Beats Per Minute

Beats Per Minute blogging from New Orleans.

(Actually, he’s in Birmingham for now, but lives in New Orleans.)

He begins Thursday’s entry:

For me, yesterday was the lowest point during this whole ordeal. I had such high hopes after hearing some news on Monday afternoon, after the hurricane had passed, that our part of town might have done really well. I imagined eventually going back, having to clean up, putting things back on shelves and on the walls, letting the dogs run around in the back yard, hearing them bark, watching them jump and play. In other words, moving back into our home. Then when I woke up yesterday morning and I heard about the breach in the levee, it was as though the ground ripped opened at my feet creating a wide chasm, and I spent all day trying to balance on a narrow ledge, trying to keep from falling in.

It’s the birthday

… of Washington Nationals manager Frank Robinson, who is 70 today.

Van Morrison is 60, as is Itzhak Perlman.

Richard Gere is 56.

Take me for a ride in your car, car

Phew. This trip is wonderful, but entirely too much driving.

NewMexiKen and Dad detoured from U.S. 101 to take the “Avenue of the Giants” through part of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. This photo does no justice to the magnificent trees, or to the spooky somewhat primeval feeling one had driving through a forest nearly dark from lack of sunlight reaching the ground. I kept thinking, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

“The City” as seen early Tuesday afternoon from Sausalito, just before we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge (toll now $5). I think you can see the tilt of the earth in this photo, though possibly I was just holding the camera badly.

Fort Bowie National Historic Site

… was authorized on this date in 1964. According to the National Park Service:

Fort Bowie commemorates in its 1000 acres, the story of the bitter conflict between the Chiricahua Apaches and the United States military. For more than 30 years Fort Bowie and Apache Pass were the focal point of military operations eventually culminating in the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 and the banishment of the Chiricahuas to Florida and Alabama. It was the site of the Bascom Affair, a wagon train massacre, and the battle of Apache Pass, where a large force of Chiricahua Apaches under Mangus Colorados and Cochise fought the California Volunteers. The remains of Fort Bowie today are carefully preserved, the adobe walls of various post buildings and the ruins of a Butterfield Stage Station.

Visiting Fort Bowie requires a three mile round trip hike — unless you use the handicap entrance, which they keep a secret until you show up after walking a mile-and-a-half on a July afternoon with a daughter eight months pregnant and a two-year-old grandson.

Sneaky snake

According to The Writer’s Almanac:

It was on this day in 30 BC that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake she had smuggled into her chamber where she was held captive by Octavian, formerly the political rival of her lover Mark Antony. Octavian had defeated Cleopatra and Antony at the Battle of Actium and had taken Cleopatra prisoner. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to parade her as part of his triumphant return to Rome, she planned her own suicide. For centuries, it was assumed that the snake she used was an asp, but it is now thought that the snake was an Egyptian cobra.

Teddy Ballgame

Ted Williams is 87 today. He’s planning to spend the day hanging out and just chillin’.

Not counting games when he only pinch hit (i.e., only one at bat), there were just eight instances in Williams’s career that he went consecutive games without getting on base — seven times he failed to get on for two games, once it was for three.

It’s also the birthday

… of Warren Buffet. The billionaire “uncle” of Jimmy Buffet is 75. (Actually distant cousins.)

… of Jerry Tarkanian. The Shark is also 75.

… of John Phillips. The Papa is 70. (The other Papa was Denny Doherty.)

… of Molly Ivins. The columnist is 61.

… of Peggy Lipton. The Mod Squad member is 58.

… of Lewis Black. The comedian, and regular on The Daily Show, is 57.

… of Cameron Diaz. Princess Fiona is 33.

They had changed the sign

… but not the pump at the Exxon station in Brookings, Oregon, so we filled up for just $2.78⁹ rather than for the $2.81⁹ that was posted. Seems that hurricane in Louisiana has already caused prices to jump 2,000 miles away.

Later, in Arcata, California, we saw the price for regular posted at $2.95-2.99; extra and premium are around $3.10 and $3.20.

Down the coast

NewMexiKen and Dad, official dad of NewMexiKen, continued their mad rush to the Pacific Northwest and back Monday, beginning the return trip with the drive down the Oregon coast — all of it. A dreary, rainy morning (appreciated by us two desert rats) gave way to sunny, nearly cloudless skies, though the temperature rarely rose above 70ºF.

This is the Yaquina Head Light House located at the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area near Newport, Oregon. Unfortunately today the surf was rough and the gray whales that spend the summer off the Oregon coast were nowhere in sight. (”You go on up to Alaska for the summer if you want. I see no reason to do all that unnecessary swimming. I’m going to just stay right here off Oregon. See you on the way back to Baja this winter.”)

Got to love a place that bills itself as the “Outstanding” Natural Area.

Dad takes in the surf further south along the coast.

The view from Debby’s porch

Debby, official younger sister of NewMexiKen, lives in Astoria, Oregon, the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies. Her porch sits about 60 feet above the Columbia River, at sea level here as it nears its outlet into the Pacific. Sunday was cool and rainy with low skies. This was the view looking northwest around 7:20 PM. That’s Washington State across the river.

It’s the birthday

… of John McCain. The Senator who doesn’t know what he stands for is 69.

… of Elliott Gould. The original “Trapper” John McIntyre and former Mr. Barbra Streisand is 67.

… of William Friedkin. The Oscar-winning director (The French Connection) is 66.

… of Michael Jackson. He was born in 1958, but who knows what that is in Michael years.

… of Rebecca DeMornay. The actress is 43.

First posted two years ago today

… it seemed like a good time to re-post these observations on family vacations written by Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen.

Every summer our family took a long vacation across country. The destinations we visited, and the routes we took, varied from year to year. However, one thing never changed: we always went by car. I suppose that a family of six really had no choice, considering the prohibitive cost of air travel. But we kids held out hope, year after year, that this summer would be the one where we’d finally get to see the inside of one of those shiny metal flying machines. (Planes held the same mystical fascination for us that space ships must hold for other children.) Alas, that rosy day never came and, well into our teens, we spent our summers strapped into a beat-up station wagon topped with a car top carrier.

On the bright side, traveling provided many special opportunities for our parents to teach us lessons that were not necessarily apparent in daily life. Some examples:

Leave the house spotless
Before leaving for any trip, my parents would clean our house until it squeaked. Every bed had to be made, every dish washed and put away, every trash can empty, and every item of clothing laundered. For some reason, we also had to close the doors to all the rooms. My mother firmly believed that the worst possible thing in the world was returning home from vacation to a messy house. So we always left it in a sterilized state. As an adult, I still find myself rushing around the kitchen, placing freshly washed pots in cupboards, as my husband impatiently honks at me from the driver’s seat of our fully packed car.

Depart on car trips at 4:00 am
Many is the morning that we kids remember being awakened while it was still dark outside, quickly bundled into clothes, and limply escorted into the station wagon. My parents always liked to hit the road before the morning paper arrived. The theory was twofold. First, you could get one last night of sleep at home, without having to drive through the night or pay for a hotel room. Secondly, you got an early start, avoided all the morning traffic, and could get a couple hundred miles from home before the kids fully gained consciousness.

Television shows are a measure of time
As anyone who has traveled a long distance by car knows, time begins to have no meaning after a certain number of miles are logged. This is especially true for small children, since their grasp of time is tenuous to begin with. To combat this, my parents developed a foolproof way of telling us how much time stood between our next stop and us. When one of us would offer up the inevitable plaint from the backseat, “How much longerrrrrrrr?” my parents would reply using units we could understand. “Two Sesame Streets and one Mister Rogers,” they would respond. This, as any fan of educational television knows, is equivalent to two-and-a-half hours. Using this child-friendly estimator, even a three-year old could figure out whether lunch was only 15 minutes away, or whether we weren’t going to even slow down for another half day.

Never stop unless you absolutely must stop
Perhaps because we took such long and involved trips, or perhaps just because my parents were masochists, a typical day’s drive for us usually involved about 1,000 miles. With so much ground to cover, stops of any kind became a prized and rare commodity. Generally, my parents liked to use one stop and one stop only to take care of: lunch, a fresh tank of gas, six bathroom breaks, souvenir buying, stretching of legs, repacking the car top carrier, separating any bickering children, changing diapers, any necessary medical attention, relevant phone calls, sightseeing, mechanical repairs, and hugs. Sometimes they’d work a second, similar stop into the evening, then continue to drive straight through the night. This was not a car for whiners.

If you do make a “frivolous” stop, make it count
One thing that my parents were always willing to go out of the way to see, on these jaunts, was a place of natural or historical significance. Yes, I grew up in a family of National Park junkies. Before every trip, my father would spend weeks with his maps and his pads of yellow, lined paper, plotting the route that would take us by the greatest number of national treasures. As children, we hiked the Grand Canyon, toured Native American ruins, discussed whether Mount Rushmore was a “gyp,” timed the geysers at Yellowstone, and ran among the great Sequoias. Whenever possible, we camped overnight at the parks, enjoying the thrills of bear warnings, ranger campfire talks, and carry-along casserole heated over our miniature propane grill. The love of these parks has never left any of us. If anything, we kids are even bigger park addicts now than we were as children.

When checking into a hotel, never admit the true occupancy
Most of the time, on the vacations we took early in my life, my family camped at night. But as we got older, more often we would stay overnight at a Holiday Inn or some comparable motor lodge. My parents would invariably tell the desk clerk that only four of us would be staying in the room, in order to save money on extra occupant fees. Thus, two children were always forced to stay in the car while my parents filled out the necessary paperwork. Then, as we traveled to our room, those unacknowledged children would have to keep their heads down in the car and scurry into the room. Hey, ten bucks is ten bucks.

Do not take the cap off the radiator when the car overheats
Our cars generally performed well on these extremely long journeys across the country. But, inevitably, something would go wrong at some point on the trip. We had many memorable breakdowns. Once we came out of McDonalds, in a bad part of town near Washington, DC, to find a poorly timed flat tire. We had one car that intermittently got the shakes and started doing a back and forth chugging motion. But, most often, our car would simply overheat. When that happened, we would generally just pull over and let it cool down. Once, however, my father made the horrible mistake of unscrewing the radiator cap, to investigate the problem. He was rewarded with a scalding stream of water directly into his face. It is safe to say that no member of my family will ever, and I mean ever, unscrew a radiator cap again. That pained shriek still rings in my ears.

It’s the birthday

… of German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born in Frankfurt on this date in 1749. Goethe said, “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”

… of Mother Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, the first American-born saint, born in New York City on this date in 1774.

… of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, born near Tula on this date in 1828.

… of ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson, born in Jamestown, New York, on this date in 1908.

The Week Quiz

NewMexiKen scored just six correct out of ten on The Week Quiz.

Try your luck.

Powell’s Books

In NewMexiKen’s view no visit to left-coast Portland is complete without getting lost in Powell’s City of Books, America’s greatest bookstore. Today we made the pilgrimage — paying at a parking meter with a credit card, a NewMexiKen first.

A (cell phone) photo of the U.S. states’ history section. Really, western states on the left, others on the right — all the way down. A row away there was nearly 30 linear feet just for books about Abraham Lincoln. Powell’s best feature is the intermingling of new and used books on the same shelf, a practice that greatly increases the variety.

When I’m older and turn into a street person, just let me get lost in Powell’s 24-by-7.

Yesterday, on the road

NewMexiKen and Dad continued their jaunt to the Pacific Northwest Friday, driving across Oregon on a warm, hazy day. The eastern and central part of the state, even along the Columbia River, was frighteningly dry. The drive through the Columbia Gorge, mostly in Oregon, partly north of the River in Washington, was superb nonetheless.

The Pendleton Mills is in Pendleton, Oregon, of all places. The store offers no discounts (other than for seconds), but is still worth a stop. Seeing so much colorful Pendleton wool in one place is always pleasing. Dad, however, refused to buy a nice Pendleton shirt that he liked when he saw it was labeled “Made in China.”

The Bonneville Dam is just one of many along the Columbia that have turned this once great river into, as one critic put it, “A string of lakes.” The lakes are pretty, but the river would be better. Wouldn’t have all that cheap hydro-electric power then though (note transmission lines in the photo).

Lyndon Baines Johnson

… the 36th President of the United States, was born on this date in 1908.

Hair, hair, hair. Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it.

Two brothers were suspended on the second day of school on Los Fresnos, Texas, for having braided hair that went below the collar.

Rodney and Skyler Burns transferred to Los Fresnos from Ardmore, Oklahoma. The next day they were placed on “In School Suspension,” The Brownsville Herald reported. They are kept in a room all day, not allowed to eat lunch or mingle with other students and not allowed to participate in extracurricular activities.

Rodney, 14, and Skyler, 14, are part Chickasaw. Their mother said the school is being discriminatory. “They are punishing them over their heritage,” Deborah Burns told the paper.

The school says it is not biased but won’t change policy. If the boys don’t cut their hair or change their hairstyle, they could be sent to the alternative high school.

Source: Indianz.Com

Isn’t dictating the length of a male’s hair also some sort of sex discrimination?

Athletes May Be in Denial, but Fans Aren’t

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:

As much as fans want to believe Lance Armstrong, who denied a report this week in a French newspaper that he’d used a banned substance before winning his first Tour de France, they may have doubts, thanks to a troubling theme resonating through the world of sports.

“It should fill us with righteous anger when a French newspaper calls Lance Armstrong, bona fide American hero, a cheater,” writes Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “[But] the sad truth is that we can’t get angry for Armstrong because we simply can’t trust anyone anymore. We’ve heard every sort of excuse. … We’ve watched superstars lie to Congress. We’ve heard all the carefully worded alibis and explanations”.

“If we can’t simply accept Armstrong’s word, blame Marion Jones and Rafael Palmeiro and Bill Romanowski and Kelli White and Jason Giambi and Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.”

The trouble with trying to believe Armstrong, Sheridan concludes, “is that everything he’s saying, we’ve heard before.”

Adam, Eve and T. Rex

From an article in the Los Angeles Times:

Dinny the roadside dinosaur has found religion.

The 45-foot-high concrete apatosaurus has towered over Interstate 10 near Palm Springs for nearly three decades as a kitschy prehistoric pit stop for tourists.

Now he is the star of a renovated attraction that disputes the fact that dinosaurs died off millions of years before humans first walked the planet.

Dinny’s new owners, pointing to the Book of Genesis, contend that most dinosaurs arrived on Earth the same day as Adam and Eve, some 6,000 years ago, and later marched two by two onto Noah’s Ark. The gift shop at the attraction, called the Cabazon Dinosaurs, sells toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, “Don’t swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution.”

Apple, Digital Music’s Savior, Earns Record Industry’s Scorn

Uh oh! This report from The New York Times on the beginning of what I fear is the end for iTunes as we’ve known it.

Two and a half years after the music business lined up behind the chief executive of Apple, Steven P. Jobs, and hailed him and his iTunes music service for breathing life into music sales, the industry’s allegiance to Mr. Jobs has eroded sharply.

Mr. Jobs is now girding for a showdown with at least two of the four major record companies over the price of songs on the iTunes service.

If he loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted - 99 cents to download any song - could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.

On the road again

Today a visit by NewMexiKen and Dad to the Golden Spike National Historic Site north of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. This is the spot where the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific came together on May 10, 1869. NewMexiKen has written about this place here and here and here. With all that I figured it was time to visit.

The place is real, everything else is a replica, including the steam engines, which were built in 1979. Nonetheless a fascinating visit on a beautiful morning.

Jupiter, replica of the actual Central Pacific engine at the ceremony in 1869.

Replica of Union Pacific Engine 119.

Duplicating the famous Kodak moment — without the crowds and without the golden spike, which is actually on display at Stanford University. The originals of both of the historic engines were sold for scrap early in the 20th century for the standard $1000 each.

Yet another parenting myth exposed

Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, on what it’s really like being a mom.

When I was pregnant, I read about a dozen books on raising infants and toddlers. Most of these had at least one chapter about how to soothe your child when she’s fussy. Most of these books with said chapter recommended that you sing to your child when she’s fussy in order to calm her down. And most of these books that recommended that you sing to your child to soothe her also made the claim (in the body of the book no less, and not in say, a footnote), that there is nothing more soothing to a baby than the sound of her mother’s voice. So, the books said, don’t worry if you can’t sing or carry a tune. It doesn’t matter to the baby. Go ahead! Make up a silly song! Sing it off key! Just do it.

Well, obviously, they were all quite wrong. Example: Today, Sofie was having a tantrum about something or other while we were at the library. To soothe her, I did what I’ve been doing for the entire 22 months that she’s been alive — I sang her some silly song about who knows what in my rather horrible voice. For a moment, she completely stopped screaming and totally dead pan, looked me in the eye and pleaded: “Mama, no singing, no more.”

Walt Kelly

… was born on this date in 1913. The tribute to Kelly at The International Museum of Cartoon Art Hall of Fame reads:

Like a number of other successful newspaper cartoonists of his day, Walt Kelly learned his craft as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios between 1935 and 1941, and the Disney style was always evident in his work. After a brief stint as a comic book artist and an editorial cartoonist, Kelly launched his masterpiece, Pogo, in 1949. The strip featured a colorful cast of furry and not-so-furry creatures who inhabited the Okefenokee Swamp, including Pogo, Albert, Howland Owl, P.T. Bridgeport, Beauregard and Churchy la Femme. Out of the mouths of these innocent animals came everything from profound musings on the human condition to downright nonsense. The superb artistry, satirical humor and playful language of Pogo enchanted millions of readers and even now, years after his death in 1973, Kelly still has a loyal following.

According to the web site I Go Pogo:

Walt Kelly first used the quote “We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us” on a poster for Earth Day in 1970. … In 1971, he did a two panel version with Pogo and Porky in a trash filled swamp.

A classic Pogo strip is published each week at Welcome to Pogo’s Website!

Clay kittens

Two cats, two shots.

[First posted by NewMexiKen two years ago today.]

Obscenities Uttered by Jesus Christ

From McSweeney’s.

A Beautiful Endgame

From the Wall Street Journal, a fascinating report on Scrabble and the national championship.

RENO, Nev. — The best play of the 2005 National Scrabble Championship didn’t occur during yesterday’s beautiful five-game final match between a Thai student and an American mortgage underwriter.

Nope, for my money it happened on Tuesday, during the 25th round of the 28-game affair, in the second division in the six-division, 700-person field, in a game that had no effect on who’d be crowned king of the Scrabble world.

Rita Norr of Danbury Conn., the only woman ever to win a national championship, in 1987, played the word MATERIAL. In one go, Andrew Golding, an IT professional from Verdun, Quebec, placed RE in front of it and IZE at the end to make REMATERIALIZE. The R landed on a triple-word-score square, and the word totaled 93 points. Rita later tacked on a D: REMATERIALIZED. A 14-letter word. There are 15 rows on a Scrabble board.

After the game, world filtered around the giant playing room. A crowd gathered around the table; 14-letter words don’t happen very often. Photos were taken — of the board, not the players …

Some additional remarks:

… To the people in this tournament, though, Scrabble is a strategy game in which the playing pieces happen to be letters. The purpose of the game is similar to that of other games, physical or mental: to use all of the pieces to their fullest potential to exploit the intricacies of the playing field.

… Scrabble’s secret is that it’s a math game: board geometry, strategic decision making, probability and chance. But nearly every player loves the language part, too, the aesthetics of the letters and letter combinations, the quirky definitions, the sheer breadth and beauty of English.

The Smithsonian’s Newest Exhibits: Water Stains

A report in The New York Times on the “widespread disrepair that is imperiling the collections” at the Smithsonian. The article begins:

It may not be obvious to the throngs of tourists who flock daily to its famed museums, but the Smithsonian Institution is falling apart.

A water stain mars a historic hang glider at the National Air and Space Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution. Officials say years of inadequate financing and maintenance have led to widespread disrepair.

Ominous drips from strained expansion joints have sprinkled down amid Asian artifacts in the institution’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. The historic Arts and Industries Building is closed to visitors to protect them from metal panels dropping from its beautiful but dilapidated ceiling. At the National Air and Space Museum, a water stain mars the Lilienthal hang glider that inspired the Wright Brothers to fly. Even the 1940’s prototypes of what was to become seemingly indestructible Tupperware were irreparably damaged in a plumbing breakdown.

The road trip continues in Utah

NewMexiKen and Dad continued their travels today visiting spectacular Zion National Park and Cedar Breaks National Monument along the way.

A view in Zion from the visitor center parking lot.

Cedar Breaks, looking down from 10,350 above sea level.

Hot time in the old town

The invading British burned the public buildings of Washington on this date in 1814.

On August 24, 1814, as the War of 1812 raged on, invading British troops marched into Washington and set fire to the U.S. Capitol, the President’s Mansion, and other local landmarks. The ensuring fire reduced all but one of the capital city’s major public buildings to smoking rubble, and only a torrential rainstorm saved the Capitol from complete destruction. The blaze particularly devastated the Capitol’s Senate wing, the oldest part of the building, which was honeycombed with vulnerable wooden floors and housed the valuable but combustible collection of books and manuscripts of the Library of Congress, then located in the Capitol building. Heat from the intense fire reduced the Senate chamber’s marble columns to lime, leaving the room, in one description, “a most magnificent ruin.”

Source: U.S. Senate Art & History

After 26 hours in Washington, the British moved toward Baltimore, where they met with resistance and the Star-spangled banner still waved.

Florida State Can Keep Its Seminoles

There was never any doubt where the Seminole Tribe of Florida stood on Florida State University’s nickname. The tribe helped university boosters create the costume for the Chief Osceola mascot, approving the face paint, flaming spear and Appaloosa horse that have no connection to Seminole history.

[Tuesday], the National Collegiate Athletic Association agreed with the 3,100-member tribe and the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, which had also endorsed the nickname. The N.C.A.A. removed Florida State from the list of universities banned from using what it called “hostile and abusive” mascots and nicknames during postseason play.

The New York Times

Tribe debate sizzles on campus

Columnist Dave Fairbank of the Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Virginia:

In that incubator for radicals and educated malcontents tucked into the colonial capital, otherwise known as the College of William and Mary, there is a buzz of activity - and not just because parking spaces are as valued as a final-grade mulligan. …

But the most intriguing athletic issue on campus these days has nothing to do with fields and buildings, and everything to do with perception.

William and Mary is in the process of assembling a report to the NCAA about its nickname - Tribe - and why it should not be judged “hostile and abusive” to Native-Americans.

Thirty-two of the 33 NCAA member schools with Native-American nicknames and mascots recently learned if they were acceptable. W&M received an extension because it was between administrations.

Any school that produced four U.S. presidents and that was judged “hottest small state school” by Newsweek needs no outside help to argue its case, but part of its report will go something like this:

“Tribe” is about as innocuous a reference to Native-Americans as it gets. The closest thing to a mascot the school has is a green, fuzzy creature called Colonel Ebirt (”Tribe” spelled backwards), who obviously was named on a day when all the clever kids slept late.

Area Indian tribes have not protested the school nickname as hostile or insensitive. The only visible Native-American references are a couple of green-and-gold feathers on the school logo.

In the rare instances when inclined, William and Mary fans perform maybe the nation’s most pitiful, half-hearted “Tomahawk Chop.”

Naturally, all of this guarantees that the NCAA will deem “Tribe” hostile and abusive.

It’s the birthday

… of Barbara Eden. “Jeannie” is 71 and NewMexiKen stopped dreaming about her some time ago.

… of Linda Thompson. The folk/rock musician, who with then husband Richard made one of the great rock albums — Shoot Out the Lights, is 58 today.

… of Shelley Long. The star of Cheers and numerous films is 56.

… of Kobe Bryant. He’s 27.

… and of Gene Kelly. The wonderful singer/dancer/actor was born on this date in 1912. He died in 1996.

No, I’m not quitting again

NewMexiKen is just on a road trip with Dad, official dad of NewMexiKen. Today we drove from Tucson to Kanab in southern Utah passing the infamous Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell along the way. As a result of the inter-mountain drought Lake Powell is still down 95 feet from its maximum fill, but up 50 feet from its recent low. Some photos:

Lake Powell with the marina in the distance. Notice the bleached (white) “bathtub ring” rocks where the lake usually is.

Highway 89 bridge over the Colorado River just below the dam.

The damn dam.

Kanab, Utah, is an attractively set tiny little town not far above the the Arizona state line. If ever there, try Rocking V Cafe. Good food, nice people.

Here’s Jay

“Russia announced that due to a lack of animal feed they’re feeding their cows confiscated marijuana. They have over 20 tons of it and they are feeding it to the cows. Do you think that’s a good idea? Giving their cows marijuana. It’s only been a week and already some cows have moved up to crack. In fact, three of them knocked off a seven eleven in Leningrad.”

Jay Leno (August 19)

Excuse me Jay, but it’s been more than a dozen years since Leningrad became St. Petersburg again.

Having a great time. Wish you were here.

A fascinating collection of early 20th century Albuquerque postcards from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Thanks to a guest blogger at Duke City Fix for the search and link.

Click image to enlarge.

Cedar Breaks National Monument

… was proclaimed as such on this date in 1933. This from the National Park Service:

A huge natural amphitheater has been eroded out of the variegated Pink Cliffs (Claron Formation) near Cedar City, Utah. Millions of years of sedimentation, uplift and erosion have created a deep canyon of rock walls, fins, spires and columns, that spans some three miles, and is over 2,000 feet deep. The rim of the canyon is over 10,000 feet above sea level, and is forested with islands of Englemann spruce, subalpine fir and aspen; separated by broad meadows of brilliant summertime wild flowers.

What a gas

The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide was “only” up one cent over the weekend according to AAA. That puts it at $2.61⁴. Extra averages $2.77⁴ and premium $2.87⁵. Premium is averaging over $3 in California, Hawaii and Illinois.

I can remember buying a dollar’s worth — and someone else pumped it.

Peter Maass had an informative article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine — The Breaking Point. A few observations and factoids excerpted from Maass:

• Unlike the 1973 crisis, when the embargo by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries created an artificial shortfall, today’s shortage, or near-shortage, is real. If demand surges even more, or if a producer goes offline because of unrest or terrorism, there may suddenly not be enough oil to go around.

• The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals — which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart, might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible.

• The eventual and painful shift to different sources of energy — the start of the post-oil age — does not begin when the last drop of oil is sucked from under the Arabian desert. It begins when producers are unable to continue increasing their output to meet rising demand. Crunch time comes long before the last drop.

• “The problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5 in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You’re leaping by two million to three million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that’s another four to five million.” In other words, if demand and depletion patterns continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day — at least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at least four million to compensate for the declining production of existing fields. “That’s like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of years,” Husseini said. “It can’t be done indefinitely. It’s not sustainable.”

It’s an interesting article that, while fearing the worst, does a lot to explain both sides; that is, that there’s plenty of oil or that we’ll be freezing in the dark soon.

Jesus help me I’m falling

From America’s Finest News Source — Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory.

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

“Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, ‘God’ if you will, is pushing them down,” said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

There’s more.

Avast, me hearties!

Good background from Christopher Hitchens in the beginning of his New York Times review of three new non-ficition works on America’s Pirate Wars:

Viewed from our hyperpower perspective, the decades between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were so precarious they seem to belong almost to the history of another country. And in many ways they do. The ”United States” at that time was to the east coast of North America what Chile now is to the west coast of the southern cone: a long and ribbonlike territory with indistinct or disputed frontiers, caught between mountains and the ocean. Three large European empires — British, French and Spanish — exerted immense influence on the rest of the continent, and on the Atlantic and Caribbean approaches to it. The new Republic had a tenuous and fluctuating relationship with France, a hostile one with Britain and a competitive one with Spain. It had no army or navy to speak of, and a Constitution that was skeptical about, if not antagonistic to, the maintenance of permanent armed forces. The two human symbols of this vulnerability were the American sailor seized from his ship and ”impressed” into the British or French Navy, and the sailor or passenger taken at sea by marauding Muslim pirates and delivered into slavery.

Each of three new books treats a different aspect of that vertiginous period. The word ”corsair,” which can mean either pirate ship or pirate, became inextricably and incorrectly linked with the Romantic as a result of Byron’s 1814 poem of that name. But corsairs ruthlessly kidnapped and plundered, whether in Africa (the Barbary Coast) or the Gulf of Mexico. We may still harbor a slight sympathy for the smuggler and the bootlegger, but there was little romance in living at a time when such people had state power.

Sideline Chatter

A couple of items from this morning’s Sideline Chatter in The Seattle Times:

• The police box score from this year’s annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota reads 388 arrests — 188 for drunken driving, 162 for drug misdemeanors and 38 for drug felonies — and 1,250 citations, AP reported.

  “In other words,” wrote Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press, “it’s like a Portland Trail Blazers season, only with Harley Davidsons.”

• Ted Wyman of the Winnipeg Sun, on Rafael Palmeiro’s dwindling credibility: “Right about now, Raffy could tell us Roger Clemens has a good fastball, Alex Rodriguez can hit for power and the outfield grass is green — and we’d have to go for a second opinion.”