It's pretty cool. I like stuff like that. Aachen, Germany, Charlemagne's favorite palace site, has a see-through reliquary with the arm bones of Charlemagne in its cathedral (which he had built 1200 years ago). The rest of him is there as well...
Insurance and repairs cost a lot? I doubt it. Model A parts are pretty cheap, lots of stuff is reproduced and the repairs are quite easy. These are tough bugger cars designed to be maintained by their owners.
As for the insurance, it says the owner owns a couple dozen cars and he mostly drives this one to shows. That stated, he probably has collector car insurance, which is very inexpensive as long as the value of the car is relatively low (like it is for a Model A like this). As long as he only puts a couple thousand miles a year on it, collector car insurance is the way to go. Probably $200 / yr or so. I own the same 1965 car (worth about $10K ... likely similar to his Model A) I owned in high school (25 years ago), and I collector insure it for about $200 a year. No big deal.
The guy sounds cool and I'm glad he has a great-grandson who understands the family-history value of the car. Hopefully he will someday take care of it as well as his ggf.
"Read Print" and the like are nice (I read the whole canon of Sherlock Holmes through Gutenberg once), but nothing beats Google Books when it comes to public domain literature.
1. At this point I think they've got all the classics, plus lot of lesser known works from famous authors. 2. Gobs of stuff from minor authors. 3. Lots and lots of period non-fiction 4. These are all photographic scans directly from the original books. This means that original typography, illustations, footnotes, indices, are all preserved. 5. Everything is savable as PDFs.
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
N.B. - To avoid getting samples of current books offered for sale, make sure to click "Full View Books" radio button.
This is a neat site. As someone who lives in a nearly 200 year old house, I would not sleep easy with the "Bonfire Sound", though! It did sound realistic, but a little too realistic for my restful slumber. Talk about nightmare-inducing! :-)
Frankly, I'm surprised (and a bit skeptical) we faired as well as we did...
To be sure, the poll wasn't conducted very well, or at least the article that reports its results was poorly written. The poll should be structured such that it counts people who COMPLETED books. Asking folks if they "read books" is taken by many to include "reading from books", which isn't the same thing.
I think religious works are fine to be counted as long as the survey results aren't skewed (and I think they may be) by someone occasionally reading a few passages or a chapter out of the Bible (or whatever) and counting that as "reading a book last year". Even secular humanists could benefit from reading the Bible as literature, but a chapter here and there isn't good enough to count as "I read a book last year". Decent pollsters should have realized that their poll would be susceptible to such skews and would have worked hard at structuring the questions to avoid that. The article gives no evidence that they did.
"With only a flimsy plastic car to protect him from the gathering hungry natives, Chumley anxiously awaited the return of his friends Tennessee Tuxedo and Mr. Whoopee... Looks like this is the end... "
I don't want to dig myself into this too deeply, but a big reason that "Americans don't want low-paying jobs, etc." is true is because they can earn a better living much more easily simply by being on the dole.
In days of old (check out photos from rural America in the 1930s on the shorpy.com blog - you may need a wake up call on how things were like then) Americans would work those low-skill jobs. They worked and they worked hard, or their familes went hungry. Then socialism came in with a myriad of "programs". Although many defend their existence as "safety nets", the fact of the matter is that anyone with a modicum of street smarts can manipulate the system and hook into a myriad of town, county, state, and federal programs to net a whole lot more $ than they would ever do at that tomato-picking job -- and all at a lot less work!
Even less educated / "poor" people behave rationally and "maximizing" in such a situation... They sign up for the dole and they tell their friends how to work the system best as well. There's still a need to fill the vacant positions, and illegal aliens are willing to fill the bill (being rational and maximizing themselves, they know the work/$ ratio is better than their next best opportunity).
If you want solve illegal immigration, stop paying Americans to sit on their behinds.
As for the insurance, it says the owner owns a couple dozen cars and he mostly drives this one to shows. That stated, he probably has collector car insurance, which is very inexpensive as long as the value of the car is relatively low (like it is for a Model A like this). As long as he only puts a couple thousand miles a year on it, collector car insurance is the way to go. Probably $200 / yr or so. I own the same 1965 car (worth about $10K ... likely similar to his Model A) I owned in high school (25 years ago), and I collector insure it for about $200 a year. No big deal.
The guy sounds cool and I'm glad he has a great-grandson who understands the family-history value of the car. Hopefully he will someday take care of it as well as his ggf.
1. At this point I think they've got all the classics, plus lot of lesser known works from famous authors.
2. Gobs of stuff from minor authors.
3. Lots and lots of period non-fiction
4. These are all photographic scans directly from the original books. This means that original typography, illustations, footnotes, indices, are all preserved.
5. Everything is savable as PDFs.
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
N.B. - To avoid getting samples of current books offered for sale, make sure to click "Full View Books" radio button.
To be sure, the poll wasn't conducted very well, or at least the article that reports its results was poorly written. The poll should be structured such that it counts people who COMPLETED books. Asking folks if they "read books" is taken by many to include "reading from books", which isn't the same thing.
I think religious works are fine to be counted as long as the survey results aren't skewed (and I think they may be) by someone occasionally reading a few passages or a chapter out of the Bible (or whatever) and counting that as "reading a book last year". Even secular humanists could benefit from reading the Bible as literature, but a chapter here and there isn't good enough to count as "I read a book last year". Decent pollsters should have realized that their poll would be susceptible to such skews and would have worked hard at structuring the questions to avoid that. The article gives no evidence that they did.
Straight talk from Sid.
"With only a flimsy plastic car to protect him from the gathering hungry natives, Chumley anxiously awaited the return of his friends Tennessee Tuxedo and Mr. Whoopee... Looks like this is the end... "
In days of old (check out photos from rural America in the 1930s on the shorpy.com blog - you may need a wake up call on how things were like then) Americans would work those low-skill jobs. They worked and they worked hard, or their familes went hungry. Then socialism came in with a myriad of "programs". Although many defend their existence as "safety nets", the fact of the matter is that anyone with a modicum of street smarts can manipulate the system and hook into a myriad of town, county, state, and federal programs to net a whole lot more $ than they would ever do at that tomato-picking job -- and all at a lot less work!
Even less educated / "poor" people behave rationally and "maximizing" in such a situation... They sign up for the dole and they tell their friends how to work the system best as well. There's still a need to fill the vacant positions, and illegal aliens are willing to fill the bill (being rational and maximizing themselves, they know the work/$ ratio is better than their next best opportunity).
If you want solve illegal immigration, stop paying Americans to sit on their behinds.
Straight talk from Sid.
PS - the kids look cute.