The Mick

Baseball fans in general and fans NewMexiKen’s age in particular should appreciate the HBO documentary on Mickey Mantle, which premiered tonight. I wasn’t a Yankee fan — indeed I was a Yankee-hater then — but he was a hero in the 1950s of a type that no one today seems to approach (ill-deserved as much of it may have been). It’s a well done program.

I saw Mantle play twice, 53 and 49 years ago. I can remember both games and especially his out-of-the-park homerun at Tiger (then Briggs) Stadium in 1956 — over the third deck’s 94-foot-high roof in right field — June 18, 1956.

The following describes a homer Mantle hit in the same park in 1960.

Mantle unloaded a tremendous homer over the right-field roof through a light tower (which it may have grazed) and out of the park. The pitcher was Paul Foytack. Years later researcher Paul Susman, Ph.D. found eyewitnesses who confirmed exactly where the ball landed on the fly. Dr. Susman then measured the distance, which turned out to be an astonishing 643 feet! This was almost certainly the longest home run Mickey hit in a regular season game that could actually be measured to the spot it landed, and probably the longest homer anyone ever hit in a regular season game that could be measured to the actual landing point. This homer is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest homer ever “measured trigonometrically.”

Mickey Mantle: Frequently Asked Questions

Same Tiger pitcher served up both of these (1956, 1960) — Paul Foytack.

Best line of the day, so far

“Santorum got excited because he finished a jigsaw puzzle in 6 months and the box said 2 to 4 years.”

Crooks and Liars Stupid Santorum Jokes

Another (from the comments):

Q: What would Rick Santorum say if you asked him if his turn signal is working?
A: Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No.

Works for me

According to our license plates, New Mexico is the Land of Enchantment — but locals know it’s also the Land of Mañana, where things get done just a little bit slower than might be anticipated.

George Adelo Jr. of Pecos came up with the perfect slogan to describe the New Mexico way…: “Carpe Mañana,” Seize Tomorrow.

Santa Fe New Mexican

A little too graphic

It seems to me that Parents Against Bad Books in Schools needs more detail than absolutely necessary. This is from the Sample Book Review Documentation Form.

For each type checked above also indicate level of vividness/graphicness using the following as a general guide:

Basic (B): large breasts

Graphic (G): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts

Very graphic (VG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples

Extremely graphic (EG): large, voluptuous bouncing breasts with hard nipples covered with glistening sweat and bite marks

Link via Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

Maybe she was just doing some homework

A psychologist who has spoken out on eating disorders and other issues was arrested after she collapsed in a supermarket, allegedly after inhaling propellant from whipped cream cans.

Lisa G. Berzins, who has been interviewed on television and in newspapers and successfully lobbied for a state law regulating claims by weight loss businesses, was arrested on a warrant Friday charging her in the May 29 incident.

Houston Chronicle

Link via Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

McDonald’s diet works for her

Article from the Raleigh News & Observer via the Detroit Free Press:

At a cost of $9 to $11 for three meals, the single mother of two can afford it. She travels throughout the Raleigh area working construction jobs, and she has never failed to find a McDonald’s somewhere. The whole process of ordering and eating a meal takes maybe 5 minutes, and she mostly eats in her car. Sometimes she hits the drive-through only once, ordering enough food to last the whole day.

Since April 22, when Morgan launched her diet with a Sausage Burrito and a medium Diet Coke, she’s lost 33 pounds, putting her at about 195 pounds. At 5 feet, 9 inches tall, she’s dropped from a size 22 or 24 to a size 15. The size 2X and 3X T-shirts she used to wear look like dresses on her. And despite her friends’ fears about skyrocketing cholesterol, she feels great.

Sounds yummy, too.

Taking control of the universe one cool application at a time

Google SMS, yet another service from Google.

Unclassified ads

Small Ads from the UK. Some are laugh-out-loud. Please no Coke or milk drinking while taking a look.

Sasquatch sighting reported in Yukon

A group of people in the Yukon community of Teslin say they saw a sasquatch or bushman over the weekend, the second reported sighting in the area in about a year.

Nine people, some of them children, say a large human-like figure covered in hair passed by a window of a house. They later saw it standing behind an abandoned car near some houses in the community, which is located 180 kilometres east of Whitehorse.

CBC North

Planarity

Planarity

NewMexiKen did well at Level 1.

Be careful out there

National Rifle Association certified instructor, NRA range safety officer, New Mexico Department of Public Safety instructor and concealed-carry instructor Steve Akins addresses the shortcomings in recent legislation. Excerpted from a column in The Albuquerque Tribune.

The changes to New Mexico’s Right to Carry gun law that were adopted during the 2005 legislative session took effect June 17.

Significant progress was made during the session, but there are some issues that remain unresolved. Some of the initiatives ended with less than completely desirable results for concealed-carry advocates.

We succeeded in getting the minimum age for concealed carry lowered from 25 to 21. This is a big step forward, but still we need to recognize that this minimum age fails to address our military personnel in the 18-to-20 age group. They are trained for combat and expected to use firearms, putting their lives on the line to defend their country. Yet they are not trusted to carry a concealed firearm to defend themselves or their families here in New Mexico.

…

We made a common-sense change in the caliber-qualification requirement. Now, a licensee can qualify with a large-caliber firearm and is authorized then to carry any lesser caliber of the same category - that is, semiautomatic or revolver.

…

A limitation was added in New Mexico saying a licensee may carry only one concealed firearm at a time. That limitation is ridiculous, in that licensees often carry a primary and a backup firearm. In New Mexico, they can’t legally do so.

…

A major failure was our inability to address the alcohol-establishment issue. Under the law, a licensee may not carry a concealed firearm into any licensed alcohol establishment. Doing so would turn the most law-abiding, trustworthy citizen in the state into a felon.

That means licensees must disarm before shopping for groceries - going into a Wal-Mart, for example, or trying to pay for gas inside a convenience store if it sells alcohol. Not only is this an encouragement to those that have no respect for the law and find safe havens to rob or injure others in such establishments, it also requires a licensee to leave a firearm unattended in his or her vehicle.

Duke City stuff

And while were on the topic of Albuquerque merchandise, check out the Albuquerque City Store.

Tricentennial

A front license plate you can get for just $7.95 from Albuquerque Tricentennial.

Too bad the state isn’t making an actual commemorative tag.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a world!

A truck bomb detonated today near a group of American soldiers who were distributing candy to children in a poor neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, killing as many as 27 people, about two dozen of them children, and wounding dozens more, government and hospital officials said.

The New York Times

A gas

Where’s the downside? As I said, there are many good reasons to own a Civic GX, but driving pleasure is not among them. Styled like the dull end of a spoon, this car is boring on a scale that calls for parsecs. Cloth seats, a dinky two-speaker stereo, a trunk eaten up by the CNG cylinder, steel wheels and a 1.7-liter four-cylinder under the hood — or an asthmatic squirrel — the GX could school Savonarola on privation. The car’s CVT gearbox howls for mercy at 80 miles per hour, which is how fast you have to drive sometimes so you don’t get plowed under in the HOV lane.

— Dan Neil in the Los Angeles Times

Best line of the day, so far

“Numbers became so important that if the SecDef went to a briefing and we had reported that we had captured 14 Al Qaeda and it really turned out to be 12 or 16, then it would be easier to let two go or go back and capture two more rather than to try to change the OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] number.”

A deputy commanding general in Afghanistan quoted in Sean Naylor’s Not A Good Day to Die via INTEL DUMP

No black passport

Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover–in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport–i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.

A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.

— Larry Johnson, guest at the TPMCafe

Rove gets The Daily Show treatment

Via Crooks and Liars. Wonderful.

Best line of the day, so far

“There’s not much you can say about someone who claims to have read the Bible cover to cover and came away from it thinking it encourages hatred for fellow human beings.”

— Massachusetts Representative Martin T. Meehan quoted in The Boston Globe. He’s speaking specifically of U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, R-Idiot.