Day: January 4, 2009

The lifesaving songbook ‘Rise Up Singing’

Emily Bazelon sings to her child and tells us where to learn the songs. Interesting review that begins:

Bedtime at our house has two rituals: stories and songs. (Yes, some children take nightly baths. Ours prefer dirt.) The books come first, the lights go out, and then Simon, who is 5, asks me or my husband, Paul, to sing. Three or four or five songs later, he asks us to sing some more.

We oblige. Going to sleep has never come easily to Simon. And so the lullaby medley at our house often turns into a miniconcert, in terms of quantity if not quality. This is all very sweet, I know—whenever I complain about the singing, people whose children have grown up tell me I’ll miss it desperately someday. But at the moment, singing night after night gets tedious. I’m tired of my standard repertoire, and so is Simon. He has ruled out “Tender Shepherd” (“No more sheep”), “Hush Little Baby” (“I’m not a baby”), and “I Gave My Love a Cherry” (“Mommy stop singing that boring song!”). Also, almost anything in Hebrew and absolutely everything from Free To Be … You and Me. This is why, in our house, the songbook Rise Up Singing represents a nightly form of deliverance.

Bush first ex-prez to face limit on Secret Service protection

President George W. Bush’s “after-life,” as Laura Bush calls the post-presidency, is shaping up to be pretty comfortable, with a Dallas office, staffers, Secret Service protection, a travel budget, medical coverage and a $196,700 annual pension, all at taxpayers’ expense.

However, Bush will be the first president not to benefit from one former lifetime benefit: Secret Service protection.

The McClatchy Washington Bureau has the details.

In B.C.S., Dollars Are the Only Relevant Numbers

. . . Under the rules, the championship teams of the Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pacific-10 and Southeastern Conferences go to the B.C.S. automatically. This season, the first team in each conference to qualify receives $18 million — win, lose or draw — and that money is distributed in that team’s conference. If a second team from a conference qualifies, the conference shares an additional $4.5 million.

But the rules for the other five conferences are different. One champion from one of the non-B.C.S. conferences gets in if it is ranked in the top 12 or ranked in the top 16 but higher than a B.C.S. conference champion. That is how Utah, ranked sixth, found its way to the Sugar Bowl against Alabama and an $18 million payday, to be shared among the five smaller conferences.

But no other small-conference team made it. Boise State went 12-0, won the Western Athletic Conference and finished the regular season ranked ninth in the B.C.S. For this, the Broncos earned a trip to the inventively named San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl and collected $750,000 — a set of steak knives compared with the Cadillac that is a B.C.S. berth, even after sharing the revenue. Boise State lost that game to Texas Christian, another non-B.C.S. program. The Horned Frogs finished second to Utah in the Mountain West and ranked 11th in the final B.C.S. standings.

Boise State and T.C.U. ranked higher in the B.C.S. than the Orange Bowl participants: No. 12 Cincinnati, winner of the Big East, and No. 19 Virginia Tech, winner of the Atlantic Coast. For their efforts, the Bearcats and Hokies came away with $18 million each for their leagues to share. Strange? It becomes even stranger.

Notre Dame, an independent, goes to the B.C.S. if it ranks eighth or higher in the standings — not a consideration this year because the team made no one’s top 25. But no matter: Notre Dame gets an automatic $1.3 million payout whether it makes it to the championship series or not.

Keeping Score – NYTimes.com

January 4th

Don Shula is 79.

Dyan Cannon is 72.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is 66.

Patty Loveless is 52.

Julia Ormond is 44. Ormond plays 39-year-old Cate Blanchett’s daughter in a small part in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Issac Newton was born on this date in 1643. The NOVA website devoted to Einstein talks also of the genius of Newton.

There is a parlor game physics students play: Who was the greater genius? Galileo or Kepler? (Galileo) Maxwell or Bohr? (Maxwell, but it’s closer than you might think). Hawking or Heisenberg? (A no-brainer, whatever the best-seller lists might say. It’s Heisenberg). But there are two figures who are simply off the charts. Isaac Newton is one. The other is Albert Einstein. If pressed, physicists give Newton pride of place, but it is a photo finish — and no one else is in the race.

Newton’s claim is obvious. He created modern physics. His system described the behavior of the entire cosmos — and while others before him had invented grand schemes, Newton’s was different. His theories were mathematical, making specific predictions to be confirmed by experiments in the real world. Little wonder that those after Newton called him lucky — “for there is only one universe to discover, and he discovered it. “

The physician, political leader and signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush was born on this date in 1746 — or on December 24, 1745, depending. When he was six, Britain and its colonies converted to the Gregorian calendar, skipping forward 11 days.

Is it Grimm’s Fairy Tales, or Grim Fairy Tales?

It’s the birthday of Jacob Grimm, born in Hanau, Germany (1785), one of the men responsible for collecting fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Snow White,” “Rapunzel,” and “Hansel and Grethel.” He and his younger brother, Wilhelm, collected more than 200 German folk tales and published Grimm’s Fairy Tales in 1812.

Lots of people thought the stories weren’t appropriate for children. There was violence, grief, an old woman who ate kids, abandoned children, and young women chopping off pieces of their feet to fit in slippers. But the book was still a big success, and it changed the way scholars collected folklore — trying to present straightforward narratives as people told them, instead of taking the basic story and turning it into a sophisticated literary piece.

In “Hansel and Grethel,” Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm wrote: “The old woman had only pretended to be so kind; she was in reality a wicked witch, who lay in wait for children, and had only built the little house of bread in order to entice them there. When a child fell into her power, she killed it, cooked and ate it, and that was a feast day with her.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

The Milky Way

Have you ever seen the Milky Way? Here’s what it looks like at 16,500 feet on a dry, dark night.

The Milky Way

Click image for larger version and to learn more.

Reposted from one year ago because it’s so cool.