Take a breath

The “A” in Atlanta might as well stand for asthma, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

The nonprofit patient organization says that for asthma sufferers, Atlanta is the worst U.S. city to live in.

Seattle ranks best — or, in this case, least bad — on the group’s list of the 100 “most challenging places to live with asthma.”

The 10 worst asthma cities, according to the AAFA, are:

1. Atlanta (last year: 4th)
2. Philadelphia (last year: 3rd)
3. Raleigh, N.C.
4. Knoxville, Tenn.
5. Harrisburg, Pa.
6. Grand Rapids, Mich.
7. Milwaukee, Wis. (last year: 5th)
8. Greensboro, N.C. (last year: 7th)
9. Scranton, Pa. (last year: 1st)
10. Little Rock, Ark.

WebMD

The full 100. Albuquerque is 57th.

Don’t believe everything you read

Consumer Reports magazine today retracted an article on infant car seats, published two weeks ago, that said most of them had failed side-impact crash tests.

The tests were supposed to simulate an impact at 38 miles per hour, but actually simulated more than 70 m.p.h., according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which was so startled by the article that it tried to duplicate the magazine’s results at a government laboratory last weekend. The agency does not have a standard for side impacts but said that at 38 m.p.h., the seats all appeared to do well.

The magazine said it had decided to retract the article after receiving data from the highway traffic agency.

The New York Times

Streakers

A double dose of digits, courtesy of Gaylon Krizak of the San Antonio Express-News:

• “41: NFL coaches with at least one playoff victory since [Marty] Schottenheimer’s most recent, which came in 1993.

• “91: Division I-A teams (out of a possible 118) that have won at least one bowl game more recently than Notre Dame.”

Sideline Chatter

A League of Her Own

Madonna did not play a character based on the youthful Ms. Trezza in “A League of Their Own,” although some have mistakenly suggested she did. But Ms. Trezza certainly stood out in her time. She brought to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, created in the 1940s to keep baseball alive during World War II, memorable base-running speed and a rifle arm. She also had a popular, peppy personality honed in stickball games on the streets of Brooklyn.

Her lifetime batting average was only .173, but it was her bat that produced her most illustrious moment. It happened in 1946 in Racine, Wis., in the sixth game of the championship series between the Racine Belles and the Peaches of Rockford, Ill.

Obituary of Betty Trezza, New York Times

Follow the link to read more and see Betty Trezza’s baseball card.

A 12th Dallas Convict Is Exonerated by DNA

A 50-year-old Dallas man whose conviction of raping a boy in 1982 cost him nearly half his life in prison and on parole won a court ruling Wednesday declaring him innocent. He said he was not angry, “because the Lord has given me so much.”

New York Times

NewMexiKen understands why an individual might NEED to feel this way after 24 years wrongly in prison, but I’d have to say instead that I was angry, “because the Lord has really screwed me.”

Atop the charts

“Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé is in its seventh week as Billboard’s number one. The Dreamgirls soundtrack is the number one album.

January 18th is the birthday

… of Kevin Costner. Costner won the Oscars for director and best picture for Dances With Wolves and was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Lt. John Dunbar. He’s 52 today.

… of Jesse L. Martin. The Law & Order star is 38.

It’s also the birthday of Cary Grant (Archibald Alexander Leach, 1904-1986) and Danny Kaye (David Daniel Kaminski, 1913-1987).

Some cool things about Dad

For the last eight years Dad lived in a townhouse condominium complex of 40+ units in the Tucson foothills. I learned from neighbors he was considered the “sergeant” or “guardian angel” for the place, with his patrols and concerns. The property manager wrote me that she didn’t “think he knew how much of a presence he was in our community.”

Dad had all the Harry Potter books, had read them all, and critiqued the more recent ones. He had ordered one of the volumes from Amazon so that it arrived the day it was published.

Dad paid his bills electronically and kept in touch with us all via email. The house was filled with family photos he had taken, been sent or scanned, printed and framed. As he often reminded me, I had six Sweeties (grandchildren) but he had ten (great grandchildren).

Jill said that when we visited the World War II Memorial in Washington last summer she had thanked her grandpa for his service in helping make the world free for her and her children. He said it was the first time anyone had ever thanked him. (Dad served four years in the U.S. Navy. Thank a vet you know.)

A man of infinite interests, when we last spoke he told me he was searching the internet to learn more about dragons. There on his desk when I arrived was the stuff he’d printed out.

Too bad this isn’t a democracy

A commanding majority of Americans oppose President Bush’s decision to send more troops to Iraq and just over half the country wants Congress to block the deployment, a Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

As he seeks to chart a new course in Iraq, Bush also faces pervasive resistance and skepticism toward the U.S. commitment — more than three-fifths of those surveyed said the war was not worth fighting and only one-third approved of his handling of the conflict.

And in a striking measure of Bush’s declining credibility, half said they believed he deliberately misled the U.S. in making his case for invading Iraq.

Los Angeles Times

Worst president ever.

Ice Queen

Shakespeare’s Sister has the story on the ice formation from heaven:

An ice formation inside a Morton, Texas, grocery store’s freezer is prompting tears from people who see it and has apparently answered the prayers of some visitors, according to a Local 6 News report.

Go read the article and see the photo of this thing and tell me there isn’t at least one other interpretation of the shape of this ice formation.

Victory

Announcer: Reidie Sweetie you’ve just won your battle with respiratory syncytial virus. What are you going to do?

Reid: I’m going to Walt Disney World.

Little, not-quite 10-month-old Reid, the youngest of The Sweeties, had a nasty case of respiratory syncytial virus this week and had to be hospitalized for a couple days. He should be going home today. The virus hits the littlest ones the hardest — he also has pneumonia and a major ear infection. His brother Aidan has RSV, too, and pneumonia and the ear infection, but he didn’t need to be hospitalized.

Both boys and their older brother Mack are expected to be well in time for a planned trip to Disney World next week.

Grandpa, meanwhile, is planning a trip to Margaritaville. I hate January.

January 17th is the birthday

… of Betty White. The character actress, who first appeared on television in 1949, and most famous now for The Golden Girls, is 85. Miss White has been nominated for 15 Emmy Awards, winning four times.

… of Eartha Kitt. Santa’s Baby is 80.

… of James Earl Jones. The voice of Darth Vader is 76. Jones has been in more than 130 films and appeared on more than 50 television programs. He was nominated for the 1971 best actor Oscar for The Great White Hope.

… of long-time baseball coach Don Zimmer, now 76.

… of Muhammad Ali. The Champ is 65.

… of Bangle Susanna Hoffs, now 48.

… of Jim Carrey. The actor is 45.

… of Kid Rock. He’s 36.

And it’s the birthday of Al Capone, born in Naples, Italy, in 1899. Here’s some of the background from his obituary in The New York Times when he died in 1947 at the age of 48.

Alphonse (Scarface) Capone, the fat boy from Brooklyn, was a Horatio Alger hero–underworld version. More than any other one man he represented, at the height of his power from 1925 through 1931, the debauchery of the “dry” era. He seized and held in thrall during that period the great city of Chicago and its suburbs.

Head of the cruelest cutthroats in American history, he inspired gang wars in which more than 300 men died by the knife, the shotgun, the tommy gun and the pineapple, the gangster adaptation of the World War I hand grenade.

His infamy made international legend. In France, for example, he was “The One Who Is Scarred.” He was the symbol of the ultimate in American lawlessness.

Capone won great wealth; how much, no one will ever know, except that the figure was fantastic. He remained immune from prosecution for his multitudinous murders (including the St. Valentine Day Massacre in 1929 when his gunners, dressed as policemen, trapped and killed eight of the Bugs Moran bootleg outfit in a Chicago garage), but was brought to book, finally, on the comparatively sissy charge of evasion of income taxes amounting to around $215,000.

For this, he was sentenced to eleven years in Federal prison–serving first at Atlanta, then on The Rock, at Alcatraz–and was fined $50,000, with $20,000 additional for costs. With time out for good conduct, he finished this sentence in mid-January of 1939; but by then he was a slack- jawed paretic overcome by social disease, and paralytic to boot.

All the news that fits

Not to shill for The New York Times, but . . .

First, a best line from David Carr writing about Monday night’s Golden Globes:

“The Queen” might not have taken home gold for best picture, but its star, Helen Mirren, had enough hardware at the end of the night that she looked as if she’d spent time at Home Depot.

An article on some beautiful pencil and paper drawings by Monet.

David Leonhardt on the cost of a mistake:

For starters, $1.2 trillion would pay for an unprecedented public health campaign — a doubling of cancer research funding, treatment for every American whose diabetes or heart disease is now going unmanaged and a global immunization campaign to save millions of children’s lives.

Combined, the cost of running those programs for a decade wouldn’t use up even half our money pot. So we could then turn to poverty and education, starting with universal preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old child across the country. The city of New Orleans could also receive a huge increase in reconstruction funds.

The final big chunk of the money could go to national security. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission that have not been put in place — better baggage and cargo screening, stronger measures against nuclear proliferation — could be enacted. Financing for the war in Afghanistan could be increased to beat back the Taliban’s recent gains, and a peacekeeping force could put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.

All that would be one way to spend $1.2 trillion. Here would be another:

The war in Iraq.

And Selena Roberts has an interesting assessment of Michelle Wie, though this one is behind the Times Select wall.

Best line of the day, so far

“Local TV and radio stations are waxing rhapsodic about more snow coming, wavering over whether they should instill fear and panic, or strut with confidence over a no-show.”

dangerousmeta

It always seems to NewMexiKen that when it comes to weather warnings, TV stations waver over whether to instill fear OR panic. P.T. Barnum’s heirs, every one.

Can you imagine?

Woman to another: I admire her strength so much… I don’t know how she did it! She raised three kids all by herself! Of course, she had her husband, but he doesn’t count. She still managed to raise three kids without a nanny or housekeeper! Can you imagine?

–Lex, Upper East Side

Overheard in New York, which also has this:

JAP on cell: I don’t think you will like Daniel, but he is worth meeting because he is a billionaire.

–25th St & 6th Ave

Overheard by: I’d like Daniel

Romania 55, United States 40

In a possible face-saving move, the score for Kazakhstan isn’t included. But the US is beaten soundly by Romania in a new report about evolution. Here’s the nugget sentence, from page two of this morning’s Post:

WASHINGTON POST (1/16/07): The United States has a smaller proportion of people who accept evolution than any other country except Turkey, according to a 34-nation survey by researcher Jon D. Miller of Michigan State University.

A graphic lists the 34 countries. For the record, 40 percent of American adults said that the following statement was true: “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals.” In Romania, 55 percent agreed with a similar statement. Iceland led the 34 nations, with 85 percent acceptance. The UK scored 75 percent.

Daily Howler

Dream Girls

Dreamgirls is a great film that even people who don’t like musicals may like. Jennifer Hudson, inexplicably winning the Golden Globe for “supporting” actress last night, is just remarkable — supporting, I don’t think so. The rest of the cast, including Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx, Danny Glover and Beyoncé Knowles, is terrific.

Reading about skiing is close enough for me

Alas, NewMexiKen has never skied and I’m not likely to start now, but this article about Silverton Mountain makes me wish I did. It begins:

Chances are you’re not good enough to ski Silverton Mountain — or to ski it with grace, anyway. Don’t take this personally: This six-year-old, vertigo-inducing backcountry “ski area” in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado that scoffs at niceties like slope grooming (and running water, but we’ll get to that) has a way of quickly separating, with the deftness of a croupier, the rippers from the gapers, the noobs and the one-and-done’s (but we’ll get to them, too). Acre for acre, it’s the most challenging lift-skiing in North America.

Simple-minded morans

From Moraes on TV, the idiocy of television’s decency police in light of FCC restrictions since Janet Jackson:

“Desperate Housewives'” Marc Cherry said his strangest D[ecency] P[olice] note came during production of the pilot, in which Eva Longoria’s character has sex with her 17-year-old gardener. Looking at the post-sex scene, the DP said “does she have to smoke?”

“And I went, ‘So, you’re good with the statutory rape thing?'”

Jenny Bicks, from “Men in Trees” recalled one recent script in which “I had two ‘ass’s’ and one ‘crap’.”

“I was… told that I could trade an ‘ass’ for a ‘crap’ but I couldn’t have two ‘ass’s’ and the ‘crap’.”