Category: People & Human Interest

Do you know who this is?

Forbes ranked her the third most powerful woman in the world in 2005.

Yulia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister Ukraine

It’s Yulia Tymoshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine.

She’s 47. She rarely appears without her famous crown braid.

Credit: All-Ukrainian Union Fatherland. Click the image for a larger version.

The Cowboy’s Dresser, Dies at 107

Jack A. Weil, a garter salesman, breezed into Denver in 1928 in a new Chrysler Roadster to start a new life. He exceeded his hopes and became a king of cowboy couture — almost certainly the first to put snaps on Western shirts (17 on a shirt), and most likely the first to produce bolo ties commercially.

His Rockmount Ranch Wear Mfg. Company has sold millions of shirts, including at least one shipment to Antarctica, since it started in 1946. Clark Gable wore one in “The Misfits” with Marilyn Monroe, and Heath Ledger’s shirt in “Brokeback Mountain” — plaid fabric, diamond snaps and saw-tooth pockets — was Style No. 69-39.

Until Wednesday, when he died at 107 in Denver, Mr. Weil was still chief executive of the company he founded and, until just before his death, came to work daily. He was regularly called the oldest chief executive still working.

The New York Times

If NewMexiKen lives that long I could be doing this blog for 49 years.

To send or not to send, that is the question

James Fallows fears email.

I make my living writing things down, but even I have reached the point where I am not willing to put any sentiment whatsoever into reproducible form — in an email that could be forwarded, in a document that could be cut-and-pasted — without thinking about how it would look if it got into unintended hands.

Brad DeLong does not.

Second, for most of us the big problem has never been that people will repeat what we say, but rather that they will repeat what we did not say–or take what we say out of context.
. . .

In such a world as this one in which we live in, email and other means of communication that automatically create a record that can be used to push back against distortions is a blessing.

NewMexiKen has had to testify in federal court about what I meant in emails I had written, so I know what can happen. The written word is very powerful. It demands thoughtfulness, which is sadly lacking in so many email messages. (And, indeed, some of the informality of email has bled over into more formal documents too.)

Say what you mean, be polite, and don’t write what you don’t want repeated. Read, revise and proofread.

That said, I go along with DeLong.

And you?

Life 101

“No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one.”

— Wallace Stegner in Angle of Repose.

“The problem is it takes most of us most of our lives to understand what we should have known from the beginning.”

— Leon Uris in Trinity.

“Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing’s worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.”

— Richard Ford in Independence Day.

Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty): “Everybody’d be nice to you if they knew you were dying.”

Bruce Pearson (Robert De Niro): “Everybody knows everybody is dying. That’s why people are as good as they are.”

— Bang the Drum Slowly

Gunning for you

NewMexiKen sold the revolver without incident — for a good price too, I think.

The shop was interesting — and very busy before 11 in the morning. I am not anti-gun by the way. I’d kind of like to own some authentic 19th century firearms if I knew what I was doing — as an investment. When I was curator of Richard Nixon’s musuem items (after he left office), I was impressed by the nice collection of firearms the firearm manufacturers had given him. I suspect most politicians — and at least five supreme court justices — have similar collections.

Two guys working in the gun shop wanted to talk about the election; how it worried them. I assured them not to worry, that the black liberal guy was sure to win.

Gunned down

Molly Ivins once wrote that she didn’t support gun control because she hated guns, but because she just liked to see knife fights.

Among the things Dad left behind when he died early last year was a loaded .38 revolver on his headboard, a Colt Cobra (3-inch barrel, not the stubby). NewMexiKen has never owned a gun — and never fired a pistol — so I just put it away (empty!) until I got around to selling it. Which is now.

The gun has no value beyond its use as a tool. Or as one firearm expert I talked to put it, “It’s a shooter, not a collector.” Even so, it has some value. Indeed, one of the places I may go to sell it is among the Brady Campaign’s list of Top 120 Gun Stores with the Most Guns Traced to Crime.

I’d better wipe the thing clean.

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

The YouTube video above has been viewed more than 4 million times. It is 76 minutes long.

“The lecture really was for my kids, but if others are finding value in it, that is wonderful.”

Professor Pausch died yesterday (the last lecture in the video was September 18, 2007). He and this lecture are so highly regarded, that among other things Google has a notice in memoriam today on its main page (with a link to the video).

“I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m goin’ keep having fun every day I have left, because there’s no other way to play it.”

Hello, Mini-Maids

NewMexiKen posted this here a year ago. I publish it again today in hopes of embarrassing myself into actually calling a maid service, as if that would be so hard. The same cobwebs are still in place.

It’s just that I’ve reached a point in life where I find engaging most people or companies to do something causes more grief than satisfaction — witness an unexpected charge for my DirecTV installation, the wrong package on the plan, and a phone line I don’t want. And that’s just this week.

Wow, this house has more spiderwebs than Peter Parker’s bedroom. I just pulled one down (highlighted by the early morning sun) that could have trapped small mammals. Kind of pretty; maybe I should have left it until Halloween and just back lit it with a candle.

NewMexiKen used to have a house cleaner but she mostly just relocated all the stuff on shelves and tables so that it took me (not that I’m anal) almost as long to realign everything as it would have to clean myself.

Alas, but I don’t clean myself. I mean the place is tidy; no dishes in the sink, counters shiny, no papers on the floor, bed usually made, trash always out to the curb early Wednesday.

I just don’t dust, mop or vacuum much. Spiders like that in a housekeeper.

You’d think this was from The Onion, but it’s real

Take the case of two Dallas County commissioners. One of them commented that so much paperwork had been lost in an office that it had become a “black hole”.

Another commissioner took great offense at this, and said it was more like a “white hole”. Then a judge demanded that the first commissioner apologize for his “racially insensitive” remark.

Bad Astronomy Blog

Metaphorically phoning it in from my metaphoric break

A federal judge has ordered the invasion of your privacy. This is from washingtonpost.com:

That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). [Judge] Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”

Speculative. It’s terabytes of data about us.

Andrew Tobias has a nice posting about Clay Felker, who died earlier this week.

Walt Mossberg provides Some General Tips For Switch to Mac From Windows. I would have found this handy during the first few weeks; not so much later.

Obama leads McCain by 5 points in — wait for it — Montana.

[Not having to blog because I’m taking a break makes it a lot easier to blog. Does that make any sense — other than as a description of insanity I mean?]

Best Britney Spear’s sister line of the day, so far

“And while some are using the opportunity to point out the scary statistics and difficulties that accompany teen motherhood (and/or being born into the Spears family), we’re trying to look at the bright side.”

Mental_Floss Blog

The post lists five babies of teenage mothers that did well, including Jack Nicholson, Bob Marley and Eric Clapton.

And how about NewMexiKen!? My mom was a teenager when I was born.

Desire

NewMexiKen learned over the weekend that grandson Mack is planning to compete in a triathlon August 9th. The event includes running, swimming and biking. You have to admire a 7-year-old with moxie to try such a grueling event.

And it becomes particularly special because Mack can’t ride a bike. He’s having to learn. His mom reported Monday evening: “Today we moved to the sidewalk and he got the hang of balancing and started to go longer and longer distances before crashing.  Eventually (after about 100 crashes) I got him to use the brakes and put his foot down when he felt unsteady, rather than just crashing.  But it is still a 50/50 proposition that he will end a ride on the ground.”

When a neighbor girl asked if she could help, Mack replied, “No, I’m in training.”

NewMexiKen’s friend Don has an equally impressive athletic ambition. Don is 45 and also prepping for a triathlon. Except Don doesn’t know how to swim.

Good luck learning Don. It’ll be hard to compete if you have to wear floaties.

Looking to Avoid Aggressive Drivers? Check Those Bumpers.

Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual choruses of “are-we-there-yet?” — and the road rage of fellow drivers.

Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but science has discovered a solution for the third.

Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.
. . .

It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love — “Visualize World Peace,” “My Kid Is an Honor Student” — or angry and in your face — “Don’t Mess With Texas,” “My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student.”
. . .

“The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked,” Szlemko said. “Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver.”

Washington Post

It seems bumper stickers are pretty much the equivalent of dogs urinating on trees and fire hydrants. It’s a way people stake out their territory. The more stickers, the more the person needs to claim the space. It’s actually quite interesting.

Thanks to Jill for the link — the article confirms her take on an incident reported here last year.