I think you could build an analogous device to work on Chicago's elevated trains. You can measure literary pressure by how many people per car are reading "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". I counted four tonight.
I think that means a storm is coming.
In Illinois, the Land of Lincoln, you can't go far without running into Abraham Lincoln statuary, and indeed, that's exactly what happened the other day when Brandi and I went in search of Mexican food in Andersonville. On the walk down, we diverted into a park so that I could take notes from a cell phone call. It turned out, there was a very large bronze Lincoln at the north end. I thought it was neat. You don't often see anything other than old Lincoln, the one stooped both by Civil War and being 4" taller than anyone else he knew, 8" with his hat on. Young Lincoln, while no more pretty, at least doesn't look like you can break him in half just by sneezing on him. Here is what Mary Todd married and became an opium addict for.
Here is a clue in the form of another photo, showing me with Brandi's bronze boyfriend. From this photo, I think you can conclude that I call it a Sling Blade, though some call it a Kaiser Blade. Mmmn-hmmn.
While in Amsterdam, I tool a couple of panoramic photos with my trusty little Canon which, coincidentally enough, comes with a panoramic function that lets you take multiple pictures to be stitched together in the image editing program of your choice (Photoshop CS3 for me). First, we see the Dam. This plus the Amstel river gives Amsterdam its name, or so I was led to believe by the canal tour. Admittedly, I was not able to hear all of this because the boat was crowded and the Spanish family near me would only stop talking loudly during the Spanish bits, leaving me, the English speaker, a bit out of luck.
My second panorama is a shot of one of the wider canals of Amsterdam. Natives will probably recognize it immediately. I have no idea. Street names were posted on the sides of buildings, and were in fact reasonably handy to navigate by using the Amsterdam rule of thumb: think in circles. Everything past the harbor is built in a loose loop. I wish I had planned my trip better and bought a book with an actual foldout map in place of the dummy map my Frommer's guide came with. It looked good enough in the bookstore, but I realized soon enough that it did not have all the streets listed when I folded it out and tried to navigate by it. I had a similar fear in Amsterdam that Brandi and I had when we first got into Rome: that bands of thieves would stalk me the moment they saw me holding a guide book and knew I was a tourist. The only thing that happened when I held a book and a quizzical expression was a nice man who looked like he was on the way home from work asked me if I needed help finding anything. I said "no". I had scarier moments getting Euros out of the ATM, when I was approached by a scraggly-looking man of indeterminate age speaking German at me and clearly looking for some kind of handout. I walked away quickly. Following the usual big city safety precautions has served pretty well in all the cities I've visited so far, so, yes, a small amount of paranoia serves me just fine.
View from the top - even if your seat on the ultra-sophisticated 747 cost the same as a used car, it still might suck like mine did for the flight to Amsterdam. I was in the very back, wedged between two irate women who obviously wanted to be anywhere but there. Why? Our seat backs were against the galley wall and did not recline, but the seats in front of us did. It felt a little like the moment in Star Wars when Luke, Leia and everyone realized they were stuck in the Death Star's trash compactor. I had my Shuffle, my computer and my book and spent it reasonably comfortable, but boy was I glad I packed the earphones because the middle-aged Dutch woman to my right just could not stop making "tsk" sounds with her mouth every time she shifted to make her back more comfortable. Let's just say the only people having a good time in our section were the Dutch college students wearing cowboy hats and clearly enjoying the mediocrity that was "Wild Hogs", the in-flight movie.
Here I am at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. If you say it fast enough, it sounds like "sh*thole", which it isn't. Rather, it's the hub for air and ground transportation, as the train to the city departs from there, as well as the shuttle to my hotel, the Amsterdam Radisson SAS. I left at 4:00 PM Monday afternoon and, due to the strangeness of a rotating, round Earth and time zones, arrived 8 hours later at 7:00 AM Tuesday morning. Mostly, I did not worry about jet lag because I rarely sleep much anyway at conferences, and this was no exception. I think in my three nights there I slept a total of about ten hours, which is pretty dismal, as was the weather when I got in. People were friendly, however, and everyone in hospitality spoke English, although since I looked somewhat German I got a few greetings in Dutch and a quick shift to the Queen's tongue when I looked quizzical and said, "Uh, hello?"
The hotel was not very far from the airport. In fact, it was close enough to snap this picture from my room. The sound of approaching airplanes did not bother me too badly - as I said, sleep was pretty rare anyway - although you can see how crummy the weather was the first day. It gave me good justification for a nap on the right side of the pushed-together king size bed made of two twins.