… of Gene Hackman. The Oscar-winning actor is 75. He won Best Actor for The French Connection and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Unforgiven. He has received three other nominations.
… of Dick Cheney. The Vice President is 64.
… of Phil Collins. The singer is 54.
A fascinating look at the future of information technology Apple style from I, Cringely. He begins:
More than a century ago, King Gillette invented both the safety razor and a new way of marketing consumer goods. Before Gillette, men shaved with straight razors, which required skill to both make and use, and lasted almost forever. Gillette’s safety razor was mass-produced and required little skill to make OR use, but couldn’t be re-sharpened, so the removable blades had to be discarded when they became dull. His marketing breakthrough was selling the razor handles at little or no profit while making huge profits on the consumable — the blades. This same technique is used today to promote mobile phones and inkjet printers. And it is supposedly behind Apple’s success with the iPod music player.
But in the case of Apple, is the iPod a razor or a blade? In other words, is Apple a hardware company or a media company?
From Ananova:
A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.
Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.
He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.
But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.
He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.
He saPOSTID: “I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I’m glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there.”
Parts of Europe have this week been hit by the heaviest snowfalls since 1941, with some places registering more than ten feet of snow in 24 hours.
Thanks mostly to a lot of people Googling to find Ron Howard’s little brother (that would be Clint Howard) and lots of other esoterica, this is already NewMexiKen’s busiest month ever — with a couple of days left.
As of this morning, 21,777 visits in January.
… of Katharine Ross. Mrs. Robinson’s daughter is (gasp!) 65. (Mrs. Robinson, Anne Bancroft, turned 73 last September.)
… of Tom Selleck. Thomas Magnum is 60.
… of Oprah Winfrey. She’s 51.
… of Judy Norton Taylor. Mary Ellen Walton is 47. (Which makes her older than Patricia Neal was when playing the mother in the original Walton film, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.)
The first players were named to the Baseball Hall of Fame on this date in 1936. The Baseball Writers’ Association of America selected:
Ty Cobb
Babe Ruth
Honus Wagner
Christy Mathewson
and Walter Johnson
entered the Union as the 34th state on this date in 1861.
Nickname: Sunflower State
State motto: “Ad Astra Per Aspera” “To the stars through difficulty”
State Song: “Home on the Range”
was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on this date in 1927. The Writer’s Almanac has this:
In 1956 he began working as a park ranger and a fire lookout for the National Park Service. He worked there for fifteen years, and this led him to write about the wilderness of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. He said, “For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!” His book Desert Solitaire (1968) is about his time working as a ranger in Arches National Park, Utah. In it he argues for, among other things, a ban on cars in wilderness preserves. In a memorial piece about Abbey, Edward Hoagland says of him, “Personally, he was a labyrinth of anger and generosity, shy but arresting because of his mixture of hillbilly and cowboy qualities, and even when silent he appeared bigger than life.”
NewMexiKen gathered these Abbey quotations:
If you’re never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You’ve only missed out on one half of life.
The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.
I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.
In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.
Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland.
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
Edward Abbey died in 1989.
Thomas Paine was born in England on this date in 1737.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
better known as W.C. Fields, was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1880 or 1889.
A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake–which I also keep handy.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.
Anyone who hates children and animals can’t be all bad.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there’s nothing exactly like it.
There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
(When “caught” reading a Bible) “Just looking for loopholes.”
Fields died on Christmas Day, 1946.
From the www.myperfectchild.com, had the Internet arrived half a century earlier, it is hard to imagine her going head to head with Ben MacNeil, who has chronicled his year-and-a-half-old daughter’s every nap, bottle feeding and diaper change (3,379, at last check) on the Trixie Update (trixieupdate.com).
Today’s parents – older, more established and socialized to voicing their emotions – may be uniquely equipped to document their children’s’ lives, but what they seem most likely to complain and marvel about is their own. The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption.
All blogging is a shrine to self-absorption. Interesting article nonetheless, with a great photo of Leta sitting next to her mother Heather Armstrong (www.dooce.com)
From the Los Angeles Times:
GILLETTE, Wyo. — When he turned Mt. Rushmore into his granite canvas, sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote that the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln would remain visible, Lord willing, “until the wind and the rain alone shall wear them away.”
Borglum’s vision endures in the Black Hills of South Dakota about 130 miles from here, but for nearly a month every year, it may soon become harder to see the famous faces through the man-made haze generated by the addition of 50,000 gas wells in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana.
It is just one of several ways in which the largest expansion of natural gas drilling approved by the federal government is expected to degrade air quality in the region that today has the clearest skies in the lower 48 states.
The federal Bureau of Land Management, under pressure from the White House to fast-track energy production, approved the drilling plan two years ago without incorporating any requirements to reduce the resulting air pollution.
Government scientists expect that the drilling expansion, combined with a planned increase in coal mining and oil drilling in the northern Great Plains, will nearly double smog-forming emissions and greatly increase particulate matter pollution in a thinly populated region that has produced less than 3% of the amount of unhealthful air found in Los Angeles.
The BLM moved forward with the project despite its own air quality analysis, which concluded that the pollution would cloud views at more than a dozen national parks and monuments, exceed federal air quality standards in several communities and cause acid rain to fall on mountain lakes, where it could harm fish and wildlife.
The Environmental Protection Agency, National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service expressed similar concerns to the BLM.
The Week Quiz is back. (In recent weeks I did so badly I didn’t want to mention The Quiz. This week I scored eight correct out of ten, so I’m linking to it.)
“Alone in the Dark will be the worst movie of 2005. The idea that anything could be worse is the only genuine scare the movie has to offer.”
Kris Kaltenbach in The [Baltimore] Sun
The blog Geese Aplenty speculates on the Brad Pitt/Jennifer Anniston break up:
Jennifer finally got around to watching Meet Joe Black.
Brad finally got around to watching Along Came Polly.
There’s more if you follow the link.
From Real E Fun. Go read it.
One of the sites NewMexiKen looks forward to every weekday morning (about 10 Mountain Time) is The Daily Howler written by Bob Somerby. Steve Twomey profiles Somerby for the Columbia Journalism Review: The Howler’s Quiet Moment.
From perhaps the cutest named blog of them all, tequila mockingbird, a “memo to the old dude who was obviously in town for the inauguration.”
welcome to our nation’s capital! i see you are taking the advice to make use of our mass transit system during your visit. i offer here just a few tips to help make your experience more pleasant.
– do not take one step off of the escalator and then promptly stop dead in your tracks. perhaps this is unique to the escalators here in d.c., but we’re not a one-person-gets-to-ride-all-the-way-up-to-the-top-before-anyone-else-gets-on system. there are people behind you. immediately behind you. please step aside so as to get the hell out of everyone’s way. and while we’re on the subject: stand right. walk left.
– this is not a “monorail.” it is a subway. well, sort of. anyway, it is not a “monorail.” this is not disney world. please stop calling it “the monorail.”
– please refrain from asking at every stop “is this our stop?” remember how, at the last stop, that exasperated guy beside you said, “you have about eight more stops to go”? well, it’s only been one. that means you now have seven more to go. the evil democrats did not sneak the metric system in on us while you weren’t paying attention. eight minus one is still seven.
– see how all of the people who are not wearing fanny packs are very quiet? yes? these people are called “commuters.” they ride “the monorail” every day. this is holy time for them. quiet time. this is the last window of silent solace they have before being pitched into the fifth circle of hell that is their job. they read. they listen to music. they meditate. a few of them even attend to their personal grooming, although, really, that’s disgusting and we wish they wouldn’t do that. here’s one thing they do not do: talk.
– one more thing they do not do: put their feet up on the seat in front of them. there are a couple of reasons for this. one is that we operate on a one-ass-one-seat rule here. there are going to be lots of people on “the monorail.” they would all like to sit down. also, people don’t want to sit on a seat that has been all dirtied up by your big-ass cowboy boots with slush all over them.
– please stop your incessant talk about how easy it would be to “blow this thing up.” the “commuters” know this. they try not to think about it. you’re not helping.
– please stop asking “is it cold enough for you?” this is true not only on “the monorail,” but just in general. and by “just in general” i mean any time or place.
– it is not amusing to look at someone reading imperial hubris and say, “well, i guess someone isn’t going to the inauguration today,” and then laugh really loudly while elbowing said person. seriously. you should stop this right now.
Paul Krugman takes Bush to the woodshed for his “shameful” playing of the race card — and lying at that — regarding Social Security this week.
Put it all together, and the deal African-Americans get from Social Security turns out, according to various calculations, to be either about the same as that for whites or somewhat better. Hispanics, by the way, clearly do better than either.
From The Washington Post:
Strolling to the bus stop, fidgeting during a meeting, standing up to stretch, jumping off the couch to change channels, and engaging in other minor physical activities can make the difference between being lean and obese, researchers reported yesterday.
The most detailed study ever conducted of mundane bodily movements found that obese people tend to be much less fidgety than lean people and spend at least two hours more each day just sitting still. The extra motion by lean people is enough to burn about 350 extra calories a day, which could add up to 10 to 30 pounds a year, the researchers found.
… of Alan Alda. Hawkeye is 69 today, just three days after being nominated for his first Oscar for his portrayal of Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster in The Aviator.
Metacritic: 2004 Film Critic Top Ten Lists. Individual lists, followed by a summary of all top ten lists.
Photographer’s Guide to New Mexico (and a little bit of Colorado).
It begins:
There are three cultures co-existing in New Mexico (if you read the middle third of my Summer 1994 travelogue then you might question the extent to which these actually co-exist). The Indians created interesting pueblos. The Spanish some impressive churches. The Anglos … mostly some houses that look like they could have been imported from Cleveland.
to bring you this video of four guys throwing a girl through a basketball hoop. Is this for real?
Link via kottke.