Best line of the day

If I’d written about, say, the Cleveland (61-101) Indians in August of 1987 as though the team were a serious pennant contender, I’d have been fired before I got back to the hotel. And yet, there they were on Charlie Rose: serious political pundits, talking seriously about what a power Sarah Palin is in the Republican party without any of them pointing out that the very fact that she is a power is prima facie evidence that the party is a festival for fruitcakes.

Charles Pierce

Oops

New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley apparently doesn’t have Internet access when she writes her columns.

Correction: July 22, 2009
An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

96th Tour de France

The 96th Tour de France cycling race is currently underway, with the final, 21st stage of the 3,445 km (2,141 mi) race coming up on Sunday, July 26th. At this time, Alberto Contado[r] of Kazakh team Astana appears to be headed toward a second tour title, currently leading riders Andy Schleck of Team Saxo Bank and Luxembourg and, in 3rd place, Lance Armstrong, also of team Astana. Armstrong’s recent emergence from retirement to return to this year’s tour has been the focus of much of this year’s media coverage. 180 riders in twenty teams started in Monaco on July 4th, heading for the final ride into Paris this weekend. Collected here are a handful of images from the 2009 race. (40 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Knowing when to yield

I’m probably the only driver who was taught how to merge at gunpoint.

Forty years ago I was driving my VW Bug in the right lane of the Southfield Freeway in Detroit. A car coming down an entrance ramp attempted to merge in front of me, but — in a fit of rudeness and stupidity — I sped up so that he had to slow down.

The Oldsmobile entered the freeway behind me, then came along side in the middle lane and honked. I gave a friendly gesture (it wasn’t the peace sign). The other driver honked again. This time when I looked over he was waving a revolver pointed at me (holding it in front of his passenger). He gestured to pull over.

This didn’t seem like a good idea, but the Bug couldn’t out run his Olds. I attempted to lose him in rush hour congestion at the next exit, but he caught up to me when I got to a stop light.

The driver came up to my car, identified himself as an off-duty Detroit police officer (he was partially in uniform), and — at gun point — and despite the fact that he himself was profane — made me apologize to his woman passenger for my obscene gesture. He seemed as rattled from anger as I was from fear — his badge was upside-down when he showed it to me — but he did have his service revolver pointed in the right direction. I did what he said.

In the process he lectured me about the difference between “merge” (give and take) and “yield” (right-of-way).

The point of telling this story again today is to offer commentary on the controversy in Cambridge, Mass. Police officers earn and deserve our respect. They are under-paid, too frequently under-trained, and routinely under-supported in their community. That said, some police have anger management problems — just like the rest of us. And police officers, unlike most of the rest of us, have at hand the ability to really mess you up.

It appears to me that in Cambridge, while race was no doubt underlying the incident, the real issue was the officer felt disrespected and largely over reacted.

It happens.

It shouldn’t.

Stuff

Speechless: Dilbert Creator’s Struggle to Regain His Voice. Fascinating.

“The Doctor is Within” — Pico Iyer talks to and about the Dalai Lama.

And Tennessee and Arizona have legalized concealed weapons in bars.

“In both states, there is a catch. The new laws stipulate that armed patrons have to refrain from drinking while in the bars — in effect, creating a new category of customer, the designated shooter.” The Lede Blog

BTW “Ian Kinsler accomplished a feat so rare on Sunday, it only happened four times previously in major-league history.”

Click here to find out.

‘Family Values’ politician of the day

While this sounds like a garden-variety Republican Sexual Hypocrite, [Tennessee State Senator Paul] Stanley takes it up a notch with his legislative CV: 1) he campaigned against the right of gays and lesbians to adopt (“When you’re married, there’s a commitment there,” Stanley said last year, while discussing legislation to prohibit gay people from adopting children); and….drum roll…2) he introduced a bill prohibiting viewing porn while driving (WTF!? Is this some kind of rampant problem in Tennessee?)

Pandagon

Stanley, married father of two, was having an affair with an intern. Intern’s boyfriend found photos, tried blackmail. Sting set up. Boyfriend arrested. Politician “will continue his social conservative legislative agenda.”

World’s first automobile road trip

Today’s redux post of the day (first posted two years ago):

If it sounds as if it would take an expert machinist to operate it, well, Benz might have thought so too, until his wife borrowed the family car without telling him. On a summer morning in August 1888, Bertha Benz got up early, loaded her sons Eugen and Richard on board and set out in the Motorwagen for her mother’s house in Pforzheim, a journey of some 50 miles. Karl Benz awoke to find a note his wife had left saying she was going to visit Grandma. He must have been panicked. The Motorwagen had never been tested for more than a few miles.

That evening, Bertha wired Karl to say they had arrived safely. But not, as it turned out, without incident. Bertha was obliged to clean out a clogged fuel line with her hatpin and mend an ignition wire with one of her garters. When the brake shoe started to give way, she stopped at a farrier’s in Bauschlott for a block of leather to replace it. In Wiesloch, she stopped at an apothecary to fill up on benzene (this pharmacy still bills itself as the world’s first filling station). And so it happened that the world’s first motorist was, in fact, a woman.

Dan Neil

Karl Benz patented the very first gasoline-powered vehicle in January 1886. “Everything in the modern car is in there. Benz just nailed it.”

Neil’s article about the first car is excellent.

July 23rd ought to be a national holiday

On July 23, 1904, according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice-cream and thereby invented the ice-cream cone. He is one of several claimants to that honor: Ernest Hamwi, Abe Doumar, Albert and Nick Kabbaz, Arnold Fornachou, and David Avayou all have been touted as the inventor(s) of the first edible cone. Interestingly, these individuals have in common the fact that they all made or sold confections at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. It is from the time of the Fair that the edible “cornucopia,” a cone made from a rolled waffle, vaulted into popularity in the United States.

Library of Congress

July 23rd

Daniel Radcliffe is 20 today.

At the other end of the acting spectrum, Gloria DeHaven is 84.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is 73. Kennedy, a Reagan appointment, is often the swing vote on the Court. Stevens (89), Ginsburg (76) and Scalia (73) are older; Breyer will be 71 next month.

Actor Ronny Cox is 71. Cox, a Cloudcroft, New Mexico native, is perhaps most famous as Lt. Andrew Bogomil of the Beverly Hills Police Department, but he has more than 120 credits listed at IMDB.

Don Imus is 69 today.

Woody Harrelson is 48. Harrelson was nominated for best actor for The People vs. Larry Flynt and won one Emmy for playing Woody on Cheers.

Saul Hudson is 44. He’s better known as Slash of Guns N’ Roses.

Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman is 42.

Alison Krauss is 38.

Important news in Seattle isn’t necessarily important news on the Web

But it should be.

Since the Seattle Times broke some serious news here, maybe it will take a day or two for the national dailies to weigh in, but it’s a big story. Yes, I’m an airplane nut, but this is supposed to be the plane of the future and Boeing single-handedly keeps our foreign trade imbalance from going all the way through the stratosphere. So this is just big news on eight different levels. This is still easily the most exciting jetliner in a generation, but if Boeing blows this and has to go back to the drawing board, it’s a catastrophic loss. If they get it together and the thing flies, so to speak, airlines and passengers around the world will be happily flying this new plane with the bigger windows, cleaner air, greater roominess, quieter engines, etc., etc., for years to come. It’s either a world-beater or an epic loss for U.S. industry. National dailies need to capture that, even if blogs don’t care.

Sam Howe Verhovek at Slate Magazine reporting from Seattle. Here’s Timothy Egan on the same story:

[A] Seattle Times story that the 787 Dreamliner may not fly this year and could have serious troubles down the road. The implication is that it may not fly at all. … But it’s a big deal. Why? With the auto industry in bankruptcy, people oft say: We don’t make anything in this country anymore. In fact, we do. We make airlines for the world, at some of the best wages in the world. If the Dreamliner, Boeing’s next edition, doesn’t fly, it’s a huge blow to American industrial might, or what’s left of it. And it shows, perhaps, that you can’t build a plane by outsourcing all its parts to factories and engineers around the world, as Boeing has tried to do.

Here’s The Seattle Times story — Boeing 787 may not fly this year.

Note that the Verhovek-Egan exchange is part of a larger look by Slate at news on the web vs. in the newspapers.

What Pretending Is

“Do you know what pretending is?”

For what seemed a long while, I listened to the whir of a 5-year-old’s mind in motion. “Well, actually,” Timmy finally said, using his favorite (and only) four-syllable word, “actually I guess it’s like when you go away on trips. Sometimes I dream about you. I dream about how you’ll come home from the airport and bring me surprises and play with me. I get sad when you go away, and so I pretend you’re not gone. Is that bad?”

I told him no, it wasn’t bad.

Tim O’Brien, from an article in the new fiction issue of The Atlantic, posted at The Second Pass.