Month: December 2005

It’s the birthday

… of Dick Van Dyke. Rob Petrie is 80.

… of Christopher Plummer. Captain Georg von Trapp is 78. More recently Plummer has been in A Beautiful Mind and, this year, Syriana.

… of Steve Buscemi. The actor who portrayed the creepy Tony Blundetto (Tony Soprano’s cousin) and the even creepier Carl Showalter in Fargo is 48.

… of Johnny Whitaker. That would be Buffy’s brother Jody on Family Affair. He’s 46.

… of Jamie Foxx. The Oscar-winner is 38.

A Perfect Memoir

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez really likes The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls.

I mean good. Effortless reading thanks to the author’s clear mind, generous heart and gift with language. Surprising, heartbreaking, satisfying in a million tiny ways. This is one of those books I read and go, “Damn, I wish I could write like that.”

Wow. Wow wow wow. Still got goosebumps.

Everywhere NewMexiKen looks, this book gets raves. The story of Walls’ upbring by dysfunctional, rambling parents is one of The New York Times 100 notable books of the year.

Bees recognize human faces

Yeah, but can they remember names to go with the faces?

Scientists have demonstrated that honeybees can recognize human faces, sometimes for days. Adrian Dyer of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues trained the bees to associate photographs of particular human faces with a sugary treat. Later, five bees were able to pick out the right face from a group of others. The results of the study, reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, may eventually aid the development of computer vision systems.

Boing Boing

NewMexiKen must be thinking new car

Because cars are sure on my mind. Here’s a couple of items:

Before long your car will stay up-to-date with your entire iTunes library. SimpleDevices is working with auto-components company Delphi on an in-vehicle media system that synchs the media from your PC via a wireless link.

Autopia

According to The Detroit News Ford’s new, stretched Expedition won’t get the name “Everest,” which the company’s marketing folks thought attracted too much attention to the truck’s size. The +19′ full-sized SUV will likely be called something less self-conscious, like Expedition L.

Jalopnik

Big Box Balderdash

Paul Krugman disputes Wal-Mart’s latest claim, that it creates jobs. He begins:

I think I’ve just seen the worst economic argument of 2005. Given what the Bush administration tried to put over on us during its unsuccessful sales pitch for Social Security privatization, that’s saying a lot.

The argument came in the course of the latest exchange between Wal-Mart and its critics. A union-supported group, Wake Up Wal-Mart, has released a TV ad accusing Wal-Mart of violating religious values, backed by a letter from religious leaders attacking the retail giant for paying low wages and offering poor benefits. The letter declares that “Jesus would not embrace Wal-Mart’s values of greed and profits at any cost.”

You may think that this particular campaign – which has, inevitably, been dubbed “Where would Jesus shop?” – is a bit over the top. But it’s clear why those concerned about the state of American workers focus their criticism on Wal-Mart. The company isn’t just America’s largest private employer. It’s also a symbol of the state of our economy, which delivers rising G.D.P. but stagnant or falling living standards for working Americans. For Wal-Mart is a huge and hugely profitable company that pays badly and offers minimal benefits.
…

But instead of resting its case on these honest or at least defensible answers to criticism, Wal-Mart has decided to insult our intelligence by claiming to be, of all things, an engine of job creation.
…

But adding 100,000 people to Wal-Mart’s work force doesn’t mean adding 100,000 jobs to the economy. On the contrary, there’s every reason to believe that as Wal-Mart expands, it destroys at least as many jobs as it creates, and drives down workers’ wages in the process.
…

So Wal-Mart has chosen to defend itself with a really poor argument. If that’s the best the company can come up with, it’s going to keep losing the public relations war with its critics. Maybe it should consider an alternative strategy, such as paying higher wages.

Myths of Modern America

Wash Park Prophet concludes we are a Christian nation only in Gallup polls. The entire entry is worth a read; he ends with this:

Most Americans aren’t really very different, even though we aren’t as trained to recognize it as such. Many Japanese parents teach their children Confucian proverbs. Americans are as likely to offer their children moral guidance form Aesop and the Brothers Grimm and Winnie the Pooh, as they are from the Proverbs or the Book of Job.

This is why there will never be a full fledged theocracy in the United States. While Christianity has made some narrow inroads into the American mythology, for example in the Pledge of Allegiance and the “In God We Trust” motto, which were themselves bad decisions, the Christian majority is illusory. Many nominal Christans in America don’t believe in Noah much more than they do in Batman, and many people who give doctrinaire answers on the phone to pollsters asking about the miracles of Christianity and the Creation story, are about as sincere as a parent asked by a child about Santa Claus. Decorum and good breeding dictate a certain answer, but that answer isn’t always sincere when the truth really counts.

It’s the birthday

… of Bob Barker. C’mon down, he’s 82. NewMexiKen actually remembers seeing Ralph Edwards introduce Barker as the host of the daytime version of Truth Or Consequences in 1956. Barker hosted that show for 18 years.

… of Connie Francis. Do you suppose she’s still trying to get to where the boys are at 67.

… Dionne Warwick. Perhaps she’d just as soon walk on by her 65th birthday.

… of Cathy Rigby. The Olympic gymnast is 53.

… of Tracy Austin. The one-time tennis prodigy is 43.

Francis Albert Sinatra was born on this date 90 years ago. This from Sinatra’s New York Times obituary in 1998:

Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940’s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940’s to the sophisticated swinger of the 50’s and 60’s seemed to personify the country’s loss of innocence.

Pennsylvania

… ratified the Constitution on this date in 1787, thereby becoming the second state.

Named fpr Adm. William Penn, father of William Penn.

Nickname: Keystone State.
Capital: Harrisburg.
Motto: “Virtue, liberty and independence.”

Pennsylvania Tag

Animal: White-tailed deer.
Beverage: Milk.
Bird: Ruffed grouse.
Dog: Great Dane.
Fish: Brook trout.
Flower: Mountain laurel.
Insect: Firefly.
Tree: Hemlock.

Total area: 46,055 sq. mi. (33rd), including 1,239 sq. mi. inland water.
Population: 12,335,091 (6th) (2002 estimate).

Ignorant and wrong

Asked by Boston radio personality Howie Carr about Howard Dean’s recent prediction that the U.S. would lose the war in Iraq, Fox’s Chris Wallace replied:

“We are in a war. We do have 150,000-plus American soldiers over there. I mean, it’s Tokyo Rose, for God sakes, going on radio saying we can’t win the war.”

Hello, Chris, Tokyo Rose is folklore. There was no such person (or personality) known as Tokyo Rose. It was a name created wholly by American GIs.

After the War, one American woman was tried for working for Japanese radio: Iva Toguri D’Aquino. She became known as “Tokyo Rose,” but her actual on-air name was “Orphan Ann.” Ignorant, biased fools like Chris Wallace were working for the news media after World War II, as well as now, and they helped railroad Mrs. D’Aquino into a conviction for treason. She was eventually granted a full pardon by President Ford — after a 60 Minutes report.

Thanks to Digby for the pointer. He provides this link for more info on Iva Toguri.

Best line of the day, so far

“Jesus says Christmas shouldn’t be about picking fights and organizing boycotts. All that legalistic nitpicking just reminds him of the Pharisees. Do you really think that if Jesus returns to Earth tomorrow, his priority is going to be organizing a boycott of Target stores? You think he’s going to appear on Fox to say, ‘Worry about genocide and hunger later – first, let’s battle with liberals over what holiday greeting to use’?”

Nicholas Kristof channeling St. Peter in a conversation with President Bush

C’etait un Rendezvous

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago.

Now, thanks to the miracle of the Internets, you can watch it in your browser.

This footage is really rather incredible; more exciting than typical movie car chases because you see the view from the car the entire time.

Link directly to the nine minute video. Here’s another link. The film has the car noise, which isn’t to be missed, but be aware.

Source for information above and links: Jerry Kindall: C’etait un Rendezvous.

Smiling faces, smiling faces, sometimes they don’t tell the truth

Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, contends that Americans and the English smile differently. On this side of the Atlantic, we simply draw the corners of our lips up, showing our upper teeth. Think Julia Roberts or the gracefully aged Robert Redford. “I think Tom Cruise has a terrific American smile,” Keltner, who specializes in the cultural meaning of emotions, says. In England, they draw the lips back as well as up, showing their lower teeth. The English smile can be mistaken for a suppressed grimace or a request to wipe that stupid smile off your face. Think headwaiter at a restaurant when your MasterCard seems tapped out, or Prince Charles anytime.

… Several years later, Keltner went to England on sabbatical and noticed that the English had a peculiar deferential smile that reminded him of those he had seen among the junior American frat members. Like the frat brothers’, the English smile telegraphed an acknowledgment of hierarchy rather than just expressing pleasure.

New York Times Magazine