Another possible New Yorker cover drawn on an iPhone. Click, you’ll like it.
Best line of the day, so far
“She’s a prudent, careful liberal, respectful of Supreme Court precedent, but willing to push its limits to defend the rights of the individual. Sort of like another kid who grew up in a single-parent home and received an Ivy League education—the President who nominated her.”
How to pronounce Sotomayor
Idle thought
I like activist judges.
As long as they are activist in good ways.
Run down the street for me, will you
Mack ran a new personal best mile yesterday of 7:05.3. He ran in the Loudoun Street Mile in Winchester, Virginia.
Mack’s age group (boys 6-8) was won by a 7-year-old who ran 6:28. Mack was third in the group. Trophy!
The adult male winner did the mile in 4:11. The race is one mile directly down Loudoun Street in the historic town.
The photos are still in Mack’s mom’s camera, which itself is in the hands of some thief at the Charles Town (WVa) Races.
Memorial Day, 2009
The one website you must visit today — The Big Picture.
Newspapers
The other day I caught a few moments of a radio exchange between a caller and the host. The host was saying that newspapers are essential (and blogs are full of nothing but plagiarism and opinion). I don’t even remember what the caller thought, but he was equally wrong.
Newspapers, by which I mean businesses that use petroleum-based ink to print time-limited information on dead trees, are not essential. Much of the content of newspapers has been and is essential to our politics, economy, enlightenment and entertainment. But all of that content can now be distributed by other means.
Newspapers began to die when radio was born. Television compounded the problem. (Many, many papers died or consolidated in the 1950s and 1960s.) Cable TV news compounded it yet again. And the internet was fatal, Craigslist perhaps most of all (annual classified advertising revenue is now less than half of what it was). The current recession is simply the pneumonia that threatens the life of a body weakened by many other system failures.
We don’t need newspapers. We do need for the providers of newspaper-like content to receive revenue so that they can continue producing that content. I’d suggest that there are many ways this can be done, and that the search for one solution — or the search for a way to subsidize newspapers — is not the answer.
This is, of course, not an attack on newspaper people. Many times I wish I had chosen a career in journalism. I still think the images of large presses running are romantic. And for most of my adult life I have subscribed to the paper.
But it’s past time to recognize that newspapers (ink on paper distributed by trucks) are a 100-year old industrial technology inappropriate in an energy-conscious, environmentally threatened information age.
State of Paralysis
“California, it has long been claimed, is where the future happens first. But is that still true? If it is, God help America.”
Paul Krugman is worth the time today of those who don’t usually read Krugman.
C’mon, go read it.
The most interesting man in the world
A look at the quirky genius of the Dos Equis ad campaign.
Absolutely truest line of the day
“But the iPhone’s name is a marketing trick; it’s really a mobile computer that I occasionally use to make crappy phone calls.”
Exactly. And if I lost mine today, I’d drive directly to the Apple Store to buy another. Best toy ever.
Manjoo’s article, BTW, is about addictive iPhone/iPod touch games.
Majoo: “Since the iPhone’s games go for a buck or two a piece, they’re not much of a risk, and many follow the recipe for great games once put forward by Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese: They’re easy to learn but difficult to master.”
The Fallen
This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.
No mail today
Our country’s postal employees have a well-deserved day off today. However, let this New York mail carrier’s mistake serve as a lesson for the Internet age: don’t do anything stupid in public, ever, because someone will probably be surreptitiously filming you.
Lazy: Brooklyn Heights Postman Lifts With Neither Knees Nor Back [22-second video]
May 25th
Today is the birthday
… of Ian McKellen. Gandalf and Sir Leigh Teabing is 70 today. McKellen has been nominated for two Oscars, one each for best actor and best supporting actor.
… of Frank Oz. The voice of Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover, Yoda and so many more, is 65 today.
… of Mike Myers. Austin Powers and Shrek is 46.
… of Brian Urlacher, 31.
Miles Davis was born on this date in 1926. The web site for JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns has a brief introduction to Miles Davis.
Babe Ruth hit the 714th (and last) home run of his career on this date in 1935. He also hit 713 and 712 that day.
Decoration Day
In 1868, Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
The first national celebration of the holiday took place May 30, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. Originally known as Decoration Day, at the turn of the century it was designated as Memorial Day. In many American towns, the day is celebrated with a parade. …
In 1971, federal law changed the observance of the holiday to the last Monday in May and extended it to honor all soldiers who died in American wars. A few states continue to celebrate Memorial Day on May 30.
The flag today
“Protocol for flying the American flag on Memorial Day includes raising it quickly to the top of the pole at sunrise, immediately lowering it to half-staff until noon, and displaying it at full staff from noon until sunset.”
Flying the flag but doing it improperly is, to my mind, worse than not flying it at all. Symbols and all.
Idle thought
If there are a lot less real estate agents (see previous post), that’s going to have a big negative impact on photography studios that take those hilarious glamour shots of realtors.
Best recession-related line of the day
“Experiences like these are leading some to wonder whether Realtors may soon go the way of travel agents.”
Commissions are half what they were at the peak in 2005. Not only are prices off, but the internet is making agents less-and-less useful.
As if “useful” is the right word for real estate agents.
What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing ‘family values’ merchant these days?
I’ll just give you a one-line teaser: “If this little kid isn’t hooked on black baggy clothes and cutting by age 11 I’ll be shocked.”
Finger Painting
A Pinup So Swell She Kept G.I. Mail
A swell Memorial Day story about Donna Reed, the pinup who kept a box full of the letters sent her during World War II.
Podcasts you should hear
If you eat, you should listen to this 53-minute podcast of a talk by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan covers the essentials of his important book. Informative and interesting.
Podcast link is to iTunes.
Spring rain in Santa Fe
Garret posted a lovely set of photos of his garden after yesterday’s rain.
Idle thought
It didn’t even reach my consciousness until today, but I’ve noticed that far fewer people on airplanes seem to be reading newspapers.
These are my thoughts about Twitter. Yours may differ.
I have a Twitter account and I find there are folks worth following. Currently I particularly like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (@kaj33) and Bill Simmons of ESPN (@sportsguy33). I’m also following Levar Burton, Kevin Spacey and Jerry Brown, among others.
I do not myself post anything on Twitter. Any thought I have worth sharing takes me more than 140 characters. For example, on NMK I’ve usually said why I think a link is worth your time (and often given you an excerpt). I myself hate being given a link without any commentary, and I don’t think you can provide worthwhile commentary in 100 characters, which is about all that’s left to you after the url of the link.
And I understand the need to use tiny URLs on Twitter, but I hate them. I almost never follow the links because I want some idea of where I’m going with my click before I go, and tiny URLs give you no idea. This just compounds the problem of lack of commentary. You’ve got to sell the link pretty hard to get me to click when I have no idea where I’m going, and frankly almost no one can do that in 100 characters.
I was talking to an intelligent and informative retired Air Force officer on the plane the other day. He was using so many acronyms that even I (after 30+ years of federal service) had to occasionally stop him and ask what such-an-such meant. Twitter is pretty much that way. Some good stuff, but too much figuring out. Briefer is not always better.
But, as I said, your opinion may differ.
Best line of the day
“Only the mediocre are always at their best.”
Somerset Maughn
Thanks Unc.