From the press release:

After meticulously saving his pennies for the last 34 years, 78-year-old Eugene J. Sukie will cash them in for nearly $11,000 -- just in time for the holidays and his 79th birthday. Sukie, a retired glass plant worker/supervisor, has accumulated more than 3.5 tons of pennies, a collection he has stored by year, in paper rolls, inside approximately 575 cigar boxes piled high in the basement of his Barberton, Ohio home.
...
Eugene's first penny collection totaled $45, which he earned as a newspaper delivery boy and used to purchase a top-of-the-line Schwinn bicycle in 1939. He then embarked on another collection of pennies totaling $400, which he was able to use in 1970 to offset some of his daughter's wedding costs. At that point, Sukie became newly-inspired to collect one million of something and thought pennies would be a reasonable and affordable hobby. Mr. Sukie also collects souvenir playing cards, wooden pencils and Matchbox(R) cars. Sukie decided to hold onto a small collection of old U.S. Wheat pennies, which he did not cash in.

Coinstar estimates that there is more than $10.5 billion in change sitting idle in American homes. To date, the company has helped more than 245 million consumers turn more than $8.5 billion in change into spendable cash.

And now the facts as reported by various main stream media outlets...

• Five tons, $10,480.
• 3.5 tons, $10480.13
• 3 1/2 decades of thrift, $10,480.13
• 1.4 million pennies
• "More than 4 tons", "more than 1.4 million pennies", "more than $14,000 worth of pennies"

The press release had all of the pertinent facts and countless papers, stations and the wire couldn't be bothered to even check to see if they got the numbers right.

Gee, I hope Coinstar machines are more accurate than the mainstream media.

UPDATE: This USA Today sheds a little light on the situation. It seems that maybe his entire collection was worth over $14K, but he turned in $10.4K in one fell swoop at the end, thereby setting the record.

How to take out an aircraft using nothing but two popsicle sticks...

A Gulfstream G-V landing incident caused by popsicle sticks.

More on this.

Delve far enough into any subculture and it becomes indistinguishable from madness.

Today's example: Designers.

Interesting cars on ebaymotors this week

• Shaq's old S55 AMG Benz. No mention of Jon Voight's convertible.
• A twice-stolen '91 Lincoln Town Car, still missing most of it's front body work.

 
After years of disuse, I'm selling off my Lego collection, starting with the old, big, Technic Lego sets: Cheapskate's bricklink shop.

Another sign of the season: The Garfield float taking a nap on Thanksgiving eve. (Photo by TubaBoy.)

Signs of the season. Christmas trees being delivered by the truckload (Truck on I-91S in Massachusetts, photo by me).

At this holiday time, remember food can be dangerous!

Lawsuit Charges Tossed Shrimp Caused L.I. Man's Death

$10 million lawsuit that claims he died from complications after trying to avoid a hot shrimp tossed by a hibachi chef at a Japanese steakhouse.

Want a Harlequin Golf? There's one on eBay now, though I think the asking price is a bit high.

 

SXOC.NL Forum -> How not to recover a car out of the water...

[Via Jalopnik.]

Maybe they are trying to make NYC a police state:

Int. No. 497 would require every bicycling New Yorker over sixteen years old to obtain bicycle license tags from the NYC Department of Transportation. The bill stipulates that those who do not display such tags on their bicycles would be subject to up to 15 days imprisonment in addition to hefty fines and bicycle confiscation.

But the opposition is starting to form.

Now for sale on ebay

eBay item 3940806513 (Ends Nov-21-04 15:17:35 PST) - Glenn Beck's Project Longface John Kerry Waffle Head

 

On ebay, ending tomorrow: Buy my car!

Silver Arrow 1999 Volkswagen Jetta GLS TDI

Quick summary - Dealer maintained, ~86K miles, ~44K miles on motor. Timing belt recently (6K ago) done. Averages 47-48 miles per gallon in mixed cycle driving with the AC on at extra-legal speeds.

Fearing the FCC, you likely won't see reporting like this on TV/Radio antyime soon.

Two things from the news this weekend:

First, our VP:
"After his fourth heart attack, Cheney quit smoking, began regular daily
exercises for 30 minutes on a treadmill and said he began watching his
diet."
Isn't the third heart attack usually a sign you should take some action?

Second:
"A man was undergoing psychiatric evaluation after he jumped naked into a pool of carnivorous reptiles at the Bronx Zoo, authorities said."
"It was not clear why the man jumped into the tank. "

You don't say?

Great terms of sale from an ebay auction:Terms of Sale

OK first thing. This is a USED CAR that was built in 1982. No warrantees of any kind. If it blows up in a ball of fire and shrapnel as you pull out of the drive, my responsibility ends at calling 911. Second item: These cars attract all kinds of holistic soybean junkies intent on making bio-fueled cars. Well more power to ya gang BUT this was designed to be run on #2 diesel and if you insist on mis-fueling it, please don't tell me about it. *I* know you will screw up the Bosch VE injection pump as I've seen it done before. I like this car and I hate to think you're going to poison it. Again, it leaves here running with #2 in the tank. Do what you want after that and suffer in silence. VW vans also attract those people who are, shall we say. dreamers? Dude! Let's get a VW van and drive out west! Ok by me EXCEPT that I will require a 10% nonrefundable deposit within 3 days of the end of the auction and the full purchase price to be in my hands within ten days of the auction end. Make sure that you've made the big score with your stash BEFORE you bid. If mom is financing this trip of yours, make sure SHE knows that and you've got cash American in the bank. Lava lamps, Deadhead posters and hash, no matter where it comes from are not legal tender for buying this van. Cash, money orders, cashiers checks are good. Personal checks are not.

How are you going to pick this up? Your choice. If you use the "buy it now" option I will haul this up to exactly 400 miles from Wilson NC for FREE! That same 400 miles will cost a regular buyer $1.25 a loaded mile. Do the math, save some cash. I cannot generally entertain a greater distance as I have only weekends to do this. I MAY have a driver who will be willing to go a further distance but that will depend on where/when. If you want to use any of these shipping options, ask before bidding! The vehicle needs to be paid for in full before it leaves here. We can pick up people at RDU airport. If it is during weekday business hours, NC DMV offers temporary plates for a few dollars. If it's a weekend, you will have to have made some arrangements for plates. We'll be a helpful as possible to put you in your VW camper!

[Emphasis added.]

What happens when a car burns, without intervention, until there is nothing left to burn?

It isn't pretty.

I ran into a neat page today looking for information on a weird old VW, a car so rare that there is an internet quest to find every one ever sold in the US: Ross's Harlequin Page. (The Harlequin was a from-the-factory multi-colored Golf that was made by building 4 single-colored cars, then disassembling them and re-assembling the parts to make polychromic Golfs.

I loved those cars. I toyed with the idea of getting one in 96. I remember the VW dealer on the Rockville Pike (in Rockville, MD) having one up on the ramps for quite a while that I stopped by and gawked at several times. I wound up getting a rather forgettable Mitsubishi Galant instead because the factory put something ridiculous like $3,750 incentive on a car that stickered for $18.2K. (They had to buy themselves out of a sales slump that followed a rash of sexual harassment problems at its Illinois assembly plant.)

Anyway, apparently the Harlequins were so hard to sell in some markets some dealers eventually painted them over and returned them to a single color.

ING Direct US Savings Account interest rate - 2.20 % APR.

ING Direct UK Savings Account interest rate - 5.00% AER.

What gives?

What the hell?

F-16 Fighter Fires At School In New Jersey

Total silliness: Kozo the Hippo.

[Via Screenhead.com]

Great silliness from the election: Project Longface.

 
A new design. Click on graphic for the shop.

Maybe it wasn't really a cop, maybe it was just a guy in a halloween costume? Man suing over display some found too spooky.

Planning ahead, I've added a new line to my Stop Hillary line of products.

 
Phillip Goulet, a real American Hero. [Registration required.]

Phillip Goulet was driving on Nepaug Road shortly after 3 a.m. when he saw flames through the fog. He figured it was a bonfire, although it was awfully close to the road. As he drove closer, he saw a tree was on fire.

Then he heard the screams.

Reat the rest. It is a nice break from the ubiquitous and inescapable election coverage.

UPDATE: A no-registration required article about Phillip Goulet's heroic actions ran in the Torrington Register Citizen.

Quote of the day, from a blonde 5-ish year old boy on Lexington avenue as he sprinted away from his mother, "I am the number two express!"
Then screeching to a halt and talking to his little brother, "would you like to be the local?"

 
I took the base picture used to make the new logo back in August somewhere a few miles south of here on 395.

At first I thought I'd missed a dramatic moon-rising, then I realized which way I was looking and had to set up in a hurry to catch the moon setting over Yosemite. I've got some slides of this somewhere, I really need to get them scanned.

(The digital images were accidentally shot in B&W, I colored this one.)

Beldar has the best summary of the John Kerry original discharge question that I've seen.

If Sen. Kerry's original discharge was fully honorable -- if the Harvard Law School admissions committee member is mistaken or lying, and if the inferential case argued from Sen. Kerry's records is mistaken -- why did the Kerry campaign not simply flatly answer with an affirmative assertion that his original discharge was fully honorable?

You don't have to be a crusty old trial lawyer, with many seasons of cross-examining reluctant witnesses, to spot that as a huge red flag and draw appropriate inferences from it. But the Kerry campaign -- perhaps correctly, if audaciously -- is gambling that because Mr. Lipscomb's article is in the New York Sun instead of in the New York Times, no significant portion of the voting public will notice.

John Kerry is stonewalling, and he's gambling that he'll get away with it, at least through the close of the last poll tomorrow.

Was John F. Kerry's original discharge from the US Navy not an honorable discharge?

Kerry's Discharge Is Questioned by an Ex-JAG Officer

"If that is the case," Mr. Sullivan said, "the true story isn't what was on the Web site. It's what's missing. There should have been an honorable discharge certificate issued to Kerry in 1975,if not earlier, three years after his transfer to the Standby Reserve-Inactive."

Another retired Navy Reserve officer, who served three tours in the Navy's Bureau of Personnel, points out that there should also have been a certified letter giving Mr. Kerry a choice of a reserve reaffiliation or separation and discharge. If Mr. Meehan is correct and all the documents are indeed on the Web site, the absence of any documents from 1972 to 1978 in the posted Kerry files is a glaring hole in the record.

Certainly something was wrong as early as 1973 when Mr. Kerry was applying to law school.

Mr. Kerry has said, "I applied to Harvard, Boston University, and Boston College. I was extremely late. Only BC would entertain a late application."

It is hard to see why Mr. Kerry had to file an "extremely late" application since he lost the congressional race in Lowell, Mass., the first week of November 1972 and was basically doing nothing until he entered law school the following September of 1973. A member of the Harvard Law School admissions committee recalled that the real reason Mr. Kerry was not admitted was because the committee was concerned that because Mr. Kerry had received a less than honorable discharge they were not sure he could be admitted to any state bar.

The fact that Mr. Kerry had cancelled his candidacy for a Congressional seat in 1970 in favor of Father Robert Drinan cannot have hurt Mr. Kerry's admission to Boston College. The Reverend Robert Drinan's previous position was dean of the Boston College Law School.

Given this, it is likely that a legal review took place that effectively purged Mr. Kerry's Navy files and arranged for the three-year-late honorable discharge in 1978.There were two avenues during the 1977-1978 time period. This could have been under President Carter's Executive Order 11967, under which thousands received pardons and upgrades for harsh discharges or other offenses under the Selective Service Act. Or it might have merged into efforts by the military to comply with the demands of the 1975 Church Committee. Mr. Sullivan was personally involved in the 1976 and 1977 records review answering Senator Kennedy's demands to determine the scope of any counterintelligence abuses by the military.

In the Foreign Surveillance Act of 1977, legislation introduced by Mr. Kennedy to enforce the findings of the Church Committee, there is language that literally describes the behavior of Mr. Kerry. The defined behavior that could no longer be subject to surveillance without warrants includes: "Americans having contact with foreign powers in the case of Americans who were active in the protest against U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Some of them may have attended international conferences at which there were representatives of foreign powers, as defined in the bill, or may have been directly in communication with foreign governments concerning this issue."

It's always good to have friends in high places. I wonder if that language was all just a private-bill in disguise?

[Via FR]