Author: NewMexiKen

Line of the day

“Many people describe their relationship with God not in abstract terms but in the way they would describe a real personal friend, but a friend who would never betray you.”

From a study of two recent national surveys as reported by the Well Blog – NYTimes.com

The study found that 82 percent of respondents said they “depend on God for help and guidance in making decisions.” And 71 percent believe that good or bad events are “part of God’s plan for them.’’

And one in three respondents agreed with the statement: “There is no sense in planning a lot because ultimately my fate is in God’s hands.”

Cape Lookout National Seashore (North Carolina)

… was established on this date in 1966.

Cape Lookout

The seashore is a 56 mile long section of the Outer Banks of North Carolina running from Ocracoke Inlet on the northeast to Beaufort Inlet on the southeast. The three undeveloped barrier islands which make up the seashore – North Core Banks, South Core Banks and Shackleford Banks – may seem barren and isolated but they offer many natural and historical features that can make a visit very rewarding.

Cape Lookout National Seashore

Bell’s Notebook

“Alexander Graham Bell’s notebook entry of 10 March 1876 describes his successful experiment with the telephone. Speaking through the instrument to his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, in the next room, Bell utters these famous first words, ‘Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.'”

Take a look at the entry in Bell’s Experimental Notebook

The Great Derangement

I’ve read Matt Taibbi’s The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion over the past few days. Though dated by being researched and written in 2006 and 2007 (that is, before the 2008 election), it’s still a provocative and useful look at America.

Taibbi’s thesis is that many Americans — reacting to war, a government increasingly run for the financial gain of the few, and media meaninglessness — have detached from reality. He embedded in two of those groups — Christian end-of-the-worlders and 9-11 truthers. His description of both the religious and conspiracy fanatics is amusing and frightening.

Faces of America

I watched the first two programs (55 minutes each) of the PBS series Faces of America this evening. I found the shows to be interesting, informative, moving and enjoyable. I encourage you to find time to view the series; all four episodes are currently online.

What made America? What makes us? These two questions are at the heart of the new PBS series Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Harvard scholar turns to the latest tools of genealogy and genetics to explore the family histories of 12 renowned Americans — professor and poet Elizabeth Alexander, chef Mario Batali, comedian Stephen Colbert, novelist Louise Erdrich, journalist Malcolm Gladwell, actress Eva Longoria, musician Yo-Yo Ma, director Mike Nichols, Her Majesty Queen Noor, television host/heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, actress Meryl Streep, and figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.

Here’s a spoiler for you — Eva Longoria and Yo-Yo Ma have a common ancestor.

Thanks to my cousin Christina for the reminder. Christina wants us to have our DNA tested to confirm that our mothers’ father is the same man. What makes it interesting is that our mothers were born just 10 weeks apart.

And, yes it’s a documentary, but it really is worth watching.

Progress

I have a desktop computer I bought 12 years ago this month that I am finally getting around to recycling. I was checking through the documentation (to see if there was any personal stuff) and noticed the technical specs.

RAM: 48MB
CPU: 66MHz
Cache: 32KB
HD : 6GB
Modem speed: Up to 56kbps
Graphic memory: 4MB
Windows 95

By comparison, my newest computer, bought two years ago this month has:

RAM: 4GB (83X)
CPU: 2.4GHz (36X)
Cache: 3MB (94X)
HD : 200GB (33X)
Modem: Wireless 802.11n Up to 300Mbps (5357X)
Graphic memory: 256MB (64X)

The newer computer was cheaper, too.

‘The Marriage Ref’ is a therapist’s nightmare

This essay by Mary T. Kelly at Salon is ostensibly a critique of NBC’s new show, “The Marriage Ref” (which I must admit, I watched).

But Kelly’s essay is more and I recommend it to anyone interested in relationships. An excerpt:

When it gets right down to it, human beings just aren’t as complicated as we like to make ourselves out to be.

We want to be seen… seen for who we are, darker sides and all. We want to be felt in that way that someone is so connected to us that when we feel pain, they feel it for us, too. They can empathize, and we find relief in knowing that we have an ally. We want to be touched, we crave to be touched, whether it’s in the full blown passions of wild and unrestrained sex or the gentle holding of the hand while watching a movie in a dark theater.
. . .

But we are a stubborn group of people, and it is often easier to focus on the silly, the superficial and the insistence that we are right.

The earthly Pandora

Two excerpts from an article in The New York Times on Pandora’s financial arrival.

Pandora’s 48 million users tune in an average 11.6 hours a month. That could increase as Pandora strikes deals with the makers of cars, televisions and stereos that could one day, Pandora hopes, make it as ubiquitous as AM/FM radio.

Its library now has 700,000 songs, each categorized by an employee based on 400 musical attributes, like whether the voice is breathy, like Charlotte Gainsbourg, or gravelly like Tom Waits. Listeners pick a song or musician they like, and Pandora serves up songs with similar qualities — Charlotte Gainsbourg to Feist to Viva Voce to Belle and Sebastian.

You can also select on the basis of a song or genre or classical composer. It’s free; ad supported.

Alas, Pandora is not among the internet services on my new Sony TV.

March 9th

Joyce Van Patten is 76, Mickey Gilley is 74 and Charles Gibson is 67.

Juliette Binoche is 46. Sigh.

Webster, that is Emmanuel Lewis, is 39.

Yuri Gagarin, the first human being in space, was born on March 9th in 1934.

Until the morning of April 12, 1961, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was no better known than any of the other 1,200 or so Gagarins living in the Moscow area.

But that morning, Yuri Gagarin, then 27 years old, sat cramped in the cockpit of a Vostok space capsule as it was launched from a pad at Baykonur, in Kazakhstan.

At 9:07 A.M., the capsule went into orbit around the earth and Yuri Gagarin became the world’s first man in space. His flight represented an epochal scientific and technological achievement for the Russians.

In both the Soviet Union and the West, it was realized that Cosmonaut Gagarin had begun a new chapter in history, one in which man had dared cross the threshold of the universe.

The New York Times

Gagarin died in an aircraft accident in 1968.

It’s also Natalie’s birthday. Happy birthday, Natalie.

The Amistad Case

… was handed down by the Supreme Court on this date in 1841.

The National Archives has a web page on the Amistad case with links to images of several documents. The Archives summarizes:

In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered the planters to sail to Africa. On August 24, 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. The planters were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, CT, on charges of murder. Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in confinement as the focus of the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba. However, abolitionists in the North opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans. Claims to the Africans by the planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the brig led the case to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut. The court ruled that the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves. The case went to the Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the defendants’ case. Adams defended the right of the accused to fight to regain their freedom. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, and 35 of them were returned to their homeland. The others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial.

In 1997 Steven Spielberg directed a fine movie concering the case with Anthony Hopkins portraying John Quincy Adams. Morgan Freeman and Anna Paquin are other “stars” in the film, but many critics thought Djimon Honsou as the leader of mutiny, Joseph Cinqué, was the heart of the film. Retired Justice Harry Blackmun played Justice Joseph Story.

Pancho Villa

… and his forces attacked Columbus, New Mexico, on this date in 1916.

Columbus, New Mexico

Why Columbus? A series of circumstances and events: Columbus had a garrison of about 600 U.S. soldiers and the U.S. had taken sides against Villa and for Venustiano Carranza in the continuing Mexican revolutions. Villa had been sold blank ammunition by an arms dealer in the town. A few days earlier 10 Mexicans had been “accidentally” burned to death while in custody in El Paso during a “routine” delousing with gasoline.

The attack at dawn lasted about three hours before American troops chased Villa’s forces into Mexico. The town was burned and 17 Americans, mostly private citizens, were killed. About 100 of Villa’s troops were reportedly killed. The arms dealer was absent from Columbus that morning. He had a dental appointment in El Paso.

Pancho VillaThe next day President Wilson ordered General Jack Pershing and 5,000 America troops into Mexico to capture Villa. This “Punitive Expedition” was often mis-directed by Mexican citizens and Villa allegedly hid in the dust thrown up by Pershing’s vehicles. (The American Army used aircraft for reconnaissance for the first time. This is considered the beginning of the Army Air Corps.)

Unsuccessful in the hunt, by February 1917 the United States and Pershing turned their attention to the war in Europe. Minor clashes with Mexican irregulars continued to disturb the border from 1917 to 1919. Engagements took place near Buena Vista, Mexico, on 1 December 1917; in San Bernardino Canyon, Mexico, on 26 December 1917; near La Grulla, Texas, on 8-9 January 1918; at Pilares, Mexico, about 28 March 1918; at Nogales, Arizona, on 27 August 1918; and near El Paso, Texas, on 15-16 June 1919.

NewMexiKen’s very own grandfather served in Columbus during World War I, making him the first NewMexiKen.

Villa, born Doroteo Arango, surrendered to the Mexican Government in 1920 and retired on a general’s pay. He was assassinated in 1923.

Columbus photo via New Mexico Magazine.

Best line of the day, so far

It’s weird enough living in a country where a man can legally own an arsenal of machine guns, but his neighbor growing a pot plant will send a team of DEA agents kicking his door in with a no-knock warrant. But this goes even beyond that. If I go online today to HaveNoLifeAndBetOnSports.com and bet fifty dollars on the Bucks against the Celtics tonight, I’m a criminal. But some gazillionaire firm in New York can legally bet against the United States of America in unlimited amounts in a trade that has nothing to do with anything, but a guess about how many other people will make the same bet.

Jesus, are we a weird country.

Matt Taibbi

Taibbi is referring to credit default swaps now being sold that “insure” U.S. Treasury bonds.

March 8th

John McPhee is 79 today.

When he was in high school, his English teacher required her students to write three compositions a week, each accompanied by a detailed outline, and many of which the students had to read out loud to the class. Ever since he took that class, McPhee has carefully outlined all his written work and has read out loud to his wife every sentence he writes before it is published.

He is known for the huge range of his subjects. He has written about canoes, geology, tennis, nuclear energy, and the Swiss army. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about the geology of America, Annals of the Former World (1998).

In his book Oranges (1967), about the orange-growing business, he wrote, “An orange grown in Florida usually has a thin and tightly fitting skin, and it is also heavy with juice. Californians say that if you want to eat a Florida orange you have to get into a bathtub first. California oranges are light in weight and have thick skins that break easily and come off in hunks. The flesh inside is marvelously sweet, and the segments almost separate themselves. In Florida, it is said that you can run over a California orange with a 10-ton truck and not even wet the pavement.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Reportedly McPhee almost never writes more than one single-spaced page a day. It adds up. He’s published more than two dozen books.

Micky Dolenz of the Monkees is 65 today.

Baseball hall-of-famer Jim Rice is 57.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was born on this date in 1841. Three times wounded in the Civil War, Holmes survived to become a prominent legal scholar, Chief Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, and Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1902-1932. He is considered one of the greatest of the Supreme Court justices.

But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done…. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force…. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Schenck v. United States, Baer v. United States, 249 U.S. 52 (1919).

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissenting, Abrams et al. v. United States, 250 U.S. 630 (1919).