The big story on the internets today is from the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson to be released tomorrow. In it Isaacson has Jobs saying he finally devised a TV interface to make it simple with no more DVRs and cable boxes.
So I started thinking, how unlike Jobs, the ultimate marketer, to give away his last “one more thing.”
And then I thought some more.
The ultimate marketer indeed. How much speculation and anticipation will there be waiting for Apple to release this product?
Cumberland Island is 17.5 miles long and totals 36,415 acres of which 16,850 are marsh, mud flats, and tidal creeks. It is well known for its sea turtles, wild turkeys, wild horses, armadillos, abundant shore birds, dune fields, maritime forests, salt marshes, and historic structures.
This 50-million year old lake bed is one of the richest fossil localities in the world. Recorded in limestone are dynamic and complete paleoecosystems that spanned two million years. Preservation is so complete that it allows for detailed study of climate change and its effects on biological communities.
Visitors discover that this resource displays the interrelationships of plants, insects, fishes, reptiles and mammals, like few other known fossil sites. The relevance and challenge of study and preservation of this ancient ecosystem are equal to those of a modern ecosystem.
The surface topography of Fossil Butte is now covered by a high cold desert. Sagebrush is the dominant vegetation at the lower elevations, while limber pine and aspen occur on the slopes. Pronghorn, Mule deer and a variety of birds are commonly seen. Moose, elk and beaver are sometimes observed.
“That makes the [iPod] older than Facebook, YouTube, Crocs, Vibram FiveFingers, and the Motorola RAZR, to name a few brands and devices that have penetrated general culture over the last decade.”
Displaying a remarkable consistency during his 17-year career, Jim Bunning became the first pitcher to record 100 wins and 1,000 strikeouts in both the American and National Leagues. He also threw no-hitters in both leagues, including a perfect game on Father’s Day 1964. Accumulated 224 career wins as a seven-time All-Star selection, Bunning was also a leading figure in the founding of the player’s union and later served Kentucky as a United States Senator.
Too bad about the political career. I always liked Bunning as a pitcher, and regret not attending a game I almost went to he pitched against the Mets in 1964. He threw a no-hitter that day. As a senator he was a raving lunatic on his lucid days.
Pele is 71 today.
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee is 57.
Dwight Yoakam is 55. Yoakam has been in a number of films — he was the nasty boyfriend in Sling Blade — but it’s country music that earned his fame.
With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the late ’80s. Like his idols Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, Yoakam never played by Nashville’s rules; consequently, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam. On each of his records, he twists around the form enough to make it seem like he doesn’t respect all of country’s traditions. Appropriately, his core audience was composed mainly of roots rock and rock & roll fans, not the mainstream country audience. Nevertheless, he was frequently able to chart in the country Top Ten, and he remained one of the most respected and adventurous recording country artists well into the ’90s.
Johnny Carson was born 86 years ago today. A little luck and many fewer cigarettes and he might be alive today. While he was alive, Carson would have been my choice for the person I’d most like to have dinner with.
He grew up an extremely shy boy, but when he was 12 years old he happened to read a how-to book about magic tricks and he later said that it was the discovery of magic that helped him relate to people. He started writing jokes in college and went on to host a TV game show called “Who Do You Trust?” But his big break came when he took over hosting The Tonight Show from Jack Parr in 1962.
By the mid-1970s, more than 15 million people were watching The Tonight Show every night before they went to bed. When he retired in 1992, he had been on the air for 30 years. He almost never appeared in public again, and died in 2005.
Michael Crichton died three years ago; he would have been 69 today. The Writer’s Almanac (link above) has a interesting entry about Crichton.
Harvey Penick was born on this date in 1904. His Little Red Book is the best-selling golf book ever.
John William Heisman was born on this date in 1869. He’s the guy the trophy is named after. The following milestones in Heisman’s career are excerpted from his 1936 obituary in The New York Times and put here in chronological order.
In 1888 he was a member of the Brown football team, and in 1889 of the Pennsylvania varsity football eleven.
He began his coaching career in 1892 at Oberlin College. In 1893 he coached all sports at the University of Akron. From 1895 to 1900 he coached football and baseball at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, and from 1900 to 1904 was coach at Clemson College.
From 1904 to 1920 he coached football, baseball and basketball at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed the famous “Golden Tornado” teams.
In 1908 he was director of athletics at the Atlanta Athletic Club. From 1910 to 1914 he was president of the Atlanta Baseball Association. In 1920 he coached football at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1923 filled the same position at Washington and Jefferson College. From 1924 to 1927 he was head football coach and director of athletics at Rice Institute, Houston, Texas.
In 1923 and 1924 he was president of the American Football Coaches Association.
For the last six years [before 1936] he had been physical director of the Downtown Athletic Club.
CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 23— Apple Computer introduced a portable music player today and declared that the new gadget, called the iPod, was so much easier to use that it would broaden a nascent market in the way the Macintosh once helped make the personal computer accessible to a more general audience.
But while industry analysts said the device appeared to be as consumer friendly as the company said it was, they also pointed to its relatively limited potential audience, around seven million owners of the latest Macintosh computers. Apple said it had not yet decided whether to introduce a version of the music player for computers with the Windows operating system, which is used by more than 90 percent of personal computer users.
“It’s a nice feature for Macintosh users,” said P. J. McNealy, a senior analyst for Gartner G2, an e-commerce research group. “But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, disputed the concern that the market was limited, and said the company might have trouble meeting holiday demand. He predicted that the improvement in technology he said the iPod represented would inspire consumers to buy Macintosh computers so they could use an iPod.
In 2003 with my brother John and his dear friend Fran, I made my one and, alas, only visit to Chaco Culture National Historical Park. I need to return.
This post was published in a different form eight years ago today.
According to the National Park Service, “Chaco Canyon was a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture between AD 850 and 1250. It was a hub of ceremony, trade, and administration for the prehistoric Four Corners area – unlike anything before or since.”
“Chaco is remarkable,” the Park Service continues, “for its monumental public and ceremonial buildings, and its distinctive architecture. To construct the buildings, along with the associated Chacoan roads, ramps, dams, and mounds, required a great deal of well organized and skillful planning, designing, resource gathering, and construction. The Chacoan people combined pre-planned architectural designs, astronomical alignments, geometry, landscaping, and engineering to create an ancient urban center of spectacular public architecture – one that still amazes and inspires us a thousand years later.”
NewMexiKen visited Chaco Culture National Historical Park for the first time Sunday and Monday. More than anything Chaco resembles — in concept, not appearance — an assemblage of European monastaries. Relatively few people lived there, yet the dozens of “Great Houses” were extensive with hundreds of rooms, scores of kivas and large plazas.
Curly Howard (Jerome Lester Horwitz) was born on this date in 1903. The most popular of the Three Stooges, Curly had no formal training and was often improvising. According to older brother Moe Howard, “If we were going through a scene and he’d forget his words for a moment, you know. Rather than stand, get pale and stop, you never knew what he was going to do. On one occasion he’d get down to the floor and spin around like a top until he remembered what he had to say.” It’s said Curly squandered all his money on wine, food, women, homes, cars, and especially dogs. Sounds like good choices, but they took their toll. Curly Howard died at age 48 in 1952 after a series of strokes.
“N’yuk, n’yuk, n’yuk.”
Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca" 1940
Three time best actress Oscar nominee Joan Fontaine is 94 today. She was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland. Miss Fontaine won the Oscar in 1942 for Suspicion. Good genes in that family. Her sister Olivia de Havilland turned 95 in July.
Nobel Prize-winner Doris Lessing is 92 today.
In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was out grocery shopping when the announcement came, and she came home to find her house swamped with reporters. She was nonplussed about the prize, saying, “Oh Christ! I couldn’t care less. This has been going on for 30 years. I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I’m delighted to win them all. It’s a royal flush.” And she said, “I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with surprise. I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.”
By the time she accepted the prize, she was considerably more gracious, saying, “Thank you does not seem enough when you’ve won the best of them all. It is astonishing and amazing.”
Christopher Lloyd is 73. The trifecta — Emmett Brown, Uncle Fester and Jim Ignatowski.
Annette Funicello is 69. At the Disney Archives, once upon a time, I actually saw first-hand something I had often fantasized about in junior high — Annette’s Mouseketeer sweater.
Catherine Deneuve is 68.
Jeff Goldblum is 59.
Spike Jonze is 42.
Ichiro Suzuki is 38.
Albuquerque’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson of Modern Family is 36.
Slugger Jimmie Foxx was born on October 22, 1907.
A fearsome power hitter whose strength earned him the moniker The Beast, Jimmie Foxx was the anchor of an intimidating Philadelphia Athletics lineup that produced pennant winners from 1929-31. The second batter in history to top 500 home runs, Foxx belted 30 or more homers in 12 consecutive seasons and drove in more than 100 runs 13 consecutive years, including a career-best 175 with Boston in 1938. He won back-to-back MVP Awards in 1932 and ’33, capturing the Triple Crown in the latter year.
It was on this date in 1962, that President Kennedy told the nation about the Soviet missiles in Cuba. From The New York Times report on the speech:
President Kennedy imposed a naval and air “quarantine” tonight on the shipment of offensive military equipment to Cuba.
In a speech of extraordinary gravity, he told the American people that the Soviet Union, contrary to promises, was building offensive missiles and bomber bases in Cuba. He said the bases could handle missiles carrying nuclear warheads up to 2,000 miles.
Thus a critical moment in the cold war was at hand tonight. The President had decided on a direct confrontation with–and challenge to–the power of the Soviet Union.
*****
All this the President recited in an 18-minute radio and television address of a grimness unparalleled in recent times. He read the words rapidly, with little emotion, until he came to the peroration–a warning to Americans of the dangers ahead.
“Let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out,” the President said. “No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.”
“The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are–but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world,” he added.
It was as close as we’ve ever come to nuclear war.
Flickr has long been the go to place for displaying photos on the web, followed I guess by Picasaweb. Of course, Facebook, Twitter and Google + all provide photo display, too.
The newest though, and the prettiest, is 500px. Take a look.
“But this seems like a good time to repeat, once again, the truth about federal spending: Your federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. The vast bulk of its spending goes to the big five: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest on the debt.”
“I am friends with Houston City Council Member Jolanda Jones. Jo is former track star, a lawyer, and a bomb thrower. She leaves a trail of pissed off people where ever she goes, and by gawd, I love her for that. When Jo gets up in the morning, the devil cringes and says, “Oh crap, she’s up.” Jo is smart. Jo is afraid of nobody and no thing. She meaner than ten acres of snakes and nobody, I mean nobody, represents the needs of her constituents better than Jo does – all while wearing 5 inch heels and the biggest damn earrings on planet earth. I swear, it takes some serious welding to make her earrings.”
So a climate skeptic, a physicist at Cal Berkeley, thought the data was wrong and he could do better. He even got the Koch brothers to fund the work.
Guess what?
Global warming is real, according to a major study released today [October 20, 2011]. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study fines finds reliable evidence of a arise rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1ºC since the mid-1950s.
Analyzing temperature data from 15 sources, in some cases going as far back as 1800, the Berkeley Earth study directly addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics, including the the urban hear heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias.
On the basis of its analysis, according to Berkeley Earth’s founder and scientific director, Professor Richard A. Muller, the group concluded that earlier studies based on more limited data by teams in the United States and Britain had accurately estimated the extent of land surface warming.
Joyce Randolph, who played Trixie Norton on “The Honeymooners” with Jackie Gleason, Art Carney and Audrey Meadows, is 87.
Whitey Ford is 83.
Edward Whitey Ford was the big-game pitcher on the great Yankees teams of the 1950s and early ’60s, earning him the moniker Chairman of the Board. The wily southpaw’s lifetime record of 236-106 gives him the best winning percentage (.690) of any 20th century pitcher. He paced the American League in victories three times, and in ERA and shutouts twice. The 1961 Cy Young Award winner still holds many World Series records, including 10 wins and 94 strikeouts, once pitching 33 consecutive scoreless innings in the Fall Classic.
Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Cropper came to prominence in the early ’60s, first with the Mar-Keys (“Last Night”), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG’s. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the ’60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic “In the Midnight Hour.”
http://youtu.be/U-7QSMyz5rg
Green Onions is the single greatest rock instrumental ever, period (Booker T. Jones, organ; Steve Cropper, guitar; Al Jackson, drums; and Lewis Steinberg, bass). Donald “Duck” Dunn replaced Steinberg in 1965. Jackson was killed in 1975.
Bassist Dunn and drummer steve Potts with Jones and Cropper in 2010. I wonder how many times they’ve played “Green Onions.”
M.G.’s stands for the British motor car and not for Memphis Group. Chips Moman of Stax founded the band and named it for his car. Moman had played with Jones in an earlier band, the Triumphs. Stax changed the origin of the M.G.’s story when Moman left the label. Steve Cropper confirmed Moman’s version on Fresh Air in 2007.
Judy Sheindlin (“Judge Judy”) is 69.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis is 59.
The daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher has hit the double-nickel. That’s Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia, and once Mrs. Paul Simon. (Debbie Reynolds is 79.)
Ken Watanabe is 52.
One of the Kardashian sisters — and does it really matter which one — is 31 today.
Dizzy Gillespie was born on October 21, 1917.
Dizzy Gillespie was one of the principal developers of bop in the early 1940s, and his styles of improvising and trumpet playing were imitated widely in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, he is one of the most influential players in the history of jazz.
. . .
Early in 1953, someone accidentally fell on Gillespie’s trumpet, which was sitting upright on a trumpet stand, and bent the bell back. Gillespie played it, discovered that he liked the sound, and from that point on had trumpets built for him with the bell pointing upwards at a 45 degree angle. The design is his visual trademark — for more than three decades he was virtually the only major trumpeter in jazz playing such an instrument.
Alfred Nobel was born on this date in 1833. He was the owner of a weapons manufacturer and inventor of dynamite.
Nobel’s enormous legacy — the impetus to leave the prize money now awarded to Nobel laureates — actually stemmed from an event that left him with feelings of great indignation. After his older brother Ludvig died, a French newspaper printed a scathing obituary of Alfred Nobel, who was in fact alive and well. The writer was allegedly confused about who had died, and he used the obituary to write a condemnation of Alfred’s life and work. “Le marchand de la mort est mort (‘The merchant of death is dead’),” the newspaper proclaimed — and also, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”
Alfred Nobel read the obituary about himself and was so upset that this was to be his legacy that he rewrote his will to establish a set of prizes celebrating humankind’s greatest achievements.
That great sixth game of the World Series where Carlton Fisk hit the winning home run in the 12th to give the Red Sox a 7-6 victory over the Reds was 35 years ago tonight.
NewMexiKen’s very own parents were married 69 years ago today in Angola, Indiana. They eloped from Detroit. She was 17 and he 19.
“Overall, what struck me was how non-threatening the thing is: a modest-sized, good-natured crowd, mostly young (it was a cold and windy evening) but with plenty of middle-aged people there, not all that scruffy. Hardly the sort of thing that one would expect to shake up the whole national debate. Yet it has — which can only mean one thing: the emperor was naked, and all it took was one honest voice to point it out.”
… of William Christopher. M.A.S.H.‘s Father Francis Mulcahy is 79.
… of Hall-of-Fame pitcher Juan Marichal, 74.
The pride of both the Dominican Republic and the Giants, Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez won 243 games and lost only 142 over 16 marvelous seasons. The high-kicking right-hander enjoyed six 20-win seasons, hurled a no-hitter in 1963 and was named to nine All-Star teams. The Dominican Dandy twice led the National League in complete games and shutouts, finishing 244 contests during his career, while fanning 2,303 and compiling a 2.89 ERA. After his playing days, Marichal became minister of sports in his homeland.
… of Wanda Jackson. The country-rockabilly singer is 74.
The rockabilly field of the Fifties wasn’t exactly crowded with female performers, but Wanda Jackson didn’t let that stop her from making her mark. She emerged from a small town in Oklahoma to become the first Queen of Rockabilly. Jackson started out her career singing with the likes of Hank Thompson and Red Foley, who hosted the Ozark Jubilee Barn Dance. Her first contract, arranged with Thompson’s assistance, was with Decca Records, and she had a country hit in 1954 with the duet “You Can’t Have My Love.”
With encouragement from Elvis Presley, who she met while on a package tour in 1955, Jackson moved in the direction of rock and roll. “You should be doing this kind of music,” he advised her. Her early singles for Capitol Records, to which she signed in 1956, typically consisted of a country song and a rock and roll number. Jackson’s rockabilly recordings – including such red-hot Fifties sides as “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad,” “Rock Your Baby,” “Mean Mean Man” and “Honey Bop” – are among the greatest ever made, regardless of gender. These rocking sides featured renowned country-music accompanists such as Buck Owens (rhythm guitar) and Ralph Mooney (pedal steel).
… of Tom Petty; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is 61.
In a sense, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are America’s band. Durable, resourceful, hard-working, likeable and unpretentious, they rank among the most capable and classic rock bands of the last quarter century. They’ve mastered the idiom’s fundamentals and digested its history while stretching themselves creatively and contributing to rock’s legacy. Moreover they are, like such compatriots as Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, a people’s band, writing of everyday struggles and frustrations while offering redemption through tough-minded, big-hearted, tuneful songs.
Hall-of-famer Mickey Mantle was born on this date in 1931. He died in 1995.
Mickey Mantle was a star from the start, parlaying a talent for the game and boyish good looks into iconic status. In spite of a series of devastating injuries, Mantle accumulated a long list of impressive accomplishments, finishing his 18-year career with 536 home runs and a .298 batting average. The switch-hitting Commerce Comet won three MVP Awards (1956, ’57, ’62) and a Triple Crown (1956). He contributed to 12 pennants and seven World Series titles in his first 14 seasons while establishing numerous World Series records, including most home runs (18).
Bela Lugosi was born on this date in 1882. The Romanian-born actor (part of Austria-Hungary then) was best known for playing Count Dracula in the 1931 film. Lugosi died in 1956.
The “fifth Marx brother” Margaret Dumont was also born Daisy Juliette Baker on October 20th in 1882. Dumont was the Brothers’ foil in many of their films.
Dumont: Oh, I’m afraid after we’re married a while a beautiful young girl will come along and you’ll forget all about me.
Groucho: Don’t be silly. I’ll write you twice a week.
If the Goverment is a car setting out to give every one a ride to work, then for 40 years the Republicans have been puncturing the tires, pouring sand in the gas tank, stealing the distributer cap, and, whenever they can get their hands on the wheel, driving it straight into the nearest ditch and then, pointing to the wreckage as the tow truck backs up to it, saying, See, this proves that people were meant to walk.
And they do this so that they don’t have to chip in on gas.
Speaking of the Louisiana Purchase, NewMexiKen hasn’t visited with Lewis and Clark for awhile. Here from the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online is much of Clark’s entry for this date 206 years ago today. The expedition was on the Columbia River between the Umatilla and John Day rivers. The editor believes the basalt rocks and island “to be the area of Crow Butte State Park, Benton County, Washington.”
Larboard or “Lard Side” is what we call port, or the left. Clark was surely one of history’s most creative spellers.
A cool morning wind S. W. we concluded to delay untill after brackfast which we were obliged to make on the flesh of dog. after brackfast we gave all the Indian men Smoke, and we Set out leaveing about 200 of the nativs at our Encampment; passd. three Indian Lodges on the Lard Side a little below our Camp which lodges [we] I did not discover last evening, passed a rapid at Seven miles one at a Short distance below we passed a verry bad rapid, a chane or rocks makeing from the Stard. Side and nearly Chokeing the river up entirely with hugh black rocks, an Island below close under the Stard. Side on which was four Lodges of Indians drying fish,— here I Saw a great number of pelicons on the wing, and black Comerants. at one oClock we landed on the lower point of [some] an Island at Some Indian Lodges, a large Island on the Stard Side nearly opposit and a Small one a little below on the Lard Side on those three Island I counted Seventeen Indian Lodges, those people are in every respect like those above, prepareing fish for theire winter consumption here we purchased a fiew indifferent Dried fish & a fiew berries on which we dined—(On the upper part of this Island we discovered an Indian vault[)] our curiosity induced us to examine the methot those nativs practicd in disposeing the dead, the Vaut was made by broad poads [NB: boards] and pieces of Canoes leaning on a ridge pole which was Suported by 2 forks Set in the ground Six feet in hight in an easterly and westerly direction and about 60 feet in length, and 12 feet wide, in it I observed great numbers of humane bones of every description perticularly in a pile near the Center of the vault, on the East End 21 Scul bomes forming a circle on Mats—; in the Westerly part of the Vault appeared to be appropriated for those of more resent death, as many of the bodies of the deceased raped up in leather robes lay [NB: in rows] on board covered with mats, &c [NB: when bones & robes rot, they are gathered in a heap & sculls placed in a circle.] we observed, independant of the canoes which Served as a Covering, fishing nets of various kinds, Baskets of different Sizes, wooden boles, robes Skins, trenchers, and various Kind of trinkets, in and Suspended on the ends of the pieces forming the vault; we also Saw the Skeletons of Several Horses at the vault & great number of bones about it, which Convinced me that those animals were Sacrefised as well as the above articles to the Deceased.) after diner we proceeded on to a bad rapid at the lower point of a Small Island on which four Lodges of Indians were Situated drying fish; here the high countrey Commences again on the Stard. Side leaveing a vallie of 40 miles in width, from the mustle Shel rapid. examined and passed this rapid close to the Island at 8 miles lower passed a large Island near the middle of the river a brook on the Stard. Side and 11 Islds. all in view of each other below, a riverlit [NB: rivulet] falls in on the Lard. Side behind a Small Island a Small rapid below. The Star Side is high rugid hills, the Lard. Side a low plain and not a tree to be Seen in any Direction except a fiew Small willow bushes which are Scattered partially on the Sides of the bank
