Damn the torpedoes!

On August 23, 1864, the Union navy captured Fort Morgan, Alabama, breaking the Confederate dominance of the ports of the Gulf of Mexico. As the Union fleet of four ironclad and fourteen wooden ships sailed into the channel on August 5, one of the lead ships, the Tecumseh, hit a mine, at the time known as a “torpedo.”

In reply to the warning, “Torpedoes ahead!” given by the forward ships, commander Admiral David Farragut called out, “Damn the torpedoes!” and, taking the lead with his flagship the Hartford, sailed over the double row of mines and into Mobile Bay.

Although the bottom of the ship scraped the mines, none exploded, and the rest of the fleet followed Farragut’s flagship to victory in the engagement with the Confederate flotilla. During the next weeks, the Union navy consolidated its hold on the bay by dispersing and capturing Southern ships and tightening the blockade. With the surrender of Fort Morgan, the Union was able to cut the South off from its overseas supply routes.

Library of Congress

It’s the birthday

… of Barbara Eden. “Jeannie” is 72.

… of Linda Thompson. The folk/rock musician, who with then husband Richard made one of the great rock albums — Shoot Out the Lights, is 58 today. She was voted best female singer of 1982 in Rolling Stone.

… of Shelley Long. The star of Cheers and numerous films is 57. Long received six Emmy nominations for her portrayal of Diane Chambers, winning once.

… of Kobe Bryant. He’s 28.

… and of Gene Kelly. The wonderful singer/dancer/actor was born on this date in 1912. Kelly is most famous for Singin’ in the Rain but received his sole Oscar nomination for best actor for Anchors Aweigh. He died in 1996.

Radio station ratings

Ever been curious how the radio station you listen to does in the ratings? Radio & Records posts the ratings for every U.S. market on a continuing basis. The charts include the call letters (but not the frequency), the owner, the format and the rating for the past several quarters. Of course, NPR and other non-commercial stations aren’t included.

The rating shown by Radio & Records is — I think — the average number of people 12 or older who listened to a radio station for at least five minutes during one quarter hour at some point during the day. This is expressed as a percentage of the total possible audience for that market.

For example, KKOB-AM in Albuquerque received a 7.6 rating for Spring 2006. That means that — on the average — each day KKOB-AM had 49,719 listeners — 7.6% of the 654,200 individuals age 12 and older in Albuquerque. Of course, it could have been a different 49,719 each day, or 80,000 one day and 19,438 another day, or 40,000 in the morning and 9,719 the rest of the day, or 40,000 men and 9,719 women. Radio stations pay dearly for all that data and you won’t find it on the Internet.

No more watermelon on airplanes

Emily, official youngest daughter or NewMexiKen, writes:

Have you ever heard of a watermelon imploding?

Rob bought a nice big watermelon on Sunday evening. We planned to cut into it today.

I guess the watermelon had other ideas . . .

Last night, it imploded and leaked sticky, gooey juice all over our kitchen island, stools, floor, trash cans, and life insurance papers. It totally ruined a rug. And our whole house smells like rotten watermelon.

Yuck!

Then, as I started to clean up, Rob tried to move the deflated fruit into the trash can. That’s when it exploded red pulp all over the floor and trash cans.

Gross!

Forty-five minutes and a whole roll of paper towel later, I finally got through mopping it all up.

The ants are already having a feast and I can only imagine it will get worse. I feel like I’ll have to mop for a week straight to STOP finding sticky spots on the floor.

Holy mother-of-pearl

There’s a rainstorm at Casa NewMexiKen this morning that began around 3:30 that goes way beyond Biblical. Mercy! If it rained any harder a good swimmer could swim straight up. [Update: About an inch-and-a-half.]

43,443 people were killed on American highways and roads in 2005, the highest number since 1990 and the highest per miles driven since 1986. 4,553 were motorcyclists (10.5%).

But what is amazing is that 55% of the passenger vehicle occupants who were killed were not wearing seat belts. Fifty-five percent!

About 80% of people use belts, so the 20% or so who don’t are really giving above and beyond the call.

Buckle up!

Have you noticed that mens’ rooms are getting busier? Woman have been complaining for years about the unfairness of long waits while men just zip in and out. Not any more.

As the baby-boomer men age — the oldest are now 60, the youngest turning 42 this year — it’s taking guys a lot longer to get the job done. There’s much more down time in mens’ rooms. As a result, we’re starting to see lines at crowded venues. Some are standing-room only.

This situation can only worsen as the male population continues to age.

Adding injury to injury

Denise Jack got a good news-bad news phone call from an insurance company yesterday regarding her blue 1993 Nissan Pathfinder, which was buried by an avalanche in Upper Manhattan last year and has been sitting beneath the mountain of dirt on Riverside Drive ever since.

The good news was that after more than a year of waiting and frustration, her sport utility vehicle would soon be dug out.

The bad news was that she would have pay to have the S.U.V. — or the presumably flattened hunk of metal, glass and rubber that was once her car — towed away.

The New York Times

The car, one of several, was buried May 12, 2005, when a wall collapsed. The car owners were told by the insurer for the building whose wall collapsed that they couldn’t be paid until the cars were unburied and vehicle identification numbers verified, etc.

In College Football, Big Paydays for Humiliation

An interesting article in Wednesday’s New York Times about lower ranked colleges playing the big boys for cash, especially now that they’ve added a 12th game to the college season. “Troy State of Alabama will receive $750,000 from Nebraska to play in Lincoln this season. Louisiana-Lafayette will get the same amount from Tennessee next year.”

Trivia from the champ

NewMexiKen has been impressed with the high quality of the weekly trivia quizzes from Ken Jennings, the all-time Jeopardy! champ.

You have to sign-up to get the quiz by email. (The link above will take you to a post on last week’s quiz. The Other Projects or About Ken links in the left-hand sidebar will take you to a place to sign-up, also in the left-hand sidebar.)

I don’t think I should copy too much Jennings’s trivia, but I do want to give you a sampling. Here are the first four from last week:

1. Who invented the word “Cablinasian” to refer to his ethnic background?

2. What famous disco refrain of 1974 is drawn, word for word, from scene six of A Streetcar Named Desire, where Blanche DuBois uses it as a come-on to Mitch?

3. What was created, almost seven thousand years ago, by the eruption of Mount Mazama?

4. The Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver were the three ships on which what famous event from American history occurred?

Education is for liberals

From Bookslut:

A (very, very) small group of Clemson University students are upset that they’re being treated like adults.

Several Clemson University students have joined a member of the Commission on Higher Education to say they did not like the book the school chose for a required freshman summer reading assignment.

The seven students, mostly freshman, joined commission member Ken Wingate and about 40 parents, grandparents and alumni Monday to talk about their concerns with “Truth & Beauty,” by Ann Patchett.

The book, which was a best-seller, tells the story of Patchett and a friend, Lucy Grealy, who struggled with the effects of cancer throughout her life and later dealt with drug addiction. Wingate said it glamorizes “deviant and debasing” behavior and is unhappy with its sexual content.

How did Clemson end up with the kids who weren’t smart enough to get into Bob Jones or Oral Roberts? Isn’t there some kind of correspondence school for the sheltered and whiny?

Pigskin to Thin Skin to Skin Alive

David Carr has a good column today about when the reporter thinks he or she is the star. To wit, Tony Kornheiser. An excerpt:

Like no one else, Mr. Kornheiser has leveraged a radio face and a newspaper voice into multiplatform stardom, but his history demonstrates that when it comes to dishing it out without the ability to take same, he also has few rivals. It is not that he has thin skin; he has no skin.

When Mike Golic, the host of a morning sports show on ESPN, suggested that Mr. Kornheiser’s performance was merely “fine,” Mr. Kornheiser was moved to say, “I just want to ring Golic’s neck and hang him up over the back of a shower rod like a duck.”

Last year, the ESPN columnist Chuck Klosterman took a measured swipe at Mr. Kornheiser, who then ranted on his radio show for days, demanding that Mr. Klosterman come to the phone and defend himself.

Language Courses

Learn a language the way the U.S. Foreign Service Institute teaches it — and free.

“These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain.

“This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. It is an independent effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages.”

She taught the Bible too well

WATERTOWN, N.Y. – The minister of a church that dismissed a female Sunday School teacher after adopting what it called a literal interpretation of the Bible says a woman can perform any job — outside of the church.

The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on Aug. 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”

Yahoo! News

First and Tundra

A good article about high school football in Alaska in the Los Angeles Times. It includes this:

This year, the Barrow High Whalers are fielding a team believed to be the first U.S. high school football team north of the Arctic Circle.

Barrow, Alaska’s northernmost village, is more than 500 miles away from its nearest gridiron foe.

On Saturday, the visiting Delta Junction High Huskies, from the Fairbanks area, played the Whalers just yards from the Arctic Ocean, amid snow flurries and temperatures in the 30s.

Barrow school officials had told the visitors the district would place a sentry in a wooden lookout tower to keep an eye out for wandering polar bears.

Pressed for details, Barrow High’s assistant principal, Mike Wetherbee, let out a laugh over the phone, and conceded there may have been an intimidation factor behind that announcement.

“The truth is, polar bears at this point in the year really aren’t all that much of a problem,” Wetherbee said. Alas, Barrow lost, 34-0.