Most teens know plenty about the dangers of risk-taking behaviors like drinking, smoking, and taking drugs, but they are hardwired to ignore what they have learned.
That is the conclusion from a new analysis of emerging research on adolescent brain development from Temple University professor of psychology Laurence Steinberg, PhD.
Teenagers seek out risk-taking behaviors, the research suggests, because the brain systems involved in decision-making mature at different times.
Who knew?
[94] BILL RICHARDSON
DarkhorseChubby presidential candidate has repped the USA in negotiations with some of the world’s scariest and weirdest dictators. Which, unfortunately, leaves the triple-chinned hopeful with precious little time for the treadmill. Chances may improve if he stays hungry — or if he accidentally eats the rest of the Democratic field onstage during the first debate.
See the other 99 from The Phoenix.
Many elementary school students report being bullied by their peers and bullying other children, a new study shows.
The study included 270 children in grades 3-6 at two schools in California and one school in Arizona.
Who knew?
. . . of Ben Nighthorse Campbell, 74.
. . . of Paul Sorvino. The 68-year-old actor has more than 100 credits at IMDB, including a season as Detective Sergeant Philip “Phil” Cerreta on Law & Order and Henry Kissinger in Nixon.
. . . of Wally Cleaver. Tony Dow is 62.
. . . of Al Green, staying together at 61.
With his incomparable voice, full of falsetto swoops and nuanced turns of phrase, Al Green rose to prominence in the Seventies. One of the most gifted purveyors of soul music, Green has sold more than 20 million records. During 1972 and 1973, he placed six consecutive singles in the Top Ten: “Let’s Stay Together,” “Look What You Done for Me,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” “You Ought to Be With Me,” “Call Me” and “Here I Am (Come and Take Me).” “Let’s Stay Together” topped the pop chart for one week and the R&B charts for nine; it was also revived with great success by Tina Turner in 1984. In terms of popularity and artistry, Green was the top male soul singer in the world, voluntarily ending his reign with a move from secular to gospel music in 1979.
. . . of chess champion Gary Kasparov, 44.
. . . of Davis Love III. He’s 43.
. . . of Rick Schroeder. Just nine when he won a Golden Globe, he’s 37 now.
It’s also the birthday of playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett, born on this date in 1906. Waiting for Godot was published in 1952.
Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen, reports:
In other news, Mack has a crush on a girl…in his drama class. He decided not to tell her about his feelings, because she might not like him back and he might get embarrassed. But he already asked me if he can wear his new “cool jeans” next Thursday. She lines up next to him during the kick line they perform to “Ham it Up” and he told me “I get to put my arm around her back” and giggled. Little operator.
Mack, just six, is, of course, unaware, that this will be the pattern, more or less, for his next 75 years.
This has been floating around the internets for the past week or so, once again proving that some folks at Google have a sense of humor. Via Andrew Tobias:
1. go to google
2. click on “maps”
3. click on “get directions”
4. type “New York” in the first box and “London” in the second box
5. hit enter
6. scroll down to step #23
. . . was born on this date in 1743.
Eight-three years later, at the end of his remarkable life, he wished to be remembered foremost for those actions that appear as his epitaph:
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At a White House dinner honoring 49 Nobel laureates in 1962, President Kennedy remarked, “I think this is the most extraordinary talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
It seems to NewMexiKen that the country could use a federal holiday during that long spell from Washington’s Birthday to Memorial Day. I propose that today, April 13, Jefferson’s birthday, would be ideal.
Despite serious flaws, Jefferson remains one of the most remarkable Americans — statesman, scientist, architect, philosopher agronomist, author.
Click on the image of the document to view Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence. The photo of Jefferson’s tomb above taken by NewMexiKen, 2001. Click to enlarge.
The BRCA1 mutation, primarily found among Ashkenazi Jews, raises my risk of ovarian cancer as high as 54% and breast cancer up to 81%. The surgery would cut my chances of ovarian cancer to virtually nothing. And as long as I had the operation by the time I turned 35, it would reduce my risk of breast cancer by half. I was 30.
My father thought I was playing Russian roulette with my life. Now that I had a baby, he believed there was no reason to wait.
I felt terrified for myself as well, as though cancer were this venomous snake waiting to strike. My aunt Lois was just 34, a few years older than I, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died at 38.
I wanted to tell my father what he wanted to hear. How could I deny him his last wish for me?
But I wasn’t ready. I wanted another baby, a sibling for my daughter. Over and over, I apologized. I begged him to trust me.
Soon, I told him. Not yet, but soon.
Anna Gorman tells her story in the Los Angeles Times.
Triskaidekaphobia — the fear of 13.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia — the fear of Friday the 13th.
More information about Friday the 13th.
Via Lifehacker, Google Earth adds hiking trails.
Very cool.
Activate Trimble Outdoors Trips under Featured Content under Layers. Description, length, difficulty, photos, GPS coordinates, send trip to your phone, more.
“It’s not a First Amendment issue. The government didn’t force Imus off the air. CBS and MSNBC made business decisions. What you witnessed is the intersection of the marketplace of ideas and commerce.”
A dusting of snow and 36° this morning at Casa NewMexiKen. Lovely.
Not.
Here, from AP, is the actual recording 27 years ago today of Astronaut Jack Swigert telling Houston we have a problem.
In the film, Tom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell has the line.
This report is from the next day’s New York Times:
The Apollo 13 Astronauts, their lives threatened by a serious oxygen leak, were forced to evacuate their command ship late last night and use their intended moon-landing craft as a “lifeboat” for a fast return to the earth.
In cool and cryptic words, they were instructed by mission control here to use the attached lunar module’s rocket to power them back to an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at about noon on Friday.
There will be great risks and little margin for error or delay. …
Capt. James A. Lovell Jr. of the Navy, the commander, and his two civilian co-pilots, Fred W. Haise Jr. and John L. Swigert Jr., crowded into the two-man lunar module at about 11:40 P.M. Eastern standard time.
Salon’s Ask the pilot (Patrick Smith) reviews the tragedy at Tenerife. He begins his fascinating history:
March 27 marked the 30th anniversary of the most deadly aviation disaster in history.
Most people haven’t heard of Tenerife, a pan-shaped speck in the Atlantic. It’s one of the Canary Islands, a volcanic chain governed by the Spanish, clustered a few hundred miles off the coast of Morocco. The big town on Tenerife is Santa Cruz, and its airport, beneath a set of cascading hillsides, is called Los Rodeos. There, on March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747s — one belonging to KLM, the other to Pan Am — collided on a foggy runway. Five hundred and eighty-three people were killed. The KLM jet had commenced takeoff without permission, slamming broadside into the taxiing Pan Am jumbo as it swerved to avoid impact.
For the first time in Major League Baseball history, Commissioner Bud Selig has decreed that any uniformed personnel — player, coach or manager — can wear Jackie Robinson’s famous No. 42 as the sport celebrates on Sunday the 60th anniversary of Robinson breaking the color barrier.
Robinson will be honored in each of the 15 ballparks where games will be played . . . .
NewMexiKen agrees with the Sports Prof, every player should wear #42 Sunday. After all, isn’t 42 the Ultimate Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?
Via the ever-valuable Crooks and Liars, Kurt Vonnegut on The Daily Show.
Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken.
Puts those dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets into a new perspective, doesn’t it?
“His books were teenager books, really: To fully appreciate them, it probably helped to perceive yourself as an alien being, forced by Fate to survive on a completely demented planet. To be 16 years old, in other words.”
Joel Achenbach, in a nice tribute deserving your click.
“The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?”
Lee Iacocca, quoted at kottke.org.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
Kurt Vonnegut, commencement address, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 1974.
“The only specifically American inventions that have made this a better world are Alcoholics Anonymous and jazz, and jazz has no bad side effects.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Rolling Stone, 1998.
. . . But then Vonnegut starts coughing, clearing his throat of phlegm, grasping for a half-smoked pack of Pall Malls lying on a coffee table. He quickly lights up. His wheezing ceases. I ask him whether he worries that cigarettes are killing him. “Oh, yes,” he answers, in what is clearly a set-piece gag. “I’ve been smoking Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes since I was twelve or fourteen. So I’m going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, who manufactured them. And do you know why?” “Lung cancer?” I offer.
“No. No. Because I’m eighty-three years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me. Instead, their cigarettes didn’t work. Now I’m forced to suffer leaders with names like Bush and Dick and, up until recently, ‘Colon.'”. . . .
From an article last August in Rolling Stone
“He is conscious of limitations greater than he has.”
Unidentified individual speaking about Harry Truman, as reported on April 12, 1945, the day Franklin Roosevelt died and Truman became President.
. . . of Clarence ‘Lumpy’ Rutherford. Actor Frank Bank of Leave It to Beaver is 65.
. . . of Ed O’Neill. He’s 61. O’Neill was nominated for two Golden Globes for playing shoe salesman Al Bundy on Married … with Children.
. . . of David Letterman. He’s 60, but a part of him seemingly never left the 8th grade.
. . . of Tom Clancy. He’s 60.
He was an insurance salesman, and he was doing well for himself, but he’d always wanted to be a writer. He had spent all his spare time reading magazines about military technology, such as Combat Fleets of the World and A Guide to the Soviet Navy, and one day he began to wonder what would happen if a Soviet submarine tried to defect to the United States. That became the basis for his first novel, The Hunt for Red October (1984).
Instead of focusing on the interactions between his characters, Clancy focused more on the technology. He described the soviet submarine in intricate detail, the way it moved and maneuvered, and all its weaponry and hardware. Since he didn’t think the novel would appeal to a mass audience, he published it with a small military publishing house called the Naval Institute Press. But the book got passed around among officers and generals, and eventually made its way to Ronald Reagan, who said he loved it. That endorsement from the president helped turn The Hunt for Red October into a huge best-seller.
. . . of Scott Turow. He’s 58. He wanted to be a writer but went to law school so he’d have a day job. His first novel was Presumed Innocent, published in 1987.
. . . of David Cassidy. Once a teen heart throb, he’s now 57.
. . . of Andy Garcia. He’s 51. Garcia was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in The Godfather: Part III.
. . . of Vince Gill. He’s 50.
. . . of Claire Danes, 28.
The photographer Imogen Cunningham was born on this date in 1883.
