I watched the film The Visitor this evening and recommend it wholeheartedly — a very human story told on a very human level. Moving, entertaining, graceful, bittersweet.
If you need more than that, here’s A.O. Scott’s review from last April.
“The curious thing about ‘The Visitor’ is that even as it goes more or less where you think it will, it still manages to surprise you along the way.”
Andrew Lo, professor MIT Sloan School of Management, in congressional testimony last week:
Why are fire codes necessary? In particular, given the costs associated with compliance, why not let markets determine the appropriate level of fire protection demanded by the public? Those seeking safer buildings should be willing to pay more to occupy them, and those willing to take the risk need not pay for what they deem to be unnecessary fire protection. A perfectly satisfactory outcome of this free-market approach should be a world with two types of buildings, one with fire protection and another without, leaving the public free to choose between the two according to their risk preferences.
But this is not the outcome that society has chosen. Instead, we require all new buildings to have extensive fire protection, and the simplest explanation for this state of affairs is the recognition—after years of experience and many lost lives—that we systematically under-estimate the likelihood of a fire. In fact, assuming that improbable events are impossible is a universal human trait …, hence the typical builder will not voluntarily spend significant sums to prepare for an event that most individuals will not value because they judge the likelihood of such an event to be nil. Of course, experience has shown that fires do occur, and when they do, it is too late to add fire protection. What free-market economists interpret as interference with Adam Smith’s invisible hand may, instead, be a mechanism for protecting ourselves from our own behavioral blind spots.
Albuquerque, N.M., is no different from any other American city, in terms of its religious life; you’ve got churches, synagogues, a couple of Unitarian congregations and a mosque. But an abandoned gas station along old Route 66 is the unlikely home for another kind of Sunday-morning service, and it’s one that you won’t find anywhere else. It’s called the Church of Beethoven.
NPR tells about the spiritual experience you can get at a former gas station.
Thanks to Veronica for the tip.
[Park Ranger] Ken Phillips got a photograph of Travis Twiggs. “I’ve made a lot of wanted posters,” he said. “But this was the first time I had to crop out the President.” The bulletins that went out over the wires gave both Travis and Will a “violent criminal history,” although before the carjacking neither had any such thing. A local lawman told me that he’d been informed they were extremely heavily armed, although all they had was the .38—“and in Arizona that’s not even close.” The Twiggs brothers might be bent on committing “suicide by cop,” according to one alert. That possibility seems closer to the mark. The two men were certainly leaving the world as they had known it. The lingering, punishing question is why. Travis, who had two young daughters whom he doted on, might have believed that he was back in Iraq. Will’s thinking was more opaque. They drove into the night, and there is no record that they ever spoke again to anyone but each other. Two days later, they were dead.
The above from a fascinating, scary, sad and important story published in the September 29th New Yorker.
Strongly recommended.
… opened on this date in 1821.
William Becknell, under forced escort by Mexican troops, arrives at Santa Fe. New Mexicans, who are still celebrating their newly won independence from Spain, quickly purchase all of his goods, which he initially intended to trade with the Indians. This marked the birth of the Santa Fe Trail, originating from Independence, Mo.
The 1940 film Santa Fe Trail, with Ronald Reagan playing George Armstrong Custer — and starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland — has little basis in historical fact other than that there was a Santa Fe Trail.
Think the Giants or Patriots could pull this off?
From 2006. Tonga vs. the All Blacks.
W. C. Handy was born on this date in 1873, the son of former slaves.
I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down,
I hate to see that evenin’ sun go down,
‘Cause my baby has left this town.
If I’m feelin’ tomorrow, just like I feel today,
If I’m feelin’ tomorrow, like I feel today,
I’ll pack my trunk and make my get-away.
St. Louis woman, with all her diamond rings,
Stole that man of mine, by her apron strings;
If it wasn’t for powder, and her store-bought hair,
That man I love wouldn’t’ve gone nowhere!
Nowhere!
W.C. Handy is widely recognized by his self-proclaimed moniker, “Father of the Blues” due to his steadfast and pioneering efforts to document, write and publish blues music and his life-long support of the genre. Although much of his musical taste leaned toward a more sophisticated and polished sound, Handy was among the first to recognize the value of the blues, and Southern black music in general, as an important American legacy. Handy was an accomplished bandleader and songwriter who performed throughout the South before continuing his career in New York. He came across the Delta blues in the late 1890s, and his composition “Memphis Blues,” published in 1912, was the first to include “blues” in the title. Some historians don’t consider “Memphis Blues” to be an actual blues song, however it did influence the creation of other blues tunes, including the historic “Crazy Blues,” which is commonly known as the first blues song to ever be recorded (by Mamie Smith in 1920). A Memphis park was named after Handy in recognition of his contribution to blues and the Blues Foundation recognizes the genre’s achievements annually with the prestigious W.C. Handy award.
NPR told the Handy and St. Louis Blues stories as part of the NPR 100. Click to hear the NPR report, which includes Handy’s own reminiscences and the complete recording of the song by Bessie Smith accompanied by Louis Armstrong, possibly the most influential recording in American music history. (RealPlayer file.)
It’s also the birthday of Maggie Gyllenhaal (31), Lisa Bonet (41), and Diana Krall (44).
Nobel Prize-winning author Jose Saramago is 86.
Burgess Meredith was born 101 years ago today. Meredith was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar — at the age of 68 and 69 — The Day of the Locust and Rocky.
… was proclaimed a national monument 101 years ago today by President Theodore Roosevelt.
Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived in the Gila Wilderness from the 1280s through the early 1300s. The surroundings probably look today very much like they did when the cliff dwellings were inhabited.
Malcolm Gladwell has a new book, Outliers: The Story of Success
In this brief interview he discusses his methodology. Interesting.
The Federal Government owns more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and it owns nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. See the map for more. It is time for a sale. Selling even some western land could raise hundreds of billions of dollars – perhaps trillions of dollars – for the Federal government at a time when the funds are badly needed and no one want to raise taxes.
Marginal Revolution has more, including a map.
But what do you think? Should we sell our public domain to rescue A.I.G.? (A question framed to tell you what I think.)
“Barack Obama won only 53 percent of the vote on Election Day, but he is getting a landslide greeting from the American public. Indeed, recent polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find the public exuberant about Mr. Obama and optimistic that he will solve the nation’s problems.”
Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, has the details.
Key point: “… Pew found 67 percent of its national sample of voters saying they thought that Mr. Obama would have a successful first term, as many as 39 percent of those voters supported John McCain.”
“If you want to know where we are right now [with the economy], rent the movie ‘Jaws.’ We’re at that moment when Roy Scheider first sets eyes on the Great White Shark and comes back and says to the skipper, with eyes wide with fear: ‘You’re gonna need a bigger boat.'”
