K Street Meets Wisteria Lane

“Desperate Housewives” beauty Eva Longoria not only turned heads Wednesday, she made them rock back with laughter.

The petite actress came to town to give the keynote address at the quarterly Latino Leaders Luncheon Series at the Capitol Hilton.

“Thank you for inviting me to this luncheon … but don’t think of me as today’s featured speaker, think of me as your temporary guest worker,” she opened. “I know some of you may only know about me from what you read in the tabloids. Let me assure you, the tabloids are the second most inaccurate libelous publications in history. First are negative campaign ads.”

She ought to know. The Texas native stumped for John Kerry in 2004 and has worked with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

“Can you imagine the TV ads they’d run based on me as Gabrielle?” she continued, referring to her “Desperate” TV character. “In the last two years, I had an affair with a teenager, faked a paternity test, my husband went to prison and I pushed him out a window. OK, so I could win in California.”

Amid her inspirational remarks on Latino advancement, the Texas native continued to draw liberally from the comedians’ toolbox.

On race: “I made TV history by being the first Latina to have a white gardener.”

On sex: “We’re trying to inject more political messages into next season. Every time you see me in lingerie, it’s a message about global warming.”

Yeas and Nays

First Person to Say Something Coherent Loses

Man: All I’m saying is that if Jesus was beautiful on the inside, he was beautiful on the outside, so I know he had ladies looking at him.

Bimbette #1: Well, I know everything began in Africa.

Bimbette #2: That’s right. You know they have the indentation in Africa where the devil landed? They built a church over it to try to make it holy. I saw it on The Exorcist.

–4 train

Overheard in New York

Generic drugs

NewMexiKen has mentioned Wal-Mart’s $4 price for many generic prescription drugs. Many, many other pharmacies have followed suit — so lets give the evil empire from Bentonville credit for leading the way, but shop elsewhere.

My insurance co-pay for generic prescriptions is $20 for 90 pills (by mail). I can now get 100 pills at Costco for $10.19 total, no insurance.

$9.81 every three months isn’t life changing money, but I’m happy for the savings.

Shop around.

And if you’re concerned about whether to take generic brands, you must have missed Chemistry class in high school. It’s all the same stuff.

Geek Talk

Shopping for computers and other high-tech products has always been a challenge, partly because the manufacturers and retailers erect a tower of techno-babble terminology to confuse you into spending more money, and to make poorly trained salespeople who merely memorize jargon seem smart.

This year, that tower of babble is higher than ever, as new terms have come into being, and old ones have come to the fore. So, here’s a quick glossary of some of the current techno terms you may encounter when shopping for a computer, television, digital camera or cellphone this holiday season.

Learn the new terms at Personal Technology from The Wall Street Journal.

I hate to see that evening sun go down

W.C. Handy was born on this date in 1873. Handy was the first to write sheet music for the blues and for that reason is known as the Father of the Blues. Though associated with Memphis and Beale Street, Handy’s most famous song is St. Louis Blues (1914).

NPR told the Handy and St. Louis Blues stories as part of the NPR 100. Click to hear the NPR report, which includes Handy’s own reminiscences and the complete recording of the song by Bessie Smith accompanied by Louis Armstrong, possibly the most influential recording in American music history. (RealPlayer file.)

W.C. Handy died in 1958.

Oklahoma!

…became a state on this date in 1907. It was the 46th state to enter the Union.

The official song and anthem of the State of Oklahoma is “Oklahoma,” composed and written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Oddly enough, the song, arguably the best “state song” of them all, wasn’t mentioned when we tried to list a song for each state here last month.

Brand new state, Brand new state, gonna treat you great!
Gonna give you barley, carrots and pertaters,
Pasture fer the cattle, Spinach and Termayters!
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom,
Plen’y of air and plen’y of room,
Plen’y of room to swing a rope!
Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope!
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, ev’ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk makin’ lazy circles in the sky.
We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say – Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma – O.K.

Startup: Albuquerque and the Personal Computer Revolution

Born from Paul Allens desire to give back to the city where he and Bill Gates spent their early years with Microsoft, STARTUP opens Nov. 18 to the general public, and offers countless items from Allens own collection. Dozens of displays take the visitor on a tour from the computer eras dawn to the present day.

Its relics carry a certain mystic power, starting with the entrance hallways pre-revolutionary murmurs. There is a Frieden S10 calculator from the 1930s. IBM 700 Series vacuum tubes sit before an ancient Big Blue ad describing them as “fingers you can count on.” A television plays a public information movie about “machines that can practically think,” a self-parodying artifact of the 1950s. Behind a glass screen stands a UNIVAC 1 mainframes control desk. Upon it is an OQO, nearly invisible amid the electromechanical monoliths myriad of buttons of lights.

“Its educating people about history,” Aydelott said. “When I started university, I was using punchcards. When I left I was using an Apple.”

Gear Factor: Wired

And where is the city Paul Allen and Bill Gates spent their “early years”? Why it’s Albuquerque — and Startup is in our very own New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

[As elsewhere, the apostrophe key appears not to work at Gear Factor.]

Phishing IQ Test

Chances are that in the past week youve received an e-mail in your inbox that pretends to be from your bank, e-commerce vendor, or other on-line site. Hopefully you[‘]ve realized that many times this e-mail is fake – a phishing e-mail. The sender phisher of these fake e-mails wants you to click on the link in the e-mail and go to a phishing Web site – which will look just like the Web site of the company being phished. Once on the phishers Web site they hope to obtain your account, financial, credit and even identity information. Of course not every e-mail you receive is a phish. In fact you should expect your bank or e-commerce vendor to send you legitimate e-mail. But how can you tell the difference? Well that[‘]s what the Phishing IQ test is all about – give it a try.

SonicWALL Phishing IQ Test

NewMexiKen scored six correct out of 10. Not very good.

The SonicWALL people seem to have a problem with apostrophes. Funny, because one of their clues to phishing is bad grammar.

According to Yahoo! News:

Both IE7 and Firefox have built-in antiphishing features designed to alert you when you’ve hit a fraudulent site. With Microsoft’s browser, antiphishing is turned on by default. Each Web site you visit is checked against a database maintained by Microsoft, and known frauds are blocked.

Firefox has two antiphishing options. With the first, the sites you visit are checked against a local database on your computer. With the second, the sites you visit are checked against a live database maintained by Google.

In the SmartWare test, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 blocked 690 known phishing sites, or 66.35 percent of the total. In contrast, Firefox blocked 78.85 percent when using a local antiphishing database and 81.54 percent when using the online database.

Note that testing was on Internet Explorer 7. Internet Explorer 6 is much less secure. Upgrade to 7.

Festival of the Cranes

Friends of the Bosque del Apache keep the census of waterfowl at one of America’s great wildlife refuges. Click to see the lovely photos, which rotate every few seconds.

And this photo is a must! Read the caption and listen to the recording. Isn’t nature awesome?

In the 1930s, the Rocky Mountain population of greater sandhill cranes was severely declining. Habitat loss in wintering and breeding areas, land use changes and other factors had taken their toll on the population. In 1941, fewer than 20 sandhills wintered on Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge (NWR).

Since 1939, refuge staff, volunteers, cooperators, and other agencies have worked to restore wintering habitat along the Rio Grande for the cranes. Intensive management on the refuge, including moist soil management (growing natural wetland foods), cooperative agriculture, and crop manipulation have helped the population recover dramatically. Bosque del Apache NWR hosts about three-quarters of the Rocky Mountain sandhill crane population each winter, totaling up to 15,000 birds.

In addition to the sandhill cranes, the refuge is also a wintering stopover or home for snow geese, Ross’ geese, pintails, shovelers, mallards, and a host of other waterfowl. The spectacular wildlife viewing opportunities contribute to the fact that Bosque del Apache NWR is consistently recognized as one of the top birding areas in the country. Enjoy our trails, observation decks, and tour loop during your Festival visit.

November 15th is the birthday

… of Judge Wapner, 87. Raymond Babbitt sends his greetings.

… of Ed Asner, who will always be Lou Grant to me. He’s 77.

… of Petula Clark. She’s 74.

When you’re alone
And life is making you lonely
You can always go
Downtown

… of Sam Waterston. Jack McCoy is 66.

… of our governor, Bill Richardson, 59 today.

… of Kevin Eubanks. The Tonight Show bandleader is 49.

Justice Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), artist Georgia O’Keefe (1887-1986), Field Marshal Edwin Rommel (1891-1944), Governor (of New York) Averell Harriman (1891-1986), and U.S. Air Force General (and George Wallace running-mate) Curtis LeMay (1906-1990) were all born on this date.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is in Santa Fe. American Masters has a brief biography.

Cubicle Culture

Even people who love PowerPoint have no shortage of gripes about it. Over the years, the software has been blamed for boring people senseless. The phrase “Death by PowerPoint” is common corporate parlance. Some companies and conference organizers have prohibited PowerPoint, and the press perennially skewers it as a thought-free plague. One legal scholar, tongue-in-cheek, proposed a constitutional amendment banning its use.

Yet, there are an estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations given each day around the world, inviting the question: Why, if so many people dread presentations, do we still see so many of them?

Read more from WSJ.com.

And don’t forget the Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication in PowerPoint.

Border Views

According to a report in The Albuquerque Journal, there’s a difference in attitudes among the four border states, albeit a small one.

“About 63 percent of New Mexicans who voted in the general election supported giving illegal immigrants working in the United States a chance at becoming legal residents, according to an Associated Press exit poll.”

In California it’s 65%, in Texas it’s 59%, and in Arizona just 55%. Nationwide the figure is 57%.

Make a Wish

The nights and early morning hours of November 17-19 mark the return of the Leonid meteor shower to the skies of Earth. Will it be worth your while to get outside and take a look? Well, that depends on which expert you listen to and where you live.

For the most part, this year’s Leonid’s display should be a pretty typical meteor shower. Just days away from New Moon, the sky will be free of moonlight so viewers should be able to see as many as 20 faint, fast-moving meteors per hour during its peak (the evening of November 17, early morning of November 18).

However, unlike a typical meteor shower, astronomers are predicting an unusual “outburst” of meteor activity late November 18 – early November 19 (the date it occurs depends on where you live).

The Planetary Society

Thanks to dangerousmeta! for the link.

Fly Apple

Apple® today announced it is teaming up with Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United to deliver the first seamless integration between iPod® and in-flight entertainment systems. These six airlines will begin offering their passengers iPod seat connections which power and charge their iPods during flight and allow the video content on their iPods to be viewed on the their seat back displays.

Apple

The pilots will be watching and listening to their iPods, too.

November 14th is the birthday

… of Buckwheat Zydeco. He’s 59.

Contemporary zydeco’s most popular performer, accordionist Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural was the natural successor to the throne vacated by the death of his mentor Clifton Chenier; infusing his propulsive party music with strains of rock and R&B, his urbanized sound — complete with touches of synthesizer and trumpet — married traditional and contemporary zydeco with uncommon flair, in the process reaching a wider mainstream audience than any artist before him. (allmusic)

… of Prince Charles. He’s 58. I thought it was “ladies-in-waiting,” not princes-in-waiting.

… of Condoleezza Rice. She’s 52.

… of Laura San Giacomo. She’s 45.

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower was born on this date in 1896. She died in 1979.

Joseph McCarthy was born on this date in 1908. Fortunately he died in 1957.