For what it’s worth

SAN FRANCISCO – Google Inc.’s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet’s top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.

In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with “comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy.”

None of the 22 other surveyed companies — a group that included Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL — sunk to that level, according to Privacy International.

Yahoo! News

The First Post

Wow a new blog. As if there was a shortage. Oh well, this one could prove interesting.

Welcome to the first post of the Book Review’s first blog.

Paper Cuts will be a daily round-up of news and opinion about books and other printed matter. Make that an almost daily round-up. There won’t be posts on weekends. Or holidays. Or on the mornings after the Book Review’s bimonthly drinks nights at Jimmy’s Corner, a bar in midtown Manhattan.

But most days, we’ll be here.

Paper Cuts

June 11th

Two-time Oscar nominee Gene Wilder is 74 today. Wilder was nominated for supporting actor for The Producers and as a co-writer with Mel Brooks for Young Frankenstein.

ZZ TopFrank Beard is 58 today. That’s him with Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Frank Beard is the one without a beard.

Joe Montana is 51.

Hugh Laurie is 48.

William Styron was born on June 11th in 1925. This from American Masters:

After leaving the service, [Styron] moved to New York, where he supported his fledgling writing career working at McGraw-Hill Publishing. He also began taking classes with Hiram Haydn at the New School for Social Research. With guidance and encouragement from Haydn, Styron made his stunning debut at the age of twenty-six with LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS (1951). This novel launched his career and earned him the American Academy’s Prix de Rome. Told under the shadow of the Hiroshima bombing, LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS charts the tragic descent into suicide of a young woman raised in a troubled Virginia family.

He followed LIE DOWN IN DARKNESS with THE LONG MARCH (1957), SET THIS HOUSE ON FIRE (1960), and one of his most famous novels, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER (1967). Published at the height of the civil rights movement, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER is told from the point of view of the historical figure who led a disastrous and bloody slave insurrection which set the stage for the Civil War. Winning a Pulitzer Prize, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER was both praised as a brave look into a rarely represented life, and maligned for what many saw as a clichéd conception of a black man.

Styron’s next novel did not appear for more than ten years. The tragedy of SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1979) is played out between a young Virginia writer and a Polish Holocaust survivor in an urban Jewish enclave of Brooklyn. It takes place during the aftermath of World War II, an era Styron describes as “a nightmarish Sargasso Sea of guilt and apprehensions.” In SOPHIE’S CHOICE, Styron weaves a fictional tale, profound in its engagement, with major recent historical events. Made into a popular movie starring Meryl Streep, SOPHIE’S CHOICE returned Styron to the popular eye as both a controversial personality and a major writer.

Styron’s compelling Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (1990) describes his crippling, nearly suicidal depression at age 60. Styron died last November.

Vince Lombardi was born on June 11 in 1913. Lombardi is the legendary football coach. You know — the one the Super Bowl trophy is named for.

Some Lombardisms:

  • “If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”
  • “If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.”
  • “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
  • “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

Vince Lombardi died in 1970 at age 57.

Jeanette Rankin…was born on this date in 1880 on a ranch near Missoula, Montana. In 1916, Rankin was elected the first woman member of the U.S. House of Representatives. She was not re-elected in 1918, after voting against entry in the First World War, but was returned to Congress for one term in 1940. In 1941, she cast the sole vote in Congress against the U.S. declaration of war on Japan. Jeanette Rankin was a social worker and a lobbyist for peace and women’s rights. She died just before her 93rd birthday in 1973. She is one of the two Montanans honored in The National Statuary Hall Collection of the U.S. Capitol. Read Rankin’s obituary from The New York Times.

Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11th six years ago for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. Dig him up and do it again.

Arizona cyclist, 81, to ride 2,000 miles

YUMA, Ariz. – An 81-year-old man has set off on a 2,000-mile bicycle ride around Arizona’s perimeter.

Bill Anderson of Yuma plans to complete the trip in 14 to 16 days. He is riding to raise money for Yuma’s Crossroads Mission, which provides shelter, meals, showers and clothing to the homeless.

Last year, Anderson rode from the Mexican border to the Canadian line and back again to raise money. In 2004, he made two trips for the mission: one from Canada to Mexico and another from San Diego to Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

Anderson left Yuma on Tuesday in his most recent ride. He planned to arrive in Page on Saturday before continuing the trip to Eagar, Safford and then along the Mexican border.

“It’s so awesome. I’m having a blast,” Anderson said over the phone on a stopover. “I’m seeing a lot of new country and taking lots of scenic photographs.”

Yahoo! News

Homeland Security will probably bust him for taking photos.

June 10th

Prince Philip is 86 today.

Football hall-of-famer Dan Fouts is 56. Fouts’ best line ever as a sportscaster was a description of Reggie Bush: “He runs like he’s playing Quittage.”

John Edwards is 54 today.

Jeanne Tripplehorn is 44. Her father played with Gary Lewis and the Playboys, though Ms. Tripplehorn grew up in Tulsa.

Elizabeth Hurley is 42.

Frances Ethel Gumm was born 85 years ago today. We know her as Judy Garland. She was just under 5-feet tall and the need for weight-control lead her to drugs, which controlled much of her adult life. She died of a barbiturate overdose at age 47. Ms. Garland was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for A Star is Born (1955) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Judgment at Nuremberg (1962). She won a special “Juvenile Oscar” for The Wizard of Oz (1940).

The author Saul Bellow was born on June 10th in 1915 in Quebec. He grew up in Chicago. The Writer’s Almanac has a brief bio today that includes this:

His father wasn’t happy that Bellow wanted to be a writer. He said, “You write and then you erase. You call that a profession?” His brothers went into more conventional careers and Bellow once said, “All I started out to do was to show up my brothers.”

Hattie McDaniel was born on June 10th in 1895. She won a supporting actress Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind, the first African-American to be nominated. Ms. McDaniel has nearly 100 credits listed at IMDB.

Best line of the day, so far

“In life it’s not how fast you run or how high you jump. It’s how well you bounce.”

William F. Cody as written and performed by Bill Moody in “Tonight! Buffalo Bill!”

NewMexiKen saw Moody’s performance last evening at the University of New Mexico. The accomplished actor — among many credits he was Paul Martin for 13 years on All My Children — was terrific as Cody, one of the early west’s most famous characters and performers. In costume and makeup with fringe jacket, hat and that famous Buffalo Bill long hair, mustache and goatee, Moody tells Bill’s life story with humor, some pathos, and accuracy. There were times I lost sight of the actor and was listening to Bill.

If you ever get the chance to see Bill Moody’s performance, take it.

Cruise the Caldera

The The Bomb Town News Observer is unhappy with the Valles Caldera Trust, as we all should be with how they are managing our 89,000 acres. An excerpt:

Remember last year’s fiasco when 1,500 cars rushed into the Preserve, only to sit idle for hours, going nowhere? Remember how while you were sitting frustrated in your vehicle inhaling exhaust fumes and wondering what you were going to have to do if you needed to pee, Valles Caldera Trust board Chairwoman Tracy Hephner was dashing about on her horse in the meadow nearby, waving and smiling at trapped motorists like a giddy rodeo queen? Remember how afterward, Hephner and the rest of the board said “they got it” that people were just itching to get a chance to see the Preserve up close—thus the root cause for the traffic jam?

And now, here it is, less than a year later, and the Preserve is still charging people 20 bucks a head to hike or bike.

This is a good rant that all interested in the environment and public lands should read.

NewMexiKen isn’t opposed, by the way, to fees, but there needs to be some variation, some free public access, and some facilities.

Letters to the Editor of Babybug, a Magazine for Readers Age 6 Months to 2 Years.

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Here’s the first one:

Dear Editor:

I read with particular delight your April feature on monkeys, a topic for which I must confess I have an inexhaustible enthusiasm. The story’s illustrations were both whimsical and touching. (I especially enjoyed one monkey’s difficulty with a party hat!) Please keep the monkey stories coming!

Mackenzie Stephenson
Age 18 months
Toledo, Ohio

A Cruel and Unusual Sentence

While Scooter and Paris get all the attention, here’s a case that deserves notice. A report from Talk Left begins:

As TalkLeft argued here, it is ridiculous for the State of Georgia to make Genarlow Wilson serve a minimum of 10 years because, at age 17, he engaged in a consensual act of oral sex with a 15 year old girl. Public outrage caused the Georgia legislature to change the law, but Georgia’s courts have refused to apply the change retroactively to save Wilson from an unfair sentence.

NewMexiKen is surprised at Georgia. You’d think a civilized place like that would want to make the punishment fit the crime. Why not just cut his tongue out?

Update: Wilson was released after 27 months on Monday, June 11, 2007.

Best comeback of the day, so far

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics’ willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in the Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

Judge Reggie B. Walton in a footnote in accepting an amicus brief filed on behalf of Scooter Libby.

Reported by the American Constitution Society Blog.

Those are side effects?

Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, caught her first ever dose of poison ivy while retrieving her boys’ football from the Virginia woods. She reports:

So, I went to the doctor for the poison ivy. It had been a week since I was infected, and it just kept getting worse every 12 hours.

She put me on a steroid to help clear up the rash. She said that the medicine would make me irritable and nervous, make it difficult to sleep, and give me an increased appetite.

So…business as usual, I guess.

It was a beautiful night for a ballgame

NewMexiKen attended the Albuquerque Isotopes – Memphis Redbirds game at Isotopes Park Friday evening. Temperature at game time, 80°. Temperature at game end, 69° and windy. Still it was a beautiful clear evening for the 8,298 people in attendance who saw Myron Noodleman and the ‘Topes beat the Redbirds 7-4 — and two hellacious homeruns over the 428 feet marker in left centerfield, one for each team.

Best yet, we walked up to the window a half-hour before game time and ended up in the seventh row behind the plate looking down the third base line for $11 apiece.

You may click on each of the images to see a larger version.

Oh Say In Albuquerque everyone stands at attention for the National Anthem. Players from little league teams joins Isotopes players on the field.
Ball here some place There’s a ball here some place. Good seats, eh?
The race And, of course, no game in Albuquerque is complete without the first-to-third dash by red, green and taco. Taco won.

Of course, almosts don’t count, but we almost saw a 5-4-3 triple play. The ‘Topes batter beat it out for an expensive fielder’s choice.

America’s War Against Mexico

In a previous post I mentioned Timothy Henderson’s A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States.

At the American Heritage Blog Henderson was interviewed. Here is the beginning of his answer to the last question, one concerning the Mexican War and today’s immigration issue. I urge you to read all of his answer, but here is the beginning of that answer.

I’m struck by how similar the debate on immigration is to the debates that preceded the U.S.–Mexican War. The debate tends to treat Mexico as if it were at best irrelevant to the issue, or at worst an agent of evil. It seems that the debaters seldom take into account that the problem now is identical to the problem then, namely the vast disparity in wealth and power between the two countries. Many of the migrants who come here have to abandon their families and endure tremendous hardship. It’s not as if they want to do that; they’re merely behaving as perfectly rational economic actors, going where the jobs are. So it’s offensive when people portray them as an evil brown-skinned horde intent on subverting our nationality and sapping our prosperity. Obviously, if Mexico were to become a prosperous and stable country, then the flow of illegal immigrants would slow to a trickle. Problem solved.

Once again, I urge you to read his entire response to the question, but here’s another money quote:

People who want to defend immigration happily point out that Mexicans are willing to do nasty, low-paid jobs that are just too hard or disgusting for Americans to do—and they say it as if this is a good thing. I have a hard time seeing that as a positive. Do we really want to encourage the formation of a permanent underclass of ethnically distinct people doing disagreeable menial labor? Isn’t that kind of what slavery was all about?

Seriously, who hasn’t wanted to stab John Daly?

Golfer John Daly shot a solid opening round Thursday at the Stanford St. Jude Championship, but at the end of the day found himself in the rough.

That night he and his wife, Sherrie Daly, got into an argument at the East End Grill at Winchester and Hacks Cross, he told Shelby County Sheriff’s deputies.

Then Friday morning, he said, he was awakened by his wife attacking him with a steak knife and shouting, “I will kill you.”

Memphis Commercial Appeal

History books

A few weeks back NewMexiKen read The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution by David O. Stewart and said, “It’s a readable, rather well-told narrative about the Constitutional Convention.” I also went on to say, “The classic work on the Constitutional Convention is Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle At Philadelphia, but that I had never read Bowen’s book. I’ve now read it.

Of the two I recommend Stewart. His is clear, concise and more analytical. Bowen’s book is, I think, reflective of much history written a generation or two ago — a little too much he said, he said (there was no she said). It also changes approach in the middle, going from day-by-day to topic-by-topic. This is disconcerting. You know how today you can sometimes read nonfiction and it seems you can almost sense the cutting and pasting? With Bowen you can almost sense the “I’ll never get done doing this; I have to try another approach.”

Which isn’t to say Bowen’s book isn’t worthwhile. It is. It has been the standard work on the Constitutional Convention for more than 40 years.

But I’d read Stewart first.

Meanwhile, I’ve learned about A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States. In this book, Professor Timothy J. Henderson tries to take a look at the war and its impact from a Mexican perspective.

There’s a interview with Henderson at the American Heritage Blog and, among other things he has this to say:

As for our own time, my suspicion is that most people nowadays don’t have many strong feelings one way or another about the [Mexican] war, simply because they know almost nothing about it. I talk to people all the time—intelligent, educated folks—who are genuinely surprised to learn that the Southwest came to us by way of a war with Mexico. That’s true even of people who’ve lived their entire lives in the Southwest, and of people who grew up in towns with names like “Buena Vista” and “Monterrey.” If more people knew the circumstances under which the United States began the war with Mexico, they might have cause to cringe. But my impression is that folks who like to read about wars tend to favor military history, and from a purely military standpoint the United States acquitted itself very well in Mexico.

The bottom line, I think, is that for Americans—and most peoples of the world, I would guess—winning counts for a great deal, and the United States won the war with Mexico decisively. In the bargain, it achieved the objective of territorial expansion, which I think most Americans broadly supported. And when I read some of the rhetoric in the debate on immigration, I don’t see a nation wracked by guilt over past injustices to Mexico.

I’ll let you know what I think when I get Henderson’s book.

June 9th

Lester William Polfus is 92 today. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as Les Paul.

The name Les Paul is synonymous with the electric guitar. As a player, inventor and recording artist, Paul has been an innovator from the early years of his life. Born Lester William Polfus in 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, Paul built his first crystal radio at age nine – which was about the time he first picked up a guitar. By age 13 he was performing semi-professionally as a country-music guitarist and working diligently on sound-related inventions. In 1941, Paul built his first solid-body electric guitar, and he continued to make refinements to his prototype throughout the decade. He also worked on refining the technology of sound, developing revolutionary engineering techniques such as close miking, echo delay and multitracking. All the while he busied himself as a bandleader who could play both jazz and country music.

Robert S. McNamara is 91.

Dick Vitale is 68 today, baby! Not exactly a diaper dandy.

Patricia Cornwall is 51.

Michael J. Fox is 46.

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin is also 46.

Two-time nominee for the Best Actor Oscar (in two remarkably disparate roles), Johnny Depp is 44.

Queen (aka Princess) (aka Senator) Padmé Naberrie Amidalais was born on June 9th. She’s also known as Evey Hammond (V for Vendetta), Sara (Cold Mountain), Sam (Garden State) and Alice (Closer). That’s Natalie Portman. She’s 26.

Cole Porter was born in Peru, Indiana, on June 9th in 1891. The following is from the web site for the PBS series American Masters:

“Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated fleas do it. Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”

“Night and Day,” “I Get A Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” “Begin the Beguine,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” — some of the cleverest, funniest, and most romantic songs ever written came from the pen of Cole Porter. He was unmatched as a tunesmith, and his Broadway musicals — from “Kiss Me Kate” and “Anything Goes” to “Silk Stockings” and “Can Can” — set the standards of style and wit to which today’s composers and lyricists aspire.

Night and Day was one of the NPR 100, their list of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. The first note is repeated 35 times.

Donald Duck

Donald Duck is 73 today. He debuted in the Disney Silly Symphony cartoon “The Wise Little Hen” on this date in 1934. (Donald Duck is one of three Disney characters with an “official” birthday. The others are Mickey and Minnie, who debuted on November 18, 1928.)

Donald Duck actually appeared in more theatrical cartoons than Mickey Mouse — 128. Donald’s middle name is Fauntleroy.

Q: Why does Donald Duck wear a towel when getting out of the shower when he usually doesn’t even wear pants?

A: Donald puts a towel when he gets out of the shower to dry off! When he gets out of the shower he’s pretty wet and doesn’t want to drip water all over the bathroom floor.

Seriously, Donald Duck was created as a human-like character. He reacts to many situations the same way that a man would. Since a man would normally wrap a towel around his waist when stepping out of the shower, so does Donald.

Q: What are the names of Donald Duck’s nephews? Who was their mother?

A: Donald’s nephews are Huey, Dewey, and Louie. They made their debut in the Donald Duck Sunday comic page on October 17, 1937, and first appeared on film in “Donald’s Nephews” in 1938. Huey wears red, Dewey wears blue, and Louie wears green.

Their mother was Donald’s sister, Dumbella Duck.

Disney Online

Maybe he meant he was for ‘tart’ reform

Judge Robert Bork, one of the fathers of the modern judicial conservative movement whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, is seeking $1,000,000 in compensatory damages, plus punitive damages, after he slipped and fell at the Yale Club of New York City. Judge Bork was scheduled to give a speech at the club, but he fell when mounting the dais, and injured his head and left leg. He alleges that the Yale Club is liable for the $1m plus punitive damages because they “wantonly, willfully, and recklessly” failed to provide staging which he could climb safely.

Judge Bork has been a leading advocate of restricting plaintiffs’ ability to recover through tort law.

ACSBlog: The Blog of the American Constitution Society

Link via Eschaton.