Author: NewMexiKen

The terrorists have won

So, is it also illegal to dye your hair or wear colored contacts or grow a beard (or shave one off)?

An Ohio man has been arrested for wearing a “Grinch” mask in the street. Norman Eugene Gray, 42, says he was dressed as the mean-spirited Dr. Seuss character to protest his employer’s pension policy, but state law restricts the wearing of masks to children, actors in plays, and workers who need facial protection. Officials defended the arrest, saying that criminals or terrorists could use masks to conceal their faces.

The Week Magazine

Snippy about a snip

Former astronaut Neil Armstrong is suing a barber for selling a snip of his hair to a collector. Marx Sizemore regularly cut Armstrong’s hair at his Lebanon, Ohio, barbershop, and decided to keep a lock. A year later, he sold it for $3,000 to a man who collects hair snippings from famous historical figures. The intensely private Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was infuriated. “I didn’t deny it or anything,” said Sizemore. “I told him I did it.” Sizemore agreed to try to buy the hair back, but told Armstrong the collector wasn’t selling. “Then I got this letter from his lawyer.”

The Week Magazine

NewMexiKen understands Armstrong’s irritation — clearly this is an invasion of his privacy — but I guess my solution (were I famous and if I had hair) would be to take my business elsewhere.

Ten Most Harmful Books

“Human Events asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.”

  1. The Communist Manifesto
  2. Mein Kampf
  3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
  4. The Kinsey Report
  5. Democracy and Education
  6. Das Kapital
  7. The Feminine Mystique
  8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
  9. Beyond Good and Evil
  10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Beyond stupid

From Ed Bott:

Last month, I wrote about Sen. Rick Santorum’s bill to prevent the National Weather Service from freely sharing information it collects with the public. The beneficiary in this scheme would be private companies like AccuWeather, which just happens to be based in Santorum’s home state.

Today comes news that the timing of the bill was, shall we say, interesting:

Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading provider of weather data.

Asked about the connection, the Senator replied: “I don’t think there’s any coincidence between the two.”

A refreshing, although almost certainly accidental, bit of truth-telling.

Pipe Spring National Monument …

was established on this date in 1923. From the National Park Service:

PipeSpring.jpg

Pipe Spring National Monument, a little known gem of the National Park System, is rich with American Indian, early explorer and Mormon pioneer history. The water of Pipe Spring has made it possible for plants, animals, and people to live in this dry, desert region. Ancestral Puebloans and Kaibab Paiute Indians gathered grass seeds, hunted animals, and raised crops near the springs for at least 1,000 years. In the 1860s Mormon pioneers brought cattle to the area and by 1872 a fort (Winsor Castle) was built over the main spring and a large cattle ranching operation was established. This isolated outpost served as a way station for people traveling across the Arizona Strip, that part of Arizona separated from the rest of the state by the Grand Canyon. It also served as a refuge for polygamist wives during the 1880s and 1890s. Although their way of life was greatly impacted, the Paiute Indians continued to live in the area and by 1907 the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation was established, surrounding the privately owned Pipe Spring ranch. In 1923 the Pipe Spring ranch was purchased and set aside as a national monument.

On this date, May 31

Clint Eastwood is 75 today.

Peter Yarrow, the Peter of Peter, Paul and Mary, and the author of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” is 67.

Joe Namath is 62.

Walt Whitman, American poet, journalist, and essayist, was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York. His verse collection Leaves of Grass is a landmark in the history of American literature.

Whitman grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and at age 12 began to learn the printing trade. Over time he moved from printing to teaching to journalism, becoming the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1846. He began experimenting with a new form of poetry, revolutionary at the time, free of a regular rhythm or rhyme scheme that has come to be known as ‘free verse.’ In 1855, Whitman published, anonymously and at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Revolutionary too was the content of his poems celebrating the human body and the common man. Whitman would spend the rest of his life revising and enlarging Leaves of Grass; the ninth edition appeared in 1892, the year of his death.

Library of Congress

It’s Not a Bubble Until It Bursts

The chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Assn. is worried enough about the torrid housing market to get out of it.

“I’m going to rent for a while,” said Douglas Duncan, who expects “significant reversals” in regions that have enjoyed strong home price appreciation, including Washington, D.C., Florida and California. He plans to sell his suburban Washington home, which has tripled in value since he bought it a dozen years ago, and move into an apartment.

Duncan is among a multitude of experts and consumers across the country debating the possibility of a housing bubble — a condition where prices have risen so far out of hand that they eventually crash.

Los Angeles Times

Oil boom

From a report in the Los Angeles Times:

Tucked away in the 96-page emergency military spending bill signed by President Bush this month are four paragraphs that give energy companies the right to explore for oil and gas inside a sprawling national park.

The amendment written by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) codifies Mississippi’s claim to mineral rights under federal lands and allows drilling for natural gas under the Gulf Islands National Seashore — a thin necklace of barrier islands that drapes the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.

As a preliminary step to drilling, the rider permits seismic testing, which involves detonating sound-wave explosions to locate oil and gas deposits in the park. Two of the five Mississippi islands are wilderness areas, and the environs are home to federally protected fish and birds, a large array of sea turtles and the gulf’s largest concentration of bottlenose dolphins.

The legislation marks the first time the federal government has sanctioned seismic exploration on national park property designated as wilderness — which carries with it the highest level of protection.

Benjamin David Goodman …

was born on this date in 1909. Goodman was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who thought that music might be a way out of poverty. His older brothers were given a tuba and a trombone but — just 10 — Benjamin was given a clarinet. He learned to play at a synagogue and then with a Jane Hull House band. By 16, he was in the Ben Pollack Orchestra; by 19, Goodman was making solo recordings.

In 1934, Goodman put together his own band and they played on a live NBC radio program “Let’s Dance” during the late hours in New York. It was not until the band played before a live audience at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles that it found its fans — because of the time difference, the Goodman band that was on so late in the east was heard during prime dancing time on the west coast. (It’s a good scene in the 1955 film The Benny Goodman Story.) Some date the beginning of the Swing Era to that August 21, 1935, appearance in Los Angeles.

On January 16, 1938, Goodman brought jazz to Carnegie Hall. This great concert was recorded (with one microphone), but the original disk was lost. In 1950, Goodman discovered a copy in a closet. It quickly became a best-selling record and the CD is an absolute essential.

But NewMexiKen’s favorite Benny Goodman appearance was on December 30, 1966, at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. That’s because I was there.

(Originally posted by NewMexiKen on May 30, 2004)

Smithsonian Castle

Castle.jpg

NewMexiKen has often wondered whether we’d have the national museums if James Smithson hadn’t bequeathed his estate “to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.”

That’s the Smithsonian Institution Building, popularly called The Castle, designed by James Renwick Jr. and completed in 1855. The statue in front is of Joseph Henry, the first director.

Photo taken Sunday evening.

Women drivers

Ever since Janet Guthrie became the first woman to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 in 1977, the story line for women at Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been how she, Lyn St. James and Sarah Fisher made the starting field — not about their chances to win.

Danica Patrick has changed that.

America’s newest racing find, a 23-year-old rookie driver from Roscoe, Ill., earned her place among the favorites for the May 29 race last Sunday when she qualified fourth — and came within a bobble of winning the pole for the 89th running of the 500.

She might seem too tiny — barely 5 feet 2 and 100 pounds — but she knows how to control a 650-horsepower machine at speeds up to 230 mph around a 2 1/2 -mile race track as well as any man here.

She will start fourth in the 500, right behind pole-sitter Tony Kanaan, last year’s Indy Racing League champion, but in her mind she should be on the pole. A sideways twitch in one of former winner Bobby Rahal’s cars as she entered the first turn of a four-lap qualifying attempt made the difference between her time of 2 minutes 38.5875 seconds and Kanaan’s 2:38.1961 for 10 miles.

Los Angeles Times

On this date, May 29

Rhode Island ratified the Constitution on this date in 1790, thereby becoming the 13th state.

Wisconsin entered the Union as the 30th state on this date in 1848.

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was born on this date 88 years ago (1917).

Annette Benning is 47. Melissa Etheridge is 44.

11 steps to a better brain

From New Scientist:

It doesn’t matter how brainy you are or how much education you’ve had – you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn’t have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them.

NewMexiKen’s brain has shrunk so much from stress and depression that there’s no hope for me, but maybe it isn’t too late for you laid back, happy people.

The 11 steps.