Just so you don’t get confused about that bastard Jesse Helms

“I’ve been portrayed as a caveman by some. That’s not true. I’m a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers.” (1985)

“All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction.” (1986)

“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.” (1995)

Jesse Helms, a few of the many quotes at Freedom Road.

Speed of sound

You see the sky rocket explode, but the boom doesn’t come for seconds. The lightning flashes, but the thunder is moments behind. The reason, of course, is that sound moves much, much, much slower than light.

Light is so fast — 186,000 miles per second — that everything we can see on Earth, we see almost instantaneously. Sound, however, travels at just 1,125 feet per second (more or less, depending on temperature, altitude, humidity). The source of the sound doesn’t need to be very far away for us to sense the lag.

Rule of thumb, it takes just less than 5 seconds for sound to travel a mile. If lightning flashes, count the seconds until you hear the thunder to calculate how far away it struck.

A bolt of lightning can be over five miles in length, have temperatures of 50,000 degrees F., and contain 100 million volts.

In 2007, 45 people were struck and killed by lightning in the U.S.; hundreds of others were injured.  Of the victims who were killed by lightning:

• 98% were outside
• 89% were male
• 30% were males between the ages of 20-25
• 25% were standing under a tree
• 25% occurred on or near the water

The reported number of injuries is likely far lower than the actual total number because many people do not seek help or doctors do not record it as a lightning injury.  People struck by lightning suffer from a variety of long-term, debilitating symptoms, including memory loss, attention deficits, sleep disorders, numbness, dizziness, stiffness in joints, irritability, fatigue, weakness, muscle spasms, depression, and an inability to sit for long.

National Weather Service

That’s funny, I don’t remember being struck by lightning and I have all those symptoms. Oh wait, including memory loss.

Build an ark

While my vacation continues, NewMexiKen is mostly recycling older posts. There was a nice mountain rainstorm during the party we attended yesterday, but nothing like this storm that seemed to go biblical on me two years ago today.

An astonishing rainstorm at Casa NewMexiKen this morning around 3. And, by my count, three lightning strikes way too close. You know, “One Mississippi, two Miss … oh damn, that was close.” NewMexiKen really doesn’t like lightning since my house was struck and set on fire in 1995.

Anyway, the rain was falling so fast and furiously I began to wonder if Lowe’s carried gopher wood.1 Then I panicked when I couldn’t remember the conversion from feet and inches to cubits (did we learn that in school?). And would it be OK if I accidentally on purpose forgot to bring two scorpions and two rattlesnakes. (But I did remember I’d only need one New Mexico whiptail.) It was really raining!

But it slowed to nothing much after 25-30 minutes. The arroyo2 next to my house is still running deep and fast, but things are returning to normal otherwise.

1 Genesis 6

  1. Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
  2. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

2 “Arroyo” is Spanish for concrete ditch.

The day music changed forever

On this day in 1954, Elvis Presley recorded his first rock and roll song and his first hit, “That’s All Right, Mama.” Elvis had wanted to be a crooner, and in his first recording sessions he only sang slow ballads. But then, in between takes, Elvis and the other musicians started fooling around and singing a blues tune called “That’s All Right.” Sam Phillips asked them to start over from the beginning and recorded the song. He then rushed the record to the biggest DJ in Memphis, and it became Elvis’s breakout hit.

The Writer’s Almanac

Sun Studio

The “other musicians” were, of course, Scotty Moore on guitar and Bill Black on bass.

Sam recognized it right away. He was amazed that the boy even knew Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup — nothing in any of the songs he had tried so far gave any indication that he was drawn to this kind of music at all. But this was the sort of music that Sam had long ago wholeheartedly embraced, this was the sort of music of which he said, “This is where the soul of man never dies.” And the way the boy performed it, it came across with a freshness and an exuberance, it came across with the kind of clear-eyed, unabashed originality that Sam sought in all the music that he recorded — it was “different,” it was itself.

They worked on it. They worked hard on it, but without any of the laboriousness that had gone into the efforts to cut “I Love You Because.” Sam tried to get Scotty to cut down on the instrumental flourishes — “Simplify, simplify'” was the watchword. “If we wanted Chet Atkins,” said Sam good-humoredly, “we would have brought him up from Nashville and gotten him in the damn studio!” He was delighted with the rhythmic propulsion Bill Black brought to the sound. It was a slap beat and a tonal beat at the same time. He may not have been as good a bass player as his brother Johnny; in fact, Sam said, “Bill was one of the worst bass players in the world, technically, but, man, could he slap that thing!” And yet that wasn’t it either — it was the chemistry. There was Scotty, and there was Bill, and there was Elvis scared to death in the middle, “but sounding so fresh, because it was fresh to him.”

Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley

NewMexiKen photo, 2006

Worth knowing

“A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.” (Forbes)

Put another way, we are exporting more than twice as much oil now as we could expect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to produce when it came online in 15-20 years.

Exporting.

More than twice as much.

Independence Day trivia quiz

  1. Based on their age when they took office, Theodore Roosevelt (42) is the youngest president the U.S. has had. John F. Kennedy (43) is the second youngest. Who is the third youngest president? Fourth youngest? (Both were 46 and some months.)
  2. Who was the oldest president?
  3. Alaska is the largest state, Texas second. Which state is the third largest? Fourth largest? Fifth?
  4. Rhode Island is the smallest state, Delaware second. Which state is the third smallest? Fourth smallest? Fifth?
  5. The highest mountain in the eastern U.S. is in which state?
  6. The largest county in the U.S. is San Bernardino, California (20,105 square miles). The smallest county (26 square miles) is?
  7. The boundary with Mexico is 1,933 miles. The boundary with Canada is about (1) half as long, (2) the same as with Mexico, (3) half again as long as the boundary with Mexico, (4) more than twice as long as the boundary with Mexico?
  8. Two first ladies earned post-graduate degrees. Which two?
  9. True or false, the Liberty Bell cracked ringing to celebrate the Declaration of Independence.
  10. The monarch to whom the Declaration of Independence is addressed is (1) Louis XIV, (2) Elizabeth I, (3) Edward VIII, (4) George III?

Bonus question: Quick, without looking, are there more red stripes or white stripes in the American flag?

Answers in comments. No peeking.

History’s Greatest Coincidence

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on this date in 1826, 50 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration; Adams, with Benjamin Franklin, was also key to its evolution.

Image of first page of Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence with edits.

Adams and Jefferson were colleagues during the Revolution, but fell apart over political differences during their terms as president (Adams 1797-1801, Jefferson 1801-1809). After Jefferson left office they resumed a remarkable correspondence that lasted until their deaths.

Also, on that same day in 1826, Stephen Foster, the first great American songwriter, was born. “His melodies are so much a part of American history and culture that most people think they’re folk tunes. All in all he composed some 200 songs, including ‘Oh! Susanna’ ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,’ and ‘Camptown Races.'” [American Experience]

And “Old Folks at Home (Swanee River),” “My Old Kentucky Home” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”

A Declaration of Mutual Dependence

An excellent piece written in 2004 for The New York Times by Walter Isaacson. Here is an excerpt but take the time to go read it all — it is our nation’s birthday after all.

Where did these axioms come from? At first, the founders foundered a bit in figuring that out. “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” Jefferson wrote in his initial rough draft. Franklin crossed this out with his heavy printer’s pen and changed it to “we hold these truths to be self-evident.” Drawing on the concepts of his friend David Hume, Franklin believed that the truths were grounded in rationality and reason, not in the dictates or dogma of any particular religion.

Similarly, Jefferson originally noted that “from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.” John Adams, a product of Puritan Massachusetts, appears to be the one who suggested that this be amended to, “they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” But whatever the provenance of these basic premises, it was clear what this meant for the role and the legitimacy of governments: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” A nice concept.

The Declaration of Independence

It was the Declaration of Independence that was approved by the Second Continental Congress on this date in 1776.

Independence itself was voted two days earlier. We celebrate the anniversary of the birth certificate, not the birth.

Although the section of the Lee Resolution dealing with independence was not adopted until July 2, Congress appointed on June 10 a committee of five to draft a statement of independence for the colonies. The committee included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, with the actual writing delegated to Jefferson.

Jefferson drafted the statement between June 11 and 28, submitted drafts to Adams and Franklin who made some changes, and then presented the draft to the Congress following the July 2nd adoption of the independence section of the Lee Resolution. The congressional revision process took all of July 3rd and most of July 4th. Finally, in the afternoon of July 4th, the Declaration was adopted.

The signing of the embossed copy we recognize as THE Declaration of Independence began on August 2nd.

Information and quote from The National Archives.

Metaphorically phoning it in from my metaphoric break

A federal judge has ordered the invasion of your privacy. This is from washingtonpost.com:

That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). [Judge] Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.”

Speculative. It’s terabytes of data about us.

Andrew Tobias has a nice posting about Clay Felker, who died earlier this week.

Walt Mossberg provides Some General Tips For Switch to Mac From Windows. I would have found this handy during the first few weeks; not so much later.

Obama leads McCain by 5 points in — wait for it — Montana.

[Not having to blog because I’m taking a break makes it a lot easier to blog. Does that make any sense — other than as a description of insanity I mean?]

Relapse

Ever take a business call while on vacation?  Me, too.

So just consider the three items that follow some stuff I phoned in.

Most revealing line of the day

“But as far as sitting down and watching a sporting event, that’s just not part of my day, it’s not part of my night, and, ahh, I’ll be honest with you, watching The Bachelorette is.”

Joe Buck, Fox Sports’ lead announcer for Major League Baseball and the NFL, on ESPN Radio’s The Herd via Awful Announcing.

NewMexiKen wrote this about Buck six months ago (January 6, 2008):

I’m thinking that Joe Buck doesn’t actually like sports. He likes the life — he learned that from his dad, and he can recite from his notes with the best of them (and then some), but I don’t think he actually likes sports (the game on the field). He got into this because it was the family business.

Woof woof

“Animal welfare groups must be panting: Leona Helmsley reportedly directed that her fortune — up to $8 billion — be used for the care and welfare of dogs.”

NPR

A bitch, even in death.

NewMexiKen

I think I’ll shut NewMexiKen down for a while.

Knowing my record you may find me back in a few days or a week.

Or maybe not. We’ll see.

UPDATE: JULY 1ST

Hey, thanks everybody.

1. I’m fine — or at least I’m as fine as ever.

2. I just really needed a break from the day-to-day pressure obsession, which I feel even when I skip a day or two. So maybe I’ll take three or four days or more off this time.

3. I’m sick of the election and reading about the election and the media coverage of the election. I needed a break particularly from that, but just doing the birthdays and a few best lines doesn’t keep me going.

4. I need to do some re-coding, hence the drop back to the default style temporarily. The site may look the same as it did when I come back (or not), but the code (CSS) has to be cleaned up.

5. I’ve done this blog an estimated 330+ days a year for almost five years. I really should quit.

‘I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.’

While greatly respecting and admiring John McCain’s patriotism and honor, NewMexiKen has never thought being a prisoner of war was a qualification for high office, as so much of the mainstream media seems to think. General Clark seems to doubt it too.

I thought about just making this a best line of the day, but out of respect to McCain — and out of respect to Clark who was after all responding to Bob Schieffer directly — I thought the context was important.

Gen. CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk, it’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the armed forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, `I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk?
What about your reputation? How do we handle it publicly?’

SCHIEFFER: Well…

Gen. CLARK: He hasn’t made those calls, Bob. So…

SCHIEFFER: Well, General, maybe–could I just interrupt you?

Gen. CLARK: Sure.

SCHIEFFER: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean…

Gen. CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

SCHIEFFER: Really?

Gen. CLARK: But Barack is not–he is not running on the fact that he has made these national security pronouncements, he’s running on his other strengths. He’s running on the strengths of character, on the strengths of his communication skills, on the strengths of his judgment, and those are qualities that we seek in our national leadership.

Face the Nation [pdf]