Runaway alarm clock

After centuries of cowering helplessly as their owners bash them every morning, alarm clocks are starting to run away.

“Clocky,” invented by a grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, is round and furry and has wheels. It takes off in search of a hiding place as soon as you hit the snooze button.

That you have to get out of bed to hunt it down after it rolls off the nightstand is considered good news by slugabeds like its creator, Gauri Nanda.

“I’ve hit the snooze button for, like, two hours,” the 25-year-old said.

Los Angeles Times

Offensive teams

Almost a decade after American Indian mascots were banned from Los Angeles public schools, California lawmakers this week are again considering a statewide prohibition on “Redskins.”

Proponents contend that the legislation would banish the mascot from five California schools that use it.

Los Angeles Times

California Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar bill last year, saying the matter should be decided locally.

Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter — a man-made island some four miles from Charleston, South Carolina — was a symbol well beyond its strategic value in the tensions leading up to the Civil War. Since December 1860, South Carolina officials had been demanding the surrender of the fort as state property. To Northerners, surrendering the fort meant surrendering the very idea of the Union.

When Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, he was informed that the small garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies. By April, he ordered a relief expedition and informed the Governor of South Carolina that it would be “with provisions only,” not men, arms or ammunition. This put the next move into the hands of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis ordered that the fort be reduced before the supplies arrived.

The Confederacy opened fire at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861. The Union garrison surrendered after 33 hours, and the American flag was lowered at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1865.

Fort Sumter

America’s most tragic conflict ignited at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, when a chain reaction of social, economic and political events exploded into civil war. At the heart of these events was the issue of states rights versus federal authority flowing over the underlying issue of slavery.

Photo and caption from the National Park Service.

I do solemnly swear

Harry Truman takes the oath of office at 7:09 PM (Eastern War Time) on this date sixty years ago. Franklin Roosevelt had died just over two hours earlier at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, the “Little White House.” When called at the Capitol and told he should rush to the White House, Truman is reported to have exclaimed, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson.” Once at the White House, Truman was told of FDR’s death by Mrs. Roosevelt.

The following day, Friday the 13th, is when Truman told several reporters: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when you told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Information and quotations from David McCullough’s outstanding biography of Truman. Photo from the National Archives via the White House web site.

Deadwood

If you, like NewMexiKen, are a fan of HBO’s Deadwood in this its second season, but you find yourself just a little uneasy about why you continue to enjoy it — I mean, let’s face it, it can be perverse — you should read the recaps at Television Without Pity.

“Honestly, the supporting cast of this show is just above and beyond anything happening anywhere else.”

From the recap of Episode 16.

Enticing email

It appeared to be junk email, but I have to admit the subject line — buttermilk Save on your Comhist LA — gave it a certain credence.

I’m from Congress and I’m here to help

Charles P. Pierce writing at American Prospect Online:

There are mice in my attic. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the mice seem to be a lot smarter than I am, and self-sacrificing, too. I have laid traps up there like I was Jacques Marquette around the Great Lakes, for pity’s sake, and I only ever catch one of them. One of them always gives himself up, and then the rest of them go back to kicking the stupid human’s ass for another month.

I can hear them, late at night, toasting their fallen comrades. I think they’re building a monument to them out of some old bowling shirts I’ve got lying around up there. At this very moment, there’s probably a famous anchormouse scribbling away at a lengthy tome, explaining how these mice are the greatest mice who ever lived.

I admire these mice for a number of their fine qualities, but I want them gone and, frankly, I’m obviously not up to the task. I need an expert. Somebody who’s got some experience ridding people of pests.

I need Tom DeLay.

You see, I like our new full-service congressional majority. Going to the halls of Congress is like going to Wal-Mart these days. Steroids making you feel bad about baseball? Sporting Goods in Aisle 7. Tough medical decisions bothering you? Try Housewares. Other people’s business? Throughout the store.

Continue the column at American Prospect Online.

Flag day

From the Library of Congress:

On April 12, 1818, a new flag flew over the U.S. Capitol for the first time. The flag’s thirteen stripes represented the original colonies, and its twenty stars symbolized the number of states in the Union.

The first national flag, emblazoned with thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, was modified in 1795 when Kentucky and Vermont entered the Union. A flag with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes was used during the war of 1812. It was the fifteen star and fifteen stripe flag which flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Continued expansion of the Union meant Congress soon again faced the prospect of adding to the number of the flag’s stars and stripes. Thus, in 1818, Congress settled on the expediency of altering the flag according to its present formula whereby stripes represent the original thirteen colonies, and stars are coincident with the number of states in the Union. The Independence Day following the admission of a State was set as the occasion for adding new stars to the flag. With the admission of Hawaii, the fiftieth star was added to the flag on July 4, 1960.

Photo is of the Star Spangled Banner.

Blast off!

From BBC News:

A law letting people in Florida kill in self-defence on the street without first trying to flee an attacker has been passed by Florida politicians.

Florida law already allows people to shoot a potential attacker in their home, place of work or car.

But until now, courts insisted that anyone confronted in a public place should first try to run away.

To which NewMexiKen says, seal the state borders and arm them all.

Link via the always resourceful dangerousmeta!

The 2005 Time 100

From Time Magazine — The 2005 Time 100:

Leaders & Revolutionaires
George Bush
Condoleezza Rice
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
Bill Frist
Donald Rumsfeld
Mark Malloch Brown
Gordon Brown
Ali Husaini Sistani
Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi
Hu Jintao
Kim Jong Il
Manmohan Singh
Thabo Mbeki
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Mahmoud Abbas
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ariel Sharon
Javier Solana
John Howard
Chen Shui-bian
Hugo Chavez

Artists & Entertainers
Clint Eastwood
Michael Moore
Hilary Swank
Quentin Tarantino
Dan Brown
Dave Eggers
Marc Cherry
John Elderfield
Kanye West
Jon Stewart
Alicia Keys
Jamie Foxx
Johnny Depp
Art Spiegelman
The Halo Team
Ann Coulter
Hayao Miyazaki
Ziyi Zhang
Juanes
Miuccia Prada
Marc Newson
Santiago Calatrava
Alice Munro
Cornelia Funke

Builders & Titans
Steve Jobs
The Google Guys
Lee Scott
Meg Whitman
Martha Stewart
Craig Newmark
Jay-Z
Amy Domini
Reed Hastings
Bram Cohen
Martin Sorrell
John Bond
Howard Stringer
Katsuaki Watanabe
Noél Forgeard
Anne Lauvergeon
Ren Zhengfei
Lee Kun Hee
Roman Abramovich
The BlackBerry Guys
Rupert Murdoch

Scientists & Thinkers
Jeffrey Sachs
Malcolm Gladwell
Robert Klein
Andrew Weil
Burt Rutan
Karl Rove
Rick Warren
Brian Atwater
Mitchell Baker
Timothy Garton Ash
Natan Sharansky
Abdolkarim Soroush
Peter Singer
Richard Pound
Lee Kuan Yew
Larry Summers

Heroes & Icons
Bill Gates
Oprah Winfrey
LeBron James
Eliot Spitzer
Melissa Etheridge
The Dalai Lama
Nelson Mandela
Viktor Yushchenko
Dina Astita
Hania Mufti
Wangari Maathai
Mary Robinson
Lubna Olayan
Ellen MacArthur
John Stott
Michael Schumacher
Stephen Lewis

Roll over, Moab

Once upon a time, there was a town in Utah called Moab, a red-rock desert hamlet known for just one thing: uranium mines. Then somebody noticed all those old mining roads and the way a set of knobby tires could grip that red rock, and pretty soon Moab was mecca for mountain bikes.

Copper Canyon, says Chuck Nichols, “is another Moab waiting to happen.” And Nichols, 55, has seen a lot of both places. He and his wife, Judy, opened the Poison Spider bike shop in Moab 15 years ago and watched as mountain bikers took to their red-rock town like ants to flan. Since 2001, through their company Nichols Expeditions, the two have been bringing a U.S. group to Copper Canyon every year.

Until now, if you’ve heard of Copper Canyon at all, it’s probably because of the railroad — a 400-plus-mile trip from Los Mochis to Chihuahua full of tunnels, twists, track-side vendors in native garb and hints of the territory’s history as a gold- and silver-mining region in the 18th and 19th centuries.

But more and more Mexican and American bikers are turning up these days, drawn by some of the deepest downhill runs in the world and a trail network blazed by generations of Tarahumara. The result is a landscape full of lethal vistas, backcountry characters and ancient ways.

Excerpt from an article in Los Angeles Times