In the zone

New Mexico weather forecasting should become more precise. The Weather Forecasting Office in Albuquerque proposes 40 zones to replace the 22 they’ve been using.

“WFO Albuquerque proposes a reconfiguration of the Public Zones that more effectively corresponds to climatological and topographical regimes currently in place over northern and central New Mexico.”

You can click on these links to see maps of the zones. (The maps are point of this post.)

Current 22

New 40

The area involved is larger than all of New England including Maine.

The longest solar eclipse of the century

Earlier today, the moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse that crossed nearly half the Earth – through Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar and China. Today’s was the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, lasting as much as 6 minutes and 39 seconds in a few areas. Despite cloudy skies in many of the populated areas in the path, millions of people gathered outside to gaze up and view this rare event. Collected here are a few images of the eclipse, and those people who came out to watch. (33 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Redux post of the day

A motorist was unknowingly caught in an automated speed trap that measured his speed using radar and photographed his car. He later received in the mail a ticket for $40 and a photo of his car.

Instead of payment, he sent the police department a photograph of $40.

Several days later, he received a letter from the police that contained another picture, this time of handcuffs.

He immediately mailed in his $40.

Top Idiots

Follow the link. There are several good stories.

First posted on July 22, 2007.

July 22nd

Bob Dole is 86 today.

Oscar-winning actress Louise Fletcher, Nurse Ratched, is 75.

Tom Robbins is 73 today.

He’s known for novels such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), and Villa Incognito (2003). He says that when he starts a book, he has no idea of what the story will be. He never outlines and never revises. He just works on each sentence until he thinks it’s perfect, sometimes for more than an hour, and then he moves on to the next one. He said, “I’m probably more interested in sentences than anything else in life.”

The Writer’s Almanac

69. How old is Jeopardy host Alex Trebek today?

One-time supporting actor Oscar nominee Albert Brooks, Danny Glover and The Eagles Don Henley all turn 62 today

Two-time Oscar nominee for best actor Willem Dafoe, aka the Green Goblin, aka Jesus, is 54.

David Spade is 45.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on July 22nd in 1890. She lived until January 22, 1995. According to The Writer’s Almanac:

There’s a cocktail named after her and it’s popular in bars on the East Coast (order a “Rose Kennedy”). It has vodka, club soda, and a splash of cranberry juice — which gives it a “rose” color. It’s served with a wedge of lemon or lime and is especially popular at gay bars, reportedly, because it’s low in calories.

We’ve had a wee bit of rain

Weather summary 7:19 PM July 21
Weather summary 7:19 PM July 21

Before today we’d had about 4 inches of rain so far this year. As you can see, we’ve had 1.73 inches this evening. I’ve rarely ever seen it rain any harder.

Update 9:15 PM: About 2 inches total rainfall so far with light rain still falling. One-third of the whole year’s rain has fallen in the past five hours.

Best punch line of the day

Michael Cooper, ex-husband of Elizabeth Gilbert — she of the gazillion-selling Eat, Pray, Love, about her post-divorce global journey — has sold his own book. Displaced will tell his side of the story, which, it turns out, is also global: …

Whatever happened to getting over a relationship by “searching for purpose” at the end of a bar with plenty of Otis Redding on the jukebox?

John Williams — The Second Pass

July 21st ought to be a national holiday

On July 21, 1959, Judge Bryan ruled in favor of Grove Press and ordered the Post Office to lift all restrictions on sending copies of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” through the mail. This, in effect, marked the end of the Post Office’s authority — which, until then, it held absolutely — to declare a work of literature “obscene” or to impound copies of those works or prosecute their publishers. This wasn’t exactly the end of obscenity as a criminal category. Into the mid-1960s, Barney Rosset would wage battles in various state courts over William Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer,” other Grove novels now widely regarded as classics. But the “Chatterley” case established the principle that allowed free speech its total victory.

Excerpt from Fred Kaplan, “The Day Obscenity Became Art” – NYTimes.com.

A holiday not because of Lawrence’s book, but to celebrate the expansion of freedom this decision represented.

Fired from the Canon

The Second Pass drops ten classics from your must read list.

If you’re looking for reading suggestions in bulk, you’re spoiled for choice. There are classics, like Clifton Fadiman’s Lifetime Reading Plan or Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon. And in recent years, a cottage industry has sprung up of books that recommend books — The Top Ten, Book Lust (and its follow-up, More Book Lust), The Modern Library, etc., etc.

Some of these efforts are quite good and owned by the authors of this feature — but a problem arises: Such guides are presumably meant to save readers time by pointing them in the right direction, but the guides themselves amount to several months or years of reading. The books they recommend add up to several lifetimes. What starts as an attempt to save hours ends as a commitment to more hours than you probably have.

That’s where we come in. Below is a list of ten books that will be pressed into your hands by ardent fans. Resist these people. Life may not be too short (I’m only in my mid-30s, and already pretty bored), but it’s not endless.

Read about the ten.

Idle thought

iTunes, I love you.

Current 20:

  • Always On My Mind — The Essential Willie Nelson — Willie Nelson
  • Margarita — Traveling Wilburys: Volume One — Traveling Wilburys
  • 7 Deadly Sins — Traveling Wilburys: Vol. 3 — Traveling Wilburys
  • Baby Love — Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles C… — The Supremes
  • Fortress Around Your Heart — The Dream of the Blue Turtles — Sting
  • You’ve Got a Friend in Me: Toy Story …— Classic Disney Volume III — Randy Newman
  • Like the River — April — Sun Kil Moon
  • Toy Heart — Bill Monroe: Columbia Historic Edition — Bill Monroe
  • My Boo — Confessions (Bonus Track Version) — Usher & Alicia Keys
  • Theme From New York, New York — Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years — Frank Sinatra
  • Keep A Knockin’ — The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: 1957 — Little Richard
  • Howdjadoo — Hard Travelin’: The Asch Recordings,… — Woody Guthrie
  • Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One … — The Sopranos — A3
  • Number 1 — Supernature — Goldfrapp
  • Don’t Let It Bring You Down — After the Gold Rush — Neil Young
  • All Apologies — Nirvana — Nirvana
  • Heebie Jeebies — Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America… — Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five
  • Lose Yourself — 8 Mile — Eminem
  • Instead — Bare Bones — Madeleine Peyroux
  • Pump It Up — The Very Best of Elvis Costello and T… — Elvis Costello and The Attractions

July 21st

It’s the birthday

… of Janet Reno, the first woman attorney general of the United States. She is 71.

… of actor Edward Herrmann. He is 66.

… of actor Wendell Burton, 62. Burton was Liza Minnelli’s boyfriend in The Sterile Cuckoo.

… of Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau. He’s 61.

… of Yusuf Islam, also 61. He was born Steven Demetre Georgiou. Much of his life he was known as Cat Stevens and he sold 60 million albums. Stevens wrote “The First Cut is the Deepest,” a hit for four artists, most recently Sheryl Crow. In 2006, he returned to music after nearly 30 years; his new stage name is Yusuf.

… of Mork. Robin Williams is 58. Williams has been nominated for the best actor Oscar three times without winning. He did win the best supporting actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting.

… of Jon Lovitz. He’s 52. Fresh!

… of Brandi Chastain. She’s 41.

… and of C.C. Sabathia, 29.

Ernest Hemingway was born on this date in 1899. He died a few weeks before his 62nd birthday in 1961. Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 “for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style.” The New York Times has an extraordinary wealth of reviews, articles, interviews and other material collected on Hemingway.

Marshall McLuhan was born on this date in 1911.

Sex and power

Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, takes a look at the C Street House, “the secretive religious enclave on Capitol Hill thrust into the news by its links to three political sex scandals.”

An excerpt:

If sexual license was all the Family offered the C Street men, however, that would merely be seedy and self-serving. But Family men are more than hypocritical. They’re followers of a political religion that embraces elitism, disdains democracy, and pursues power for its members the better to “advance the Kingdom.” They say they’re working for Jesus, but their Christ is a power-hungry, inside-the-Beltway savior not many churchgoers would recognize. Sexual peccadilloes aside, the Family acts today like the most powerful lobby in America that isn’t registered as a lobby — and is thus immune from the scrutiny attending the other powerful organizations like Big Pharma and Big Insurance that exert pressure on public policy.

Money quote: “If you’re chosen, the normal rules don’t apply.”

Another must have free iPhone app

Ars Technica reviews the updated Public Radio Player. They begin:

Public radio’s existing iPhone app was already cool—it allowed listeners to hear public radio stations from across the country on their phones, live. But the new version of the Public Radio Player, released this weekend, adds an incredible new set of features that provide a glimpse at the future of “radio.” Welcome to the on-demand, in-your-pocket future, today.