The Top 100 Americans

This time from The Atlantic and a panel of ten eminent historians. Here’s the top 10 “most influential figures in American history.”

1 Abraham Lincoln
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America’s second founding.

2 George Washington
He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.

3 Thomas Jefferson
The author of the five most important words in American history: “All men are created equal.”

4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he proved it.

5 Alexander Hamilton
Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation’s transformation into an industrial power.

6 Benjamin Franklin
The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.

7 John Marshall
The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.

8 Martin Luther King Jr.
His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.

9 Thomas Edison
It wasn’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.

10 Woodrow Wilson
He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.

Amazing, four Virginians and no sign of John Warner.

Those Founders Were a Bunch of Wise Guys

It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs [and presidents with control of both houses of congress] will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.

The Federalist Papers: No. 4, John Jay (November 7, 1787)

Found as part of an essay on the draft by Glenn Greenwald.

Meanwhile

Pentagon officials are considering a substantial but temporary increase in troops in Iraq, known by some as a “surge option.”

When the Germans tried a substantial but temporary increase in troops in December 1944, it was known by some as the Battle of the Bulge.

In the Battle of the Bulge there were an estimated 85,000-90,000 casualties on each side in six weeks.

Just sayin’.

When Apple Rules the World

Mark Morford just gushes over his new MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo. An excerpt:

You know it’s true. Apple has done more than perhaps any other mass-market consumer line on the planet to affect the look and feel of nearly every gizmo made today. This cannot be underestimated. It’s a George Bush world, after all, one that values sameness, mediocrity, intellectual and spiritual laziness. But merely rub your hand across the top of a MacBook or whip your thumb around the click wheel of an iPod and notice: Feel that throb? That’s your id saying mmmmmmm.

What? What’s that you say? Why yes, other tech companies have changed the world, too. Microsoft, for example. They invaded the global cube-farm and made everyone’s workday a bit more bloated and annoying and sad and just a little uglier, buggy as hell, frustrating, virusy and lonely and numbing. Truly, it has been quite an impressive accomplishment.

It is strange how much better even Windows seems on my Mac than it did on a PC. That’s not fair because the iMac has a larger monitor and is faster, but there is something else …

Size Matters

LONDON (Reuters) – Walk tall – it’s the short cut to success at speed-dating. In what is billed as the first study of its kind, two academics found there is no short cut to true love.

They calculated that for every inch taller a man is than his speed-dating rivals, the number of women who want to meet him goes up by about five percent.

Yahoo! News

You know what this means when the results of this study become widely known? It means that spam will be about leg enlargement.

It also explains Wilt Chamberlain.

More Pixels Than You Need

David Pogue ran a test:

On the show, we did a test. We blew up a photograph to 16 x 24 inches at a professional photo lab. One print had 13-megapixel resolution; one had 8; the third had 5. Same exact photo, down-rezzed twice, all three printed at the same poster size. I wanted to hang them all on a wall in Times Square and challenge passersby to see if they could tell the difference.

Even the technician at the photo lab told me that I was crazy, that there’d be a huge difference between 5 megapixels and 13.

Bottom line, no one could tell the difference: “I’m telling you, there was NO DIFFERENCE.”

November 21st is the birthday

Stan Musial Plaque

… of baseball hall-of-famer Stan Musial. He’s 86. Stan “The Man” graced the first cover ever of “Sports Illustrated” (1954).

… of “That Girl” Marlo Thomas, now 69.

… of actress Juliet Mills. Hayley’s older sister is 65. Juliet Mills first appeared in a movie in 1942, when she played an infant.

… basketball hall-of-famer Earl Monroe. The Pearl is 62.

… of writer-director-actor Harold Ramis. He’s 62. Ramis co-wrote the screenplay and directed “Groundhog Day,” enough to make me a fan. He was the doctor in the film.

… of Goldie Hawn. Kate Hudson’s mom is 61.

… of the other Judy Garland daughter, Lorna Luft. She’s 54.

… of the not so desperate Nicollette Sheridan. She’s 43.

… of Björk. She’s 41.

… of football hall-of-famer Troy Aikman. He’s 40.

… of probably future baseball hall-of-famer Ken Griffey Jr. Junior is 37.

The Letter to Mrs. Bixby

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]

In My Beautiful Balloon

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e, hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.

But November 21, 1783, is the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.

The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.

The Balloonists Prayer

Windows on a Mac

NewMexiKen installed Windows Vista (Release Candidate 1) on my iMac today. There are still a few tweaks left, but both systems appear to be working fine. All-in-all, including the repair of an unrelated disk problem, it took less than 90 minutes.

Vista is real purty on the 20-inch Apple monitor.

Update: Some small problems in Windows with drivers and software, partly related to increased security in Vista. Just bugs that needed workarounds. Windows quite fast on iMac with 1GB RAM. Windows partition using only 10% of iMac hard drive with room to spare for software.

I put Windows on the Mac because I have a couple of Windows programs without Mac equivalents, one important to me. With free software (BootCamp from Apple and Vista from Microsoft) I’ve now got six more months to wean myself. (My copy of Windows Vista expires June 1, 2007.)

Firefox 2.0

NewMexiKen has seen no references to this on the internets, but Firefox 2.0 has rather consistently frozen up on me since it was a beta. I go to start it and the little icon in my dock just jumps up and down but nothing happens. I have to force quit and start over, sometimes more than once. (Mac version). I have the latest download.

Anyone else having this type of issue?

No browser is perfect — and I do like Camino 1.1 (a beta) quite a bit — but I’d probably use Firefox the most if it didn’t aggravate me so.

November 20th is the birthday

… of U.S. Senator Robert Byrd. The West Virginian is 89.

… of best supporting actress Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons. She won the award for “Bonnie and Clyde” and was nominated again the following year for “Rachel, Rachel.” She’s 79.

… of comedian Dick Smothers. The straight man of the duo is 68.

… of U.S. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. He’s 64.

… of Veronica Hamel of Hill Street Blues. She’s 63.

… of Joe Walsh of The Eagles. He’s 59. Life’s been good to him so far.

… of Bo Derek. She’s five 10s now. She’s 50.

… of Sean Young. Ms. Young won the Razzie for worst actress AND worst supporting actress for “A Kiss Before Dying” (she played twins). She’s been nominated for the award five other times. She’s 47.

… of hottie Nadine Velazquez of “My Name Is Earl.” She’s 28.

Robert F. Kennedy might have been 81 today. He was assassinated at age 42.

A New Strategy to Discourage Driving Drunk

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 — The threat of arrest and punishment, for decades the primary tactic against drunken drivers, is no longer working in the struggle to reduce the death toll, officials say, and they are proposing turning to technology — alcohol detection devices in every vehicle — to address the problem.

In the first phase of the plan, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, backed by a national association of state highway officials and car manufacturers, will announce here on Monday a campaign to change drunken driving laws in 49 states to require that even first offenders install a device that tests drivers and shuts down the car if it detects alcohol.

Many states already require the devices, known as ignition interlocks, for people who have been convicted several times. Last year New Mexico became the first to make them mandatory after a first offense. With that tactic and others, the state saw an 11.3 percent drop in alcohol-related fatalities last year.

The New York Times

Moderate, my ass

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask one question about abortion. Then I want to turn to Iraq. You’re for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, with some exceptions for life and rape and incest.

MCCAIN: Rape, incest and the life of the mother. Yes.

I’d Been Wondering What to Get The Sweeties for Christmas

Tattoo

Open up your very own pretend play tattoo parlor. This easy-to-use tattoo maker kit includes an electronic tattoo pen and funky stencils. Using soft, safe pulsating action, the tattoo pen creates realistic, washable designs with dramatic effects. Requires two AA batteries (not included).

Amazon.com: GR8 TaT2 Maker: Toys & Games

 

$14.99

4-2-3-9

Ohio State’s magical 42-39 victory over Michigan also turned out to be lucky for players of the Ohio Lottery.

The numbers 4-2-3-9 were drawn in Saturday night’s Pick 4 game with the lottery paying winnings of $2.19 million on wagers of $347,867.50.

SI.com

Minimalist Music

NewMexiKen guesses he is the last kid on his block to learn a little about the music of composer Steve Reich (I wasn’t totally ignorant, just unfamiliar), but an article in The New Yorker earlier this month got me interested. So far I’ve just been listening around the edges at the iTunes Store, but it’s fascinating.

I don’t know enough to begin to explain what Reich does. Let this paragraph from Alex Ross’ article suffice as an introduction:

In this sense, “Different Trains,” for recorded voices and string quartet, may be Reich’s most staggering achievement, even if “Music for 18” gives the purest pleasure. He wrote the piece in 1988, after recalling cross-country train trips that he had taken as a child. “As a Jew, if I had been in Europe during this period, I would have had to ride very different trains,” he has said. Recordings of his nanny reminiscing about their journeys and of an elderly man named Lawrence Davis recalling his career as a Pullman porter are juxtaposed with the testimonies of three Holocaust survivors. These voices give a picture of the dividedness of twentieth-century experience, of the irreconcilability of American idyll and European horror—and something in Mr. Davis’s weary voice also reminds us that America was never an idyll for all. The hidden melodies of the spoken material generate string writing that is rich in fragmentary modal tunes and gently pulsing rhythms.

The NPR 100 included Reich’s “Drumming” among its “100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.” Here’s that report. (RealPlayer)

November 19th is the birthday

… of Larry King. He’s 73. Before CNN, King was one of the first stars of national talk radio. He left his keys on the table of a fast food restaurant in Crystal City, Virginia, near where I was staying during a business trip in 1983. I noticed the keys and called after him. Only when he thanked me did I hear his voice and know who he was.

… of Dick Cavett. He’s 70. Time for the University of Nebraska to get someone else to narrate its football in-game television promotion.

… of Ted Turner. He’s 68. Turner is America’s largest individual private landowner. Turner owns about 1.8 million acres in 10 states, more than one million of it in New Mexico (though he is not New Mexico’s largest private individual landowner). According to Forbes (in 2003):

Despite his reputation as a die-hard conservationist, the cable pioneer makes plenty of money off his land. He sells bison meat to restaurants (including his own). He opened some of his New Mexico holdings to gas and coal exploration. Timber is harvested and sold. Hunting and fishing fees generate $5 million a year. “I’m doing things as natural as I can and trying to make some money at the same time,” he says. “I have the same credo with my land as I had with my business: He who profits most serves the best.”

… of Calvin Klein. He’s 64.

… of Ahmad Rashad. He was born Bobby Moore 57 years ago. Rashad proposed to Cosby TV mom Phylicia Ayers-Allen on national TV during halftime of a Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Day game. O.J. Simpson was his best man. Rashad and Allen were divorced in 2001.

… of Ann Curry. She’s 50. Daughter of an American father and Japanese mother, Curry was born on Guam and raised in Oregon.

… of Allison Janney. She’s 46. Six Emmy nominations for “West Wing,” four wins.

… of Meg Ryan. She’s 45. Ryan has been nominated for best acting Golden Globes, but no Oscars.

… of Jodie Foster. She’s 44. Nominated for the best actress Oscar three times and best supporting actress once, Foster won for “The Accused” and “Silence of the Lambs.”

The Gettysburg Address delivered on November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.