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Price column: Driver of converted car has another fuel option
| Tuesday, Jun 12 2007 6:55 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Jun 12 2007 8:07 PM
Today I'm delivering a half-dozen columns for the price of one. It's mailbag day, my excuse for dumping assorted updates on your porch.
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Remember Richard Malicdem, the guy who converted his old diesel Mercedes to run on used cooking oil? Of course you do -- I wrote about him June 6. Malicdem said he'd switch to biodiesel if he could find a local place that sold it. Which prompted Ray Finnell to e-mail me about it so he could 1), congratulate Malicdem on his perseverance and 2), tell him about Kimber Renegade Shell, near the intersection of Highway 58 and Weedpatch Highway.
Turns out the fueling station has been offering B20 biodiesel (20 percent corn/vegetable oil and 80 percent low-sulphur diesel) since April. It's going for $3 a gallon at the moment. Thanks Ray, but will my car smell as good as Malicdem's french-fry-flavored fry-brid?
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Speaking of smelly cars, here's an update on the proposed legislative ban on smoking in cars carrying children. The bill authored by state Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Long Beach, passed the Senate June 7 on a 22 to 16 vote. Dean Florez, Democrat of Shafter, voted yes; Roy Ashburn, Republican of Bakersfield, voted no.
Supporters cited a 2006 report by the Harvard School of Public Health concluding that Mommy's cigarette smoke can be up to 10 times more dangerous to Junior in an enclosed car than in the house. The Assembly will take a look at SB 7 next month.
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Speaking of politics, Cal State Bakersfield political science professor Rachel Bzostek is planning on getting into the pop-culture-meets-academia act. She hopes to teach a class on "South Park and Politics" in March 2008. Yes, scholarship based on the irreverent, adult animated TV program.
If approved, it'll be a two-unit class in the university's "passions" program, wherein profs are encouraged to find educational value in their off-campus interests. No word on whether Kenny will die at the end of each class session.
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Speaking of which, you know you've been dying to find out if Natalie Erlendson ever found Ace, her beloved greyhound. She adopted Ace back in April through a greyhound-rescue program and bonded with him for a week, only to have him escape through a doggie door and a loose fence picket the first time she left him alone. Then a few neighbors proceeded to deface her "lost dog" posters and make harassing phone calls.
The bad news: She still hasn't found Ace. The good news: She answered a greyhound-for-sale ad, thinking the dog in question might be Ace. It wasn't, but the young, neglected-looking pooch she encountered clearly needed a home, so she got out her checkbook. She initially named him Deuce, but then decided that was just too much pressure for one dog. Now his name is Nikko -- and the search for Ace continues. Meanwhile, Erlendson is shopping for a new place to live where the neighbors are a little kinder.
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Speaking of kindness, retired Master Sgt. Jerry W. Long of Bakersfield e-mailed last week to salute Teresa Leach for her "kindness" mission to the NATO base at Ramstein, Germany, which I wrote about June 3. Long wrote to say he spent six of his 20 Air Force years at Ramstein and is therefore qualified to say 1), the "Frankfurt-area" airbase is a good hour-and-a-half drive from Frankfurt -- and that's if you have the nerve to drive at Autobahn speeds -- and 2), U.S. airmen and airwomen are generally well-liked by the local populace and trained in the ways of regional custom. He made some other good points too, but I've been going on too long already.
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Well, one more thing: My May 27 column about Vietnam-era Medal of Honor recipient Larry Pierce of Taft got a thumbs-up from Mary K. Shell. Old- and medium-timers may remember that as mayor of Bakersfield in the early 1980s, Shell helped coordinate the creation of a memorial to Pierce, who dove on a land mine in 1965, saving many fellow soldiers -- but suffering fatal injuries in the process. The Bakersfield memorial was one of the first in the nation to honor a Vietnam soldier.
Members of the building trades unions donated their services to construct the memorial, which still stands today in the county courts building. Good job, Madam Mayor.
Robert Price's column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach him at 395-7399 or rprice@bakersfield.com.