NewMexiKen wrote a short piece Sunday for the Duke City Fix questioning why New Mexico still has 86-octane gasoline. Wouldn’t you know, an innocent little piece attracted (at last count) 14 comments (not counting my own). Seems like everyone has an opinion on gasoline.
Criminies, 14 comments is two week’s worth around here.
On May 9, 1754, Join, or Die, considered the first American political cartoon, was printed in The Pennsylvania Gazette. The impetus for the cartoon, which is believed to have been devised by Benjamin Franklin, was concern about increasing French pressure along the western frontier of the colonies.
… of Mike Wallace; 88 today. 60 Minutes is the only place where the average age is higher than that of the College of Cardinals.
… of Glenda Jackson; 70 today. Ms. Jackson has four Oscar nominations, two of them winners for best actress — Women In Love and A Touch of Class.
… of Albert Finney; he’s 70 as well. Finney has been nominated for an Oscar five times, but no wins.
… of Sonny Curtis; 69 today. Curtis started out with Buddy Holly but earned fame as a songwriter — I Fought the Law and the Law Won. It’s Curtis who wrote — and who sang — Love Is All Around. You know, the theme song from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it’s you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it
Love is all around, no need to fake it.
You can have the town, why don’t you take it.
You’re gonna make it after all
… of James L. Brooks; he’s 66. Brooks won Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay for Terms of Endearment. He received nominations in various categories for Broadcast News, Jerry Maguire and As Good as It Gets, too. For my money, I like his work as executive producer of Mary Tyler Moore and, of course, The Simpsons.
… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Richie Furay; 62 today. Furay, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, Stephen Stills and Neil Young were the founders of Buffalo Springfield.
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
… of Candace Bergen; she’s 60. Ms. Bergen was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 for Starting Over.
… of Billy Joel; 57 today. If you need a couple notes of Billy Joel, click here.
“You know what we should do, the next time a Kennedy gets in a car late at night, wake up Dick Cheney and have him shoot out the tires.”
Jay Leno
Dubner and Levitt have a great new article (Sunday’s Times Magazine). It begins:
If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in next month’s World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this quirk to be even more pronounced. On recent English teams, for instance, half of the elite teenage soccer players were born in January, February or March, with the other half spread out over the remaining 9 months. In Germany, 52 elite youth players were born in the first three months of the year, with just 4 players born in the last three.
What might account for this anomaly? Here are a few guesses: a) certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills; b) winter-born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer stamina; c) soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime, at the annual peak of soccer mania; d) none of the above.
Intrigued? Try this: “The trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated.”
Mac Maintenance Quick Assist from Apple.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Robert Johnson was born on this date in 1911.
Though he recorded only 29 songs in his brief career – 22 of which appeared on 78 rpm singles released on the Vocalion label, including his first and most popular, “Terraplane Blues” – Johnson nonetheless altered the course of American music. In the words of biographer Stephen C. LaVere, “Robert Johnson is the most influential bluesman of all time and the person most responsible for the shape popular music has taken in the last five decades.” Such classics as “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Home Chicago” are the bedrock upon which modern blues and rock and roll were built.
Or, as Eric Clapton put it in the liner notes to the Johnson boxed-set, “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived….I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really.”
Eric Hilliard Nelson would have been 66 today. (He died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985.)
I went to a Garden Party
To reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories
and play our songs again.
When I got to the Garden Party
They all knew my name
But no one recognized me
I didn’t look the same.
But it’s all right now.
I learned my lesson well.
You see you can’t please everyone
So you got to please yourself.
Rick Nelson, “Garden Party” (1971)
… was born on this date in 1884. NewMexiKen presents this excerpt from the Truman diary:
January 6, 1947 — Arose at 5:45 A.M.[,] read the papers and at 7:10 walked to the station to meet the family. Took 35 minutes. It was a good walk. Sure is fine to have them back. This great white jail is a hell of a place in which to be alone. While I work from early morning until late at night, it is a ghostly place. The floors pop and crack all night long. Anyone with imagination can see old Jim Buchanan walking up and down worrying about conditions not of his making. Then there’s Van Buren who inherited a terrible mess from his predecessor as did poor old James Madison. Of course Andrew Johnson was the worst mistreated of any of them. But they all walk up and down the halls of this place and moan about what they should have done and didn’t. So-you see. I’ve only named a few. The ones who had Boswells and New England historians are too busy trying to control heaven and hell to come back here. So the tortured souls who were and are misrepresented in history are the ones who come back. It’s a hell of a place.
Still is.
see how three presidents answered the question “what was the best moment of your presidency?”
to summarize:
carter: the camp david negotiations
clinton: the resolution of the kosovo crisis
bush: that time i caught a big fish on my ranch
y’know, as richard cranium says, bush is probably right. catching that fish probably was the best thing he’s done since he entered the oval office.
Via the Arizona Daily Star, a reasonably even-handed examination of the Indian trust lawsuit.
“It wasn’t Custer’s last stand; it was Custer’s last fight,” Medicine Crow said.
“It was Sitting Bull’s last stand. They won the battle that day but lost a way of life.”
An interesting article in the Rocky Mountain News about the history and current issues at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument.
U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.
“You know, I’ve experienced many great moments and it’s hard to name the best,” Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.
“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.
Bush said the worst moment was September 11 when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Reuters via Yahoo! News
NewMexiKen first posted this two years ago today.
Click to enlarge.
NewMexiKen posted this a year ago today, but it seems timely in light of the new season.
From Science Daily, Slow Balls Take The Swing Out Of Young Ball Players:
Exasperated parents practicing throw-and-connect skills with their young children will be relieved to know that their child’s inability to hit a slow-moving ball has a scientific explanation: Children cannot hit slow balls because their brains are not wired to handle slow motion.
“When you throw something slowly to a child, you think you’re doing them a favour by trying to be helpful,” said Terri Lewis, professor of psychology at McMaster University. “Slow balls actually appear stationary to a child.”
This explains why a young child holding a bat or a catcher’s mitt will often not react to a ball thrown toward her, prompting flummoxed parents to continue throwing the ball even slower. By adding a little speed to the pitch, Lewis and her team found that children were able to judge speed more accurately. There are several reasons for the phenomenon.
Somewhere along the line, the Kentucky Derby became known as “America’s Race,” which seems a bit of a misnomer given that the Derby is not a) America’s best race, b) America’s oldest race, c) the Daytona 500. But so it is with the relentlessly hyped Derby, where undeniable bunkum runs stride for stride with quaint nostalgia and willful anachronism. You can see all of that in the name alone. Since 1896, when the mile-and-a-half race was shrunk to a mile-and-a-quarter, the Derby hasn’t been, strictly speaking, a derby.
Read what else Tommy Craggs has to say about How we misunderstand the Kentucky Derby.
Orson Welles was born on this date in 1915. To many who grew up with television, Welles was simply the larger-than-life spokesman for Paul Masson Wines — “We will sell no wine before its time.” But at age 23 Welles had scared thousands of Americans with his realistic radio production of War of the Worlds. At 25 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in what many consider the best film ever made, Citizen Kane. For that film alone, he was nominated for the Oscar for best actor, best director, best original screenplay and best picture (he won, with Herman Mankiewicz, for screenplay). Welles was nominated for the best picture Oscar again the following year — The Magnificent Ambersons.
The New York Times has this to say about Welles when he died in 1985:
Despite the feeling of many that his career – which evoked almost constant controversy over its 50 years – was one of largely unfulfilled promise, Welles eventually won the respect of his colleagues. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Film Institute in 1975, and last year the Directors Guild of America gave him its highest honor, the D. W. Griffith Award.
His unorthodox casting and staging for the theater gave new meaning to the classics and to contemporary works. As the ”Wonder Boy” of Broadway in the 1930’s, he set the stage on its ear with a ”Julius Caesar” set in Fascist Italy, an all-black ”Macbeth” and his presentation of Marc Blitzstein’s ”Cradle Will Rock.” His Mercury Theater of the Air set new standards for radio drama, and in one performance panicked thousands across the nation.
In film, his innovations in deep-focus technology and his use of theater esthetics – long takes without close-ups, making the viewer’s eye search the screen as if it were a stage – created a new vocabulary for the cinema.
“I’m beginning to think Brownie was the cream of the crop.”
Digby discussing the mess at the CIA and referring to former-FEMA director Michael Brown.
… of Bob Seger, making Night Moves at 61 today.
Detroit has always been a musical hotbed, and Bob Seger is one of its greatest rock and roll talents. His was a long, slow climb to the top, and his overdue breakthrough – with Night Moves, in 1977 – attested to his belief in himself and rock music as a dream worth pursuing. For more than ten years Seger labored on rock’s fringe. Sustained by a rabid fan base, he cut some fine albums and performed at least 200 shows a year. As Dave Marsh wrote, “He had all the requisites of greatness: the voice, the songwriting, the performance onstage, the vision and the ambition.”
When Seger finally broke through, assuming a rightful place among such fellow travelers as the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen, it was sweet vindication for all the years spent in the shadows. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
… of George Clooney. The Oscar-winner is 45. According to IMDB: “He says he will never get married again, nor have any children, but Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman both bet $10,000 each that he would be a father before he turned 40. They were both wrong and each sent him a check. He returned the money, betting double or nothing that he won’t have kids by age 50.”
… was approved on on this date in 1882. It was The Chinese Exclusion Act.
Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore,
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That … the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having so come after the expiration of said ninety days to remain within the United States.
The National Archives, which has a full transcript and images of the Act, notes that: “The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left the United States, they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them.”
The exclusion of Chinese remained in effect in one form or another until 1943.
… is 75 today. That’s Willie Mays.
When Joe DiMaggio died in 1999, baseball luminaries were asked who inherited the title of greatest living player. NewMexiKen had a different assumption. I thought Willie Mays became the greatest living ballplayer when Ty Cobb died in 1961.
Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid,” played with enthusiasm and exuberance while excelling in all phases of the game – hitting for average and power, fielding, throwing and baserunning. His staggering career statistics include 3,283 hits and 660 home runs. The Giants’ superstar earned National League Rookie of the Year honors in 1951 and two MVP awards. He accumulated 12 Gold Gloves, played in a record-tying 24 All-Star games and participated in four World Series. His catch of Vic Wertz’s deep fly in the ’54 Series remains one of baseball’s most memorable moments.
Two quotes about Mays:
Ted Williams: “They invented the All-Star game for Willie Mays.”
Manager Leo Durocher, who must have been from Deadwood, once recalled a remarkable home run by Mays: “I never saw a f—ing ball go out of a f—ing park so f—ing fast in my f—ing life!”
First among the Forbes.com list of 20 greatest individual athletic achievements is Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile on this date in 1954.
In 1954 it seemed unlikely–maybe even impossible–that anyone could run a mile in less than four minutes. Several runners had come close–Sweden’s Gunder Haess had run the mile in four minutes and 1.4 seconds nine years previously–but no one could break through the four-minute barrier. People began to believe that it couldn’t be done. Until Britain’s Roger Bannister, that is. Competing at Oxford’s Iffley Road track on May 6, 1954, the 25-year-old medical student wowed some 3,000 spectators when he crossed the finish line in three minutes and 59.4 seconds. Once the psychological barrier had been broken, mile times kept falling. Bannister’s record stood a scant six weeks before John Landy of Australia ran the mile in three minutes and 58 seconds. The current world record is three minutes and 43.1 seconds.
USATODAY.com brought us up to date on Bannister two years ago on the 50th anniversary of his famous race:
Bannister’s is the story of a well-lived life. He is as proud of his distinguished medical and academic careers as he is of those celebrated four minutes, less six-tenths of a second. Bannister’s second act in a distinctly British life is in some respects as astonishing as his athletic feats: neurologist, author, and master of Pembroke College, one of 30 colleges that make up his beloved Oxford University.
It was on this date in 1937 that the zeppelin Hindenburg exploded and crashed at the Naval Air Station Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirteen of the 36 passengers and 22 of the 61 crew were killed, as well as one ground crew member.
Listen to a brief version of Herbert Morrison’s famous broadcast [RealPlayer].
Here’s The New York Times report on the disaster.
The Writer’s Almanac has some details about the Hindenburg and the crash, including this:
The Hindenburg was about as big as the Titanic. It traveled at eighty miles per hour, so the trip between Frankfurt, Germany, and Lakehurst, New Jersey, took two and a half days, half the time needed by the fastest ocean liner of the era. Passengers on the Hindenburg paid $400 for a one-way trip. They had sleeping compartments, sitting and dining areas, as well as a 200-foot promenade deck with a spectacular view of the ocean passing below. Passengers were free to roam about, to eat meals at a table on the best china, and to sample the best wines from France and Germany. The passengers could even dance to the music of a lightweight, aluminum grand piano, probably the only grand piano ever to provide entertainment for people in a flying machine.
… was first designated a national monument on this date in 1907.
Lassen Volcanic National Park is located in Northeastern California at the southern terminus of the Cascade Mountains, approximately 50 miles east of Redding, California.
Beneath Lassen Volcanic’s peaceful forests and gem-like lakes lies evidence of a turbulent and fiery past. 600,000 years ago, the collision and warping of continental plates led to violent eruptions and the formation of lofty Mt. Tehama (also called Brokeoff Volcano.) After 200,000 years of volcanic activity, vents and smaller volcanoes on Tehama’s flanks-including Lassen Peak-drew magma away from the main cone. Hydrothermal areas ate away at the great mountain’s bulk. Beneath the onslaught of Ice Age glaciers, Mt. Tehama crumbled and finally ceased to exist. But the volcanic landscape lived on: in 1914, Lassen Peak awoke. The Peak had its most significant activity in 1915 and minor activity through 1921. Lassen Volcanic became a national park in 1916 because of its significance as an active volcanic landscape.
All four types of volcanoes in the world are found in the park. Over 150 miles of trails and a culturally significant scenic highway provide access to volcanic wonders including steam vents, mudpots, boiling pools, volcanic peaks, and painted dunes.
Click image to enlarge and learn more.
