Tribal Casino Revenues Surpass Nevada’s

From The Washington Post:

Indian gambling pulled in $18.5 billion in 2004, nearly double the take for Nevada’s gambling industry, as tribal casinos boomed ahead.

The 10 percent increase extended more than a decade of double-digit growth for the nation’s Indian casinos, which have mushroomed since Congress passed a law creating the legal framework in 1988.

There now are 411 Indian casinos in the United States, operated by 223 tribes in 28 states. More than half the 341 federally recognized Indian tribes in the continental United States operate casinos.

Take me for a ride

From the Casper Star Tribune:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — Interior Secretary Gale Norton cruised the powdery soft roads on a snowmobile, then took in the scenery near Old Faithful from a warm snowcoach.

She experienced for herself on Tuesday the plan that has made room for both activities in Yellowstone National Park for at least the next two winters.

As she got off the yellow snowcoach — a roomy passenger van on tracks — she declared the experience “not as special as snowmobiling.” Both are good options for seeing the park, Norton said, but “this is a much more ordinary way to see things.”

Righteous Anger

From a review of God’s Politics in The Washington Post:

The problem with religious conservatives is not that they invoke religion too much, but that they practice “bad theology,” he argues. He notes that although religious conservatives focus on homosexuality and abstinence, Jesus and Isaiah and Micah had much more to say about poverty and economic justice than sexual impropriety. Therefore, he writes, the Bush administration’s tax policies reflect a “religious failure.” And also: “An enormous public misrepresentation of Christianity has taken place. . . . [M]any people around the world now think Christian faith stands for political commitments that are almost the opposite of its true meaning. How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American?”

Where in the world is your car
Big Brother wants to know

This story from CBS News about states mulling over taxing us by the mile.

College student Jayson Just commutes an odometer-spinning 2,000 miles a month. As CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, his monthly gas bill once topped his car payment.

“I was paying about $500 a month,” says Just.

So Just bought a fuel efficient hybrid and said goodbye to his gas-guzzling BMW.

And what kind of mileage does he get?

“The EPA estimate is 60 in the city, 51 on the highway,” says Just.

And that saves him almost $300 a month in gas. It’s great for Just but bad for the roads he’s driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.

Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called “tax by the mile.”

Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.

“Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it’s as simple as that,” says engineer David Kim.

Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.

B.S. in Tulsa

The Tulsa World has written a threatening letter to BatesLine, a Tulsa-based blog. The following is from The World‘s letter:

The reproduction of any articles and/or editorials (in whole or in part) on your website or linking your website to Tulsa World content is without the permission of the Tulsa World and constitutes an intentional infringement of the Tulsa World’s copyright and other rights to the exclusive use and distribution of the copyrighted materials.

“[O]r linking your website to Tulsa World content” Linking? How could linking alone be a copyright violation?

BatesLine has much to say about The World and Tulsa politics.

Dominoes

No, not the pizza. The kind of dominoes you play. NewMexiKen got out a set of dominoes for the grandkids to play with while they were here. First thing we knew, 12 of the 28 tiles were missing.

They’re still missing, and keep in mind the entire house has been torn apart and reassembled to accomodate the installation of new carpet.

Where are the dominoes?

I’m just hoping none of the grandkids saw Maria Full of Grace.

Slogans for America’s Top 15 Fattest Cities

1. Houston: We Have a Problem… Buttoning Our Jeans!
2. Detroit: Mo’ Town — Mo’ Pie! Mo’ Pudding! Mo’ Cake!
3. New York: Hey, I’m EATIN’ Here!
4. Philadelphia: The City of Blubbery Love Handles
5. Indianapolis: The 500 Ain’t Just a Race — It’s Our LDL Cholesterol Level.
6. Las Vegas: C’mon, Baby, Papa Needs a New Pair of Pants
7. Phoenix: But It’s a Dry Fat
8. Wichita: Where Everyone Looks Like a Lineman
9. El Paso: Out in the West Texas Town of El Paso, I Fell In Love With a Mexican Grill
10. New Orleans: Show Us Your Man-Boobs!
11. Chicago: The Winded City
12. San Antonio: Remember the A La Mode!
13. Memphis: Barbecue — It’s What’s for Breakfast
14. Houston: We Have a Pork Chop
15. Chicago: That Waddlin’ Town

From The Edge in The Oregonian. Thanks to Lee for the pointer.

NewMexiKen doesn’t know why Houston made the list twice. Here’s the actual list.

Sideline Chatter

These from The Seattle Times: Sideline Chatter —

Lovie Smith and Romeo Crennel made it to the finals, but this year’s Valentine’s Day salute goes out to the star of the Kentlake High School girls basketball team: Luv Rattler.

Syndicated columnist Tom FitzGerald, on the only awkward Super Bowl XXXIX moment: “When the game ended and Doug Mientkiewicz ran onto the field and took off with the football.”

Makeup calls

Robert Hilburn takes on the Grammy “credibility gap.”

Few artists in the history of American pop are more deserving of the Grammys’ top award than the late Ray Charles, so it was hard to feel too disappointed Sunday when his “Genius Loves Company” was named album of the year — even if the award was 40 years too late. In sports, it’s known as a makeup call.

Because the Recording Academy did such a dismal job for years in saluting talent that didn’t fit into the comfortable boundaries of mainstream pop, many of the greatest artists in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s were ignored.

An embarrassing number of artists who have won Lifetime Achievement Awards from the academy were never honored with a high-profile Grammy during their most creative years. It’s a list that stretches from Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones to, until Sunday, Ray Charles.

Makeup calls struck four times in the last seven years in the album of the year category: Bob Dylan in 1998, Carlos Santana in 2000, Steely Dan in 2001 and now Brother Ray. Only Dylan, honored for his widely heralded “Time Out of Mind” album, was a deserving choice.

Though it may seem sacrilegious to suggest it after Charles’ dominant showing Sunday, when he won a total of six awards, the academy needs to stop this cycle, even if it means something as drastic as adding a new Grammy category. They already have 107, so why not? Category 108 — best album by an artist we should have honored in the album of the year category more than 25 years ago but didn’t.

Valentine, You Slay Me

It was on this date in 1929 that the Valentine’s Day Massacre took place in Chicago. Here is the beginning of the news report in The New York Times:

Chicago, Feb. 14 — Chicago gangland leaders observed Valentine’s Day with machine guns and a stream of bullets and as a result seven members of the George (Bugs) Moran-Dean O’Banion, North Side Gang are dead in the most cold-blooded gang massacre in the history of this city’s underworld.

The seven gang warriors were trapped in a beer-distributors’ rendezvous at 2,122 North Clark Street, lined up against the wall by four men, two of whom were in police uniforms, and executed with the precision of a firing squad.

The killings have stunned the citizenry of Chicago as well as the Police Department, and while tonight there was no solution, the one outstanding cause was illicit liquor traffic.

Additional background from This Day in History:

Capone was in Florida in February 1929 when he gave the go-ahead for the assassination of Bugs Moran. On February 13, a bootlegger called Moran and offered to sell him a truckload of high quality whiskey at a low price. Moran took the bait and the next morning pulled up to the delivery location where he was to meet several associates and purchase the whisky. He was running a little late, and just as he was pulling up to the garage he saw what looked like two policemen and two detectives get out of an unmarked car and head to the door. Thinking he had nearly avoided being caught in a police raid, Moran drove off. The four men, however, were Capone’s assassins, and they were only entering the building before Moran’s arrival because they had mistaken one of the seven men inside for the boss himself.

Wearing their stolen police uniforms and heavily armed, Capone’s henchmen surprised Moran’s men, who agreed to line up against the wall. Thinking they had fallen prey to a routine police raid, they allowed themselves to be disarmed. A moment later, they were gunned down in a hail of shotgun and submachine-gun fire. Six were killed instantly, and the seventh survived for less than an hour.

Moran survived until 1957. Capone died in 1947. Prohibition ended in 1932.

More Valentine

This from The History Channel:

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first ‘valentine’ greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who may have been his jailor’s daughter — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It’s no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

Be mine, Valentine (whoever you were)

The Catholic Roots of Valentine’s Day:

A quick quiz: St. Valentine was:

a) a priest in the Roman Empire who helped persecuted Christians during the reign of Claudius II, was thrown in jail and later beheaded on Feb. 14.

b) a Catholic bishop of Terni who was beheaded, also during the reign of Claudius II.

c) someone who secretly married couples when marriage was forbidden, or suffered in Africa, or wrote letters to his jailer’s daughter, and was probably beheaded.

d) all, some, or possibly none of the above.

If you guessed d), give yourself a box of chocolates. Although the mid-February holiday celebrating love and lovers remains wildly popular, the confusion over its origins led the Catholic Church, in 1969, to drop St. Valentine’s Day from the Roman calendar of official, worldwide Catholic feasts.

There’s more.

Clang!

Michael Sokolove has an interesting and provocative essay on what’s wrong with the NBA in the The New York Times Magazine. The whole article is worthy, but a couple of excerpts:

Many others over the years have seen basketball as jazz, an apt comparison when the game is played well — as an amalgam of creativity, individuality, collaboration, improvisation and structure. Much of what makes basketball interesting is the give and take, the constant tension, between individual expression and team concepts. On the best teams, players take their turns as soloists, but not at the expense of others in the quintet.
…

But I do hope that college and high-school basketball will again ban dunking, so that players on the way up have some chance of acquiring something other than a repertory of slam dunks.

The three-point shot is another matter altogether. No reason it should not just disappear. ”The dagger!” announcers sometimes call it, as if it were the shock-and-awe of the hardwood, a weapon that brings opposing players to their knees. The three-pointer is a corruption of the sport, a perversion of a century of basketball wisdom that held that the whole point of the game was to advance the ball closer to the basket. If its intent was to increase scoring, the three-point shot definitely has not done that, and if it was to make the game more wide open and exciting, it hasn’t accomplished that either. The unintended consequence of the three-pointer has been to make the game more static as players ”spot up” outside the arc, waiting for the pass that will lead to the dagger.

The un-Hollywood ending

Frank Rich’s column is about the assinine controversy surrounding Million Dollar Baby. Along the way he includes this:

As Mr. Eastwood has pointed out, advance knowledge of the story’s ending did nothing to deter the audience for “The Passion of the Christ.” My own experience is that knowing the ultimate direction of “Million Dollar Baby” – an organic development that in no way resembles a plot trick like that in “The Sixth Sense” – only deepened my second viewing of it.

Big oops!

From AP via The New York Times:

INGLESIDE, N.C., Feb. 12 (AP) – Larry Green stepped out of the darkness so suddenly that the car that hit him did not leave skid marks. He ended up beside a trash-strewn ditch, where he was examined by paramedics and declared dead.

Over the next two and a half hours, Mr. Green’s bloody body with a gaping head wound was zipped into a black vinyl bag, taken to the morgue and slid into a refrigerated drawer.

There was one problem: Mr. Green was alive.

Two weeks after that shocking discovery, Mr. Green is in a hospital intensive care unit, paralyzed.

Wind power

From an article in The New York Times:

With every turn of the giant blades of the 136 windmills here on the edge of a mesa, the stiff desert breeze is replacing expensive natural gas or other fuel that would have been burned in a power plant somewhere else.

Wind energy makes up a small fraction of electric generation in this country, but the rising price of natural gas has made wind look like a bargain; in some cases, it is cheaper to build a wind turbine and let existing natural gas generators stand idle. Giant, modern wind farms like the New Mexico Wind Energy Center here may become more common if prices continue to rise.

The center, 150 miles east of Albuquerque, opened in the summer of 2003 and is one of the largest in the country. The power is bought by the state’s largest utility, Public Service of New Mexico, and provides about 4 percent of that company’s electricity over the course of a year. In March, when demand is low and winds are usually strong, the project generates 10 percent of the electricity the company supplies.

Reading list

For its 50th anniversary issue, American Heritage assembled the “definitive guide to the greatest books about our past.”

So here it is, certainly the most challenging editorial task we’ve ever attempted—and one of the most rewarding. We have drawn on the knowledge and enthusiasm of leading historians, writers, and critics to offer a compendium of the very best books about the American experience. Divided into both chronological and subject categories ranging from the rise of the Republic to sports, from the years of World War II to the African-American journey, each section presents the writer’s choice of the 10 best books in a particular field, along with lucid, lively explanations of what makes them great. The result, we believe, is both a valuable reference work and an anthology of highly personal views of the making of our country and our culture that is immensely readable in its own right.

The essays are in the printed edition only, but the 20 booklists can be found online. There’s a list alphabetically by title here.