Category: Life

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No one liked Susan B. Anthony dollars. “Gold” dollars all but vanished from circulation, as far as I can see (I can’t remember the last time I saw one that wasn’t change from a vending machine.) And while CNN/Money seems skeptical, Congress wants to try for another dollar coin. The catch? Collectability. Modeled after the state quarter series, they’ll release four Presidents a year, in historical order.

OK, it could work. But I have yet to see any of this year’s crop of commemmorative nickels, and I’m not even sure I’ve seen all of 2004’s quarters, never mind any from 2005.

Then there’s the matter of living people:

When the time comes to honor contemporary presidents, such as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and their successors, their likenesses are to be minted whether they are living or dead.

That means by 2018 or so — when Bush and Clinton would be in their early 70s — the United States could break a long-standing tradition that money only honors the deceased.

I had thought this was codified somewhere, but I may be confusing the issue with postage stamps. The important part is keeping current government figures off of the money (too monarchist), but I’m not exactly thrilled about the precedent.

Of course, the real question is this: Why hasn’t the dollar coin caught on? I remember an Australian grumbling about American currency and how “you can have a pocket full of coins and have nothing.” Admittedly Australian currency no longer uses $1 bills (coins go from 5¢ to $2 and bills from $5 to $100), but they had a point: A pocket full of £1, 1€ or even AU $2 coins can buy a lot more than the same pocket full of quarters and dimes.

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KCRW ran a story on the indecency wars this morning, and quoted someone who was concerned that kids are picking up bad language from broadcast media.

Yeah, right. Broadcast media is so locked down they can’t find that kind of language there.

When I was in middle school, I spent a week working at a cub scout day camp. I think I was around 12 or 13 at the time. The adults warned us that we had to watch our language around the cubs (who were probably around 8 or 9), because they didn’t want the kids picking up any bad words from us. They needn’t have bothered. The kids were far more foul-mouthed around us than we were amongst ourselves, and actually managed to shock us. This was in the late 1980s.

Kids don’t need TV or movies to learn bad words. They learn them from their friends at school, or they learn them from parents, or from neighbor kids.

There was a B.C. comic strip a few years ago that I thought illustrated this point well: Two kids (well, ants) walk into the room, one crying, “Mom, he said the Z-word!” The parents send the kid to his room, then have this brief conversation: “Where’d the little %@#&! learn the Z-word?” “Beats the #@*$ out of me.”

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It’s taking me longer than I thought to post all these Hawaii photos. North of Kona there are miles of old lava flows, the most recent of which were in 1801 (from Hualalai, the volcano above Kailua) and 1859 (from Mauna Loa, the second-higest peak on the island). Because the island is right in the middle of the trade winds, and has sizable mountains in the middle, the clouds all bunch up on the eastern side of the island, dropping several hundred inches of rain a year before stopping—rather abruptly—halfway across the island. The west side of the island, especially in North Kona and Kohala, gets closer to 10 inches of rain a year. That’s not far off, climate-wise, from Southern California. It also means that there’s not enough plants to break up a lava field in only 200 years, and large chunks of the coast look like this:

A‘a lava flow in Kohala (with coral graffiti!)
That’s not dirt, that’s rock! You may be wondering about the white bits. They’re a sort of temporary graffiti. All through this area, people have dragged out bits of coral to spell out messages ranging from “Hi Mom” and “Aloha Dolly” to “In Memory Of…” For some reason it’s almost universally good-natured. Katie’s got some interesting pictures. that we’ll be posting later.

Here’s a view of the coast itself. Continue reading →

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Found these at Sterling Art:

rum tankard goes here

There were four in the box; the last is on my desk at work scaring away dust bunnies. The company that makes them, Accoutrements, also has an Anne Bonny action figure, a sort of Dilbert-Playmobil collectible playset, and a cat-headed Buddha, among boatloads of other cool stuff. They don’t sell to the public (boo) but Sterling will ship (yay!).

Yarrrrr.

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When we visited Oahu two years ago, we noticed that aloha was everywhere, and meant everything. Aside from hello and goodbye, it seemed to represent an easy-going, positive attitude. There were signs all over the place saying things like “Drive with aloha.”

Then there was mahalo, Hawaiian for “thank you,” which is used everywhere in place of the English phrase. Either it’s part of the wave of Hawaiian identity, or it’s mandated by the Hawaii tourist board.

Aloha is all over the big island as well, but not quite to the same extent. We didn’t see a single “drive with aloha” sign this time around, for instance.

What we did see was kapu. Kapu is the Hawaiian form of taboo, a word which has lost much of its meaning both in modern English usage and in modern Hawaiian usage. In traditional polynesian cultures, a taboo was a sacred prohibition, and violation was often punishable by death (generally by way of being chosen for a human sacrifice). These days, kapu mainly shows up on “No Tresspassing” signs—of which there are plenty!

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We spent a lot of time exploring the Kona coast, where towns manage to be both beach towns and mountain towns at the same time. It’s simplest to think of the island as one huge mountain (though there are really four mountains on the island, with a fifth, Kilauea, working its way up). The land just climbs up out of the sea and it’s easy to get several thousand feet up without going very far inland.

On our first full day, we just headed south to see what we could find. We randomly turned down Napo‘opo‘o Road, which while acceptable by rental-car standards, was a very winding road with lots of drop-offs. The road leads to Kealakekua Bay, a major kayak launching point, where we stopped and got a view across the bay.

View across Kealakekua Bay

This shot quickly became my new desktop background on the laptop. Way off to the left (not visible in this photo) is the obelisk marking the spot where Captain Cook was killed by Hawaiians in 1779. Right by the road are the remains of the Hikiau Heiau (a heiau is a Hawaiian temple), where Cook read the burial rites for one of his sailors. Continue reading →

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Driving through the lava fields of North Kona, you’ll see signs like these:

Traffic sign: Donkey Xing Traffic sign: Donkey crossings at dawn and dusk

After coffee companies stopped using donkeys for transportation, they turned them loose, and a herd of wild donkeys roamed the fields. They apparently picked up the nickname “Kona nightingales” from their, uh, “singing.” They’ve since been moved up to greener—and less traveled— pastures on the lower slopes of Mauna Kea, but the signs remain.

One can only assume the Kona nightingales were the inspiration for Surfin’ Ass Coffee Company and the signature island confection:

Surfin' Ass Coffee Company: Donkey Balls Factory Outlet

For the record: 1-inch macadamia nuts dipped in chocolate.

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