Tea time

It was on this date in 1773 that the Boston Tea Party took place. Fortunately for the future of America, the populace at that time was not encumbered with excessive Christmas shopping or second-rate bowl games and could pay attention to public affairs.

In 1770, the British Parliament ended the Townshend Duties — taxes on the sales of lead, glass, paper, paints and tea — ended them on all but the tea. The tax on British tea and a boycott of it in many of the colonies continued.

Tea was a hot commodity in the colonies, however, and considerable foreign tea was smuggled into America to avoid the tax. Some four-fifths of the tea consumed in America was brought in by smugglers.

In 1773 Parliament, in an effort to both prevent the bankruptcy of the East India Company and raise tax revenue, reduced the tea tax and gave the company a monopoly in the American tea business. The price of tea would be lower than smugglers could match, Americans would buy East India tea, the company would revive, and the tax, though lower, would be paid on vastly more tea. Win-win.

Continue reading Tea time

December 16th

Born on this date were:

… Jane Austen (1775-1817). Best known for her novels about young women yearning to get married, she was never married.

… George Santayana (1863-1952). “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

… Margaret Mead (1901-1978). “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Arthur C. Clarke is 90 today. Clarke’s laws:

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

TV producer Steven Bocho is 64.

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top is 58.

Benjamin Bratt is 44.

Best line of the day, so far

“I don’t know about you, but I’m really getting tired of having elected officials who appear to have either no knowledge of or respect for the Constitution of this country.”

Crooks and Liars commenting on Rep. Steve King saying “If you teach American history, you cannot teach it without teaching Christianity.”

It’s worse. They appear to have no knowledge of or respect for a Constitution they have sworn to “support and defend…against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “bear true faith and allegiance to.” Shouldn’t they have to pass some sort of written exam before they can take the oath?

I’m afraid I’m back to agreeing

Indeed, Obama’s campaign has begun to make my skin crawl a little bit. The we-are-the-world optimism that not only blinds him to the fundamental corruption of the regime he hopes to replace, but also makes you wonder if he’s the guy to come in and throw daylight into all the dark corners of the past seven years. The willingness to employ Republican storylines on Senator Clinton and, far more seriously, on Social Security in an apparent attempt to win the vital Green Room Primary in Washington and to appeal to mythical “moderates” who don’t exist and won’t vote for him anyway.

Charles Pierce

Valero

There has been an additional line of gas stations I’ve noticed recently — Valero. They have 5,800 outlets, yet I’d never heard of them until the past year or two. Valero also has 17 refineries “with a throughput capacity of approximately 3.1 million barrels per day.”

So today’s trivia question is: Where does the name Valero come from? (No fair Googling.)

Hint: The company is headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.

The answer is in the Handbook of Texas.

Almost the perfect winter’s day

It has been snowing fairly hard and fairly consistently at Casa NewMexiKen since 7:30 this morning, yet there is no accumulation on the pavement.

Beauty without the inconvenience.

Simply put, Albuquerque has the best four-season climate in the U.S.

Update: At 1PM it’s snowing and the sun is out. I’m thinking someone is making soap snowflakes around here like at Disneyland.

The eco bottle

The Numbers Guy takes a look at the new water bottles.

It’s not uncommon for bottled-water companies to tout the purity of their waters. But one giant bottler has gone one step further: boasting about the bottles themselves.

Nestlé claims it offers the lightest half-liter bottles in the U.S. market. Earlier this year, it introduced new, sculpted bottles with labels stating they contain “30% less plastic.” On Web sites for its brands Poland Spring, Ozarka, Arrowhead and Ice Mountain, Nestlé clarifies that this isn’t a 30% reduction from the old model, which is still in distribution; instead, its new “Eco-Shape Bottle” has 30% less plastic “than the average half-liter bottle.”

Homeowners With Negative Equity

51 million U.S. households have mortgages. By the end of this year, 11% of them (5.6 million) will have no or negative equity. By the end of next year, if housing prices decline another 10%, the number of mortgages with no or negative equity could exceed 20% (10.7 million).

A basic underpinning of the middle class way of life may crumble before our eyes in coming months.

Source for numbers: Calculated Risk

Best line of the day, so far

“I always thought I would miss immortality by about 50 years – which really pissed me off.   I know, lots of people say they wouldn’t WANT to live forever, but I sure would, if only because it will take that long to successfully cancel my Norton Anti-Virus subscription.”
 
Andrew Tobias

Tobias goes on to talk about Ray Kurzweil who predicts that in about 15 years life expectancy will be increasing about a year every year. Just make it to that cusp and you’re golden.

Unless of course the glaciers melt and you live near the coast.

Did Maxine do a ‘Britney’?

Canberra Times editor Mark Baker has defended his newspaper’s decision to publish a revealing front-page photograph of Labor MP Maxine McKew in a short dress.

The broadsheet received complaints from readers after it ran the image of Ms McKew talking animatedly to former Prime Minister John Howard.

LIVENEWS.com.au

Click the link, then click the photo link (the little camera in the article) to see the contentious photo.

What do you think? I’d have cropped it.

December 14th

Today is the birthday

… of Don Hewitt. The producer of 60 Minutes is 85.

… of Patty Duke. The Oscar-winning actress is 61.

It’s the birthday of Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, mother of one of The Sweeties, attorney-at-law, and source of many suggestions and comments for NewMexiKen. Happy Birthday, Veronica.

Oscar nominee, for Days of Wine and Roses, Lee Remick was born on this date in 1935. Miss Remick died in 1991.

Congressional Medal of Honor winner Jimmy Doolittle was born on this date in 1896. Doolittle led the daring bombing raid on Tokyo in April 1942. Sixteen B-25s from the U.S.S. Hornet did little damage, but the attack on the Japanese homeland was a major public relations and morale-boosting effort for U.S. forces just five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Nostradamus was born on this date in 1503.

George Washington died at his Mount Vernon home on this date in 1799 at the age of 67. According to the Library of Congress, his last words reportedly were: “I feel myself going. I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly. I cannot last long.”

Alabama was admitted to the Union as the 22nd state on this date in 1819.

Roald Amundsen and four others became the first to reach the South Pole on this date in the summer of 1911. See the NOAA South Pole Live Camera.

The Golden Globe movie nominees

NewMexiKen has seen exactly none one of these 17 films.

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA
“American Gangster”
“Atonement”
“Eastern Promises”
“The Great Debaters”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

BEST MOTION PICTURE, MUSICAL OR COMEDY
“Across the Universe”
“Charlie Wilson’s War”
“Hairspray”
“Juno”
“Sweeney Todd”

FOREIGN LANGUAGE PICTURE
“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (Romania)
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (France/USA)
“The Kite Runner” (USA)
“Lust, Caution” (Taiwan)
“Persepolis” (France)

The Envelope.com

Update: Three of the above — “There Will Be Blood,” “Juno,” and “The Kite Runner” — are reviewed by David Denby in this week’s New Yorker. And Anthony Lane reviewed “Atonement” last week.

The Checklist

If you have any interest in hospitals, critical care, survival, bureaucracy, heroes, or the occasional simplicity of solutions you need to read Annals of Medicine: The Checklist from last week’s New Yorker.

It occurred to me while reading this article how very screwed up so much of our political system is. What I would like to see in political candidates is an awareness that they are literate about issues such as this — even a few issues and even just to the extent of a New Yorker article — and I’d like to see them champion worthwhile causes (that save lives!). Instead we get mostly crap discussions from crap candidates.

There should be a law. Anyone who wants to be a politician is prohibited from being one. Or at least, anyone who wants to be a politician has to demonstrate an abiding interest in some things other than politics (and his or herself).

But ignore my rant and go read the article, which isn’t at all about politics.