Radio Galaxy

In New York, we bottle chutzpah

In case you hadn’t seen enough signs of the apocalypse lately, I’ll lay another one on you.

This businessman from Ohio came to New York in 2003, drank a glass of water, and got an idea. He’d put our local tap water in a bottle and sell it for a buck-fifty a pop. This is not a joke:

Tap’dNY is a New York City bottled water company with a local twist and knack for honesty. We don’t travel the world from Fiji to France seeking water or offer the usual bottled water gimmicks. We work with NYC’s public water system to source the world’s best tasting tap water, purify it through reverse osmosis and bottle it locally, leaving out ludicrous transportation miles.

We offer an honest and local alternative to thirsty New Yorkers, giving them a smarter choice: to drink their own (award winning) water.

I’m waiting for my fellow citizens to laugh this guy out of town. Please, people. Start laughing.

Anyone?

By now, I think all you Radio Galaxy Book Club people who intend to read Jim Shepard’s Like You’d Understand, Anyway along with us have probably gotten the book. I know some of you have read it. So it’s time to start getting questions together, because I have set a date to interview Shepard.

It’s going to happen October 1. And I want your help in figuring out what I’m going to talk with him about.

Then I’ll get you the results, in some form—audio, text, or a combination of the two.

Sound good? Get reading, and drop me your questions in the comments or by e-mail here.

In the meantime, check out the video above, in which Shepard reads from the book, starting with the beginning of the story “Pleasure Boating in Lituya Bay.” It’s a brilliant example of his ability to enter a real historic moment and use it as a jumping-off place for creating characters.

If you want to learn more about the extraordinary events of July 9, 1958, in Lituya Bay, you could start here.

My father-in-law, Richard Goodyear, has revised his take on the present state of the electoral votes. A dedicated Obama supporter, he sees a mixed and still-evolving picture, writing:

[The] polls haven’t yet caught up with the Palin effect. Assuming that effect persists, the RCP Averages will catch up with it, and when it does the map, and the outcome in EVs, will change in McCain’s favor.

The new analysis is here.

This is Joe Biden, who's not as handsome as my father-in-law but looks a lot like him anyway.

Richard Goodyear, my father-in-law for exactly eight years today, has been an Obama supporter from way, way back. If he’d known young Barack as a grade schooler in Hawaii, he’d likely have started canvassing for him right then.

Sr. Goodyear (lucky guy lives in Spain now) is also possessed of an exact — and exacting — intelligence. He’s brilliant, stunningly so. While the rest of us have been toying around with outcomes on the various electoral map calculators of the world, he has been dissecting the one on Real Clear Politics. Here, from an Obama proponent’s perspective, is one of the most intriguing looks at the presidential race I’ve seen so far. (Hint: He says he’s now convinced he “should leave worry as a last resort.”)

Solid, Leaning and Toss Up States, an analysis by Richard Goodyear
Bonus: He’s also a lovely, lovely photographer.

UPDATE: His latest version considers the “Palin Effect.”

Got this from @eladyland. If nothing else, it’s amazing how much work went into it. (I’m guessing whoever made it is voting for Obama.)

The other night I went to the movies. Before the show started, they screened an ad for the National Guard, which they have been doing, at this theater, for years now. Some of them have been pretty good. Emotionally affecting. Putting a human face on the people in uniform, and all that.

But this one was different, an absurd stew of some of the clumsiest propaganda to hit the screen since the 1950s. Kid Rock screams a song about being a hero. Dale Earnhardt Jr. races for the finish line. And a Guardsman in the Middle East kicks a soccer ball back to a little boy instead of running him over with a tank.

I think Ronald Reagan scripted that last bit from whatever puffy cloud he’s perched on right now.

I interviewed a Mississippi economist yesterday who told me my home state’s labor force has grown all of .1 percent since 2000 — .1 percent. This economics gig is still foreign territory to me, but even I can see it’s hard to prosper that way. The economist said people just aren’t moving to Mississippi the way they are to other Southern states, including tough ones like Alabama. He said they’ve got no reason to go to Mississippi, or at least very little reason.

Though I see friends of mine hanging on back in Rankin County, I’ll likely never join them. That’s a bittersweet fact of life for me, and I suspect for any number of people who now live and work far from where they grew up.

Anyway. Sarah Goodyear sent over this account by someone fleeing Hurricane Gustav this week. Loki followed the unraveling Katrina situation three years ago. This time he says his family met with troopers blocking the highway exits in my state — the universal code for “keep moving, partner.” We might ought to find a way to say welcome, y’all.

Bonus:
Katrina: An Unnatural Disaster
The Gambit’s wonderful New Orleans blog