Obama’s Top Ten

Barack Obama’s answer last year when asked to name his personal top ten.

1. “Ready or Not” Fugees
2. “What’s Going On” Marvin Gaye
3. “I’m On Fire” Bruce Springsteen
4. “Gimme Shelter” Rolling Stones
5. “Sinnerman” Nina Simone
6. “Touch the Sky” Kanye West
7. “You’d Be So Easy to Love” Frank Sinatra
8. “Think” Aretha Franklin
9. “City of Blinding Lights” U2
10. “Yes We Can” will.i.am

NPR was vamping until the start of today’s inaugural concert by discussing the list.

Inaugural Event Today

Sunday’s big event is the official inaugural opening ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial, with performances and readings by Beyonce, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Sheryl Crow and other artists. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to descend on the National Mall for the event — a possible harbinger for the even bigger crowds expected when Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday.

Sunday’s ceremony will be broadcast live on many public radio stations and will be streamed live at NPR.org.

NPR

HBO will broadcast the event this evening on what is called an “open signal.”

White Sands National Monument (New Mexico)

… was established by President Herbert Hoover on this date in 1933.

At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert lies a mountain ringed valley called the Tularosa Basin. Rising from the heart of this basin is one of the world’s great natural wonders – the glistening white sands of New Mexico.

White Sands

Here, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and have created the world’s largest gypsum dune field. The brilliant white dunes are ever changing: growing, cresting, then slumping, but always advancing. Slowly but relentlessly the sand, driven by strong southwest winds, covers everything in its path.

White Sands National Monument

Best line of late night

“Everybody was okay. The pilot did a terrific job of landing the aircraft. The passengers did what panicking people rarely do – they helped each other out.

“Back in coach, in the middle of all the chaos, people were lending total strangers the $10 life jacket fee.”

Jimmy Kimmel

Still Missing the Housing Bubble

Americans lost $8 trillion in home equity over the past few years (and another $7 trillion in stock value last year). No wonder we aren’t spending money like we were. Many that write or talk about the economy seem oblivious to this rather basic fact.

The Washington Post, which was famous for relying on David Lereah, the chief economist of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), as its main expert on housing (also the author of Why the Housing Boom Will Not Bust and How You Can Profit from It), is still missing the housing bubble.

An article that discusses aspects of the bubble and how it has hit a family in California refers to the “mortgage mess.” Of course the mortgage mess is secondary. The problem stems from the fact that prices became hugely inflated and have now crashed. If house prices had followed a normal pattern of rising in step with inflation, the problems presented by the bad mortgages issued during this period would be relatively minor.
. . .

Dean Baker

The Prado 2.0

Users of the Google Earth software can simply type in “Prado, Madrid” to be “flown” in to the virtual front door of the museum, where they are greeted by this explanation of the project, alongside 14 thumbnails of the paintings that can be viewed in high-resolution:

We present a virtual tour of fourteen masterpieces from the Museo Nacional del Prado, displayed in ultra high resolution, enabling you to see details of the paintings that have never been seen before. Thanks to the high resolution of the digital images, you can view the whole painting or zoom in on a small fragment. Given the plethora of masterpieces housed at the Museum, choosing which works to include was no easy task but this selection represents the best of the collection.

The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com

Amazing resolution. Let’s hope other museums follow the Prado’s lead.

Coffee Strong Enough to Ward Off Alzheimer’s

The researchers note that previous studies have shown that coffee drinking improves cognitive performance, and caffeine reportedly reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

The researchers say it’s not known how coffee would offer protection against dementia, but that coffee drinking also has been associated with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, which is a risk factor for dementia. The authors speculate that the effect may have something to do with coffee’s antioxidant capacity in the blood.

WebMD

An acquired taste worth acquiring.

Namibia: Land of Awesome

NewMexiKen has a subscription to the magazine mental_floss (thank you Nora and Jason). Each issue they profile a country — the “50-Cent Tour” they call it. In the Jan-Feb issue the subject is Namibia. I looked for links to the article but found only this mental_floss Blog item instead.

The opening paragraph resonated quite well — I was having the same reaction to the magazine article the blogger did:

Elaborating on last week’s post on the nature of wanderlust, today I have a practical example to share. Here’s how wanderlust works. You’re minding your own business, and then something lands in front of you — say, this month’s issue of Mental_floss. You flip to the back of the mag and devour a great feature article on Namibia, and you start to feel a funny tickle in your brain. That sounds interesting, says the tickle, which leads you to the internet, where you start looking up Namibia on Wikipedia and a few hours later are looking it up on Kayak (the plane ticket comparison site). … Lonely Planet calls it “one of those dreamlike places that make you question whether something so visually orgasmic could actually exist.”

Speaking of Speeches

He said he then walked the girls over to the other side of the Lincoln Memorial, where the 16th president’s celebrated Civil War-era second inaugural address is etched. Obama said his younger daughter, 7-year-old Sasha, asked whether he would be giving a similar speech.

“And I said, ‘Well, actually, that’s a short version, but yeah, I will,’ ” Obama recalled. “And then Malia says, ‘First African American president — it better be good.’

“So I just want you to know the pressures I’m under here from my children.”

washingtonpost.com

He comes close to that, the greatest inaugural speech in American history, and he’ll have done something.

Frankly I’d like a version of Fired up! Ready to go! That’s what we need.

Idle thought

Not to joke too much1 about something that could have been an enormous tragedy, but how much do you suppose passengers on board U.S. Air Flight 1549 will receive in compensation for their landing in the Hudson River?

From what I’ve read it sounds as if the pilot is a genuine hero. Good thing the marine who ejected over San Diego last month wasn’t flying this plane.

Update: Can the Passengers of Flight 1549 Sue for Emotional Distress?

Update Two: In case you were wondering, about that airplane in the Hudson. Interesting assessment.
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1 Howard Stern reportedly was once fired from his radio job in D.C. for inquiring on the air in 1982 after a plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, how much the fare was from National Airport to the 14th Street Bridge.

Another idle thought

NewMexiKen always felt and said that buying stuff from Circuit City was too much like buying it out of the back of a truck — annoying, snide, self-important jerks1 — but now the truck has gone.

Circuit City Will Be Liquidated, Sources Say – CNBC.com

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1 Not all 35,000 employees of Circuit City, of course, nor perhaps all 567 stores. I do feel badly for their personal loss.