Best line of tomorrow tonight, so far

No matter what the trappings or the ceremonies require of the leader of the free world, he brings the same DKE diction, bearing and cadences, the same insouciance and smart-alecky attitude, the same simplistic approach — swearing, swaggering, talking to Tony Blair with his mouth full of buttered roll, and giving a startled Angela Merkel an impromptu shoulder rub. He can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger.

Maureen Dowd in a column titled “Animal House Summit”

Final Jeopardy

Shakespeare’s Sister gets the right question.

For Some Netflix Users, Red Envelopes Gather Dust

With three Netflix envelopes sitting here for at least a week, NewMexiKen found this article at The Wall Street Journal interesting. It includes this:

Netflix Inc., which boasts nearly five million members, often trumpets how its all-you-can-eat rental model is changing the way people are watching movies. But Netflix may also be changing the way people don’t watch them. Through its Web site, Netflix makes it easy to comb through a massive catalog of 60,000 films. It offers access to everything from Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent tramp movie “The Kid” to recent Academy Award-winners like “Crash.” And some members admit that when browsing the Netflix backlog, they overestimate their appetite for off-the-beaten-track films. The result: Sometimes DVDs languish for months without being watched.

1776

NewMexiKen has completed David McCullough’s 1776, a military history of that fateful year newly out in paperback.

After an opening chapter detailing the politics in Britain, McCullough traces the action, from the successful American siege of Boston (forcing the British ultimately to abandon the city), through a series of dreadful and disastrous American defeats in New York, the demoralizing retreat across New Jersey and, at the end of December and beginning of January, the miraculous American victories at Trenton and Princeton. McCullough includes much from the contemporary correspondence and reminisces of the participants; the reader learns more about the war fighters than the fighting, but that is good.

The American army was hardly more than tattered remnants when it reached the Delaware River and crossed into Pennsylvania. As Thomas Paine so famously wrote that December of 1776:

Considering the circumstances — the depleted American ranks, the British naval and military superiority — it really is rather remarkable that Americans today are taking coffee breaks rather than stopping for tea and biscuits. The reason — in two words — George Washington, who learned from his (and other’s) mistakes, and, while often losing hope, never lost faith.

Where does electricity come from?

Making electricity is generally about creating a source of heat and steam, and using that steam to turn giant turbines and generate power. Less than 3 percent of our electric power is generated from oil. Besides the 20 percent contribution from nuclear power, 50 percent of our electricity comes from burning coal, 18 percent from burning natural gas and (in a heat-free method that is often the cheapest) 6.5 percent by harnessing the energy of water moving through dams. Wind and solar power make up less than one-half of 1 percent of what we use on a typical day.

Source: Atomic Balm?, an article in The New York Times Magazine about the possible renaissance of nuclear power.

They’re not sure about the remaining 2%, I guess. Maybe it’s from batteries.