No, not that tagging, the kind of tagging you do on websites. Tagging is, simply put, indexing a blog post by identifying and listing keywords. NewMexiKen experimented with it last week but found it to be pretty much a pain with so many topics (for example, the birthday posts I do). So I stopped.
But it occurs to me, why tag anyway? If you have full text search, as this site does and as the internet does, why do we need to tag?
What am I missing here?
“Obviously the details matter and I haven’t seen them yet, but this could be one of those win win things. Or it could be one last chance for Countrywide to screw people. We’ll see.”
Eschaton reporting on a new Countrywide offer to assist borrowers.
She Should Have Held Out For a Jury Trial Because No Jury Would Have Convicted Her.
Move over Hokie football, there is another Virginia Tech team in the national spotlight this week.
The Bass Fishing Team at Virginia Tech is a national champion.
The iPod is six-years-old today. It was introduced by Steve Jobs on October 23, 2001.
The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, who (with others) was called by Apple to figure out how to introduce the new player to the public. After Chieco saw a prototype, he thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase “Open the pod bay door, Hal!”, which refers to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship. Joseph N. Grasso of New Jersey had originally listed an “ipod” trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in July 2000 for Internet kiosks. The first ipod kiosks had been demonstrated to the public in New Jersey in March 1998, and commercial use began in January 2000. The trademark was registered by the USPTO in November 2003, and Grasso assigned it to Apple Computer, Inc. in 2005.
Pele is 67 today.
Michael Crichton is 65.
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee is 53.
Dwight Yoakam is 51. Yoakam has been in a number of films — he was the nasty boyfriend in Sling Blade — but it’s country music that earned his fame.
With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the late ’80s. Like his idols Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, Yoakam never played by Nashville’s rules; consequently, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam. On each of his records, he twists around the form enough to make it seem like he doesn’t respect all of country’s traditions. Appropriately, his core audience was composed mainly of roots rock and rock & roll fans, not the mainstream country audience. Nevertheless, he was frequently able to chart in the country Top Ten, and he remained one of the most respected and adventurous recording country artists well into the ’90s.
Weird Al Yankovic is 48.
Johnny Carson was born 82 years ago today. A little luck and many fewer cigarettes and he might be alive today. While he was alive, Carson would have been NewMexiKen’s choice for the person I’d most like to have dinner with.
John William Heisman was born on this date in 1869. He’s the guy the trophy is named after. The following milestones in Heisman’s career are excerpted from his 1936 obituary in The New York Times and put here in chronological order.
In 1888 he was a member of the Brown football team, and in 1889 of the Pennsylvania varsity football eleven.
He began his coaching career in 1892 at Oberlin College. In 1893 he coached all sports at the University of Akron. From 1895 to 1900 he coached football and baseball at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, and from 1900 to 1904 was coach at Clemson College.
From 1904 to 1920 he coached football, baseball and basketball at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed the famous “Golden Tornado” teams.
In 1908 he was director of athletics at the Atlanta Athletic Club. From 1910 to 1914 he was president of the Atlanta Baseball Association. In 1920 he coached football at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1923 filled the same position at Washington and Jefferson College. From 1924 to 1927 he was head football coach and director of athletics at Rice Institute, Houston, Texas.
In 1923 and 1924 he was president of the American Football Coaches Association.
For the last six years [before 1936] he had been physical director of the Downtown Athletic Club.
NewMexiKen has 11,999 songs (tracks) in my iTunes library. And while I have more CDs to import, I thought I should celebrate by getting something special from the iTunes store for number 12,000. Any ideas?
I spilled a lot of bird feed yesterday and this morning the film crew for the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is sizing up my backyard — a dozen mourning doves, sparrows, finches, a partridge or two, scrub jays.
Apple stock rose more than 8 percent in the first hour this morning on yesterday’s earnings report of $1.01 a share. I keep thinking it’s peaked and “now” would be a bad time to buy — and it’s up nearly 30% in a month. As Jimmy Jones sang:
Oh you need timin’
A tick a tick a tick of good timin’
Timin’ timin’ timin’ timin’
Timin’ is the thing it’s true
Good timin’ brought me to you
Big fuss because J.K. Rowling told an audience Dumbledore was gay. That’s a surprise? Didn’t people read the books?
The Cleveland Indians logo, Chief Wahoo, has got to go. Can you imagine them getting away with that type of a caricature with African or Asian-Americans or Hispanics (think of the fuss over Sambo or the Frito Bandito)?
Overnight Annie and SnoLepard added some interesting pairs in the comments to the Whom would you rather be? list.
TalkLeft has a great excerpt from Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem on the Santa Ana winds, those east-to-west hot winds that blow in southern California and fan the fires.
Just an excerpt of the excerpt:
The Santa Ana, which is named for one of the canyons it rushes through, is foehn wind, like the foehn of Austria and Switzerland and the hamsin of Israel. There are a number of persistent malevolent winds, perhaps the best know of which are the mistral of France and the Mediterranean sirocco, but a foehn wind has distinct characteristics: it occurs on the leeward slope of a mountain range and, although the air begins as a cold mass, it is warmed as it comes down the mountain and appears finally as a hot dry wind. Whenever and wherever foehn blows, doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about “nervousness,” about “depression.”
In Los Angeles some teachers do not attempt to conduct formal classes during a Santa Ana, because the children become unmanageable. In Switzerland the suicide rate goes up during the foehn, and in the courts of some Swiss cantons the wind is considered a mitigating circumstance for crime. Surgeons are said to watch the wind, because blood does not clot normally during a foehn.
Michael Froomkin on the national security bra removal.
The Virginia legislature enacted a law five years ago making it a serious crime to drive past a police officer on the side of the road without changing lanes. As a result, unsuspecting motorists, who are not speeding, can nonetheless be caught in a speed trap and face a first degree misdemeanor ticket that carries a fine of up to $2500. According to a Virginia State Police news release issued in July, despite the significant financial penalty involved, nearly three-quarters of all motorists have never heard of “move over” laws.
Forty states have passed these laws which require drivers either to make an immediate lane change when approaching a police officer with his flashing lights activated, or to slow down at least 20 MPH under the posted speed limit.
“I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.”
Or so said Glen Beck on his syndicated radio show today as reported by Media Matters.
“But presidential candidate and former Arkansas Governoer Mike Huckabee, himself a Baptist minister, actually told a crowd yesterday that ‘most’ of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were ‘clergyman.’
As reported by Talking Points Memo, which points out that just one of the 56 signers was a clergyman.
As a two-time resident of California (two years in the Bay Area, 10 years in Orange County), NewMexiKen is familiar with its cycles of rain, mudslides, brush growth, fire, erosion. The worst of these is always fire. I’m certain whatever news source you follow will provide you with a surfeit of video and pointless interviews. I just thought this photo taken in Irvine in Orange County was striking. Click for larger version.
The photo is from the Los Angeles Times, which has many.
Update: I thought this announcement from the San Diego Wild Animal Park was interesting.
This morning, after more than 8.5 million hits on the Colorado Rockies website, Paciolan (Pack-ee-o-lan), Major League Baseball’s ticket vendor, experienced a system wide outage that impacted all of its North American customers. As a result, the Colorado Rockies have suspended the sale of 2007 World Series tickets scheduled to be played at Coors Field.
Pretty much the same thing happened to Cleveland’s pitching staff.
And why is she with Michael Douglas’s father?
Curly Howard (Jerome Lester Horwitz) was born on this date in 1903.
Thanks to Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers for the video link.
No Atlantic hurricanes and it’s two-thirds through October!
Just as I’ve thought all along, this global warming nonsense is just a Democratic hoax.
[Democrats could be] doing something as simple as saying the magic word: “No.”
Retroactive immunity for the telcos? “No.” War funding for anything other than the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq? “No.” Continuing to deny Habeas Corpus rights? “No.” Illegal wiretapping? “No, no, no.”
And how about doing something about all those witnesses—like Karl Rove and Harriet Miers—who gave you the middle finger by not showing up for congressional hearings?
But no. They just follow the Yellow Brick Road until they get to the GOP poppy field and pass out.
“Clarence Thomas blames affirmative action for his difficulties in geting a job after graduating from Yale Law. Well, it certainly couldn’t have been that charming personality or razor sharp intellect right?”
Three time best actress Oscar nominee Joan Fontaine is 90 today. Miss Fontaine won the Oscar in 1942 for Suspicion. Good genes in that family. Her sister Olivia de Havilland turned 91 in July.
Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing is 88 today.
“that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny”
Christopher Lloyd is 69.
Annette Funicello is 65.
Catherine Deneuve is 64.
Jeff Goldblum is 55.
It was on this date in 1962, that President Kennedy told the nation about the Soviet missiles in Cuba. From The New York Times report on the speech:
President Kennedy imposed a naval and air “quarantine” tonight on the shipment of offensive military equipment to Cuba.
In a speech of extraordinary gravity, he told the American people that the Soviet Union, contrary to promises, was building offensive missiles and bomber bases in Cuba. He said the bases could handle missiles carrying nuclear warheads up to 2,000 miles.
Thus a critical moment in the cold war was at hand tonight. The President had decided on a direct confrontation with–and challenge to–the power of the Soviet Union.
*****
All this the President recited in an 18-minute radio and television address of a grimness unparalleled in recent times. He read the words rapidly, with little emotion, until he came to the peroration–a warning to Americans of the dangers ahead.
“Let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out,” the President said. “No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are–but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world,” he added.
It was as close as we’ve ever come to nuclear war.
NewMexiKen thought Ted Sorensen’s talk on the Cuban missile crisis and the rule of law earlier this year was quite interesting. It’s available from Yale via iTunes as a free 45-minute podcast.
NewMexiKen took this photo one year ago this evening. I like it.
Elaine had some snow on her Five Acres with a View.
Update Sunday 6:20 pm: A quick little snow flurry this evening at Casa NewMexiKen.
But by God, Tom Brady can sure throw the football — 21-for-25, 354 yards, 6 touchdowns and no picks.
The Fall Colors nicely done.
79 66 65 51 48 1917
Whitey Ford
Steve Cropper
Judy Sheindlin (“Judge Judy”)
Carrie Fisher
Ken Watanabe
Dizzy Gillespie
NewMexiKen’s parents eloped 65 years ago today. She was a high school senior just turned 17. He was a 19-year-old sailor.