You won’t find NewMexiKen or any of the fine blogs I nominated among the finalists (sigh), but take a look anyway — and vote for your favorites — for the Sixth Annual Weblog Awards — the Bloggies.
… I have to update an earlier entry and say that after my third call Comcast was responsive, sent out a technician Sunday afternoon who ultimately replaced my five-year-old cable modem. All’s well that ends well. They did good.
Bloggers are noting that today on Meet the Press Tim Russert asked U.S. Senator Barack Obama about a remark a private citizen, Harry Belafonte, had made.
Once before he asked a guest about a remark Harry Belafonte had made. That time he asked Colin Powell.
Hurrah for the Seahawks for not pouring Gatorade on their winning coach. It’s a tradition that is old and tired and trite.
Baseball or football, sportscaster Joe Buck never knew a stat or piece of trivia his mouth couldn’t use,
Coaches chewing gum with their mouth open deserve to lose.
The Peyton Manning commercial is one of the best ads ever.
Simply awesome film.
Matt Dillon is superb. But everyone else is, too. As Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen put it, “I thought the performances, right down the line, were as good as in any movie I’ve ever seen.”
More after I watch it again: Crash.
… I have only one question.
How come my grandfather didn’t buy an NFL franchise in 1936 for $2500?
(As Steelers president Art Rooney II’s grandfather did.)
It’s the birthday of romantic poet Lord Byron, born George Gordon Noel in Aberdeen, Scotland (1788). Byron was the product of his father’s second marriage. His father, nicknamed “Mad Jack,” struggled with debt, made his living by seducing rich women, and may have killed his first wife, though he was never charged with the crime.
In 1809 Lord Byron traveled to the Eastern Mediterranean and kept a diary of his adventures and exploits. While traveling in Albania, he let a friend read the diary, and his friend persuaded him to burn it. He rewrote the story of his travels as a partially fictionalized book-length poem called Child Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812). The book made Byron one of the most popular poets of his time.
He was also an outspoken politician in the House of Lords. In 1812, workers in the weaving industry were rioting and destroying machinery in Nottinghamshire because of poor wages and working conditions. The Tories introduced a bill to punish the destruction of weaving machinery by death. Byron fiercely opposed the bill, speaking on behalf of workers’ rights, and published a poem on the topic that said, in part, “Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking,/When Famine appeals, and when Poverty groans,/That life should be valued at less than a stocking,/And breaking of frames lead to breaking of bones.”
Byron wrote many more books of poetry, including Don Juan (1819), and lived a life of controversy and excess. When he died at age 36, several interested parties burned his unpublished memoirs before he’d even been buried.
The New York Times Magazine has some Questions for Daniel C. Dennett, a longtime professor of philosophy at Tufts University, who has written a book promoting the idea that religious devotion is a function of biology. Two of the interview exchanges:
So what can you tell us about God?
Certainly the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world – that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.
Yet faith, by definition, means believing in something whose existence cannot be proved scientifically. If we knew for sure that God existed, it would not require a leap of faith to believe in him.
Isn’t it interesting that you want to take that leap? Why do you want to take that leap? Why does our craving for God persist? It may be that we need it for something. It may be that we don’t need it, and it is left over from something that we used to be. There are lots of biological possibilities.
Alito isn’t even on the Court yet and the Los Angeles Times has a report showing that the fight is already underway. The article begins:
Taking direct aim at Roe vs. Wade, lawmakers from several states are proposing broad restrictions on abortion, with the goal of forcing the U.S. Supreme Court — once it has a second new justice — to revisit the landmark ruling issued 33 years ago today.
The bill under consideration in Indiana would ban all abortions, except when continuing the pregnancy would threaten the woman’s life or put her physical health in danger of “substantial permanent impairment.” Similar legislation is pending in Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee.
Today is the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
As I’ve written, NewMexiKen cancelled all cable television from Comcast. Saturday they finally got around to actually putting filters on my connection so that I would have internet, but not TV. Since then, every time I put any kind of demand on the service (loading multiple pages, pages with lots of images, etc.), the modem reboots — and I wait.
I called. They’ll be out Wednesday to check the line.
And, of course, I’m paying an additional $15 a month for internet because I don’t have TV.
Update: See later entry.
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