961...Ode To Mickey Dee's And tic

A cut and paste job from a New York Times blog that tells us that in the lower 48 states the farthest one can get from the golden arches is less than 150 miles. I would guess that in Canada, if one follows the Trans Canada highway, the number is similar.

McSparseness,’ U.S.A.

Today’s idea: The place in the contiguous United States where you can get farthest away from a McDonald’s is in remote northwestern South Dakota, a visual artist and mapmaker figures.

Stephen Van Worley

Commerce “To gauge the creep of cookie-cutter commercialism, there’s no better barometer than McDonald’s,” writes Stephen Von Worley [sic], a blogger and visual artist who says he came to this conclusion on seeing golden arches on a dispiriting drive down Interstate 5 in central California.

And so it dawned on him that to locate the antithesis of such strip-mall sameness, it makes sense to find the remotest point from any McDonald’s in the lower 48 states, as the crow flies. And to do that you need to plot the locations of each of the roughly 13,000 of them across the land, as Von Worley does in the illuminating (some would say alarming) map above.

[No matter, I may be World Famous but I ain't Bill Gates, he hee]

As the map suggests, you then need to go west, young crassness detester. Von Worley writes:
For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer. Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!

Suffer a Big Mac Attack out there, and you’re hurtin’ for certain! [Weather-Sealed]

WFDS

933...William Safire Leaves The Planet

Reported widely, William Safire, conservative political columnist and language savant, died today at a hospice.

The reported cause of death is of pancreatic cancer.

His On Language columns ran until two weeks ago.

A Pulitzer Prize winner in '78, Mr. Safire, wrote a semi-weekly political column in the New York Times from 1973 to 2005. He wrote an erudite and opinionated series of articles, ultimately creating a body of work that he described as libertarian conservative.

Say a prayer.

WFDS

411...It Took You Long Enough Senator

Bulletin from the New York Times:

The Minnesota Supreme Court has just issued its long-awaited judgment in the Senate race, declaring that Democrat Al Franken is the winner. And Norm Coleman, his opponent, at 4 p.m., announced that he had conceded and contacted Mr. Franken.

Wonder what Tom Davis thinks about this?

WFDS

228...Do They Get The New York Times In Heaven?

If they do, The Greatest Canadian [at least according the CBC], Tommy Douglas, must be smiling.

First thing that popped out of my copy of the New York Times [only N I N E dollars, plus tax, at Boushey's, Elgin Street, Ottawa---by the way that is more than a cooked chicken---N I N E] was the lead that President Obama's is going to step up his role in pushing for health care reform. He had previously said that he would leave the contentious issue, and why universal health care is contentious is beyond me, to Congress. Instead President Obama will give speeches and conduct town-hall style meetings to push his preferred policies, including government-run insurance coverage. Nice step, four or five or six decades too late but, better late than never.

By the way, N I N E dollars. No comics. Quite the racket, eh?

WFDS

183...Peter Van Loan, Please, Snap Them On

Your testicles that is.

Story from www.CBC.ca this morning stating that Canadian border guards abandoned their posts early Monday at a U.S. border crossing at Cornwall, Ont., after talks broke down with Mohawk officials over the arming of border guards.

First off, why is the Conservative government so afraid of 400/200 angry non Canadians? Mohawk leaders from the Akwesasne Mohawk territory, which straddles the borders of Quebec, Ontario and New York, say they don't want the guards to be armed because it would violate their sovereignty and increase the likelihood of violent confrontations. If they, the Mohawks are a sovereign nation, and I will give them that, why are they dictating what our [bigger by the way, we have an army and everything] sovereign nation can do to protect our borders?

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan's office said the issue is out of its hands.

Whoah, repeat that.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan's office said the issue is out of its hands.

One more time.

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan's office said the issue is out of its hands.

It is not your problem PVL, well, if it is not your problem, who's problem is it?

Ask your legislative assistant where he keeps your testicles Petey, snap them on and get to work.

WFDS

157...Who Is More Credible?FoxTV/New York Times

Entertainment Weekly reports online that "The New York Times reports that AT&T may have influenced the outcome of American Idol by providing free text-messaging services at parties organized by fans of Kris Allen, who won the competition last week. Representatives of AT&T, a corporate sponsor of the show, reportedly taught Allen fans how to "power text" at the parties, allowing them to send multiple messages with a push of a button. Questions remain as to whether power texting violates American Idol voting rules."

Denials all around.

Imagine that.

WFDS