Author: NewMexiKen

Liberty

What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.

“What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

Judge Learned Hand

Remarks are excerpted from a speech Hand gave at “I Am an American Day” in 1944. Hand was born on January 27 in 1872. Many consider Judge Hand the most influential American jurist to have not served on the Supreme Court.

Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge is a lengthy book review of the major legal biography of Hand. The 1961 obituary from Time is worthwhile.

January 27th

Chief Justice John Roberts is just 53 today.

The actor James Cromwell is 68. Among his many roles, Cromwell was the farmer in Babe. The role earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Who was the lead in that film — the pig?

Mikhail Baryshnikov is 60.

Sultry-voiced Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies is 47.

Peter Fonda’s daughter Bridget is 44.

Jerome Kern was born on this date in 1885.

Kern and his wife returned to America, where he enhanced the scores of European musicals and worked as a rehearsal pianist. Then he met Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a lifelong friend, and the two collaborated on Show Boat in 1927. This musical gave us the songs “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” In 1933, Kern and Hammerstein produced Roberta, which included the famous song “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”

Kern moved to Hollywood in 1935, and he enjoyed success there. He wrote “The Way You Look Tonight” for the movie Swing Time, and the song won an Academy Award. In 1941, Kern and Hammerstein wrote “The Last Time I Saw Paris” because Paris had just been occupied by Nazi Germany, and that song also won an Academy Award.

Kern died in 1945 with Hammerstein at his side. At the memorial service, Hammerstein said of his friend Jerome Kern, “He stimulated everyone. He annoyed some. He never bored anyone at any time.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart

… was born in Salzburg on this date in 1756. Theophilus—or Gottlieb—or Amadé means “loved by God.” As an adult Mozart signed Wolfgang Amadé Mozart or simply Mozart. In the family he was known as Wolfgangerl or Woferl.

A delightful Mozart web site is Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, complete with music while you browse. Among other things, the site has an analysis of the truth and fiction in the wonderful film Amadeus. (It’s “Amadeus, an apologia” when you open the Biography section. The site is structured in a way that prevents a direct link.)

Fiction or not, watching Amadeus seems like a wonderful way to celebrate Mozart’s birthday.

More great photos

Photographer’s Guide to New Mexico (and a little bit of Colorado).

It begins:

There are three cultures co-existing in New Mexico (if you read the middle third of my Summer 1994 travelogue then you might question the extent to which these actually co-exist). The Indians created interesting pueblos. The Spanish some impressive churches. The Anglos … mostly some houses that look like they could have been imported from Cleveland.

Whither goest the pollsters?

This from Glenn Greenwald:

As it turns out, the South Carolina polls were even more inaccurate than the New Hampshire polls were, though that fact hasn’t received much attention because predicting the wrong winner (as the New Hampshire polls did) is a far more dramatic error than under-predicting the winner’s ultimate margin of victory (as the South Carolina polls did). But, mathematically speaking, the magnitude of the polling error is actually greater in South Carolina.

The average of the pre-New Hampshire polls showed Obama with an 8 point lead, and Clinton won by almost 3 points — a difference of 11 points. By contrast, the average of the pre-South Carolina polls showed Obama with an 11 point lead, and he won by 28 points — a difference of 17 points.

Greenwald thinks it was the racial campaigning by Bill Clinton that gave Obama the last-minute surge, just as it was the negative treatment by the press that gave Hillary her come from behind victory in New Hampshire.

Top Ten Rejected Titles for The George W. Bush Movie

From the home office, Letterman’s Top Ten Rejected Titles for The George W. Bush Movie:

10.”Jackass 3″
9.”The Lyin’ King”
8.”The Departed As Of January 20th, 2009″
7.”Stop Or My Vice President Will Shoot”
6.”Dial M For Moron”
5.”Das Boob”
4.”When Sally Met Cheney’s Daughter”
3.”White Men Can’t Govern”
2.”The Nightmare Before Hillary”

And the number one rejected title for George W. Bush Movie:

“Raging Bull****”

Thanks to DP for the pointer!

Rocky Mountain National Park (Colorado)

… is celebrating its 93th anniversary today.

Established on January 26, 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park is a living showcase of the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains. With elevations ranging from 8,000 feet in the wet, grassy valleys to 14,259 feet at the weather-ravaged top of Long’s Peak, a visitor to the park has opportunities for countless breathtaking experiences and adventures.

Elk, mule deer, moose, bighorn sheep, black bears, coyotes, cougars, eagles, hawks and scores of smaller animals delight wildlife-watchers of all ages. Wildflower-lovers are never disappointed in June and July when the meadows and hillsides are splashed with botanical color. Autumn visitors can relax among the golden aspens or enjoy the rowdier antics of the elk rut (mating season).

National Park Service

Good news

John Fleck reports on the good news in our otherwise very dry winter:

As of Friday, snowpack in the high country that feeds the Rio Grande headwaters was 59 percent above normal, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Snow in the headwaters of the San Juan is 50 percent above normal, and snowpack in the mountains that feed the Pecos is 25 percent above normal.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Down here at 5,000-6,000 feet, less than a quarter inch of precip in six weeks. (Though I had a pretty little dusting of snow yesterday morning). Dry, dry, dry.

Michigan

… joined the Union as the 26th state on this date in 1837.

  • “Derived from the Indian word Michigama, meaning great or large lake.”
  • The State Nickname is the “Great Lake State”. Others include “Wolverine State” or “Water Winter Wonderland”.
  • Michigan
  • The State motto is “Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice” (If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you).
  • The Michigan state flower is the apple blossom, the tree the white pine and the bird the robin.
  • Indigenous people in Michigan at the time of contact were the Ojibwa, Ottawa and Potawatomi.

Click image for larger version.

Addendum: The first bullet above is a quotation from michigan.gov, the “Official State of Michigan Portal.” It should be corrected. It is the equivalent of saying, “Derived from the European word …”

There are no “Indian” words. Indian is not a language.

January 26th

Paul Newman is 83 years old today.

Newman has been nominated for the Best Actor in a Leading Role Oscar eight times, winning for The Color of Money in 1986, but not for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Absence of Malice, The Verdict, or Nobody’s Fool. He was also nominated for the Best Supporting Actor for Road to Perdition (at age 78).

Scott Glenn is 67.

One-time Oscar nominee David Strathairn is 59.

Lucinda Williams is 55.

Eddie Van Halen is 53 (going on 153).

Ellen DeGeneres is 50.

Wayne Gretzky is 47.

Julia Morgan was born in San Francisco on January 26, 1872.

Miss Morgan was one of the first women to graduate from University of California at Berkeley with a degree in civil engineering. During her tenure at Berkeley, Morgan developed a keen interest in architecture which is thought to have been fostered by her mother’s cousin, Pierre Le Brun, who designed the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower in New York City. At Berkeley one of her instructors, Bernard Maybeck, encouraged her to pursue her architectural studies in Paris at the Ecole Nationale et Speciale des Beaux-Arts.

Arriving in Paris in 1896, she was initially refused admission because the Ecole had never before admitted a woman. After a two-year wait, Julia Morgan gained entrance to the prestigious program and became the first woman to receive a certificate in architecture. While in Paris, Morgan also found a mentor in her professor, Bernard Chaussemiche, for whom she worked as a drafter.

Soon after her graduation from the Ecole, Julia Morgan returned to her native San Francisco and began working for architect John Galen Howard. At the time Howard was the supervising architect of the University of California’s Master Plan, the commission of which he won by default from Phoebe Apperson Hearst. Morgan worked on the Master Plan drawing the elevations and designing the decorative details for the Mining Building built in memory of George Hearst. During this time Morgan also designed the Hearst Greek Theater on the Berkeley campus.
…

Over the course of the next 28 years, Morgan supervised nearly every aspect of construction at Hearst Castle including the purchase of everything from Spanish antiquities to Icelandic Moss to reindeer for the Castle’s zoo. She personally designed most of the structures, grounds, pools, animal shelters and workers’ camp down to the minutest detail. Additionally, Morgan worked closely with Hearst to integrate his vast art collection into the structures and grounds at San Simeon. She also worked on projects for Hearst’s other properties including Jolon, Wyntoon, Babicore, the “Hopi” residence at the Grand Canyon, the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Gymnasium at Berkeley, the Los Angeles Examiner Building, several of his Beverly Hills residences and Marion Davies’ beach house in Santa Monica.

Hearst Castle

The most overrated — especially by himself — person in American history was born on this date in 1880. That’s Douglas MacArthur.

January 25th ought to be a damn national holiday

Today is Etta James’ birthday. Tell Mama, Etta James is 70 today.

Jerry Wexler, Atlantic Records’ legendary producer, describes Etta James as “the greatest of all modern blues singers…the undisputed Earth Mother.” Her raw, unharnessed vocals and hot-blooded eroticism has made disciples of singers ranging from Janis Joplin to Bonnie Raitt. James’ pioneering 1950s hits – “The Wallflower” and “Good Rockin’ Daddy” – assure her place in the early history of rock and roll alongside Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles. In the Sixties, as a soulful singer of pop and blues diva compared with the likes of Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday, James truly found her musical direction and made a lasting mark.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Miss James was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, same year as Creedence, Cream, the Doors, Sly and the Family Stone, Van Morrison and Dick Clark if you still need a clue.

At Last

Alicia Keys is 27.

I was thinkin’ ’bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from crying
When she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the line
I’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could be
I been looking for her even clear through Tennessee
— Bob Dylan, “Thunder on the Mountain”

Virginia Woolf was born on January 25th in 1882.

And, Happy Birthday to Rob, one of two official sons-in-law of NewMexiKen.

Tiger Woods makes everyone else play worse

Analyzing data from round-by-round scores from all PGA tournaments between 2002 and 2006 (over 20,000 player-rounds of golf), Brown finds that competitors fare less well—about an extra stroke per tournament—when Tiger is playing. How can we be sure this is because of Tiger? A few features of the findings lend them plausibility. The effect is stronger for the better, “exempt” players than for the nonexempt players, who have almost no chance of beating Tiger anyway. (Tiger’s presence doesn’t mean much to you if the best you can reasonably expect to finish is about 35th—there’s not much difference between the prize for 35th and 36th place.) The effect is also stronger during Tiger’s hot streaks, when his competitors’ prospects are more clearly dimmed. When Tiger is on, his competitors’ scores were elevated by nearly two strokes when he entered a tournament. And the converse is also true: During Tiger’s well-publicized slump of 2003 and 2004, when he went winless in major events, exempt competitors’ scores were unaffected by Tiger’s presence.

Joel Waldfogel – Slate Magazine

The argument is that the other players sense they are playing for second place and so their incentive is less. I don’t believe professional athletes play only for money, but the numbers are convincing.

Woods is 12 under, leading by four strokes after two days in his first tournament of 2008.

Best line of the day, so far

[Tom] Friedman seems to be arguing here that [Chris] Matthews is simply paid to spout opinions, and that whether they are wise or stupid is not relevant to the discussion. I am now very confused. If your job is to spout opinions, isn’t the spouting of wise opinions a pretty good measure of whether or not you’re doing your job well? In our culture, the spouting of stupid opinions generally used to be left to people on barstools, just as the spouting of crazy opinions generally used to be left to the man in the park who thought he was Napoleon. One opinion is not as good as another.

Charles Pierce

Rebates

What will you do with your $600? Buy some crap made in China or Malaysia? How will that help the economy exactly?

With the understanding that it would take longer to get into the economy and that urgency is an issue, here’s what I would have done if I were the czar. I’d buy $150 billion (the cost of the stimulus package) worth of infrastructure repairs — roads, sewers, bridges, schools.

Let’s see — the work would have to be done in the U.S., much of the money would be in paychecks spent locally, we’d all benefit. Even the wealthy who won’t see any of the rebate*, would be better off with improved roads and bridges that don’t collapse.

_______

* The rebates are phased out if your adjusted-gross income is more than $75,000 ($150,000 for couples), slightly more if you have children. Those making more than $87,000 ($174,000) get nothing (again depending on children).

There Will Be Blood

First, There Will Be Blood is worth seeing simply for the performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. I’ve seen just one other of the five Oscar-nominated best actors, George Clooney in Michael Clayton, and Day-Lewis is in a whole other league from Clooney, good as Clooney was. Simply extraordinary.

I’ve seen four of the five best picture nominees now, all but Atonement. It’s hard to say, but I think I’d put There Will Be Blood last of the four. Michael Clayton was more intriguing, Juno more entertaining, No Country for Old Men more challenging.

There Will Be Blood is an episodic biography of a fictional oil man, much the way The Aviator was the biography of the real Howard Hughes, or Citizen Kane was of a mostly fictional tycoon. There’s a little bit about a silver strike, small oil finds, a large oil strike, a pipeline — beads on a string, some larger and more complete than others, but nothing in between. Why did this happen? Why did he get that way? Why did he do that? We get a glimpse, but no real answers.

I find this troublesome. The Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness was entertaining, but I didn’t feel I knew any more about the lead character at the end than I did going in. Good Night, and Good Luck was another good film that left more questions unasked than answered. Ken mentioned to me Michael Clayton — how did the woman attorney get to murder? That’s a big step. I’m glad that many films are trying to be more than they are, and I certainly respect the constraints of telling a story visually in 120 minutes, give or take (158 for There Will Be Blood). I just don’t think the current crop quite gets it done.

Critics have written that this year’s best picture nominees are a particularly bleak look at the world and indeed they are. They say it’s the temper of the times. A film historian might point out however, that the most successful type of films during the depths of the depression were comedies and musicals. The audience sought relief from everyday life. Perhaps now we have too many other ways to find lighter fare with television and the internets, I don’t know. But the unexpected success of Juno may be one indication. I’d watch all four of these films again for one reason or another, but Juno is the one I’d look forward to seeing.

Atonement this weekend.

Investment advice

In light of the stock market and Davenetics new retirement investment strategy mentioned here Wednesday of taking the Giants and the points, Jeanne sends along a complimentary tactic:

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago, drunk all the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

It’s called the 401-Keg Plan.