Monday, May 9, 2005
That damn Carlo
NewMexiKen just received a piece of junk email (I didn’t read it, Outlook did). It had the subject line “tell Sonny not to come over.”
Too late, “They shot Sonny on the Causeway. He’s dead.”
Archive for May 9, 2005
Gila monster spit aids diabetics
Millions of diabetes sufferers throughout the world can thank the most unlikely of all medical heroes - our desert-dwelling Gila monster - for a new and effective drug to control their disease.
Just given federal approval, the drug - marketed as Byetta - is made from the saliva of the slow-moving, venomous lizard of the American Southwest.
Whatever works, but NewMexiKen is wondering who exactly figured this out and how? Do you suppose kissing was involved?
DiGiorno’s anyone?
A Brazilian woman sent a poisoned pizza to a teenager she had a crush on, which landed the teenager, his six schoolmates and their teacher in the hospital in grave condition on Friday, police said.
An Australian prison siege ended Monday after a group of inmates agreed to release a guard they had held for two days in return for a delivery of pizzas, prison officials said.
Something new: Singer Susie Suh
It’s a typical story: She’s a California-raised Korean-American girl who went to boarding school in New Hampshire and then to Brown. She was discovered by talent scouts while playing music in a coffee shop. And she auditioned for Sony Music executives playing Bob Dylan’s guitar.
Well, maybe not so typical, after all.
From NPR, which has a few songs you can hear.
It’s the birthday
… of Kermit (yeah, that Kermit). He’s 50 today. Maybe it is easy being green.
The original Kermit was made from a coat belonging to Jim Henson’s mother.
1 CommentGood free RSS reader
If you’d like to try an RSS feeder, NewMexiKen suggests FeedReader, a lightweight, totally free program (Windows).
Update May 11: FeedReader lost all my feeds (a substantial investment in time). I know not why.
For more information you might check out NPR, which has a little background and lists a number or availble readers, including FeedReader.
The Final Insult
Suppose you’re a full-time Wal-Mart employee, earning $17,000 a year. You probably didn’t get any tax cut. But Mr. Bush says, generously, that he won’t cut your Social Security benefits.
Suppose you’re earning $60,000 a year. On average, Mr. Bush cut taxes for workers like you by about $1,000 per year. But by 2045 the Bush Social Security plan would cut benefits for workers like you by about $6,500 per year. Not a very good deal.
Suppose, finally, that you’re making $1 million a year. You received a tax cut worth about $50,000 per year. By 2045 the Bush plan would reduce benefits for people like you by about $9,400 per year. We have a winner!
I’m not being unfair. In fact, I’ve weighted the scales heavily in Mr. Bush’s favor, because the tax cuts will cost much more than the benefit cuts would save. Repealing Mr. Bush’s tax cuts would yield enough revenue to call off his proposed benefit cuts, and still leave $8 trillion in change.
The usual suspects
A new group blog, The Huffington Post, now just hours old.
On the front page:
Arianna, of course.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall
Mike Nichols
John Cusack
Ellen DeGeneres
Harry Shearer
Laurie David
and more.
Thank you
The home page, the monthly archives and the category archives are all paginated now, with nice little page number links at the bottom.
NewMexiKen wants to thank Chad Everett of Don’t Back Down for his help with this. First, his discussion of how to paginate in Movable Type was the first I ever understood. And, when I got stuck, he personally came to my aid. I might have figured the code out on my own, but not in this lifetime. So, if you ever need consulting for computer, network, programming or security, be certain to consider Mr. Everett.
Zoo babies
The Rio Grande Zoo has had a passle of births and The Albuquerque Journal has three cute photos. (No registration required for these, but I suspect they’ll only be there a few more days.)
Caught listening
If you are fond of radio as a once unique and quite special medium — and NewMexiKen is — you will enjoy Garrison Keillor’s take on its current state in The Nation, Confessions of a Listener. One paragraph:
The deregulation of radio was tough on good-neighbor radio because Clear Channel and other conglomerates were anxious to vacuum up every station in sight for fabulous sums of cash and turn them into robot repeaters. I dropped in to a broadcasting school last fall and saw kids being trained for radio careers as if radio were a branch of computer processing. They had no conception of the possibility of talking into a microphone to an audience that wants to hear what you have to say. I tried to suggest what a cheat this was, but the instructor was standing next to me. Clear Channel’s brand of robotics is not the future of broadcasting. With a whole generation turning to iPod and another generation discovering satellite radio and Internet radio, the robotic formatted-music station looks like a very marginal operation indeed. Training kids to do that is like teaching typewriter repair.
In fact this is just a great piece about the state of affairs in America, full of laughs and insights (as Keillor always is).
Amen
More from Confessions of a Listener:
I enjoy, in small doses, the over-the-top right-wingers who have leaked into AM radio on all sides in the past twenty years. They are evil, lying, cynical bastards who are out to destroy the country I love and turn it into a banana republic, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
John Brown
The American Experience has a biographical essay on the abolitionist John Brown, who was born on this date in 1800. I recommend it.
He has been called a saint, a fanatic, and a cold-blooded murderer. The debate over his memory, his motives, about the true nature of the man, continues to stir passionate debate. It is said that John Brown was the spark that started the Civil War. Truly, he marked the end of compromise over the issue of slavery, and it was not long after his death that John Brown’s war became the nation’s war.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood
Buenos días Caballeros y Damas. It’s so clear this morning I can see the snow still on the top of Mt. Taylor 60 miles (96km) west.
Mike Wallace is 87 today. 60 Minutes is the only place where the average age is higher than that of the Catholic College of Cardinals.
Albert Finney is 69. He’s been nominated for an Oscar five times; no wins. Remind me to check out Tom Jones from Netflix.
Glenda Jackson is 69 today as well. She only has four Oscar nominations, but she’s won twice for Best Actress: Women In Love and A Touch of Class.
James L. Brooks is 65. Brooks won the Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay for Terms of Endearment. Broadcast News, Jerry Maguire and As Good as It Gets got him various nominations as well. For my money, I like his work as executive producer of Mary Tyler Moore and, of course, The Simpsons.
Candace Bergen is 59. Ms. Bergen was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 for Starting Over.
Billy Joel is 56. If you need a couple notes of Billy Joel, click here.
Sir James Barrie was born on this date in 1860. NewMexiKen thought Johnny Depp was superb in his portrayal of Barrie in Finding Neverland. Barrie may or may not have been like the character portrayed, but Depp got the sensitive wuss down really well. And to think, the year before he was a pirate. If they’d nominated Jamie Foxx for Best Actor for Collateral, he’d have gotten my vote. But now that I’ve seen the five performances that were nominated, I gotta go with Johnny Depp.
It’s time to take it to the streets
Apostrophe boosters were in mourning at the University of Minnesota after it was decided to name a fancy new walkway the Scholars Walk, not the Scholar’s Walk. …
For weeks, the issue has bedeviled those at the university and beyond who care a great deal about such things. English professors, e-mailers from across the United States and even the Apostrophe Protection Society of England offered advice.
Key quote: “Apostrophes would be out of control!” said board member Margaret Carlson.
