Friday, April 22, 2005
Archive for April 22, 2005
Look, up in the sky!
It’s Jupiter shining brightly, followed by the moon, followed by the star Spica.
Jupiter is the third-brightest object in the night sky, after the Moon and Venus. But Venus isn’t in view right now, so there’s nothing to compete with Jupiter.
Spica is a true star — one of the brightest in the night sky, even from its distance of 260 light-years.
Look for Spica, the Moon, and Jupiter lining up atop the southeastern horizon in early evening. The Moon will move closer to Spica during the night, and appear quite close to the star at dawn tomorrow.
The moon will be full Sunday.
Judge not, lest ye be judged
“Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court,” [James C.] Dobson said. “They don’t have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th Circuit doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s gone.”
Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.
An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.
The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts.
1 CommentReligion is the hallucogenic of the masses
Umm, NewMexiKen does not wish to seem too cold and non-believing, but if there are people who think this is a religious apparition, I really don’t want to spend eternity with them.
Read about the Underpass Virgin at CNN.com.
Culprit fingered
A woman who said she found part of a human finger in a bowl of Wendy’s chili last month has been arrested and charged with larceny in connection with the incident, authorities said on Friday. …
Wendy’s International Inc., was “thrilled that an arrest has been made,” Tom Mueller, president of the company’s North American business, said in a statement.
The larceny charge, which originated in San Jose, was related to the finger incident, but the origin of the finger was still unknown, said San Jose police department spokesman Nick Muyo.
Throw out the records
In one of the most competitive Southeastern Conference races in memory, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina have each had 11 football players arrested or cited in recent months.
The three teams’ lineups are so evenly matched, penal pundits say, that the SEC might have to resort to the seldom-used strength-of-sentence tie-breaker.
Functional Ambivalent accepts the challenge
… and handles the book meme with his usual aplomb and erudition: FunctionalAmbivalent: Taking the NewMexiKen Challenge.
Sorry, though, my yard is reserved for quail and rabbits.
I have no idea what this means …
but it appears NewMexiKen is doing better on the market than most of my investments. Scroll down and check out the graphs.
Charles Mingus …
was born in Nogales, Arizona, on this date in 1922.
Irascible, demanding, bullying, and probably a genius, Charles Mingus cut himself a uniquely iconoclastic path through jazz in the middle of the 20th century, creating a legacy that became universally lauded only after he was no longer around to bug people. As a bassist, he knew few peers, blessed with a powerful tone and pulsating sense of rhythm, capable of elevating the instrument into the front line of a band. But had he been just a string player, few would know his name today. Rather, he was the greatest bass-playing leader/composer jazz has ever known, one who always kept his ears and fingers on the pulse, spirit, spontaneity, and ferocious expressive power of jazz.
Charles Mingus died in 1979. There’s an attractive Official Mingus Web.
Jack Nicholson …
is 68 today. Here’s what I posted last year.
Earth Day
Earth Day was first observed in Spring of 1970. An estimated 20 million people nationwide attended festivities out of which came the largest grassroots environmental movement in U.S. history, and the impetus for national legislation like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. By the twentieth anniversary of that event, April 22, 1990, more than 200 million people in 141 countries participated in Earth Day celebrations.
