“Thanks for bringing up Tiger. First thought: Elin has nothing on Lisa ‘Left Eye’ Lopes. Remember? When she suspected Andre Rison was up to no good, she took a fairway wood to five of his luxury cars and then burned down his house. This remains the gold standard against which all spurned women must be measured.”
Malcolm Gladwell in email conversation with Bill Simmons
As with their previous exchanges, this whole Gladwill-Simmons correspondence is fascinating.
The University of New Mexico men’s basketball team is ranked 12th in the coaches poll and 13th in the AP poll. They are 12-0 on the year.
The six other undefeated teams are ranked 1 through 6 in both polls.
“We just read some great advice somewhere that said to treat every kid as if they are the sixth of eighteen children. You’ll get to them sometime, but right now the fifteenth kid is burning down the kitchen, so whoever is fussing right now will have to suck it.”
“Also in DC, a cop pulled a gun during a snowball fight, clearly a violation of snowball fighting rules: No slushballs, no iceballs, nothing to the face, no guns. Every kid who’s ever been to grade school knows that.”
The Solstice is at 10:47 this morning Mountain Time. Anthropologists have found that celebrations of the solstice go back for 30,000 years.
Ancient peoples believed that because daylight was waning, it might go away forever, so they lit huge bonfires to tempt the sun to come back. The tradition of decorating our houses and our trees with lights at this time of year is passed down from those ancient bonfires.
The Writer’s Almanac (2005)
According to the Library of Congress, “The name ‘winter’ comes from a Germanic term meaning ‘time of water’ and refers to the seasonal precipitation.”
Today is the birthday
… of Joe Paterno. The football coach at Penn State is 83.
… of Phil Donahue. The talk show host is 74.
… of Jane Fonda. The two-time Oscar-winning actress is 72. Miss Fonda has been nominated for the best actress Oscar six times, winning for Klute and Coming Home. She was also nominated for best supporting actress for On Golden Pond.
… of Carla Thomas. Gee Whiz, she’s 67.
… of Michael Tilson Thomas, he’s 65.
His grandparents, the Thomashefskys, were famous Yiddish theatrical stars. He graduated from the school of music at the University of Southern California and then got a fellowship conducting at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires. At 23, he was the youngest assistant conductor ever hired by the Boston Symphony.
He was the protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and is frequently compared to him. Like Bernstein, he stepped in at a major performance when the principal conductor got sick, and so made his reputation at age 24. He was founder of the New World Symphony in Miami, and in 1995 he went to direct the San Francisco Symphony, and he’s been there ever since. He hosts a classical music series on PBS called Keeping Score.
He said, “I believe that music is the most important when the music stops. When a piece ends, that’s when I really measure what effect it had on me or those who heard it.”
… of Samuel L. Jackson. Mace Windu is 61. Jackson was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction.
… of Chris Evert. The tennis hall-of-famer is 55.
… of Jane Kaczmarek. Malcolm’s mom is 54.
… of Ray Romano. Raymond is 52.
… of Kiefer Sutherland. Donald Sutherland’s little boy is 43.
… of Julie Delpy. The actress, who was nominated for a writing Oscar for Before Sunset, is 40.
Frank Zappa was born on this date in 1940. He died in 1993.
The singer, songwriter, and composer was born in Baltimore, Maryland (1940). Zappa’s father was a meteorologist in the Army who studied the effects of weather on explosions and poisonous gases. The gas masks and chemical paraphernalia his dad brought home were some of young Zappa’s first toys. When Frank Zappa started playing atonal classical music on his electric guitar, he said that his goal was to make sounds that would cause people to run from the room the moment they heard it. He was also a political activist, and he once proposed that the United States form a fourth branch of government devoted entirely to creativity.
Joseph Stalin was born on this date in 1879. This from his obituary in 1953:
Joseph Stalin became the most important figure in the political direction of one-third of the people of the world. He was one of a group of hard revolutionaries that established the first important Marxist state and, as its dictator, he carried forward its socialization and industrialization with vigor and ruthlessness.
During the second World War, Stalin personally led his country’s vast armed forces to victory. When Germany was defeated, he pushed his country’s frontiers to their greatest extent and fostered the creation of a buffer belt of Marxist-oriented satellite states from Korea across Eurasia to the Baltic Sea. Probably no other man ever exercised so much influence over so wide a region.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered 72 years ago today.
That famous photo of Elvis Presley with President Richard Nixon was taken 39 years ago today. The National Archives has all the details — When Nixon Met Elvis, but here’s the photo and Elvis’s letter. Just click for the larger versions.
Crank it up.
My new favorite futile argument for passing the current POS is that, in our politics, simply by passing the aforementioned POS, we forever will have established, banners aloft, the notion that healthcare is a right or, at least, an affirmative obligation of the national government. As a result, we will be freer to move forward as the years go by. This is a fine argument, provided that you were cryogenically frozen in 1958. Let me explain to everyone holding this particular view what is going to happen. The POS is going to pass. The Republicans are going to oppose it and run against it. The Democrats are going to look ridiculous for a year defending it, and the Democrats who most opposed it are going to look the most ridiculous, because it is going to be politically impossible for a Democrat to run against this bill. The prevailing media narrative will prevent it. Millions more American[s] will have health insurance, but millions of Americans will be forced by law to fork over their money, during a grisly recession, to the greediest and least popular industry the country has seen since the railroads were running amok in the 1890’s. These people will go broke a little more slowly, depending on how sick they get. The industry will jack up its rates until we all have to put in new attics. The subsidies will fail to keep up. And then the industry will lie about doing any of it, and the White House will send out a sternly worded letter. The industry will be stopped by the new “consumer protections” approximately as effectively as a butterfly stops a freight train. By the end of 2009, these “reforms” will be thoroughly despised by a healthy portion of the electorate. The Republicans will then use the weaknesses of the reforms to assume control of the Congress, whereupon they will leave the mandates in place, gut the regulations, and laugh their way to the bank doing it. And that is what’s going to happen.
You should go read all of it. Scroll down to Pierce.
POS stands for Piece of S..t.
“In nearly 200 years of recorded stock-market history, no calendar decade has seen such a dismal performance as the 2000s.”
“Since the end of 1999, stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have lost an average of 0.5% a year thanks to the twin bear markets this decade.”
The Winter Solstice, the moment when the Earth’s axial tilt is fully 23º26′ from the sun, is Monday, December 21st, at 10:47 AM MT in the northern hemisphere. It is, of course, the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Earth’s orbit is elliptical not circular. The earliest sunset (in the northern hemisphere) was around two weeks ago. The latest sunrise is in about two weeks.
But Monday is the shortest time between the two, the shortest daylight of the year in the northern hemisphere.
For more than 1600 years in western Europe the northern winter solstice was celebrated on December 25th, though astronomically it increasingly came later than that due to errors in the Julian calendar.
The French colors were lowered and the American flag raised in New Orleans on this date in 1803, signifying the transfer of sovereignty of Louisiana from France to the United States. Arguably the transfer was one of the two or three most defining moments in American history.
As ultimately defined, Louisiana Territory included most of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, east of the Rocky Mountains, except for Texas and New Mexico; that is, parts or all of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
I have been enjoying tunes from the CD Christmas in Santa Fe
Spanish guitarist Romero and violinist Notkoff provide the perfect Christmas fireside mood.
“Her father hadn’t wanted her to be a writer; he thought that in order to make it as a successful Latina, she should aim to be a television news weather girl.”
The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor describing Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, more than two million copies sold. Cisneros is also the author of Caramelo and is 55 today.
“But her mom encouraged her to read and write, took her to the library, didn’t make her learn how to cook, and didn’t interrupt her studying or reading to make her do chores.”
Yay, Mom.
Roger Ebert picks the top films.
The lists are divided into Mainstream Films and Independent Films. This neatly sidesteps two frequent complaints: (1) “You name all those little films most people have never heard of,” and (2) “You pick all blockbusters and ignore the indie pictures.” Which is is my official Top Ten? They both are equal, and every film here is entitled to name itself “One of the Year’s 10 Best!”
Oh, and Ebert says, “a probable Oscar-winning performance by Jeff Bridges.”
The NFL Players Association is offering to cover any fines that Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco would incur for wearing Chris Henry’s No. 15 jersey during Sunday’s game versus San Diego, a source close to the situation said.
The NFL would fine a player for wearing the number of another player — a player who died this week — in tribute.
Let me see “F,” what applicable words that begin with F might better be part of NFL?
I will remind you that the NFL played on the weekend of JFK’s assassination. Nothing has changed.
And yes, Ochocinco is a showboat, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t sincere — his teammate did die. And besides, pro football is a show, not a liturgical rite.
“I’m not happy — this is too flawed a bill for joy — but I am relieved ( or will be once I’m sure that Joe Lieberman isn’t going to pull a double-cross). You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need.”
Paul Krugman with an assist from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
The Saturday before Christmas is the the busiest retail day of the year.
But maybe not this year with a third fifth of the population getting clobbered with snow.
Twas on this day in 1732 that Benjamin Franklin began publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack.
Poor Richard’s Almanac was a hodgepodge of stuff: It had information about the movements of the moon and stars, weather reports, historical tidbits, poems, and those adages that Franklin became famous for, like “Fish and visitors stink in three days” and “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead” and “A penny saved is twopence dear” (often misquoted as “A penny saved is a penny earned”). Some of the stuff was original and some was borrowed, drawing upon diverse sources like Native American folklore, common farmers’ superstitions, politicians’ speeches, and published authors’ writings.
Franklin published his wildly successful almanac for a quarter century, and its popularity increased by the year. At its height, the book sold 10,000 copies a year, making it a best-seller in colonial America. Books were expensive and hard to come by in the colonies, and Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac was the only book that many households owned besides the Bible. It made Franklin rich and famous.
It’s the birthday of Al Kaline. The hall of fame right fielder is 75.
Today is also the birthday
… of Little Jimmy Dickens. The country novelty singer is 89.
… of Oscar-nominee Cicely Tyson. She’s 76. Tyson was nominated for the 1973 best actress award for her performance in Sounder.
… of Kevin McHale. The basketball hall of fame member is 52.
… of Mike Lookinland. Bobby Brady is 49.
… of Flashdance’s Jennifer Beals. She’s 46. Flashdance was her second film. She played Clifford’s girlfriend in My Bodyguard. Adam Baldwin (no relation to “the” Baldwins) was the bodyguard, Matt Dillon the bully, and Joan Cusack another girlfriend.
… of Jake Gyllenhaal. The Oscar nominated actor is 29.
Edith Piaf was born on this date in 1915. Petite Piaf (4-10, 90 pounds) was known as the “sparrow of the streets.” She was the leading chanteuse of her day, most well-known for “La vie en rose.” According to some reports she used her fame to ingratiate herself to Nazi officers during the occupation of France, then in turn used that to gain access to French prisoners with whom she had her photo taken. The prisoners used the photo to create false identity cards to assist in an escape. Ms. Piaf died in 1963.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was published on this date in 1843. I read it just the other evening — on my iPhone.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Bah! Humbug!
Call it what you will, “the noughties”, “the two-thousands” or something else, the first decade of the 21st century (2000-2009) is now over. Looking back on the past ten years through news photographs, it becomes clear that it was a dramatic, often brutal decade. Natural disasters, terrorist attacks and wars were by far the most dominant theme. Ten years ago, Bill Clinton was ending his final term in office, very few had ever heard of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein still ruled Iraq – all that and much more has changed in the intervening time. It’s really an impossible task to sum up ten years in a handful of photographs, but below is my best attempt at a look back at the last decade – feel free to let me know what I missed in the comments below. (50 photos total)
Depressing as hell. Anyone think the next decade will be any better?
Seven banks were closed by the FDIC Friday.
The FDIC could not find buyers for three of the seven.
We’re both old enough to recall when the Pepsi name applied to nothing but Pepsi. Then Diet Pepsi stormed onto the scene, followed by other options like Pepsi Free, Pepsi Clear, Cherry Pepsi, Caffeine Free Pepsi, Pepsi Lemon, Pepsi One, Pepsi Lime, and a few other varieties that came and went. At least the names of these soda pops made it obvious that they were Pepsi products. Today, PepsiCo and the other “big three” soft drink companies market several different brands nationwide, and it’s becoming increasingly tricky to pin them down by their parent companies. In today’s…quiz, we offer 11 soft drink brands, which you’ll identify as being a product of The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, or the Dr Pepper/Schweppes Group.
Wow, this was difficult (for me at least).