Actual information from the Enchantment Pet Resort & Spa:
Enchanted Canine Experience
Includes comfortable bedding, daily maid service, bedtime turndown service with a cookie, gourmet breakfast and dinner, and supervised day camp with other dogs.
(This isn’t the place with the TV mentioned previously — which actually is “television and ice cream treat.”)
“CodeWeavers has announced plans to release CrossOver Mac this summer. The $60 software will allow Intel Mac users to run Windows applications — including some games — without having to buy or install Windows itself.”
“Millions of Americans will celebrate July 4 by watching a fireworks show. How do they choreograph those midair pyrotechnics?”
Here’s how from Slate.
And here’s How to Photograph Fireworks.
Albuquerque has the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds this weekend.
3:00 Saturday. You’ll hear them.
This year’s Tour de France likely winner, given all the disqualifications for doping.
Idea and photo thanks to John Fleck.
So, Germany and Argentina and it comes down to penalty kicks.
Maybe baseball should just play three extra innings and if the game remains tied go to a homerun derby.
(Even so, soccer’s tie-breaker is better than the NFL tie-breaker.)
“You can burn the flag as many times as you want and the concept of freedom is not only still there — it’s stronger. I like that about my flag. I would go so far as to say it’s my flag’s best feature.
“I wouldn’t mind if Congress were considering changing some other feature of the flag. For example, if they wanted to represent Rhode Island with half a star, I could get behind that. But I’d hate to chip away at my flag’s freedom feature. That just seems wrong.”
Excerpt from a good piece by Scott Adams
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… we honor two venerable American institutions.
On this date in 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed the land grant preserving Yosemite Valley.
And Lena Horne is 89 today.
A friend needed to board her dog for a few days. When she called to make the arrangements they asked if she wanted the suite with television. She thought not, but began to wonder what the dogs would watch.
NewMexiKen wondered too. Surely re-runs of Rin Tin Tin and Lassie. Probably Scooby-Doo.
But most likely, dogs playing poker.
From a report in the Los Angeles Times:
When referring to the Trinity, most Christians are likely to say “Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”
But leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are suggesting some additional designations: “Compassionate Mother, Beloved Child and Life-giving Womb,” or perhaps “Overflowing Font, Living Water, Flowing River.”
Then there’s “Rock, Cornerstone and Temple” and “Rainbow of Promise, Ark of Salvation and Dove of Peace.”
The phrases are among 12 suggested but not mandatory wordings essentially endorsed this month by delegates to the church’s policy-making body to describe a “triune God,” the Christian doctrine of God in three persons.
The Rev. Mark Brewer, senior pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church, is among those in the 2.3-million-member denomination unhappy with the additions.
“You might as well put in Huey, Dewey and Louie,” he said.
“If the battle to protect marriage takes even five more years, liberal judges and activists will have destroyed this 5,000-year-old institution, which was designed by the Creator, Himself.”
James Dobson, Focus on the Family Action, for CNN, via Andrew Sullivan
Why is it that we tip in restaurants, taxis, airports, hotels, and so on, and yet no one has thought to establish a service station with attendants to fill your tank for a small salary plus tips?
When it takes $40 or $50 or more to fill a tank, how many of us might be perfectly happy to tip (say 10 percent) to have someone do the nasty work, and possibly clean our windshield and headlights. I certainly would. Most women I know would.
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… was born on this date in 1900. In January 2003 Outside Magazine listed its 25 essential books for the well-read explorer. At the top was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
Like his most famous creation, The Little Prince, that visitor from Asteroid B-612 who once saw 44 sunsets in a single day, Saint-Exupéry disappeared into the sky. Killed in World War II at age 44, “Saint Ex” was a pioneering pilot for Aéropostale in the 1920s, carrying mail over the deadly Sahara on the Toulouse-Dakar route, encountering cyclones, marauding Moors, and lonely nights: “So in the heart of the desert, on the naked rind of the planet, in an isolation like that of the beginnings of the world, we built a village of men. Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited out the night.” Whatever his skills as a pilot—said to be extraordinary—as a writer he is effortlessly sublime. Wind, Sand and Stars is so humane, so poetic, you underline sentences: “It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.” Saint-Exupéry did just that. No writer before or since has distilled the sheer spirit of adventure so beautifully. True, in his excitement he can be righteous, almost irksome—like someone who’s just gotten religion. But that youthful excess is part of his charm. Philosophical yet gritty, sincere yet never earnest, utterly devoid of the postmodern cop-outs of cynicism, sarcasm, and spite, Saint-Exupéry’s prose is a lot like the bracing gusts of fresh air that greet him in his open cockpit. He shows us what it’s like to be subject—and king—of infinite space.
… was renamed and redesignated on this date in 1938. It had been Mount Olympus National Monument since 1909.
Glacier capped mountains, wild Pacific coast and magnificent stands of old-growth forests, including temperate rain forests — at Olympic National Park, you can find all three. About 95% of the park is designated wilderness, which further protects these diverse and spectacular ecosystems.
Olympic is also known for its biological diversity. Isolated for eons by glacial ice, and later the waters of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Olympic Peninsula has developed its own distinct array of plants and animals. Eight kinds of plants and 15 kinds of animals are found on the peninsula but no where else on Earth.
“Things not looking good for the Pittsburgh Pirates. They have now lost 11 games in a row. To give you an idea of how bad they are, today they got beat by Ghana.”
Jay Leno (Tuesday)
“[D]o we really need every single scientist in the world to agree with every single word of the movie before we see the bigger picture and take action?”
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Here’s the current weather warning for northern and central New Mexico:
SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS ARE NOT ANTICIPATED TODAY OR TONIGHT. HOWEVER…
STRONG THUNDERSTORMS CAN BE EXPECTED ACROSS PORTIONS OF THE STATE
TODAY WITH HAIL UP TO ONE HALF INCH IN DIAMETER…WINDS UP
TO 55 MPH…AND HEAVY TO VERY HEAVY RAIN. RAINS WILL RESULT IN
LOCALIZED FLOODING OF ARROYOS AND SMALL STREAMS…AS WELL AS SOME
LOW LYING AREAS AND STREETS IN THE URBAN AREAS.
Hail to half an inch, 55 mph winds, very heavy rain and flooding. But severe storms are NOT anticipated.
“Severe” thunderstorms must include frogs, boils, locusts and death of the first born.
Functional Ambivalent pokes a little fun at NewMexiKen —
Best blog buddy NewMexiKen is celebrating actual rain after months or years or maybe decades of little or none in his home town of Albquerque, New Mexico. Which, I feel obligated to point out, is in the middle of a desert. Still the normally sensible NewMexiKen seems shocked and disturbed that it doesn’t rain there.
but goes on to tell a funny story about L.A. TV weathermen. (Whose ranks once included Pat Sajak.)
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“Oh, for crying out loud.
“The whole point of America is that you can burn the flag. Nothing sums up her greatness so succinctly.”
… was created on this date in 1954, when President Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to acquire the site and remaining structures.
Fort Union was established in 1851 by Lieutenant Colonel Edwin V. Sumner as a guardian and protector of the Santa Fe Trail. During it’s forty-year history, three different forts were constructed close together. The third and final Fort Union was the largest in the American Southwest, and functioned as a military garrison, territorial arsenal, and military supply depot for the southwest. Today, visitors use a self-guided tour path to visit the second fort and the large, impressive ruins of the third Fort Union. The largest visible network of Santa Fe Trail ruts can be seen here.
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… was assassinated in Sarajevo on this date in 1914, igniting what we know as World War I.
Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary. After the Emperor’s son had committed suicide and Ferdinand’s own father had died, Ferdinand was first in succession to the Emperor. He was considered likely to be a reformer, which upset Balkan nationalists.
In all, there were seven assassins along the route of the Archduke’s car, all Bosnian Serbs. The third of the seven, Nedelko Cabrinovic,
threw a bomb, but failed to see the car in time to aim well: he missed the heir’s car and hit the next one, injuring several people. Cabrinovic swallowed poison and jumped into a canal, but he was saved from suicide and arrested. He died of tuberculosis in prison in 1916.
The seventh was Gavrilo Princip.
Princip heard Cabrinovic’s bomb go off and assumed that the Archduke was dead. By the time he heard what had really happened, the cars had driven by. By bad luck, a little later the returning procession missed a turn and stopped to back up at a corner just as Princip happened to walk by. Princip fired two shots: one killed the archduke, the other his wife. Princip was arrested before he could swallow his poison capsule or shoot himself. Princip too was a minor under Austrian law, so he could not be executed. Instead he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and died of tuberculosis in 1916.
It was the Archduke and Sophie’s fourteenth wedding anniversary. The Archduke’s last words were, “Sophie dear, Sophie dear, don’t die! Stay alive for our children.”
In the aftermath of the assassination, diplomatic efforts failed, perhaps because both Austria and Serbia feared loss of national prestige. Austria declared war on Serbia. Germany sided with Austria; Russia supported Serbia as required by treaty. France was obligated to support Russia in any war with Germany or Austria-Hungary. Britain was obligated to support France in an any war with Germany.
Source for quotes and some background: The Balkan Causes of World War One
“Heavy rains caused so much flooding in Washington, D.C. they had to close down the National Archives where they keep the Constitution. Luckily, the Bush administration’s not using the Constitution anymore.”
Jay Leno
… at Casa NewMexiKen this evening. Will this horrible weather ever stop?
A satellite photo of the Florida peninsula (left) and another (right) indicating what it will look like when the sea rises 18-20 feet.
From The New York Review of Books, “The Threat to the Planet,” by Jim Hansen.
Kind of silly to pour billions of dollars into rescuing the Everglades, don’t you think?
From Wannabe Hippie (with thanks to Veronica for the pointer), a collection of analogies and metaphors from high school English. Don’t miss it; some examples:
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
American TV sportscasting is full of factoids, full of graphics, full of breakaways from the midst of play for prerecorded human-interest backgrounders, full of color analysts overexplaining what happened a couple of minutes ago even as new, more urgent things are happening in front of our eyes, full of overpacked broadcast booths with three-man teams, sideline reporters, spotters, graphics people and telestrators, all breathlessly jostling for air time. Goals are scored in hockey games, and instead of showing the players celebrating, hyperactive producers cut away to show coaches, random crowd shots, the empty net, the goalie whose expression is hidden behind his mask. A single football play cannot pass without two instant replays; lineups cannot be given without film clips of the players saying their own names. At any given moment in a baseball game, what you’ll hear is the studied casualness of the down-home, nothing-really-exciting-going-on-here play-calling tradition that O’Brien personifies.
All these strands together add up to the crisis in American sportscasting that is made evident at every World Cup, when English-speaking fans flee in enormous numbers to listen to commentary in a language they don’t even understand. It’s not just soccer, of course — for many U.S. sports fans, it has long been impossible to listen to the type of football telecasts epitomized by Al Michaels, John Madden and the overproduced Monday Night Football franchise. John Davidson’s interruptions wherever there is an American hockey telecast has driven those few fans who care about them to the Internet for local radio connections. And so on down the line. The common denominator in the way American TV covers any sport is the absence of the simple, urgent description of what is happening on the field, the court or the ice — the single most visceral thing for any fan watching any sport he or she cares about.
That is the very experience the Spanish-language World Cup telecasts give English-language viewers: the sense of urgency, of excitement, of drama. There are no departures to explain what the rules are, no fancy graphics to present statistical factoids, no interruptions to show personal profiles. In Spanish, the narrative is the thing, and even though anglophones may not be able to follow that narrative perfectly, its primacy is so compelling as to be prefereable to the ESPN/ABC model.
Jeff Z. Klein World Cup ‘06, from a longer commentary on World Cup coverage
Amen! Given the choice, NewMexiKen would choose to watch most sports on TV with just the players, crowd and public address sound.
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“The irony is that when it comes to terror threats, the Administration has decided that a 1% chance is enough to impel decisive action. But when it comes to the global climate change that could wipe out most of the world’s coastal cities and threaten civilization itself, even near certainty is not enough to provoke action.”
NewMexiKen believes there is a fine line in professional sports between athletic competition and unabashed show business — pro wrestling is the best example of the wrong side of the line.
The fights in the NHL pushed that league over the line, but it has mostly pulled itself back. The NBA dances with the line but usually stays on the athletic side. Honoring the line is why the NFL discourages celebration and taunting. (My advice: When you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.)
It seems to NewMexiKen that the melodrama over fouls in professional soccer, especially in international competition, with the moaning and groaning, and the silly mandatory stretcher, push the sport — at times — precariously close to the line.
“I’m covering my seventh World Cup, and love the event, but I can understand if Americans who catch a glimpse of soccer are turned off by the weasel code in which players fake grievous, perhaps even mortal, injury.”
George Vescey, The New York Times, who adds:
I’m not a big fan of American football — I get bored between downs — but I admit that the American game does not reward a player for rolling on the turf like a man possessed by evil spirits in a science-fiction flick. That’s downright unmanly, by our standards. Jim Brown used to lope stoically back to the huddle after every play because he never wanted to show pain. “You can’t hurt me,” was his attitude.
In an earlier interview with Charlie Rose, Mr. Buffett explained the role he played in Mr. Gates’s engagement in 1994 to his wife, with whom he has had three children. The couple flew into Omaha, where they met Mr. Buffett at Borsheim’s, the jeweler that Berkshire Hathaway has owned for years.
“Look, Bill, this is none of your business, but when I got married, I spent 6 percent of my net worth on the ring,” he recalled saying to Mr. Gates, who at the time had a net worth already well into the billions. “I don’t know how much you love Melinda.”
Mr. Gates can get his jabs in, too. He has said publicly that his daughter calls Mr. Buffett “the man who works at Dairy Queen,” a needle at Mr. Buffett’s oft-expressed love for the company, which he owns, and its signature product.
In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: “I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore’s new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?”
“I have said consistently,” answered Bush, “that global warming is a serious problem. There’s a debate over whether it’s manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary … to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil…”
The President — as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find — is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said — as he also did a few weeks ago — that “There’s a debate over whether it’s manmade or naturally caused” … well, there really is no such debate.
At least none above what is proverbially called “the flat earth society level.”
Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence — gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world — that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world’s average temperature.
Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.
One small group of special interest businesses leaders — those of some fossil fuel companies — have been well documented by journalist Ross Gelbspan and others to have been fighting a PR campaign for 15 years to keep the American public confused about the wide and deep scientific consensus on this.
They’ve aimed, as Gelbspan explains, to keep us thinking that (to borrow the president’s words this morning) “There’s a debate over whether it’s manmade or naturally caused” — though no open and thorough journalism this reporter knows of can find any such thing.
Bill Blakemore, ABC News
… was authorized on this date in 1990.
As you walk among the petroglyphs, you are not alone. This world is alive with the sights and sounds of the high desert - a hawk spirals down from the mesa top, a roadrunner scurries into fragrant sage, a desert millipede traces waves in the sand. There is another presence beyond what we can see or hear. People who have lived along the Rio Grande for many centuries come alive again through images they carved on the shiny black rocks. These images, and associated archeological sites in the Albuquerque area, provide glimpses into a 12,000 year long story of human life in this area.
Petroglyph National Monument stretches 17 miles along Albuquerque’s West Mesa, a volcanic basalt escarpment that dominates the city’s western horizon. Authorized June 27, 1990, the 7,236 acre monument is cooperatively managed by the National Park Service and the City of Albuquerque.
Petroglyph National Monument protects a variety of cultural and natural resources including five volcanic cones, hundreds of archeological sites and an estimated 25,000 images carved by native peoples and early Spanish settlers. Many of the images are recognizable as animals, people, brands and crosses; others are more complex. Their meaning, possibly, understood only by the carver. These images are inseparable from the greater cultural landscape, from the spirits of the people who created them, and all who appreciate them.
Petroglyph National Monument is a place of respect, awe and wonderment.
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… was redesignated Pecos National Historical Park on this date in 1990.
Pecos preserves 12,000 years of history including the ancient pueblo of Pecos, two Spanish Colonial Missions, Santa Fe Trail sites, 20th century ranch history of Forked Lightning Ranch, and the site of the Civil War Battle of Glorieta Pass.
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… died on this date in 1829.
Smithson’s will left the bulk of his estate to his nephew, Henry James Hungerford. But should his nephew die without children—legitimate or illegitimate—a contingency clause stated that the estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge…”
Source: The Smithsonian Institution
The nephew did indeed die without children and in 1838 approximately $500,000 in gold was brought to the United States. After a decade of indecision and debate about how best to carry out the bequest, the Smithsonian Institution was created by Act of Congress (1846).
Here’s what that gift has led to:
It seems somehow incomplete for a blogger to view a film, enjoy it, marvel at the star’s performance, and then not mention it. Yet, I feel at a loss for what to say.
Transamerica, starring Felicity Huffman (Oscar nomination) as Stanley/Sabrina/Bree, is a movie that grows on you while you watch, perhaps because Bree grows on you — as a person, not a type. Days before a final sex change operation, Bree discovers she fathered a now 17-year-old son in New York. The road trip back to Los Angeles follows (of course, on two-lane back country roads — no one in road movies ever takes the interstates) with the boy (Kevin Zegers) assuming, implausibly, that Bree is a do-gooder church lady, and not, of course, his parent, least of all his father. Ultimately, according to the formula, the secret comes out, but by then the movie has us. We realize the film is about people and families and life and not about sexuality at all.
One-time supporting-actor Oscar nominees Graham Greene and Burt Young both succeed in small roles and Fionnula Flanagan is terrific.
… and the announcement of Warren Buffet’s $30 billion contribution to the Gates Foundation, it occurs to NewMexiKen that Bill Gates now sees Microsoft as a means rather than an ends, and that his life’s great work is yet to come.
… to some of the videos Bill Simmons mentions (see my previous post).
Michael Jackson’s moonwalk during Motown 25. Hard to remember what an incredibly big star Michael was 20 years ago.
The We Are the World video.
A scene from the Miami Vice pilot. So cool it was hot.
Joe Namath makes a pass — to Suzy Kolber.
And the Best of Bo Jackson. The opening Nike ad alone is awesome.
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