“They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free—anytime, anywhere in the world.”
Author: NewMexiKen
Today, we’ll try to speak so slowly that even professors can follow
The Daily Howler takes on the liberals.
Update: Thursday’s Daily Howler is worth reading as well.
Two of country music’s immortals
… were born on this date.
Jimmie Rodgers, considered the “Father of Country Music,” was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on September 8, 1897. He died from TB in 1933. Jimmie Rodgers was the first person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame and among the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Patsy Cline, the most popular female country singer in recording history, was born in Winchester, Virginia, on September 8, 1932. She died in a plane crash in 1963. Patsy Cline is an inductee of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
A lot, that’s for sure
Seemed time to bring this back. First posted by NewMexiKen February 23, 2004, and originally found at Wampum.
Enough!
Read a report from The Salt Lake Tribune on what’s happening to firefighters.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.
Fifty (THAT’S 50!) firefighters were “ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.”
“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” Arthur C. Clarke
iPod User Guide
One of the most popular searches at NewMexiKen is for the “iPod User’s Guide,” which is no more than a link to the real thing — The Mossberg Solution’s iPod User’s Guide.
America’s Finest News Source
There is nothing funny about the disaster that Katrina left in its wake.
Even so, The Onion has some perceptive headlines:
God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again
Officials Uncertain Whether To Save Or Shoot Victims
Nation’s Politicians Applaud Great Job They’re Doing
Area Man Drives Food There His Goddamned Self
Bush: ‘It Has Been Brought To My Attention That There Was Recently A Bad Storm’
Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq
Government Relief Workers Mosey In To Help
Refugees Moved From Sewage-Contaminated Superdome To Hellhole Of Houston
White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters
Another Saints Season Ruined Before It Begins
Shrimp Joint Now Shrimp Habitat
Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance
Apple Unveils Cellphone Music Player
Also on Wednesday, Apple announced a new iPod, the iPod Nano: “1,000 songs in your pocket and impossibly small,” Jobs said. It’s “thinner than a No. 2 pencil,” he said to oohs and aahs from the audience. “The iPod Nano is 80 percent smaller than the original iPod.”
iPod Nano comes in two models–the 4GB iPod nano holds up to 1,000 songs and the 2GB iPod Nano holds up to 500 songs. They cost about $249 and $199, respectively.
“iPod Nano is the biggest revolution since the original iPod,” Jobs added. “iPod nano is a full-featured iPod in an impossibly small size, and it’s going to change the rules for the entire portable music market.”
The iPod Nano features the same 30-pin dock connector as the iPod and iPod Mini, allowing it to work with a wide range of more than 1,000 accessories developed for iPod, including home stereo speakers and iPod car adapters.
— Excerpted from an article in The New York Times
Update September 8: Walter Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal just loves the new iPod Nano.
The whole world can talk for free
“Skype is a little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype. It’s free and easy to download and use, and works with most computers.”
Last week, The New York Times had an article on internet telephony including this paragraph:
Skype (www.skype.com), a popular VoIP network based in Luxembourg, has had 51 million users register worldwide since its inception, with five million in the United States and an average of three million users logged on at any one time. To make free calls to other PC’s, users simply download the Skype software from the Web site; the PC receiving the Skype call also has to be connected to the Skype network. For PC-to-phone calling, the company has added SkypeOut and SkypeIn. With SkypeOut, introduced last year and now having more than two million users, PC’s with the Skype software are able to call conventional phones. Minutes are purchased in advance, and the price depends on the destination. Calls within the continental United States, for example, are 2.1 cents a minute; calls to New Delhi are 15.4 cents; São Paulo, Brazil, 2.5 cents; and Beijing, 2.1 cents.
So, you can see, Skype is free only between Skype users. Still …
[Update: NewMexiKen tested Skype and found the quality and ease of use to be superb.]
Radio ratings
Ever been curious how the radio station you listen to does in the ratings? Radio & Records posts the Arbitron ratings for every market on a continuing basis. The charts include the call letters (but not the frequency), the owner, the format and the rating for the past several quarters. Of course, NPR and other non-commercial stations aren’t included.
The rating shown by Radio & Records is—I believe—the average number of persons over age 12 that listened to a radio station for at least five minutes during one quarter hour at some point during the day. This is expressed as a percentage of the total possible audience for that market.
Rhapsody in Blue
A fascinating article about whale watching off Santa Barbara from the Los Angeles Times. It concludes:
But a blue it is.
A huge blue. Gently swimming across our bow, it breaks the surface with a head like a Titan rocket. Then more of it follows, and more still. And yet more after that — a vast, undulating grain silo moving through the choppy water, its glistening topside and the great bulk beneath reflecting the daylight and illuminating the dark sea.
Rhythmically, it blows, replenishing oxygen after diving and taking a throat-engorging gulp of krill. The ph-whoosh of its twin blowholes could be the sound of an air leak from deep inside the membrane of the planet.
Then something unexpected happens. The experts and whale-watching veterans start dancing on tiptoes.
Regal and blasé, blues almost always ignore a boat nearby. They surface, breathe for a few moments and vanish again for 10 or 15 minutes at a spell. But this one turns to investigate, slow and wide, in the way a ship would change course.
Now, it is heading for us. Its colossal torso carves waves through the Pacific and churns up a trail of backwash. Gouts of steam jet skyward as it exhales.
The Condor Express is 75 feet long. This whale figures to be 80 feet, some aboard estimate 90 — almost the length of a basketball court.
It comes alongside the starboard rail. A couple of car-lengths pass before a bulging, monstrous eye, still below the surface, glides by. For just an instant, the world of water meets the world above. All those years ago, the grade-school teacher was wrong, wonderfully wrong. The living proof fills you with joy.
Through Shakespeare, Lessons of Life and Devotion
The 49-year-old teacher, Rafe Esquith, is a genius and saint. The American education system would do well to imitate him. These children’s lives have been changed by their year with this man. And it is not all about Elizabethan drama.
Mr. Esquith’s pupils play guitar. They name the six states that border Idaho. They discuss whether Huckleberry Finn would be doing the right thing to turn in his friend Jim, a runaway slave. They visit the Lincoln Memorial on a class trip.
— From an article in The New York Times
Mr. Esquith and his students are the subject of a PBS program: The Hobart Shakespeareans, which aired Tuesday evening. NewMexiKen did not see the program, but did see an item about the class previously. The fifth-grade teacher is remarkable. Though from a “poor and dangerous part of Los Angeles,” he gives his students gift certificates to Barnes & Noble for Christmas and takes them to UCLA to show them “This is the life you’re working for.”
But it’s the students who are truly remarkable.
This Song Goes Out to You, Big Easy
For hundreds of thousands of listeners of about 225 public radio stations and XM Satellite Radio, Mr. Spitzer and “American Routes” have served since 1997 as the voice of New Orleans, right down to the theme music by Professor Longhair. Now, working with a patchwork staff from a borrowed studio in Lafayette, La., Mr. Spitzer is assembling this weekend’s show, titled “After the Storm.” (… A list of other stations is at www.americanroutes.org.) “I wanted it to be music of reflection and solace and also hope.”
— From an article in The New York Times
S.E. Hinton
The author of The Outsiders, That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumble Fish is profiled in The New York Times. S.E. — it stands for Susan Eloise — published The Outsiders when she was 17. She’s lived all her 55± years in Tulsa.
It’s the birthday
… of Elizabeth, born in 1533. The queen Virginia is named after.
… of Grandma Moses (Anna Mary Robertson), born in 1860. She lived until 1961, but only started painting at age 76.
… of David Packard, born in 1912. The “P” in HP.
… of tenor saxaphonist Theodore Rollins. Sonny is 75 today.
… of Buddy Holly, born in 1936. Just 22 when the music died.
… of Gloria Gaynor, born in 1949. Still surviving.
… of Julie Kavner, born in 1951. NewMexiKen liked her best in Awakenings, but we all know her as the voice of Marge Simpson.
That little actor fellow
Functional Ambivalent tells his Bob Denver story. It’s a good one that fans of Denver will particularly appreciate.
Oops!
Add geography to the growing list of FEMA fumbles.
A South Carolina health official said his colleagues scrambled Tuesday when FEMA gave only a half-hour notice to prepare for the arrival of a plane carrying as many as 180 evacuees to Charleston.
But the plane, instead, landed in Charleston, West Virginia, 400 miles away.
— CNN.com
Link via FunctionalAmbivalent
Native ingenuity
“Scholars have known for decades that Native American societies were in many ways more technologically sophisticated than their European counterparts. So why do we still find this fact so surprising?”
An article by Charles Mann at The Boston Globe explains.
Mann is the author of the well-received new book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
The eyes have it
The Albuquerque Tribune has a great photo with the following caption:
Mr. McMillen, who declined to give his first name, peers at would-be rescuers from his third-floor apartment in a New Orleans housing project. Although reluctant, he was eventually persuaded to leave the flooded area by a rescue crew that included Bernalillo County deputies and Fire Department personnel. McMillen didn’t know what year it was and thought Gerald Ford was still president. He was evacuated, along with three other stranded residents of the building, by airboat on Monday. (Photo by Craig Fritz/Tribune)
Magic Marker Strategy
Instead of relying on a “Good Samaritan” policy – the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors – the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.
“It’s cold, but it’s effective,” Mr. Judkins explained.
— John Tierney in The New York Times.
The revolver was covered with a handkerchief
On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Leon Czolgosz, a Polish citizen associated with the Anarchist movement, fired two shots at McKinley who was greeting the public in a receiving line.
McKinley died September 14, whispering the words of his favorite hymn, “Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee.” He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.
— Source Library of Congress.
Czolgosz died in the electric chair.
See The New York Times articles from the day of the shooting.
Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
… was born on this date in 1757. Not yet 20, Lafayette was commissioned a major general in the American army by the Continental Congress. (It helped that he served without pay and funded his own troops.)
Lafayette was wounded at Brandywine, served Washington loyally at Valley Forge and during an attempted cabal against the Commander-in-Chief, saved American troops and supplies in Rhode Island, was instrumental in obtaining vital French assistance from Louis XVI, and was on the field at Yorktown in 1781 when the British surrendered. By then Lafayette was 24.
Dumb ass
Wonkette reports on Chertoff’s reading habits:
On Sunday, DHS chief Michael Chertoff told “Meet the Press’s” Tim Russert that one reason for the delay in getting federal aid to Katrina victims was that “everyone” thought the crisis had passed when the storm left: “I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.'” We’re wondering what papers the Chertoff household gets, because these are the headlines that greeted most people Tuesday morning:
See more headlines from the Newseum.
They saw it coming
Brian Williams reports this weather message he received last Sunday (upon arriving in Baton Rouge to begin coverage for NBC):
URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005…DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED…
HURRICANE KATRINA…A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH…RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER.
AT LEAST HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED…ALL WINDOWS WILL BE BLOWN OUT.
THE VAST MAJORITY…OF TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
It seems to NewMexiKen that mobilization should have begun THEN.
Ticket to ride
I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a “ticket.” Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn’t believe these people were afraid they’d be charged for a rescue.
Perhaps they will be.