Month: July 2006

So, which is it?

Mumbai or Bombay?

MUMBAI, India, July 12 — A bank worker did not ….

— The New York Times

BOMBAY, India (AP) — Authorities named two suspects ….

— The Washington Post

Bombay officially became Mumbai in 1997. Bom baía originated with the Portuguese and means good bay. The British converted it to Bombay. Mumbai is the name the area long had in the indigenous languages and is thought to refer to the mother goddess, Mumbadevi.

Oil

With Daniel Yergin’s The Prize still on NewMexiKen’s mind, I did a little research. These are the countries that produced more than 2 million barrels of oil a day in 2004. Surprised at any? (A barrel is 42 gallons.)

  1. Saudi Arabia 10.37 Million
  2. Russia 9.27 Million
  3. United States 8.69 Million
  4. Iran 4.09 Million
  5. Mexico 3.83 Million
  6. China 3.62 Million
  7. Norway 3.18 Million
  8. Canada 3.14 Million
  9. Venezuela 2.86 Million
  10. United Arab Emirates 2.76 Million
  11. Kuwait 2.51 Million
  12. Nigeria 2.51 Million
  13. United Kingdom 2.08 Million
  14. Iraq 2.03 Million

Don’t worry, be happy

LONDON (AFP) – The tiny South Pacific Ocean archipelago of Vanuatu is the happiest country on Earth, according to a study published measuring people’s wellbeing and their impact on the environment.

Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica and Panama complete the top five in the Happy Planet Index, compiled by the British think-tank New Economics Foundation (NEF).

The index combines life satisfaction, life expectancy and environmental footprint — the amount of land required to sustain the population and absorb its energy consumption.

Zimbabwe came bottom of the 178 countries ranked, below second-worst performer Swaziland, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ukraine.

The Group of Eight industrial powers meet in Saint Petersburg this weekend but have not much to smile about, according to the index.

Italy came out best in 66th place, ahead of Germany (81), Japan (95), Britain (108), Canada (111), France (129), the United States (150) and Russia, in lowly 172nd place.
…

Selected others: 17. Philippines; 23. Indonesia; 31. China; 32. Thailand; 44. Malaysia; 62. India; 64. Iceland; 70. Netherlands; 87. Spain; 88. Hong Kong; 89. Saudi Arabia; 99. Denmark; 112. Pakistan; 115. Norway; 119. Sweden; 123. Finland; 139. Australia; 154. UAE; 156. South Africa; 159. Kuwait; 166. Qatar.

— Via Yahoo! News

It’s the birthday

… of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Patrick Stewart is 66.

… of Bob Falfa. That’s Harrison Ford. He’s 64. And yes, Ford, who at one time had been in seven of the ten top grossing films of all times, has an Oscar nomination — for best actor in Witness.

… of Roger McGuinn, an inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Byrds.

As Roger McGuinn once said of the Byrds, “It was Dylan meets the Beatles.” The Byrds combined the upbeat, melodic pop of the Beatles with the message-oriented lyrics of Bob Dylan into a wholly original amalgam that would be branded folk-rock. If only for their harmony-rich versions of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and Pete Seeger’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” drenched in the 12-string jangle of McGuinn’s Rickenbacker guitar, the Byrds would have earned their place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yet the group continually broke ground during the Sixties, creating revelatory syntheses of sound that were given such hyphenated names as space-rock (“5D [Fifth Dimension]”), psychedelic-rock (“Eight Miles High”) and country-rock (their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album). At a time when rock and roll was exploding in all fronts, the Byrds led the way with an insatiable curiosity about the forms and directions pop music could take. In so doing, they became peers and equals of their mentors, Dylan and the Beatles.

… of Pedro de Pacas. Richard ‘Cheech’ Marin is 60.

So, dear, how was your day in court?

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact–complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words–to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor’s edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.

— From an actual proceeding in U.S. District Court via Lawyers, Guns and Money who got it from Unfogged.

The Prize

NewMexiKen has finished Daniel Yergin’s Pulitzer prize-winning history of the oil industry, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

I recommend it.

The Prize (1992) is a lengthy (788 pages), detailed account of oil from the discovery in Pennsylvania in 1859 through the first Gulf War in 1991. It is a history of corporate, national and international politics and machinations — the Standard Oil Trust, and its dissolution, international concessions and agreements, the discovery of “elephants” (big oil fields), the role of oil in the cause and fighting of World War II, the rise of the oil-producing nations and OPEC.

Before the Rumble Seat

Dan Neil takes a replica of the world’s first automobile for a spin. A good report, with history, technology and appreciation. An excerpt:

Fettled in his modest workshop in Mannheim, Germany, Benz’s Patent Motorwagen didn’t look much like a car as we know it today. To the town’s mildly alarmed burghers, it didn’t even immediately suggest a horseless carriage, whatever that was. With its spoked rear wheels and tuck-and-roll upholstered seat, it looked rather more like a park bench gone walkabout. But it was, in all the ways that matter, the first proper automobile. This was the life-evoking lightning stroke in the primordial pond, the rudimentary sorting of nucleotides from which a new species would arise. It was only a matter of time before real estate agents driving three-ton Escalades would overrun the Westside.

Automotive history begins with the 1886 Benz Motorwagen. And here I am, driving it down the quiet streets of Pasadena.

Terror Target List

New Mexico, though 37th in population, is 17th among the states in the number of “assets” in the Department of Homeland Security data base. Presumably, there are, according to data submitted to DHS by New Mexico, 1,348 targets in the Land of Enchantment.

But 553 of these were information technology assets (73% of the national total). The next highest state (Virginia) had just 68 information technology assets.

In another anomaly, California listed the Bay Area Rapid Transit (1 asset). New York listed subway stations (739 assets).

Nationally 1,305 casinos were listed and 34 Coca Cola plants.

Source: DHS Inspector General’s report [pdf]

A Combined IQ of Forty Eight

Girl: He took me to a Japanese restaurant. I got the chicken karaoke.

–78th & Broadway

Overheard by: E HAGEN

20-Something girl: So, is Alabama in Kentucky?

–27th & 1st

Overheard by: interlard

Early-20’s woman: The Himalayas aren’t a real place. They’re like Narnia.

–1st & 1st

Ghetto girl: In British Whose Line Is It Anyway?, do they speak English?

–75th St

All from the world’s greatest website, Overheard in New York. Thank you V, thank you, thank you.

Let’s party

In case you missed the pre-game show from the World Cup final — and if you watched on ABC you did — here’s what the rest of the world saw. How many musical traditions can you hear in Shakira and Wyclef Jean’s performance? (Shakira has a Lebanese father and Colombian mother. She grew up in Colombia. Wyclef Jean is Haitian via Brooklyn and New Jersey.)

Hot. Drink Your Wheat.

In Belgium, the wheat beer is often flavored with orange peel and coriander. But in Bavaria, brewers developed a particular kind of ale yeast that imparts a most unusual flavor to the beer: clove, citrus, smoke and, you’ll taste for yourself, banana and bubblegum. As odd as it sounds, it’s tremendously refreshing and goes well with a wide variety of spicy foods. The beer is called hefeweizen; weizen for wheat and hefe for yeast. It is almost always unfiltered, which gives hefeweizen its characteristically cloudy, hazy appearance.

— From a review in The New York Times

They liked the Brooklyn Brewery Brooklyner Weisse the best (3 stars) and the Flying Dog In-Heat Wheat Hefeweizen, Samuel Adams Hefeweizen and Magic Hat Hocus Pocus next (2½ stars).

Two related blog items — here and here.

U.S. Terror Targets: Petting Zoo and Flea Market?

From a report in The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, July 11 — It reads like a tally of terrorist targets that a child might have written: Old MacDonald’s Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory, the Mule Day Parade, the Sweetwater Flea Market and an unspecified “Beach at End of a Street.”

But the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in a report released Tuesday, found that the list was not child’s play: all these “unusual or out-of-place” sites “whose criticality is not readily apparent” are inexplicably included in the federal antiterrorism database.

The National Asset Database, as it is known, is so flawed, the inspector general found, that as of January, Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation.

The database is used by the Homeland Security Department to help divvy up the hundreds of millions of dollars in antiterrorism grants each year, including the program announced in May that cut money to New York City and Washington by 40 percent, while significantly increasing spending for cities including Louisville, Ky., and Omaha.

“We don’t find it embarrassing,” said the department’s deputy press secretary, Jarrod Agen. “The list is a valuable tool.”

Jay’s back

“As you know, we finally found those weapons of mass destruction. The bad news? They’re in North Korea! Boy that Saddam Hussein is sneaky isn’t he? Had them hidden over there.”

“The Japanese prime minister joined the United States in condemning North Korea’s missile policy. The Japanese prime minister was really upset when he found out that they had missiles that could reach Graceland.”

Jay Leno

Duel

Alexander Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow wrote the following two years ago. (The duel was July 11, 1804.) Chernow provides informative background, but here are the essentials.

Two hundred years ago today, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton squared off in a sunrise duel on a wooded ledge in Weehawken, N.J., above the Hudson River. Burr was vice president when he leveled his fatal shot at Hamilton, the former Treasury secretary, who died the next day in what is now the West Village of Manhattan. New Yorkers turned out en masse for Hamilton’s funeral, while Burr (rightly or wrongly) was branded an assassin and fled south in anticipation of indictments in New York and New Jersey. To the horror of Hamilton’s admirers, the vice president, now a fugitive from justice, officiated at an impeachment trial in the Senate of a Supreme Court justice.
…

So Hamilton, at 49, decided to expose himself to Burr’s fire to prove his courage, but to throw away his own shot to express his aversion to dueling. He gambled that Burr would prove a gentleman and merely clip him in the arm or leg — a wager he lost. With Hamilton’s death, America also lost its most creative policymaker. (The murder indictments against Burr petered out, and he died a reclusive old man in 1836.)