Good, thoughtful summaries:
Day: July 8, 2009
But can they do the Moonwalk?
On Sunday, July 5th in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region, thousands of minority ethnic Uighur residents marched, demanding a government investigation into an earlier incident – a brawl between Han Chinese and Uighurs in a toy factory in Shaoguan that ended with at least two Uighur deaths. Sometime during the July 5th protest the situation became very violent, Uighurs clashing with police and attacking local Han Chinese. Urumqi citizens woke the next morning to learn that over 1,000 people had been injured and 156 killed in their city. Government forces worked to quell the violence and to separate the newly-formed Han vigilante groups and the Uighurs still in the streets. Communications were shut off, streets closed, curfews imposed, hundreds arrested, and thousands of troops poured into Urumqi, which remains tense – several clashes reported even today. (36 photos total)
Bread and circuses
In a week when the U.S. withdrew in Iraq and attacked in Afghanistan, when the governor of California declared an economic emergency and the governor of Alaska stepped down, it was Michael Jackson who drove the news agenda.
The dominant story ever since he died on June 25, the fascination with Jackson’s life and death filled 17% of the newshole from June 29-July 5, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. …
. . .The Jackson story filled 30% of the airtime studied on network news and 28% on cable news last week. Within the network news universe, the more feature-oriented morning shows spent more than half their time (56%) on the story compared with 20% in the evening.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) has more.
Idle thought
It continues to amaze me that so many people assume that the price of their house will go back to its 2005-2006 value sometime soon.
That value was a bubble! An anomaly. An aberration.
Today’s prices are likely to be it for a while — if they don’t drop further what with all the foreclosures yet to come.
Best line of the morning
As the parent (or should I say survivor?) of teenagers, I love looking at these books. Doesn’t matter when they are published, someone always believes “they” have the answer. Personally, I would have loved a “parenting” book on ”how to hide the body”…
Awful Library Books reviewing How to Survive Your Child’s Rebellious Teens—New Solutions for Troubled Parents.
How now Dow?
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had an intra-day low of 40.56 on this date in 1932, its Great Depression bottom. It closed that day at 41.22.
34 months earlier it had been at 381.17; the drop was 89.3%.
(For comparison, we’re 21 months into the current bear market, down 43.7% since October 2007.)
The Dow did not reach the September 1929 level again in inflation-adjusted value until 1954.
How many of you expect to die?
Reposted from one year ago today:
“How many of you expect to die?” she asked.
The audience fell silent, laughed nervously and only then, looking one to the other, slowly raised their hands.
“Would you prefer to be old when it happens?” she then asked.
This time the response was swift and sure, given the alternative.
Then Dr. Lynn, who describes herself as an “old person in training,” offered three options to the room. Who would choose cancer as the way to go? Just a few. Chronic heart failure, or emphysema? A few more.
“So all the rest of you are up for frailty and dementia?” Dr. Lynn asked.
According to Dr. Lynn, cancer takes about 20% of seniors, peaking around age 65; heart and lung failure, about 25% peaking around age 75; and old age about 40%, peaking around age 85.
Life’s a bitch, then you die.
Brown
Reposted from two years ago today:
NewMexiKen attended a talk Saturday evening by Richard Rodriguez. His presentation was sponsored by The Chicano, Hispano, Latino Program (CHIPOTLE) of the University Libraries at the University of New Mexico. He was excellent.
Rodriguez is an author and journalist, his most recent book being Brown: The Last Discovery of America
Rodriguez’s 75-minute talk was on the browning of the world. It was an anecdotal, amusing, entertaining and provocative presentation. My notes are fleeting but include:
- The Senate voted to designate English the only language. Won’t they have to stop selling burritos in the Senate cafeteria? How could you even describe a burrito — tortilla, no, guacamole, no, chile, no.
- We don’t speak English, we speak American. (German words, Spanish words, French words, American Indian words.)
- Outside the U.S. there is no such thing as Hispanics. It’s a number of cultures not a race.
- HBO did a documentary on white culture. It was 15 minutes.
- The Census suggests there will be no racial distinctions by the 2020 census. The races are becoming too intermingled.
- One of his aunts, like Rodriguez part Spanish and part Indian, married an East Indian. Their daughter, his cousin, is an Indian Indian. (And she married an American Indian so their child is Indian Indian Indian.)
- Why is Barack Obama considered an African-American (i.e., black)? His mother was white.
- He’d gotten a letter from a woman who’s father was Muslim and mother was Jewish. She didn’t know what she was but Americans think of her as the frugal terrorist.
These one-liners, of course, do not do the talk justice. Underlying it all was the theme that individuals everywhere are crossing racial lines — as they have for centuries in some cultures. It’s the browning of the world. And now people are crossing religious lines, too. Reacting to it all are the extremists, doing all that they can to stop the mingling.
July 8th is the birthday
… of Anjelica Huston. The third generation Oscar winner is 58. Anjelica won the best supporting actress Oscar for Prizzi’s Honor; she has two other nominations. Her father John was nominated for 15 writing, directing or acting Oscars, winning director and writing for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Grandfather Walter was nominated four times for acting Oscars, winning the supporting award for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
… of journalist and author Anna Quindlen, 56.
… of Kevin Bacon. He’s 51. And no, Kevin Bacon has never been nominated for an Oscar. He’s only a few degrees of separation however, from many who have.
Steve Lawrence is 74 and Jerry Vale is 77. Or vice versa.
Jeffrey Tambor is 65. Toby Keith is 48 (I like that bar too, Toby). Joan Osborne is 47. Billy Crudup is 41.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, was born in Zurich, Switzerland on this date in 1926. The Writer’s Almanac informed us in 2007:
She was the first medical professional to argue that dying is a natural process, and that patients who are terminally ill should not be forced to fight the dying process every step of the way. …
Her book On Death and Dying (1969) helped start the hospice movement, which has since spread around the world. She also introduced the now-famous concept of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Louis Jordan was born on this date in 1908.
“In the Forties, bandleader Louis Jordan pioneered a wild – and wildly popular – amalgam of jazz and blues with salty, jive-talking humor. The music played by singer/saxophonist Jordan and his Tympany Five got called “jump blues” or “jumpin’ jive,” and it served as a precursor to the rhythm & blues and rock and roll of the Fifties.
John D. Rockefeller was born on this date in 1839. The world’s first billionaire, Rockefeller essentially retired from Standard Oil in 1911. Even so, his taxable income in 1918 was $33,000,000 and his personal worth was estimated at more than $800,000,000. By then, he had already donated about $500 million to charitable causes. Rockefeller died in 1937 at age 97. Ron Chernow has written a recent highly-regarded biography, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Nelson Rockefeller, grandson of John D., was born on his grandfather’s birthday in 1908. Rockefeller was governor of New York 1959-1973 and vice president 1974-1977. He died in 1979. NewMexiKen once attended a conference hosted by Rockefeller and saw him stirring his coffee with the temple of his eyeglasses. It was kind of endearing.
Best lines of the day
During our week off, I had a very dark day. First, I’m on the computer Googling things and I learn that Farrah Fawcett has died. I used to have her poster. Six hours later, I’m watching TV and I find out Michael Jackson is dead. I used to have his glove. But it isn’t over. I stumble to the kitchen to find solace in milk and cookies and find out my milk has expired. Seriously.
Three things in one day. That can’t be normal. So it gets me thinking, I wonder how many people die every day? According to the Internet, it’s somewhere between a hundred and forty-five thousand and three hundred thousand. That’s a lot of people. And the real tragedy is that we won’t read anything about most of those people, because they weren’t hot or good dancers.