Month: February 2006

NewMexiKen Day

Yours truly took up residence in New Mexico on this date in 1999, thereby becoming NewMexiKen.

New Mexico ranks fifth for longevity among the states where I’ve lived — after Michigan, Virginia, California and Arizona. I’ve also resided in Texas, Nevada and New York, though the latter two just for a few weeks each during the same summer. Long enough to have a job in each, though. (Well, actually, the New York job was in New Jersey, but I resided in Jackson Heights, Queens.)

Ahchoo!

From The Citizen Scientist:

Martin Hocking and Harold Foster of Canada’s University of Victoria have studied the problem of increased colds among airline passengers. In an article for the Journal of Environmental Health Research (“Common cold transmission in commercial aircraft: Industry and passenger implications,” 2004) , they reported that 20 percent of passengers who flew on a 2.5 hour flight developed colds within a week.

Depending on three different flight scenarios, Hocking and Foster found that airline passengers in three different scenarios were 5, 23, or 113 times more likely to catch a cold than if they had not flown at all!

The scientists also found that the threat of catching tuberculosis is substantially higher if an infected passenger is aboard a flight.

The most logical reason for infections would seem to be the limited amount of cabin air shared by the passengers. But Hocking, Foster and other scientists have found this is only one factor. The very low humidity in an airplane seems to be much more important.

There’s more.

The U.S. Mail

While the service has always been good (vacation holds, things like that) the mail doesn’t arrive at Casa NewMexiKen until 4 or 5 or even 6PM. It’s not unusual, in fact, to see the letter carrier with a light on in his truck as he drives down our street from mailbox-to-mailbox well after dark. This is a problem across much of Albuquerque and apparently even extends statewide. There has been a flurry of activity recently to improve service — including some top manager reassignments.

NewMexiKen hasn’t seen any changes yet — the mail still arrives late and the Netflix DVD I put in my mailbox yesterday afternoon couldn’t have been picked up until after 4. Even so, moments ago — a little after 8 AM — I received an email from Netflix that the DVD had been received (in Denver, more than 400 miles away). Something is working.

February

… from the Roman republican calendar month Februarius, named for Februa, the festival of purification held on the 15th. The name is taken from a Latin word, februare, meaning “to make pure”.

Movie immortals

… John Ford and Clark Gable were born on this date. Ford in 1895; Gable in 1901.

John Ford won six Oscars for Best Director: The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952). The other two Oscars were for World War II documentaries: The Battle of Midway and December 7th. Other memorable films include Drums Along the Mohawk, Young Mr. Lincoln, Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine and The Searchers. Regardless of where Ford’s westerns were set, most of the exteriors were filmed in Monument Valley Arizona/Utah.

Clark Gable won the Best Actor award in 1935 for It Happened One Night. He was nominated for Best Actor for Mutiny of the Bounty and Gone With the Wind.

We just called it a gym

This is a snapshot (on a rare for this winter rainy morning) of the Union School District Multipurpose Activity Center in Tulsa. Union High SchoolThe facility seats 5,662 and cost $22 million in a school district with 13,500 students in grades 6-12 and 11 elementary schools. (It was completed in 2003.) Union is often ranked among the top high school teams in the country, especially in football. More info.