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Is this Dana Rohrabacher’s car?

ca-46-license-plate

The driver of this car changed lanes abruptly in front of me in heavy traffic on K Street this afternoon. As you can see, it’s registered in California and bears a license plate marked “U.S. CONGRESS 46.”

Does Rep. Dana Rohrabacher drive a green Oldsmobile Aurora?

As far as I can tell, it is — or should be — his car. The California Department of Motor Vehicles says this of such licenses:

The number represents the congressional district. The small “A,” when present, indicates a second vehicle owned by a member of Congress. A small “R,” when present indicates a retired member of Congress. A small “1″ after “R,” indicates a second vehicle owned by a retired member of Congress.

There are no small letters or numbers next to the “46″ above, so this appears to be Rohrabacher’s primary automobile. I didn’t get a better look at the driver than what’s visible in the photo, so I can’t confirm the congressman was behind the wheel.

If it is Rohrabacher’s car, he’s had it since at least 2000, when Space.com published an article that began thus:

A sign above the congressional office door of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher sums up his mindset: “Fighting for freedom and having fun.”

That might help explain why the California Republican, who loves a good battle over space issues on Capitol Hill, was cruising his district’s scenic coastline in his Buick Aurora recently when a reporter reached him by cell phone.

Case closed!

Postscript: if I’m ever unlucky enough to be a member of Congress, I certainly will not pay extra to have a license plate that invites bloggers with too much time on their hands to investigate my identity when I make a questionable decision on the road. California’s DMV charges legislators $12 for the privilege of announcing themselves to drivers behind them.

Posted April 05, 2009 by Will § Observations • Comments (1)

Past performance and future results

Ladies and gentlemen, the starting pitchers for your 2009 Pittsburgh Pirates!

Career ERA and ERA+:

Maholm’s career ERA+ of 100 means he is a perfectly average major league pitcher. All the other guys have been worse.

Posted April 04, 2009 by Will § Observations • Comments (3)

Can’t go wrong

Lindsey says I’m “lobbying for Iron City to become the next hip beer.”

It’s true. Iron City is a no-frills lager brewed in Pittsburgh since 1861 by a company that survived bankruptcy a few years ago. If you’re looking for a bland beer with a proud industrial history, look no further (and for $3 or less in the bar around the corner, the history is a bonus).

Lindsey also points to a post at A Continous Lean where Miller High Life gets much-deserved support, and I can’t argue with it. Here’s why:

The YouTube user graffiti62 has done the world a great service by posting a few dozen of these old ads. Do yourself a favor one night: buy a six-pack of the Champagne of Beers and watch them all.

But also, please start asking for Iron City at your local dive.

Posted April 03, 2009 by Will § Observations • Comments Off

Going home again makes good sense

One of my parents’ friends told me a story a few years ago about moving home to Pittsburgh for what he expected to be a few months after graduate school before going to New York to start his life. But then an illness stalled him, and then he met his wife (who’d had big-city ideas, too), and 30 years later I sat in their suburban living room, where we agreed that it’s never any twentysomething’s dream to end up in Pittsburgh.

But maybe it is, or could be.

Here are some anecdotes about my friends from high school:

Ian bought a house in Pittsburgh last month, having spent most of the previous five years in Las Vegas and Washington.

Max, who’s in law school in Ann Arbor following stints in Boston and New York, told me recently that he’ll probably take the Pennsylvania bar exam.

Jessica, who has lived mostly in New York since 2000, told me she can see herself ending up in Pittsburgh when it’s time for kids and mortgages and all that.

Here’s some data:

The difference in housing prices between Pittsburgh and New York/Washington is absurdly large. Trulia’s home price “heat map” for Pittsburgh features a scale from $58,000 to “$136K and up”; Washington’s scale begins at “236K and below.” New York starts around a million.

Here’s some more:

The seven-county Pittsburgh metro area lost almost 3,000 people last year, but new Census Bureau figures show that the region’s long-term population drain could be coming to an end.

University of Pittsburgh economist Chris Briem said what’s most interesting is that the gap between the number of people moving out and moving in closed considerably between 2007 and 2008, from 3,351 to 708.

The closing gap is probably due to Pittsburgh faring better than surrounding metro areas in the early months of the recession, which began in December 2007, he said. If so, then the number of people moving into the metro area could exceed the number moving out this year, the first time that would have happened since the early 1990s.

…

During the mid- to late 1990s, Pittsburgh lost population even though its economy was doing well because other places were booming, Briem said.

“If you were young and mobile, there were some great wages to be made in some of these places,” he said.

The question among economists was whether those booms were sustainable, and the answer appears to be that they weren’t, he added.

Posted April 01, 2009 by Will § Observations • Comments (4)

God is a vain ad wizard

I’ve noticed that “God” has leased some space on Washington metrobuses to run an ad that says, “Why believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake.” Humanist associations in the United States and Britain have been running ads using similar words for a few months (“Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake”), and God’s ads are apparently a response to them.

God’s argument is question-begging nonsense, since you’d have to believe in him to accept that he created or loved anything. But I’m more interested in the meaning of his comma. Let’s look at the statement again:

Why believe? Because I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake.

If I understand God’s intent, the comma sets “for goodness’ sake” apart as an interjection to express his exasperation at having to explain himself to us for the thousandth time. Who can blame him? He’s been working on this for millennia, and he’s still going around asserting his existence to transit riders and bystanders in major cities.

There’s a second possibility. Maybe “for goodness’ sake” is his reason for creating and loving. If that’s the case, God’s ad contradicts itself. Someone who did something solely for the sake of goodness would be unlikely to purchase mass-visibility advertisements to claim credit.

Either way, his decision to spend money on ads just to promote himself is kind of tacky. Campaign season is over.

Posted March 04, 2009 by Will § Observations • Comments (2)