Even better best line of the day

It is reported that after the second time that a mobile phone had rung in the public gallery the Judge put down his pen, and glared across at the flustered-looking owner of the phone. “If that happens again” said His Honour, “you may discover why they are known as cell phones”.

The Magistrate’s Blog

Link via Discourse.net, which also had this:

March 18th

Today is the birthday

… of Peter Graves. Mr. Phelps is 82. Long before he was on Mission Impossible, Graves was Jim Newton on the Saturday morning show Fury. He’s Jim Arness’s little brother. The family name is Aurness.

… of author John Updike. “[O]ne of the chief glories of postwar American literature” is 76.

Updike is known for writing about middle-class, middle-aged, ordinary Americans. He is also known for writing about the theme of adultery. His most popular books feature a character named Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a man who is afraid of responsibility, aging, and his tedious job, and who suffers marital problems. The last two novels in Updike’s “Rabbit” series, Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), earned Updike a number of awards including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and two respective Pulitzer Prizes.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

… of Grammy award winner Charley Pride. He’s 70.

… of Brad Dourif. Deadwood’s Doc Cochran is 58.

… of Jazz guitar great Bill Frisell. He’s 57.

… of the first African-American Miss America. Vanessa Williams is 45.

… of Oscar nominee — for best supporting actress in Chicago — Queen Latifah. She’s 38.

Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, was born on this date in 1837.

John C. Calhoun was born on this date in 1782. Calhoun was a representative, senator, vice president (for both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson), secretary of war and secretary of state.

Inquiring minds want to know

Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen, reports:

I was just reading a short article about Leslie Mann, the wife of writer/director Judd Apatow. She played the uptight sister in Knocked Up. The two met in 1996 and married in June, 1997.

At the end of the article is a quotation from Apatow, saying of their relationship, “At its core, that’s what Knocked Up is about: It makes no sense that this woman likes this guy. And that’s the story of Judd and Leslie.”

I then thought, “Isn’t their older daughter around ten years old?” I checked, and the daughter was born sometime in 1997.

So they weren’t dating long, and she got pregnant, and they got married. And she is a blond hottie who had a rising career. And he’s a kind of shlubby guy who hadn’t really hit it big yet. And they had a girl.

So why did nobody bring this up in ANY of the articles about Knocked Up?

March 17th

Kurt Russell is 57.

One-time Oscar nominee Gary Sinise is 53.

Rob Lowe is 44.

Mia Hamm is 36 today.

It’s also the birth date of two greats who died young — Nat “King” Cole (1919-1965) and Rudolf Nureyev (1938-1993).

Bobby Jones was born on this date in 1902. This from his obituary in 1971.

In the decade following World War I, America luxuriated in the Golden Era of Sports and its greatest collection of super-athletes: Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb in baseball, Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney in boxing, Bill Tilden in tennis, Red Grange in football and Bobby Jones in golf.

Many of their records have been broken now, and others are destined to be broken. But one, sports experts agree, may outlast them–Bobby Jones’s grand slam of 1930.

Jones, an intense, unspoiled young man, started early on the road to success. At the age of 10, he shot a 90 for 18 holes. At 11 he was down to 80, and at 12 he shot a 70. At 9 he played against men, at 14 he won a major men’s tournament and at 21 he was United States Open champion.

At 28 he achieved the grand slam–victories in one year in the United States Open, British Open, United States Amateur and British Amateur championships. At that point, he retired from tournament golf.

A nation that idolized him for his success grew to respect him even more for his decision to treat golf as a game rather than a way of life. This respect grew with the years.

The New York Times

And, of course it’s Saint Patrick’s Day. Patrick was just another Briton who conquered Ireland — in his case spiritually — but for some reason he’s the Irish patron saint.

Stupid is as stupid does

The headline was: Man treated after attempting to nail himself to cross.

I wasn’t going to post anything about this lunacy when the story came out on this date four years ago, but then I saw the money quote:

“When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911,” Boucher said.

The original story was in the Portland Press Herald.

No Film for Women

I’ve talked to a number of people now about the Best Picture Oscar-winner No Country for Old Men and pretty much without exception women dislike it and men like it. And the ending seems to particularly fall into this polarity.

Is my sample just too small?

How bad is the mortgage crisis going to get?

Fortune: By year-end, 15 million Americans could have mortgages worth more than the value of their homes. What happens then?

Krugman: Actually, I think home prices will fall enough for us to produce about 20 million people with negative equity. That’s almost a quarter of U.S. homes. If home prices are rising, or if there’s positive equity, you can refinance or sell. But if you have negative equity, you can end up being foreclosed on, and then some people will just find it to their advantage to walk away. We’re probably heading for $6 trillion or $7 trillion in capital losses in housing.

Fortune

Krugman goes on to say:

So that’s about a 25% decline in overall home prices. Only a fraction of that’s happened so far. Of course, it varies a lot. In places like Houston or Atlanta, where home prices have not risen much compared with underlying rents, the decline will be relatively small. In places like Miami or Los Angeles, you could be looking at 40% or 50% declines.

Best blogging buddies

If my memory serves me correctly — something increasingly in doubt — Hugh was just the second blogger ever to link to NewMexiKen. (The first was South Knox Bubba, long gone.) You may remember Hugh’s blog, Three Bed, Two Bath.

After a hiatus from blogging he’s back at Permanent Qui Vive.

Hugh, Tom, Luis, Dwight and Annette have been around these parts for four years or so now. And, so far as I know, none is even family. Thanks guys.

Are Generics Worse Than Brand-Name Drugs?

Like the Times, we found that both doctors and patients felt passionately that generics weren’t always up to snuff. But despite lots of searching, we couldn’t find a solid, randomized and well-controlled study proving there was a problem. The Epilepsy Foundation and allied doctors acknowledged they didn’t have one either.

WSJ.com Health Blog

The WSJ blog is responding to stories in today’sLos Angeles Times.

The money quote:

After first walking down the same road as the Times, we discovered that major brand-name drug makers were playing a behind-the-scenes role in the debate, encouraging the Epilepsy Foundation to pursue it and even funding some of the lobbying. The same companies just so happened to have big-selling epilepsy drugs going off-patent.

When is it over?

With apologies to the Sage of St. Louis, there comes a time when it ain’t over, but … it’s over. There comes a time in a relationship when a woman will still answer your phone calls, but you’re wasting your money buying flowers; you know what I’m saying? There comes a moment during a job interview when you’re still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes. There is a time in an illness when you’re not dead yet, but you might as well stop taking that nasty medicine.

Bill James in an article discussing his means of calculating when a basketball games is out of reach. Interesting.

This probably isn’t good news

The deal calls for J.P. Morgan to pay $2 a share in a stock-swap transaction, with J.P. Morgan Chase exchanging 0.05473 share of its common stock for each Bear Stearns share. Both companies’ boards have approved the transaction, which values Bear Stearns at just $236 million based on the number of shares outstanding as of Feb. 16. At Friday’s close, Bear Stearns’s stock-market value was about $3.54 billion. It finished at $30 a share in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading Friday.

The Wall Street Journal

Read it again. The company was valued at $3.54 billion Friday at 4PM and sold today for $236 million.