Author: NewMexiKen

John Heisman

… was born on this date in 1869. He’s the guy the trophy is named after. The following milestones in Heisman’s career are excerpted from his 1936 obituary in The New York Times and put here in chronological order.

In 1888 he was a member of the Brown football team, and in 1889 of the Pennsylvania varsity football eleven.

He began his coaching career in 1892 at Oberlin College. In 1893 he coached all sports at the University of Akron. From 1895 to 1900 he coached football and baseball at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, and from 1900 to 1904 was coach at Clemson College.

From 1904 to 1920 he coached football, baseball and basketball at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed the famous “Golden Tornado” teams.

In 1908 he was director of athletics at the Atlanta Athletic Club. From 1910 to 1914 he was president of the Atlanta Baseball Association. In 1920 he coached football at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1923 filled the same position at Washington and Jefferson College. From 1924 to 1927 he was head football coach and director of athletics at Rice Institute, Houston, Texas.

In 1923 and 1924 he was president of the American Football Coaches Association.

For the last six years [before 1936] he had been physical director of the Downtown Athletic Club.

Bumper stickers

Jesus is Coming. Look Busy!
I’m your honor student’s real father
186,000 miles per second — it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law!
Horn broken — watch for finger
Nuke the Unborn Gay Whales

(First posted by NewMexiKen two years ago today.)

Open Office

Don’t have or don’t want Microsoft Office. How about OpenOffice 2.0?

OpenOffice is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

NewMexiKen has played around a little today with OpenOffice 2.0, which has word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database functions. It’s too soon for me to decide if it could replace Microsoft Office, but it’s possible and it’s free. Takes up less than half the space on the hard drive, too.

One nice feature in OpenOffice that MS Office doesn’t have yet — save your file as an Adobe PDF.

Download it here.

Woman of Mass Destruction

Judy [Miller] told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover “the same thing I’ve always covered – threats to our country.” If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.

Maureen Dowd in the concluding paragraph of today’s column

Other quotables from the column:

“I have often wondered what Waugh or Thackeray would have made of the Fourth Estate’s Becky Sharp.”

“But investigative reporting is not stenography.”

Whom would you rather be? (II)

Reecie is right, there were too few women in the first “Whom would you rather be?” So, here’s a few more, with a higher percentage without a Y chromosome.

Whom would you rather be?

  1. Eleanor Roosevelt or Jackie Kennedy
  2. General Grant or General Lee
  3. Elizabeth I or Elizabeth II
  4. Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein
  5. Mary Kate or Ashley
  6. Jed Bartlet or Mackenzie Allen
  7. Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday
  8. Marianne or Elinor

A grimness unparalleled in recent times

It was on this date in 1962, that President Kennedy told the nation about the Soviet missiles in Cuba. From The New York Times report on the speech:

President Kennedy imposed a naval and air “quarantine” tonight on the shipment of offensive military equipment to Cuba.

In a speech of extraordinary gravity, he told the American people that the Soviet Union, contrary to promises, was building offensive missiles and bomber bases in Cuba. He said the bases could handle missiles carrying nuclear warheads up to 2,000 miles.

Thus a critical moment in the cold war was at hand tonight. The President had decided on a direct confrontation with–and challenge to–the power of the Soviet Union.

*****

All this the President recited in an 18-minute radio and television address of a grimness unparalleled in recent times. He read the words rapidly, with little emotion, until he came to the peroration–a warning to Americans of the dangers ahead.

“Let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out,” the President said. “No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”

“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are–but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world,” he added.

It was as close as we’ve ever come to nuclear war.

Are they trying to set her up?

At one point, Miers described her service on the Dallas City Council in 1989. When the city was sued on allegations that it violated the Voting Rights Act, she said, “the council had to be sure to comply with the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause.”

But the Supreme Court repeatedly has said the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” does not mean that city councils or state legislatures must have the same proportion of blacks, Latinos and Asians as the voting population.

“That’s a terrible answer. There is no proportional representation requirement under the equal protection clause,” said New York University law professor Burt Neuborne, a voting rights expert. “If a first-year law student wrote that and submitted it in class, I would send it back and say it was unacceptable.”

Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, also an expert on voting rights, said she was surprised the White House did not check Miers’ questionnaire before sending it to the Senate.

“Are they trying to set her up? Any halfway competent junior lawyer could have checked the questionnaire and said it cannot go out like that. I find it shocking,” she said.

Los Angeles Times

Wow!

Dione and Saturn

Speeding toward pale, icy Dione, Cassini’s view is enriched by the tranquil gold and blue hues of Saturn in the distance. The horizontal stripes near the bottom of the image are Saturn’s rings. The spacecraft was nearly in the plane of the rings when the images were taken, thinning them by perspective and masking their awesome scale. The thin, curving shadows of the C ring and part of the B ring adorn the northern latitudes visible here, a reminder of the rings’ grandeur.

Image taken October 11, 2005.

Source: NASA

Top Ten Perks Of Getting Into The World Series

10. “Another two weeks of wearing a cup and showering with guys”

9. “Get to visit exotic, far-off destinations like Illinois”

8. “More time to discuss with team doctor if Cialis is right for me”

7. “With the discount, beer is only 18 bucks”

6. “It’s fine and all, but the good news is, I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico”

5. “Certificate good for one free groin pull”

4. “I get to appear on my favorite Late Night program — ‘The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'”

3. “World Series MVP gets to throw switch at Saddam’s execution”

2. “Clemens used his AARP card to get us cheap hotel rooms”

1. “If Steinbrenner wants me next year, my price is now a billion dollars”

Late Show with David Letterman

Best paragraph(s) of the day, so far

If the Goverment is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.

And they do this so that they don’t have to chip in on gas.

— Lance Mannion

Best line of the day, so far (vintage 1788)

“He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”

— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 76 (1788)

Obviously Hamilton never met W.

Pop Quiz

Whiskey Bar has a copy of Harriet’s re-do. Here’s the first question and answer:

Q: Please describe the importance of the U.S. Constitution in our system of government.

A: The Constitution is a very important document which plays a very important role in our system of government. The importance of the Constitution cannot be overstated, because the role it plays is so important. I am certain that as an Associate Justice — and I plan to be the best ever! — I will have many opportunities to consider the very important role that the Constitution plays in our system of government. However, as I am still reading the document, I feel it would be inappropriate for me to comment further at this time.

Read the rest, it’s the best satire ever!!!