Walt Mossberg says Congress Must Make Clear Copyright Laws To Protect Consumers. Hear. Hear.
Who Gets Better With Age?
An article in today’s Wall Street Journal asserts that, while various life skills seem to deteriorate as people get older, our skill at making personal-finance decisions doesn’t peak until the ripe age of 53. “Baseball players are said to peak in their late 20’s,” writes David Wessel. “Chess players in their mid-30’s. Theoretical economists in their mid-40’s. But in ordinary life, there’s an obvious tension between sheer smarts, often seen in the supple minds of the young, and experience, which comes only with age.”
There’s more at Freakonomics Blog.
Best line of the day yesterday, so far
“No, that isn’t the rule of — you’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this. You don’t do this anymore. Elections have consequences.”
Senator Boxer to Senator Inhofe during Gore testimony.
Read this
A must-read on the U.S. attorneys business from Josh Marshall.
‘The planet has a fever.’
Best line of the day, so far
“There’s a dangerous culture of obedience throughout much of this country that’s worse in Utah than anywhere.”
Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson quoted in The New York Times. Anderson supports the impeachment of President Bush.
Great read
NewMexiKen recommends Sebastian Junger’s A Death in Belmont
In a review last April, Alan Dershowitz wrote that A Murder in Belmont “though nonfiction, reads like a novel. Its narrative line is crisp. Junger takes us through the trial and conviction of Roy Smith, the series of stranglings in and around Boston, and the arrest and confession of Albert DeSalvo. But there are threads left untied by the imperfect system of Massachusetts justice that Junger describes so well.” Dershowitz does find fault with the speculative nature of some of Junger’s conclusions: “But when a writer has a stake in playing down coincidences and emphasizing connections, his work must be read with caution, especially when it contains no footnotes or endnotes.”
Indeed, but it’s a great read.
Junger is best known for The Perfect Storm.
Thanks to Ken for recommending the book.
Jon Stewart vs. John Bolton
Crooks and Liars has the Jon Stewart exchange with former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton. Good television.
Stewart is quite right about Lincoln by the way.
Ever feel like these were the people in your hotel room last night?
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – Santa Cruz County authorities have confiscated more than two dozen animals from a couple who were hoarding them in their motel room they shared with two children. Staff of the downtown Santa Cruz motel went to the man and woman’s room on Tuesday because they had not heard from the couple in more than a month. Inside they found 20 domestic birds, a cat and a rabbit. There was one dead bird in a cage and three others stuffed in the freezer.
Dungy: ‘I embrace’ same-sex marriage ban
CARMEL, Ind. — Colts coach Tony Dungy said he knows some people would prefer him to steer clear of the gay marriage debate, but he used a speech Tuesday night to clearly stake out his position.
Dungy told more than 700 people at the Indiana Family Institute’s banquet that he agrees with that organization’s position supporting a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.
“I appreciate the stance they’re taking, and I embrace that stance,” Dungy said.
Shut up Coach.
Apple TV
This silvery little $299 gadget is designed to play and display on a widescreen family-room TV set all the music, video and photos stored on up to six computers around the house — even if they are far from the TV, and even if they are all Windows PCs rather than Apple’s own Macintosh models. It can also pull a very limited amount of music and video directly off the Internet onto the TV.
. . .Yet, in our tests, it worked great, and we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers. We tried it with various combinations of Windows and Mac computers, with movies, photos, TV shows, video clips and music. And we didn’t even use the fastest wireless network it can handle. It performed flawlessly.
. . .We’ve been testing Apple TV for the past 10 days or so, and our verdict is that it’s a beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers. It has some notable limitations, but we really liked it. It is classic Apple: simple and elegant.
In looks, it sits at the top of the heap. Apple TV is a gorgeous, one-inch-tall, round-cornered square slab, 7.7 inches on a side. It slips silently and almost invisibly into your entertainment setup. (You can’t say that for, say, the Xbox, which, in comparison, is huge and too noisy for a bedroom.)
The heart-breaker for millions, however, is that Apple TV requires a wide-screen TV — preferably an HDTV. It doesn’t work with the squarish, traditional TVs that many people still have.
Apple defends its audience-limiting decision by saying that the future is HDTV; Apple is just “skating to where the puck is going to be,” as a product manager put it.
John McCain’s ‘Curved Talk’ Weiner Mobile
Crooks and Liars has Jon Stewart’s take on the new John McCain.
New NewMexiKen poll
{democracy:12}
Best line of the day, so far
“There’s nothing remarkable about [making music]. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”
Johann Sebastian Bach, born on this date in 1685, and quoted by The Writer’s Almanac in a brief profile.
How many of the world’s 245 countries can you type in 10 minutes?
Jill has it down to 238. Here’s the ones she missed last time:
Abkhazia
Akrotiri and Dhekelia
Kyrgyzstan
Myanmar
Nagorno-Karabakh
Pridnestrovie
Tuvalu
Be honest, how many of those countries had you even heard of?
NewMexiKen’s original posting for the countries item.
The actual challenge. When you click the clock begins to tick. 600 seconds, 245 countries.
The curse of Billy Packer
Bill Simmons doesn’t like Billy Packer:
“Like always with Packer, it wasn’t the opinion as much as the way he expressed it: He was condescending, stern, inflexible. In Packer’s world, he’s always right, and everyone else is always wrong. Unless they agree with him.”
There’s much more.
Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit
DETROIT (Reuters) – With bidding stalled on some of the least desirable residences in Detroit’s collapsing housing market, even the fast-talking auctioneer was feeling the stress.
“Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?” he offered.
After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: “The lumber in the house is worth more than that!”
As Detroit reels from job losses in the U.S. auto industry, the depressed city has emerged as a boomtown in one area: foreclosed property.
Detroit, a good place to be from.
March 21st is the birthday
… of Matthew Broderick. Ferris is 45.
… of Rosie O’Donnell. She’s 45 also.
The oldest of the Huxtable children, Sondra, is 49 today. That’s Sabrina Le Beauf.
Give ’em food stamps to help ’em out
What’s next, a cardboard sign with “Will Dunk For Food” scrawled on it?
Denver Nuggets center Jamal Sampson — who gets the NBA’s $106 daily road per diem in addition to making $798,112 this season — figures he pockets half his meal money, and he isn’t alone. “I’m the Subway king,” Sampson told the Rocky Mountain News. “I don’t do room service. I’d rather walk. … Subway, Quiznos, I’ll go to whatever sandwich shop.”
But Sampson says guard Yakhouba Diawara, who makes the rookie minimum of $412,718, is the Nuggets’ top penny-pincher.
“There’s nothing over a $10 meal for Kouba,” Sampson said. “Kouba will walk three miles. He’ll walk around the whole city just to save some money.”
Spring
The equinox was at 6:07 this evening MDT.
Spare the fruit, spoil the child
Old lady when boy gives up his seat: What a nice boy! Thank you!
Boy #1: Well, my mom raised me well. It was the belt — she only had to use it once, and then I just knew, you know?
Chick: Ohhh, yeah, for me it was a wooden spoon.
Boy #2: Oranges. She used to throw oranges at my face.
–2/3 train
Doesn’t anyone use a switch anymore?
Don’t Get Pregnant
Advice to aspiring U.S. Attorney candidates: Don’t get pregnant.
The document dump from the Department of Justice shook loose this letter from Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor to Alberto Gonzales in reference to the Karl Rove lackey Tim Griffin, who was appointed U.S. Attorney after the ouster of the popular and competent U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.
What’s revelatory here is the excuse Gonzales’ liason gave Pryor for why Cummin’s deputy wasn’t elevated to the post: She was on maternity leave.
Pryor describes himself as “astonished” that DOJ would use “pregancy and motherhood as conditions that deny an appointment” argued that such “discrimination” would be actionable in court had such a decision been made in the private sector.
March 20th is the birthday
… of Carl Reiner. He’s 85. From the Encyclopedia of Television:
Carl Reiner is one of the few true Renaissance persons of 20th-century mass media. Known primarily for his work as creator, writer and producer of The Dick Van Dyke Show–one of a handful of classic sitcoms by which others are measured–Reiner has also made his mark as a comedian, actor, novelist, and film director.
… of Barney Miller, who’s 76. That’s Hal Linden.
… of Hockey hall-of-famer Bobby Orr, 59.
… of four-time Oscar nominee William Hurt, 57. He won best actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman.
The Fabulous Thunderbirds’ Jimmie Vaughan (Stevie Ray’s brother) is 56.
Two-time Oscar nominee Shelton Lee is 50. His mother called him Spike.
Holly Hunter is 49. Miss Hunter has been nominated for an Academy Award four times, twice for best actress and twice for supporting actress. She won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Piano in 1993. She has also won Emmys for Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom and Roe vs. Wade.
World’s largest
The largest passenger plane in history, an Airbus A380, was sitting at LAX when I passed through this evening. It had flown from France and arrived in L.A. Monday morning, the second to land in the U.S. (another with guest passengers came into JFK minutes before this plane had landed at LAX). If nothing else, our pilot was excited enough to mention it.
Mercy, it is humongous. It is one-third bigger than a 747. The wingspan is 87 yards across. It weighs 1.2 million pounds and will hold 555 passengers.
Albuquerque
The plane arrived at the gate at 9:52. I got my checked bag, took a shuttle to the off-airport parking, paid for the parking, drove 17 miles home and it was just 50 minutes later.
Tip for shuttle driver (one bag): $2
Parking for four-and-a-half days: $25
Convenience of living in Albuquerque: Priceless