A Dog's Life

Malcolm Gladwell writes about Football, dog fighting, and brain damage in this week’s New Yorker. An excerpt:

“Lately, I’ve tried to break it down,” [Kyle] Turley said. “I remember, every season, multiple occasions where I’d hit someone so hard that my eyes went cross-eyed, and they wouldn’t come uncrossed for a full series of plays. You are just out there, trying to hit the guy in the middle, because there are three of them. You don’t remember much. There are the cases where you hit a guy and you’d get into a collision where everything goes off. You’re dazed. And there are the others where you are involved in a big, long drive. You start on your own five-yard line, and drive all the way down the field—fifteen, eighteen plays in a row sometimes. Every play: collision, collision, collision. By the time you get to the other end of the field, you’re seeing spots. You feel like you are going to black out. Literally, these white explosions—boom, boom, boom—lights getting dimmer and brighter, dimmer and brighter.

Got their motors runnin'

8-year old Mack ran a 24:07 5K yesterday, taking three minutes off his previous best for that distance (3.1 miles).

He threw up after crossing the finishing line, so I guess we can conclude he gave it his all. It was good enough for second place in his age/gender.

Today, Sunday, both Mack and Aidan ran in the King George Fall Festival Mile.

Aidan took first for “Men 6 and under” with an 8:06 mile. He has improved his personal best by two minutes in less than two weeks! It was head-to-head for the finish line and Aidan pulled ahead to win by a second. It was his first “gold.”

Mack also took first, running his second best mile ever in 7:03.

Mom meanwhile was moving along too. She got a speeding ticket.

UPDATE: Jill says I’m not like other moms.

Best line of the day

“Good morning.  Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning.  After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, ‘Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo’s birthday!’  And then Sasha added, ‘Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.’  So it’s good to have kids to keep things in perspective.”

President Obama

This is a pretty good line, too:

“And that’s why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity — for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometime their lives for the cause of peace.”

Autumn

It’s that time of year again, the Earth’s northern hemisphere is tipping away from the warmth of the Sun. Days in the north are getting cooler and shorter, leaves are changing, animals migrating and many harvests are underway. The wet summer in New England this year should make 2009 a banner year for brightly-colored fall foliage in the area. Collected here are a group of photographs of recent Autumn scenes around the northern hemisphere. (32 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Lovely.

Teamwork

The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is billed as the world’s largest community sponsored event. That world’s largest is a bit of local boosterism hyperbole for sure, but it is a community event. Donna sent this photo taken within the last hour. It’s a school holiday here and neighborhood kids were eager to help Frank and Brian and their crew pack up.

IMG00325

I love Albuquerque.

Imagine

John Lennon should have been 69-years-old today.

Jackson Browne is 61, Robert Wuhl is 58. Tony Shalhoub is 56. Guillermo del Toro is 45. Annika Sorenstam is 39. (I saw what may have been her yacht in Michigan. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she’s rich.)

Best redux post of the day

From this date three years ago:

“If you really want to get a taste of it, come out and go with us.”

— Mike Krepfl, owner of AAA Pumping Service, which provides 401 porta-potties to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. He’s offering a free ride-along if you want to look into the business. From story in The Albuquerque Tribune.

Money quote: “[Fiesta field manager Sam] Baxter says he received a letter from a lady from the East Coast ‘thanking us immensely for providing a little ledge [in the porta-potty] for her purse,’ not knowing what the urinal was for.”

It was dark in one of those porta-potties last night after the glow and fireworks. Good thing I knew where everything was.

Your photo could win!

America’s Federal Recreation Lands are special places that bring people together and leave visitors enriched. From scenic vistas to diverse wildlife to historic landmarks, these lands offer a myriad of picture perfect moments to capture. We invite you to get out and explore these places and share your experience by entering up to three photos into the Share the Experience Photo Contest. This year in celebration of these special places, we’ve included two exciting categories and you can enter your 3 images in only one category or both.

You can enter your photos in the Federal Recreation Lands Pass Category for a chance to have your winning photo adorn the 2011 Federal Recreation Lands Pass, earn you an Olympus E-3 DSLR Camera Kit and a trip to a Federal Recreation Area of your choice. There are fourteen chances to win national recognition and many great prizes.

You can also enter the America at Its Best Category. This special category is being included to acknowledge the PBS special by Ken Burns entitled, “National Parks — America’s Best Idea.” … Take a photo in any of the federal recreation lands that you believe showcases “America at Its Best.” The winning photo will be featured in an issue of Parks magazine and the winner of this one time category will receive an Olympus E-30 DSLR camera kit and the Ken Burns “National Parks – America’s Best Idea” DVD and companion book.

Share the Experience

The Uneducated American

Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.

Paul Krugman

Idle thoughts about the Balloon Fiesta

Update: Karen has photos of two of the best of the special shape balloons.

If you ever want to attend the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta — and everyone should see it at least once — it runs from the first Saturday each October through the following weekend. The very best time — weather notwithstanding — is from Thursday morning through Saturday morning (today, tomorrow and Saturday this year).

In addition to mass ascensions each morning (500+ balloons), there are glows (where the balloons remain on the ground but are lit by their burners) and fireworks Thursday and Friday evenings.

And Thursday is when they break out the special shape balloons!

Take a look at this year’s poster.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta | Mass Happiness

Alas the winds picked up after launch this morning and there were six reported crashes, with one broken leg suffered by a woman who fell out of the gondola. I love calling a wicker basket a gondola.

October 8th

Time marches on.

Today Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan, is 70; Jesse Jackson 68; Chevy Chase 66; Sigourney Weaver 60; and Stephanie Zimbalist 53. Even Matt Damon is 39.

Author R.L. Stine is 66.

When someone asked him how he first knew that Goosebumps was going to be a big success, he said: “I was in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, driving to a bookstore for a book signing. I remember I was stuck in a huge traffic jam and I was really worried I would be late and was growing more and more annoyed at all the traffic. When we finally approached the bookstore, I realized that the traffic jam was caused by all the people who were coming to see me.” For several years in a row in the 1990s, he was voted not just the best-selling children’s author in the country, but the best-selling author. He has written more than 100 books and sold more than 400 million copies.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Frank Herbert, author of Dune, was born on this date in 1920. He died in 1986.

Eddie Rickenbacker was born on this date in 1890.

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was a man whose delight in turning the tables on seemingly hopeless odds took him to the top in three distinct fields.

In the daredevil pre-World War I days of automobile racing he became one of this country’s leading drivers, although he had a profound dislike for taking unnecessary risks. He had entered the auto industry as a trainee mechanic and made his first mark servicing the cranky machines of that day.

In World War I he became the nation’s “Ace of Aces” as a military aviator despite the fact that he had joined the Army as a sergeant-driver on Gen. John J. Pershing’s staff.

He was named by Gen. William Mitchell to be chief engineering officer of the fledgling Army Air Corps. His transfer to actual combat flying–in which he shot down 22 German planes and four observation balloons–was complicated not only by his being two years over the pilot age limit of 25, but also because he was neither a college man nor a “gentleman” such as then made up the aristocratic fighter squadrons of the air service.

In the highly competitive airline business, Mr. Rickenbacker was the first man to prove that airlines could be made profitable, and then the first to prove that they could be run without a Government subsidy and kept profitable.

New York Times

Seems like he might have been the last man to prove that airlines could be made profitable too.