Time to talk about the facts of life

After Tuesday night’s election results, I’m thinking that Chelsea needs to have a little heart-to-heart with her folks.

Bipolar on Bipolar

Tuesday:

Many people who have been told by their doctors that they have bipolar disorder don’t really have it.

So say researchers who used a standardized, comprehensive, psychiatric diagnostic interview to evaluate 700 adult psychiatric outpatients.

WebMD

One year ago Wednesday:

There appear to be almost twice as many Americans with bipolar disorder as previously thought, and many are not getting the treatments they need, researchers from the National Institute of Mental Health report.

Once thought of as a single mental illness, bipolar disorder is increasingly recognized as a spectrum disorder, with symptoms ranging from less severe to devastating.

WebMD

Best line of the day, so far — at least for guys

“I come from a long line of Europeans — illiterate, mud-eating Europeans from the Outer Hebrides, to be exact, whose idea of a good time was to go down to the firth and watch the plague victims wash out to sea. Even so, I’ve always had an affinity for the Continent. Between New Orleans and Amsterdam, I prefer Amsterdam. I’ll take Rousseau over Jefferson, Beck’s over Budweiser, Formula One over NASCAR, and Heidi Klum over my knee.”

Dan Neil

Update: Hmm, on second thought. The end of the line made me laugh out loud, but the more I think about it — the line, not the image — I find it a little too sexist.

So, first instinct, funny go with it, or second instinct, not up to the high standards of this blog — what do you think?

Just when you think people can’t get any more ignorant

Chalk this one up to hard-to-believe: a substitute teacher in Florida lost his job in part because of a magic trick.

As reported by Channel 10 in Tampa, Jim Piculas did a magic trick where he makes a toothpick disappear and reappear. What happened next? The principal called him up to the office and told him he was being accused of — wait for it, wait for it — wizardry.

Bad Astronomy Blog

Birthday present

As noted earlier, Ken, official oldest child of NewMexiKen, is celebrating his birthday today. Yesterday he celebrated one of his birthday gifts:

The Audi Sportscar Experience has been created to allow you to enjoy the highest performance vehicles that Audi produces while increasing your skills so you can extract the most performance from your car. The Audi Sportscar Experience is for the enthusiast, the person who loves to drive and has an appreciation for the fine art of constantly improving his or her driving skills. Using a variety of vehicles from Audi’s R, RS and S categories, this program was developed to be the ultimate experience in an automobile.

His spouse reports: “Apparently, Ken had accidentally called me on his mobile. It was in his pocket while he was driving. So, I get this voice mail that is basically static and silence and then: ‘zooooooooooooom….zoooooooooooooooom.’ It went on and on and on.”

He was driving an Audi R8 at Sonoma’s Infineon Raceway.

Update: Here are photos of Audi R8s on the track taken by Ken’s passenger. Click images for larger versions.

My question to Ken: Why are these cars in front of you?

Killer Angels

Yesterday Professor ari at The Edge of the American West wrote about The Killer Angels in the classroom. He began:

On this day in 1975, Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, which, I’m told, is a good get. Killer Angels, for those of you who haven’t read it, tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg, mostly through the eyes of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and James “Pete” Longstreet and Union officers Joshua Chamberlain and John Buford. The prose is vivid, the narrative taut, and Shaara’s command of tactics and history are both impressive.

If you’ve read the book or studied the civil war you may find ari’s post particularly interesting.

If you haven’t read the book, you really should. NewMexiKen was recently given a first edition.

Best line of last night

“And sadly, the ‘father of LSD’ is dead.” He “has died at the age of 102. But the good news, the ‘mother of LSD,’ still alive and working as a judge on ‘American Idol.’”

Jay Leno

Even one more reason to make today a national holiday

It’s National Teacher Day.

Around 1944 Arkansas teacher Mattye Whyte Woodridge began corresponding with political and education leaders about the need for a national day to honor teachers. Woodbridge wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, who in 1953 persuaded the 81st Congress to proclaim a National Teacher Day.

NEA, along with its Kansas and Indiana state affiliates and the Dodge City (Kan.) Local, lobbied Congress to create a national day celebrating teachers. Congress declared March 7, 1980, as National Teacher Day for that year only.

NEA and its affiliates continued to observe National Teacher Day on the first Tuesday in March until 1985, when the National PTA established Teacher Appreciation Week as the first full week of May. The NEA Representative Assembly then voted to make the Tuesday of that week National Teacher Day.

Thanks to all the wonderful teachers in NewMexiKen’s life, K-12 and beyond.

More reasons May 6th should be a national holiday

Willie Mays is 77 today.

When Joe DiMaggio died in 1999, baseball luminaries were asked who inherited the title of greatest living player. NewMexiKen had a different assumption. I thought Willie Mays became the greatest living ballplayer when Ty Cobb died in 1961.

Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid,” played with enthusiasm and exuberance while excelling in all phases of the game - hitting for average and power, fielding, throwing and baserunning. His staggering career statistics include 3,283 hits and 660 home runs. The Giants’ superstar earned National League Rookie of the Year honors in 1951 and two MVP awards. He accumulated 12 Gold Gloves, played in a record-tying 24 All-Star games and participated in four World Series. His catch of Vic Wertz’s deep fly in the ‘54 Series remains one of baseball’s most memorable moments.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Two quotes about Mays:

• Ted Williams: “They invented the All-Star game for Willie Mays.”

• Manager Leo Durocher, who must have been from Deadwood, once recalled a remarkable home run by Mays: “I never saw a f—ing ball go out of a f—ing park so f—ing fast in my f—ing life!”

Orson Welles was born on this date in 1915. To many who grew up with television, Welles was simply the larger-than-life spokesman for Paul Masson Wines — “We will sell no wine before its time.” But at age 23 Welles had scared thousands of Americans with his realistic radio production of War of the Worlds. At 25 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in what many consider the best film ever made, Citizen Kane. For that film alone, he was nominated for the Oscar for best actor, best director, best original screenplay and best picture (he won, with Herman Mankiewicz, for screenplay). Welles was nominated for the best picture Oscar again the following year — The Magnificent Ambersons.

Amadeo Peter Giannini was born on this date in 1870. Giannini was one of Time’s 20 most influential builders and titans of the 20th century. Daniel Kadlec wrote the story:

Like a lot of folks in the San Francisco area, Amadeo Peter Giannini was thrown from his bed in the wee hours of April 18, 1906, when the Great Quake shook parts of the city to rubble. He hurriedly dressed and hitched a team of horses to a borrowed produce wagon and headed into town–to the Bank of Italy, which he had founded two years earlier. Sifting through the ruins, he discreetly loaded $2 million in gold, coins and securities onto the wagon bed, covered the bank’s resources with a layer of vegetables and headed home.

In the days after the disaster, the man known as A.P. broke ranks with his fellow bankers, many of whom wanted area banks to remain shut to sort out the damage. Giannini quickly set up shop on the docks near San Francisco’s North Beach. With a wooden plank straddling two barrels for a desk, he began to extend credit “on a face and a signature” to small businesses and individuals in need of money to rebuild their lives. His actions spurred the city’s redevelopment.

That would have been legacy enough for most people. But Giannini’s mark extends far beyond San Francisco, where his dogged determination and unusual focus on “the little people” helped build what was at his death the largest bank in the country, Bank of America, with assets of $5 billion. (It’s now No. 2, with assets of $572 billion, behind Citigroup’s $751 billion.)

Most bank customers today take for granted the things Giannini pioneered, including home mortgages, auto loans and other installment credit. Heck, most of us take banks for granted. But they didn’t exist, at least not for working stiffs, until Giannini came along.
…

Giannini also made a career out of lending to out-of-favor industries. He helped the California wine industry get started, then bankrolled Hollywood at a time when the movie industry was anything but proven. In 1923 he created a motion-picture loan division and helped Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith start United Artists. When Walt Disney ran $2 million over budget on Snow White, Giannini stepped in with a loan.
…

When Giannini died at age 79, his estate was worth less than $500,000. It was purely by choice. He could have been a billionaire but disdained great wealth, believing it would make him lose touch with the people he wanted to serve. For years he accepted virtually no pay, and upon being granted a surprise $1.5 million bonus one year promptly gave it all to the University of California. “Money itch is a bad thing,” he once said. “I never had that trouble.”

Bob Seger is 63 today. George Clooney is 47.

May 6th ought to be a national holiday

This still seems like it was just yesterday.

Too many years ago, I was leaving the area of the University of Arizona and coasted through a stop sign. A Tucson PD motorcycle officer saw the infraction and pulled me over within seconds. As he told me what he’d seen and asked for my driver’s license I said, “My wife is in labor. I’m just anxious to get to her.” He gave me that “yeah, sure” look and walked back to his motorcycle to write me up. When he returned in a minute or two he said he was just giving me a written warning (no fine, no points). And then he added, “Be careful. We haven’t lost a father yet.”

A small moment made important to me because my oldest child was born later that evening. Today he’s a son, a husband, a father, an attorney and a friend. Happy birthday Ken.

What did you dream last night?

Today is Sigmund Freud’s birthday. He was born on May 6, 1856.

In the following pages, I shall demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, and that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, and one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness and obscurity of dreams, and to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or co-operation is responsible for our dreams.

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)

In dreams I walk with you. In dreams I talk to you.
In dreams you’re mine. All of the time we’re together
In dreams, In dreams.

Roy Orbison, “In Dreams” (1963)

Oh, the humanity

Herb Morrison reporting, 71 years ago today.

Thirty-six were killed — 13 of the 36 passengers, 22 of the 61 crew, and one ground crew member.

The Hindenburg did not explode because it was filled with hydrogen as long thought. The outer skin of the big German aircraft — longer than three 747s — was painted with an iron oxide, powdered aluminum compound to reflect sunlight (to minimize heat build up). The powdered aluminum was highly flammable and was ignited by an electrostatic charge in the imperfectly grounded zeppelin.

How flammable is iron oxide and aluminum? It’s the fuel used to launch the Shuttle.

Eight Belles

At Salon a very informative piece on horse racing, track surfaces, horse anatomy and Eight Belles. It includes this:

Eight Belles didn’t die because she was a filly, running over her head in a race against colts. Just last year, the filly Rags to Riches won the Belmont Stakes. Eight Belles died because horses are oddly designed creatures. They have no muscles below the knee, and their hooves are essentially nails. One thoroughbred owner I know says horses “run on their middle fingers.” Thoroughbreds are especially fragile, carrying enormous bodies on legs as spindly as a Kenyan marathoner’s. Compare the stocky legs and platter-size feet of a Percheron or a Clydesdale, and you’ll see why racehorses are so easily broken.

If you follow racing at all — even three times a year — you should read this essay.