Best line of the day, so far

“On the Web, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.”

— David Weinberger, with a play on Andy Warhol’s maxim, as quoted by Nicholas Lemann in The New Yorker.

Alternative explanation for global warming

As the average temperatures have risen in recent years, a strong scientific consensus has formed that human-generated greenhouse gases are the primary cause. I think it is time we seriously considered a very likely alternative explanation.

What with so many baby-boomer women reaching menopause, perhaps what we’re really seeing is just the heat built-up from billions and billions of hot flashes.

Milestone

A former colleague and his wife, Ross and Margaret Swimmer, finished the San Francisco Marathon together Sunday in 4 hours and 41 minutes. Not bad you say, but what makes it particularly sweet is this — it was their 40th wedding anniversary!

Can you tell?

Which is Limbaugh and which is bin Laden?

“they are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes”

“but until those civilians start paying a price for propping up these kinds of regimes, it’s not going to end”

Quotations and juxtaposition from Whiskey Bar.

Coincidences

Two of the four coincidences posted by John Steele Gordon at AmericanHeritage.com:

1) Probably the most famous coincidence in American history is that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day. And it was not just any day but July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The cherry on top is that Adams and Jefferson were the only two signers of the Declaration to later become President. We will never know, of course, but I’ve always suspected that both Jefferson and Adams, old and rapidly failing though they were (Adams was 90, Jefferson 83) were aware of what day it was and perhaps at some level decided that it was a good day to die. President James Monroe also died on July 4, in 1831. So more than 8 percent of deceased American Presidents have died on the nation’s birthday, and three of the first five did.

3) In the 1940s two of the mightiest and most iconic of American industrial corporations were General Motors and General Electric. The president of GM from 1941 until 1953 was a man named Charles E. Wilson. The president of General Electric from 1940 to 1950 (except from 1942 until 1945, when he worked for the government) was a man named . . . Charles E. Wilson. They were unrelated and were known as Engine Charlie and Electric Charlie to keep them separate. (Runner up in this category, perhaps, is the fact that Chief Justice Earl Warren was succeeded in office by Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger.)

Rags to riches

“She was living in Scotland as a single mother, and her apartment was unheated, so she would go to the local café and write, while her daughter slept in the baby carriage. She eventually quit her job and lived on public assistance to finish the book.” (The Writer’s Almanac)

And so the book was published in 1998 and today she is a billionaire (a first ever for an author).

J.K. Rowling, 41 today.

According to another source Rowling has denied the lack of heat in her flat: “I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat, in Edinburgh, in mid-winter; it had heating.” Still, a good Dickensian touch, that.

Saving us from ourselves

From Independent Online Edition:

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist has drawn up an emergency plan to save the world from global warming, by altering the chemical makeup of Earth’s upper atmosphere. Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the hole in the ozone layer, believes that political attempts to limit man-made greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency plan is needed.
…

Professor Crutzen has proposed a method of artificially cooling the global climate by releasing particles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight and heat back into space….

Why it’s gone so terribly wrong

“But both Clausewitz and Sherman were right: war is both a continuation of policy by other means, and all hell. It’s a terrible mistake to start a major military operation, regardless of the moral justification, unless you have very good reason to believe that the action will improve matters.”

— Excerpt from Paul Krugman’s column in Monday’s New York Times

Another really useful how-to photo site

Photojojo

Amenities

Four-month-old Reid, the youngest of the Sweeties, had to be taken to the emergency room Friday for some diagnostic tests. (He’s doing OK, thank you.) The urgency meant that his older brothers came along.

An experienced traveler, five-year-old Mack took one look at the hospital’s newly remodeled entry area with its marble and granite and knew exactly what was important.

As his mother checked in, Mack asked the receiving nurse, “Do you have a pool?”

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta

Balloon Fiesta [QT video]

This year, October 6-15.

Ultimate couch potato line of the day, so far

“Having to walk over to the PC to plan or check out what I might want to watch is like throwing away the remote and manually getting up and changing the channel. If i want a work out, I will go to the gym.”

— Mark Cuban on computer-based TV guides (I think).

Because it’s there?

Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, ran in the San Francisco Marathon today. Arriving home, she showed two-year-old Sofie the finisher’s medal with its depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Sofie, mommy ran over that bridge twice today!”

And she looks at me like I’m a total nut job and says, “Why?”

Indeed

News report: “More than 54 civilians, at least 34 of them children,
die in Lebanon ….”

Sorry, wrong number

Man: It was nice to meet you. Now will you shake my hand?

Little boy: No.

Man: Why not?

Little boy: Because she gave you her number, but she already has a boyfriend! I don’t like that.

Woman: Shut up. That’s not true.

Little boy: If it isn’t, then why did it say “Jason and Trish, together forever” on your phone, when I turned it on right now?

Woman: Together forever, my ass; now shut up!

–Q37 bus, Liberty Ave

— Overheard in New York

Throw in talking about the weather and one’s health

… and Ken Jennings will have nailed a description of old age.

Because I’m old. Soon I will be driving 45 in the leftmost lane with my left turn signal flashing, telling you long stories at family reunions about people you’ve never met, and putting a “the” in front of the names of fast food chains. 

House calls

List in Friday’s New York Times from drawings by Karl Haendel.

How many of these doctors have you visited?

Dr. Spock
Dr. Zhivago
Dr. John
Dr. Feelgood
Dr. Jekyll
Dr. J
Dr. Dolittle
Dr. Roberts
Dr. Phil
Dr. Gachet
Dr. Who
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Ruth
Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Evil
Dr. Watson

Best line of the day, so far

“[University of Miami football coach Larry] Coker says he especially doesn’t want his players to have firearms on campus. To which several players asked, ‘Campus?’”

Scott Ostler

Tiger Island

Scott Ostler on Tiger’s importance to golf:

A fast look at the men’s world Top 10 list: Tiger is way on top, and he’s 30. That’s his age, but it may also be his waist measurement, after a big meal.

The four guys closest to Woods are 36, 43, 36 and 37. The only kids on the list are Adam Scott (26), Geoff Ogilvy (29) and Sergio Garcia (26). Pick out the one who most frightens Tiger.

Now look at the women’s Top 10. Annika (age 35) is No. 1, followed by Michelle Wie (16) and Lorena Ochoa (24). Sorenstam is at least four years older than everyone on the list except Julie Inkster (46).

There are three teenagers in that Top 10.

The next teenager in the men’s Top 10 will probably be named Jack Arnold Earl Woods.

Birthday boys and girls

Edd “Kookie Kookie lend me your comb” Byrnes is 73.

Oscar nominee (direction and co-writer, The Last Picture Show) Peter Bogdanovich is 67.

Paul Anka is 65. Anka is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is 59.

Actress Delta Burke and blues guitarist Buddy Guy are 50. I like the thought of them partying together today.

Lisa Kudrow is 43.

Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank is 32.

The Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel was born on this date in 1890.

MANAGED NEW YORK YANKEES 1949-1960.
WON 10 PENNANTS AND 7 WORLD SERIES WITH
NEW YORK YANKEES. ONLY MANAGER TO WIN
5 CONSECUTIVE WORLD SERIES 1949-1953.
PLAYED OUTFIELD 1912-1925 WITH BROOKLYN,
PITTSBURGH, PHILADELPHIA, NEW YORK AND
BOSTON N.L. TEAMS. MANAGED BROOKLYN
1934-1936, BOSTON BRAVES 1938-1943,
NEW YORK METS 1962-1965.

A few Casey-isms:

“Can’t anybody here play this game?”

“Don’t cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself.”

“Don’t drink in the hotel bar, that’s where I do my drinking.”

“Good pitching will always stop good hitting and vice-versa.”

“He’d (Yogi Berra) fall in a sewer and come up with a gold watch.”

Henry Ford

One of the most remarkable Americans, Henry Ford, was born on this date in 1863. The following is and excerpt from Mr. Ford’s New York Times obituary in 1947:

Renting a one-story brick shed in Detroit, Mr. Ford spent the year 1902 experimenting with two- cylinder and four-cylinder motors. By that time the public had become interested in the speed possibilities of the automobile, which was no longer regarded as a freak. To capitalize on this interest, he built two racing cards, the “999″ and the “Arrow,” each with a four-cylinder engine developing eighty horsepower. The “999,” with the celebrated Barney Oldfield at its wheel, won every race in which it was entered.

The resulting publicity helped Mr. Ford to organize the Ford Motor Company, which was capitalized at $100,000, although actually only $28,000 in stock was subscribed. From the beginning Mr. Ford held majority control of this company. In 1919 he and his son, Edsel, became its sole owners, when they bought out the minority stockholders for $70,000,000.

In 1903 the Ford Motor Company sold 1,708 two-cylinder, eight horsepower automobiles. Its operations were soon threatened, however, by a suit for patent infringement brought against it by the Licensed Association of Automobile Manufacturers, who held the rights to a patent obtained by George B. Selden of Rochester, N.Y., in 1895, covering the combination of a gasoline engine and a road locomotive. After protracted litigation, Mr. Ford won the suit when the Supreme Court held that the Selden patent was invalid.

From the beginning of his industrial career, Mr. Ford had in mind the mass production of a car which he could produce and sell at large quantity and low cost, but he was balked for several years by the lack of a steel sufficiently light and strong for his purpose. By chance one day, picking up the pieces of a French racing car that had been wrecked at Palm Beach, he discovered vanadium steel, which had not been manufactured in the United States up to that time.

With this material he began the new era of mass production. He concentrated on a single type of chassis, the celebrated Model T, and specified that “any customer can have a car painted any color he wants, so long as it is black.” On Oct. 1, 1908, he began the production of Model T, which sold for $850. The next year he sold 10,600 cars of this model. Cheap and reliable, the car had a tremendous success. In seven years he built and sold 1,000,000 Fords; by 1925 he was producing them at the rate of almost 2,000,000 a year.

He established two cardinal economic policies during this tremendous expansion: the continued cutting of the cost of the product as improved methods of production made it possible, and the payment of higher wages to his employes. By 1926 the cost of the Model T had been cut to $310, although it was vastly superior to the 1908 model. In January, 1914, he established a minimum pay rate of $5 a day for an eight-hour day, thereby creating a national sensation. Up to that time the average wage throughout his works had been $2.40 a nine-hour day.

The entire obituary is really rather fascinating reading.

Douglas Brinkley’s Wheels for the World (2003) is considered a good biography of Ford and the Ford Motor Company.

Golden Spike National Historic Site (Utah)

… became a federal site on this date in 1965. It had been designated in 1957.

The Jupiter, one of the replica steam engines at Golden Spike NHS. NewMexiKen photo.

Completion of the world’s first transcontinental railroad was celebrated here where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads met on May 10, 1869.

Golden Spike National Historic Site

The Grand Canyon of Mars

Click image to enlarge and learn more.

Failure to Zigzag

If you saw Jaws or read it, you will remember the harrowing story Quint (Robert Shaw) tells of surviving the sinking of the cruiser Indianapolis. It was on this date in 1945 that the ship, which had carried the Hiroshima atomic bomb, was torpedoed by the Japanese. According to the USS Indianapolis CA-35 web site:

At 12:14 a.m. on July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the Philippine Sea and sank in 12 minutes. Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men, were left floating in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 men were still alive.

The ship’s captain, the late Charles Butler McVay III, survived and was court-martialed and convicted of “hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag” despite overwhelming evidence that the Navy itself had placed the ship in harm’s way, despite testimony from the Japanese submarine commander that zigzagging would have made no difference, and despite that fact that, although over 350 navy ships were lost in combat in WWII, McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed. Materials declassified years later adds to the evidence that McVay was a scapegoat for the mistakes of others.

Shark attacks began with sunrise of the first day (July 30) and continued until the survivors were removed from the water almost five days later.

The Navy web site includes oral histories with Indianapolis Captain McVay and Japanese submarine Captain Hashimoto. The Discovery Channel has a wealth of material.

The site dedicated to the Indianapolis is perhaps the best source.

In Harm’s Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors (2001) by Doug Stanton is a book on the voyage, the sinking, the survivors and McVay’s court martial.

Someone else’s Sweeties

I know I’m just a bleeding heart liberal old grandpa, but this Reuters photo of Afghan children taking a break from looking for things to recycle in Kabul, taken today, breaks my heart.

Found at TalkLeft.

Slightly larger version of photo here.