Author: NewMexiKen

Unchain my blog

Steve Terrell has forwarded to me a blog chain letter. Now what I always do with chain letters is break the chain. And while, I know, that means I have passed up endless opportunities at good fortune, nothing drastic has come my way as a result yet either (I don’t think).

But a blog chain letter is different. It’s public. If you break the chain it will be known to all. When an asteroid hits the earth or Antarctica melts I could be held responsible and possibly even face litigation. So I fear I must respond to Steve.

Besides I like Steve’s blog and I’m flattered he included me.

The last CD I bought was: Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love — but I bought it at Borders, not Starbucks so I will not be held to ridicule

Song playing right now: “This Cowboy Song,” Sting; just before: “Little Shoes,” Leo Kottke — the best part of blogging BTW is friends, but the next best part is iTunes while you blog (I have 6089 tracks on shuffle play)

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me: I’m going to cheat a little on this. Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, made me a couple of mix CDs when I was last visiting her, and I’ve been listening to them a lot. So I will pick a few from the 40 tracks — some that I found surprising, that I liked more than I would have guessed.

  • “I’ve Been Everywhere.” Johhny Cash — pure Americana, pure Johnny, sounds like he was having fun, and I’m sure Tom Petty and the band were
  • “You Were Meant for Me,” Jewel — I knew who Jewel is and certainly had heard this song before, but it is such a great song
  • “Just A Ride,” Jem — a lot of good advice in that riff
  • “Hey Ya!” OutKast — a very useful song while doing 90 on an Interstate, and pop music was invented for driving — “shake it like a Polaroid picture”
  • “Pony,” Kasey Chambers — this one isn’t on the mix CDs, but I like this song and they way it’s sung, little girlie voice or not, and I have played it a lot

Five people to whom I’m passing the baton (and who I hope forgive me): Well, the last time I did pass something along to bloggers only one of the three responded, so I am feeling a little uneasy. I am going to contact five and ask if they’re interested. If they are, or when they blog it, I will add the link here.

MakesMeRalph

Musings from America’s Outback

Colorado Luis

Bill Moyers

Only two weeks ago did we learn that Mr. Tomlinson had spent $10,000 last year to hire a contractor who would watch my show and report on political bias. That’s right. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson spent $10,000 of your money to hire a guy to watch NOW to find out who my guests were and what my stories were. Ten thousand dollars.

Gee, Ken, for $2.50 a week, you could pick up a copy of TV Guide on the newsstand. A subscription is even cheaper, and I would have sent you a coupon that can save you up to 62 percent.

In the speech, which you can read here and watch here, Moyers threatened to come out of retirement. Do it Bill — and bring Walter with you.

Newspeak

Without a trace of irony, the powers that be have appropriated the Newspeak vernacular of George Orwell’s 1984. They give us a program vowing no child will be left behind, while cutting funds for educating disadvantaged children; they give us legislation cheerily calling for clear skies and healthy forests that give us neither, while turning over our public lands to the energy industry.

Bill Moyers

GOPBS

Jesus’ General has the new PBS logo and some upcoming programming highlights.

A Very Special Bert and Ernie Special

Sesame Street becomes Rapture Road after Pastor Bob and Freedomland Development Corp. run all of the brown people out of the neighborhood. Homeless, penniless, and desperate, Bert and Ernie accept the Lord Jesus into their lives and begin reparative therapy.

“A pack of lies”

From Crooks and Liars the video of British House of Commons member George Galloway defending himself before a U.S. Senate committee Tuesday. The Senator he is addressing is Norm Coleman (R-MN).

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.”

Strong stuff. Watch.

I was told there would be no math

It’s been pointed out in a comment that I’m 14 names short on my list of the 100 Greatest Americans; that I started at 57 instead of 44. I’d feel foolish if doing this in the first place hadn’t already made me feel that way.

But here they are:

  1. Charles Lindbergh — see comment re: Lindbergh
  2. Frank Capra
  3. John Ford
  4. Orson Welles
  5. Jedediah Smith
  6. John Wesley Powell
  7. Sequoyah
  8. Sitting Bull
  9. Chief Joseph
  10. Sam Adams
  11. “Black Jack” Pershing
  12. Hyman Rickover
  13. Joseph Henry — foremost American scientist of the 19th century

I can’t restore “Hef” to the list as one commenter has argued. While I agree with Garth that Hefner fostered a healthy liberalization of standards, Hefner also fostered an unhealthy attitude toward women as toys. And, most assuredly, there are other more important publishers who also supported a free press, for one, Katharine Graham during Watergate.

The 100, one last time

NewMexiKen opened up 57 slots on the 100 Greatest Americans list yesterday. Their replacements:

First, I suggested three as I deleted the others:

  1. Bing Crosby
  2. Brigham Young
  3. Omar Bradley

Then, I liked Functional Ambivalent’s nominees, so they’re in as a block, counting Lewis and Clark as one:

  1. Lewis and Clark
  2. Ernest Hemingway
  3. Frank Lloyd Wright
  4. Margaret Sanger
  5. David Sarnoff
  6. Douglas MacArthur
  7. W.C. Handy
  8. Ray Kroc
  9. Rachel Carson

A few incredibly important political-military-judicial figures need to be added:

  1. James Madison
  2. John Adams
  3. Ulysses Grant
  4. George Marshall
  5. John Marshall
  6. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
  7. Earl Warren
  8. Thurgood Marshall
  9. Jane Addams

Inventors were among America’s greatest contribution to the world:

  1. Eli Whitney — the cotton gin yes, but much more importantly, interchangable parts
  2. Samuel Colt — automatic firearms
  3. Cyrus McCormick — agricultural implements
  4. Samuel F. B. Morse — communication
  5. Philo Farnsworth — television
  6. James Watson — DNA

And how about the robber barons:

  1. John Jacob Astor — established America’s first settlement on the Pacific Coast
  2. John D. Rockefeller — oil
  3. J.P. Morgan — capital
  4. William C. Durant — General Motors

And the writers:

  1. John Muir — for his conservation ideology
  2. Louisa Mae Alcott — every young woman read her novels; immeasurable influence
  3. Edgar Alan Poe — Evermore
  4. Toni Morrison — Nobel Prize; seems more relevant than Pearl Buck, another American woman Nobel Prize winner
  5. Sinclair Lewis — Nobel Prize; The Jungle
  6. William Faulkner — Nobel Prize

American music:

  1. Stephen Foster — the 19th century
  2. Irving Berlin — the 20th century
  3. Louis Armstrong — the greatest American musician; changed music forever
  4. Duke Ellington; — America’s greatest composer
  5. Hank Williams — did for Country what Elvis did for pop and Ray Charles did for Rhythm & Blues — revolutionized it

Which gets us to 99 and too many names left:

Frank Capra, John Ford, Orson Welles
Jedediah Smith, John Wesley Powell
Sequoyah, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph
Sam Adams, “Black Jack” Pershing, Hyman Rickover

Porciuncula

Porciuncula (see below) is from a chapel near Assisi in Italy that Saint Francis restored and made the center for the Franciscan Order.

The large church built at Pecos Pueblo beginning in 1622 was named Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Porciuncula de los Pecos. It was the largest European structure north of Mexico until destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The ruins there now are from the smaller 18th century church.

“Our Lady” was apparently “Queen of the Angels” in Los Angeles, but only “of the Angels” 150 years earlier in Pecos.

“[I]t seemed like forever.”

A well-done report on the submarine San Francisco’s collision with an uncharted undersea mountain in The New York Times: Adrift 500 Feet Under the Sea, a Minute Was an Eternity.

The submarine crashed at top speed – 33 knots, or roughly 38 miles an hour – about 360 miles southeast of Guam. The impact punched huge holes in the forward ballast tanks, so the air being blown into them was no match for the ocean pouring in. The throttles shut, and the vessel briefly lost propulsion. As the emergency blow caught hold, mainly in the rear tanks, the sub was just drifting in the deep, its bow pointing down.

Mossberg looks at the free email services

From The Mossberg Report:

As for how they rank, Yahoo Mail takes the lead. It’s fast, and its gigabyte of free storage is more than enough to free most users from deleting old mail. I also like Yahoo’s autocompletion of addresses, as well as its folder and filter systems. Plus, its overall user interface is clean and clear.

Google’s Gmail is also pretty good, though its quirky design could put off some users — it’s clearly still a work in progress. Gmail has the most free storage of the Web-based providers, which is a big plus, and searching all that mail is fast and accurate. But a simple operation such as deleting an e-mail takes more steps than in Yahoo. …

Hotmail comes in last. It offers only a fraction of the free storage of Yahoo and Gmail, which, for my money, flatly disqualifies it as a serious contender.

The City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reyna de los Angeles de Porciuncula has given Antonio Villaraigosa a landslide victory as its new mayor (58%). He’s the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since Cristobal Aguilar left office in a town of 6,000 people in 1872.

“It doesn’t matter whether you grew up on the Eastside or the Westside, whether you’re from South Los Angeles or Sylmar,” [Villaraigosa] said. “It doesn’t matter whether you go to work in a fancy car or on a bus, or whether you worship in a cathedral or a synagogue or a mosque. We are all Angelenos, and we all have a difference to make.”

Read all about it in the Los Angeles Times.

NewMexiKen really doesn’t have much to say about this. I just wanted to write out the original Spanish name for the city we so carelessly call L.A.

Thanks to Colorado Luis for the reminder.

And, finally, the remaining 30 from the list

  1. Maya Angelou — there are far more significant writers
  2. Mel Gibson — he was born in the U.S., but he’s a hack, however successful
  3. Michael Jackson — there are scores of better entertainers who aren’t freakin’ whackos
  4. Michael Jordan — Michael is “THE” American athlete as far as much of the world is concerned; his time on the list may be short, but he’s there for now
  5. Michael Moore — absurd
  6. Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.) — another athlete that rose above athletics; as time passes he may seem less important, however, for now he stays
  7. Neil Alden Armstrong — not sure Armstrong was “great” but what he did was; NewMexiKen believes Armstrong will be the most famous person from our times in 500 years
  8. Nikola Tesla — too many of you are saying “who?” for Tesla to make the list; a great electrical engineer, but true greatness is moving beyond your primary field and achieving fame elsewhere as well [Update: Tesla should be included. See comments.]
  9. Oprah Winfrey — Oprah’s influence is unbelievable and mostly positive; I included Carson, she rises to that level
  10. Pat Tillman — bless his patriotic heart, but get real
  11. Dr. Phil McGraw — LOL
  12. Ray Charles — heroin-addict womanizer who helped revolutionize popular music
  13. Richard Nixon — let’s not kick Nixon around
  14. Robert Kennedy — inspirational leader for a couple months
  15. Ronald Reagan — changed American politics
  16. Rosa Parks — maybe the toughest one; symbol for so much; in the end, her own actions are too specific, too limited
  17. Rudolph W. Giuliani — he rose to the occasion, but what else?
  18. Rush Limbaugh — greatness implies not appealing to the lowest common denominator
  19. Sam Walton — changed American retailing; JC Penney and Montgomery Ward were probably as influential, but we’re living with Walton today
  20. Steve Jobs — maybe Jobs could be included with Wozniak for inventing the PC; but not for running Apple
  21. Steven Spielberg — a pretty impressive and varied body of work to date, but …
  22. Susan B. Anthony — NewMexiKen rule: you make the currency (or coins) you make the list
  23. Theodore Roosevelt — one of the great presidents
  24. Thomas Edison — inventor in so many areas and also entrepreneur: General Electric
  25. Thomas Jefferson — drafted the Declaration of Independence; that’s enough right there and he was just getting started
  26. Tiger Woods — still just an athlete and celebrity
  27. Tom Cruise — one of the silliest on the list, though he was good in Collateral
  28. Tom Hanks — arguably the best actor on the list; but not the best actor who could be on the list
  29. Walt Disney — Mickey, Donald, Goofy — that’s good enough for me
  30. Wright Brothers (Orville & Wilbur Wright) — up-up-and-away

We interrupt this blog with some other stuff

Children who are 3 and 4 years old weigh only 35 pounds or so, but when they are kicking, hitting, biting, running around or are in other ways a handful, they are more likely to get expelled from their state-funded preschool program than students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

More than three times as likely.

That’s the finding in the first study of expulsion rates of 3- and 4-year-olds, led by Yale University Child Study Center researcher Walter S. Gilliam.

Gilliam, assistant professor of child psychiatry and psychology, said that decades of research show that early childhood programs can significantly improve the chances of a student’s success in school.

“Unfortunately, there appears to be a back door through which some children — the ones who stand the most to gain from these programs — are sometimes pushed,” he said.

“These children are barely out of diapers. No one wants to think of children this young being kicked out of school.”

Pittsurgh Post-Gazette

Link via The Huffington Post

Six more bite the dust

  1. Lance Armstrong — great athlete and his public battle with cancer is significant, but I just don’t think he’s transcended athletics yet, like Ruth or Robinson or Owens
  2. Laura Bush — married beneath herself
  3. Lucille Ball — I Love Lucy
  4. Lyndon B. Johnson — a tough one for NewMexiKen; in the end, fatally flawed; but the “We Shall Overcome” speech (in support of the Civil Rights Act) is a signal moment in American history; he stays
  5. Madonna (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone) — why not Cher? why not Barbra? are they not strong women who managed their own entertainment careers? Is that sufficient? No.
  6. Malcolm X (Malcolm Little) — Alex Haley’s Autobiography of Malcolm X tries to convince us Malcolm was changing at the time of his assassination; had he lived he may well have become a more important historical figure
  7. Marilyn Monroe — talented, gorgeous, tragic, but not great
  8. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) — “THE” American writer
  9. Martha Stewart — huh? Jon Stewart maybe, Payne Stewart even; not Martha
  10. Martin Luther King Jr. — you get a holiday named after you, you make the list; greater for what he represented and how he lead than for who he was, but if you doubt him go read his letter from Birmingham Jail; that alone puts him on the list

Ten more again

  1. Jimmy Carter — a successful man in everything except the presidency
  2. Jimmy Stewart — not even among the greatest actors
  3. John Edwards — is there some other John Edwards? surely this isn’t the one-term senator
  4. John Glenn — marine officer, game show contestant, astronaut, Senator, back in space in his seventies
  5. John F. Kennedy — lots and lots of points for not ending the world during the Cuban missile crisis but name something else he accomplished
  6. John Wayne — actors become the best by pretending to be other people; can an actor be a great American?
  7. Johnny Carson (John William Carson) — another tough one (and another I’ve seen in person); does he get credit for keeping the national discourse on a higher plane while he was such an influence?
  8. Jonas Edward Salk — NewMexiKen saw enough of polio as a child to know what Salk did
  9. Joseph Smith Jr. — Brigham Young surely, but not Smith
  10. Katharine Hepburn — fine actress; what else?