Author: NewMexiKen

Red Light Cameras

Santa Fe Sheriff Greg Solano tells us about cameras and red light citations. It’s quite interesting. He begins:

One item that has come up in Santa Fe County recently is the use of Red Light Cameras at Santa Fe County intersections. The use of these cameras to issue official criminal traffic citations is illegal in the state of New Mexico. State Law requires citations to be given by a uniformed certified officer who must witness the infraction. The only exception is in the case of an accident when the officer can rely on evidence at the scene and witness statements to issue the citations. So how does Albuquerque use the Red Light cameras to issue citations? They do this through a civil action.

The Sheriff goes on to note: “In February of 2006 a traffic camera at Coors and Paseo del Norte caught 1,353 motorists driving through the intersection after the light turned red. Assuming that all citations were first time violators the city raised $338,250 in one month at one location.”

Da Vinci Code Quest

The Da Vinci Code involves a thrilling murder investigation that unearths a secret that could change the course of history. The film opens May 19th worldwide

The quest, which began April 17th requires skill, intellect, and perseverance. Over a span of 24 days ending May 11th, you will encounter unique challenges. These daily puzzles will pull you deeper into the world of The Da Vinci Code. Answer all 24 puzzles correctly for a chance to win untold riches.

Only the worthy will prevail.

Google: Da Vinci Code

Thanks to Emily for the pointer.

Taking their toll

It’s not drunken driving or speeding. It’s not unlatched seat belts or inexperienced teenage drivers. The greatest danger on the nation’s highways is at a place where people are expected to be slowing down: tollbooths.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said toll plazas are the most deadly areas on highways, and said their design standards have gone unregulated since they were introduced 50 years ago. …

Toll plazas account for 49 percent of all interstate accidents in Illinois and 38 percent in New Jersey, according to an NTSB report.

Examiner.com

Hitler

Adolf Hitler was born at Braynau, Austria, on this date in 1889. The New York Times obituary from May 2, 1945, (Hitler died April 30) is an excellent contemporary source. It’s worth reading the entire piece, but here are a few excerpts:

Like Lenin and Mussolini, Hitler came out of the blood and chaos of 1914-18, but of the three he was the strangest phenomenon. Lenin, while not know[n] to the general public, had for many years before the Russian Revolution occupied a prominent place as leader and theoretician, of the Bolshevist party. Mussolini was a widely known Socialist editor, orator and politician before making his bid for power. Hitler was nothing, and from nothing he became everything to most Germans.

Many who watched Hitler from the time when he first made his appearance on the political scene noticed his megalomania, his gambler’s readiness to take risks, his habit of wild exaggeration and inability to grasp the full implications of things he said and did. It was this failure to measure the significance of his words and deeds that was considered responsible for the coolness he displayed at critical moments after violent outbursts of thought and temper, although on occasions he was reported to fall into tears and hysterics.

The German dictator himself never married. At the age of 16 he suffered from lung trouble. On his mother’s side there were several eccentrics in the family. In general, the family showed definite tendencies to illness and mental instability.

Adolf Hitler was an ascetic, a celibate and a vegetarian and he neither smoked nor drank. From his early youth he was an eccentric. At the age of 16 he suffered from lung trouble and his passionate ambition to become a great historical figure impelled him to take good care of himself. Careful diet was his deliberately chosen method.

Though merciless to political opponents, he was kind to animals. A militarist, he was sickened by the sight of blood. A Wagnerian mystic, he loved spectacles of heroics and death. He was simple, Spartan and vain to the point of megalomania.

Oh good, another literary novel I can start

Four years after agreeing to sell his second novel to Random House for an advance of more than $8 million, Charles Frazier, the author of the best-selling “Cold Mountain,” has handed in the first half of his final manuscript, and is expected to turn in the remaining half next week.
…

The new novel, like “Cold Mountain,” takes place in the 19th-century American South and is the story of a young white man raised by Cherokee Indians who ends up representing them in Washington in their fight to preserve their land. According to Random House’s fall catalog, which goes out to booksellers this week, the new novel, “Thirteen Moons,” is also, like “Cold Mountain,” an epic love story.

The New York Times

NewMexiKen has tried to read Cold Mountain.

Commute sentence

Auto repair shop chain Midas has declared Dave Givens to be the ultimate road warrior, with a daily round trip of 372 miles, earning him the America’s Longest Commute award. Every day, Givens drives from his 7.5-acre ranch in Mariposa, CA to his electrical engineering job at Cisco Systems in San Jose, CA (Google Local says that it’s “only” 159 miles one way, but maybe Givens takes a few trips around the block at either end because he likes to drive so much). The stated reason for this is the enjoyment he receives from living in a rural area, although we’re not sure how much time is left after his seven-hour commute. All that time is spent in a 2005 Honda Accord, which already has nearly 75,000 miles on the clock after nine months of ownership.

Autoblog

‘Rounders’

ESPN’s Bill Simmons has a Curious Guy exchange with “screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien, or as [he likes] to call them, ‘The Guys Who Wrote Rounders.'” Link is to the second of two-parts, the part that deals primarily with the movie.

Hot Springs National Park (Arkansas)

Hot Springs

Congress established Hot Springs Reservation on April 20, 1832 to protect hot springs flowing from the western slope of Hot Springs Mountain. This makes it the oldest area currently in the National Park System–40 years older than Yellowstone National Park. People have used the hot spring water in therapeutic baths for more than two hundred years to treat rheumatism and other ailments. The reservation eventually developed into a well-known resort nicknamed “The American Spa” because it attracted not only the wealthy but also indigent health seekers from around the world. Today the park protects eight historic bathhouses with the former luxurious Fordyce Bathhouse housing the park visitor center. The entire “Bathhouse Row” area is a National Historic Landmark District that contains the grandest collection of bathhouses of its kind in North America. By protecting the 47 hot springs and their watershed, the National Park Service continues to provide visitors with historic leisure activities such as hiking, picnicking, and scenic drives. Hot Springs Reservation became Hot Springs National Park by a Congressional name change on March 4, 1921.

Hot Springs National Park

Ron Howard’s brother

… Clint is 47 today.

Clint Howard has appeared in more than 150 films and television programs including many of his brother’s films — Cocoon and Apollo 13 come to mind. Many will remember Clint as the 8-year-old kid in the TV series Gentle Ben. Howard was also the voice of Roo in the Disney Winnie the Pooh films, and more recently the voice of the balloon man in Curious George.

ClintandRon.jpg

The Howard brothers: Ron (right) and Ron’s brother
Photo from The Clint Howard Show

See NewMexiKen’s special Ron Howard’s Brother page.

The Worst President in History?

From Rolling Stone by Princeton professor Sean Wilentz. He begins: “George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace.”

Further along:

How does any president’s reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties — Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush — have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures — an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

Best line of the day, so far

“If unborn children really had rights, the infant daughter of the actress Katie Holmes and the temporarily-humanoid immortal starseed that styles itself ‘Tom Cruise’ would have been delivered by a lawyer. Breaking the absolute silence of the delivery room, the lawyer, on the infant’s behalf, would have sued for spiritual guardianship and demanded that all profits earned from sale of the child’s story and image– including ‘virtual’ profits in the form of publicity for its parents — be deposited in a trust account to fund its lifelong psychotherapy needs.”

Walter at Andrew Sullivan

Interesting, verrrry interesting

“Still, coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in women over 25, killing more than 250,000 a year in the United States. Before they reach their 60’s, women are less likely than men to develop heart problems, but once the disease does occur, women often fare worse than men.”

In Heart Disease, the Focus Shifts to Women

“But recent findings from Australia confirm that fish owners should nonetheless take care when cleaning an aquarium or otherwise interacting with finned friends or the water they swim in.”

Nemo Beware: Fish Tank Can Be a Haven for Salmonella

Giving Sacramento Good Reason to Have New Orleans on Its Mind

Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Mount:

Q. If you were making a bet, where would you say the next New Orleans will be?

A. I’d say the Sacramento area. The common denominator is concentrated urban development in the shadow of flooding and levees.

You have around 400,000 people at risk from flooding, and the number will grow in the next few years because of intense development.

The city’s main problem is that it is situated between the American and the Sacramento Rivers and at the base of the 12,000 foot Sierra Nevada range. Both rivers are prone to flooding. Additionally, powerful storms come in from the Pacific, slam against the mountains and dump heavy precipitation that ends up very quickly in the rivers.

Yet, around Sacramento — the capital of the seventh largest economy in the world — there’s intense building on the flood plains.

Twenty miles downstream is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a maze of leveed islands and channels that flow into San Francisco Bay. Because of past agricultural practices, the delta is sinking. Parts are 20 feet below sea level, lower than anything in New Orleans. Still, there are proposals to put up 130,000 new homes in the delta.

The New York Times

America’s Own Princess

By 1956, Grace Kelly was calling it quits after a movie-acting career of only five years—but what a career it was. Her 11 films included the 1952 classic High Noon, the 1956 musical High Society, and the Alfred Hitchcock-directed masterpieces Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. She had won an Oscar for her role in 1954’s The Country Girl—and all this before her twenty-seventh birthday. She was already Hollywood royalty, to be sure. But on April 19, 1956—50 years ago today—she became a true princess: Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco.

Continue reading about America’s Own Princess from American Heritage.