Author: NewMexiKen

It’s a Bad Week to be a Crony

Well, with the news that Julie Meyers, the Bush administration’s nominee for head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (a part of the Department of Homeland Security), is also the niece of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the wife of the DHS’s chief of staff, we finally understand the White House’s promise that their contribution to architecture of federal government would be a bureaucracy-free model of efficiency. They got rid of a lot of paperwork by dispensing with resumes.

— Wonkette

Fort Caroline National Memorial

was authorized on this date in 1950. According to the National Park Service:

Fort Caroline

Fort Caroline National Memorial was created to memorialize the Sixteenth Century French effort to establish a permanent colony in Florida. After initial exploration in 1562, the French established “la Caroline” in June 1564. Spanish forces arrived 15 months later. Marching north from their newly established beachhead (San Agustin) the Spanish captured la Caroline in September, 1565. Nothing remains of the original Fort de la Caroline; a near full-scale rendering of the fort, together with exhibits in the visitor center, provide information on the history of the French colony, their interaction with the native Timucua, and the colonists’ brief struggle for survival.

Whoa! You mean the French and Spanish were here even before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock?

Assateague Island National Seashore

… was established on this date 40 years ago. The National Park Service tells us:

Assateague Island

Storm tossed seas, as well as gentle breezes shape Assateague Island. This barrier island is a tale of constant movement and change.

Bands of wild horses freely roam amongst plants and native animals that have adapted to a life of sand, salt and wind. Special thickened leaves and odd shapes reveal the plant world’s successful struggle here. Ghost crabs buried in the cool beach sand and tree swallows plucking bayberries on their southward migration offer glimpses of the animal world’s connection to Assateague.

Drawn to the Lightning in New Mexico

NewMexiKen first posted this item two years ago.

Drawn to the Lightning in New Mexico

… “The Lightning Field” was ready to offer up its magic.

Seen from the porch, the rods marched away in phalanxes to the south. As the sun sank over our right shoulders, the metal spikes started to glow in the golden light. Their pointed tips took fire first, like candles, but soon the spikes themselves lighted up, top to bottom, as if glowing from within.

“This is like a sea, and these ships are moving in the distance” one of us said. “They look like centurions coming at you,” said another. “They look like those golden soldiers from Xian, like grave markers, almost like raindrops, like the Roman armies.”

For me, it was as if a piece of formal music, a Bach invention, perhaps, had taken material form and was playing before my eyes, not my ears. “You can make up stories for every row,” one of us observed, and she was right.

As an almost full moon rose, we sat on the porch and sipped our wine, captivated by what lay before us.

It’s the birthday

Bill Murray is 55 today. Nominated for an Oscar for Lost in Translation, NewMexiKen still thinks Murray’s best effort was as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day.

Stephen King is 58. The Writer’s Almanac tells us about King:

It’s the birthday of the novelist Stephen King, born in Portland, Maine (1947). His father was a merchant seaman who left the family when Stephen was just two. He has no memories of his father, but one day he found a whole box full of his father’s science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, and that box of his father’s books inspired him to start writing horror stories.

He studied creative writing in college. He tried to write some literary stories, but he found that writing about giant man-eating rats was a lot more fun. He worked at a gas station after college and at a laundromat. His wife worked at Dunkin’ Donuts. He did his writing in the furnace room of his trailer home. He did the first drafts typed single-spaced and no margins to save paper.

He was working as a teacher when he wrote his first novel about a weird high school girl with psychic powers named Carrie White. He gave up on the book at one point and threw it in the trash. His wife rescued it. Carrie was published in 1973. The hard cover didn’t sell well, but then his agent called to say that the paperback rights had sold for $400,000.

September 21

409 years ago today (1596) Spain named Juan de Oñate governor of the colony of New Mexico.

221 years ago today (1784) the nation’s first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, began publication.

Gas balloon

AAA, which claims to survey credit card transactions at 60,000 service stations and base its average on the last price paid each day, says regular gasoline has dropped 27 cents a gallon since its record high September 5. (Just imagine, that was Labor Day.)

The national average for regular is currently $2.788.

A billion here, a billion there

During the Federal fiscal year which ends in ten days, we taxpayers will have paid about $350 billion dollars in interest. That is, nearly twice as much as the estimated cost to repair the damage from Katrina.

About 75% of the principal (that is, the national debt on which we paid the $350 billion) resulted during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. The other 25% came about during the other 212 years of our Republic.

Burden the country with debt; fill agencies with hacks. A perfect way to convince voters that government is the problem.

Government is an institution, not a moral issue. It can be made to do whatever we have the will to make it do.

Or not.

Evolution — it’s the law

Nobel laureate James D. Watson, co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, on “Why Darwin’s still a scientific hotshot.” Watson concludes:

Today, there is a concerted effort by some religion-dominated scientists to treat evolution as a theory, as though that in some way diminishes its authority and power as an explanation of how the world works. Fortunately, the courts are exercising their wisdom and rejecting arguments of equal time for creationist beliefs in schools. We can only hope that a time will soon come when rational, skeptical thought renders the creationists’ stories as what they are — myths.

One of the greatest gifts science has brought to the world is continuing elimination of the supernatural, and it was a lesson that my father passed on to me, that knowledge liberates mankind from superstition. We can live our lives without the constant fear that we have offended this or that deity who must be placated by incantation or sacrifice, or that we are at the mercy of devils or the Fates. With increasing knowledge, the intellectual darkness that surrounds us is illuminated and we learn more of the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

Let us not beat about the bush — the common assumption that evolution through natural selection is a “theory” in the same way as string theory is a theory is wrong. Evolution is a law (with several components) that is as well substantiated as any other natural law, whether the law of gravity, the laws of motion or Avogadro’s law. Evolution is a fact, disputed only by those who choose to ignore the evidence, put their common sense on hold and believe instead that unchanging knowledge and wisdom can be reached only by revelation.

Credit card details found on hotel key

This from Boing Boing:

A geeky biz traveller decided to find out what info in on the mag-stripe on a hotel key (an item that is often left behind on checkout) — turns out that some hotel keys have credit card numbers, names and addresses.

What’s scary is how easy it is for even a novice to steal this information. He says he bought a $39 card reader at a local retail store and plugged it into his laptop’s USB port. Now when he scans a card, the device inputs the data directly into an open Excel or Word document.
I asked Wallace how often he finds his personal data on the cards. “Certain chains have that information [on their cards]. I’ve noticed it on three different chains,” he says. While he declined to name specific hotels, he says the most recent incident occurred in June at a resort. In that hotel the magnetic strip yielded his credit card information, street address and full name.

Link

As Its Coffers Swell, Red Cross Is Criticized on Gulf Coast Response

“The Red Cross has been my biggest disappointment,” said Tim Kellar, the administrator of Hancock County, Miss. “I held it in such high esteem until we were in the time of need. It was nonexistent.”

Even some volunteers are disgusted. “I will never, ever wear the Red Cross vest again,” said Betty Brunner, who started volunteering in 1969 when Hurricane Camille destroyed her house but quit last week over the organization’s response in Hancock County.

Two days after Hurricane Katrina struck, the Red Cross had only one shelter in the county, and it was far from some of the most populated coastal towns. It had no shelter in New Orleans.

The New York Times

Key quote:

But time and again in past disasters, the Red Cross has raised more money than it has needed for relief. It has also been less than clear in the past about where its money goes, and it has rarely shared its money with other organizations that tackle long-term needs of victims.

Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood

An article in today’s New York Times tells us that:

Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

Much attention has been focused on career women who leave the work force to rear children. What seems to be changing is that while many women in college two or three decades ago expected to have full-time careers, their daughters, while still in college, say they have already decided to suspend or end their careers when they have children.

An interesting article.

An observation

You know how very old people sometimes wear that style of eye-glasses that look almost like goggles; not only thick lenses, but the wrap-around thick frames? Well, it has dawned on NewMexiKen that they don’t choose that style simply because they need them to see better. No, I think it’s because that style of glasses is just easier to find when you leave your glasses laying around the house.

At least that’s what occurred to me when I was looking for my wireless frame glasses, which turned out to be well camoflauged by a placemat.

Free at last

Another highly regarded internet browser, Opera is now free and without ads. Downloads quickly and installs cleanly.

The most full-featured Internet power tool on the market, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera’s groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of your Opera browser with a few clicks of the mouse.

Imported my Firefox bookmarks easily enough.

Fall out

In case you want to synchronize your calendars, the equinox is Thursday at 22:23 Universal Time. That’s the fall equinox in the northern hemisphere; spring in the southern.

Subtract 4 hours for Eastern Daylight Time, 5 for Central, 6 for Mountain and 7 for Pacific.

Or, in other words, fall begins at 4:23 PM Mountain Daylight Time on Thursday, September 22.

Holy s***!

Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore:

Yet researchers who study the evolution of language and the psychology of swearing say that they have no idea what mystic model of linguistic gentility the critics might have in mind. Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, some variant on comedian George Carlin’s famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

Key quote: “Even the quintessential Good Book abounds in naughty passages…”

Key discovery: “The investigators have found, among other things, that men generally curse more than women, unless said women are in a sorority, and that university provosts swear more than librarians or the staff members of the university day care center.”

For those who must, here’s Carlin and his seven words you can’t say on television. [Note: Audio file. May be offensive to some.]