NewMexiKen blog post titles are now posted at Twitter — @NewMexiKen.
June 15th is the birthday
… of Mario Cuomo, 77.
… of Jim Belushi. He’s 55.
… of Julie Hagerty. Airplane’s flight attendant is 54.
… of Wade Boggs, 51.
… of Oscar-winner Helen Hunt, 46.
… of Courteney Cox, now 45. Apparently that’s cougar age.
… of O’Shea Jackson. Ice Cube is 40.
And it’s the birthday of Doogie. Neil Patrick Harris was born in Albuquerque 36 years ago today. He grew up in Ruidoso, New Mexico.
Factoid of the day
The percentage of Americans of African descent was greater in 1776 than it is today.
About one person in five of those listed in the first census (1790) had African ancestry. It’s around 13.5% now.
A day late perhaps
…but let’s talk about Betsy Ross.
According to James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Professor Michael Frisch at SUNY Buffalo asks his first-year college students to list “the first ten names that you think of” in American History before the Civil War. (He excludes presidents, generals, etc.) Betsy Ross led the list seven years out of eight.
Here’s reality according to Loewen: Betsy Ross played no part in the actual creation of the first American flag. As he puts it, “Ross came to prominence around 1876, when some of her descendants, seeking to create a tourist attraction in Phildadelphia, largely invented the myth of the first flag.”
Flag Day (June 14) commemorates the date in 1777 when the Continental Congress approved the design for a national flag.
However, according to my very own official younger daughter Emily, who—with her sister—has written about Betsy Ross, “She may have just had good PR, but my recent research did seem to lead me to believe that Betsy Ross did standardize the five-pointed star for use on the American flag. Until she made her flags, the stars were sometimes six pointed. Ross used the five points because she could cut it out quickly by folding the material and only making one cut. After her flags, the five-pointed star was used on other American flags.”
Best line of the day, so far
“You want to have a parade and scream your lungs out for a job well done, then invite the young men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to walk down Figueroa Street and be feted like heroes in the Coliseum.”
Sunday stuff
Saw the Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino last night. A very good film. Eastwood does cranky old man just as well as he did tough cop and enigmatic western hero.
The Apple App Store has Peggle on sale through today for 99¢. It’s a fun arcade game. I’ve never been much of a video game player, but do enjoy them on the iPhone/iPod. Paper Toss is another great time waster, and it’s free.
A brief squall here this morning. Thunderstorms in June? In the morning? What is this planet coming to? Looks like some 90-degree days headed our way, though. I guess I’d better fire up the cooler — haven’t needed it yet this year.
I see we’ve gotten through the switch to digital TV without people taking to the streets with torches. It’s getting more and more difficult for ANY change to come about in our society without it being turned into the apocalypse.
FiveThirtyEight projects that Obama would win 445 electoral votes if an election were held today. The projection is based on his popularity, awarding the president states where he has 50% approval or better.
Alas, as Frank Rich writes, “A sizable minority of Americans is irrationally fearful of the fast-moving generational, cultural and racial turnover Obama embodies — indeed, of the 21st century itself. That minority is now getting angrier in inverse relationship to his popularity with the vast majority of the country.”
Cities Downsize to Survive
Via Calculated Risk:
Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.
In Detroit … there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.
Plans for Flint, Michigan, include a reduction of the city (converted to vacant, natural land) by 40%.
Best line of the day about new Facebook names
“No obvious Star Trek, Star Wars or Harry Potter names have been snapped up. We’re hoping that someone picks up at least Voldemort, because the owner could never tell anybody what his page is named.”
Alas, facebook.com/Voldemort has been taken.
The girl in the window
Go read this story. It won Lane DeGregory a Pulitzer Prize.
No, really, go read it.
A brief excerpt:
The doctors and social workers had no way of knowing all that had happened to Danielle. But the scene at the house, along with Danielle’s almost comatose condition, led them to believe she had never been cared for beyond basic sustenance. Hard as it was to imagine, they doubted she had ever been taken out in the sun, sung to sleep, even hugged or held. She was fragile and beautiful, but whatever makes a person human seemed somehow missing.
June 13
John-Boy Walton is 58 today. That’s actor Richard Thomas.
The voice of Buzz Lightyear is 56. That’s Tim Allen.
The Olsen twins are 46.
Camping advisory line of the day
“[A]ll food, garbage, and scented items such as toothpaste, deodorant, sunscreen, toiletries, and chapstick, must be stored in bear canisters, hung from park bear wires, or hung at least 12 feet high and 10 feet out from the nearest tree trunk.”
National Parks Traveler describing new restrictions at Olympic National Park.
Camping in some parks is like trying to get on an airplane. Damn bears. Damn terrorists.
Thrifty
Not surprisingly, all the various chains of superdiscount stores are thriving in the recession. At Dollar Tree Inc. (3,667 stores), earnings were up nearly 38 percent in the most recent quarter. In its most recent quarter, Family Dollar Stores (6,654 locations) said same-store sales were up 6.2 percent. Both companies’ stocks are higher than they were when the market peaked in October 2007. And Dollar General (8,400 stores, $10.5 billion in 2008 sales) is performing even better.
Tiffany sales in NYC meanwhile are off 42%.
Line of the day
“The projected losses also reflect an assumption that from the first quarter of 2009, home prices will fall an additional 12.5% nationally and 36% in California, with home prices not exhibiting stability until the second half of 2010.”
Calculated Risk quoting Fitch Ratings
The Knox Trial, Continued
Timothy Egan updates yesterday’s column on Amanda Knox, which I linked to yesterday.
Another air show video
But this time, from inside the air show; inside a Blue Angels jet in fact.
This appears to be over Annapolis and Chesapeake Bay.
How much would you pay to take this ride? I’d pay quite a bit.
Excusable absence
Obama writes a note. [1:43 minute video]
A prom to live for
One more newspaper prom article. Except this one begins:
Pulsing purple and green strobe lights swirl across satin gowns and bare arms. Pink’s defiant “So What?” rages on a dance floor packed with smiling, spinning teenagers.
Just outside the prom, Miles Person considers — just for a second — the time he has left to live. His doctors say four months, that there is nothing left to fight the brain tumors that began at age 17.
Best line published on this date, so far
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.
Supreme Court of the United States, Loving v. Virginia, June 12, 1967. (Unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Warren.)
At the time the case was decided 42 years ago, Virginia was one of 16 states that still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
12 June
President George H.W. Bush is 85 today.
Well, gawwwleee and shazzayam, Jim Nabors is 79.
Marv Philip Aufrichtig was born 68 years ago today. We know him as Marv Albert.
Armando Anthony Corea is also 68. We know him as Chick.
Anne Frank should have been 80 years old today. The Writer’s Almanac wrote a brief essay about Frank last year that began with: “It was on this day in 1942 that she received a red and white plaid journal, from her father, for her 13th birthday, and she started to write her diary, a diary that she called by the name of ‘Kitty.'”
Fifteen years ago today someone killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
Most on target line of the day
“Yes, the worst terrorist attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such people at their, and our, peril.”
Greatest Press Release Ever
Studying The Finals
Even more insight into the NBA Finals from Bill Simmons, this from The New Yorker website.
This is good reading, too — Who has the better life philosophy, Phil Jackson or Stan Van Gundy?
Best quote of the day, so far
As a 30-year pro journalist myself, I abhor sloppy and imprecise journalism like the next person. But bloggers aren’t the first to practice bad journalism any more than they are the first to do good journalism, as some have. Training does not make you responsible. Peer approval does not make you responsible. Method of dissemination does not make you responsible. Those are all arbitrary definitions that are transcended by the First Amendment.
Playoffs
Click photos for larger versions.
The season ended for cousin teammates Kiley and Aidan last night, but this evening Mack tossed a TD and two PATs, picked off an interception, and his team advanced 14-6.
Truest line of the day
“GENEVA, SWITZERLAND—World Health Organization officials expressed disappointment Monday at the group’s finding that, despite the enormous efforts of doctors, rescue workers and other medical professionals worldwide, the global death rate remains constant at 100 percent.”