Author: NewMexiKen

Montana

… entered the Union as the 41st state on this date in 1889.

According to the last estimate (2004), 926,865 people reside in Montana, the fourth largest state with 147,046 square miles. That’s just more than six people per square mile.

The state animal is the Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis); the state bird the Western Meadowlark; and the state fossil the Duck-billed dinosaur (Maiasaura Peeblesorum).

Officially Montana is the Treasure State but it’s also known as Big Sky Country.

The highest point is Granite Peak, 12,799 feet (3,901 meters) above sea level. The lowest elevation is 1,820 feet.

Computer error I’m sure

New Mexico has rebated some of this year’s income tax already to help pay our winter heating bills. (My amount is about one warm month’s payment, but welcome.)

However, the check managed to arrive with a spelling error in both my first name and my last name.

Think I can convince the bank it’s really me?

How about a couple Pretty Good Jokes

The following from A Prairie Home Companion:

A lady walks up to a pharmacist and asked to buy a bottle of cyanide.

The pharmacist said, “Why in the world do you need cyanide?”

The lady then explained she needed it to poison her husband.

The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he said, “Lord, have mercy — I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband! That against the law! I’ll lose my license, they’ll throw both of us in jail and all kinds of bad things will happen! Absolutely not, you can NOT have any cyanide!”

The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist’s wife. The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, “Well, now, you didn’t tell me you had a prescription?”

A penguin walks into a psychiatrist’s office wearing a santa suit.

The doc says “It’s clear. You have bipolar disorder.”

A blonde woman was speeding down the road in her little red sports car and was pulled over by a woman police officer who was also a blonde.

The blonde cop asked to see the blonde driver’s license. She dug through her purse and was getting progressively more agitated.

“What does it look like?” she finally asked.

The policewoman replied, “It’s square and it has your picture on it.”

The driver finally found a square mirror, looked at it and handed it to the policewoman.

“Here it is,” she said.

The blonde officer looked at the mirror, then handed it back saying, “Okay, you can go. I didn’t realize you were a cop.”

Restless Giant

Charles Peters likes Restless Giant: The United States From Watergate to Bush v. Gore.

This is first-rate history by a first-rate historian. Unlike many of his brethren, James T. Patterson can write, and he understands the value of vivid detail, using “Annie Hall,” “Norma Rae” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to help explain the women’s movement. What’s more, he can think, and he offers analysis and interpretation that is consistently sensible, if sometimes a trifle Panglossian.

The events he describes make up the history – social, economic and political – of the United States during the final quarter of the 20th century, from Richard Nixon’s departure from the White House and America’s departure from Vietnam to the bitter partisanship of Bill Clinton’s impeachment and Bush v. Gore.

In between, he recalls the Ford and Carter administrations and the Iranian hostage crisis, the rise of Ronald Reagan and the resurgence of American conservatism, Bush 1 and Iraq 1, and President Clinton’s economic triumphs and missed opportunities.

…

Still, despite its faults, “Restless Giant” is a splendid book that will come to be regarded as indispensable to everyone who cares about the history of this country.

Windows Live

Though still in beta, Microsoft’s new Windows Live start page looks promising, especially for Hotmail users. As with Google and My Yahoo!, (or for that matter My MSN) the page lets you add elements such as news headlines, weather, RSS feeds, etc.

Windows Live will also list your incoming email messages right on the front page.

And you can move items around the page with your mouse.

Pride, Prejudice, Insurance

Paul Krugman takes Congressman Matt Santos’ side in the health-care debate:

Let’s start with the fact that America’s health care system spends more, for worse results, than that of any other advanced country.

In 2002 the United States spent $5,267 per person on health care. Canada spent $2,931; Germany spent $2,817; Britain spent only $2,160. Yet the United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than any of these countries.

But don’t people in other countries sometimes find it hard to get medical treatment? Yes, sometimes – but so do Americans. No, Virginia, many Americans can’t count on ready access to high-quality medical care.

…

The U.S. system is much more bureaucratic, with much higher administrative costs, than those of other countries, because private insurers and other players work hard at trying not to pay for medical care. And our fragmented system is unable to bargain with drug companies and other suppliers for lower prices.

…

One of these days we’ll realize that our semiprivatized system isn’t just unfair, it’s far less efficient than a straightforward system of guaranteed health insurance.

Pot called ‘murder weed’ in 1937

An intriguing article in the Rocky Mountain News tells briefly the history of marijuana and the law.

On Oct. 2, 1937, in the somewhat shady Lexington Apartments at 1200 California St. in Denver, Samuel R. Caldwell became the first person in the United States to be arrested on a marijuana charge. Caldwell, a 58-year-old unemployed laborer moonlighting as a dealer, was nailed by the FBI and Denver police for peddling two marijuana cigarettes to one Moses Baca, 26.

If you’re wondering why it took the U.S. government so long to bust a pot dealer, it’s because until the Marijuana Stamp Act was passed – on you guessed it, Oct. 2, 1937 – cannabis wasn’t illegal. Certainly, it had been vilified in newspapers with headlines such as “Murder Weed Found Up and Down Coast: Deadly Marijuana Plant Ready for Harvest That Means Enslavement of California Children.”

Harry J. Anslinger, for example, commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was a vociferous foe of cannabis. In his book, Assassin of Youth, he labeled marijuana “dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake,” and anguished, “How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries, and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year, especially among the young, can be only conjectured.”

Indeed. Texas cops insisted that because it fueled a “lust for blood” and imbued its imbibers with “superhuman strength,” pot was the catalyst for unspeakably violent crimes.
…

Much more real was the racism that anchored some of the original hysteria surrounding cannabis. At least that’s a contention of John C. McWilliams, a professor of history at Penn State University specializing in 20th century social-political American history and drug policy, who has written a book on Anslinger.

“Marijuana was associated with black jazz musicians and Mexicans in border towns – clearly racist stuff,” said McWilliams, who says Anslinger’s files are chock full of letters linking marijuana and minorities.

In fact, he cites part of a 1936 correspondence from Floyd Baskett, editor of the Daily Courier in Alamosa.

“I wish I could show you what a small marijuana cigarette does to one of our degenerate, Spanish-speaking residents,” Baskett wrote to Anslinger.

The country simply replaced its first foolish prohibition with another that just as stupidly criminalized human behavior. This new “prohibition” — which originated out of much of the same small-minded, bigoted thinking as the prohibition of alcohol — has never been repealed like the one on alcohol was.

It took a Constitutional amendment (18th) to make alcohol illegal. No such amendment exists for cannabis.

Act like a pirate day

The 10,000-ton Seabourn Spirit came under fire at about 5.30am [Saturday]. The pirates approached in 25ft speedboats and shot at the ship with the grenade launcher and machineguns. Terrified passengers watched as the pirates tried to get aboard — only to be repelled by crew members who set off what one described as a “loud bang”.

The Bahamas-registered ship was carrying 302 passengers and crew, but there was only one casualty: a crew member suffered minor injuries from flying debris.
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The Seabourn Spirit, owned by the cruise giant Carnival, was on its way from Alexandria in Egypt to the Kenyan port of Mombasa. It offers the height of luxury, with huge suites, marble bathrooms and more than one crew member to each passenger. Cruises aboard the liner cost from £6,100 for a 16-day sail to £18,270 for an epic 46-day voyage.

The liner used a sonic blaster to foil the pirates. Developed by American forces to deter small boats from attacking warships, the non-lethal weapon sends out high-powered air vibrations that blow assailants off their feet. The equipment, about the size of a satellite dish, is rigged to the side of the ship.

The waters off the Somali coast are among the most dangerous in the world. They are occasionally patrolled by a combined taskforce, known as CTF150, currently under the command of the French navy.

Somalia has had no recognised government since 1991. There have been at least 23 pirate attacks off its coast this year alone.

— Sunday Times (UK)

Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site (Alabama)

… was authorized on this date in 1998.

The sky was the limit–literally! After the successful flight of Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903, Americans of all races were stung by the love bug of flight. In the late 1920’s and 1930’s African Americans in great numbers began their love affair with flight. They learned the basics of flight on either American soil or abroad, and created their own flight schools and clubs.

This love affair was kindled in the late 1930’s, when the United States Government created Civilian Pilot Training Programs throughout the country to provide a surplus of pilots in case of a national emergency. African Americans were included in these programs, although trained at segregated facilities.

Their love of flight became fully ablaze amid World War II as political pressure challenged the government to expand the role of African Americans in the military. The Army Air Corps was the first agency to accept the challenge. Tuskegee Institute, a small black college in Alabama, was selected to host the “military experiment” to train African American pilots and support staff–thus the Tuskegee Airmen were born.

The outstanding performance of the over 15,000 men and women who shared the “Tuskegee Experience” from 1942-1946, is immortalized at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site.

Source: National Park Service

A literature lover strikes it rich

Thar’s gold — and books! — in them there hills. From an article in the Los Angeles Times:

No less a personage than Richard Booth, who turned Hay-on-Wye in Wales into the world’s first book town, had given his blessing to the Gold Cities Book Town Assn., placing the neighboring Gold Rush hamlets of Grass Valley and Nevada City, Calif., in the company of such other bookish venues as Larry McMurtry’s Archer City, Texas; Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia; St.-Pierre-de-Clages, Switzerland; and Fjaerland, Norway.

Not only was the Gold Country a lot closer than Fjaerland, but it also promised to be at least as pleasant, an area whose relaxed ambience, crisp mountain air and splendid scenery had turned writers including poet Gary Snyder into permanent residents. The location, a couple of hours north of Sacramento, proved as charming as the wine country without the hurly-burly of the consumption industry.

Key quote: Biblioholism — “the habitual longing to purchase, read, store, admire and consume books in excess.”

NewMexiKen pleads guilty, as charged.

Sounds like he belongs in Congress

Freeway graffiti is a serious problem, and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman has the solution: Cut off the thumbs of those who deface freeways on television. “You know, we have a beautiful highway landscaping redevelopment in our downtown. We have desert tortoises and beautiful paintings of flora and fauna. These punks come along and deface it,” griped Goodman, on the Nevada Newsmakers television show. “I’m saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb,” the mayor added, also noting that, “In the old days in France, they had beheading of people who commit heinous crimes.” Another panelist on the show, state university system regent Howard Rosenberg, countered that Goodman’s suggestion is not a viable solution, and encouraged the mayor to “use his head for something other than a hat rack.”

Wired News: Furthermore

Why not make those apprehended clean off the graffiti?

Ouch!

Gasoline has become cheaper — NewMexiKen paid just $2.099 for regular Friday in Virginia. (So why is it 40-50 cents more a gallon in New Mexico?)

However, and it’s a big however, my October natural gas bill has arrived. I used 2.6 percent less gas than a year ago, but the cost was 50 percent more.

With gasoline cheaper and natural gas up, when it gets really cold I may have to sit in the heated car in the garage.

Maybe Gehrig wasn’t ‘the luckiest man on the face of the Earth’

Forget that bromide that an agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

MastoNet is putting Lou Gehrig’s 1935 signed Yankees contract — that earned him $31,000 — up for auction.

Minimum bid: $42,120.

— Sideline Chatter

Of course, Gehrig didn’t say he was the luckiest man. He said he “considered himself” the luckiest man, kind of the anti-Terrell Owens.

Friends of Abe

Eminent Civil War historian James McPherson reviews Doris Kearns Goodwin’s newest book: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. McPherson begins:

More books about Abraham Lincoln line the shelves of libraries than about any other American. Can there be anything new to say about our 16th president? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Having previously offered fresh insights into Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an elegant, incisive study of Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet that will appeal to experts as well as to those whose knowledge of Lincoln is an amalgam of high school history and popular mythology.

I Dive Now Deep Into the Functional Ambivalent Archives…

Functional Ambivalent exhumes an entry from a couple of years ago that argues that we (collectively) vote for the presidential candidate we perceive would be the most fun to party with.

It’s an interesting assessment, worth your time. For NewMexiKen’s part I am trying to see how it correlates with the evangelical vote going primarily to Bush. We know from studies that many evangelicals are hypocrites (higher divorce rates, higher alcoholism rates, etc., than the population at large), but it would seem they would vote against the party-boy even so. (Hypocrites being in fact hypocrites). Or am I overlooking the “saved” aspect? Does F/A need to update his theory so that a “born-again” (i.e., found the lord) party-boy is the even more popular choice?

Not for me, I hasten to add. Not expecting to party with the president, I prefer competence.

Influenza trivia

NewMexiKen began reading John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza yesterday on the plane from Baltimore to Albuquerque. The book describes the 1918 influenza outbreak worldwide — the deadliest plague in history. 170 pages in and it’s been mostly background — not uninteresting, but a little tedious and repetitious. I’ll sum up and make a recommendation regarding the book when I’m done.

In the meanwhile, some interesting tidbits:

It was called the Spanish flu because Spain wasn’t fighting in World War I and therefore its press remained free to print what was going on. Elsewhere, including particularly the U.S., the press was censored and did not report the epidemic at first.

The influenza began, more than likely, in Haskell, Kansas (west of Dodge City), in March 1918. It spread rapidly because of crowded wartime military camps and troop movements. It was worldwide by fall.

Pandemic is the term for a worldwide epidemic. An epidemic is local or national.

Influenza (a virus) mutates rapidly, even within a host cell. In humans influenza is exclusively a respiratory disease, though it may indirectly affect many parts of the body (headaches, sore muscles). The stomach “flu” we get is not influenza.

And, as you all know, antibiotics have no effect whatsover on viruses. They work exclusively on bacteria.

400 years ago

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, celebrating the day in 1605 when police foiled the so-called Gunpowder Plot by seizing Guy Fawkes before he could blow up the English Parliament. Fawkes was a British soldier who had converted to Roman Catholicism at a time when the British government was making it a crime to be a Catholic. Catholic masses were held in secret chapels, clergy had to go into hiding and sleep in closets, and families that refused to attend Protestant mass suffered crippling fines.

Fawkes became so disgusted by British Protestantism that he left England and enlisted in the Spanish Army in the Netherlands. He became known as a soldier of great courage. At that time, a small group of Catholics were secretly planning to assassinate the Protestant King James I, and they enlisted Fawkes to help them execute the plot, and he agreed.

They rented a cellar under the Parliament building, and Fawkes planted more than 20 barrels of gunpowder there, in the hopes of blowing up the king. The rest of their plan included an uprising in the Midlands, and the crowning of a puppet queen, the king’s young daughter Elizabeth. But an anonymous tip gave up the plot to the authorities and Guy Fawkes was caught red-handed, ready to light the fuse. He managed to withstand torture on the rack for two days before giving up the names of his co-conspirators.

For Catholics, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot only worsened their oppression. They could no longer practice law, serve as officers in the army or navy, nor vote in local or parliamentary elections. Some British authorities even suggested that Catholics should have to wear red hats in public.

November 5th came to be celebrated as a holiday in England and in the early American colonies. People would build bonfires, light off fireworks, and burn Guy Fawkes in effigy. But even in England, the holiday has been overshadowed by the American import of Halloween.

Source: The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

You can hear Garrison Keillor relate the above and more by clicking here.

Hall of fame and Oscar-winner day

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ike Turner is 74 today.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Art Garfunkel is 64.

Sam Shepard is 62. An inductee as a playwright into the Theatre Hall of Fame, Shepard was also nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for playing Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

Bill Walton is 53. He’s in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Kellen Winslow is 48. He’s a football hall-of-famer.

Tatum O’Neal is 42. Miss O’Neal won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at age 10 for Paper Moon.

Vivien Leigh (who died at age 53) was born on this date in 1913. Miss Leigh was selected as Best Actress twice — for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (opposite Clark Gable) and for Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (opposite Marlon Brando).

And Leonard Franklin Slye was born in Cincinnati on this date in 1911. As Roy Rogers he’s an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the only person to be elected twice — as the King of the Cowboys and as a founder of the Sons of the Pioneers (“Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Cool Water”). Rogers died in 1998.

Maybe it is a melting pot

A story in the Los Angeles Times tells of a radio station that has hit the ratings jackpot with a bilingual format. “It’s puro Spanglish at this L.A. radio estación, where reggaeton is king.”

Sometimes the station’s back-and-forth by its disc jockeys comes much faster, even sentence-to-sentence or phrase-by-phrase. It’s not unusual to hear callers intermix their languages as they tell a joke, ask a question or relate a personal story.

“It’s like being at home,” said Soto, who listens to the station usually in his car. “You get English and Spanish and you don’t notice the difference. It all blends together.”

¡Viva America!

KXOL

More from Dowd

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Men are simply not biologically suited to hold higher office. The Bush administration has proved that once and for all.

These guys can’t be bothered to run the country. They are too obsessed with frivolous stuff, like fashion and whether they look fat. They are catty, sometimes even sabotaging their closest friends. They are deceitful minxes and malicious gossips.

And heaven knows they’re bad at math. Otherwise, W. would realize that a 60 percent disapproval rating, or worse, means that most Americans would like some fresh blood in the administration.
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Women are affected by hormones only at times. Vice [President Cheney]’s hormones rage every day.

Maureen Dowd