Author: NewMexiKen

Maybe they were surfers

The first humans who left Africa to populate the world headed south along the coast of the Indian Ocean, Science magazine reports.

Scientists had always thought the exodus from Africa around 70,000 years ago took place along a northern route into Europe and Asia.

But according to a genetic study, early modern humans followed the beach, possibly lured by a seafood diet.

They quickly reached Australia but took much longer to settle in Europe.

— BBC News

Really Simple Syndication

BBC News has the clearest explanation NewMexiKen has seen of RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

In a world heaving under the weight of billions of web pages, keeping up to date with the information you want can be a drag.

Wouldn’t it be better to have the latest news and features delivered directly to you, rather than clicking from site to site? Well now you can, thanks to a very clever service, RSS.

…

In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications. All allow you to display and subscribe to the RSS feeds you want.

Once you have chosen a news reader, all you have to do is to decide what content you want.

There’s more.

On this date

Winston Wolfe is 66. That’s Harvey Keitel. He was George Baines in The Piano, and nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Mickey Cohen in Bugsy. Keitel played Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ and Elvis in Finding Graceland.

A year ago NewMexiKen wrote about Richard Steven Valenzuela, better known as Ritchie Valens, Steveland Hardaway Judkins, better known as Stevie Wonder, and Joe Louis.

Wonder is 55 today. Valens would have been 64. Joe Louis was born on this date in 1914.

Friday the 13th

Paraskevidekatriaphobia — fear of Friday the 13th

So where does it come from — the fear of 13? Its origins can be traced to Norse mythology and a dinner party at Valhalla, home of the god Odin, where Odin and 11 of his closest god-friends were gathered one night to party. Everyone was having fun, but then Loki, the dastardly god of evil and turmoil, showed up uninvited, making it a crowd of 13. The beloved god Balder tried to boot Loki out of the house, the legend goes, and in the scuffle that followed he suffered a deathblow from a spear of mistletoe.

From that mythological start, the number 13 has plowed a path of devastation through history. There were 13 people at Christ’s Last Supper, including the double-crossing Judas Iscariot. The ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission left the launching pad at 13:13 hours and was aborted on April 13. Friday hasn’t been much kinder to us. Friday was execution day in ancient Rome — Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Put it all together, and Friday the 13th spells trouble for triskaidekaphobics. It’s a testament to the phobia’s prevalence that Hollywood was able to parlay our fear into a hugely successful series of slasher movies starring a hockey-masked guy named Jason.

But triskaidekaphobia isn’t an exclusively American affliction. Italians omit the number 13 from their national lottery. There is a hush-hush organization in France whose exclusive purpose is to provide last-minute guests for dinner parties, so that no party host ever has to suffer the curse of entertaining 13 guests.

Excerpted from Jon Bowen, writing at Slate.

About.com has five pages of background on the superstition.

And Urban Legends has a lengthy page.

Source found

A week ago NewMexiKen posted a quotation from Dwight Eisenhower. Here is the (slightly) corrected quotation, which is from a November 8, 1954, letter to his brother Edgar:

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Read the whole letter from among The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower.

The meaning of life

And so we went to see The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill tonight at the Guild Cinema. It affected me on several levels. Not that the film is a puzzle (It is a straight-forward report of a man and his “hobby.”). Rather, it’s simplicity allows one to look deeper into small pleasures…and wonder how they fit into the fabric of one’s own life.

— Jon at Albloggerque

Many have praised this film, for example:

A thoroughly absorbing portrait of one man’s discipline and commitment — and, yes, spiritual transformation….Quite simply, a beautiful film, in both form and content. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And your heart is guaranteed to soar.

— Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three

Rumsfeld attempts to cancel the contract for the C-130J, a plane considered unfit for duty by the Pentagon’s own inspector general. But there is Congressional opposition, so yesterday Rumsfeld advised Congress that Defense would continue the $4.1 billion five-year contract.

The plane is considered so inept it isn’t used for combat, which means that most of them are stationed in the U.S. As a result, the presence of the planes has been used as justification by members of Congress for keeping a base open.

Details in The New York Times.

Trust…but validate

The New York Times made an error in the obituary of Col. David Hackworth last week, calling him the inspiration for Apocalypse Now character Kurtz (Marlon Brando) rather than, as he actually was, for character Kilgore (Robert Duvall). As Editor & Publisher notes, others blithely passed along the mistake:

Time magazine, NPR’s “Fresh Air” and “All Things Considered,” and London’s Sunday Mirror. It’s likely they all just cribbed from “the newspaper of record.”

Kurtz, of course, is based on the character of the same name in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

American 250 heavy, you’re on approach for heaven

“I was raised a Southern Baptist and twice now a preacher has made reference to airlines pairing their pilots with one Christian (or saved) and one non-Christian (or un-saved). This is done on the pre-text that if and when the 2nd coming of Christ happens and the one Christian pilot is taken into the clouds with Christ, leaving the non-Christian pilot to supposedly land the plane safely alone. One preacher specifically mentioned American Airlines as having this policy.”

— Urban Legends, which responds.

“I write them to find out what happens,” he said of his novels. “I don’t write for anybody else.”

David Carr has a wonderful piece about Elmore Leonard in today’s New York Times. I suggest you read it, then go get Leonard’s latest, The Hot Kid.” But here’s a couple excerpts:

He writes seven days a week in the living room of a nice house in the suburbs here with a No. 5 Pilot Pen on unlined yellow paper. He does not use e-mail or a computer. He types the handwritten pages on an I.B.M. Selectric, which occasionally breaks down from daily exertion.

“There’s one name in the phonebook who repairs typewriters,” Mr. Leonard said, adding, “he says he can live on $6,000 a year. He lives in a trailer park.”

…

This great American author, one of the best dialogue writers ever, lets people at charity auctions bid for the right to name his characters; Ed Hagenlocker, a “hard-shell Baptist” and cotton farmer in “The Hot Kid,” got his name that way. “Why not help them out?” he said.

…

“Elmore always says you have to do what you love; otherwise, what’s the point?”

And that explains 40 wonderful books.

One of our 50 is missing

NewsGator, a good online RSS aggregator, has lists and lists of feeds one can subscribe to. One of those lists is to National Weather Service Watches, Warnings and Advisories. They are listed for each state, D.C., Guam, Midway and others.

Each state that is, except New Mexico.

The National Weather Service does have a page for New Mexico.

(To be honest, they left Ohio out too, but who cares about Ohio?)

Louie Louie reprise

Let’s hope that this poor soul found at The Smoking Gun hasn’t heard any rap.

A member of The Kingsmen was interviewed by the FBI in 1965.

What happened, of course, was that every rock and roll band in America played this song in their local gigs and many of the local bands did have scurrilous lyrics.

Global warming => Flooded South Florida => Less spam

No place does spamming and scamming quite like South Florida.

Together, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties are home to more spammers than any country on Earth. And it’s not just the annoying pitches for mortgages and sex pills. Increasingly, law enforcement officials are finding that junk e-mail is a favored weapon of predators, an easy way for criminals to target a world of potential victims from behind a wall of anonymity.

More than a quarter of about 180 hardcore spammers tracked by watchdog group Spamhaus are based in Florida, and most of those are in the tri-county area. The city with the most spammers in the world is Boca Raton. Eleven are listed by Spamhaus as based there, though anti-spam groups say they think that figure misses dozens who send spam at least part-time.

Why South Florida? Spammers and anti-spam groups cite a combination of reasons. They include the warm weather and laid-back lifestyle, lenient bankruptcy laws, proximity to Internet data centers, a history of telemarketing and e-mail marketing, and the state’s longstanding image as a good place to do dirty business.

Sun-Sentinel.com.

Boca Raton, doesn’t that mean rat’s mouth?

Link via Discourse.net

Remarkable

Maybe I’m just easily amazed by information technology, but NewMexiKen is fascinated to find that when I write a check (albeit very few anymore) I can view an image of the check online as soon as it clears.

And speaking of finances — there is no apparent correlation between the local sales tax rate and the amount Comcast charges me each month. They’re charging too little. Out of idle curiosity I called, but they were clueless. Only thing I can figure is because food is now sales tax free in New Mexico, Comcast doesn’t have to charge us sales tax for the Food Channel.

Please, can I have one?

Want to buy Christine, or Bob Falfa’s ’55 Chevy, or the Beverly Hillbillies Truck, or The General Lee, or Smokey’s Trans Am? They’re being auctioned this Saturday in Los Angeles by Bonhams. Take a look.

Take me for a ride in your car-car

At Rox Populi there has been a series of photos (now 182) with instructions to Write Your Own Caption.

PutinandBush.jpg

The best caption NewMexiKen saw for this photo was:

“I’m a really good driver…yeeaah…definitely a good driver….UH OH! 33 minutes to judge Wopner.”

What do liberals believe?

What exactly is “my” side? In previous eras there were more clear-cut definitions of what “left” and “right were. Today there are dozens of variations. On economic issues I’m a typical liberal. Having run my own business and having worked for big corporations, I have a basic belief in capitalism, but I think that government, representing the collective will of the citizens, has a special obligation to balance out the excesses of the marketplace. I wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes to have national health care, better paid school teachers, smaller class sizes in public schools, and more jobs programs to help get people out of poverty and help average-income people deal with their lives more easily. It seems to me that many Western European countries have been better at supporting people on the low end of economic spectrum than Americans have, and the extent of poverty in America seems immoral to me given our country’s wealth. Although I’ve never been a member of a labor union, I believe they should be stronger. Corporations have so much power that it seems healthier to me for there to be a strong counterweight on behalf of workers. I also think our country should be more generous with foreign aid given the immense poverty around the world.

Conservative rhetoric that implies that private charities can replace government doesn’t ring true to me. I know that governments tend to be inefficient, but there are some things that only governments can do, such as build highways, protect the environment, and provide police protection, and so on. The environment is an area where it’s particularly important for government to enforce the public interest when it clashes with the economic interest of businesses.

Danny Goldberg, from his book, Dispatches from the Culture Wars: How the Left Lost Teen Spirit, quoted at Altercation.