Author: NewMexiKen

Best line of the day

Apple sent e-mail invitations to journalists Monday morning for a “special event” to be held next Wednesday in San Francisco. “Come see our latest creation,” the message says.

Unless you’ve been living on another, Internet-deprived planet for the last year or so, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea what this is likely to be: the unveiling of Apple’s long-awaited, breathlessly hyped tablet computer. The device promises to hasten the extinction of paper, solidify Apple’s advantages in the mobile computing market, cure hunger and finally broker a peace between Jay and Conan.

Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

It’s a very colorful invitation; might be worth your click.

Newbery and Caldecott Awards

Rebecca Stead, author of “When You Reach Me,” a mystery and a novel of friendship set in New York City, won the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature on Monday.

The association also awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children to “The Lion and The Mouse” by Jerry Pinkney. Mr. Pinkney’s book is a nearly wordless adaptation of Aesop’s fable about how the king of the animal kingdom is helped by one of its smallest creatures.

ArtsBeat Blog – NYTimes.com

January 18th

Today is the birthday

… of Kevin Costner. Costner won the Oscars for director and best picture for Dances With Wolves and was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Lt. John Dunbar. He’s 55 today.

… of hockey hall-of-fame inductee Mark Messier. He’s 49.

… of Jesse L. Martin. The Law & Order actor is 41.

It’s also the birthday of Cary Grant (Archibald Alexander Leach, 1904-1986) and Danny Kaye (David Daniel Kaminski, 1913-1987). Both won honorary Oscars though neither won the real thing; Grant had two nominations.

Daniel Webster was born on January 18, 1782.

The first college basketball game with five players on a side was played on this date in 1896 at Iowa City, Iowa. The University of Chicago defeated the University of Iowa 15 to 12.

White Sands National Monument (New Mexico)

… was established by President Herbert Hoover on this date in 1933.

At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert lies a mountain ringed valley called the Tularosa Basin. Rising from the heart of this basin is one of the world’s great natural wonders – the glistening white sands of New Mexico.

White Sands

Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and have created the world’s largest gypsum dune field. The brilliant white dunes are ever changing: growing, cresting, then slumping, but always advancing. Slowly but relentlessly the sand, driven by strong southwest winds, covers everything in its path.

White Sands National Monument

Translating David Brooks

Matt Taibbi translates David Brooks for us. Taibbi begins:

A friend of mine sent a link to Sunday’s David Brooks column on Haiti, a genuinely beautiful piece of occasional literature. Not many writers would have the courage to use a tragic event like a 50,000-fatality earthquake to volubly address the problem of nonwhite laziness and why it sometimes makes natural disasters seem timely, but then again, David Brooks isn’t just any writer.

It’s raw, even for Taibbi — and it’s pitch perfect. He takes a segment of Brooks’s column, then tells us what it means. An excerpt:

TRANSLATION: The best thing we can do for the Haitians is let them deal with the earthquake all by themselves and wallow in their own filth and shitty engineering so they can come face to face with how achievement-oriented and middle-class they aren’t. Then when it’s all over we can come in and institute a program making the survivors earn the right to keep their kids by opening their own Checkers’ franchises and completing Associate’s Degrees in marketing at the online University of Phoenix.

Best line of yesterday

The scene: The Vikings led, 27-3, with 1:55 left and with a fourth-and-3 from the Dallas 11. Instead of running up the middle or kicking a field goal, Brett Favre threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Visanthe Shiancoe.

The Cowboys’ Keith Brooking:

“I just thought what happened at the end of the game was disrespectful. It was classless and all the things that are in that category. I’ll say it to the Vikings organization and whoever is over there calling plays. It wasn’t the right thing to do at that time. Period.”

Vikings Coach Brad Childress:

“As Lou Holtz used to say, ‘It’s our job to score points and it’s their job to stop us from scoring points.’ ”

Were Vikings ‘Classless’ in Adding Late Score? – The Fifth Down Blog

Haiti six days later

I find these still photos from Haiti more interesting, more emotional and more harrowing than the TV images because they can be studied and thought about — in other words, for me, it’s not as mindless as some TV reporter telling me what I’m seeing, what I should think.

Haiti remains a place of profound need, anguish, desperation and danger, with a few glimmers of hope and slowly growing capabilities to receive and distribute the international aid now flowing in. Sporadic looting, sometimes violent, was met with force by security oficials and ordinary citizens, resulting in a number of further deaths and injuries. The tenuous security situation has led to at least one temporary evacuation of a medical facility, to protect the care-givers. Despite the long time since the earthquake, at least five people were pulled from the rubble alive this weekend, including a young girl trapped inside a supermarket who was fortunately surrounded by food, and survived on fruit snacks. (38 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Non-Believers Giving Aid

1. 100% of your donation will be go to these charities: not even the PayPal fees will be deducted from your donation, since Richard will personally donate a sum to cover the cost of these (capped at $10,000). This means that more of your money will reach the people in need.

2. When donating via Non-Believers Giving Aid, you are helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans.

It goes without saying that your donations will only be passed on to aid organizations that do not have religious affiliations. In the case of Haiti, the two organizations we have chosen are:

     • Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières)

     • International Red Cross

You may stipulate using the dropdown menu which of these two organizations you want your donation to go to; otherwise, it will be divided equally between them.

Non-Believers Giving Aid

Best lines of the past 304 years, so far

  • The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
  • He is not well-bred, that cannot bear ill-breeding in others.
  • You may talk too much on the best of subjects.
  • A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
  • All would live long, but none would be old.
  • One today is worth two tomorrows.
  • Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
  • Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
  • Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
  • Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
  • Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.
  • Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.
  • I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.
  • If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.
  • I wake up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name is not on it, I get up.

All the above from Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston on this date in 1706.

Best Pierce line of the day

“I will moderate my commentary on the Drudge ‘n Grudge book written by his pal and the execrable Mark Halperin, who is to political journalism what E. coli is to steakhouses. The sourcing is laughable. The anecdotes petty, where they are not trivial, and indecent, where they are not petty and trivial. It exists, apparently, to dish dirt about the Clinton and Edwards marriages, thereby providing Andrea Mitchell with her quadrennial orgasm.”

Charles Pierce

He continues. I don’t think he likes the book.

Martin Luther King Jr.

… was born 81 years ago today.

Many may question some of King’s choices and perhaps even some of his motives, but no one can question his unparalleled leadership in a great cause, or his abilities with both the spoken and written word.

There are 10 federal holidays, but only four of them are dedicated to one man: one for Jesus, one for the man given credit for discovering our continent, one for the military and political founder George Washington, and one for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
December 10, 1964
Library of Congress