Monday Meanderings - 8.31.2015

My current book at Learning Ally is The Train to Crystal City, by Jan Jarboe. Most of us are aware that during WWII thousands of civilians of Japanese descent were uprooted and spent the duration of the war in Internment Camps. What is perhaps less known is the extent of this imprisonment, and Roosevelt's government prisoner exchange program called “quiet passage.”

From 1942 to 1948, trains delivered thousands of civilians from the United States and Latin America to Crystal City, Texas,  way down in the tip of South Texas. The trains carried Japanese, German and Italian immigrants and their native-born children. Unlike the other camps, Crystal City was the only family internment camp during World War II. 

During the course of the war, thousands of prisoners from Crystal City, including their native-born children, were exchanged for other more important Americans—diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, physicians, and missionaries—behind enemy lines in Japan and Germany.

It's a sobering read. During the hysteria following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hoover's FBI agents swept through Japanese communities on the West coast and German and Italian communities on the East coast and branded tens of thousands foreign-born men (and some few women) as "dangerous enemy aliens" and imprisoned them without regard to their constitutional and legal rights.

Families of these detainees were left without any means of support and most "voluntarily" requested internment, including of course, their American-born (therefore American-citizen) children. Once interned, the families were fair game for repatriation, and thousands were exchanged for Americans. The challenge in reading this book is the pronunciation of the Japanese and German names!

One side of a phone conversation that took place in our Chuy's during the Hatch Green Chili Festival, between the restaurant manager and headquarters:
RM: "These Bacon-Wrapped Pork Rellanos on the Hatch Special Menu are a disaster!"
(District Manager responds)
RM: "They won't hold together! The kitchen's having to throw away more than we are able to serve!"
(District Manager responds)
RM: "I know that you approved them, but the ones you were served were some of the ones that held together. Of course they didn't serve you any of the ones that came apart!"
(District Manager responds)
RM: "Well, just so you know, I hate them. Hate, hate, hate them!"

I took advantage of a sale and bought a small propane grill a while back. Lean grilled meat is high on our list of approved foods, so I'm slowly working my way through some grilling options. I'm no master, but so far I've tried chicken, pork chops, steak and fish. So far, so good, except fish sure comes apart in a easily! Did you know that that there is such a thing as a fish spatula, which has an enormous flat surface? Got to get me one of those.

We have had a couple of Google self-driving cars in ATX for a while, but I have mentioned in actuality they each carry two passengers that serve as observers and backup. Now Google is getting ready to turn loose some totally autonomous vehicles on the Austin streets. No passengers, no backup. I guess they think that if they can navigate Austin traffic the project is good to go. Unlike the populated cars, these will be easier to spot.

My question is - if it is self-driving, and nobody is in it, just who decides where it is going to go? I mean does the car think, "I'm going to cruise some auto dealerships today and see if I can pick up a hot convertible?" IMWTK.