Month: February 2006

Frederick Douglass

… was born on this date in 1817.

With the headline Death Of Fred Douglass, The New York Times reported Frederick Douglass’ death in 1895. It’s a fascinating contemporary article. An excerpt:

Frederick Douglass has been often spoken of as the foremost man of the African race in America. Though born and reared in slavery, he managed, through his own perseverance and energy, to win for himself a place that not only made him beloved by all members of his own race in America, but also won for himself the esteem and reverence of all fair-minded persons, both in this country and in Europe.

Mr. Douglass had been for many years a prominent figure in public life. He was of inestimable service to the members of his own race, and rendered distinguished service to his country from time to time in various important offices that he held under the Government.

He became well known, early in his career, as an orator upon subjects relating to slavery. He won renown by his oratorical powers both in the northern part of the United States and in England. He had become known before the civil war also as a journalist. So highly were his opinions valued that he was often consulted by President Lincoln, after the civil war began, upon questions relating to the colored race. He held important offices almost constantly from 1871 until 1891.

Mr. Douglass, perhaps more than any other man of his race, was instrumental in advancing the work of banishing the color line.

It’s the birthday

… of James Spader. He’s 46.

… of Yukon, Oklahoma’s Garth Brooks. He’s 44. (The paint with his name is fading on the town water tower.)

… of Eddie Izzard. He’s 44.

… of Chris Rock. He’s 41.

… of Ashton Kutcher. He’s 28.

Manohla Dargis explains all

A terrific Oscar-focused Q&A with Times film critic Manohla Dargis. It includes this:

Q. My friends and I seem to be asking each other the following two questions:

1. How did Reese Witherspoon become such a shoo-in when, as a lead actress, she doesn’t have that much screen time, and worse, she seems to be playing Reese Witherspoon the whole time?

2. How did “Crash,” a somewhat obvious, over-the-top, contrived drama, score so many nominations and now come to be considered as a possible dark horse for best picture?
—Danny, Austin, TX

A. Reese Witherspoon was nominated for “Walk the Line” because she’s beautiful, talented, has paid her dues (and I don’t mean by marrying Ryan Phillippe) and did a credible job in a big studio movie that made money and won kudos, if not across the board. (My pal A. O. Scott wasn’t wild about the movie, but he called her performance “lively” and “smart.”) Her performance seems more supporting than not, true, but given the paucity of good female lead performances (see above) the Academy’s choice of Ms. Witherspoon this year was a no-brainer.

There are a few obvious reasons why “Crash” connected with the Academy. First, Los Angeles, where most of Academy members live, is a profoundly segregated city, so any movie that makes it seem like its white, black, Asian and Latino inhabitants are constantly tripping over one another has appeal. If nothing else it makes Los Angeles seem as cosmopolitan as, well, New York or at least the Upper West Side. Second, no matter how many times the camera picks out Oprah Winfrey on Oscar night, the Academy is super white. Third, the Academy is, at least in general terms, socially liberal. You see where I’m going, right? What could better soothe the troubled brow of the Academy’s collective white conscious than a movie that says sometimes black men really are muggers (so don’t worry if you engage in racial profiling); your Latina maid really, really loves you (so don’t worry about paying her less than minimum wage); even white racists (even white racist cops) can love their black brothers or at least their hot black sisters; and all answers are basically simple, so don’t even think about politics, policy, the lingering effects of Proposition 13 and Governor Arnold. This is a consummate Hollywood fantasy, no matter how nominally independent the financing and release. I also think it helped the film’s cause that its distributor sent out more than 130,000 DVD’s to the industry, ensuring easy viewing.

Quick, let’s all go there before it’s ruined

Scientists said on Tuesday they had found a “Lost World” in an Indonesian mountain jungle, home to dozens of exotic new species of birds, butterflies, frogs and plants.

“It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said Bruce Beehler, co-leader of the U.S., Indonesian, and Australian expedition to part of the cloud-shrouded Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea.

— Reuters via Yahoo! News

The power-law curve

Malcolm Gladwell has a New Yorker article currently online that provides new insight into the homeless and other issues and the whole way we understand and react to social problems.

One brief excerpt from this especially informative article:

The homelessness problem is like the L.A.P.D.’s bad-cop problem. It’s a matter of a few hard cases, and that’s good news, because when a problem is that concentrated you can wrap your arms around it and think about solving it. The bad news is that those few hard cases are hard. They are falling-down drunks with liver disease and complex infections and mental illness. They need time and attention and lots of money. But enormous sums of money are already being spent on the chronically homeless, and Culhane saw that the kind of money it would take to solve the homeless problem could well be less than the kind of money it took to ignore it. Murray Barr used more health-care dollars, after all, than almost anyone in the state of Nevada. It would probably have been cheaper to give him a full-time nurse and his own apartment.

Read Gladwell’s article and it will change your thinking on the homeless, police violence and smog-control.

“It is very much ingrained in me that you do not manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.???

Some Guy Told Me

The Dilbert Blog, like the strip itself, is a hit-or-miss proposition, but when he hits it’s pretty good. This information about whales seemed like a hit to me (but NewMexiKen is a hit-or-miss proposition, too, so caveat lector).

Household hint

Another in a series of household hints based upon NewMexiKen’s personal experience.

There are three essential steps to making coffee: (1) Add filter and coffee, (2) Add water, (3) Turn on the coffee maker. EACH of these steps is essential. Failure to turn on the coffee maker can delay the entire process.

Other hints here, here, here, here and here.

Update: I hate it when I come up with two household hints in the same morning, but here’s the second: When you’ve had a cold for several days, before starting the washer it’s a good idea to check the pockets of any laundry to make certain you didn’t stick a tissue in a pocket.

Little House

The Library of Congress devotes its Today in History page today to Laura Ingalls Wilder. It begins:

On every side now the prairie stretched away empty to a far, clear skyline. The wind never stopped blowing, waving the tall prairie grasses…And all the afternoon, while Pa kept driving onward, he was merrily whistling or singing. The song he sang oftenest was:

Oh, come to this country,
And don’t you feel alarm,
For Uncle Sam is rich enough
To give us all a farm!

Laura Ingalls Wilder,
By the Shores of Silver Lake

And goes on to tell us:

On February 7, 1867, Laura Elizabeth Ingalls, the author of the beloved semi-autobiographical Little House series, was born in Wisconsin, the second daughter of Charles and Caroline Ingalls. The basic facts of her life correspond to those related in her books about her family’s experiences on the American frontier during the 1870’s and 1880’s.

There’s much, much more about the author who was sixty-three years old she started writing about her pioneer childhood.

Jewel Cave National Monument (South Dakota)

… was proclaimed on this date in 1908.

Jewel Cave

With more than 133 miles surveyed, Jewel Cave is recognized as the third longest cave in the world. Airflow within its passages indicates a vast area yet to be explored. Cave tours provide opportunities for viewing this pristine cave system and its wide variety of speleothems including stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, frostwork, flowstone, boxwork and hydromagnesite balloons. The cave is an important hibernaculum for several species of bats.

Jewel Cave National Monument

Here’s Jay

“I don’t want to say the stones are getting old. But this is not the first time the Rolling Stones performed at an event where Roman numerals were used.”

“Some sad news – Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow have split up. Apparently she met some guy with a car. You know how girls are.”

Nora’s Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

Nora, official good friend of NewMexiKen, is participating in this year’s Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. Nora tells us:

To do this, I need your help and the help of many others, and I’m hoping that I can count on you to be part of my support team.

Any donation you make will go to the Avon Foundation Breast Cancer Crusade and support its mission of providing access to care and finding a cure. And if you’re ever in the Denver area, it’s worth touring the Anschutz Cancer Pavilion — you can see where your donations are going.

Visit Nora’s Page to learn more — to see a great photo of Nora — and to contribute what you can to this important cause.

And, other bloggers, please considering linking your blog to Nora’s page.

A billion people watching

Not on this planet. Oscarbeat by Steve Pond takes a serious look at the numbers. Two excerpts:

In the current issue of Sports Illustrated, columnist Steve Rushin nicely dismantles the billion figure as it applies to the Super Bowl. It turns out a media research firm measured the worldwide audience for last year’s game and came up with a figure of 93 million, only about 2 million of them from outside North America.

The U.S. audience for the Oscars was 42.1 million last year, though it’s been significantly higher in years past. In the rest of the world, the telecast begins at inconvenient hours (5:00 p.m. in Los Angeles is 1:00 a.m. in England) or tape-delayed and presented in an edited form after the winners are already known.

What he said

But there are two cities in America where there simply should not be a band imported to play at a quintessential American event, which is how the NFL packages the Super Bowl: Nashville and Detroit.

A whole lot of folks here were upset over the Stones being picked to play when Detroit has an unparalleled and historic stable of artists across the music spectrum. The two things associated with Detroit are cars and music, yet the NFL favored a European band, meaning the league passed on all of Motown, not to mention locals such as Madonna, Anita Baker, Eminem and Kid Rock.

The great Smokey Robinson performed across the street from Ford Field on Friday night, so chances are he was available. And if Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder can do pregame and the national anthem, then why not reward them with the honor of doing the big show? Seeing Aretha perform in Detroit is, for some of us, the equivalent of seeing Frank Sinatra perform in New York or Michael Jordan perform in Chicago.

It makes me wonder if some artists, particularly in the R&B tradition, are being forced to pay for Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction from a couple of years ago.

Michael WIlbon

OK Amazon, which is it?

NewMexiKen received this response after notifying Amazon that a rebate input page was not accepting my data:

I’m sorry to hear about the system error you experienced that prevented you from entering your rebate information.

We are aware of this issue, and our developers are working on a resolution. Often these errors are corrected after only a short time, so please try again after one week.

Again, I apologize for this inconvenience. Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.

Note: If after two days you are still experiencing the same problem, please use the link below to e-mail us so we can investigate further: [Emphasis added.]

One week? Two days? After the cutoff date for submitting the rebate?

The other woman in King’s life

Martin Luther King Jr. biographer David J. Garrow writes in the Los Angeles Times:

Just moments after the news of Coretta Scott King’s death, the first inquiring e-mail arrived: How long would it be before the woman some King scholars have for years privately thought of as “the other wife” either stepped forward or was identified by some unprincipled news outlet?

Her story is not exactly secret; it’s one that was known to dozens if not hundreds of people even before Martin Luther King Jr.’s tragic assassination on April 4, 1968. A number of biographers and historians (myself included) have met and interviewed her, and several have made reference to her. But although she was his most important emotional companion during the last five years of his life, her identity has remained hidden for even longer than that of Watergate’s “Deep Throat.”

Garrow continues.

Moving In for the Kill With Montana’s Buffalo Hunters

A good, fairly even-handed report on buffalo hunting in Montana from the Los Angeles Times. It begins:

GALLATIN NATIONAL FOREST, Mont. — Boots crunching on iced-over snow, Jeff Vader creeps toward two animals from the world’s last wild herd of pure buffalo.

The normally chatty 50-year-old crouches behind a cluster of juniper trees and puts a finger to his lips. The four men behind him fall mute. Vader lies on his belly, points his rifle at the biggest bull and becomes part of a contentious experiment in controlling an icon of the American West.

And includes this:

Vader and his hunting buddies have thought long and hard about these issues: Is it sporting to stalk a creature that is so oblivious to danger that, 125 years ago, millions were slaughtered by gunmen who could ride right into herds?

Buffalo, also known as bison, are found throughout the West but mostly live on ranches and are largely descended from cross-breeding with cattle. The Yellowstone herd is among the few herds that have no cross-breeding in their lineages and the only one that roams wild.