Month: June 2006

Most inspiring films

AFI has named the 100 most inspiring films of all time. The top ten:

  1. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE 1946
  2. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 1962
  3. SCHINDLER’S LIST 1993
  4. ROCKY 1976
  5. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON 1939
  6. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL 1982
  7. THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1940
  8. BREAKING AWAY 1979
  9. MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET 1947
  10. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN 1998

Banned

The Miami-Dade School Board voted to ban the children’s book A Visit to Cuba from the county’s public schools.

It became the target of controversy earlier this year when the father of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary student complained about the book’s rosy portrayal of life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

“The Cuban people have been paying a dear price for 47 years for the reality to be known,” said Juan Amador Rodriguez, a former political prisoner in Cuba who filed the original complaint, which was denied, and subsequent appeals. “A 32-page book cannot silence that.”

It’s heartwarming when people flee a dictatorship so they can come to America and start banning books.

Bookslut

It’s the birthday

… of Jim Belushi. He’s 52. Think Ron Howard’s brother if Ron Howard had died of a drug overdose.

… of Julie Hagerty. Airplane’s flight attendant is 51.

… of Oscar-winner Helen Hunt. (Hard to believe, but true.) At 43, Tami Maida’s quarterbacking days are over.

… of Courteney Cox Arquette, now 42.

… of Ice Cube. O’Shea Jackson is 37.

… and it’s the birthday of Doogie. Neil Patrick Harris is 33.

Albuquerque among America’s brainiest cities

The report, produced for the New Mexico Business Weekly’s parent, ACBJ, for its Bizjournals.com Web site, says 18.4 percent of Albuquerque residents hold a bachelor’s degree, while 13.4 percent have earned a graduate or professional degree. Another 24.2 percent attended college, but didn’t earn a degree, according to U.S. Census Bureau data evaluated for the report.
…

The city with the most highly educated population in the nation is Seattle. An analysis of Census Bureau data puts Seattle’s No. 1 ranking in perspective:

* Forty-seven percent of Seattle’s adults hold bachelor’s degrees, the strongest proportion of college-educated residents in any big city. It’s nearly double the U.S. average of 24.4 percent.

* Seattle is second to Washington, D.C., in the share of people with advanced diplomas. Twenty-one percent of Washington’s adults have earned graduate or professional degrees, followed by Seattle at 17 percent. The national average is 8.9 percent.

San Francisco and Austin are the runners-up in the Bizjournals.com study, which ranks the relative brainpower of 53 large communities.

Rounding out the top 10 are Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, Charlotte, San Diego, Washington, Portland, Ore., and Albuquerque.

New Mexico Business Weekly:

Thanks to Duke City Fix for the pointer.

Why Do Young Teens Have Sex?

Why do young teens have sex? While a recent study suggested sexy media images might be to blame, a new study shows kids might also be motivated by relationship goals like intimacy and social status.

Teens want their relationships to bring them intimacy, social status, and sexual pleasure — and they have a strong expectation these goals will be fulfilled if they have sex, according to a report in the June 2006 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

WebMD

So, ah, um, they have sex for the same reasons everyone does, I guess.

A penny saved

If you’re 18 today and saved the same $3 a day, by the time you’re 65, with the same 6% assumption, we’re up to $264,000.

Of course, if you’re 18, you’re thinking you’ll never be 65. But actually the chances are that you will be – with an an extra $264,000 after tax in today’s dollars in your Roth IRA, for being a bit frugal.

It’s cheating – but fun – to assume more than 6% above inflation, but it’s not impossible, either. So if we go wild and assume 7% instead, the $264,000 jumps to $360,000.

And remember, this is still just on $3. You could double that if you found a second way to save $3 a day – say by buying one fewer gallon of gas a day by (in the short run) driving more carefully and (in the long run) switching to a car that got better mileage.

Andrew Tobias

Best lines of last night, so far

“President Bush went to Iraq to boost the new government. That shows how rough the situation is in Iraq when a guy with a 30% approval rating stops by to give you a boost.”

“Ann Coulter is going to be on the show tomorrow night. Security is very tight. In fact, there is even restricted airspace over the studio. Her people are afraid that Dorothy’s house could drop on her.”

Jay Leno

Congress gives self $3,300 raise

Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday embraced 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.

AP via MSNBC.com

But the minimum wage remains unchanged at $5.15/hour since 1997. It would be $6.35 if it had simply kept up with Congressional (self-generated) raises during the same period — 23.3%.

Vote no on Congress.

Thanks to Functional Ambivalent for the pointer.

Flag Day

On this date in 1777 the Continental Congress approved a national flag:

Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.

In 1916 President Wilson issued a proclamation declaring June 14 Flag Day.

The present design of the flag was established in 1818 — thirteen stripes to represent the original states and a star for each state. The current flag with 50 stars was established on July 4, 1960, when Hawaii was admitted to the Union.

The Star Spangled Banner at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 had 15 stars and 15 stripes.

Eighty Years of the Nation’s Greatest Magazine

James Wolcott lovingly reviews The Complete New Yorker.

After I finally broke down, sliced through the plastic, split open the accursed thing, and inserted the installation disk into the laptop, I found myself lured into a Borgesian labyrinth of interlocking chambers, spiral stairs, and odd detours that unearthed archeological finds wherever the links led. Daylight disappeared as I descended into permanent dusk, the thumbnail covers of The New Yorker instilling a nostalgia for a time I had never known.

What’s Your Favorite Novel?

From Reason, a “recent survey of men’s and women’s favorite books points to a more fundamental question—and a fascinating answer.” An excerpt:

When they got around to interviewing men on the same topic, the results were decidedly different. For starters, many male respondents took issue with the question itself, either refusing to name a text or picking a non-fiction work instead of a novel. “Many men we approached really did not seem to associate reading fiction with life choices,” wrote Jardine and Watkins. The men’s responses also didn’t vary as much as the women’s. The women they interviewed coughed up about 200 different titles, whereas the men’s picks congregated mostly around four works: Albert Camus’s The Stranger (traditionally translated into British English as The Outsider), Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.

“The men’s list was all angst and Orwell. Sort of puberty reading,” Jardine cheekily told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We found that men do not regard books as a constant companion to their life’s journey, as consolers or guides, as women do… They read novels a bit like they read photography manuals.”

The Olsen twins

… are 40 today.

John-Boy Walton is 55. That’s actor Richard Thomas.

The voice of Buzz Lightyear is 53. That’s Tim Allen.

Ally Sheedy is 44. She was 23 when she made St. Elmo’s Fire.

Something to think about while the music plays on

Apple’s iPods are made by mainly female workers who earn as little as £27 per month, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday yesterday.

The report, ‘iPod City’, isn’t available online. …

The Mail visited some of these factories and spoke with staff there. It reports that Foxconn’s Longhua plant houses 200,000 workers, remarking: “This iPod City has a population bigger than Newcastle’s.”

The report claims Longhua’s workers live in dormitories that house 100 people, and that visitors from the outside world are not permitted. Workers toil for 15-hours a day to make the iconic music player, the report claims. They earn £27 per month. The report reveals that the iPod nano is made in a five-storey factory (E3) that is secured by police officers.

Another factory in Suzhou, Shanghai, makes iPod shuffles. The workers are housed outside the plant, and earn £54 per month – but they must pay for their accommodation and food, “which takes up half their salaries”, the report observes. …

Macworld UK

You have the right to remain silent

The Supreme Court handed down the Miranda decision on this date 40 years ago. AmericanHeritage.com has an excellent summary of the case worth reading in full. It includes these essentials:

In the 1963 case Gideon v. Wainwright, the court strengthened the right to counsel by ruling that a man convicted of robbery who could not afford a lawyer had to have one appointed for him by the state. A year later, when Danny Escobedo confessed to a Chicago murder after being denied a chance to see his lawyer, the court overturned his conviction, holding that in such an instance “no statement elicited by the police during the interrogation may be used against him.”

The Miranda case was the culmination of this trend toward, as Time magazine put it, “moving the constitution into the police station.” It evolved out of a growing realization that false confessions were not uncommon and that the police could coerce without resorting to the rubber hose. In the decision handed down on June 13, 1966, Chief Justice Earl Warren, writing for the 5-4 majority, recognized that the “third degree” was a venerable tradition in American law enforcement (the term itself comes from the rigorous questioning of candidates for a high level of the Masonic order). “The very fact of custodial interrogation,” Warren found, “exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty and trades on the weakness of individuals.”

In order for a statement to be assumed voluntary, the suspect had to be informed of four things before being questioned: (1) his right to remain silent, (2) the fact that his statements could be used against him, (3) his right to the presence of an attorney, and (4) the obligation of the state to provide counsel if he couldn’t afford it.

The decision did Ernesto Miranda little good. He was retried without the confession and again convicted. He served almost 10 years before being paroled. He briefly traded on his celebrity by selling autographed “Miranda warning” cards in Phoenix for $1.50 each.

The evil empire

NewMexiKen lived through The Sopranos without cable, but Deadwood, which returned last night on HBO, pushed me to the brink. I need HBO and I need it now.

So I called my dealer, Comcast. They had sent me an advertisment for cable at “$25 off per month for 16 months!” Sounded good.

“But sir, you have to be an existing dish customer. This is a ‘Dump the Dish’ marketing campaign.”

“But it doesn’t specifically say that,” I reply.

“But that’s what we intended,” I hear back. “It’s a “Dump the Dish” campaign.”

The supervisor who eventually came on the line (not unlike Ernestine for those who remember Lily Tomlin’s telephone operator) pointed out that the mailer does say “Some restrictions may apply.” And so they do.

I’m going to buy a dish.

Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

1939 Baseball Hall of Fame

Sixty-seven years ago today.

Back row: Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie, George Sisler, Walter Johnson.
Seated: Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, and Cy Young.
Ty Cobb is missing from the photo; he had missed a train and arrived late.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was officially dedicated in colorful ceremony on June 12, 1939. The game’s four ranking executives of the period — [Kenesaw M.] Landis, [Ford] Frick, [William] Harridge and William G. Bramham, President of the National Association — participated in the ribbon-cutting. Of the 25 immortals who had been elected to the Hall of Fame up to that point, 11 were still living; and all of them journeyed to Cooperstown to attend the centennial celebration. A baseball postage stamp commemorating the occasion was placed on sale that day at the Cooperstown post office, with Postmaster General James A. Farley presiding.

Origins of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

Check out the Babe’s socks. He was into the low-cut sock look long before anyone else.

Best conversation of the day, so far

Woman: Who do you think would win a fight between Ann Coulter and Maureen Dowd?

Man: A fight?

Woman: Yeah, you know, a death match.

Man: I’m gonna go with Ann Coulter.

Woman: You think? They both wear long, spikey heels. They could put each other’s eyes out pretty fast.

Man: But Ann Coulter would be like, “Rock on, I’m in a death cage!” And Maureen Dowd would be like, “Wait, what am I doing in a death cage?”

–Alt.Coffee, Avenue A

Overheard in New York