Author: NewMexiKen

May 5th ought to be a holiday

Nellie Bly was born on this date in 1864.

Nellie Bly was born Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. In the 1880s and 1890s, as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, she became a pioneer in journalism and investigative reporting. Before the muckrakers of the early 20th century publicized corruption and before the investigative reporters of today sought out the story behind the story, Bly paved the way to valuable journalism as one of the first to “go behind the scenes” to expose societyís ills. At some personal danger, she had herself committed to a mental institution for 10 days so she could study firsthand how the mentally ill were being treated. As a result of her expose, the care of the mentally ill was reformed. As the New York Journal recognized, Bly was considered the “best reporter in America.”

National Women’s Hall of Fame

She went down into the sea in a diving bell and up in the air in a balloon and lived in an insane asylum as a patient; but the feat that made her famous was her trip around the world in 1889. She was sent by The World to beat the mark of Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s hero of “Around the World in Eighty Days,” and she succeeded, making the tour in 72 days 6 hours 11 minutes. Every one who read newspapers followed her progress and she landed in New York a national character.

The New York Times

Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany, on this date in 1818.

Soren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on this date in 1813.

Debunking Grammar Myths

Patricia T. O’Conner, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, and the author of the national best-seller Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, debunks some grammar myths for mental_floss Blog.

Among the myths she debunks:

Myth #1: Don’t Split an Infinitive.

Myth #2: Don’t End a Sentence With a Preposition.

Myth #4: None Is Always Singular.

Cinco de Mayo

The holiday of Cinco De Mayo, The 5th Of May, commemorates the victory of the Mexicans over the French army at The Battle Of Puebla in 1862. It is primarily a regional holiday celebrated in the Mexican state capital city of Puebla and throughout the state of Puebla, with some recognition in other parts of the Mexico, and especially in U.S. cities with a significant Mexican population. It is not, as many people think, Mexico’s Independence Day, which is actually September 16.

MexOnline.com

Housing roller coaster

Calculated Risk reports on a house in Costa Mesa (Orange County), California, that sold for $177,500 in 1994, $600,000 in 2005, and is offered for $439,000 today.

“Yes, nominal prices in Orange County are off about 22% from the peak, and real prices (inflation adjusted) are off about 26% from the peak – but prices will probably fall significantly from here.”

The above was written the other day when the asking price was $559,000 (less than the existing mortgages). It was reduced $120,000 over the weekend. That would be a 27% drop in three years, fairly consistent with what Calculated Risk is saying — if it sells.

Here is the listing. Note the freeway sign hanging almost in the backyard. $439,000 is still $340 per square foot.

(You might notice also that the annual property tax is $6,965.)

Wireless security

If you have a wireless network at home, it is imperative that you encrypt it. (While recently in Virginia I was able to see the files on an iMac on the next street over.)

NewMexiKen isn’t knowledgeable enough to tell you how to go about this, but I can explain some of the basics.

  • Wireless encryption and a firewall are both essential — they do different things
  • The first standard was WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)
  • WEP is better than no protection at all
  • WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was introduced in 2003
  • WPA2 was an update to WPA in 2004
  • WPA (and WPA2) are far superior to WEP
  • If your wireless router, computer wireless card(s) or the associated software is older than 2003, you probably won’t be able to use WPA
  • Newer products — and the Wii, PlayStation 3, PSP, XBox 360, iPhone — can use WPA, but not all of them can use WPA2
  • WPA and WPA2 have two configurations: Personal and Enterprise
  • If you use a good network password, WPA or WPA2 Personal is sufficient for a home network

Bottom line: Use WPA (or WPA2 if you can) and use a good password for the network. Use WEP if that’s all you’ve got.

Death of a Racehorse

“Death of a Racehorse” is a classic piece by the sportswriter W.C. Heinz from 1949.

It seems appropriate today.

They were going to the post for the sixth race at Jamaica, two year olds, some making their first starts, to go five and a half furlongs for a purse of four thousand dollars. They were moving slowly down the backstretch toward the gate, some of them cantering, others walking, and in the press box they had stopped their working or their kidding to watch, most of them interested in one horse.

“Air Lift,” Jim Roach said. “Full brother of Assault.”

Assault, who won the triple crown … making this one too, by Bold Venture, himself a Derby winner, out of Igual, herself by the great Equipoise … Great names in the breeding line … and now the little guy making his first start, perhaps the start of another great career.

They were off well, although Air Lift was fifth. They were moving toward the first turn, and now Air Lift was fourth. They were going into the turn, and now Air Lift was starting to go, third perhaps, when suddenly he slowed, a horse stopping, and below in the stands you could hear a sudden cry, as the rest left him, still trying to run but limping, his jockey — Dave Gorman — half falling, half sliding off.

“He broke a leg!” somebody, holding binoculars to his eyes, shouted in the press box. “He broke a leg!”

Continue reading Death of a Racehorse

Haymarket

On the evening of May 4, 1886, a few thousand people assembled in the Haymarket area at the intersection of Randolph and Desplaines Streets, across the South Branch of the Chicago River about eight blocks west of City Hall. The purpose of the rally was to protest the killing of two workers the previous day by the police when they broke up an angry confrontation between locked-out union members and their replacements at the McCormick reaper factory on the city’s Southwest Side. This confrontation was one of many outbreaks of violence at the time due to labor and class tensions. Central among labor’s demands was the eight-hour workday.

As the protest meeting in the Haymarket was nearing a close, about 180 police marched from the nearby Desplaines Street station to the makeshift speakers’ stand. Immediately after a police commander ordered the rally to disperse, someone threw a dynamite bomb into the ranks of the officers. One officer was killed almost instantly, and six more would die in the next few days and weeks of wounds either caused by the bomb or sustained in the riot that followed. Acting with overwhelming public support, the police arrested dozens of political radicals. In the trial that followed, eight anarchists were found guilty of murder. After appeals to the Illinois and United States Supreme Courts failed, four of the defendants were executed on November 11, 1887. One day before the hangings, another defendant committed suicide. Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby commuted the capital sentence of two other defendants to life in prison. The jury had sentenced the eighth defendant to fifteen years at hard labor.

Scholars have long considered the Haymarket trial one of the most notorious miscarriages of law in American history. At this time of cultural crisis, the defendants were convicted by a prejudiced judge and jury because of their political views, rather than on the basis of solid evidence that linked them to the bombing. Although most middle-class Americans and even many working people at the time cheered this action and praised the police as defenders of public order, the executions transformed the anarchists into martyrs of labor in this country and throughout the world. The cultural memory of Haymarket has echoed ever since through many other events.

The above excerpted from the excellent The Dramas of Haymarket, an online project produced by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University.

Kent

Today, May 4, is an excellent day to listen to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Ohio.”

It’s been 38 years.

On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a busy college campus during a school day. A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students: Allison Krause, William Schroeder, Jeffrey Miller, and Sandra Scheuer were killed. Nine students were wounded.

Kent May 4 Center

Here’s the news story from The New York Times.

Catty remark

“Did you know former President James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other at the same time? That was Garfield. When President Bush heard about it, he said, ‘We had a talking cat for president?'”

Jay Leno quoted by AP — and first posted here two years ago today.

A desert hike through Joshua Tree with high tech

Dan Neil takes a hike — with gadgets. He begins:

“Whoso walketh in solitude, and inhabiteth the wood . . . into that forester shall pass . . . power and grace.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But what if I snap my ankle? Or blow a cardiac gasket? Or fall or get stuck on a mountain where I can’t go up or down, what climbers call getting “cliffed out”? What then, Ralph Waldo? I won’t give a tinker’s damn about power and grace then. I’m going to be looking for that orange-and-white rescue whirligig in the sky. Swing low, sweet Stokes litter.

Going solo into the backcountry — or on a sailboat around Catalina, or on a mountain bike in Moab, Utah, for that matter — always implies a trade-off, the exchange of safety for reverie. Nearly always, the risk is worth it, and for all the reasons Emerson made a career of. To be alone in big-N nature is to challenge yourself, to calibrate yourself, to fully inhabit the body you were born with, to feel the chill of the absolute run up your spine.

But things can go very wrong.

Best lines

“Did you all see ‘American Idol’ Tuesday night? The story is everywhere on the Internet and the radio that Paula Abdul was drinking before she had that meltdown on ‘American Idol.’ I hope so. Because if she wasn’t drinking, that means she’s just crazy. Usually when you see somebody named Abdul babbling like that, it’s in an al Qaeda video.”

“And some sad news. ‘CSI’ actor Gary Dourdan was arrested in Palm Springs for possession of heroin, cocaine and ecstasy. Heroin, cocaine, and ecstasy. Or as Amy Winehouse calls that, a ‘happy meal.'”

Jay Leno

Sounds like a Darwin Award nominee to me

A lot of zeros: Chares Ray Fuller, the police say, had it in mind last week to start a record business, and figured he might as well finance it by cashing a forged check drawn on his girlfriend’s mother’s account, The Associated Press reported this morning. Not that The Lede has any firsthand experience with this, but one imagines that a check-forger-to-be inevitably faces a moment when, with pen poised, he or she must decide exactly what amount to try for.

How about, oh, $360,000,000,000? Yeah, that ought to do it.

At the Chase Bank branch in Fort Worth, Texas, where the police said he tried to cash the check, the teller apparently thought something was amiss, seeing as how the amount far exceeded the bank’s total market capitalization and all, so officials contacted the account owner. When she told them that, no, she hadn’t written any multibillion-dollar checks, Mr. Fuller was arrested and charged with forgery (not to mention possession of a small amount of marijuana and a .25-caliber pistol), and later was released on $3,750 bail — cash or bond, please, no personal checks.

The Lede

The Civil War in New Mexico

Today and tomorrow from 10-4, New Mexico has its very own Civil War reenactments.

“Military drills, skirmishes and cannon fire will highlight two action-filled days, including reenactments of the battles of Glorieta Pass and Apache Canyon fought near Santa Fe during the War Between the States. Visit Confederate and Union camps, and more!”

And tonight only:

“To enhance your daytime experience at the ranch, you will have a unique opportunity to come back on Saturday evening to participate in a candlelight tour that will take you back to the days of the Civil War in the New Mexico! You will view several ‘vignettes,’ depicting everyday life of soldiers and civilians in 1862. Tours will be given by New Mexico Civil War Congress and the Friends of Fort Selden. After the tour, you will have an opportunity to chat with re-enactors by the campfire, while enjoying hot chocolate and cookies!”

Every 20 minutes, starting at 8 p.m., no charge, reservations required.

El Rancho de las Golondrinas

10 ways to blow your tax rebate

Mark Morford has some spending suggestions for those of you receiving the hush money tax rebate. Several are funny. My favorite:

One share of Google. Hey, it’s the most powerful company on Earth. It belches up bits of Microsoft after an organic tofu and wakame salad lunch in its massive world-class floating cafeteria in the sky. Why not buy a tiny crumb of the company that already owns a large piece of you and everything you do and play with and think about and log into every single day? Sort of like buying back a tiny, digitized, bitmapped, rebranded, YouTubed, Street Viewed piece of your own exhausted soul. Neat!

May 3rd ought to be a national holiday

Harry Lillis Crosby was born on this date in 1903. Known as “Bing” from a childhood nickname, he was:

[W]ithout doubt, the most popular and influential media star of the first half of the 20th century. The undisputed best-selling artist until well into the rock era (with over half a billion records in circulation), the most popular radio star of all time, and the biggest box-office draw of the 1940s, Crosby dominated the entertainment world from the Depression until the mid-’50s, and proved just as influential as he was popular. Unlike the many vocal artists before him, Crosby grew up with radio, and his intimate bedside manner was a style perfectly suited to emphasize the strengths of a medium transmitted directly into the home. He was also helped by the emerging microphone technology: scientists had perfected the electrically amplified recording process scant months before Crosby debuted on record, and in contrast to earlier vocalists, who were forced to strain their voices into the upper register to make an impression on mechanically recorded tracks, Crosby’s warm, manly baritone crooned contentedly without a thought of excess. …

John Bush for the All Music Guide

And today is Pete Seeger’s birthday. He’s 89.

Pete Seeger’s contribution to folk music, both in terms of its revival and survival, cannot be overstated. With the possible exception of Woody Guthrie, Seeger is the greatest influence on folk music of the last century.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

(The audio and the video are slightly out of sync, but it’s interesting nonetheless.)

It’s also the birthday

… of Ann B. Davis. Alice is 82.

… of Frankie Valli, well-seasoned at 74.

… of Greg Gumbel. He’s 62. (Brother Bryant is 59.)

… and of Dulé Hill. That’s Charlie on West Wing. He’s 33.

Why we like red or green

NewMexiKen found this in a 1992 New Yorker article about chiles and New Mexican cuisine.

According to scientists who have studied the effects of fiery food, a very hot chili sends the nervous system into a state of panic, and the brain reacts by flooding the distressed nerve endings with endorphins, which are the body’s natural painkillers—a sort of friendly morphine. The sudden shot of endorphins is what transforms the pang of hot food into pleasure, and also what makes it considerably more tolerable after the first few bites.

The article, by Jane and Michael Stern, is not available online.

Factoid of the day

During one of the most difficult periods in the presidency of Bill Clinton, he addressed a group of clerics at an annual prayer breakfast in September 1998 just as the Starr report outlining his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was about to be published.

Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. …

The Caucus

There’s even of photo of Wright and President Clinton.