The Congress of the United States abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia on this date in 1850 as part of the so-called Compromise of 1850.
Slavery itself continued in the capital of the United States until April 1862.
I Wish I Thought I Understood This
The Monty Hall Problem Revisited by Joel Achenbach.
Arctic Ice Melt Shocks Scientists
European scientists voiced shock today as they viewed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe’s most northerly outpost to the North Pole.
The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Perennial sea ice — thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer — had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.
There’s more at NEWS.com.au.
But, then again, “man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Or, so says Senator James Inhofe, R-Moron.
The West’s Best Bike Trail
Sunset Magazine has rated Albuquerque’s Paseo del Bosque Trail as the best “bike ride” in the west — Bosque Bikepath.
Madrid
Sunset Magazine selected Madrid, New Mexico, as one of “The West’s best shopping streets” — True grit, great treasures.
There is really only one street in Madrid, in case you wondered.
Other best shopping in the west:
Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Los Angeles
San Francisco, the Richmond and Hayes Valley
Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood
Silver Lake in Los Angeles
Portland’s Pearl District
The runners-up included two in Santa Fe, Santa Fe’s Guadalupe District and Santa Fe’s Railyard.
Old Joy
A movie review to take note of from Manhola Dargis. It begins:
There are roughly 90 viewing days left till Christmas. By that point most of the big studio movies will have opened for the consideration of the paying public and Academy Award voters, and untold numbers of words will have been spilled about the same handful of serviceable or perhaps even brilliant films of the sort that dominate the discourse every fall. Odds are that none of those contenders will capture the tenor of these difficult times with more sensitivity or greater attention to beauty than Kelly Reichardt’s “Old Joy,” a triumph of modesty and of seriousness that also happens to be one of the finest American films of the year.
Florida State University To Phase Out Academic Operations By 2010
This just in from America’s Finest News Source:
Bowing to pressure from alumni, students, and a majority of teaching professors of Florida State University, athletic director Dave Hart Jr. announced yesterday that FSU would completely phase out all academic operations by the end of the 2010 school year in order to make athletics the school’s No. 1 priority.
Give Me Land, Lots of Land, Under Starry Skies Above
If the fence is built, however, it could have a long gap — about 75 miles — at one of the border’s most vulnerable points because of opposition from the Indian tribe here.
More illegal immigrants are caught — and die trying to cross into the United States — in and around the Tohono O’odham Indian territory, which straddles the Arizona border, than any other spot in the state.
Tribal leaders have cooperated with Border Patrol enforcement, but they promised to fight the building of a fence out of environmental and cultural concerns.
For the Tohono O’odham, which means “desert people,” the reason is fairly simple. For generations, their people and the wildlife they revere have freely crossed the border. For years, an existing four-foot-high cattle fence has had several openings — essentially cattle gates — that tribal members use to visit relatives and friends, take children to school and perform rites on the other side.
Read more about how Border Fence Must Skirt Objections From Arizona Tribe from The New York Times.
Running Away
NewMexiKen missed this in the Times last week, but thought it worth drawing attention to — When Being Varsity-Fit Masks an Eating Disorder. The article begins:
For a runner, Alex DeVinny wasn’t all that skinny on the day that she won a state track title in 2003. At 17, she was 5-foot-8 and weighed 125 pounds.
Few people watching her run the 3,200 meters in 10 minutes 53 seconds would have guessed that she had had symptoms of an eating disorder since age 9 and that she had yet to start menstruating. Her coach didn’t know. The college recruiters certainly did not know.
She was never going to run for those colleges. The summer after she won the title, Ms. DeVinny, from Racine, Wis., began to run even harder and eat even less. When she came out for cross-country in the fall, she looked frail and underweight. Her coach was concerned enough to prevent her from competing in several meets, but he allowed her to do two-thirds of her training. He never asked about her menstrual periods and did not know about her anorexia.
Ms. DeVinny sneaked in extra workouts, but her dazzling window of athleticism had already begun to close. “Her body kind of broke down during her senior year,” said her sister Gabby Fekete, 27. “She had lived on adrenaline.”
Last March, Ms. DeVinny died from cardiac arrest related to her starvation. She was 20 and weighed roughly 70 pounds.
Cheap Gasoline
NewMexiKen read that Costco has regular gasoline for $1.89 a gallon in Cincinnati if that’s not too far out of your way.
(That’s reportedly the cheapest in the U.S.)
Fall
In case you want to synchronize your calendars — the equinox is Saturday at 4:03 Universal Time. That’s the fall equinox in the northern hemisphere; spring in the southern.
Subtract 4 hours for Eastern Daylight Time, 5 for Central, 6 for Mountain and 7 for Pacific.
Or, in other words, fall begins at 10:23 PM Mountain Daylight Time on Friday, September 22.
The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold
I see your lips, the summer kisses
The sun-burned hands I used to hold
Since you went away the days grow long
And soon Ill hear old winters song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
Johnny Mercer
Novel Idea
Author Carlos Fuentes on the saving grace of literature. He begins:
Not long ago, the Norwegian Academy addressed one hundred writers from all over the world with a single question: Name the novel that you consider the best ever written.
Of the one hundred consulted, fifty answered: “Don Quixote de la Mancha” by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Quite a landslide, considering the runners up: Dostoevsky, Faulkner and Garcia Marquez, in that order.
Re-posted from last year.
Best line of the day about instant replay, so far
“Get rid of replay entirely — on the field, off the field, in my living room, everywhere. Why? Because I’d rather think the officials are blowing a game than know it.”
Gregg Doyel, CBS SportsLine.com
Speaking of Brothers
You think you have it bad?
How’d you like to be Jesus’ brother James?
How many times do you think he heard his mother say “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
Talk Like a Pirate Day
The folks at the precinct seemed a little put-off when I went to vote in the school bonds election and talked to them like I was a pirate.
He’s Three Today
And Aidan sounded happier on the phone than he appeared in this photo taken on last year’s birthday.
He’s got a six-month old brother to pester now. That keeps him busy.
Voting Today
Shall the Albuquerque Public School District issue $351,000,000 of general obligation bonds to erect, remodel, make additions to and furnish; school buildings within the district, to purchase or improve school grounds, to purchase computer software and hardware for student use in public schools, and to provide matching funds for capital outlay projects funded pursuant to the Public School Capital Outlay Act?
Yes or No?
Those are the exact words of the measure, copied from the sample ballot.
NewMexiKen thinks there should be another measure requiring “semicolon training” at the clerk’s office. Why is that semicolon in there? Why didn’t someone proofread the ballot?
Hall of Fame Birthdays
Duke Snider is 80.
EDWIN DONALD SNIDER
“DUKE”
BROOKLYN N.L., LOS ANGELES N.L.,
NEW YORK N.L., SAN FRANCISCO N.L.
1947-1964
HIT 407 CAREER HOME RUNS AND TIED N.L.
RECORD WITH 40 OR MORE ROUND-TRIPPERS
FIVE YEARS IN A ROW, 1953-1957. BATTED .300
OR BETTER SEVEN TIMES IN COMPILING .295
LIFETIME AVERAGE. TOPPED LEAGUE IN SLUGG-
ING PCT. TWICE AND TOTAL BASES THREE TIMES.
FIRST TO HIT FOUR HOMERS IN A WORLD SERIES
TWICE — IN 1952 AND 1955. SET N.L.
RECORD SERIES HOMERS (11).
Bill Medley is 66.
The vocal duo of Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield virtually defined the term “blue-eyed soul.” As the Righteous Brothers, they cut a string of hits that fared well on both the pop and rhythm and blues charts: “Unchained Melody” (#4 pop, #3 R&B), “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration (#1 pop, #13 R&B) and their masterpiece – and one of the seminal singles of the rock and roll era – “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ (#1 pop, #3 R&B). In the mid-1960s, the Righteous Brothers became a fixture on Top Forty radio and the televised rock and roll variety show Shindig!, on which they guested frequently. Medley’s commanding baritone and Hatfield’s forceful tenor ranked among the most indelible voices of that charmed era. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)
Joe Morgan is 63.
JOE LEONARD MORGAN
HOUSTON, N.L., 1963-1971, 1980
CINCINNATI, N.L., 1972-1979
SAN FRANCISCO, N.L., 1981-1982
PHILADELPHIA, N.L., 1983
OAKLAND, A.L., 1984
IMPACT PLAYER WHO LIFTED CINCINNATI’S “BIG RED
MACHINE” TO HIGHER LEVEL WITH HIS MULTI-FACETED
SKILLS. TRADEMARK WAS FLAPPING LEFT ARM AS HE
AWAITED PITCH. PACKED UNUSUAL POWER INTO
EXTRAORDINARILY QUICK 150-LB. FIREPLUG FRAME. PLAYED
22 SEASONS AND ALSO HOLDS HOME RUN AND GAMES
PLAYED RECORDS FOR 2B. N.L. MVP, 1975-76.
And Aidan is 3.
“If there’s a fire, get out of house.” — Aidan. He also advised not to go back in for any toys.
“I’ve got Hulk in my belly.” — Aidan describing his flu.
Best spinach line of the day, so far
“On the good side there has never been a better time to pick a fight with Popeye.”
— David Letterman
Best Willie’s pot bust line, so far
“In Louisiana federal agents raided Willie Nelson’s tour bus and found a pound and a half of marijuana. Looks like Willie is cutting back in his old age!”
— Jay Leno
Avast, me hearties!
Today is Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Best Places to Retire 2006
• Walla Walla, Wash.
• St. Simons Island, Ga.
• Prescott, Ariz.
• Holland, Mich.
• Williamsburg, Va.
Olbermann: ‘The President of the United States owes this country an apology’
Indeed.
Keith Olbermann, once again, not to be missed.
Crooks and Liars has the video and the transcript.
With increasing rage, he and his administration have begun to tell us, we are not permitted to disagree with them, that we cannot be right. That Colin Powell cannot be right.
And then there was that one, most awful phrase.
In four simple words last Friday, the President brought into sharp focus what has been only vaguely clear these past five-and-a-half years — the way the terrain at night is perceptible only during an angry flash of lightning, and then, a second later, all again is dark.
“It’s unacceptable to think…” he said. It is never unacceptable… to think.
And when a President says thinking is unacceptable, even on one topic, even in the heat of the moment, even in the turning of a phrase extracted from its context, he takes us toward a new and fearful path — one heretofore the realm of science fiction authors and apocalyptic visionaries.
Old Man River
Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes.
And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the river.
— Continue from The New York Times
Pac-10 Suspends Officials, Apologizes to Oklahoma
“The Pacific-10 Conference, finding merit in Oklahoma’s complaints about the officiating in its loss to Oregon, on Monday suspended for one game the officiating crew and the instant replay officials who worked the game and issued an apology to the Sooners.”
— SI.com
If you aren’t familiar with the incident, officials awarded the ball to Oregon on an onside kick when the replay clearly showed that an Oregon player had touched the ball before it went 10 yards. Helped by yet another bad call and blown review, Oregon went on to score their second touchdown in 72 seconds and made the extra point. That put the Ducks ahead 34-33 after being down 33-20. They won the game when a last second Oklahoma field goal was blocked.