Saturday, January 5, 2008
MVP
Tom Brady has been elected the NFL’s most valuable player for the 2007 season. He received 49 of 50 votes.
Some cheesehead voted for Brett Favre.
Archive for January 5, 2008
Best line of the day, so far
“[Richard] Scaife is so repellent a creep he begs comparison to Hannibal Lecter, and not in a good way.”
Heroes
First posted here two years ago today:
Mack, official oldest grandchild of NewMexiKen, watched much of the Rose Bowl with his mother Wednesday night. Here’s the story as told by his mother, Jill:
The honorary marshal came onto the field, before the game, to flip the coin. I saw that it was Sandra Day O’Connor.
I said, “Oh, Mack, that is one of my heroes.”
“Why?”
I referenced conversations we’ve had in the past, “You know how we’ve talked about how, for thousands of years, men got to be in charge of everything and women didn’t get to do lots of things?” (Mack has a fairly solid background knowledge in this stuff, at least for a five-year-old boy.)
“Yes, like how they couldn’t vote or have a house or do lots of jobs?”
“Right. Well one job they didn’t get to do was be a judge. A judge gets to decide the laws for all the people to follow. It’s a really important job. Well, that lady was the first woman who got to be a judge. So she is one of Mommy’s heroes.” (Not strictly accurate, I know.)
Mack looked at me for a minute, then said, “Then she is one of my heroes, too.”
My heart melted. I put my arms out for a hug, so proud of my brilliant, sensitive child.
He continued, “Yes. Also Batman.”
I’m told I’m fickle
And I guess I am. I preferred Bill Richardson for the Democratic nomination. He is the strongest anti-war candidate and I still believe he is the most experienced, if experience matters. But his campaigning has been ineffective, downright embarrassing at moments, the opposite of what a candidate running on experience needed to demonstrate.
Then I wasn’t sure about Obama or Edwards. I was influenced considerably by Paul Krugman’s negative take on Obama, that the Senator is too conciliatory, that he is, for pete’s sake, using Republican talking points at times. I thought this post at Corrente was valid. But I had liked Obama’s The Audacity of Hope very much.
Edwards clearly is the strongest on domestic issues, and arguably has pushed his fellow Democrats in the correct directions — universal health insurance, for example. But Edwards just can’t seem to get real traction.
I admire Hillary Clinton. Perhaps she should have been running for office all along instead of Bill. But I don’t want another Clinton. The 90s are over; I don’t care for the country to relive them.
So my loyalties have been changing; I have been fickle. I may continue to be fickle. But today …
8 CommentsJanuary 5th
Robert Duvall was born in San Diego 77 years ago today. Duvall won the best actor Oscar for his portrayl of Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies in 1983. Among other characters he has portrayed are Boo Radley, Frank Burns, Tom Hagen, Lt. Col. William ‘Bill’ Kilgore, Bull Meechum and the unforgettable Augustus McCrae.
Umberto Eco is 76 today.
Eco had never written any fiction, but the idea intrigued him, so he told the publisher that he would work on something. He got the idea of a murder mystery set in the Middle Ages, and he wrote about a Franciscan friar who stumbles upon a series of interrelated deaths in the Italian abbey he is visiting. He filled the book with the history of the 14th century, as well as philosophy and theology. He also used every trick he’d ever learned from studying detective novels and spy movies to create his protagonist, William of Baskerville.
When Eco finished the novel, titled The Name of the Rose, he thought that his publishers were being way too optimistic when they ordered 30,000 copies to be printed. But when it came out in 1980, The Name of the Rose sold 2 million copies.
Charlie Rose is 66 today.
Diane Keaton was born in Los Angeles 62 years ago today. Keaton won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of Annie Hall in 1977. She has had three other Oscar nominations. She has never married but has adopted two children. Her real name is Diane Hall; she changed to Keaton, her mother’s maiden name, because there was already a Diane Hall in the Actor’s Guild.
Marilyn Manson is 39.
On the twelfth day of Christmas
Though advertisers and merchants would have us believe that the Christmas season begins at Thanksgiving (or possibly Halloween), liturgically it begins on Christmas Eve and extends until Twelfth Night, the eve of the Epiphany.
The Twelve Days of Christmas are Christmas through January 5th. Tonight is Twelfth night.
The $5 day
As The New York Times reported on this date in 1914:
Henry Ford, head of the Ford Motor Company, announced…one of the most remarkable business moves of his entire remarkable career. In brief it is:
To give to the employees of the company $10,000,000 of the profits of the 1914 business, the payments to be made semi-monthly and added to the pay checks.
To run the factory continuously instead of only eighteen hours a day, giving employment to several thousand more men by employing three shifts of eight hours each, instead of only two nine-hour shifts, as at present.
To establish a minimum wage scale of $5 per day. Even the boy who sweeps up the floors will get that much.
Before any man in any department of the company who does not seem to be doing good work shall be discharged, an opportunity will be given to him to try to make good in every other department. No man shall be discharged except for proved unfaithfulness or irremediable inefficiency.
Read the complete Times article.
What’s the rush?
President Harry S. Truman, 59 years ago today in his State of the Union Address:
We must spare no effort to raise the general level of health in this country. In a nation as rich as ours, it is a shocking fact that tens of millions lack adequate medical care. We are short of doctors, hospitals, nurses. We must remedy these shortages. Moreover, we need–and we must have without further delay–a system of prepaid medical insurance which will enable every American to afford good medical care.
