Category: Persons

People who interest me

How Do You Know Where You Are?

Studies have demonstrated that users of paper maps have greater geographical skill than those who don’t.

The prototypical traveling salesman carried among other necessaries a Thomas Brothers Street Guide for the area he (in those days, usually a he) was working. A Thomas Guide was usually within easy reach on the front seat of the car. The guides, with their foldout maps and street indexes were especially popular in California and other western states. Businesses, government agencies, law enforcement and emergency responders used Thomas maps, including the company’s large wall maps.

Cartographer George Coupland Thomas and his two brothers founded the company in 1915. Early maps were detailed block grids with bird’s-eye three-dimensional drawings of major buildings. As the business expanded, the Thomas Company moved its headquarters from Oakland to Los Angeles.

George Thomas died in 1955. The family’s lawyer, and brother of a former Oakland mayor, purchased the company. Business continued to grow and in 1970 the company moved into a shiny new building in Irvine, south of L.A.

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Before Nancy Pelosi There Was Thomas B. Reed

“The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.”

The current occupant of the White House, the greatest negotiator ever, the purported author of “The Art of the Deal,” met his match with Nancy Pelosi. Speaker of the House Pelosi learned her deal making from her father, a mayor of Baltimore, and later in the bruising political environment that is San Francisco. She has the current President so flustered that the best he can come up with for a denigrating nickname is an ineffectual “Nancy.” Pelosi, in turn, said that the border wall, “is like a manhood thing for him — as if manhood would ever be associated with him.”

The Speaker’s power that Nancy Pelosi is exploiting goes back more than a century when another powerful politician wielded the gavel. Thomas B. Reed was Speaker of the House from 1889-1891 and again from 1895-1899.

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“Lifeboat” – No, Not Alfred Hitchcock’s

“Sea-Watch is a group of volunteers who heard that people were drowning off the coast of Libya, and instead of just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, they purchased a retrofitted research vessel, motored down off the coast of Africa, and started pulling people out of the sea.”

The 1944 movie “Lifeboat” received three Academy Award nominations: Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock), Best Story (John Steinbeck) and Best Cinematography (Glen MacWilliams).

See the interesting digression below.

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Flying Over The Wall

The advertisement has been featured on the national news – CBS, CNN, Fox, USA Today – and the YouTube video has gone “viral.” Aeromexico offered discounts on flights from the U.S. to Mexico. Fares are reduced the same percentage as the passenger’s percentage of Mexican DNA.

In case you haven’t seen Aeromexico’s ad:

You won’t find it on the airline’s web site. The discounts were offered through travel agents in the southern U.S.

DHO Studios of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida produced the two-minute commercial. Founder and Creative Director Danny Holguin is a native of Colombia. He has won numerous awards for short films and documentaries in addition to DHO’s advertising work.

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Dave Barry’s 2018 Year in Review

It’s January, time to reflect on the year just passed. Dave Barry, as he does every year, gives us a trip down the memory hole of 2018, helping us to remember much that we tried to forget.

“What made this year so awful? We could list many factors, including natural disasters, man-made atrocities, the utter depravity of our national political discourse and the loss of Aretha Franklin.”

Re-live the year just finished. Read Dave’s month-by-month report.

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John Boehner: Still Smokin’

“I’m all in on marijuana.”

Republican John Boehner resigned from the House of Representatives in 2015 after nearly twenty-five years, the last five as Speaker. He has since found a life after politics.

“I’m all in on marijuana.”

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