“When he walked in the newsroom, it was like Thomas Jefferson walking into a history class at a university.”
Sean McManus, president of CBS News, on Walter Cronkite’s last visit to news headquarters a year ago. Quoted at Media Decoder Blog – NYTimes.com
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
. . .You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?
The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
I did get my 99¢ back, though.
“We can finally stop talking about the first lady’s penchant for showing off her toned arms and the national conversation can turn to something substantive: her husband’s unflattering, baggy blue jeans.”
Ellen Warren — Chicago Tribune
Hey, it’s hard to wear tight jeans (let alone throw the ball) when you’ve got on kevlar underwear.
This was just three years ago.
Chancellor Merkel is 55 today.
“The ‘golf is a real sport’ argument is getting brutally murdered by Mark Calvecchia & Tom Watson right now.”
Bill Simmons (sportsguy33) on Twitter
Calvecchia is 49 and, one could say, fat. Watson is 59. They are currently near the top of the leaderboard in the British Open.
Awesome sets of photos.
Today, nearly eight years after the initial invasion of Afghanistan, the country remains unstable at best, and the U.S. is now pouring thousands of new troops into the country, joining the international coalition to combat the Taliban insurgency. This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops have reached an all-time high – at least 46 American troops killed by IEDs this year, part of the larger figure of 1,249 coalition deaths to date. On June 25th, U.S. officials announced the launch of Operation Khanjar – 4,000 U.S. Marines and hundreds of NATO and Afghan forces pushing into various parts of Helmand province attempting to secure the area ahead of Afghanistan’s presidential election next month. Consider this entry a double-issue – there has been so much powerful photography coming out of Afghanistan the past few months, I had a very hard time editing down to just these, recent photographs from Afghanistan.
Fifties TV host Art Linkletter is 97 today. He’s the one that said “kids say the darndest things” and had a panel of them on many of his shows to prove it.
Phyllis Diller is 92 today. Before she became a kind of parody of herself she was actually very, very funny.
Diahann Carroll , the first African-American actress to appear in a TV series and not portray a domestic worker, is 74 today. The show was Julia and she was a nurse and single mom. Ms. Carroll was nominated for a best actress Oscar for Claudine in 1975.
Kiefer’s dad Donald is 74 today. Donald Sutherland’s breakthrough role was as Vernon Pinkley in The Dirty Dozen, then as “Hawkeye” Pierce in M*A*S*H. He has more than 150 credits listed at IMDb.
Spencer Davis is 67.
Camilla is 61.
Lucie Arnaz is 58.
David Hasselhoff is 57.
And one of my favorites, Andre Royo, “Bubbles,” is 41 today.
Elbridge Gerry was born on this date in 1744. He signed the Declaration of Independence, the Article of Confederation, but was one of three delegates who did not sign the Constitution, in Gerry’s case because it did not include a Bill of Rights. Gerry was the fifth U.S. vice president, serving the first year-and-a-half under Madison’s second term before dying. And, of course, he is the person for whom gerrymandering is named. He was the Massachusetts governor who signed a particularly egregious redistricting plan in 1812.
Joe DiMaggio did not get a hit on this date in 1941. Too bad, if he had his consecutive game hitting streak would have been 73. As it was, he hit safely in 56 consecutive games up to this date — and 16 after. (44 is the best by anyone else.)
At AmericanHeritage.com a couple years ago, John Steele Gordon told a famous good DiMaggio story:
[This story] story concerns his brief, disastrous marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was a film actress, used to working in front of cameras and technicians, not audiences. After their wedding, DiMaggio and Monroe went to Korea to entertain the American troops fighting there against the Chinese communists. There were perhaps 5,000 soldiers on the air-base runways waiting to greet them, and when they stepped out of the plane, the soldiers started cheering. Monroe, startled by the ovation, turned to her husband and said, “I bet you’ve never heard such cheering, Joe.” DiMaggio, who had brought a sold-out Yankee Stadium screaming to its collective feet more times than he could count, just said quietly, “Oh, yes I have.”
Then he beat her.
Billie Holiday died 50 years ago today. She was 44.
Considered by many to be the greatest jazz vocalist of all time, Billie Holiday lived a tempestuous and difficult life. Her singing expressed an incredible depth of emotion that spoke of hard times and injustice as well as triumph. Though her career was relatively short and often erratic, she left behind a body of work as great as any vocalist before or since.
Or ever.
Treat yourself [opens iTunes].
Spectacular Wide-Field View of Eagle Nebula in High-Res. Photo taken from Earth.
“JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: Thank you, Senator [Graham], for the opportunity to revisit that matter. I appreciate that the man who once said he’d drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama has a special contribution to make when it comes to the importance of thinking before you speak.”
Gail Collins in an amusing parody of this week’s dialogue.
Guglielmo Marconi’s mother was Annie Jameson of the Jameson Irish Whiskey family.
Although Marconi’s invention of wireless telegraphy was an original and significant application of electromagnetic theory to commercial use, the family connection and money were instrumental in his early business success.
How come I love it when I open my Twitter application and there’s 6 or 8 new Tweets, but hate it when I open it and there’s 23?
(That’s why I only follow a few people — so far.)
Tom Watson almost shot his age in the first round of the British Open today. He’s 59. He shot a 65.
“In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.”
There were lines of people waiting patiently to get into these hearings, even if just for a few moments, and what was striking about it is that so many of them were very young, so many were women, and so many were of different races and colors. America’s future was waiting in line to get a glimpse of a hearing at which the woman who will become this country’s first Hispanic justice was repeatedly called out as someone with a race problem.
[H]e has performed all sorts of experiments to test how much people will eat under varying circumstances. These have convinced him that people are—to put it politely—rather dim. They have no idea how much they want to eat or, once they have eaten, how much they’ve consumed. Instead, they rely on external cues, like portion size, to tell them when to stop. The result is that as French-fry bags get bigger, so, too, do French-fry eaters.
From an interesting review of some of the literature on obesity by Elizabeth Kolbert.
Excerpts from a Wall Street Journal editorial dated July 16, 2009:
We like profits as much as the next capitalist. But when those profits are supported by government guarantees or insured deposits, taxpayers have a special interest in how the companies conduct their business. Ideally we would shed those implicit guarantees altogether, along with the very notion of too big to fail. But that is all but impossible now and for the foreseeable future.
. . .
Another answer would be an FDIC-style bailout tax, perhaps tied to leverage ratios, for those in the too-big-to-fail camp.
Yes, THAT Wall Street Journal. The T-word.
40 years ago, three human beings – with the help of many thousands of others – left our planet on a successful journey to our Moon, setting foot on another world for the first time. Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard. The entire trip lasted only 8 days, the time spent on the surface was less than one day, the entire time spent walking on the moon, a mere 2 1/2 hours – but they were surely historic hours. Scientific experiments were deployed (at least one still in use today), samples were collected, and photographs were taken to document the entire journey. Collected here are 40 images from that journey four decades ago, when, in the words of astronaut Buzz Aldrin: “In this one moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind”. (40 photos total)
America’s Best Idea – the national parks – gets even better this summer with three fee-free weekends at more than 100 national parks that usually charge entrance fees*.
*Fee waiver includes: entrance fees, commercial tour fees, and transportation entrance fees. Other fees such as reservation, camping, tours, concession and fees collected by third parties are not included unless stated otherwise.
The second of the three weekends is this Saturday and Sunday.
One of the great benefits of reaching 62 is the National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Senior Pass. It’s $10, good for the rest of your life, and admits you and up to three adult passengers in your vehicle free to all federal recreation sites. It also includes a 50% discount on many charges such as campgrounds. Is this a great country, or what?
If you’re under 62, the similar annual pass is $80.
Some example entrance fees (but not this weekend!):
Bryce Canyon National Park $25 per vehicle
Carlsbad Caverns National Park $6 per person over age 15
Grand Canyon National Park $25 per vehicle
Shenandoah National Park $15 per vehicle ($10 in winter)
Yellowstone National Park $25 per vehicle ($20 for snowmobile)
A reserve soldier who said he should not have to go to Afghanistan because Barack Obama was never legally eligible to be the president has had his deployment orders revoked, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported Wednesday.
. . .Cook believes that Obama was ineligible to become president and commander-in-chief because he was is not a natural-born U.S. citizen, the paper reported. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.
Here’s hoping his next deployment is to Leavenworth.
Did you read Matt Taibbi’s article about Goldman Sachs yet?
Today is the birthday
… of Clive Cussler, 78.
… of Alex Karras, All-American, Heisman runner-up (and he was a lineman), Outland Award winner, NFL star (1958-1971), Monday Night Football sportscaster, TV sitcom actor and — most notably — Mongo in Blazing Saddles. He’s 74 today.
… of Tucson’s favorite daughter, Linda Ronstadt, 63 today. Miss Ronstadt has sold more than 66 million albums worldwide. The session band behind her on her third album became The Eagles. Linda went to a different high school and was behind me a year or two, but I did sit behind her cousin in many a class when the nuns had us in alphabetical order.
… of Arianna Stassinopoulos, 59. Born in Greece, educated at Cambridge, wealthy by her marriage to Michael Huffington, she is an actress, commentator, author of a dozen books, re-born liberal and founder of the Huffington Post.
… of Forest Whitaker, 48. Whitaker has been in more than 60 films and television productions, most notably Good Morning, Vietnam, The Crying Game and as Charlie “Bird” Parker in Bird (which earned him best actor at Cannes). He won the best actor Oscar, of course, for portraying Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.
Rembrandt Van Rijn was born in Leiden, Netherlands on this date in 1606.