Make plans

2005 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta — Friday, September 30 through Sunday, October 9, 2005

Egad!

From USA Today via Yahoo! News:

One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.

The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get “government approval” of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.

You’re hired

From the Telegraph:

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners — who must pay tax and employee health insurance — were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her “profile” and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job — including in the sex industry — or lose her unemployment benefit.

Important warning!

NewMexiKen adjusted my mutual funds today, moving from conservative to more adventuresome investments. Trust me, stock values of all kinds will crash soon.

Monkey see, monkey do

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms:

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey’s bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates. Maybe that’s like you or me buying People magazine.

Yeah, but do they get Cinemax?

For the record

Apprehensible: Capable of being understood.

Reprehensible: Deserving rebuke or censure; blameworthy.

Blahs

NewMexiKen is trying — really — to find something worth linking to or writing about, but inspiration is lacking.

If you’ve seen Million Dollar Baby, there’s an article in today’s New York Times about the controvesy emerging over it. (DON’T go there is you haven’t seen the movie. Major plot revelation!).

Today in History (from the Library of Congress) has some stuff about John C. Frémont — he was “court-martialed on grounds of mutiny and disobeying orders” on this date in 1848. Frémont was ahead of his times — all style and public relations and very little true ability.

Charles Pierce, writing at Altercation, tries to put some perspective on the Iraqi election yesterday, but it’s too soon to see what it all meant, and NewMexiKen would just as soon celebrate the accomplishment until we know more.

Josh Marshall continues on Social Security, doing good work I suppose, but is there really only one issue meriting analysis these days?

The Albuquerque Tribune has an nice article on Nuestra Señora de Purísima Concepción de Cuarac, the Quarai mission church.

And Sideline Chatter has some trash talk about Spiro Agnew’s golf game. Always glad to see negative stuff on Agnew, without a doubt the most venal man ever in America’s two top offices.

NMAI

From tequila mockingbird, mother and daughter discuss the National Museum of the American Indian — sorta. It begins:

“so, i went to the museum of the american indian a couple of weeks ago.”

“you did? how was it? i hope they didn’t screw them on their museum. the least they could do is give them a decent museum.”

“the cafeteria is awesome! really, it’s so cool. …”

Read it all.

Norman Mailer …

was born on this date in 1923.

Mailer has not only published 39 books (including 11 novels), he has written plays (and staged them), screenplays (and directed and acted in them), poems (in The New Yorker and underground journals), and attempted every sort of narrative form, including some he invented. No record of “new journalism” is complete without mention of his 1960s Esquire columns, essays and political reportage. He has reported on six sets of political conventions (1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, 1996), participated in scores of symposia, appeared and debated hundreds of times on college campuses, boxed (and fought) in several venues and led a vigorous public life in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, his current home. His passions, feuds, imbroglios, litigations and loyalities are numerous, notorious and complex. Happily married for nearly a quarter of a century to Norris Church, he was wed five times previously and has nine children all told. A stalwart on radio and television talk shows, he may have been interviewed more times than any writer who has ever lived. Without being paid for his pains, he has given advice to several presidents, has run for office himself (mayor of New York), served as president of the American chapter of the writers organization, P.E.N., and won most of the major literary awards, but for the Nobel. Co-founder of The Village Voice, he also named it, and has been the equivalent of a decathalon athlete in the effort to break down barriers between popular, elite and underground publications. He has written for at least 75 different magazines and journals.

J. Michael Lennon, Professor of English, Wilkes University [for PBS, American Masters]

Thomas Merton …

was born on this date in 1915.

Thomas Merton, known in the monastery as Fr. Louis, was born on 31 January 1915 in Prades, southern France. The young Merton attended schools in France, England, and the United States. At Columbia University in New York City, he came under the influence of some remarkable teachers of literature, including Mark Van Doren, Daniel C. Walsh, and Joseph Wood Krutch. Merton entered the Catholic Church in 1938 in the wake of a rather dramatic conversion experience. Shortly afterward, he completed his masters thesis, “On Nature and Art in William Blake.”

Following some teaching at Columbia University Extension and at St. Bonaventure’s College, Olean, New York, Merton entered the monastic community of the Abbey of Gethsemani at Trappist, Kentucky, on 10 December 1941. He was received by Abbot Frederic Dunne who encouraged the young Frater Louis to translate works from the Cistercian tradition and to write historical biographies to make the Order better known.

The abbot also urged the young monk to write his autobiography, which was published under the title The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) and became a best-seller and a classic. During the next 20 years, Merton wrote prolifically on a vast range of topics, including the contemplative life, prayer, and religious biographies. His writings would later take up controversial issues (e.g., social problems and Christian responsibility: race relations, violence, nuclear war, and economic injustice) and a developing ecumenical concern. He was one of the first Catholics to commend the great religions of the East to Roman Catholic Christians in the West.

Merton died by accidental electrocution in Bangkok, Thailand, while attending a meeting of religious leaders on 10 December 1968, just 27 years to the day after his entrance into the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Many esteem Thomas Merton as a spiritual master, a brilliant writer, and a man who embodied the quest for God and for human solidarity. Since his death, many volumes by him have been published, including five volumes of his letters and seven of his personal journals. According to present count, more than 60 titles of Merton’s writings are in print in English, not including the numerous doctoral dissertations and books about the man, his life, and his writings.

Brother Patrick Hart, OCSO [Abbey of Gethsemani]

Pearl Zane Grey…

was born in Zanesville, Ohio, on this date in 1872.

Zane Grey was the first American millionaire author. According to the Zane Grey’s West Society web site:

The breakthrough success of Heritage of the Desert in 1910 enabled Zane Grey to establish a home in Altadena, California, and a hunting lodge on the Mogollon Rim near Payson, Arizona; and the family of five moved West for good. A lifelong passion for angling and the rich rewards of his writing also allowed Grey to roam the world’s premier game-fishing grounds in his own schooner and reel in several deep-sea angling records which stood for decades. A prodigiously prolific writer, Grey would spend several months each year gathering experiences and adventures, whether on “safari” in the wilds of Colorado or fishing off Tahiti, and then spend the rest of the year weaving them all into tales for serialization, magazine articles, or the annual novel.

Zane Grey wrote to live and lived to write — surely a balance rarely attained — until his untimely death of heart failure on October 23, 1939. He left us almost 90 books in print, of which about 60 are Westerns, 9 concern fishing, and 3 trace the fate of the Ohio Zanes, the rest being short story collections, a biography of the young George Washington, juvenile fiction and baseball stories.

Everyone should read the classic Riders of the Purple Sage.

Screw you Intuit

It seems that Intuit will pull the plug on some features of older versions of Quicken this spring.

Retirement of Online Services for older versions of Quicken

As of April 19th, 2005, in accordance with the Quicken sunset policy, Online Services and Live Technical Support will no longer be available for Quicken 2001 and 2002 users. These services include online bill pay; downloading financial data from your bank, credit union, credit card, brokerage, 401(k) or mutual fund accounts; downloading stock quotes, news headlines and other financial information into Quicken; uploading portfolio information from Quicken to Quicken.com; and access to the investing features on Quicken.com including portfolio tracking, any watch lists you have created, One-Click Scorecard?, Stock Evaluator and Mutual Fund Evaluator. To continue using these services and maintain access to live technical support from an Intuit representative, you will need to upgrade.

NewMexiKen runs Quicken 2002 and it serves perfectly well. I don’t use many of the features that will be “retired” on April 19th, but I find this policy apprehensible. I don’t remember any warnings on the box that I was just renting some features of the software for a couple of years.

The only alternative may be the Evil Empire and Microsoft Money but this kind of business model deserves to be scorned.

Million Dollar Baby

Simply superb. Hilary Swank is magnificent.

It’s the birthday

… of Gene Hackman. The Oscar-winning actor is 75. He won Best Actor for The French Connection and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Unforgiven. He has received three other nominations.

… of Dick Cheney. The Vice President is 64.

… of Phil Collins. The singer is 54.

Is iPod the Razor or the Blade?

A fascinating look at the future of information technology Apple style from I, Cringely. He begins:

More than a century ago, King Gillette invented both the safety razor and a new way of marketing consumer goods. Before Gillette, men shaved with straight razors, which required skill to both make and use, and lasted almost forever. Gillette’s safety razor was mass-produced and required little skill to make OR use, but couldn’t be re-sharpened, so the removable blades had to be discarded when they became dull. His marketing breakthrough was selling the razor handles at little or no profit while making huge profits on the consumable — the blades. This same technique is used today to promote mobile phones and inkjet printers. And it is supposedly behind Apple’s success with the iPod music player.

But in the case of Apple, is the iPod a razor or a blade? In other words, is Apple a hardware company or a media company?

Also useful for fire prevention

From Ananova:

A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He saPOSTID: “I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I’m glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there.”

Parts of Europe have this week been hit by the heaviest snowfalls since 1941, with some places registering more than ten feet of snow in 24 hours.

Busy Busy Busy

Thanks mostly to a lot of people Googling to find Ron Howard’s little brother (that would be Clint Howard) and lots of other esoterica, this is already NewMexiKen’s busiest month ever — with a couple of days left.

As of this morning, 21,777 visits in January.

It’s the birthday

… of Katharine Ross. Mrs. Robinson’s daughter is (gasp!) 65. (Mrs. Robinson, Anne Bancroft, turned 73 last September.)

… of Tom Selleck. Thomas Magnum is 60.

… of Oprah Winfrey. She’s 51.

… of Judy Norton Taylor. Mary Ellen Walton is 47. (Which makes her older than Patricia Neal was when playing the mother in the original Walton film, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.)

The original Hall of Famers

The first players were named to the Baseball Hall of Fame on this date in 1936. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America selected:

Ty Cobb
Babe Ruth
Honus Wagner
Christy Mathewson
and Walter Johnson

Kansas …

entered the Union as the 34th state on this date in 1861.

Nickname: Sunflower State

State motto: “Ad Astra Per Aspera” “To the stars through difficulty”

State Song: “Home on the Range”

Edward Abbey …

was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on this date in 1927. The Writer’s Almanac has this:

In 1956 he began working as a park ranger and a fire lookout for the National Park Service. He worked there for fifteen years, and this led him to write about the wilderness of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. He said, “For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!” His book Desert Solitaire (1968) is about his time working as a ranger in Arches National Park, Utah. In it he argues for, among other things, a ban on cars in wilderness preserves. In a memorial piece about Abbey, Edward Hoagland says of him, “Personally, he was a labyrinth of anger and generosity, shy but arresting because of his mixture of hillbilly and cowboy qualities, and even when silent he appeared bigger than life.”

NewMexiKen gathered these Abbey quotations:

If you’re never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You’ve only missed out on one half of life.

The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.

I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.

In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.

Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland.

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Edward Abbey died in 1989.

The American Crisis

Thomas Paine was born in England on this date in 1737.

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

William Claude Dukenfield …

better known as W.C. Fields, was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1880 or 1889.

A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.

I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake–which I also keep handy.

I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.

Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.

A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.

A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.

Anyone who hates children and animals can’t be all bad.

I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.

I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.

Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there’s nothing exactly like it.

There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.

(When “caught” reading a Bible) “Just looking for loopholes.”

Fields died on Christmas Day, 1946.

Mommy (and Me)

From the www.myperfectchild.com, had the Internet arrived half a century earlier, it is hard to imagine her going head to head with Ben MacNeil, who has chronicled his year-and-a-half-old daughter’s every nap, bottle feeding and diaper change (3,379, at last check) on the Trixie Update (trixieupdate.com).

Today’s parents - older, more established and socialized to voicing their emotions - may be uniquely equipped to document their children’s’ lives, but what they seem most likely to complain and marvel about is their own. The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption.

All blogging is a shrine to self-absorption. Interesting article nonetheless, with a great photo of Leta sitting next to her mother Heather Armstrong (www.dooce.com)

It’s Not All Blue Skies for Drilling Project

From the Los Angeles Times:

GILLETTE, Wyo. — When he turned Mt. Rushmore into his granite canvas, sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would remain visible, Lord willing, “until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away.”

Borglum’s vision endures in the Black Hills of South Dakota about 130 miles from here, but for nearly a month every year, it may soon become harder to see the famous faces through the man-made haze generated by the addition of 50,000 gas wells in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.

It is just one of several ways in which the largest expansion of natural gas drilling approved by the federal government is expected to degrade air quality in the region that today has the clearest skies in the lower 48 states.

The federal Bureau of Land Management, under pressure from the White House to fast-track energy production, approved the drilling plan two years ago without incorporating any requirements to reduce the resulting air pollution.

Government scientists expect that the drilling expansion, combined with a planned increase in coal mining and oil drilling in the northern Great Plains, will nearly double smog-forming emissions and greatly increase particulate matter pollution in a thinly populated region that has produced less than 3% of the amount of unhealthful air found in Los Angeles.

The BLM moved forward with the project despite its own air quality analysis, which concluded that the pollution would cloud views at more than a dozen national parks and monuments, exceed federal air quality standards in several communities and cause acid rain to fall on mountain lakes, where it could harm fish and wildlife.

The Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service expressed similar concerns to the BLM.

The Quiz

The Week Quiz is back. (In recent weeks I did so badly I didn’t want to mention The Quiz. This week I scored eight correct out of ten, so I’m linking to it.)

Making fun of the way celebs look

Go Fug Yourself

Best line of the day, so far

“Alone in the Dark will be the worst movie of 2005. The idea that anything could be worse is the only genuine scare the movie has to offer.”

Kris Kaltenbach in The [Baltimore] Sun

This could do it

The blog Geese Aplenty speculates on the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Anniston break up:

Jennifer finally got around to watching Meet Joe Black.

Brad finally got around to watching Along Came Polly.

There’s more if you follow the link.

Don’t Cry For Me

From Real E Fun. Go read it.

The Daily Howler

One of the sites NewMexiKen looks forward to every weekday morning (about 10 Mountain Time) is The Daily Howler written by Bob Somerby. Steve Twomey profiles Somerby for the Columbia Journalism Review: The Howler’s Quiet Moment.

Don’t miss commuting on the Metro one bit

From perhaps the cutest named blog of them all, tequila mockingbird, a “memo to the old dude who was obviously in town for the inauguration.”

welcome to our nation’s capital! i see you are taking the advice to make use of our mass transit system during your visit. i offer here just a few tips to help make your experience more pleasant.

- do not take one step off of the escalator and then promptly stop dead in your tracks. perhaps this is unique to the escalators here in d.c., but we’re not a one-person-gets-to-ride-all-the-way-up-to-the-top-before-anyone-else-gets-on system. there are people behind you. immediately behind you. please step aside so as to get the hell out of everyone’s way. and while we’re on the subject: stand right. walk left.

- this is not a “monorail.” it is a subway. well, sort of. anyway, it is not a “monorail.” this is not disney world. please stop calling it “the monorail.”

- please refrain from asking at every stop “is this our stop?” remember how, at the last stop, that exasperated guy beside you said, “you have about eight more stops to go”? well, it’s only been one. that means you now have seven more to go. the evil democrats did not sneak the metric system in on us while you weren’t paying attention. eight minus one is still seven.

- see how all of the people who are not wearing fanny packs are very quiet? yes? these people are called “commuters.” they ride “the monorail” every day. this is holy time for them. quiet time. this is the last window of silent solace they have before being pitched into the fifth circle of hell that is their job. they read. they listen to music. they meditate. a few of them even attend to their personal grooming, although, really, that’s disgusting and we wish they wouldn’t do that. here’s one thing they do not do: talk.

- one more thing they do not do: put their feet up on the seat in front of them. there are a couple of reasons for this. one is that we operate on a one-ass-one-seat rule here. there are going to be lots of people on “the monorail.” they would all like to sit down. also, people don’t want to sit on a seat that has been all dirtied up by your big-ass cowboy boots with slush all over them.

- please stop your incessant talk about how easy it would be to “blow this thing up.” the “commuters” know this. they try not to think about it. you’re not helping.

- please stop asking “is it cold enough for you?” this is true not only on “the monorail,” but just in general. and by “just in general” i mean any time or place.

- it is not amusing to look at someone reading imperial hubris and say, “well, i guess someone isn’t going to the inauguration today,” and then laugh really loudly while elbowing said person. seriously. you should stop this right now.

Shameful

Paul Krugman takes Bush to the woodshed for his “shameful” playing of the race card — and lying at that — regarding Social Security this week.

Put it all together, and the deal African-Americans get from Social Security turns out, according to various calculations, to be either about the same as that for whites or somewhat better. Hispanics, by the way, clearly do better than either.

Get up, Stand, up

From The Washington Post:

Strolling to the bus stop, fidgeting during a meeting, standing up to stretch, jumping off the couch to change channels, and engaging in other minor physical activities can make the difference between being lean and obese, researchers reported yesterday.

The most detailed study ever conducted of mundane bodily movements found that obese people tend to be much less fidgety than lean people and spend at least two hours more each day just sitting still. The extra motion by lean people is enough to burn about 350 extra calories a day, which could add up to 10 to 30 pounds a year, the researchers found.

It’s the birthday

… of Alan Alda. Hawkeye is 69 today, just three days after being nominated for his first Oscar for his portrayal of Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster in The Aviator.

2004 Critics’ Picks

Metacritic: 2004 Film Critic Top Ten Lists. Individual lists, followed by a summary of all top ten lists.

Great photos

Photographer’s Guide to New Mexico (and a little bit of Colorado).

It begins:

There are three cultures co-existing in New Mexico (if you read the middle third of my Summer 1994 travelogue then you might question the extent to which these actually co-exist). The Indians created interesting pueblos. The Spanish some impressive churches. The Anglos … mostly some houses that look like they could have been imported from Cleveland.

We interrupt this day off …

to bring you this video of four guys throwing a girl through a basketball hoop. Is this for real?

Link via kottke.

I feel fine …

but NewMexiKen is phoning in sick today. Call it a mental health day.

Money to burn

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, on each of those few cold, rainy nights in southern California supermarkets sell 1 million-plus bundles of firewood.

For ten years in Orange County, NewMexiKen got by splitting and burning lumber scraps from nearby housing developments.