Blame the refs if you want, but I believe you have to score more than one goal in three games to advance.
(The goal in the tie vs. Italy was an own goal by an Italian player.)
Update: The U.S. had four shots on goal in three games.
After reading the review last week of John McPhee’s latest book, Uncommon Carriers, and posting about it, I ordered it. The book arrived yesterday morning and I spent the afternoon reading it.
If you’ve ever been interested in trucks or trains, or river barges, or how UPS works, you will, I think, find this fascinating reading. And no one writes this kind of stuff better than John McPhee.
NewMexiKen watched the DVD of the Anthony Hopkins film The World’s Fastest Indian last evening and found it totally enjoyable. The film tells the true story of Burt Munro, a sixty-something grandfather from New Zealand, who set speed records in the 1960s with a rebuilt 1920 Indian motorcycle — or, as he says, “motorsicle.” Hopkins is terrific as a nitro-pill taking, eccentric, hard-of-hearing, muddled, but obsessed and endearing codger. Most of the people he meets between Invercargill (“we sometimes spell it with just one l to save ink”) and Bonneville are endearing too.
Tom: Aren’t you scared you’ll kill yourself if you crash?
Burt Munro: No … You live more in five minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in a lifetime.
… of Ralph Waite. Papa Walton is 78.
… of Meryl Streep. The 13-time Oscar nominee is 57. She has been nominated ten times for leading actress, winning for Sophie’s Choice, and three times for supporting actress, winning for Kramer vs. Kramer. She’s been married nearly 28 years and has four children.
… of Graham Greene. He’s 54. Greene was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Dances with Wolves.
… of Cyndi Lauper. A girl of 53, just wanting to have fun.
… of Dan Brown. The author of The Da Vinci Code is 42. The book has sold an estimated 60 million copies.
… was renamed from Chopawamsic Recreation Demonstation Area on this date in 1948. The trails and campsites were constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Established in 1936, the 15,000 acre Prince William Forest Park is the largest protected natural area in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. The park is the largest example of Piedmont forest in the National Park System. The park also protects the Quantico Creek watershed and is a sanctuary for numerous native plant and animal species.
A variety of recreational opportunities are available, which include wildlife viewing, 37 miles of hiking trails, and 21 miles of bicycle accessible roads and trails.
… was first designated Monocacy National Military Park on this date in 1934. It was redesignated a national battlefield in 1976.
Known as the “Battle That Saved Washington”, the battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864 between 18,000 Confederate forces under General Jubal Early, and 5,800 Union forces under General Lew Wallace, marked the last campaign of the Confederacy to carry the war into the north. One of the objectives of this campaign was to capture Washington, D.C.
Although this battle was a military victory for the Confederates, it was also a defeat. Time spent for battle cost the Confederates a day’s delay in marching on the federal capital. General Lew Wallace’s defense along the Monocacy bought critical time to allow Washington to be reinforced. Early’s raid would be thwarted and the war would be taken to the south for the rest of the war.
Elk Grove, Calif., had the nation’s fastest growth rate among large cities (100,000 or more population) between July 1, 2004, and July 1, 2005, according to new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates.
Located south of Sacramento, Elk Grove is a relatively new city, having incorporated less than six years ago. Elk Grove’s population increased 12 percent during the period, to 112,338. It was joined on the list of the 10 fastest-growing cities by three others in California: Moreno Valley (ranking sixth), Rancho Cucamonga (seventh) and Irvine (10th). These three cities are each located in southern California.
Florida had three cities among the fastest growing: Port St. Lucie (third), Cape Coral (fifth) and Miramar (eighth). Two cities in Arizona were in the top 10 — Gilbert (fourth) and Chandler (eighth) — and, relatively nearby, North Las Vegas, Nev., was second.
Phoenix had the largest population increase of any city between 2004 and 2005. San Antonio; Fort Worth, Texas; North Las Vegas, Nev.; and Gilbert, Ariz., rounded out the list of the five biggest numerical gainers.
New York City continued to be the nation’s most populous city, with 8.1 million residents in 2005. This was more than twice the population of Los Angeles, which ranked second at 3.8 million. The estimates show that among the 10 largest cities, one change has occurred in the rankings: San Antonio has replaced San Diego as the nation’s seventh most populous city.
U.S. Census Bureau today announced its 2005 population estimates for U.S. cities and towns.
According to the estimates there are just six cities in New Mexico with more than 40,000 people:
Albuquerque was the 15th fastest growing city in the U.S. 2004-2005 (ranked by actual count), adding 10,392 residents (2.1%).
According to reports at BluegrassReport.org, which has been critical of the administration of Governor Ernie Fletcher, the Kentucky Commonwealth Office of Technology has blocked access on Kentucky state computers. As other sites have reported on this during the day, they too have been blocked.
Talk about putting your head in the sand and making your ass a target.
Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 59 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 45 on June 9th.
Jane Russell is 85 today. She was 36D when she made The Outlaw for Howard Hughes. He discovered her at his dentist, where she was a receptionist.
Juliette Lewis is 33 today. She was 18 when she played the daughter in Cape Fear, and received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.
… but existentialist philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre was born on this date in 1905.
Dan Neil’s look at A Prairie Home Companion includes this:
Because the movie is set behind the scenes of the show, I thought it might be useful to go backstage during the June 2 taping at the Hollywood Bowl to see the real thing. From the wings I could see the audience settling into their high-priced box seats and, sure enough, they were a bunch of cheese-eating hybrid drivers, all right. Beards and Birkenstocks, trim waists and natural fibers. Every one of them looked like they belonged on the Whole Foods board of directors.
News report: “Mark Cuban, outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fined $250,000 by the league Tuesday for ’several acts of misconduct’ following his team’s Game 5 loss in the NBA Finals on Sunday in Miami.”
Mark Cuban is worth an estimated $2 billion. That’s “B” for billion. $250,000 to Mark Cuban has about the same relative value as $125 would have for someone worth only $1 million, or 12 dollars and fifty cents would to someone worth $100,000.
This evening, just as the sun sets, take note of its direction in relation to neighborhood landmarks — trees, other houses, water towers, what have you. Write it down, make a diagram, or take a photo.
We’ll come back to this in September and December.
(Alternative assignment: Same, only at sunrise.)
In the northern hemisphere, summer begins at 6:26 AM MDT (12:26 UTC).
It’s the longest day of the year for locations north of the equator. The further north, the more daylight. That means 14 hours and 31 minutes of daylight in Albuquerque, 14 hours and 59 minutes in Denver, Colorado, 15 hours and 43 minutes in Billings, Montana, and 21 hours 48 minutes in Fairbanks, Alaska.
The United States Naval Observatory can tell you the duration of daylight today in your location (U.S. only).
Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday accepted a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.
The 2 percent cost-of-living raise would be the seventh straight for members of the House and Senate.
Associated Press
House says yes to $3,300 pay raise
June 14, 2006
A bid to boost the U.S. minimum wage failed Tuesday as Republicans in the House of Representatives pushed back an effort by Democrats to force a vote on the measure.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, said last week that he wanted to hold off on debating minimum wage legislation until possibly after the November elections. House Majority Leader John Boehner also said he probably wouldn’t allow the legislation to reach the House floor this week.
Bloomberg News
Bid to boost minimum wage suffers setback
June 20, 2006
Text from Whiskey Bar, who adds his always incisive commentary.
“I want to say something about Dwayne Wade, but I fear I may get called for a foul.”
Comment in sidebar to Bill Simmons’s great column on the NBA. If you saw Game 5 Sunday, you understand the comment. Wade shot 25 free throws. Game 6 tonight.
“The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled ‘Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.’ Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: ‘All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.’ ”
Dan Froomkin discussing Ron Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine
“‘Nacho Libre,’ naïvely made kids’ stuff, lacks such minor attributes as a decent script and supporting cast.”
People tend to regard the gradual yet irreversible atrophying of their faculties as a bad thing. Is it, though? Sure, it’s tied up with stuff that you don’t want to think too much about. One day, you learn that you can’t hear a sound that is perfectly audible to teen-agers and dogs. (Any significance in that symmetry, by the way? Do we feel diminished as a species because dogs can hear a noise that we can’t?) Soon after that, you realize that you have forgotten how to calculate the area of a triangle, and how many pints there are in a quart. From there, it’s not long until you find that you are unable to stop talking about real estate, which is the first step down an increasingly rocky and overgrown path that leads, almost always—all right, always—to death. What is there to like about any of this?
A lot it seems. Read the whole comment by Louis Menand at The New Yorker
Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas.
Move your mouse, see what happens. Click to change color. Too cool!
Subscribe to the RSS feed for The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci and get one page a day to read.
New restrictions on library access mean homeless children can no longer borrow books from the Porter County library system.
The move also restricts borrowing for adults staying in a variety of Porter County residential shelters.
Update June 22: The library board rescinded this policy.
Shy people may be quiet, but there’s a lot going on in their heads. When they encounter a frightening or unfamiliar situation–meeting someone new, for example–a brain region responsible for negative emotions goes into overdrive. But new research indicates that shy people may be more sensitive to all sorts of stimuli, not just frightening ones.
Read more from ScienceNOW.
“You don’t have to run down that last stretch on a white stallion, you know, you could limp in there and say, ‘Thanks for the trophy.’”
Johnny Miller commenting during Phil Mickelson’s crash on 17 and 18 at the U.S. Open.
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