Author: NewMexiKen

Best line of the day, so far

“In an exclusive poll I once conducted among fellow [airline] passengers, I found that 80 percent favored forcing Mr. Reid to sit next to the metal detector, helping small children put their sneakers back on.”

John Tierney in The New York Times in a column arguing that Internet hackers deserve a punishment worse than death. Mr. Reid, of course, is the would-be shoe bomber that brought about the removal of shoes in airport security lines.

Under cover

A CIA manager once told me about life under cover. He went by his regular name, lived in a regular neighborhood, etc., but as far as anyone knew he worked for the Navy. In fact, he told me, one time his car broke down and his neighbor insisted on giving him a ride to work at the Washington Navy Yard (in southeast Washington, D.C.). The neighbor kept insisting and he finally had to accept.

After being left off at the Navy Yard the CIA employee had to figure how to get back across the Potomac to Virginia to his “real” office. He was further away than when he started.

In other instances we were often amused when we held a meeting that included CIA or other “under cover” agency personnel. The sign-in sheet consisted of names like Cindy D., Bob L., Frank C., etc.

Lastly, my particular favorite under cover story. After visiting a “secret” location for business and being well treated, I composed a short thank you note to the man in charge. I addressed it to him by name. I ran the draft past my staff member who was liaison with that agency. The staff member came back, saying the note was great except that the man’s name was classified because he worked undercover. So we sent the thank you without the name.

His name was John Smith.

Satellite Radio Is Music to Fans’ Ears

An article in today’s New York Times describes the appeal of Major League Baseball broadcasts on XM radio.

“Because of the length of the season, the pace of the games and the soap-opera quality of baseball, listeners get to know announcers very well and become very close to them,” Gary Cohen, the radio voice of the Mets, said. “But what I like best about XM is that you can also listen to other broadcasters. You can get a point of comparison.”

Harry Kalas has been calling Philadelphia Phillies games in his unique baritone for 34 years, but only now can he be heard all the way to California. Jerry Coleman has been tripping over his words in San Diego for 34 years and can finally be laughed about in the far Northeast. But the main attraction seems to be Scully, the Dodgers’ Hall of Fame announcer who is generating better reviews on XM than Beyoncé. Fifty years after Scully narrated Brooklyn’s only World Series championship, New Yorkers can again listen to his lyrical broadcasts of Dodgers home games.

Stocking up

Following up on the Cuban cigar item below, here’s what Pierre Salinger wrote about the Cuban cigar embargo:

Shortly after I entered the White House in 1961, a series of dramatic events occurred. In April 1961, the United States went through the disastrous error of the Bay of Pigs, in which Cuban exiles with the help of the U. S. government tried to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Several months later, the president called me into his office in the early evening.

“Pierre, I need some help,” he said solemnly.

“I’ll be glad to do anything I can, Mr. President,” I replied.

“I need a lot of cigars.”

“How many, Mr. President?”

“About 1,000 Petit Upmanns.”

I shuddered a bit, although I kept my reaction to myself. “And, when do you need them, Mr. President?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

I walked out of the office wondering if I would succeed. But since I was now a solid Cuban cigar smoker, I knew a lot of stores, and I worked on the problem late into the evening.

The next morning, I walked into my White House office at about 8 a.m., and the direct line from the president’s office was already ringing. He asked me to come in immediately.

“How did you do, Pierre?” he asked, as I walked through the door.

“Very well,” I answered. In fact, I’d gotten 1,200 cigars. Kennedy smiled, and opened up his desk. He took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.

The good life

From the article mentioned in the next entry:

Just this last year [Stewart Udall] rafted down the Colorado River from Lees Ferry — named for Udall’s grandfather — and, with a grandson, trekked from the floor of the Grand Canyon up Bright Angel Trail some 7,000 feet to the South Rim. His family had cautioned against it, and he rejected a Park Service offer of a mule. “They wouldn’t have liked it if I hadn’t made it,” he recounted, “but what a way to go.” Once at the South Rim, Udall marched straight to the bar at the Tovar Lodge and ordered a martini.

Wilderness

A profile of The West’s defender of wild places, Stewart Udall, from the Los Angeles Times. It begins:

On a late spring day, with streambeds roaring and the sun breaking through the thin mountain air, Stewart Udall has just crossed a calf-deep creek, rushing with late-season snowmelt from the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico. His corduroy pants are drenched at the cuffs, his sneakers muddied and soaked. Udall is on the Rio en Medio Trail, a popular and well-watered seven-mile hike a good half hour out of Santa Fe.

Udall, who turned 85 in January, has slowed down in recent years. Age, the death of his wife and a degenerative eye condition have contributed, but once on the trail, he gamely sloshes ahead, grasping drooping branches and, if needed, an outstretched hand.

“This is good wilderness,” he says, his somber voice lightening up. “Any time you have to struggle a bit to cross a stream you’ve got good wilderness.”

Good wilderness. That’s what Udall can boast about. As secretary of the Interior during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations — and one of the architects of the Wilderness Act — he is perhaps the politician most responsible for the public lands you hike, the rivers you kayak, the mountains you climb and the wilderness you contemplate. And it is this legacy that he is most fearful will be lost.

41! Amazing

Bobby Abreu of the Phillies his 41 homeruns tonight to win the Major League Baseball All-Star Homerun Derby. His first round was 24, breaking the old single round record of 15. His total of 41 beat the old record of 27.

Abreu is from Venezuela. Each of the eight players tonight represented their native country.

Smoke ’em if You Got ’em

Saddam Hussein isn’t thrilled about being cooped up in jail — who would be? — but at least the deposed Iraqi dictator isn’t being denied one of his supreme pleasures: a fine Havana cigar. Saddam receives his cigars from his daughter, Raghad, who sends them through the International Red Cross. The irony, of course, is that Saddam can smoke like a chimney while incarcerated at a U.S. military base but he’d be busted for hawking one on the streets of New York, since the economic embargo against Cuba makes selling the cigars illegal on American soil.

Wired News

Ray gun

Rich Garcia is proud of his two-second record.

That’s how long the test subject, a Kirtland Air Force Research Laboratory spokesman, lasted when an ultraviolet beam boiled the water molecules in the top 1/64th layer of his skin.

It’s not the top time – that’s more like three seconds – but it was a good record for withstanding the pain of a new nonlethal weapon being developed by his lab, the Department of Defense, Raytheon and Sandia National Laboratories, Garcia said.

“It’s excruciating,” Garcia said. “For a moment you feel heat; then it gets unbearably hot. I did it four times. The first time, I jumped out of the beam almost immediately, but then I thought to myself, `You wimp. It doesn’t damage the skin.’ So on the second, third and fourth time, I lasted a little longer. The fourth was my record: two seconds. Nobody made it past three.”

The weapon, cryptically called the Active Denial System, beams ultraviolet waves at a target, penetrating only the top layer of skin, which conveniently houses most of the body’s pain receptors, said Steve Scott, a Sandia engineer.

“It’s been described to me as wrapping your body around a hot light bulb,” Scott said. “The reaction is very similar to the involuntary response you have when you touch a hot object. You want to get out of the beam fast.”

It leaves no permanent skin damage, and the pain goes away almost immediately after the subject steps out of the beam, Scott said.

The Albuquerque Tribune

I know God has a plan and all …

but why is this kind of thing a part of it?

17-month-oldAuthorities planned an autopsy today for a man who fired repeatedly at neighbors and police, and for his 17-month-old daughter whom he used as a shield before police stormed his apartment.

… early reports indicated that the suspect “continuously had that baby in front of him while he was firing at officers.”

Los Angeles Times

Guns, Germs and Steel

PBS begins a three-part series on Guns Germs, & Steel this evening.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, the Rhone Poulenc Science Book Prize, along with three other international literary prizes, Guns, Germs and Steel has been translated into 25 languages and has sold millions of copies around the world.

Dennis is “sinned” spelled backwards

Just hours after Hurricane Dennis made landfall across the Florida Panhandle yesterday, Governor Jeb Bush asked a state prosecutor to investigate possible links between the category 3 storm and Michael Schiavo. In a statement to reporters, Mr. Bush noted that the issue of Mr. Schiavo’s involvement in the strongest hurricane to develop this early in the Atlantic storm season “remains unsettled.”

The Swift Report: Jeb Bush: Hurricane Dennis Could Be Fault of Michael Schiavo

Seems right to me

Joshua Marshall on Karl Rove’s attorney:

Yep, you heard that right. Luskin got paid more than $500,000 of his attorney’s fees in gold bars from his client who was trying to appeal his conviction on charges that he laundered drug money through precious metals dealers. Who woulda thought that was drug money?

Luskin insisted that he “never have, and never would, knowingly accept a fee that was the proceeds of illegal activities.”

But when federal prosecutors finally got a chance to depose Luskin and Saccoccia’s other lawyers, they found that their lawyers’ fees had come in forms “such as gold bars, cash that was dropped off at hotels and trunks of cars, and money transfers from Swiss bank accounts.”

Eventually, in 1998, Luskin came to a settlement with the government in which he agreed to cough up $245,000 of the money he’d gotten from Saccoccia.

Talking Points Memo

Fernando and Isabel

Isabel of Castile was born in 1451. Fernando of Aragon was born in 1452. He was Isabel’s second cousin and it took a dispensation from the Pope for them to be married in October 1469 (with the not yet 17-year-old Fernando’s two illegitimate children present).

Isabel succeeded her half-brother Enrique IV as Queen of Castile in 1475. Fernando succeeded his father as King of Aragon in 1477. By signed agreement they reigned jointly.

The King and Queen of Aragon and Castile committed to support Columbus’ expedition on April 17, 1492. The cost was about 2 million maravedis; a good royal wedding in those days cost about 30 times as much. Isabel did not have to hock the crown jewels to fund Columbus’ trip, though she did offer to do so. (In fact, some were already hocked to pay for the war against the Muslims.)

About half the money needed for Columbus was collected from the profit on religious indulgences in just one province. The Nina (Girl) and Pinta (Painted Lady) were provided by the town of Palos as a penalty owed the crown for a crime. The rest was raised by Columbus himself and he bought the largest of the three ships, the Santa Maria, which was shipwrecked off Haiti on Christmas Eve 1492.

Source: Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Emprire from Columbus to Magellan

Today, July 10

On this date in 1913, the hottest temperature ever reported in North America was recorded at the Greenland Ranch in Death Valley, California. 134ºF/56.7ºC … in the shade.

Wyoming joined the Union as the 44th state on this date in 1890. Wyoming is the 10th largest state, but has the fewest people of any state. Its highest point is 13,804 feet above sea level; it’s lowest 3,099.

Lolita is 59 today; that is, actress Sue Lyon, who played the title role in the 1962 film.

Pandering

Pandas might still be coming to Albuquerque.

Mayor Martin Chávez and Gov. Bill Richardson announced a plan Friday for using $1.5 million in state funding to help the effort.

State capital outlay money pledged by Richardson would replace funds that were cut from a general-obligation bond-issue proposal by the City Council.

The Albuquerque Journal

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of New Mexico’s schools have at least one inadequate building feature (e.g., roofs, plumbing, electric wiring), and 75% have at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition (e.g., poor air quality, poor heating, too much noise).

American Society of Civil Engineers

Priorities

“It is proper to ask what the appropriate balance is between basic services such as sidewalks – particularly in city with high pedestrian fatalities – and the mayor’s proposal to spend $1.8 million on a panda exhibit and $3 million on a diving tank for the city biopark. The mayor’s proposal set aside only $400,000 for sidewalks.”

From an editorial in The Albuquerque Tribune

Dreary day

According to the National Weather Service, yesterday Albuquerque only received 94% of the possible sunshine. No wonder I was in the dumps. What a dreary day.

On July 3rd and 4th it was 100% of the possible sunshine.

Not a lot of clouds around.