like NewMexiKen is, but Michael Wilbon appreciates In Overtime, an All-Timer.
Month: March 2005
Consistency not a strong suit in Florida (or anywhere else, I suppose)
From a report in the Miami Herald:
A federally funded watchdog group is investigating the recent deaths of four disabled Floridians amid an aggressive campaign by the state to cut millions of dollars from programs that provide medical care for disabled people in community settings.
Two developmentally disabled adults who lived in group homes in Brandon, and two others under the care of The ARC in St. Lucie County, have died since October 2004, a month after the state required the operator of the two Brandon group homes to change the way residents received nursing care.
A woman at one Brandon home developed such a severe infection at the site of her feeding tube that she has been hospitalized in intensive care since Feb. 13.
Link via Discourse.net
Red Lake
Ojibwe Indian David Treuer writes that “Red Lake is like Cuba: proud, poor, troubled, and independent.”
Bloodshed is what put Red Lake on the map. When my Ojibwe (Chippewa) ancestors arrived in Red Lake in the mid-18th century, the area was occupied by the Dakota. The Ojibwe orchestrated a surprise attack on a flotilla of Dakota canoes heading into the lake from a small tributary. The Ojibwe fired from the steep banks onto the canoes below. The Dakota fell into the water and swam for shore, but none of them made it. There were so many dead that their blood stained the water red far out into the lake, and the Ojibwe named the river Battle River and the lake Red Lake: Miskwaagamiwizaga’iganing.
An interesting and important essay.
Composition
NewMexiKen never thought of it this way before, but the very informative and useful book Photographic Composition (Tom Grill and Mark Scanlon) describes photo composition as the grammar and syntax of the visual arts.
A language without any rules or conventions is unintelligible. In the verbal medium, the applicable rules and conventions are called grammar and syntax. Effective communication requires that all parties involved know and employ the agreed-upon grammar and syntax patterns. …
In the language of the visual arts, grammar and syntax are called composition, which we define as the controlled ordering of the elements in a visual work as the means for achieving clear communication.
The authors believe that visual communication was much more primary until the invention of the printing press and that since humans have unlearned much of their ability to express themselves visually.
Life is too complicated
Or maybe NewMexiKen is just getting too old. It used to be I couldn’t remember all the passwords. Today I was editing my password cheat sheet and I found I couldn’t even remember what some of the passwords were for.
A miracle
Jesus’ General tells of a miracle.
And see today’s Republican Jesus too, just below.
The Perfect (Snow)Storm
A lovely little snowstorm at Casa NewMexiKen this morning; nearly perfect. Maybe an inch of lovely white covered everything — but none stuck to the streets and walks, and it was all gone by noon — every trace except on the mountains above.
And its 50° now (early afternoon) and golfing weather tomorrow.
Update (an hour later): I wrote too soon. It’s snowing again and the temperature has dropped to 40°.
Still predicting 60s tomorrow and 70s Monday though.
Hello, anyone there?
The boss of a big company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with one of the main computers, dialed the employee’s home phone number and was greeted with a child’s whisper.
“Hello.”
“Is your daddy home?” he asked.
“Yes,” whispered the small voice.
“May I talk with him?”
The child whispered, “No.”
Surprised, and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, “Is your mommy there?”
“Yes.”
“May I talk with her?”
Again the small voice whispered, “No.”
Hoping there was somebody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, “Is anybody else there?”
“Yes, “whispered the child, “a policeman.”
Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee’s home, the boss asked, “May I speak with the policeman?”
“No, he’s busy”, whispered the child.
“Busy doing what?”
“Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the fireman,” came the whispered answer.
Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like a helicopter through the earpiece on the phone the boss asked, “What is that noise?”
“A hello-copper” answered the whispering voice.
“What is going on there?” asked the boss, now truly alarmed.
In an awed whispering voice the child answered, “The search team just landed the hello-copper.”
Alarmed, concerned, and even more then just a little frustrated the boss asked, “What are they searching for?”
Still whispering, the young voice replied along with a muffled giggle:
“ME.”
Thanks to Amy.
Good advice
NewMexiKen has ordered a new camera and is reviewing the online literature in preparation for its delivery next week. I thought this was pretty good advice:
When using the viewfinder
When operating the diopter adjustment control with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally.
Speaking up for Barry Bonds
Joel Achenbach looks at Barry Bonds from another direction:
No one has ever done what Barry Bonds did at the plate. Even in a league rife with steroids he has stood out as leaps and bounds better than everyone else. That’s why he has to go into the Hall even if people think that he’s a steroid cheater. We judge athletes against their competition. Even steroids don’t let your average superstar win seven, count ’em, seven MVP awards. If steroids make such a big difference than how come Jose Canseco never reached 500 home runs for his career? Canseco never managed to hit 50 home runs in a season, much less the 73 that Bonds hit to set that all-time record. Bonds has inspired more fear in pitchers than Canseco, McGwire and Sosa combined. He became, in his late 30s, so dangerous at the plate that he deformed the basic principles of pitching. Last year he walked 232 times, which is absurd, and by far the all-time record, but what’s stunning is that, of those, 120 were “intentional” walks, meaning the pitcher didn’t even pretend to want to pitch to him. Pitchers basically gave up.
Even if we believe that Bonds took steroids and that by doing so betrayed the game, the fact of the matter is that Bonds has been at the center of the steroid controversy not because he abused them in any special way. It’s because he’s a lot better than everyone else.
Cruel irony
While none of the doctors are really involved in stem cell therapy, it was discussed at great length by each of them. Perhaps one of the few agreements between these experts is that stem cell research is currently at the experimental stage and is years away from being accepted either medically or politically. It would not appear from the testimony that this is a viable treatment option at this time.
But could it be in the future? Aren’t the people and organizations (and politicians) that protest the removal of the feeding tube the same as those opposing stem cell research?
Pointer and idea from Hesiod at The American Street.
Imus in the Morning
State attorneys general in New Mexico and New York are quizzing radio personality Don Imus about his San Miguel County ranch.
Imus and his wife, Deirdre, opened the 4,000-acre ranch between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, N.M., in 1999 as a summer camp for sick children.
But the New York-based charity’s multimillion-dollar annual budget and the Imus family’s use of the ranch’s well-appointed facilities have drawn scrutiny from government officials. …
The nonprofit ranch spent $2.6 million last year while hosting only about 100 children, The Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page story Thursday. The newspaper said experts consider that an unusually high dollar-tochild ratio for a charity.
NewMexiKen supposes that too many rug rats might really mess up the “14,000-squarefoot adobe mansion, swimming pool and billiard hall” and its “Asian and American Indian rugs, rustic chandeliers and an outdoor shower designed to look like Aztec ruins.”
Update March 26th: New York Attorney General Spitzer has closed his inquiry into the Imus Ranch without finding any impropriety The New York Times reported Friday.
Functional Ambivalent
My best blogging buddy, Functional Ambivalent, refers to the University of West Virginia – University of Louisville game tomorrow as the “NewMexiKen Regional Final of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.” (It’s the game in Albuquerque.) I suppose after such kindness I’ll have to root for his team, the Louisville Cardinals, who are anything but “Ambivalent” about winning.
Functional Ambivalent has also posted — after a lengthy lapse — one of his funny — but totally distasteful — sex day essays. (I have to include the “distasteful” disclaimer in case Sister Baptista, or Sister Mary Francetta, or any of the others who prayed me through ten years of Catholic schools are reading this.) Of course, I only view Functional Ambivalent for the photos.
Winning ways
NewMexiKen wrote in December that the local high school, La Cueva, had won its second consecutive state football championship and gone 26-0 over the two years.
I learned Thursday that the La Cueva baseball team has gone 67-0, not losing a game since May 2002. On Tuesday they will play for their 68th consecutive win and a chance to tie the national record winning streak. (Archbishop Molloy High of Briarwood, N.Y., went 68-0 from 1963-1966.)
It must be the water.
The first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame …
is 63 today. I Never Loved A Man, Respect, Baby I Love You, A Natural Woman, Chain of Fools, Think, The House That Jack Built, I Say a Little Prayer, Bridge Over Troubled Water — all great, but for NewMexiKen give me Aretha Franklin’s version of You Are My Sunshine.
From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
Aretha Franklin, the “Queen of Soul,” remains one of the preeminent vocalists of the age, a singer of great passion and control whose finest recordings define the term soul music in all its deep, expressive glory. As Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun observed, “I don’t think there’s anybody I have known who possesses an instrument like hers and who has such a thorough background in gospel, the blues and the essential black-music idiom….She is blessed with an extraordinary combination of remarkable urban sophistication and of the deep blues feeling that comes from the Delta. The result is maybe the greatest singer of our time.”
Franklin was born in Memphis in 1942 and grew up in Detroit, where her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, was the pastor at the New Bethel Baptist Church. Aretha began singing church music at an early age, and recorded her first album, The Gospel Sound of Aretha Franklin, for the Checker label at age 14. Her early influences, however, included secular singers like Dinah Washington, Sam Cooke, LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown. She signed with Columbia Records in 1960, having been brought to the label by legendary talent scout John Hammond. However, her tenure at Columbia was an inconclusive one that found her dabbling in pop and jazz styles. In Hammond’s words, “Columbia was a white company who misunderstood her genius.”
With her switch to Atlantic Records in 1966, Aretha helped usher in an era of fresh, forthright soul music. It commenced with her first single for the label, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Loved You),” a salty, importuning number that unleashed the full force of Franklin’s voice upon the world. Her next triumph was “Respect,” a fervent reworking of an Otis Redding number that can in hindsight be seen as an early volley in the feminist movement and a signature statement of racial pride. Working under the tutelage of producer Jerry Wexler, engineer Tom Dowd and arranger Arif Mardin, Franklin rewrote the book on soul music in the late Sixties with a string of smash crossover singles that included “Chain of Fools,” “Think” and a memorable rendering of Carole King’s “A Natural Woman (You Make Me Feel).”
Game winner
The photo below is the game winner by Arizona’s Salim Stoudamire with 2.8 seconds left. Arizona beat Oklahoma State 79-78.
Stoudamire was four for four in the closing minutes.
Yes!
One reason I’d like to visit New Zealand
The elite athletes
U.S. Men’s National Team coach Bruce Arena on the increasing attraction of soccer to the best young American athletes:
I think any young kid that aspires to play a sport they always look to the top. In this country, traditionally, we’ve had an NFL, Major League Baseball, NBA, etc. We’ve rarely had a professional league in soccer. Over the past 10 years I think it’s been obvious to kids that they can become professional soccer players in the United States. They see the success of some of our young players, DaMarcus Beasley, Landon Donovan, now Eddie Johnson. They realize that that’s ahead of them as well. I think that inspires African-American players, Hispanics, Caucasians, etc. Professional soccer, I believe, is here to stay in the United States and it will now compete for our elite athletes and I think that’s been the reason. The existence and growth of MLS has developed a dream for young kids.
The U.S. plays Mexico in a World Cup qualifying match this Sunday at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City live on ESPN2 and Telemundo at 11AM MT. The whole interview with Coach Arena is here.
Made a snap decision
NewMexiKen just read this excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s best-seller Blink and will be heading off to the bookstore now to purchase the book.
Must have fallen off the ark!
Paleontologists have recovered what appear to be soft tissues from the thighbone of a 70 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex, potentially enabling dinosaur research to make a leap into the study of the animals’ actual physiology and perhaps even their cell biology, they said today.
Working with the remains of a T. rex unearthed in northeast Montana’s celebrated Hell Creek formation, the research team systematically removed minerals and fossilized deposits from the thighbone, exposing blood vessels, bone cells and possibly intact blood cells with nuclei.
Mulling
Anyone have anything negative to say about the Nikon D-70?
Deadwood, for real
The Characters & People page of the Adams Museum & House web site has the story on some of Deadwood’s real-life characters. The Gem’s Al Swearengen, Dan Dority and Johnny Burns were real, as were E.B. Farnum, Charlie Utter, Seth Bullock, Sol Star and Tricksie.
What they care about
According to [Robert] Novak, the Schiavo matter has his mainstream press colleagues more upset than anything since Vietnam! Translation: They didn’t care this much about Iraq. They didn’t care this much about Bush’s tax cuts. They don’t care this much about Social Security. They didn’t care this much about the Bush-Gore election—the election which totally changed our politics—or about that crackpot book by those Swift Boat Veterans. No—more than all else, they care about this. It’s a confession we find most illustrative.
Birthdays and stuff
Harry Houdini was born on this date in 1874. The New York Times has posted their original obituary from when Houdini died in 1926 from peritonitis, which followed appendicitis.
Joseph Barbera, the cartoonist, is 93.
Annabella Sciorra, the actress, is 41.
Keisha Castle-Hughes, the Oscar-nominated actress (Whale Rider) is 15.
Thomas E. Dewey was born on this date in 1902. He was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for President in 1944 and 1948. NewMexiKen has a vague memory of visiting Albany as small child, touring the capitol, and actually sitting in Governor Dewey’s chair. (He wasn’t there.)