Author: NewMexiKen

Out of bounds

Michael Bérubé on how to perfect soccer:

I have long thought that soccer– known in some parts of the world, namely, everywhere but here, as “football”– is almost the perfect sport. It involves intense, explosive large-muscle-group strength, incredible cardiovascular stamina, and stunning small-muscle-group finesse and coordination. It also has nearly-ideal combinations of individual virtuosity with team effort, skill with chance, and synoptic strategy with sudden bursts of impromptu brilliance. But unfortunately, the sport has deep structural flaws, the most notorious of which is its “offsides” rule, which prevents players from sprinting behind defenses. And don’t even try to defend the inane “shootout” as a means of deciding games: at the very least, the players should run in from midfield and/or shoot from outside the penalty area. Shooting from 11m out is a joke. The main problem, though, is that the scale of soccer is too big. The way I figure it, if soccer would just reduce the size of its field, reduce the number of players on the field, make the ball smaller and harder and flatten it on both ends, make the goal smaller, put up boards and glass around the boundaries, cover the field in ice, and give everybody sticks, then you’d have the perfect sport.

Couldn’t you just give me a pill?

From AP via Newsday:

The government has lent its seal of approval to a marketing an age-old medical device — leeches.

The Food and Drug Administration said Monday that Ricarimpex SAS, a French firm, is the first company to request and receive FDA clearance to market the bloodsucking aquatic animals as medical devices.

Leeches are already widely used in American hospitals, and companies that raised and sold them here before 1976 were allowed to continue doing so. However, the medical device law passed that year required newcomers to the field to seek approval.

Link via South Knox Bubba

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry…

was born on this date in 1900. In January 2003 Outside Magazine listed its 25 essential books for the well-read explorer. At the top was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

Like his most famous creation, The Little Prince, that visitor from Asteroid B-612 who once saw 44 sunsets in a single day, Saint-Exupéry disappeared into the sky. Killed in World War II at age 44, “Saint Ex” was a pioneering pilot for Aéropostale in the 1920s, carrying mail over the deadly Sahara on the Toulouse-Dakar route, encountering cyclones, marauding Moors, and lonely nights: “So in the heart of the desert, on the naked rind of the planet, in an isolation like that of the beginnings of the world, we built a village of men. Sitting in the flickering light of the candles on this kerchief of sand, on this village square, we waited out the night.” Whatever his skills as a pilot—said to be extraordinary—as a writer he is effortlessly sublime. Wind, Sand and Stars is so humane, so poetic, you underline sentences: “It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.” Saint-Exupéry did just that. No writer before or since has distilled the sheer spirit of adventure so beautifully. True, in his excitement he can be righteous, almost irksome—like someone who’s just gotten religion. But that youthful excess is part of his charm. Philosophical yet gritty, sincere yet never earnest, utterly devoid of the postmodern cop-outs of cynicism, sarcasm, and spite, Saint-Exupéry’s prose is a lot like the bracing gusts of fresh air that greet him in his open cockpit. He shows us what it’s like to be subject—and king—of infinite space.

Goooooaaaaal

“Officials at a prison in Thailand arranged a soccer game between inmates and elephants. The two teams played to a 5-5 tie, then the elephants were returned to their regular stamping grounds — the greens at Shinnecock Hills.”

Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle

A 2 by 4 rain

NewMexiKen’s father reports on the seasonal change in Tucson:

Those of you familiar with the desert know that after two or three months of no rain we expect thunderheads to build up every afternoon south east of us. These are the rain clouds from the Gulf of Mexico, pushing up into the Sierra Madres in Mexico. Day by day they creep closer to us.

Yesterday while reading I was surprised by a loud clap of thunder. Glancing out the window it was true….. Rain………

I raced to the kitchen to gather my rain gauges and ruler; ran out the door and proceeded to record the event.

Taking numerous measurements, I concluded the drops averaged two inches apart and the rain had lasted four minutes…..a 2/4 rain.

Passionate, clever, scathing, funny, snarky, brutal, sad, glib and at times superficial

From Editor & Publisher:

While the country as a whole appears split, along political lines, over the controversial Michael Moore documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” movie reviewers at U.S. daily newspapers are not.

An E&P survey of 63 daily papers that ran reviews, in “red” and “blue” states alike, finds that 56 gave the film a positive nod, with only seven abstaining, an almost 90% favorable rating.

The headline for this entry is from the review of Mary Pols in the Contra Costa Times.

The Treaty of Vesailles…

at the end of World War I was signed on this date in 1919, five years to the day after the assassination that sparked the war.

The United States Senate never ratified the Treaty, as much for political as diplomatic reasons.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand…

was assassinated in Sarajevo on this date in 1914, igniting what we know as World War I.

Franz Ferdinand was the nephew of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary. After the Emperor’s son had committed suicide and Ferdinand’s own father had died, Ferdinand was first in succession to the Emperor. He was considered likely to be a reformer, which upset Balkan nationalists.

In all, there were seven assassins along the route of the Archduke’s car, all Bosnian Serbs. The third of the seven, Nedelko Cabrinovic,

threw a bomb, but failed to see the car in time to aim well: he missed the heir’s car and hit the next one, injuring several people. Cabrinovic swallowed poison and jumped into a canal, but he was saved from suicide and arrested. He died of tuberculosis in prison in 1916.

The seventh was Gavrilo Princip.

Princip heard Cabrinovic’s bomb go off and assumed that the Archduke was dead. By the time he heard what had really happened, the cars had driven by. By bad luck, a little later the returning procession missed a turn and stopped to back up at a corner just as Princip happened to walk by. Princip fired two shots: one killed the archduke, the other his wife. Princip was arrested before he could swallow his poison capsule or shoot himself. Princip too was a minor under Austrian law, so he could not be executed. Instead he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and died of tuberculosis in 1916.

It was the Archduke and Sophie’s fourteenth wedding anniversary. The Archduke’s last words were, “Sophie dear, Sophie dear, don’t die! Stay alive for our children.”

In the aftermath of the assassination, diplomatic efforts failed, perhaps because both Austria and Serbia feared loss of national prestige. Austria declared war on Serbia. Germany sided with Austria; Russia supported Serbia as required by treaty. France was obligated to support Russia in any war with Germany or Austria-Hungary. Britain was obligated to support France in an any war with Germany.

Source for quotes and some background: The Balkan Causes of World War One

Bitter old man running for President

“Nader is a sixty-something year-old man raised in a household that trained him to revile the decadent pleasures that most of us enjoy.

The most famous story is that Ralph’s mother refused to serve him a frosted cake for his birthday, believing it unhealthy. After years of begging, Mrs. Nader agreed to bake the children such a delight. She constructed a beautiful cake, let the children see it, then removed all the frosting before allowing them to eat it. Parents take note: this is how to raise a bitter, twisted child.

Correspondent and Public Citizen alum Andrew Cohen writing at Altercation

Running mate

As Dick Cheney becomes more and more unraveled, maybe it’s time to start speculating about who Bush’s running mate might be. NewMexiKen has come up with a few possibilities:

  • Jeb Bush (what more could the family want?)
  • John McCain (just like McCain to do this, if asked)
  • Colin Powell (I don’t think so)
  • Zell Miller (not really, but he might as well)
  • Ralph Nader (truth in advertising)
  • Mitt Romney (Massachusetts counter point)

Let’s keep giving them ideas

From Time:

Although there are no plans to raise the threat level from yellow to orange, a senior Justice Department official says, “there’s very serious intelligence that’s corroborated, that’s multiple sourced, that indicates that al-Qaeda is intent on hitting us and hitting us hard this year.” The official concedes, however, that “we don’t have specific information.”

Along with this now familiar general warning, the FBI has introduced the specter of a new terrorism threat: booby-trapped beer coolers. A lightly classified bulletin sent to 18,000 state and local agencies last week advised local authorities to look out for plastic-foam containers, inner tubes and other waterborne flotsam commonly seen around marinas that could be rigged to blow up on contact. Also, the bulletin warned, terrorists might attach bombs to buoys. FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials say no such devices have actually been discovered, nor is there any current intelligence that terrorists are hatching plots involving floating bombs.

My god, take a cooler and an almanac to the beach and you’re in big trouble.

Link via Eschaton.

Constitutional duty

Jon Stewart on Larry King discussing John Edwards as possible vice presidential candidate:

Yes. I hate to see a boy like that’s heart crushed when he gets to be the vice president and he realizes he has to tell Senators to f-off. That is actually a vice presidential duty within the constitution.

Albuquerque first family update

From the Albuquerque Tribune:

In Albuquerque, Mayor Martin Chavez and his wife, Margaret Aragon de Chavez, have kept any disagreement private since filing for divorce this month.

But in Boston, at a dinner for the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting Friday, a disagreement over crossing a picket line caught the attention of protesters and reporters.

Mayors arriving at the event faced a gauntlet of hundreds of jeering, chanting police officers and other city employees trying to embarrass Boston Mayor Thomas Menino over pending contracts with city unions.

Picketers chanted “Don’t go in!” and “Shame on you!” as buses ferried mayors and their families to the red-carpet event at the Boston Public Library.

Chavez, a Democrat, walked past protesters with his wife and daughter saying, “We’re going in. Tom Menino is a great friend and a great Democrat.”

But then Aragon de Chavez and their 13-year-old daughter, Martinique Chavez, pulled aside metal barricades and joined the union protesters, sparking cheers from the crowd. She was handed a Boston Fire Department T-shirt and a sign.

“There were all these union firefighters and police looking at all the people going into this extravagant party,” Aragon de Chavez said in a phone interview. “And they were saying `Don’t go in, don’t go in.’ I was raised in a blue-collar family. I looked into their eyes and I couldn’t do it. . . .

“I wasn’t trying to draw attention to myself. It just reminded me of my upbringing.”

Aragon de Chavez said her husband went into the dinner and that she encouraged Martinique to go in as well. But her daughter also decided not to cross the line of protesters.

Without knowing the issues in the Boston dispute, it still occurs to NewMexiKen that the wrong Chávez is mayor.

Link via Metaquerque.

The clueless

From William Powers in the National Journal, The Church of Best-Sellers:

More and more, the coverage of these massive cultural events is like absurd comic theater. Act 1: Long before publication, the media announce that the book in question will be simply huge, The Biggest Thing In Years, and the drumbeat continues right up to the day of release. Act 2: The public, eager to participate in this foreordained historic moment, dutifully lines up to buy the important tome. Act 3: The media marvel at the popular frenzy, as if it had happened quite spontaneously and they had nothing to do with it.

Link via Bookslut.

Unusual promotion

The Daytona Cubs give away an unusual item to the first 500 fans.

In another unique promotion by the Daytona Cubs, Friday night will be the first ever jock-strap give-away at Jackie Robinson Ballpark. The first 500 fans through the gates, will receive a FREE atheltic supporter courtesy of your Daytona Cubs.

Link via Dave Barry.

The Known World

NewMexiKen read Edward P. Jones’s The Known World this past week. The novel, which won the Pulitzer Prize and that The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Yardley called “the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years” is — obviously — excellent and I highly recommend it. It’s available in soft cover.

Set in Virginia in the decades before the Civil War, the novel’s primary characters are members of the extended Townsend family, including slaves owned by the freed-Black Townsends. This mix makes for a rich and complex tapestry of racial-relations — black, mulatto, white and Indian. Indeed, more than any one individual, it is slavery that is the main character. As Yardley wrote:

More than anything else, Jones is concerned with the relationship between master and slave, and with the wholly unexpected permutations this acquires when both master and slave are black. Jones cuts right to the core when he writes: “Henry had always said that he wanted to be a better master than any white man he had ever known. He did not understand that the kind of world he wanted to create was doomed before he had even spoken the first syllable of the word master.” A master is a master is a master, and it doesn’t matter whether the master is white or black.

The Smithsonian Institution