The NCAA has approved a bowl game for Albuquerque that will match a Western Athletic Conference team against a Mountain West Conference team.
They should call it the Posole Bowl.
Author: NewMexiKen
The Crony Fairy
After discussing The Crony Fairy “who visits key agencies by dead of night, snatches away qualified people and replaces them with unqualified political appointees,” Paul Krugman concludes:
So what’s the point of creating a new agency to replace FEMA? The history of FEMA and other agencies during the Clinton years shows that a president who is serious about governing can rebuild effective government without renaming the boxes on the organizational chart.
On the other hand, the history of the Bush administration, from the botched reconstruction of Iraq to the botched start-up of the prescription drug program, shows that a president who isn’t serious about governing, who prizes loyalty and personal connections over competence, can quickly reduce the government of the world’s most powerful nation to third-world levels of ineffectiveness.
And bear in mind that Mr. Bush’s pattern of cronyism didn’t change after Katrina. For example, he appointed Julie Myers, the inexperienced niece of Gen. Richard Myers, to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an agency that, like FEMA, is supposed to protect us against terrorism as well as other threats. Even at the C.I.A., the administration seems more interested in purging Democrats than in improving the quality of intelligence.
So let’s skip the name change for FEMA, O.K.? The United States will regain effective government if and when it gets a president who cares more about serving the nation than about rewarding his friends and scoring political points. That’s at least a thousand days away. Meanwhile, don’t count on FEMA, or on any other government agency, to do its job
NewMexiKen — who proudly served the American people as a federal public servant for more than 30 years — can only say thank you Mr. Krugman. The professionals don’t make the laws, don’t make the appropriations and don’t appoint our bosses. But most of us do try and do care and do succeed.
Top tunes
NewMexiKen thought you’d want to know that Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day” is in its fifth week as the number one tune in the country according to the Billboard Hot 100.
Rascal Flatts’ “Me And My Gang” is the number one album.
Tabbed browsing for the masses
David Pogue reviews the new Internet Explorer — available to you now.
But hope is in the air. Earlier this week, Microsoft took the wraps off IE 7. The new version is a public beta — Beta 2 — and therefore technically unfinished. Still, Microsoft feels that this release is ready for average people to try out; you can download it from www.microsoft.com/ie. Phone help is available, and you can easily restore Version 6 if necessary.
How this new browser measures up depends on the ruler you’re using. If you’ve never used anything but Internet Explorer, you won’t be able to wipe the grin off your face.
But next to rivals like Firefox, Opera and Safari, IE 7 is a catch-up and patch-up job. Some of its “new” features have been available in rival browsers for years.
For example, IE may be the last Web browser on earth to offer tabbed browsing. This useful feature lets you keep several Web sites open on the screen simultaneously — not in a hopeless mess of overlapping windows, but all in one window. File-folder index tabs at the top of the window keep them straight.
NewMexiKen doesn’t know why you wouldn’t just choose Firefox or Opera or Safari, but at least IE is catching up. It’s more secure than IE 6, too.
(Of course, tabbed browsing is so 2004 for most websites. RSS is the newer new best thing.)
Best gasoline price line of the day, so far
“Give you an idea how expensive gas is, this morning I carpooled in with Letterman.”
Jay Leno
This video quacks me up
From ABC News. You’ll have to watch a commercial first, but the video will warm your heart’s cockles.
New hobby for NewMexiKen
I think I’ll give up blogging and play with model trains instead. Yesterday’s train ride got me reminiscing.
It goes back to sixth grade. Late in that school year my family moved from Fenton, Michigan, to Durand, Michigan, a distance of about 25 miles. We had already moved schools once that school year, so my folks resisted putting us through that again. But it was a long round-trip to make by car twice a day just to keep a sixth grader and third grader (my sister) in the same school.
So it ended up that an 11-year-old and not quite 9-year-old took the train. Each morning at 7:01 — at least once they held the train a minute or two for us to show up — we would board the Grand Trunk Western commuter train bound for Detroit. In Fenton, we would walk the several blocks from the depot to school. In the afternoon we reversed the trip. (I can remember my sister and I walking across the wooden railroad trestle between St. John’s School and the depot in Fenton. Yikes!)
While all trains are inherently cool, nothing quite has the romance of a steam locomotive and Grand Trunk still had steam engines pulling its passenger trains 50 years ago. It was the best school bus ever.
Best line of the day, so far
“The president’s approval ratings are down there in the territory of whatever’s on TV opposite American Idol.”
That depends on what your definition of gouging is
Oil company first-quarter profits are up substantially over last year’s records. The oil companies say it’s because the price of oil is up.
But the oil companies control both the extraction and production. To a very large extent they set the price.
Yes, multiple complex issues are in play here. But let’s not let the oil companies get away with acting like they are innocent victims of windfall oil price increases beyond their control.
Someone I’ll miss
Keith Jackson, the storied voice of college football, is calling it quits, declining offers from ESPN officials to keep him at ABC Sports.
“I’m finished with play-by-play forever,” Jackson said yesterday by telephone from his home in Sherman Oaks, Calif. “I’m going out to learn to be a senior citizen and find a president I can vote for and believe in.” He added, “I’m not angry, I’m just going off like an old man and sitting by the creek.”
Jackson is 77. He said, “I don’t want to die in a stadium parking lot.”
U(nconditional) S(urrender) Grant
HEADQUARTERS ARMY IN THE FIELD
Camp near Fort Donelson
February 16, 1862.
General S. B. BUCKNER,
Confederate Army.SIR: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
U.S. GRANT,
Brigadier-General, Commanding.
Ulysses S. Grant
… was born on this date in 1822. The Writer’s Almanac has a fine essay on Grant, some of which is excerpted here:
But by that time, Grant had also been diagnosed with throat cancer and his health deteriorated rapidly. He realized that he didn’t have long to live, and wrote his memoirs as fast as he could. In extreme pain, and in a daze from pain medication, he still managed to write 275,000 words in less than a year. In the last few weeks of his illness, he couldn’t even speak, but he kept writing and revising, and checking everything he wrote against the official records to make sure it was all factual. He finished his memoirs in July 1885, and died four days later. …
Critics and writers of the time were shocked at how well Grant wrote. His book Personal Memoirs (1885) is one of the few books ever written by an American president that qualifies as great literature.
Among the most famous passages in the book is Grant’s description of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the Appomattox Court House. Grant wrote, “What General Lee’s feelings were I do not know … [but] my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause (slavery) was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
The Library of Congress has information on Grant and his White House biography is here.
The other animator named Walter
Walter Lantz was born on this date in 1899. Lantz was the creator of such animated characters as Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Wally Walrus and the greatest cartoon character of them all, Woody Woodpecker. Lantz was nominated for the Academy Award 10 times. He received the Academy’s Life-Time Achievement Award in 1979.
Click on the image above to visit lantz.toonzone.net for audio and video clips and lots of other goodies.
Hamilton Grange National Memorial (New York)
… was authorized on this date in 1962.
Hamilton Grange National Memorial, located at 287 Convent Avenue, preserves the home of founding father Alexander Hamilton. Born and raised in the West Indies, Hamilton came to New York in 1772 at age 17 to study finance at King’s College (now Columbia University).
Hamilton became a supporter of the cause of the American patriots during the political turmoil of the 1770s. Commissioned as a Captain of Artillery at the beginning of the American Revolution, he soon became an aide-de-camp to George Washington.
After the war, as a member of Congress, Hamilton was instrumental in creating the new Constitution. As co-author of the Federalist Papers he was indispensable in the effort to get the Constitution adopted. As the first Secretary of the Treasury (1789-1795) he devised plans for funding the national debt, securing federal credit, encouraging expansion of manufacturing and organizing the federal bank.
Hamilton commissioned architect John McComb Jr. to design a Federal style country home on a sprawling 32 acre estate in upper Manhattan. This house was completed in 1802 and named “The Grange” after the Hamilton family’s ancestral home in Scotland, but served as his home for only two years. On July 11, 1804, Hamilton was fatally wounded in a duel with his political rival Aaron Burr.
Bernalillo choo choo
A great report at Albloggerque on The Best 15 Minute Train Ride I Ever Had!. His is a much more descriptive report than the one NewMexiKen did earlier.
Best political line of the day, so far
“Senator John Kerry said this week that he is thinking about running for president again but he hasn’t made up his mind as of yet. Well, that should put to rest all those rumors about him being indecisive.”
Jay Leno
‘Free’ speech is important
I’ve been asked for background, so here goes. This post refers to a vote on internet freedom (or ‘net neutrality’) that took place in a House Committee today [April 26]. Right now your broadband ISP isn’t really allowed to block legal web sites or services to their customers. A law that passed in a House Committee today lets them. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist. Pretty soon your broadband provider [for example, Comcast or Qwest] will be allowed to block Google, Vonage, or your favorite blog if a competitor pays them, if they develop a competing service, or if they just don’t like you. This sort of undermines the whole internet thing, and I’m fighting against it. More info is at Savetheinternet.com. …
NewMexiKen is pleased to report that my very own Representative, Heather Wilson, was the sole Republican to oppose this awful giveaway. Thank you, Congresswoman Wilson.
Gathering of Nations
This is the weekend for North America’s largest powwow, the Gathering of Nations right here in Albuquerque.
Click to learn more — and view hundreds of colorful photos from previous Gatherings, and much, much more.
Click here for a schedule of New Mexico Pueblo feast days and other tribal events.
Chernobyl — 20 years
“This is quite possibly the most horrifying — and utterly heartbreaking — presentation I’ve ever seen.”
Link via Mind of Gutter, Mouth of Potty, whose introduction I couldn’t top.
Gladwell takes a look at the Duke case
Malcolm Gladwell wonders about our ability to make eyewitness identifications. An excerpt:
In Blink, I mentioned the research of Jonathan Schooler on lineups: he’s showed that merely requiring people to write down a physical description of the suspect before viewing the lineup radical impairs their ability to pick out the correct person.
But the Duke case is an example of another, even more problematic aspect of eyewitness identifications, and that is that we aren’t particular good at making them across races.
Jane Jacobs
A nice piece from 2004 by Adam Gopnik on Jane Jacobs, who died yesterday at age 89. The essay includes:
Jacobs has closely followed the Ground Zero plans and debates, and she thinks that the right thing to do is not to do anything right away. “The significance of that site now is that we don’t know what its significance is,” she said. “We’ll know in fifteen or twenty years.” She also thinks that it might be a good idea not to “restore” the street grid at the Ground Zero site but to break it decisively. “I was at a school in Connecticut where the architects watched paths that the children made in the snow all winter, and then when spring came they made those the gravel paths across the green. Why not do the same thing here?”
Best line of the day about plagarism, so far
Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, who was paid the largest advance for an unpublished author, admitted to having “unintentionally” borrowed passages from author Megan McCafferty for her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. What do you think?
David Niles, Portrait Photographer:
“This just goes to show there are many things a Harvard education can’t teach you, like how to use a thesaurus to cover up your plagiarism.”
Best line of the day, so far
“It’s hard to figure why blowing up the Middle East hasn’t had the intended effect of lowering gas prices.
“Weird.”
Rail Runner NMRX
Rail Runner — coming at you soon.
|
Thanks to the intercession of Jon of Albloggerque, and the courtesy of Augusta Meyers, Communications Manager for the Mid-Region Council of Governments, NewMexiKen got to take a train ride today — a very special train ride on New Mexico’s Rail Runner.
Set to open to the public in July, the beautiful streamlined express will carry passengers from Albuquerque south to Belen or north to Bernalillo — and on to Santa Fe in 2008. |
|
The train is beautiful, inside and out and the road runner logo is classic (see below).
Even before we left the increasingly attractive Alvarado station downtown, NewMexiKen began to imagine the possibilities. A shuttle connecting to the Sunport. A station at Balloon Fiesta Park — what an improvement that would be over the existing chaos that is Fiesta traffic and parking. These and other developments are a few years off, but the prospects are exciting. |
Jon enjoys the sunny Rail Runner car.
|
Looking west on Central Avenue (U.S. 66) as the train pulled out.
Today’s 25-mile roundtrip to U.S. 550 in Bernalillo was delightfully smooth. The train cruises at 79 mph (despite several grade crossings). This isn’t as fast as the Amtrak Metroliner, but there was none of the motion sickness I have occasionally felt on that ride. The eventual trip from Albuquerque to Santa Fe should be an hour, even with stops. (And how much less stressful than the dodge-em cars on I-25?)
The officials and others on board seemed almost giddy with delight. There is something vaguely Disney-esque about riding the train.
All aboard in July. The first three months will be free!
New Mexico’s Rail Runner has an attractive, informative web site.
[Update Wednesday Evening: Albloggerque has a great post with many more details — The Best 15 Minute Train Ride I Ever Had!]
Where does the money go?
Driving home at noon from elsewhere I decided to swing by Costco and take advantage of the few cents a gallon savings for gasoline. $400 later I’m thinking maybe I should just have stopped somewhere else.
$49 for gasoline at $2.95/gallon. $209 for two pairs of glasses. $48 for two black injet cartridges. And then $80 or $90 for the usual stuff I didn’t know I needed until I saw it.
Good thing I saved 16 cents (total) on gasoline.