Author: NewMexiKen

Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson.jpg… 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:

Author of the
Declaration
of
American Independence
of the
Statute of Virginia
for
Religious Freedom
and Father of the
University of Virginia.

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.”

Draft of DeclarationIt 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 above taken by NewMexiKen, 2001.
 
 

New CPR is saving more lives

A report from Arizona Daily Star:

Paramedics using the new “user-friendly” CPR developed at the University of Arizona are reporting a dramatic jump in the survival of cardiac-arrest victims.

For the first time since UA heart scientists launched an all-out effort to get the new CPR adopted worldwide, a formal study of paramedics using the technique has proved it saves significantly more lives — nearly triple the survival rate.

Unveiled three years ago in Tucson, the new CPR calls for hard and fast chest compressions as the first and only priority to revive any adult who has collapsed from cardiac arrest.

When done by untrained bystanders, only chest compressions — at least 100 a minute — are required, with no need for mouth-to-mouth breathing that often confuses and discourages people from trying CPR.

When done by trained professionals, such as paramedics and doctors, the technique calls for continuous chest compressions first, without interruption.

And will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States

TrumanOath.jpg

Harry Truman took the oath of office at 7:09 PM (Eastern War Time) on this date 61 ago. Franklin Roosevelt had died just over two hours earlier at his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, the “Little White House.” When called at the Capitol and told he should rush to the White House, Truman is reported to have exclaimed, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson.” Once at the White House, Truman was told of FDR’s death by Mrs. Roosevelt.

The following day, Friday the 13th, is when Truman told several reporters: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when you told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Information and quotations from David McCullough’s outstanding biography of Truman. Photo from the National Archives via the White House web site.

First shot

Fort Sumter — a man-made island some four miles from Charleston, South Carolina — was a symbol well beyond its strategic value in the tensions leading up to the Civil War. Since December 1860, South Carolina officials had been demanding the surrender of the fort as state property. To Northerners, surrendering the fort meant surrendering the very idea of the Union.

When Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, he was informed that the small garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies. By April, he ordered a relief expedition and informed the Governor of South Carolina that it would be “with provisions only,” not men, arms or ammunition. This put the next move into the hands of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis ordered that the fort be reduced before the supplies arrived.

The Confederacy opened fire at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861. The Union garrison surrendered after 33 hours.

It’s the birthday

… of Clarence ‘Lumpy’ Rutherford. Actor Frank Bank of Leave It to Beaver is 64.

… of Ed O’Neill. He’s 60. O’Neill was nominated for two Golden Globes for playing shoe salesman Al Bundy on Married … with Children.

… of David Letterman. He’s 59, but a part of him seemingly never left the 8th grade.

… of Tom Clancy. He’s 59. His first novel, The Hunt for Red October was published in 1984.

… of Scott Turow. He’s 57. 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 56.

… of Andy Garcia. He’s 50. Garcia was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in The Godfather: Part III.

… of Vince Gill. He’s 49.

Arches National Park (Utah)

… was proclaimed Arches National Monument on this date in 1929.

Delicate Arch

Arches National Park preserves over two thousand natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch, in addition to a variety of unique geological resources and formations. In some areas, faulting has exposed millions of years of geologic history. The extraordinary features of the park, including balanced rocks, fins and pinnacles, are highlighted by a striking environment of contrasting colors, landforms and textures.

Arches National Park

Bob Dylan

What possesses people to spend $60 or $100 on a concert ticket and leave before the encore? A couple of years ago, I noticed this phenomenon at a James Taylor concert. Hello, you folks that are streaming out, he hasn’t sung “Sweet Baby James” yet. Why would you come to see James Taylor if you don’t want to wait and hear “Sweet Baby James”?

Same thing last night with Bob Dylan. People leaving by the scores, while the rest of us are screaming and clapping to coax an encore. And what were the encore songs — “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower.”

Now I’m sorry, I know not everyone gets into it like I can, but seeing Bob Dylan perform “Like A Rolling Stone” has got to be the equivalent of seeing “Hamlet” or “King Lear” with Shakespeare in the cast. Great as it sounds, hard as it rocks, the moment transcends even the music.

But not for some, more intent on beating the traffic.

One can’t actually say Dylan sounded great — he’s never “sounded” great — but he sounded like Bob Dylan and the songs were great and the music rocked and that seemed to please most of us. It’s a testament to his staying power that he could open with the 2000 Oscar-winner “Things Have Changed” and follow it with a classic from 1964 “The Times They Are A Changin’.” It was all music, no chatter other than introducing the band, no playfulness, no recognition that it was the 45th anniversary (to the day) of his New York debut. Ever a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Ever a legend.

Albuquerque Set List

1. Things Have Changed
2. The Times They Are A-Changin’
3. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum
4. To Ramona
5. Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again
6. Love Sick
7. I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
8. Ballad of A Thin Man
9. I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)
10. Cold Irons Bound
11. Lay Lady Lay
12. Cat’s in the Well

Encore
13. Like A Rolling Stone
14. All Along the Watchtower

Best line of the night

“I wonder how many of these folks will stay around for Bob Dylan once Merle Haggard is done.”

Old guy behind me at Bob Dylan concert. Haggard was the opening act.

Answer: Most of them, though not the man that asked it — who said he’d had open-heart surgery two weeks ago. He was gone after just a few Dylan numbers.

Haggard, who turned 69 last week, sounded great, but the crowd never seemed with him — and he with it. A good 25-30 percent were still arriving when he began, and I noticed, for example, the couple to the left of me and the two women in front of me seldom applauded his numbers. I mean, my god folks, this is a legend; he’s performed at the White House. The Country Music Hall of Fame says, “Merle Ronald Haggard remains, with the arguable exception of Hank Williams, the single most influential singer-songwriter in country music history.”

Haggard performed a short set of about 40-45 minutes. The Stangers (Haggard’s band) was hot. The crowd got into it a little with “Silver Wings” and “I Think I’ll Just Sit Here and Drink.” Near the end, Haggard started into his signature song, “Okie from Muskogee,” then quit after a few bars saying, “Oh, I forgot this is a rock and roll crowd, you don’t want to hear that.” He closed out instead with “The Fightin’ Side of Me.” No encore.

It’s an odd pairing when you think about it — a rock legend and a country legend. NewMexiKen thought it was great, but too many people raised on format radio aren’t into eclectic I guess.

Mutually Assured Dementia

Even by the corrupt and debased standards of our times, this is a remarkable thing. The U.S. government is planning aggressive nuclear war (the neocons can give it whatever doublespeak name they like, but it is what it is); those plans have been described in some detail in a major magazine and on the front page of the Washington Post; the most the President of the United States is willing to say is that the reports are “speculative” (which is not a synonym for “untrue”) and yet as I write these words the lead story on the CNN web site is:

ABC pushes online TV envelope
ABC is going to offer online streams of some of its most popular television shows, including “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost,” for free the day after they first air on broadcast TV.

It appears our long national journey towards complete idiocy is over. We’ve arrived.

Whiskey Bar

Can You Say, ‘Bienvenidos’?

Eugene Robinson writing in The Washington Post:

There are economists, I realize, who argue that illegal immigration — mostly from Mexico — has depressed wages for unskilled labor, to the detriment of low-income, native-born African Americans and whites.

Other economists disagree, and in any case the effect is somewhere between negligible and small. There’s no reason employers can’t be required to pay a living wage to every janitor, whether his name is John or Juan.

But I don’t think the immigration debate is about economics anyway. It’s about culture and it’s about fear.

Among other things, it’s about this voice-mail message: “Para continuar en español, oprima el numero 2. To continue in Spanish, press 2.”

Robinson notes that California and Texas are states without a majority population and that New York, Arizona and Florida are soon to follow. He neglects to include New Mexico and Hawaii, states already without a majority.

The first hybrids

On April 11, 1900, the U.S. Navy acquired its first submarine, a 53-foot craft designed by Irish immigrant John P. Holland. Propelled by gasoline while on the surface and by electricity when submerged, the Holland served as a blueprint for modern submarine design. By the eve of World War I, Holland and Holland-inspired vessels were a part of large naval fleets throughout the world.

Designs for underwater boats date back to the 1500s. In the nineteenth century, the first truly practical submarines began to appear, with a period of intense development occurring at the end of the century as nations strived to establish their sea power. Seizing upon the latest military technology, the United States used subs in both the War of 1812 and the Civil War. It was not until World War I, however, that submarines emerged as major weapons.

Library of Congress

The Long-Distance Journey of a Fast-Food Order

From an article in The New York Times:

SANTA MARIA, Calif. — Like many American teenagers, Julissa Vargas, 17, has a minimum-wage job in the fast-food industry — but hers has an unusual geographic reach.

“Would you like your Coke and orange juice medium or large?” Ms. Vargas said into her headset to an unseen woman who was ordering breakfast from a drive-through line. She did not neglect the small details —”You Must Ask for Condiments,” a sign next to her computer terminal instructs — and wished the woman a wonderful day.

What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas’s workplace here on California’s central coast. She was at a McDonald’s in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.

Ms. Vargas works not in a restaurant but in a busy call center in this town, 150 miles from Los Angeles. She and as many as 35 others take orders remotely from 40 McDonald’s outlets around the country. The orders are then sent back to the restaurants by Internet, to be filled a few yards from where they were placed.

The people behind this setup expect it to save just a few seconds on each order. But that can add up to extra sales over the course of a busy day at the drive-through.

The internet changes everything.

A touch of hyperbole

From an article in Sunday’s New York Times:

A few years ago, USA Today called Sedona the most beautiful place in America. At sundown, that doesn’t begin to cover it. And it’s not just the views. There’s a vibe in the air, something not quite audible, a kind of metaphysical dog whistle that calls people out to have a look around and to try to feel something that, if you’re not a committed New-Age pilgrim, is hard to put into words. Nowhere else in this country does a natural setting feel so much like the inside of a soaring pantheistic cathedral.

“Nowhere else.” Really? Not in Yosemite Valley? Among the Redwoods? Deep in the Grand Canyon? High in the Rockies?

Sedona is beautiful, stunning really, but come on.

Tierra y libertad

“There have been men who, dying, have become stronger. I can think of many of them — Benito Juárez, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ — Perhaps it might be that way with me.”

Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary, who became stronger on this date in 1919, when he was lured into a trap and killed by one of Carranza’s generals.

A problem, but not the problem we’re led to believe

Wash Park Prophet takes a look at some numbers and, guess what, here’s another myth challenged:

While foreign born people make up 9.7% of the population of Colorado, foreign born people make up only 6.6% of the prison population, meaning that foreign born people in Colorado are about a third less likely to be convicted of felonies in Colorado than persons born in the United States.

Why I might put Windows on my Mac

For Microsoft Money. While there are a few other Windows programs I would add * — I mean as long as it’s there — Money is the only one I “need.”

My iMac came with Quicken for Mac and I’ve converted all this year’s financial data (an unpleasant process). But Quicken is an ugly program on Windows; on Mac it is an ugly, difficult, counter-intuitive program.

But I hate paying $150 or more for Windows so I can use a $30 program, Money.

* Microsoft MapPoint, because it permits trip planning rather than just routing. Microsoft Access, because I haven’t figured out how to convert my existing databases (CDs, books) to a Mac program. And Wilson Turbo Texas Hold’em, because it’s smarter than the other poker programs (like iPoker for Mac), if homely.

World-wide quality of living survey

Zurich ranks as the world’s top city for quality of living, according to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The city scores 108.2 and is only marginally ahead of Geneva, which scores 108.1, while Vancouver follows in third place with a score of 107.7. In contrast, Baghdad is the lowest ranking city in the survey, scoring just 14.5.

Honolulu, the highest ranking city in the U.S., drops two positions to 27th with a score of 103.3. San Francisco remains at 28th position and scores 103.2. Boston, Washington, Chicago and Portland follow in positions 36, 41, 41 and 43 respectively (scores 101.9, 100.4, 100.4 and 100.3) while Houston remains the lowest ranking city in the U.S. at position 68 (score 95.4). Overall, U.S. cities continue to slip slightly or remain stable in the rankings, except Chicago which has moved up 11 places due to decreased crime rates.

The analysis is part of an annual World-wide Quality of Living Survey, covering more than 350 cities, to help governments and multinational companies place employees on international assignments. Each city is based on an evaluation of 39 criteria, including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport, and other public services. Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, which has an index score of 100.

Download rankings (pdf).