Makes sense

NewMexiKen’s auto insurance premium for the next six months is 17% less than it has been.

I suppose they figure, what with $2.50-a-gallon for gasoline, I won’t be driving as much.

If you haven’t seen it

Here’s The Shot seen ’round the world (60-second WMV).

From Jaffe Juice via Ed Bott.

Poor Phil

It was poignant that nearly every time CBS cut to the defending champion Phil Mickelson, he was far less than what he was last year. “Wow!” Lundquist said, as Mickelson double-bogeyed the 16th. “The defending champion with a four-putt.”

From that moment until Mickelson wrapped up, the Amazon.com ranking of his book, “One Magical Sunday,” fell to 372nd from 329th.

The New York Times

The shot

Joel Achenbach explains Tiger’s miracle shot:

What few people realize is that this is all done with powerful magnets. Augusta National has the most advanced electronics underneath its greens of any golf course in America. There’s essentially an entire city down there, with technicians in jump suits, hallways as long as a Par 5, enough computing power to track a fleet of satellites. In fact they use GPS to guide the ball into the hole. Basically all Tiger had to do was get the ball somewhere on the green — anywhere. Although he hit a terrible shot and came nowhere close to the hole, the folks in the bunker took over and guided the ball home.

Achenbach goes on to explain that this was because Tiger’s success is more critical to the television networks and corporate sponsors than Chris DiMarco’s.

The 65% solution

George Will writes about One Man’s Way to Better Schools:

The idea, which will face its first referendum in Arizona, is to require that 65 percent of every school district’s education operational budget be spent on classroom instruction. On, that is, teachers and pupils, not bureaucracy.

Nationally, 61.5 percent of education operational budgets reach the classrooms. Why make a fuss about 3.5 percent? Because it amounts to $13 billion. Only four states (Utah, Tennessee, New York, Maine) spend at least 65 percent of their budgets in classrooms. Fifteen states spend less than 60 percent. The worst jurisdiction — Washington, D.C., of course — spends less than 50 percent.

Survey says

From InformationWeek:

By a landslide, air travelers don’t want to add cell phone chatter to their already-long list of in-flight complaints, a survey says.

The poll, conducted on behalf of the National Consumer League and a flight attendants’ association, found that 69 percent of those surveyed wanted to keep cell phone restrictions in place on planes, while just 21 percent thought it was fine to gab once off the ground.

One suspects the 21 percent will prevail.

Tipping point

From the Financial Times:

All of this suggests that tipping exists for psychological rather than economic reasons. The display of wealth, status and power, the seeking of social approval, conformity, a (forlorn) hope for future, better service, and guilt over inequitable relationships are all theories put forward to explain why we tip.

Some findings:

[T]he research again finds that regular customers do not vary tips in accordance with service quality. Also, diners themselves admit that how much they tip is not affected by whether they visit an establishment often or never again. …

In one study, waitresses’ tips increased by 17 per cent if they wore flowers in their hair. …

Another of Lynn’s studies involved the server drawing a happy face on the bill. On average this increased a waitress’s tip by 18 per cent, but decreased a waiter’s by 9 per cent.

Link via Marginal Revolution via Kottke.

The Masters

NewMexiKen isn’t sure why the commentators keep making such a deal out of Tiger Woods’ shot on 16 during the final round of the Masters yesterday. I’ve made that uphill, curve around and drop back into the hole shot dozens of times.

And I usually have to hit it through a minature windmill, too.

Interesting that after the high of seven birdies in a row, Tiger bogeyed two holes. Then after the high of making an impossible shot on 16, he also bogeyed the next two holes. Coincidence, or does Tiger let up a notch after reaching some emotional height?

Chris DiMarco showed more game than all the rest of the golfers out there. And a short game to die for.

The old guys who run the Masters should be ashamed of their biases and all, but they sure know how to keep the romance in a golf tournament. Limited TV coverage; better yet, limited commercial time away. Without the barrage of disconnected messages, the viewer can actually get caught up in the drama. Good commentary from CBS too, primarily focused on the play in front of them.

Reality TV at its best.

A Rift Among History’s Voiceless

From the Los Angeles Times:

In all his school years, Skokomish tribe member Denny Hurtado heard almost nothing about the history of his own people, aside from cursory mentions of Indians on Thanksgiving and Columbus Day.

“From the eyes of history,” Hurtado said, “we were mostly invisible.”

That could change if state legislators pass a bill that would require all public schools to teach Native American history. It would affect every grade in which Washington state or U.S. history was taught.

The measure, proposed by a Native American lawmaker, has received overwhelming support in the state Legislature. Its passage would make Washington one of a handful of states — including Montana, New Mexico and Wisconsin — with such a law.

…

But in recent weeks, the bill has run into opposition, and the most vocal criticisms have come from an unexpected source: Native Americans.

Several prominent but federally unrecognized local tribes — among them the Duwamish, Snohomish and Chinook — say the measure would exclude them from school curricula and would, in time, result in erasing them from history.