Author: NewMexiKen

Arches National Park (Utah)

… was redesignated from national monument to national park on this date in 1971.

Arches

For there is a cloud on my horizon. A small dark cloud no bigger than my hand. Its name is Progress.

The ease and relative freedom of this lovely job at Arches follow from the comparative absence of the motorized tourists, who stay away by the millions. And they stay away because of the unpaved entrance road, the unflushable toilets in the campgrounds, and the fact that most of them have never even heard of Arches National Monument.
…

The Master Plan has been fulfilled. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the “visitation,” as they call it, mounts ever upward [769,672 visitors in 2003].
…

Progress has come at last to Arches, after a million years of neglect. Industrial Tourism has arrived.

— Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968)

NewMexiKen photo, 2003

Top Ten Good Things About Being An 18-Year-Old Mayor

As noted on NewMexiKen yesterday, high school senior Michael Sessions was elected mayor of Hillsdale, Michigan. Here, from Letterman, the Top Ten Good Things About Being An 18-Year-Old Mayor:

10. “Parents try to tell me what to do, I raise their taxes”

9. “Every night, a different member of the town council does my homework”

8. “It’s every teen’s dream: The power to regulate zoning laws”

7. “Goodbye, education budget — Hello, brand new X-box”

6. “I got a call from Demi Moore”

5. “Trying to get the city hall on an episode of ‘MTV Cribs'”

4. “I don’t have to wait in line at Applebee’s anymore”

3. “School bullies now have to deal with the Feds”

2. “Only victory speech featuring the word ‘Dude'”

1. “It’s flattering when President Bush calls me for advice”

Krispy Kreme

Brad DeLong excerpts much of today’s Paul Krugman column on the Medicare drug plan including this, the ending.

It’s hard to believe that either the current Congressional leadership or the Mayberry Machiavellis in the White House would do any better on a second pass. We won’t have a drug benefit that works until we have politicians who want it to work.

Best suggestion of the day, so far

I think that the presidents of MIT, Cal Tech, the University of Chicago, and all the other major universities with high-priced investments in the physical sciences should call a press conference and announce, much to their regret, that they no longer will consider any application they receive from any high school student in the state of Kansas. Sadly, they should say, due to the state’s publicly expressed preference for mythology over science, they no longer can be confident that students from Kansas are sufficiently grounded in the basics for those students to succeed at these extremely competitive universities. Disappointed? Tough. Go to Bob Jones University.

Comment at Altercation

Veterans

24.5 million
The number of military veterans in the United States. To quote Functional Ambivalent, “Find one and say thanks.”

1.7 million
The number of veterans who are women.

9.5 million
The number of veterans who are age 65 or older.

2.3 million
The number of black veterans. Additionally, 1.1 million veterans are Hispanic; 276,000 are Asian; 185,000 are American Indian or Alaska native; and 25,000 are native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander.

8.2 million
Number of Vietnam-era veterans. More than 30 percent of all veterans served in Vietnam, the largest share of any period of service. The next largest share of wartime veterans, 3.9 million or fewer than 20 percent, served during World War II.

16%
Percentage of Persian Gulf War veterans who are women. In contrast, women account for 5 percent of World War II vets, 3 percent of Vietnam vets and 2 percent of Korean War vets.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Veterans should be proud. Today is one of the holidays Americans celebrate on a date, not a first or second or third or last Monday, or a fourth Friday. Puts it right up there with Christmas and Independence Day. November 11 is, of course, the date of the Armistice ending World War I. More below.

In honor of all veterans

Arizona Memorial

The Allied powers signed a cease-fire agreement with Germany at Rethondes, France on November 11, 1918, bringing World War I to a close. Between the wars, November 11 was commemorated as Armistice Day in the United States, Great Britain, and France. After World War II, the holiday was recognized as a day of tribute to veterans of both world wars. Beginning in 1954, the United States designated November 11 as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all U.S. wars.

Source: Library of Congress

Official Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Day website.

Photo taken by Donna at the Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

New Mexico 48th smartest state

Vermont was named the country’s smartest state in a report released last month. But the rankings wouldn’t make my list of the smartest studies.

The education rankings are determined by Morgan Quitno, a small publisher that specializes in compiling statistics from government and other sources about education, health and crime. The rankings are based on data about attendance, class size and other characteristics of primary and secondary public schools. Vermont ranks in the top 10 in nearly all of the 21 factors Morgan Quitno includes. The Associated Press, Barre Montpeiler (Vt.) Times Argus and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle were among those that covered the rankings. In its package on the list, Netscape News ran the subheadline, “The smartest state is Vermont. The dumbest is Arizona.”

The above from The Numbers Guy at the Wall Street Journal. He — Carl Bialik — disconstructs the study.

The rankings.

Last year New Mexico was last.

San Antonio Missions National Historical Park (Texas)

… was established on this date in 1978.

San Antonio Missions

Four Spanish frontier missions, part of a colonization system that stretched across the Spanish Southwest in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, are preserved here. They include Missions San Jose, San Juan, Espada, and Concepcion. The park, containing many cultural sites along with some natural areas, was established in 1978. The park covers about 819 acres.

National Park Service

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve (Louisiana)

… was authorized on this date in 1978.

Jean Lafitte NHP&P

Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve was established to preserve significant examples of the rich natural and cultural resources of Louisiana’s Mississippi Delta region. The park seeks to illustrate the influence of environment and history on the development of a unique regional culture.

The park consists of six physically separate sites and a park headquarters located in southeastern Louisiana. The sites in Lafayette, Thibodaux, and Eunice interpret the Acadian culture of the area. The Barataria Preserve (in Marrero) interprets the natural and cultural history of the uplands, swamps, and marshlands of the region. Six miles southeast of New Orleans is the Chalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery, site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans and the final resting place for soldiers from the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam. At 419 Decatur Street in the historic French Quarter is the park’s visitor center for New Orleans. This center interprets the history of New Orleans and the diverse cultures of Louisiana’s Mississippi Delta region. The Park Headquarters is located in New Orleans.

National Park Service

Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park (Hawaii)

… was established on this date in 1978.

Kaloko-Honokohau NHS

Established in 1978 for the preservation, protection and interpretation of traditional native Hawaiian activities and culture, Kaloko-Honokohau NHP is an 1160 acre park full of incredible cultural and historical significance. It is the site of an ancient Hawaiian settlement which encompasses portions of four different ahupua’a, or traditional sea to mountain land divisions. Resources include fishponds, kahua (house site platforms), ki’i pohaku (petroglyphs), holua (stone slide), and heiau (religious site).

National Park Service

Badlands National Park (South Dakota)

… was upgraded from national monument to national park on this date in 1978.

Badlands National Park

Located in southwestern South Dakota, Badlands National Park consists of 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the largest, protected mixed grass prairie in the United States. The Badlands Wilderness Area covers 64,000 acres and is the site of the reintroduction of the black-footed ferret, the most endangered land mammal in North America. The Stronghold Unit is co-managed with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and includes sites of 1890s Ghost Dances. Established as Badlands National Monument in 1939, the area was redesignated “National Park” in 1978. Over 11,000 years of human history pale to the ages old paleontological resources. Badlands National Park contains the world’s richest Oligocene epoch fossil beds, dating 23 to 35 million years old. Scientists can study the evolution of mammal species such as the horse, sheep, rhinoceros and pig in the Badlands formations.

National Park Service

Here’s Dave

  • Yesterday was election day. A lot was on the ballot here in New York City. Proposition 8 was on the ballot. That would have made it illegal to shoot someone in a library without a silencer.
  • Every election I go to the polling place with my Uncle Earl. He went into the booth first and I was in line behind him. I’m sitting there waiting and waiting and finally I hear, “The damn thing won’t flush!?”
  • Dick Cheney is currently out in South Dakota duck hunting. There were no ducks though. He blamed it on bad intelligence.

— David Letterman

Fantasyland

Freakonomics authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner question Why Vote? in The New York Times Magazine. Here’s one observation:

Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it’s fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you’d spend the winnings – much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.

It’s a fantasy all right.

Best line of the day, so far

“You might expect me to object to the 2 1/2 -ton Jeep Commander Limited 4×4 on the grounds of its in-the-teens fuel economy. You would be wrong. I wouldn’t drive this thing if gas were free and I got 72 virgins with every fill-up.”

— Dan Neil, Los Angeles Times, who also has this:

“The purpose of the Commander — based on the Grand Cherokee platform — is to give Jeep a seven-passenger vehicle, two more seats than the Grand Cherokee. Which raises the question: Who are these two additional people and what did they ever do to Jeep? The third-row seats, reached after a brief spelunker behind the folded second-row seats and onto the hump of the rear axle, are hilariously cramped and uncomfortable.”