on the North American continent that is not accessible by highway.  The only way in is by boat, which is subject to icy conditions much of the year, or by air.

The runway at Iqaluit Airport is enormous, and it is rumored to be an emergency landing place for the Space Shuttle, but a quick check at globalsecurity.org debunks this rumor.  As a side note, my former hometown of Lincoln, NE is actually an emergency landing site.

For the record, while Iqaluit sounds like an interesting place, I could never, in a million years, live there.  It is too damn cold.

The average high during the summer is in the low 50s, and the highest temperature recorded there at any time in the past 35 years was 79 degrees Fahrenheit.  Most of the year, however, average lows are below freezing and six months of the year the average low is below zero.  Sounds awful.   

I don't know how you people up there do it, but if you're willing to put up with that kind of cold there must be something you love about it.  So if you are one of those people who does live in Iqaluit, let us know.  Leave a comment or send us an email at StoneTSR@gmail.com.  If you want to write a piece about it, we may even feature it right here at TSR.

Thanks for checking out our first Random Hit, check back regularly to see if your community is featured on the TSR Random Hits Page.