“The state of Virginia has now passed a law that calls for a $50 fine for anyone who displays their underwear in a lewd or indecent manor. They’re calling this new law ‘Just say no to crack.'”
“Imagine that you can’t show your underwear in Virginia. Let me tell you something — the plumbers union is really going to fight this one! They have their lobbyists in Washington right now.”
Jay Leno
(Maybe the lobbyists should go to Richmond, but whatever.)
“Administration officials said declassifying the report had been slowed by the fact that the commission no longer existed and that it was unclear who was authorized to work on the declassification.”
Critics Want Full Report of 9/11 Panel in The New York Times
Mark A. R. Kleiman has an ethics problem. What would you do?
Link via Discourse.net.
was born in Milan, Ohio, on this date in 1847.
Edison’s stature has diminished since his death; technology has evolved so much since then. But he was still a hero when he died in 1931. These are the sub-headlines from his obituary in The New York Times:
World Made Over By Edison’s Magic
He Did More Than Any One Man to Put Luxuries Into the Lives of the Masses
Created Millions Of Jobs
Electric Light, the Phonograph, Motion Pictures and Radio Improvements Among Gifts
Lamp Ended “Dark Ages”
He Held the Miracle of Menlo Park, Produced on a Gusty Night 50 Years Ago, His Greatest Work
From The Albuquerque Tribune —
New Mexico driver’s licenses would no longer be recognized as proof of identity by federal officials – like the guards who screen passengers before they board airplanes – under legislation headed for House approval today.
New Mexico is one of 10 states whose residents would have to carry some other proof of identity to board airplanes or enter a federal courthouse because the state issues driver’s licenses without requiring proof of U.S. citizenship.
New Mexico would have to change its law and deny such licenses if its other licenses are to be recognized as valid identification by the feds.
From The New York Times, Sudden Stress Breaks Hearts —
Sudden emotional stress – from grief, fear, anger or shock – can cause heart failure, in a little known and poorly understood syndrome that seems to affect primarily women, researchers are reporting today. The victims are generally healthy, with no history of heart disease.
A death in the family, an armed robbery, a car accident, a biopsy procedure and a surprise party were among the events that sent 18 women and one man to coronary care units in Baltimore with chest pains and weakening of the heart, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine.
A trip in the San Juans from The Santa Fe New Mexican:
Driving the vertigo-inducing “Million-Dollar Highway” between Ouray and Silverton in southwestern Colorado, one might spot the small shrine dedicated to the modern snowplow drivers who have been swept off the highway and to their deaths. The road is often shut down for days when tons of snow rip off the high peaks above the road and thunder down into the river canyon beyond the shoulder, which has no guardrail because the slides tear it out year after year.
This is the land of Big Snow — 400 inches a year on average and close to 2 feet in a single day — and some of the most avalanche-prone terrain in the United States.
Red Mountain is just off this highway — U.S. 550 on a leg of the so-called San Juan Skyway — just north of Silverton in the heart of the rugged San Juan mountain range. The greatest concentration of 13,000- and 14,000-foot-plus peaks in North America, including 14 towering above 14,000 feet and close to 300 above 13,000 feet. Known as “The Rooftop of the Continent,” the range is the realm of beautiful, cool, rain-fed summers — and intense winters.
Link via dangerousmeta!.
Let’s see. You may remember that I was, I believe, mislead about the installation date for my carpet (described here). Instead of January 28th as I was told, the installation is February 9th and 10th. Interestingly, that’s two days, not one as I was originally told. Whatever, they’re doing a great job.
But guess what? The decorator didn’t order enough carpet. (And believe me, these guys have cut it very, very efficiently.) Some more will be ordered. The good news, I guess I saved some money. The bad news, some areas will remain uncarpeted (just padding) until the carpet is delivered (from Georgia). The worse news, will the extra carpet look exactly the same as the rest?
From Janet Maslin’s review in The New York Times:
These are the Disney characters of James B. Stewart’s two-decade history of corporate squabbling, “DisneyWar.” The only traditional Disney figure they bring to mind is Pinocchio. The book describes an Eisner-dominated atmosphere of nonstop conflict and bickering, punctuated by the occasional stinker (“Pearl Harbor”), gold mine (“The Lion King”) or missed opportunity (“The Sopranos”). It tells a messy, fractious story complete with its own Seven Dwarfs: Sneaky, Screamy, Pushy, Greedy, Grabby, Nasty and Snarky. Snow White is nowhere to be seen.
Sony introduces a $3,300 high definition camcorder. David Pogue reports:
All right, go ahead, ask it: “In whose twisted opinion does a $3,300 price tag make this a consumer camcorder?” Let’s put it this way: the next least expensive three-chip, high-definition camcorder costs about $40,000.
From The New York Times —
First, a confession. Since starting to write this article two hours ago, I have left my chair only once. But I have not been entirely present, either.
Each time I have encountered a thorny sentence construction or a tough transition, I have heard the siren call of distraction.
Shouldn’t I fiddle with my Netflix queue, perhaps, or click on the weekend weather forecast? And there must be a friend having a birthday who would love to receive an e-card right now.
I have checked two e-mail accounts at least a dozen times each, and read eight messages. Only two were relevant to my task, but I responded right away to all of them. My sole act of self-discipline: both instant messaging accounts are turned off. For now.
This sorry litany is made only slightly less depressing when I remind myself that I have plenty of company.
Let’s talk about a guy we know. We’ll call him Sam.
Sam is well respected. He’s always doing things for others out of his own pocket. Trouble is Sam does so much that by the end of the year almost every year he has spent more money than he earned.
But Sam has good credit. The banks and credit unions (even the loan sharks) love loaning money to Sam. Even Sam’s children loan him money from their savings accounts (at interest).
Sam pays the interest on all his loans faithfully — but he always rolls over the principal. As a result, every year Sam is more and more in debt (and every year more of his income goes to paying interest).
In a few years Sam’s children are going to need their savings. They’re saying, “Dad, do you have our money safely put away for when we need it?” And Sam knows he doesn’t. He spent the kids money helping people (including his children).
What will Sam do?
As of the end 2004 the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance trust fund held $1,500,764,334,000 in U.S. Government securities. The Disability Insurance trust fund held $186,220,792,000. The total for the two trust funds was $1,686,985,126,000.
(That’s one trillion, 686 billion, 985 million, 126 thousand dollars.)
According to the Social Security Administration, “The average interest rate, weighted by the amount invested at each rate, is 5.492 percent at the end of December 2004.”
As of Tuesday, the federal debt was $7,623,393,028,778.05.
(That’s 7 trillion, 623 billion, 393 million, 28 thousand, seven hundred seventy-eight dollars and five cents.)
$4,428,946,193,753.01 is owed to individuals, corporations, state or local governments, and foreign governments. Types of securities held by the public include Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, and United States Savings Bonds.
The remaining $3,194,446,835,025.04 is owed to Government trust funds, revolving funds, and special funds.
If you’d like to make a contribution to reduce the debt:
ATTN DEPT G
BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT
P O BOX 2188
PARKERSBURG, WV 26106-2188
The carpet is about half installed and the installers have left for the day. A good crew — nice guys, proficient, conscientious. Just like you want. They’ll finish tomorrow.
The carpet itself looks terrific — and now everything else looks like it needs attention. (Sigh!)
All Songs Considered, NPR’s Online Music Show, has a Grammys edition.
Each year the Grammys hand out awards for nearly every conceivable category of music, from “best jazz instrumental album, individual or group” to “best engineered classical album.” Did you ever wonder how it all works? On this edition of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen talks with Ron Roeker, vice president of communications for the Recording Academy about the selection process; plus a look at the “best new artist” category. Below you’ll find the five Grammy nominees for best new artist, along with listener and staff picks for best new artist from the past year.
From Body and Soul, an interesting essay on the teaching of history from which the following is excerpted:
I’ve been pleasantly surprised — up to a point — with the way history is covered in my daughter’s class. When my son was her age, ten years ago, he had a teacher who was so uninterested in history — she actually told me that she despised the subject — that one time a kid recited, “The Indians made corn and ate baskets,” and the teacher just nodded and moved on. As long as the kid got Indians, corn, and baskets in one sentence, as far as she was concerned he knew everything he needed to know about Native Americans. And it wasn’t likely she was ever going to ask a kid to put Columbus and genocide in the same sentence.
Ever since then, “The Indians made corn and ate baskets” has been our code for how bad elementary school history is.
The first two paragraphs of an AP article by Joseph B. Frazier:
Representatives of Northwest Indian tribes from seven states are in Portland this week to seek common ground on issues affecting them, and possible infringement on tribal sovereignty by the Bureau of Indian Affairs is near the top of the list.
The Office of Special Trusts, formed five years ago to improve accountability in the BIA, is drawing much of the acrimony.
Facts:
1. It is the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (not Office of Special Trusts).
2. It was established by federal statute in 1994 (that would be 11 years ago, not five).
3. It is not part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (though both are part of the Department of the Interior).
Ernie Stensgar, president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, said the formation of the office was announced at a meeting of tribal leaders five years ago by Interior Secretary Gale Norton with no tribal input.
Fact:
Gale Norton has been Secretary of the Interior for just four years, not five.
From the Los Angeles Times:
USC offensive coordinator Norm Chow said Tuesday night that he is taking a similar job with the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, thus ending one of the most successful coaching partnerships in college football history.
“I’m fired up — it’s an exciting opportunity to get into the highest level of football,” Chow said. “But my family is very, very sad to leave USC because it’s been such a great run.”
Chow, 58, accepted an offer from Titan Coach Jeff Fisher that will pay him nearly $1 million annually plus incentives. It will be Chow’s first job in pro football after 32 seasons at Brigham Young, North Carolina State and USC.
“Paul Krugman likes to say that if the White House were to announce tomorrow that the world is flat, our press is so disfunctional that the leads the following day would read ‘opinions on shape of earth differ.'”
As quoted at Brad DeLong’s Website
the man who brought a dwarf (Eddie Gaedel) to bat in the major leagues, was born on this date in 1914.
Read about Gaedel’s time at the plate, told as the first chapter of Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck: “When Eddie went into that crouch, his strike zone was just about visible to the naked eye. I picked up a ruler and measured it for posterity. It was 1-1/2 inches. Marvelous.”
Veeck (it rhymes with wreck) died in 1986. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.
Source of income for FY 2006:
This from Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:
Frank Gifford says in an A&E “Biography” that in 1990, when he was already a grandfather, Don Meredith was the first person he called after learning wife Kathie Lee was pregnant.
“There was this long pause,” Gifford says before Meredith is shown saying, “I told him not to worry, I’d find out who did it.”
Gifford says that when Kathie Lee became pregnant with their second child three years later, Meredith again was the first person he called.
This time Meredith is shown saying that he told his friend, “Oh no, I killed the wrong guy.”
The battle for the island of Guadalcanal was won by American forces on this date in 1943. See The New York Times article: Guadalcanal Is Ours from which the following is taken:
The conquest of this island, or specifically a few square miles of territory around Henderson Airfield on its northern shore, gives American forces undisputed possession both of the airfield and an excellent harbor near by, which becomes a threat to Japan’s major bases in the South Pacific.