War!

The United States Congress declared war on Mexico on this date in 1846. (Open hostilities had begun in April.)

Two days earlier, in a message to Congress, President Polk had claimed:

The cup of forbearance had been exhausted even before the recent information from the frontier of the Del Norte [Rio Grande]. But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the two nations are now at war.

(Of course, Mexico did not recognize the Rio Grande as the border.)

Within a few hours the House passed a resolution authorizing war 173-14. The Senate interrupted its debate about whether to abolish West Point and discussed the matter of war for a day before agreeing 42-2.

At a cabinet meeting on the 13th, Polk corrected Secretary of State Buchanan of the notion that the U.S. did not intend to acquire New Mexico or California. Such acquisition might be necessary to indemnify us Polk said, and he would accept war with “either England or France or all the Powers of Christendom” rather than pledge “that we would not if we could fairly and honourably acquire California or any other part of Mexican territory which we desired.”

Where do you fit?

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has a Typology Test. Answer 25 questions about public policy plus a few personal indicators and get an assessment of yourself and your type. Interesting.

NewsGator

NewMexiKen mentioned Thursday that the web-based RSS aggregator NewsGator had left New Mexico out of its list of available weather alerts — all the other states and outlying areas of the U.S. were listed (except Ohio).

Today I received an email from Leland Rucker, the Content Manager at NewsGator Technologies. He has corrected the list (including Ohio). Mr. Rucker says, “I’m a big fan of your fair state and have spent much time there the last twenty years.”

The Week Quiz

The Week Quiz

NewMexiKen upped my score to six correct out of ten this week.

Evelyn Wood anyone?

While we’re on the topic of Bush’s leisure time, anyone intent on criticizing the president for taking an hour and a half out of his day to mountain-bike should take the following as proof that he is indeed a busy man: In a photo taken just after the ride, Bush is holding what appears to be a copy of “I Am Charlotte Simmons,” the Tom Wolfe novel about debauchery on a college campus. In early February, Bush told reporters he was reading that same book — which, if he is almost done, averages to about seven pages a day.

— The Washington Post

Link via The Huffington Post.

What, me worry?

Q: Might there be something wrong with protocols that render the president unnecessary when the alarm is going off at his house?

McCLELLAN: That’s not at all what occurred, Ken. And I would disagree strongly with the way you characterize it for the reasons I started earlier, and that I talked about. This was a situation where the president was in an off-site location. He was not in danger, a situation where protocols have been put in place to address the situation. The protocols were followed. …

Q: And those protocols are OK with the president despite the fact that his wife was in a situation where she might have been endangered?

McCLELLAN: She was taken to a secure location, as were some other officials.

Q: And wouldn’t he want to know about that as it was happening?

McCLELLAN: He was briefed about the situation.

Q: After it happened.

He was bike riding in Maryland.

Sticky fingers

A bottle of maple syrup fell from Jason Kottke’s refrigerator onto the floor. NewMexiKen likes Kottke’s original plans for dealing with it:

My first reaction upon seeing the sticky pointy superhero of a mess was to abandon all my possessions and move immediately to a new apartment. After seriously considering that for a few seconds, I then decided to leave it for the ants. I currently have no ants in my apartment, but I’m sure a big puddle of liquid sugar in the middle of the kitchen floor is just the thing to attract some.

He has moved on to less practical approaches: How to clean up maple syrup.

Church talk

The American Street has the opening weekend church bulletin for Our Lady of the Perpetual Democrat Church and Day Spa.

Pretty funny. Note the signs on the church and the choice of communion wine.

NewMexiKen always liked Garrison Keillor’s name for the Catholic church in Lake Wobegon — Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.

Maybe they were surfers

The first humans who left Africa to populate the world headed south along the coast of the Indian Ocean, Science magazine reports.

Scientists had always thought the exodus from Africa around 70,000 years ago took place along a northern route into Europe and Asia.

But according to a genetic study, early modern humans followed the beach, possibly lured by a seafood diet.

They quickly reached Australia but took much longer to settle in Europe.

— BBC News

Unfounded

The Smoking Gun has the Albuquerque Police report on the Runaway Bride — Runaway Bride’s Tall Tawdry Tale.

The General reviews a children’s book

Jesus’ General reviews the children’s book — which an Oklahoma legislator is attempting to ban — King & King. A teaser:

That’s the danger of this book. On the surface it seems like your average buddy story, but it’s actually a diabolical attempt to endanger our children’s salvation by introducing them to the iniquitous world of the tolerant.

Really Simple Syndication

BBC News has the clearest explanation NewMexiKen has seen of RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

In a world heaving under the weight of billions of web pages, keeping up to date with the information you want can be a drag.

Wouldn’t it be better to have the latest news and features delivered directly to you, rather than clicking from site to site? Well now you can, thanks to a very clever service, RSS.

…

In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want.

There’s more.

On this date

Winston Wolfe is 66. That’s Harvey Keitel. He was George Baines in The Piano, and nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Mickey Cohen in Bugsy. Keitel played Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ and Elvis in Finding Graceland.

A year ago NewMexiKen wrote about Richard Steven Valenzuela, better known as Ritchie Valens, Steveland Hardaway Judkins, better known as Stevie Wonder, and Joe Louis.

Wonder is 55 today. Valens would have been 64. Joe Louis was born on this date in 1914.

Friday the 13th

Paraskevidekatriaphobia — fear of Friday the 13th

So where does it come from — the fear of 13? Its origins can be traced to Norse mythology and a dinner party at Valhalla, home of the god Odin, where Odin and 11 of his closest god-friends were gathered one night to party. Everyone was having fun, but then Loki, the dastardly god of evil and turmoil, showed up uninvited, making it a crowd of 13. The beloved god Balder tried to boot Loki out of the house, the legend goes, and in the scuffle that followed he suffered a deathblow from a spear of mistletoe.

From that mythological start, the number 13 has plowed a path of devastation through history. There were 13 people at Christ’s Last Supper, including the double-crossing Judas Iscariot. The ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission left the launching pad at 13:13 hours and was aborted on April 13. Friday hasn’t been much kinder to us. Friday was execution day in ancient Rome — Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Put it all together, and Friday the 13th spells trouble for triskaidekaphobics. It’s a testament to the phobia’s prevalence that Hollywood was able to parlay our fear into a hugely successful series of slasher movies starring a hockey-masked guy named Jason.

But triskaidekaphobia isn’t an exclusively American affliction. Italians omit the number 13 from their national lottery. There is a hush-hush organization in France whose exclusive purpose is to provide last-minute guests for dinner parties, so that no party host ever has to suffer the curse of entertaining 13 guests.

Excerpted from Jon Bowen, writing at Slate.

About.com has five pages of background on the superstition.

And Urban Legends has a lengthy page.

Arlington National Cemetery

The very first burial at Arlington was on this date in 1864. There have been 240,000 since.