Not your father’s Honda Accord — Well, yes it probably is

The ever-awesome Dan Neil reviews the new Honda Accord. He begins:

I was sitting at a red light when they rolled up beside me, the guy riding his Suzuki Do-Me 8000 with his hot female companion on the back, her thongage pouring out of her low-rise jeans. Her blond hair fell from beneath the helmet and fluffed weightlessly in the hot breeze. Her skintight ballistic-armor motorcycle jacket was unzipped down to her navel. It’s a good look, I guess, if you go in for that sort of thing.

As I sat there in the Amana-white 2008 Honda Accord EX-L sedan, she looked over at me. I knew what she was thinking. I knew she wanted me.

And why wouldn’t she? The Honda Accord ska-reams confirmed heterosexual, and not in a Larry Craig way, either. This car ought to be issued with a complimentary pair of relaxed-fit dad jeans. Every male owner should get a free BlackBerry, which is like monogamy’s ankle bracelet. To own this car is to be possessed with an inexplicable urge to trim hedges. While other cars suggest the owner is still working out issues — experimenting, if you will — the Accord sedan says, “Hey, I’m past all that. I’m a smoldering volcano of straight suburban love, and I accept it.”

“[T]he Accord is an institution, like the Federal Reserve or the missionary position.”

American History for the iPod

Want to hear one of the most popular courses at Berkeley, History 7B, The U.S. From the Civil War to the Present? It’s available free as 38 podcasts (of roughly 50 minutes each). The lecturer is Professor Jennifer Burns, who will be leaving Berkeley for the University of Virginia next year.

There are other courses and lectures available from Cal and other schools. Check out iTunes U via the iTunes store in iTunes, not your browser.

Best line of the day, so far

“How could a U.S. Senator who was arrested for soliciting bathroom sex and then faked his own resignation…?”

FARK.com. Apparently, Sen. Larry Craig intends now not to resign. Ha!

Best line of the day, so far

“Poll shows Michigan voters favor Clinton for the Democrats, Romney for the Republicans, and Lloyd Carr for the unemployment line.”

FARK.com. Carr is the University of Michigan football coach.

Apple’s Beat Goes On

Things gleaned from Steve Jobs’s presentation for Apple today. I thought live blogging this would be dreamy for me, and there must be at least a few iPod/iTunes users who read NewMexiKen.

iTunes has sold over 3 billion songs and over 95 million videos.

32% of all music released in the U.S. is only released digitally (no CDs, etc.). Nearly a third!

Tonight there’ll be another new version of iTunes for you to download.

500,000 iTunes songs will be available as iPhone ringtones for just an additional 99¢ each.

They’ve sold 110 million iPods and every item in the line is being refreshed or replaced (in time for the holidays).

A new iPod nano. With video. Metal, not plastic. More storage. With Cover Flow (to scroll through album covers). 2-inch screen (same as iPod). Great resolution, 204 ppi. Still uses wheel for scrolling (no touch screen, like the iPhone). Even smaller than existing nano. Games. 24-hour battery life for audio (5 for video).

Jobs endorses The Daily Show.

4GB Nano $149. 8GB Nano $199. In stores this weekend.

The iPod is now to be called the iPod classic. A new 160GB version. 40,000 songs in your pocket. (Does anyone have 40,000 songs?) 40-hour battery life for audio. Smaller than original iPod with 8X the capacity. $349. 80GB model now $249. Shipping today. In stores this weekend.

And introducing the iPod touch. 3.5-inch widescreen. It’s the iPhone without the phone! It’s a third of an inch thinner than the iPhone. With WiFi and Safari. YouTube. 22-hour battery life for audio, 5 for video. 8GB ($299) and 16GB ($399). Shipping in September!

And there’s a wireless iTunes Store on the iPod touch (and iPhone). Search, preview, buy and download from anywhere (anywhere there’s WiFi).

I want one!

Jobs says the customer satisfaction numbers on the iPhone are the highest for any Apple product ever. So they’re dropping the price from $599 to $399! 33%!

And then Jobs introduced KT Tunstall to perform live.

McDreamy

Over the years NewMexiKen hasn’t had a lot of dreams — or I guess I should say I didn’t remember my dreams often. That seems to be changing lately, however. Perhaps it’s the profound excitement I get from blogging that’s stimulating them. Who knows?

Last night one dream included Don Imus. Go figure. And it was one of those dreams that had a memory of another dream in it. That always troubles me because I’m not sure whether the flashback dream is part of the current dream or actually was a dream I had before.

Another dream I had last night had to do with the new iPods expected to be announced later this morning (11 MT). Dreaming about Apple announcements really is pathetic.

Where the money goes

In the fiscal year that ended just over 11 months ago (FY 2006) the federal government spent $2.655 trillion.

Here’s where the money went (in billions):

“All other mandatory” spending includes retirement programs other than Social Security, education and training programs, community grants, food stamps, farm subsidies, veterans benefits, etc. SCHIP is the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“All other discretionary” spending includes everything else the federal government does except defense, international affairs, homeland security, and social service programs. That would be agriculture, parks, printing money, courts, congress, prisons, space exploration, air traffic control, regulatory agencies, etc.

As you can see, only 38.4% of federal expenditures are considered discretionary. The remainder are entitlements — the Congress set up a program, established eligibility, and the rest is just distribution.

(Rounding keeps the total from being exact.)

Where the money comes from.

More Tolling

Tolls in Florida are expected to bring in more than $1 billion in revenue this year with future revenues expected to explode as new tolls come online. Last month, the US Department of Transportation handed FDOT $62.9 million as a reward to create toll lanes on Interstate 95 in Miami. Lee County expects to add toll lanes to Interstate 75. Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) on Tuesday suggested tolling could help solve the state’s budget deficit.

The Newspaper

September 5th

Jesse James was born on this date in 1847. If James were alive today, he’d be the kind of guy who’d park a Ryder truck in front of a federal building. He was not the Robin Hood character many learned, but rather a racist, anti-emancipation, anti-union murdering terrorist long after the civil war had effectively decided the larger matters. See T.J. Stiles masterful Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War.

“As this patient biography makes clear, violence came to Jesse James more or less with his mother’s milk.” — Larry McMurtry.

“Overall, this is the biography of a violent criminal whose image was promoted and actions extenuated by those who saw him as a useful weapon against black rights and Republican rule.” — Eric Foner

John Cage was born on this date in 1912. On his death in 1992, The New York Times described Cage as a “prolific and influential composer whose Minimalist works have long been a driving force in the world of music, dance and art.” Cage’s most influential and famous piece is 4’33″. It consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. The work was among National Public Radio’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.

The piece, premiered in 1952, directs someone to close the lid of a piano, set a stopwatch, and sit in silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Musicians and critics alike initially thought the piece a joke. But its premiere pianist, who never played a note, calls it his most intense listening experience. “4:33″ speaks to the nature of sound and the musical nature of silence.

Bob Newhart is 78. John Stewart of The Kingston Trio is 68. Raquel Welch is 67. Michael Keaton is 56.

Remembering New Orleans

NewMexiKen posted a number of items about the aftermath of Katrina two years ago today that you might find worth revisiting.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“He also told us about the green-yellow-red behavior system and said that he won’t get any reds but we should expect a few yellows.”

That’s Mack’s mom reporting on Mack’s first day of kindergarten last year. Mack later said that it’s not that he might purposefully break a rule, it’s that you don’t always know the rules. Indeed. It’s difficult to go through kindergarten, or any other part of life, without a few yellows.