Scooby-Scooby-Doo, Where are You?

Today was Kimmers first "How to drive stick" lesson. We took my car over to a big parking lot and I let her at it. If you've ever tried to teach someone how to drive a manual transmission, you know how rough the first lesson can normally be. Well, I'm happy to say Kimmers did excellent! She stalled it a couple times, but compared to how I did my first couple times, she looked like a pro. Maybe Kimmers will be able to help out on the driving on the way to Baltimore...ok, not really. A couple more lessons and I'll think about letting her drive in traffic :-)
-SD

Kimmers and I were talking about TV shows we like last night and I happened to mention Cops on FOX. Kimmers does not like Cops. In fact, she hates Cops. She said it was racist. Her argument was that out of all the all the people getting arrested on the show, almost all were not white. I have to agree partially with her on it. Being a Cops veteran, I'd estimate that 60-80% of the people on the show were either African-American or Hispanic/Latino. My point was that most of the population in the cities they film in have a higher percentage of minorities, therefore more arrests are going to made on those groups. She did not like that answer. Since today I ALL this free time, I looked up some statistics from the 2000 Census on major cities that Cops usually films at. Here is what I found:

City	%White	%Black	%Latino/Hispanic
Detroit	12	82	5
NYC	44	26	27
Los Angeles	47	11	47
Atlanta	33	61	4
Chicago	42	37	26
Washington DC	30	60	8
Memphis, TN	34	61	3
Philadelphia	45	43	8

These were all taken from the Census Website.
To say the least, the results are inconclusive. In some of the cities the population adds up to more than 100%, but that's because whites and blacks have separate categories, while Hispanics are in a category that includes people with ANY amount of that race in them. So a person could be half white, half Hispanic and get counted in both the white and Hispanic columns. Anyway, ignoring this discrepancy, it still looks as though Kimmers won the argument on this one. The average Cops city has half white, half other, making that 60-80% split Cops uses look pretty awful.

To be honest, I don't even know why I like watching the show. I guess it could be worse though, I could be watching The Bachelor :-)
-SD

Last night I got two new books from Amazon: Prey by Michael Crichton and Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Crichton is a great science fiction writer, with such classics to his name like Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Congo. His latest is about a cloud of nanobots that escapes from a lab and tries to destroy the human race...sounds kind of like Matrix: Revolutions, eh? The second book is from a new author. Christopher Paolini is one of those genius kids, graduated from High School at age 15 and never looked back. The book is about a dragon and a peasant kid that finds him. I've read two short chapters and so far it's similar to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I think it will become a big hit, especially with the younger sci-fi crowd. I had also started reading Catch 22, but for whatever reason I found it hard to follow. I'll give it another try once these two books are done.

Shouts out to the sleepy-head at home!
-SD

Kimmers and I were shopping at Michaels on Sunday and picked up a Chinese food cookbook. There were tons of good looking recipes in it, so that night we tried out a stir-fry. I can't remember the exact name - Kimmers can help me remember it later :-) It was goo-oood! With my raw chicken chopping skills and her sauce making abilities, we are sure to be the Dynamic Duo of delicious dishes. Last night (Monday) we tried out turkey burgers. They were also great, although Kimmers insisted on using bread instead of hamburger buns. Silly girl! What mouth-watering cuisine will we construct tonight? It looks like a go at a lemon stir-fry and some rice. I can't wait :-)
-SD

Kimmers and I went and saw Love Actually on Sunday. It was a romantic comedy, so anyone into shoot 'em up action films should steer clear. Overall, I think it was pretty good for a chick flick. The movie follows 5 couples/families and the experiences they go through concerning their love lives leading up to Christmas. Hugh Grant plays one of the main roles as the Prime Minister of Britain (where this takes place) having a crush on one of his new staff assistants. There is also an aging rock star that rejuvenates his career by taking an old hit and making it into a Christmas song- and telling the truth about how the song stinks. To top it off even Mr. Bean (Rowan Atkinson) makes a guest appearance. The action was continuous and kept the audience entertained through to the end. If you can take a few naked bodies, I would highly recommend it.
-SD