Turn it off!

Sitting in Atlanta airport and CNN is going on and on and on about Scott Peterson. Who cares?

Oops! I guess this is some other Peterson alleged wife killer. Still.

Perks begin at the door

They’ve consolidated Delta and Northwest counters at Albuquerque Sunport, perhaps everywhere. The result this morning was the longest check-in line I’ve ever encountered here, almost like a big city airport.

I stood in the line for a few minutes and then remembered — “Hey, I’m in first class.”

No line for me.

34 weeks

34 weeks pregnant and dooce is particularly funny today. A short excerpt:

“I’m also way more emotional than I have been in previous weeks, on the verge of tears all day long, and even now as I write this I’m trying not to cry. About what? Do you even have to ask that question? Yesterday it was because my tortilla chip broken into several pieces as I was dipping it into salsa.”

Another biennial

NewMexiKen first published this four years ago today and again in 2007.

From an article in The Albuquerque Tribune:

Those who didn’t care much for Pete Nanos still seethed over the comment he made about some lab employees being “cowboys and butt-heads” during an all-hands meeting of Los Alamos National Laboratory employees last year.

Not a good choice of words for a staff meeting, but I’ve got to admit that every place NewMexiKen ever worked had its share of “cowboys and buttheads.”

I’ve posted this on 5/7/05 and 5/7/07

So why not 5/7/09?

1. Shouldn’t it be Jesus comma Christ (that is: Jesus, Christ), rather than Jesus Christ (no punctuation)? Christ is a title right, not technically part of his name?

2. Why is “frigging” acceptable and “f***ing” not? Aren’t words just symbols? So in this case isn’t frigging just a symbol for f***king?

3. There’s a sign I’ve seen a couple of times this week:

SLOW
MY DADDY
AND MOMMY
WORKS HERE

Now, understand I mean no disparagement to highway construction workers. That people drive recklessly through construction zones and endanger workers is an obscenity. And the sign is cute with its attempt to copy a young child’s lettering.

But this particular sign is just wrong. “My Daddy and Mommy Works Here.” Plural noun, singular verb. (Gasp!) Furthermore, do you suppose some kid actually has both his/her dad and mom working on the site? Daddies and mommies might both work there, but “My Daddy and Mommy”? Are we into nepotism in road construction? Doubtful.

Here’s what NewMexiKen suggests:

JESUS, CHRIST
SLOW DOWN
YOU FRIGGING ASSHOLE
PARENTS WORK HERE

Best redux line of the day

“I can still tick off at least half a dozen [former bosses] who, if I saw them in flames on a sidewalk today, would prompt no thought more vexing than ‘Damn, where’re my marshmallows?'”

nancynall.com in a really excellent essay on the “reassignment” of James Lileks at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Good reading from 2007.

Get to work. No holiday today.

Former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici is 77 today.

Tim Russert would have been 59.

Johannes Brahms and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky were born on May 7th in 1833 and 1840 respectively.

Poet, playwright and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish was born on May 7th in 1892.

Gary Cooper was born on May 7th in 1901. Copper twice won the best actor Oscar and had three more nominations in the category. His wins were for Sergeant York and High Noon.

Edwin Herbert Land was born on May 7th in 1909. Land invented the Polaroid Land Camera.

And Eva Peron was born on May 7th in 1919.

Religion in America

According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:

  • Just more than half of the American population is Protestant
  • Just less than a quarter are Catholic
  • Another 3 percent are other Christian; e.g., Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness or Orthodox
  • Just less than 2 percent are Jewish
  • Buddhists, Hindu, Muslim and other world religions account collectively for nearly 2 percent
  • Other faiths such as Unitarian, New Age or Native American account for about 1 percent
  • About 12 percent of Americans claim to be unaffiliated — half of these say religion is important, half say it is not
  • And 4 percent are non-believers

Other slices.

  • Roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics
  • 28% of the population has left the faith of their childhood for another religion – or none at all (44% if you count intra-Protestant changes)
  • 25% of 18-29 year olds say they are unaffiliated

Why-oh-why isn’t this a national holiday?

In addition to A.P. Giannini, mentioned in the previous post, today is the birthday of Willie Mays (78), Bob Seger (64) and George Clooney (48). Orson Welles was born on May 6th (1915). So was Rudolph Valentino (1895), Sigmund Freud (1856), Robert Peary (1856) and Maximilien Robespierre (1758).

And so was my eponymous oldest son.

Greatness abounds.

A shadow of its founder’s greatness

You know that the Bank of America is in the news today for being in need of $34 billion in shoring up.

Today also is the birthday of the Bank’s founder, Amadeo Pietro Giannini (1870-1949), a hero of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Like a lot of folks in the San Francisco area, Amadeo Peter Giannini was thrown from his bed in the wee hours of April 18, 1906, when the Great Quake shook parts of the city to rubble. He hurriedly dressed and hitched a team of horses to a borrowed produce wagon and headed into town — to the Bank of Italy, which he had founded two years earlier. Sifting through the ruins, he discreetly loaded $2 million in gold, coins and securities onto the wagon bed, covered the bank’s resources with a layer of vegetables and headed home.

In the days after the disaster, the man known as A.P. broke ranks with his fellow bankers, many of whom wanted area banks to remain shut to sort out the damage. Giannini quickly set up shop on the docks near San Francisco’s North Beach. With a wooden plank straddling two barrels for a desk, he began to extend credit “on a face and a signature” to small businesses and individuals in need of money to rebuild their lives. His actions spurred the city’s redevelopment.

That would have been legacy enough for most people. But Giannini’s mark extends far beyond San Francisco, where his dogged determination and unusual focus on “the little people” helped build what was at his death the largest bank in the country, Bank of America . . .

Most bank customers today take for granted the things Giannini pioneered, including home mortgages, auto loans and other installment credit. Heck, most of us take banks for granted. But they didn’t exist, at least not for working stiffs, until Giannini came along.

Time 100

The first significant law restricting immigration into the United States

… was approved on on this date in 1882. It was The Chinese Exclusion Act.

Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof: Therefore,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That … the coming of Chinese laborers to the United States be, and the same is hereby, suspended; and during such suspension it shall not be lawful for any Chinese laborer to come, or having so come after the expiration of said ninety days to remain within the United States.

The National Archives, which has a full transcript and images of the Act, notes that: “The 1882 exclusion act also placed new requirements on Chinese who had already entered the country. If they left the United States, they had to obtain certifications to re-enter. Congress, moreover, refused State and Federal courts the right to grant citizenship to Chinese resident aliens, although these courts could still deport them.”

The exclusion of Chinese remained in effect in one form or another until 1943.

Oh, the humanity

The Hindenburg was about as big as the Titanic. It traveled at eighty miles per hour, so the trip between Frankfurt, Germany, and Lakehurst, New Jersey, took two and a half days, half the time needed by the fastest ocean liner of the era. Passengers on the Hindenburg paid $400 for a one-way trip. They had sleeping compartments, sitting and dining areas, as well as a 200-foot promenade deck with a spectacular view of the ocean passing below. Passengers were free to roam about, to eat meals at a table on the best china, and to sample the best wines from France and Germany. The passengers could even dance to the music of a lightweight, aluminum grand piano, probably the only grand piano ever to provide entertainment for people in a flying machine.

The Hindenburg wasn’t the first airship to crash. There had been more than five crashes already. But the Hindenburg was the highest-profile crash, in part because the destruction was caught on camera.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

Herb Morrison reporting, 72 years ago today.

Thirty-six were killed — 13 of the 36 passengers, 22 of the 61 crew, and one ground crew member.

The Hindenburg did not explode because it was filled with hydrogen as long thought. The outer skin of the big German aircraft — longer than three 747s — was painted with an iron oxide, powdered aluminum compound to reflect sunlight (to minimize heat build up). The powdered aluminum was highly flammable and was ignited by an electrostatic charge in the imperfectly grounded zeppelin.

How flammable is iron oxide and aluminum? It’s the fuel used to launch the Shuttle.

The Quad Countdown

For the second straight year, Paul Myerberg is counting down all 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in preparation for the college football season. We know, we know. Baseball hasn’t reached the All-Star break, the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. are making their way through the playoffs, college lacrosse hasn’t even reached its Final Four. But there’s never a bad time to start getting ready for the football season. So why not begin here? Paul will be back every day with a new team, providing some gridiron knowledge to help you make it through the days until the season kicks off.

The Quad Countdown starts with No. 120, Western Kentucky.

The Quad Countdown: No. 119 Idaho.

The Quad Countdown: No. 118 New Mexico State.

Best, if most obvious, line of the day

“The truth is these mega-banks invested trillions, made billions, and took risks with their eyes wide open. Now, because they are deemed ‘too big to fail,’ they need trillions in government bailouts and guarantees to solve problems they helped create. But let’s look at it another way: perhaps these mega-banks are simply ‘too politically connected to fail.’

Bill Buzenberg, executive director Center for Public Integrity