“Although, there have been many times in recent months when I’ll look up and realize that my five-year-old has been sitting in a corner reading books for three hours, and I want to go, sweetie! Put down the literature and come watch TV. Tyra’s on.”
Precisely
If people actually reduce social contact and cut down on air travel and stay home in response to a single cough, then it’s much likelier that swine flu will quickly die out. If it does, we’ll all feel a bit foolish over having taken those precautions and late night comics will make fun of Joe Biden and everyone will move on. If we don’t, and R jumps up, then we could be dealing with a full blown pandemic and Biden’s warning will come to be seen as, if anything, insufficiently alarmist.
R is the reproduction rate. Interesting insight — go read what he has to say, it’s only a half-dozen paragraphs.
Is it worth it to wash your hands in a public bathroom?
More than you want to know about washing your hands.
Key point:
“In general, it’s safer to leave your hands unwashed than to leave them wet.”
Another day, another national holiday gone missing
It’s Willie Nelson’s birthday. He’s 76.
He is an American icon; his voice as comforting as the American landscape, his songs as familiar as the color of the sky, his face as worn as the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps that’s why Dan Rather suggested, “We should add his face to the cliffs of Mt. Rushmore and be done with it.”
He’s recorded 250 albums, written 2,500 songs, and for half a century played countless concerts across America and around the world. He’s been instrumental in shaping both country and pop music, yet his appeal crosses all social and economic lines. Sometimes he’s called an outlaw, though from Farm Aid to the aftermath of September 11, from the resurrection of a burned-out courthouse in his own hometown to fanning the flame of the Olympics, it is Willie Nelson who brings us together.
Perhaps Emmylou Harris said it best: “If America could sing with one voice, it would be Willie’s.”
Not only that, but Cloris Leachman is 83 and Kirsten Dunst is 27.
All that and you are at work, why?
Furthermore . . .
Casey Jones wrecked his train on April 30th in 1900.
John Luther Jones from Cayce (pronounced Cay-see), Kentucky, famous to us through song as a brave engineer who romantically died trying to make up time. In truth, he crashed his locomotive at high speed into a freight train that was attempting to get out of the way on a siding. According to reports he failed to heed warning signals that were out. The accident took place early in the morning of April 30, 1900. Jones was the only fatality.
Jones was known for his affability and his skill in blowing a train whistle. His engine wiper, Wallace Saunders, reportedly idolized the engineer. Saunders wrote the original song. All you might want to know can be found in this 1928 article.
George Washington took office as the first president of the U.S. on this date in 1789. His term had begun on March 4th, but he’d booked flights on JetBlue and didn’t get from Virginia to New York City—then the capital—until the end of April.
Louisiana entered the union as the 18th state on this date in 1812.
Best line of the day from five years ago
“Jill, Mack’s mommy, also reports that watching a bunch of three-, four- and five-year-olds doing jumping-jacks is funnier than any movie Hollywood has put out in 20 years. Some clap, some jump, but no one gets the whole thing together.”
Best it’s good to be old line of the day
“[E]arly analysis of the virus’ protein-making instructions suggested that people exposed to the 1957 flu pandemic — which killed up to 2 million people worldwide — may have some immunity to the new strain.”
If you’re 52 or older you’re golden.
Key auto industry line of the day
“State franchise laws protect dealers from automakers forcing them out of business. Once a company enters bankruptcy, federal law takes priority and dealers lose leverage.”
Chrysler had 3,215 dealers at the end of March, more than Honda and Toyota combined.
Update: Felix Salmon has a brief solid piece on Chrysler’s future.
A line you don’t hear every day
“It really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.”
WHO Director General Margaret Chan in Geneva
Best political line of the day
“Those who speak for what is left of the Republican Party diminish their ranks every time they do. On Rove’s advice, they killed stimulus money for fighting pandemics like swine flu. They still follow the post-bunker missives of Dick Cheney, who has as much credibility on competent governing as the Octomom has on birth control.”
I think this explains it
Photo from The Consumerist.
What Makes Orszag Run?
Ryan Lizza adds to his profile of Obama’s OMB director, Peter Orszag, telling us how Orszag uses a website to motivate himself. The website is stickK.
StickK has different tools, known as “commitment devices,” to incentivize its users, and Orszag uses one that makes a credit-card donation to an “anti-charity”—some cause that he finds loathsome—if he doesn’t reach his goal. He even recruited a friend as a “verifier” to make sure he couldn’t cheat the system.
Go read the post (it’s brief) to find out what Orszag’s “anti-charity” might be.
I actually think this sounds like a very useful motivational tool. What would your “stick” be?
Stickk’s slogan is “Put a contract out on yourself.”
Abraham Lincoln’s 100 Days
Historian Jill Lepore writes about another 100 days. Good stuff.
Maybe the face masks are acts of faith
From a news story:
“Inside the church of San Hipolito, someone fitted a surgical mask over a statue of St. Jude.”
St. Jude is the patron saint of desperate or hopeless causes. (I know this because he was my high school class’s patron saint.)
The problems of financial illiteracy
According to a paper on financial literacy, only 7% of the American people answer this question correctly:
You purchase an appliance which costs $1,000. To pay for this appliance, you are given the following two options: a) Pay 12 monthly installments of $100 each; b) Borrow at a 20% annual interest rate and pay back $1,200 a year from now. Which is the more advantageous offer?
(i) Option (a);
(ii) Option (b);
(iii) They are the same;
(iv) Do not know;
(v) Prefer not to answer.
Source: Felix Salmon, who argues the correct answer may not be the most appropriate choice.
Answer in comment.
Most inherently racist line of the day
“[Obama’s] sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.”
Conservative commentator Byron York quoted by The Washington Independent.
Cause for Alarm — Or Not
It seems, as this is written late Wednesday morning, that the swine flu is cause for a watchful eye, but possibly nothing more. I have read that some people are wearing face masks on airplanes and I have heard that urgent care facilities are maxed out. That’s to be expected, I guess, what with the news media’s hysterics.
But what does it mean to us, the intelligent, thoughtful folks that read this blog? Has the swine flu changed your behavior in any way? Would you send home an ill co-worker who’s son had recently been to Mexico? Would you cancel a planned trip to Mexico? Would you cancel domestic or international air travel? Would you wear a mask on the plane? Would you keep your kids home from school if a case is diagnosed in your area? Would you avoid the Kentucky Derby and it’s large crowd (or any other crowd)?
My understanding is that the disease cannot be transmitted through the comment feature of this blog.
Human landscapes from above
From the always interesting, usually colorful, sometimes inspiring The Big Picture.
Startling line of the day
“Phoenix home prices fell 35 percent from February 2008 to February 2009…”
“Phoenix home prices are down 51 percent from their peak.”
A lot of people have to have a lot more mortgage than house.
The Great Recession
Worst six months for the U.S. economy since 1958.
Gross Domestic Product down at an annual rate of 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009, after a 6.3% drop in the last quarter of 2008. (See below.)
But there is this optimistic quote from an article in The New York Times: “We’re still declining, but we can see the forces that will get us out of this.”
Well, except that the comment comes from Markus Schomer, “global economic strategist at AIG Investments.”
Why on earth would anyone quote somebody from AIG?
The same article also says, “Earlier this week, General Motors announced it would slash another 21,000 jobs in the United States.” And once again, no mention is made of the more than 100,000 workers expected to lose their jobs just from GM closing 2,600 dealers. I guess those people don’t count. Ten here, twenty there, forty here. Ain’t no thing.
GDP change year-to-year:
2008 1.1
2007 2.0
2006 2.8
2005 2.9
2004 3.6
2003 2.5
2002 1.6
2001 0.8
2000 3.7
1999 4.5
1998 4.2
1997 4.5
As you can see, in a healthy economy the GDP grows about 3% on average each year. The current rate of negative 6% then is even worse than it seems.
The GDP dropped 10.4% in the first quarter of 1958 after dropping 4.2% the last quarter of 1957 (on an annualized basis); but it was down only 1.1% for the entire year 1958, however, due to a strong recovery. It seems reasonable to expect that 2009 could be the worst calendar year since 1946, when the U.S. came out of the war economy and GDP dropped 11%.
What’s the use of living?
“The German news site Spiegel Online reports the world’s leading manufacturer of beer coasters has gone bankrupt. The Katz Group, located in southwest Germany, controlled 97 percent of the U.S. coaster market. It’s unclear whether the company is reorganizing its finances, or ending production altogether.”
Just another day that should be a national holiday
Edward Kennedy Ellington, that is, Duke Ellington, was born in Washington, D.C., on this date in 1899. The PBS web site for JAZZ A Film By Ken Burns sums up Ellington succinctly.
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was the most prolific composer of the twentieth century in terms of both number of compositions and variety of forms. His development was one of the most spectacular in the history of music, underscored by more than fifty years of sustained achievement as an artist and an entertainer. He is considered by many to be America’s greatest composer, bandleader, and recording artist.
The extent of Ellington’s innovations helped to redefine the various forms in which he worked. He synthesized many of the elements of American music — the minstrel song, ragtime, Tin Pan Alley tunes, the blues, and American appropriations of the European music tradition — into a consistent style with which, though technically complex, has a directness and a simplicity of expression largely absent from the purported art music of the twentieth century. Ellington’s first great achievements came in the three-minute song form, and he later wrote music for all kinds of settings: the ballroom, the comedy stage, the nightclub, the movie house, the theater, the concert hall, and the cathedral. His blues writing resulted in new conceptions of form, harmony, and melody, and he became the master of the romantic ballad and created numerous works that featured the great soloists in his jazz orchestra.
The Today in History page from the Library of Congress has much about Ellington. The Red Hot Jazz Archive has a number of Ellington recordings on line [RealAudio files].
Today is also the birthday
… of Jerry Seinfeld. He’s 55.
… of four-time Oscar nominee, two-time winner Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s 52. Lewis won for My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown and for There Will Be Blood.
… of three-time Oscar nominee Michelle Pfeiffer. She’s 51. Once upon a time, before she gave it all up to go to Hollywood, Michelle was a checker at our local Von’s supermarket.
… of Jan Brady. Eve Plumb is 51.
… of one-time Oscar nominee (Pulp Fiction) Uma Thurman. She’s 39.
… of Andre Agassi, 39.
William Randolph Hearst was born on this date in 1863. His father, George Hearst, was 42, his mother Phoebe Apperson Hearst was 20. Was Hearst the model for Charles Foster Kane? Here is what Orson Welles had to say in 1975.
Florida’s New License Plate
Idle thought
Why not just abandon the pretense and appoint senators for their lifetime — also the lifetimes of their current spouse and any children.
(Arlen Spector is 79-years-old.)
Update: As Atrios says that Harry Reid said: “Arlen Specter’s with us except when we need him.”
If we can’t make Harper Lee’s birthday a national holiday
… then what’s the point of even having holidays?
Harper Lee. The author of one the great classics of American literature, To Kill A Mockingbird, is 83 today. Mockingbird, published in 1960, has sold more than 30 million copies.
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
The Writer’s Almanac had a nice essay about Lee three years ago (it includes the quotation above). There was another slightly longer variation of it four years ago that NewMexiKen replicated.
And, absolutely, you must read Garrison Keillor’s essay (ostensibly a book review).
Today is also the birthday
… of James A. Baker III. The former Secretary of State is 79. NewMexiKen met Baker in 1993 during the last week of the first Bush Administration. He was the President’s chief of staff, so the meeting took place in the West Wing (one of two times I’ve been there on business). Never have I met an individual more impressive in a small meeting than Baker. When you spoke, Baker gave you his apparent undivided attention. Baker’s place in history will be enhanced I believe by his diplomatic work in forming the international coalition before the 1991 invasion of Iraq. His place in history will be diminished I believe by his work for the second Bush in the 2000 Florida election litigation.
… of Ann-Margret, 68.
… of Jay Leno. He’s 59.
… of golfer John Daly. He’s 43.
… of Penélope Cruz Sánchez. Winner of several best actress awards in Europe for Non ti muovere, the Oscar-nominee for best actress last year is 35.
… of Jessica Alba. She’s 28.
Carolyn Jones was born on this date in 1929. The one-time Oscar nominee has nearly 100 credits to her name despite dying of colon cancer at age 54. She was, of course, Morticia Addams in the classic TV show.
Lionel Herbert Blythe was born on this date in 1878. We know him as Lionel Barrymore — and we know him even better as Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life — “I’d say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider.” Barrymore won the Oscar for best actor in 1931 for A Free Soul. The previous year he was nominated for best director. Both of Barrymore’s parents were actors, as were his sister Ethel (an Oscar winner) and brother John.
And James Monroe, the fifth U.S. President, was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on this date in 1758. He is one of three presidents (and two NewMexiKen daughters) to attend the College of William and Mary.
This is the best they can do?
The new “conservative” op-ed columnist for The New York Times, Ross Douthat, begins his first column.
Watching Dick Cheney defend the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, it’s been hard to escape the impression that both the Republican Party and the country would be better off today if Cheney, rather than John McCain, had been a candidate for president in 2008.
And people always said the Times didn’t have comics.