Month: March 2011

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #40

Vfyw-contest_3-5

A reader writes:

Are you kidding? I don’t know how anyone could guess this location or deduce it from any observation of items in the photo, unless they know the spot already. I’ve been trying (and failing) to guess at these contests for months, but this one seems simply impossible.

Another writes:

I recognize that sky – it has to be Florida!  The chairs, the houses, the outgoing tide.  I’m going to guess at Jupiter, FL.  Maybe I’ll figure out the exact location if I look around.  I have a feeling it’s very close to where I live.

Another:

I don’t do so well with warmer climes.  The palms, seabirds, and waterfront real estate suggested Florida, but there wasn’t much else to go on.  Random guess: Boca Raton?

Another:

Damn you! Another 45 minutes spent satellite driving up the East Coast looking for this VFYW. I’m going gut instinct here: the highway pictured is the Overseas highway, rt 1, that goes down the spine of the Florida Keys. And because I really love Key West.

Another:

I worked down on the Gulf as part of the spill response in late summer and into the fall. This reminds me greatly of one of the bridges along the Mississippi coastline. I’m going with Ocean Springs, MS, looking west towards Biloxi on the north side of US 90.

Another:

I think the VFYW location for this week is Fulong Beach, Fulong Village, Gongliao Township, Taipei County, Taiwan, highlighting the Rainbow Bridge going over the Shuang River.  I think that the picture was taken from east of the bridge, at one of the little resort huts on the other side of the inlet.  I don’t have the superskills that some of your other readers have which allows them to get the location down to the Lat/Long, so that’s as specific as I can get.

Another:

Madison, Wisconsin? The palm trees were the big tipoff for me.

Heh. Another:

This one took less than two minutes.  The Adirondack chairs suggest it’s probably in the US.  The palm trees and waterways look like the Florida Intercoastal. Unfortunately, it appears that the land in the distant background is at elevation, not a characteristic associated with Florida or the Gulf Coast.  That leaves the lagunas of southern California.

Specifically, this is the northeasterly view from Hotel Paradise Point in San Diego.  The bridge in the background is Ingraham Street. The water is Mission Bay.

Yep! Another submits this view:

VFYW San Diego

Another writes:

The view is very Mission Bay – the squat Dr. Seuss trees on the right, the terra cotta on the left, and those thick cement bridges. I think this is the Mission Bay drive crossing, the last bridge you go under before going out the channel to the bay, and while my google mapping tells me it should be a view from Paradise Point, I can’t find a house that looks right (most of them have low trees in the front yard). So I’m going to guess that it’s this guy’s house, and that he took the trees down at some point.

Another:

Because this photo was taken on a cloudy day, the possibly-snowcapped mountains in the distant background are not visible.

Another:

I know this view because we used to rent a condo on Mission Bay near El SAN_PARA-exter-1Carmel Street and the Yacht Club. The photo was taken from a “California Bayside Bungalow” at Paradise Point Resort & Spa. I’ve attached a photo of one of the rooms showing a similar patio with the white Adirondack chairs, arched overhang and stone facade:

 

Another:

Mission Bay is one of the world’s great water parks for boaters, skidoos, paddleboarders and swimmers.

Another:

There is a very nice bike and walking path that goes around the bay and you can access it from a lot of places including the stairs shown to the left of the bridge. We have a group that meets every Wednesday for a 14-mile ride around the bay and under that very bridge on that very bike path. We always end at a pub at the beach for a pint or two. We also kayak and do stand up paddling on the bay.

Another sends an e-postcard from the resort (which we can’t link to because it reveals his name). It reads:

I haven’t been there for 20 years, but I recognized that bridge in an instant, having rowed under it many times during warm-ups for the San Diego Crew Classic.

Another:

Maybe my homesickness for my home in southern California made this standout to me. It’s been a long cold first winter here in New Hampshire, so my mind drifts often to the warmer climate of my youth. This appears to be in the Mission Bay area, not far from Sea World. The architecture of the bridge and the very familiar cloud formations after a rain were also hints. Can I get a trip home?

Another:

I’m not from San Diego but was there once, when Make A Wish sent my daughter and the whole family to the San Diego Zoo nine years ago. Everyone’s fine still, and it was a wonderful trip full of behind-the-scenes tours of Zoo and the Wilds. I’m sure there are many clues the San Diego natives will pick up, but for me it was those chairs.   I will never forget those wonderful white chairs with those wide arm rests and that little white table between the two of them.

PPRS Map

Another submits the above map. Another writes:

The reason that I so vividly remember this area it because the bridge in the photo was right around the 20-mile mark of my first marathon in 2005. The 20-mile mark is a tough point in any marathon, but for me it was even harder. I ran this marathon only six weeks after completing chemotherapy for lymphoma. I was training throughout my treatment while raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through Team in Training. I finally complete the marathon in just over six hours, but my real finish line was still a month away as I had four weeks of radiation treatments remaining.

Another:

Yay! We finally got one! My girlfriend and I are at work today, and a few minutes ago she started screaming from the office, “Come here, come here!” I ran in and she was staring at the computer, smiling from ear to ear. We started following the VFYW Contest from the get go, and generally our guesses are continents away. But we both grew up around Mission Bay, and she used to kayak around that cove with her family, throwing bread to the ducks. Everyone should be so lucky to spend summers on that bay.

Though the winner will probably be someone who has a picture of the day he proposed to his wife in one of those white wood chairs, we thought that perhaps speed of response and a crudely drawn red arrow might count for something:

Paradise Point

P.S.  I’m reminded to tell you that “Jon and Kate + Eight” stayed there once.

P.P.S  I’m also reminded to tell you that I have a big, bushy beard.

Another:

I recognize this view because just over 41 years ago, on January 23, 1970, my wife and I spent our honeymoon night there. I was in law school and she was attending college at the time and we could afford neither the time nor the money that a real honeymoon would have cost. While I was in law school, I also skippered a 45” Marlineer sport fishing boat owned by Ken Golden (of Ken Golden Construction) who at the time also owned this resort. It was called Vacation Village (since renamed Paradise Point), and I knew it pretty well since I had previously played in a rock band that entertained guests on the Bahia Belle, which cruised between Vacation Village, the Bahia Hotel and the Catamaran Hotel. As a wedding gift from Ken Golden, my wife and I received not one but two nights in one of his luxury suites in what could have been this exact spot.

Another:

This is my first entry into the VFYW contest, and what a happy one it is! I have ParadisePointVFYW attached a map with my best guess as to exactly which suite it is. I grew up in San Diego and have had countless family birthday parties, barbecues, and holiday celebrations in the grassy public use area to the south of the resort on Vacation Isle. I recognized the view because I spent a day on the bay this past summer when my uncle took me out to teach me how to fish. He’s an out-and-proud East County San Diego Tea Partier, and I’m an Obama-loving Anthropology grad student. We bonded over the ideal of self sufficiency that day; and now, in theory at least, I can feed myself.

Another:

Google had a link to this Flickr photo, along with the several other photos of the account holders vacation photos.  And since one of those photos showed their cottage number to be 454, that’s my guess.

Another:

I have Google Earth on my laptop, and now that I look there, here‘s a photo of the awnings on the bungalows facing the water, specifically unit 457. In the background, at the next bungalow, you can see what appears to be the two chairs in the photo you posted.

We had scores of readers who correctly guessed the Mission Bay resort, but only one nailed the exact cottage:

The VFYW is from room 451 at the Paradise Point Resort and Spa on Paradise Cove on Mission Bay in San Diego. The view faces ENE and shows the northern bridge of the two Ingraham Street bridges.

I’m a reader since the days of your blog’s blue background, so it was a thrill to recognize this location, but I usually see the bridge from the east while on Fiesta Island taking my golden retriever Buddy to the dog beach. Anyway, my partner and I went to the bay this morning to find the right spot:

Photo 2

(Archive)

And They’re Off …

Josh Green reports from "the first semi-official Republican cattle call of the 2012 election cycle" and declares Santorum the winner:

Pawlenty came across as a passable top-tier candidate, although his strategy for shaking his reputation as being dull was apparently to shout his speech. He, too, had it noted that he is enjoying a bountiful and happy marriage to his wife of many years (take that, Newt!). He also gave the obligatory shoutout to Ronald Reagan, quoted scripture, and invoked the Founding Fathers: "The Constitution was meant to protect people of faith from government, not to protect government from people of faith." …

Rick Santorum won the evening in a rout, which surprised me. The trick at these sorts of events is to pander to the audience, but not in a way that's flagrant and embarrassing, like Mitt Romney does. Santorum seemed relaxed, genuine, and sunny, even when talking about unpleasant issues like partial-birth abortion.

Inequality And The Right, Ctd: “Bring Back the Reagan Tax Rates!”

A reader writes:

I'm a bit late with this, but I wanted to respond to your post yesterday in which you wrote:

"To many on the right, this inequality is a non-issue, and in an abstract sense, I agree. Penalizing people for their success does not help the less successful."

Let's look at this issue another way: A homeowner who owns a $1 million home will pay more for insurance than will the owner of a $200,000 home. The insurer is not penalizing the first homeowner for his success. The first homeowner simply has more to lose and therefore pays more. If you believe the core function of government is to provide a stable environment (physical, financial, legal, social) in which society can flourish, the wealthy have more to lose from government's absence. Penalizing the successful wouldn't help anyone. Underwriting the successful costs money.

Underwriting risk-free millionaire bankers costs a lot of money. I take the point, as did Adam Smith. I have come around to the need for more revenue and as a practical matter, that will disproportionately affect the well-to-do. This piece also has a valid point:

Measured against the size of the economy, U.S. federal tax revenue is at its lowest level since 1950. Tax receipts in the 2011 fiscal year are expected to equal 14.4 percent of GDP, according to the White House. That compares with the 40-year average of 18 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So if tax receipts return to their long-term average amid an economic recovery, about one-third of the annual budget deficit would disappear.

Likewise, individual federal income tax rates have declined sharply since the top marginal rate peaked at 94 percent in 1945. The marginal rate — which applies to income above a numerical threshold that has changed over time — was 91 percent as late as 1963 and 50 percent in 1986. For 2011, the top marginal rate is 35 percent on income over $373,650 for individuals and couples filing jointly.

My italics. Imagine if Obama made a speech in which he called for a return to the tax rates under Reagan! Imagine the confusion on the brain-dead FNC right!

“Mandatory Health Insurance Now!”

Chait responds to his libertarian critics. He cites the headline above as an example of libertarian inconsistency on the mandate question. But the provocative headline and its exclamation point seem to me to be obviously acknowledging that Bailey is challenging some libertarian sacred shibboleths, while advancing others. There’s a little wryness in the headline that Jonathan surely cannot miss. And when you look at Bailey’s overall argument, it is an admirable attempt by the right to address the need for universal access to health insurance while incorporating a much more market based system to hold down costs and spur innovation. It beats, say, what McCain was advocating by a mile. And if you see the mandate as a necessary evil to transform American healthcare, it makes sense. I don’t think Chait is correct in saying that Bailey regards the mandate as a good in itself. Rather, Bailey is clear that it appears the least worst option, especially as he saw a single-payer system gaining traction in 2004:

If a national single-payer health care system is adopted, most medical progress will be stopped in its tracks. The proposal for mandatory health insurance offers a way to maintain our private system, expand consumer choice, lower costs, and allow medical progress to continue.

The point of the scheme is to

preserve and extend the advantages of a free market with a minimal amount of coercion.

Chait is right to observe that many libertarians’ demonization of the Obama healthcare mandate represents a further turn to the right – a sign of the accelerating radicalization of the GOP since 2000. But there was a time when conservatives and libertarians had a chance to shape universal healthcare to conservative principles. They blew it. In that sense, Bailey was more prescient than he knew.

Beards And Mormons

WILSONEzraShaw:Getty

Paydirt for the Dish. At BYU, the now much-discussed honor code includes the following:

A student who wishes to obtain a beard exception must visit a BYU Student Health Center doctor by appointment (422.5156). The doctor will fax his recommendation. The student then needs to come to the Honor Code Office to fill out some paperwork and receive the letter allowing the growth of the beard, if approved. If a yearly beard exception is granted, a new Student ID will be issued after the beard has been fully grown, and must be renewed every year by repeating the process.

If a request is granted for a temporary or more permanent beard exception the student will be notified by the Honor Code Office; at which time the student will come into the office to complete the necessary paperwork.  After completion of this process the student may then grow a full beard according to the guidelines given.

Brigham Young, FYI, had a full beard and 55 wives.

The SF Giants' Brian Wilson is not a Mormon and his photo above (Ezra Shaw/Getty) is pure free association. The beard – now even heavier – can be seen in action here.

Quote For The Day III

“I think everyone should scare a progressive today and give Sarah a vote,” – a participant in last weekend's Dorchester Conference in Seaside, Oregon. Mitch Daniels, mercifully, won the straw poll. Romney and Palin were second and third.

If Huckabee decides not to run, I wonder if the contest comes down to Romney vs Palin. Two transparent phonies, but the latter with a good deal more panache to distract from the lies.