You may have seen the story in today's New York Times about New Jersey selling its assets to raise money. State Senator Raymond Lesniak, a Democrat from Union, NJ introduced legislation that would let the state lease the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway for up to 75 years, steps that could raise as much as $15 billion in revenue to pay off debts and free up money for other projects. Also, another senator raised another possibility yesterday: leasing or selling the lottery, which generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Can you imagine driving through New Jersey (neither can I), running low on gas, and pulling into the Vince Lombardi rest stop (see previous post) sponsored by Papa John's and eTrade? This would be hilarious. If anything, it might upgrade the terrible food that is always found at rest stops.
So this got me thinking about today's blog post. The origin of place names is pretty well documented. America is named after the Italian merchant, explorer, and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. Pennsylvania is named after William Penn and his woods. And San Diego is, of course, from the German for a whale's vagina.
Quick, what is the capital of the United States of America? Pretty easy. Washington, D.C. Quick, who is Washington, D.C. named after? Pretty easy again. Our first president, George Washington. So here is my question: what if our first president had a funny last name like, oh to stay with the political theme, Lewinsky. Would we still have named the capital of the United States of America Lewinski, D.C.? Doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Or what if the first president was named George Acey? At the time the founding fathers would have thought to themselves, "Yes, let's call the capital of this great land Acey, D.C. after out first president." How funny would this have been in modern times?
Get it? Acey, D.C. Oh nevermind.
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