Author: NewMexiKen

Airline humor

The flight attendant did a nice job with some old material on Southwest Airlines today.

“The smoking section is on the wing. If you can light ’em, you can smoke ’em.”

“If you’re travelling with a child — or someone who acts like a child — ”

“We’ll be coming through the cabin one more time,
We’ll be coming through the cabin one more time,
Oh, we’ll be coming through the cabin,
We’ll be coming through the cabin,
We’ll be coming through the cabin one more time.”

Sung well to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain” with several verses. This one got him a round of applause, which I’m certain would have been a standing ovation if the seatbelt sign hadn’t been on.

Pretended to spill a tray of drinks. The cups were empty.

And that old chestnut:
“I want to tell you we have a first time flyer celebrating their 100th birthday on board today. Please, be sure to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to the captain on your way out.”

Probably true

“Iowa Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, has written to the oil companies asking them to donate a portion of their nearly $100 billion dollars in profits to help low income people buy heating oil this winter. The oil companies responded by offering millions of dollars for someone to run against Grassley in next the Republican primary.”

— Jay Leno

Here’s Jay

  • Today, President Bush outlined the U.S. government’s plan to fight a “bird flu outbreak”. Apparently the plan is to attack the flu over there in Iraq, before it attacks us here.
  • President Bush and Dick Cheney both made speeches about Iraq this week. That’s how you know things are going bad when the White House wants to get our minds back on Iraq?
  • President Bush was asked how he came up with a conservative like Alito. Bush said he got the idea over the weekend while turning the clocks back.
  • Of course, the big question now is, what did President Bush know and when was it explained to him?

North and South

… Dakota were admitted to the Union as the 39th and 40th states on this date in 1889.

North Dakota is the 19th largest state; 70,704 square miles.

The capital of North Dakota is Bismarck.

North Dakota is the least visited state of the 50.

The highest point is 3,506 feet above sea level.

The North Dakota state bird: Western Meadowlark
State flower: Wild Prairie Rose “Rosa arkansana”
State tree: American Elm “Ulmus americana”

South Dakota is the 17th largest state; 77,121 square miles.

The capital of South Dakota is Pierre.

The South Dakota state flower: Pasque
State insect: Honey bee (Apis Mellifera L.)
State tree: Black Hills spruce
State animal: Coyote

Update: The highest point in South Dakota is indeed Harney Peak, 7,242 feet.

Best line of the day, so far

“Mr. Leader,” one stunned journalist observed, “I don’t remember you being so exercised over something before.”

“You’ve never seen me in heart surgery,” the senator, a transplant specialist, replied.

Dr. Frist’s patients — not to mention the Tennessee medical licensing board — may be surprised to learn that he had operating-room rage.

— Dana Milbank describing Senator/Doctor Frist’s reaction to the Senate Rule 21 session Tuesday

Howdy Doody Time

Joel Achenbach on what the time change really means.

As you know, the best thing about the autumnal time change, when we fall back one hour, is that it becomes plausible to go to bed at 9:30 p.m. You don’t have to be embarrassed. You don’t have to stare at the clock and wish that it were later and that you could go to sleep without feeling like a complete zero. Because it’s really 10:30. Also you can eat lunch at 11 and have cocktails at 4. But the next morning, the time reverts to what it says on the clock, and you can stay in bed an extra hour. The extra hour has achieved a kind of duality: It’s there or not there depending upon your mood.

When I’m president, the clocks will move forward and backward by one hour at my whim. Sometimes two hours, or three.

There are more things he’ll change when he’s president.

Best line(s) of the day, so far

“No convictions? That’s, ahem, is not something the Majority Leader may be able to say about himself much longer.”

– Whiskey Bar, responding to Senator Frist’s complaint about the Democrats, “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas.”

Also from Billmon (Whiskey Bar): “Outside of a nursery school, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard such a chorus of crying and whining from a bunch of babies before. ”

New study generates a buzz

Researchers asked two sets of subjects to take IQ tests. One group had to check e-mail and respond to instant messages while taking the test. The second group just sat down and did the test without distractions. Surprise, surprise, the distracted group didn’t do as well on the test—10 points worse than the control group. In similar testing conditions, people intoxicated by marijuana had scores 8 points lower. So researchers drew attention to their study by noting that multitasking is worse for your ability to concentrate than getting stoned.

– Discover Magazine

Testing Alito On Speech

Functional Ambivalent says freedom of speech and not abortion is the real test for Alito. An interesting and different look.

NewMexiKen wonders if the fourth and fifth amendments won’t be on the line with this Court even more than the first amendment.

Colorado Luis meanwhile points out that his own Senator Allard critized the Miers nomination because she was from Texas and thus not enough of a westerner to be knowledgeable about water issues that might come before the Supremes. Allard has not made a similar comment about Alito, despite the fact that this nominee is from New Jersey.

Best line of the day, so far

“Here we have a judicial nominee who is somewhere to the right of Darth Vader (at least on the gun issue), who backs strip searches for little 10-year-old girls, who believes the word “women” is a contraction of ‘wombs for men,’ and who would probably approve of a corporate employment policy that required black men to dress up in jockey costumes and stand outside on the lawn holding little lanterns.”

Whiskey Bar

The Spirit of Tombstone

Just in time for Halloween, a good travel article about Tombstone, Arizona, from the Los Angeles Times.

They say ghosts walk the streets of this dusty desert town. It’s easy to understand why.

With a name like Tombstone and a frenzied history of bloodshed, this outpost near the southwestern edge of the United States has a reputation that’s — well, haunted. And it doesn’t help to see a dozen gunslingers die each day in the town’s sandy red dirt.

The fights are staged, but Tombstone’s checkered past is real, I learned when I spent a few days here earlier this month searching for ghosts. Tombstone, which advertises itself as “The Town Too Tough to Die,” surprised me. So did the spirits of its past.

Ehrich Weiss

… better known to us as Harry Houdini, died on this date — Halloween — in 1926.

But during a stay in Montreal in October, Houdini was assaulted by a young man in his dressing room. The stomach blows — which he had invited as a test of his legendary strength — aggravated a case of appendicitis, and he soon became seriously ill. In a final display of stamina and willpower, Houdini performed the next day and again in Detroit. His appendix was removed on October 25th, but the delay had allowed an infection to set in, and he died in Detroit on Halloween.

Source: The American Experience, which has a brief biography.

Nevada

Nevada was admitted to the Union as the 36th state on this date in 1864.

In Spanish “nevada” means snow-capped.

The Nevada state bird: Mountain Bluebird
State animal: Desert Bighorn Sheep
State reptile: Desert Tortoise

Nevada is the seventh largest state: 110,540 square miles. It has 17 counties.

The fourth estate

“And as for the media: these days, there is much harsh, justified criticism of the failure of major news organizations, this one included, to exert due diligence on rationales for the war. But the failures that made the long nightmare possible began much earlier, during the weeks after 9/11, when the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were.

“So the long nightmare won’t really be over until journalists ask themselves: what did we know, when did we know it, and why didn’t we tell the public?”

— Paul Krugman