“When my so-called phone rings, my first reaction is ‘Shit. What’s wrong now?’ When I get an email or text message, I feel a tingle of optimism.”
Scott Adams from a blog post on the need for a new name for the device we call a phone.
Another line:
“Ask a teen how often he makes phone calls on his texter.”
“The average human eye blinks at a speed (between) three-tenths and four-tenths of a second. So if you are the batter and you blink at the point of Chapman’s release, the ball will pass you before you open your eyes again.”
Matt Bynum of Hillerich and Bradsby quoted by Paul Daugherty – SI.com.
Estimated time from Chapman’s hand until the ball crosses the plate at 104 mph — 0.36 seconds.
“Great summer tune for a family road trip.”
Customer Review on iTunes for Cee Lo’s “Fuck You.”
A new “Mosquito” device at the street level of the Metro entrance at 7th & H Streets in Chinatown is emitting shrill noise at 18 KHz, a high frequency that only young people can hear.
Similar devices have been installed in Britain with the same purpose of discouraging young people from congregating outside shops. According to Councilmember Jack Evans, the founder of the Gallery Place development had the device installed on his company’s Gallery Place building.
Former senator but still a jackass, Alan Simpson is 79 today. Why is someone 79 years old co-heading a commission on how to manage the deficit? (His co-chair is just 65. Have we no young people in this country? No one with a stake in the future?)
Hall of fame basketball coach John Thompson is 69 today.
Terry Bradshaw is 62, Mark Harmon 59 and Jimmy Connors 58 today.
Harmon’s father was “Old 98,” Tom Harmon, a football great at Michigan and for the L.A. Rams. Mark himself played quarterback at UCLA, where he graduated cum laude.
Keanu Reeves is 46.
And Salma Hayek is 44. Ms. Hayek received a best actress Oscar nomination for Frida.
It was on the morning of September 2, 1945, that the Japanese officially surrendered to Gen. Douglas MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. MacArthur signed the articles at 9:07 am Tokyo time, ending World War II. President Truman declared Sunday, September 2nd V-J Day in the U.S.
While summer’s phenom Steven Strasburg prepares for surgery tomorrow, Aroldis Chapman lights ‘em up.
Cincinnati’s Chapman appeared in his second game Wednesday, getting the win with an inning of relief.
The Cuban threw 11 pitches, nine for strikes and hit 104 mph twice, four were 102, and he tossed up a 99 mph change of pace.
The immensity often gets lost in the superlatives stirred up by the most outrageously scenic sites. But in the aggregate, this is what every citizen owns: 530 million acres, of which 193 million are run by the Forest Service, 253 million by the Bureau of Land Management and 84 million by the National Park Service. The public land endowment is more than three times the size of France.
From A nice tribute to our public lands by Timothy Egan.
Apple has sold 275,000,000 iPods.
The Touch is now the most popular model.
There’s a new version of iTunes out today. And there’s a new version of the iPhone/iPod Touch operating system (4.1) next week.
Ya gotta love Apple. They have a P.R. event and the live music is provided by Chris Martin.
“When people say this isn’t the America they grew up in, they’re right. Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.”
And another:
“During the last election, I noticed that at the Republican town halls, people complained constantly about immigration. But what they complained most about wasn’t the possibility of lost jobs, or crime. It was that when they called their bank, a recorded message told them to press 2 for Spanish.”
“[S]ix of the eight pitches Chapman threw were fastballs. Of those six heaters, two registered at 103 mph as well as one each at 101, 100, 99 and 98.”
MLB FanHouse reporting on Cincinnati left-handed pitcher Aroldis Chapman’s Major League debut. Chapman had been clocked at 105 in AAA.
Lily Tomlin is 71 today.
Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees is 64.
Barry, Maurice [d. 2003] and Robin Gibb — better known as the Bee Gees — are among the most successful vocal groups in rock and roll history. They rank sixth on the all-time top-sellers list, having sold 64 million albums to date. Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Garth Brooks and Paul McCartney have outsold the Bee Gees. The trio’s contributions to 1977’s Saturday Night Fever pushed that soundtrack album past the 40 million mark. It reigned as the top-selling album in history until Michael Jackson’s Thriller — an album that Jackson has acknowledged was inspired by Saturday Night Fever — surpassed it in the Eighties. Saturday Night Fever and 1979’s Spirits Having Flown combined to yield six #1 hits, making the Bee Gees the only group in pop history to write, produce and record that many consecutive chart-topping singles.
Dr. Phil is 60.
Gloria Estefan is 53.
Dee Dee Myers — remember her? — she’s just 49.
The only undefeated heavyweight champion (1952-1956), Rocky Marciano was born on September 1st in 1923. He died in a small plane crash the day before he turned 46 in 1969. Marciano was the Seabiscuit of boxing.
For a heavyweight, he was considered too short (5-10 1/4) and too light (183-189 pounds) for most of his fights. His reach of only 68 inches was a distinct disadvantage (no heavyweight champ ever had such a short reach).
But how do you measure a person’s heart? In that area, Marciano possibly had the largest in the sport. He refused to stay down, and he refused to lose. He might be bloodied, but he wouldn’t be beaten.
Estee Lauder was born on the first day of September in 1908. She died in 2004.
The great labor leader Walter Reuther was born on the first day of September in 1907. Reuther died in a small plane crash in 1970.
President Nixon called Mr. Reuther’s death “a deep loss not only for organized labor but also for the cause of collective bargaining and the entire American process.” Mr. Nixon added:
“He was a man who was devoted to his cause, spoke for it with eloquence and worked for it tirelessly. While he was outspoken and controversial, even those who disagreed with him had great respect for his ability, integrity and persistence.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs was born in Chicago on the first day of September in 1875.
He had read Darwin’s book Descent of Man, and he was fascinated by the idea that human beings were related to apes. He began to wonder what might happen if a child from an excessively noble, well-bred family were somehow left in the jungle to be raised by apes. The result was his story “Tarzan of the Apes,” which filled an entire issue of All-Story magazine in October of 1912. It was one of the most popular issues the magazine had ever published, and within six-months, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a full-time writer producing about 400,000 words of short stories every year.
The Writer’s Almanac (2007)
Blind and deaf, Helen Keller graduated from Radcliffe on the first day of September in 1904.
On the first day of September in 1773, Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in London.
Wheatley’s collection was the first volume of poetry by an African-American poet to be published. Regarded as a prodigy by her contemporaries, Wheatley was approximately twenty at the time of the book’s publication.
Born in the Senegambia region of West Africa, she was sold into slavery and transported to Boston at age seven or eight. Purchased off the slave ship by prosperous merchant John Wheatley and his wife Susanna in 1761, the young Phillis was soon copying the English alphabet on a wall in chalk.
Rather than fearing her precociousness, the Wheatleys encouraged it, allowing their daughter Mary to tutor Phillis in reading and writing. She also studied English literature, Latin, and the Bible—a strong education for any eighteenth-century woman. Wheatley’s first published poem, “On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin,” was published in Rhode Island’s Newport Mercury newspaper on December 21, 1767.
On the first day of September in 1939 Germany invaded Poland and ignited World War II.
The Sweeties grandmother was born on the first day of September. Happy Birthday, Grammy.
First posted here three years ago today.
Driving along Tramway across Sandia Pueblo last evening, I was reminded of one of the best things about living in Albuquerque. I began to think, NewMexiKen you can live anywhere, why do you stay here?
There are a lot of ways to answer a question like that. One way is to make a list.
These aren’t the only reasons, and they aren’t in any particular order, but these are the ten that came to mind.
“These opinions have an agenda. They seek to demonize the Obama Presidency and mainstream liberal politics in general. The conservatism they prefer is not the traditional conservatism of such figures as Taft, Nixon, Reagan, Buckley or Goldwater. It is a frightening new radical fringe movement, financed by such as the newly notorious billionaire Koch brothers, whose hatred of government extends even to opposition to tax funding for public schools.”
Broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr would have turned 94 today. He died in July.
One of just 13 men to win baseball’s triple crown (with Baltimore in 1966), Frank Robinson is 75 today. A few of the others: Cobb, Hornsby (twice), Foxx, Gehrig, Williams (twice), Mantle. The last, Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. Robinson won the MVP award both with Cincinnati (1961) in the National League and with Baltimore (1966) in the American.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Van Morrison is 65 today.
A paragon of blue-eyed soul, Van Morrison has been following his muse for four decades. His travels have led him down pathways where he’s explored soul, jazz, blues, rhythm & blues, rock and roll, Celtic folk, pop balladry, and more, forging a distinctive amalgam that has Morrison’s passionate self-expression at its core. With a minimum of hype or fanfare, working with a craftsman’s discipline and an artist-mystic’s creativity, Morrison has steadily amassed one of the great bodies of recorded work in the 20th century. His discography numbers roughly thirty albums, among them the deeply poetic song cycle Astral Weeks, the warm, pop-soul classic Moondance and such spiritually minded later works as the ambitious double-disc set Hymns to the Silence. At one extreme, Morrison has made raw, angry blues-rock with the British Invasion-era group Them. At the other, he has produced some of the most transcendent, even-toned soul music of the modern era as a solo artist.
Violinist Itzhak Perlman is also 65 today.
Richard Gere is 61. No Oscar nominations for Gere, but his actual middle name is Tiffany.
Five time Oscar nominee for best actor, two time winner, Frederic March was born on the last day of August in 1897. March won for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1931 and The Best Years of Our Lives in 1946. I met him while he was filming Hombre.
Radio and television performer Arthur Godfrey was born on the last day of August in 1903. Godfrey, seemingly forgotten now, was one of the biggest stars of early television.
Arthur Godfrey ranks as one of the important on-air stars of the first decade of American television. Indeed prior to 1959 there was no bigger TV luminary than this freckled faced, ukelele playing, host/pitchman. Through most of the decade of the 1950s Godfrey hosted a daily radio program and appeared in two top-ten prime time television shows, all for CBS. As the new medium was invading American households, there was something about Godfrey’s wide grin, his infectious chuckle, his unruly shock of red hair that made millions tune in not once, but twice a week.
The esteemed New Yorker editor William Shawn was born on the last day of August in 1907. His actual name is William Chon. Before The New Yorker, Shawn worked briefly at the Las Vegas, New Mexico, Optic.
Four days before he died in 1992, Shawn had lunch with Lillian Ross, and she showed him a book cover blurb she had written and asked if he would check it. She later wrote of that day, “He took out the mechanical pencil he always carried in his inside jacket pocket, and … made his characteristically neat proofreading marks on a sentence that said ‘the book remains as fresh and unique as ever.’ He changed it to read, ‘remains unique and as fresh as ever.’ ‘There are no degrees of uniqueness,’ Mr. Shawn said politely.”
The Writer’s Almanac (2006)
The lyricist Alan Jay Lerner was born on the last day of August in 1918.
He teamed up with a composer named Frederick Loewe and after a few moderately successful productions, they came out with Brigadoon (1947), about a two Americans who discover a mythical Scottish town that disappeared in 1747 and only returns to life for one day each century. One of the Americans falls in love with a girl from the town, and has to decide whether to stay with her and give up the modern world. Brigadoon was a big hit, and it contained Lerner and Loewe’s first hit song, “Almost Like Being in Love.”
But Lerner and Loewe’s biggest success was a musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion: My Fair Lady, which premiered on Broadway on March 15, 1956. In that musical’s most famous song, Professor Henry Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle to properly pronounce the phrase “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.” Lerner spent six weeks working on most of the songs in the musical, but he wrote “The Rain in Spain” in 10 minutes.
The Writer’s Almanac (2007)
Maria Montessori was born in Chiaravalle, Italy, on the last day of August in 1870.
As a doctor, she worked with children with special needs. And through her work with them, she became increasingly interested in education. She believed that children were not blank slates, but that they each had inherent, individual gifts. It was a teacher’s job to help children find these gifts, rather than dictating what a child should know. She emphasized independence, self-directed learning, and learning from peers. Children were encouraged to make decisions. She was one of the first to use child-sized tables and chairs in the classroom.
During World War II, Montessori was exiled from Italy because she was opposed to Mussolini’s fascism and his desire to make her a figurehead for the Italian government. She lived and worked in India for many years, and then in Holland. She died in 1952 at the age of 81.
Princess Diana died 13 years ago today.
Mary Ann Nichols, a prostitute, was found murdered in London’s East End on August 31, 1888. She is generally regarded as the first victim of Jack the Ripper.
We have been reading about the “radio priest”—the young Catholic Father who broadcasts his beliefs from a small chapel in Michigan, and gets as many as three hundred and ninety thousand letters a day from members of the radio audience. He employs eighty-three secretaries to handle this mail—a larger payroll, you must admit, than most young shepherds command. He speaks against birth control, pacifism, and internationalism; and in favor of the multiplication of the body as commanded by God, and of the sanctity of patriotism. This, it seems to us, is a phenomenal leadership. We get accustomed to thinking of the radio merely as an instrument for increasing the sale of trademarked products and the vanity of tenors; yet here is an advocate of the sanctity of patriotism and other barbarous causes, with so many listeners and converts that he can’t handle them without secretaries. We happen to be, in a small way, on the other side of the fence from Father Coughlin on all his points; but we must confess, after reading the statistics about his audience, that being on the other side of the fence from him is like standing all alone in a million-acre field. What an impressive thing it is! Talking against internationalism over the radio is like talking against rain in a rainstorm: the radio has made internationalism a fact, it has made boundaries look so silly that we wonder how mapmakers can draw maps without laughing; yet there stands Father Coughlin in front of the microphone, his voice reaching well up into Canada, his voice reaching well down into Mexico, his voice leaping national boundaries as lightly as a rabbit—there he stands, saying that internationalism will be our ruin, and getting millions of letters saying he is right. Will somebody please write us one letter saying that he is wrong—if only so that we can employ a secretary?
“But what makes the Post still worth reading is its news pages. They are separate from the editorial page operation, which is a notably weak part of the overall product. If you took an equal number of random Washington, D.C., citizens off the street and gave them the job of running the newspaper’s editorial and op-ed pages, you could hardly do worse. You might well do better.”
121 American soldiers died in Afghanistan in July and August.
Why is it that four of the months have never been named for anything but a number, while the first eight months of the year are named for someone or something?
January is named for Janus (that two-faced guy); February after februa, a celebration of purification and forgiveness; March for Mars, the god of war. April comes from aperire, Latin for opening, as in the opening of buds in the spring (or possibly from Aphrodite); May is named for Maia, the goddess of of plants; June for Juno, the goddess of marriage and well-being.
Then along comes Julius Caesar and he has the gall in 44 B.C.E. to rename Quintilis (for fifth month, as it was then) to Julius (July). Not to be outdone, Augustus renamed Sextilis (for sixth month) to Augustus (August) in 8 B.C.E.
So, why did it stop 2018 years ago? I mean, there are September (seven), October (eight), November (nine) and December (ten) just sitting out there like blank billboards waiting for a clever new name. (And the numbers are no longer even correct!)
Surely, Julius and Augustus can’t be the last two guys in Western culture with enough ego to rename a month after themselves.
Or more fit for our times, commercialize the names of the months; the rights could be purchased like bowl games. It’s not the Orange Bowl anymore, it’s the FedEx Orange Bowl. It’s not November anymore, it’s Toyota November, it’s Bud Light December. Just think, their logo on every calendar.
Revised from four years ago.
At Live From Silver City Avelino takes a look at Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. One-third of the way through, and Avelino is already recommending the book.
“I’m incredibly impressed with Ghost Wars. It’s an elaborate, if chilling, history of the events leading up to some of the most important events in our lifetimes.”
He also recommends Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory, the story of Pat Tillman and the coverup.
“Like other Krakauer books, the text is engaging and (at least to me) moving.”
Follow the link above and read more of what Avelino has to say about these two books. He got me interested.
Since May Pre-Snap Read has been reviewing the 120 Bowl Championship Division football teams. (New Mexico was 116 and New Mexico State 115.) With Nebraska Saturday, Oklahoma early today and Ohio State just now, he’s down to the top two (play begins Thursday).
Looks like 1 and 2 are Alabama and —
wait for it
— Boise State.
Or maybe 1 and 2 are Boise State and Alabama.
Click the link above for the list. Here’s the rest of the Pre-Snap Read top 10.
3. Ohio State
4. Oklahoma
5. Nebraska
6. T.C.U.
7. Virginia Tech
8. Oregon
9. Iowa
10. Florida
Boise State and Virginia Tech play Monday at FedEx Field.
“Those who like to believe they have picked themselves up by the bootstraps sometimes forget that they wouldn’t even have boots were it not for the women who came before.”
From The Mother of All Grizzlies about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Dahlia Lithwick. An excerpt:
To which I would just add that Palin and the Mama Grizzlies also owe a debt of thanks directly to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who almost single-handedly convinced the courts and legislatures to do away with gender classifications in matters ranging from a woman’s right to be executor of her son’s estate (Reed v. Reed, 1970), to a female Air Force lieutenant’s right to secure housing allowances and medical benefits for her husband (Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973), and the right of Oklahoma’s “thirsty boys” (her words) to buy beer at the Honk n’ Holler at the same age as young women (Craig v. Boren, 1976).
“Filthy conditions at henhouses linked to the egg recall include infestations by rodents, flies, maggots, and wild birds, FDA inspectors report.
“Some of the egg-producing hens were caged above manure pits four to eight feet deep.”
Edward Rothstein has reviewed the new Old Faithful visitor center at Yellowstone. It opened last week.
I commend the article to you; I particularly liked this paragraph.
But as the symbol of one of the country’s most visited national parks, Old Faithful actually seems least faithful — least suggestive of untrammeled nature. From its measured eruptions to its paved surroundings, it can seem a manufactured extravaganza. Three hotels have grown around it, the most famous of which, the 1904 Old Faithful Inn, probably inspires far more gasps, with its fanciful, rustic, pine-log construction than the famed geyser’s jets of water. As for spectacle, the Bellagio’s Las Vegas fountains outdo nature, at least in this case.
Which is better, the Bellagio or Old Faithful?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Powered by WordPress.
