Florida

Dennis the Menace

Floridian blogger Jim Mathies is riding out Hurricane Dennis from a coastal town close to where the eye of the storm is coming ashore. This is the strongest storm to ever hit the Florida panhandle, and you have to worry about the people there when you read his increasingly tense updates. Here's what he wrote an hour ago: Things are starting to get ugly now. The wind has picked up to a constant roar and has shifted North. The water in the air is so thick I can bearly see across the street. I ... (read more)

2005/07/10

I toured Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral this past week, an exciting time to visit because of the impending shuttle launch scheduled for Wednesday July 13 at 3:51 p.m. Eastern. The closest we got to the shuttle Discovery was the sight of the top of its external tank and booster rockets -- the rest was obscured behind launch pad 39B, from our vantage point on an observation tower. NASA, which used to syndicate updates in a proprietary XML format, offers an RSS feed for news related to ... (read more)

2005/07/09

Unsolved Disappearances at Sea

The story about disappearing cruise ship passengers has been picked up by MSNBC. This may be a statistically improbable thing to care about, since 10 million people cruise each year and around 12 have gone overboard during voyages in five years. However, each incident affects thousands of people, because the ships turn back to participate in searches, and some may involve foul play rather than suicide or accident. There also can't be many more grim tragedies to endure than a loved one who ... (read more)

2005/06/10

As you enter Disney World Epcot, you pass granite monuments covered with thousands of postage stamp-sized etched metal portraits. Getting a single picture on a Leave a Legacy monument costs around $35, and I've always regarded it as a very moving tribute to Disney's ability to separate millions of dollars from their original owners. However, on my last trip I glanced over a few of the portraits, spotting one next to a woman and child with an inscription "Cesar Alviar 9-11-2001." Alviar was a ... (read more)

2005/06/09

Cruise Passengers Lost at Sea

My wife M.C. Moewe, a reporter for the Jacksonville Business Journal, has been chasing an elusive story over the oceans of the world for several months: Cruise ship passengers who vanish while their vessels are at sea. At least 12 passengers have gone overboard or disappeared since 2000, including five on Carnival Cruise Lines ships within the past 12 months. Some are suicides, others accidents, and at least one incident suggests the possibility of foul play. One was lost coming into ... (read more)

2005/06/06

It's a Gay World After All

My family visited Disney World this weekend, the last before our yearly passes are blocked for the summer. Riding to the Magic Kingdom, I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt tight enough to reveal that Disney keeps the monorails pretty cold. The shirt read "I only hang with pretties." Entering the park, we were greeted by an unusually large number of people in red shirts, mostly clustered in groups of the same gender. We had unsuspectingly visited during Gay Days 2005. This week, many an ... (read more)

2005/06/06

I've Been Owned

I live in a neighborhood governed by a community association, which means I pay several hundred dollars a year for the privilege of being ordered by strangers to drag my trash cans into the garage. Like any government, the association has found it much easier to expand its authority than to occasionally unclench, review the rules, and get rid of the more nettlesome ones. In some ways, it's kind of entertaining, like having a busybody in-law who can't repress the desire to micromanage your life. ... (read more)

2005/05/16

Slip the Surly Bonds of Epcot

Took the family this weekend to ride Soarin', a new movie-based flight simulator at Disney World Epcot that zooms over the state of California: Guests are lifted 40 feet in the air over an 80-foot domed projection screen. Wind effects and gentle tilting of the seats create a simulated flying sensation totally unique to Disney. Scents released at key points during the five minute presentation enhance the experience. I had the mistaken impression that this was going to be similar to Peter Pan's ... (read more)

2005/05/11

I Pay 6% More on Internet Purchases!

I'm going to start selling products over the web, so I recently acquired a Florida sales and use tax permit that requires I collect sales taxes and file quartertly payments. In my first filing yesterday, I discovered that Florida residents are required to pay a 6 percent use tax on all retail purchases they make over the Internet with companies outside the state, unless the retailer includes the tax in the purchase. You're supposed to voluntarily report these purchases and submit the tax ... (read more)

2005/03/31

Florida attorney Matt Conigliaro has done an unbelievable job of reporting on the state legal issues of the Terry Schiavo case. Beginning in August 2003, a month after he began his weblog, Conigliaro has covered the subject extensively, providing a reference page that manages to be both thorough and fair, though some people would consider his respect for the legal process as an attempt to pick sides: The facts of this case are terribly sad, but they are not hard to understand. There's really ... (read more)

2005/03/28

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