All-Indian TV channel planned

From the Albuquerque Tribune:

Harlan McKosato likens his quest to start an American Indian cable station to the famous first line in “Field of Dreams.”

“I keep saying: ‘If you build it, they will come,’ ” said McKosato, 38.

And come they will, McKosato is certain, to a cable and satellite channel filled 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with nothing but American Indian programming.

“People are starting to look for a specific slice of our (American Indian) society,” he said.

He’s so certain that on April 9 he gave up his nine-year gig as host of the locally produced syndicated radio show “Native America Calling” to focus on getting this channel into the homes of the 105 million cable and satellite subscribers in the United States, and a few more around the world.

“If we get the European market, we think that’s going to bust it loose because of the interest they have in Native American history,” he said.

Sink the Bismarck

The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by the British Navy on this date in 1941.

Design for the Bismarck began in 1934, her keel was laid down in 1936, she was launched in 1939 and commissioned in August 1940. The Bismarck embarked on her maiden combat voyage on May 18, 1941. Nine days later she went to the bottom. Of her crew of 2,300, only 110 survived.

The Hood found the Bismark and on that fatal day
The Bismark started firin’ fifteen miles away
We gotta sink the Bismark was the battle sound
But when the smoke had cleared away
The mighty Hood went down
For six long days and weary nights
They tried to find her trail
Churchill told the people put ev’ry ship a-sail
‘Cause somewhere on that ocean
I know she’s gotta be
We gotta sink the Bismark to the bottom of the sea

We’ll find that German battleship
That’s makin’ such a fuss
We gotta sink the Bismark
‘Cause the world depends on us
Hit the decks a-runnin’ boys
And spin those guns around
When we find the Bismark we gotta cut her down

From “Sink the Bismarck” written by Johnny Horton and Tilman Franks

Herman Wouk…

the author of The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance is 89 today. Wouk’s twelfth novel, A Hole in Texas, has just been released.

The Caine Mutiny won the Pulitizer Prize for fiction in 1952.

Now, there are four ways of doing a thing aboard ship—the right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and my way. I want things on this ship done my way.

Captain Queeg

The Golden Gate Bridge…

opened on this date in 1937. Vehicular traffic began the next day. Jumping off began three months later.

Read about the world’s leading location for suicide from an article last October in The New Yorker.

On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

Ken Baldwin, one of 26 known survivors

Seems to have far more to do with limiting Forest Service exposure to possible lawsuits than with ensuring safety

The Missouilan has some thoughts on the folly of the USDA tanker decision —

Well, it didn’t take long to demonstrate the folly of the Forest Service’s decision this month to fight wildfires without all the right tools.

In southern New Mexico, the Captain fire is burning more than 23,000 acres and has sent dozens of homeowners fleeing. “I was shocked to be told this fire could have been held to a single acre if the heavy air tankers had been available at the beginning,” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.

But, of course, air tankers weren’t available at the beginning. And it doesn’t look as though they’re going to be available at the beginning of the next fire, or the ones after that. The Forest Service terminated all its contracts for 33 of the big planes earlier this month, citing safety concerns springing from the crash of two Wyoming-based tankers two years ago.

*****

The decision seems to have far more to do with limiting Forest Service exposure to possible lawsuits than with ensuring safety. Whatever reduction of risk gained by grounding the tankers surely will be offset by increased danger to firefighters and people living in the path of wildfires.

There is no evidence that the tanker aircraft that have been grounded are anything but safe. What we already have is a fire raging out of control in New Mexico that might have been stopped in its tracks with the use of large tankers. Something tells us this summer will produce many such examples.

Not all the drastic climate change is in the movies

From AP via The Salt Lake Tribune:

Other researchers compared the current drought and rising temperatures to a similar episode 13,000 years ago. Mountain forests died off or were wiped out by fire, to be replaced by woodlands, grasslands and desert scrub that had been prevalent at lower elevations or farther south.

“Yet another spate of disturbance-driven plant migrations may be looming in the West,” the researchers reported.

Scientists still don’t know how much climate stress forests can withstand before massive die-back kicks in. Without that knowledge, researchers can’t begin to realistically predict how much of the West’s forests will die, nor gauge the resulting effects on the environment or society.

The effects of drought are compounded by the ravages of tree-eating beetles that are killing entire forests from Alaska to Arizona. Not only may a lack of water weaken trees, but warmer temperatures may help the bugs survive and multiply into what Jesse Logan of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station called widespread and intense outbreaks.

Around Santa Fe the loss of piñons is already more than 60% and it’s not a pretty picture.

But are they our Idols?

Virginia Heffernan in The New York Times has a great idea:

November’s general elections need a “results show” like the big bash “American Idol” staged on Fox last night. Instead of distracted anchormen calling tallies from boring desks, the hyperhappy host, Ryan Seacrest, could crow in a tieless tux about how fabulous voter turnout was. Past failed candidates – Carol Moseley Braun, Bob Dole and Howard Dean, certainly – could reprise old stump speeches, all smiles now. Finally, following a sax rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by a former idol, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and John Kerry could stand up, holding hands, trembling but beaming encouragement to each other, as Ryan announced our next American president.

Heffernan’s brief article on the final of American Idol is worth reading.

Thanks to Veronica for the tip.

Hubert Humphrey…

was born in Wallace, South Dakota, on this date in 1911.

Humphrey was first elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 and U.S. Senator in 1948. He introduced his first bill in 1949; it became law in 1965 and we know it as Medicare.

Humphrey became Vice President with the election of President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. After Johnson withdrew from the 1968 campaign, and after Robert Kennedy was killed, Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President. He lost to Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in history. Some commented that with the vote trending as it did, had the election been one or two days later Humphrey would have won.

But then we wouldn’t have had Watergate and Nixon to kick around.

The Maltese Falcon

Mystery writer Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on this date in 1894. Hammett departed from the intellectualized mysteries of earlier detective novels (Sherlock Holmes for example) and transformed the genre with his less-than-glamorous realism. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

Hammett actually was a detective with Pinkerton for a few years just before World War I. Contracting TB during military service, he realized his health would keep him from resuming as a detective. He turned to writing. He published his first story in 1922, and then about 80 more, many in the popular pulp crime magazine Black Mask. Hammett’s first novel was Red Harvest, published in 1929. His most famous character, Sam Spade, made his appearance in Hammett’s third novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930). (It was the third—and only successful—attempt to turn that novel into a film when Humphrey Bogart played the role in 1941.) The Thin Man (1934) was the last of Hammett’s novels.

By the early-thirties, Hammett was established and famous. He began a relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman that lasted for 30 years despite his drinking and womanizing. Though both eventually divorced their spouses, they never married. Hammett served in the Army in World War II, enlisting as a private at age 48. His involvement in left-wing politics and unwillingness to testify about it before Congress however, and the continued drinking, diminished his stature. He died in 1961.

Leaphorn and Chee

Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman was born on this date in 1925. The Sinister Pig is the 17th book in the series centered around the Navajo Tribal policemen.

Hillerman has an excellent web site with excerpts from all the books. He tells us there that:

Leaphorn emerged from a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff who I met and came to admire in 1948 when I was a very green ‘crime and violence” reporter for a paper in the high plains of the Panhandle. He was smart, he was honest, he was wise and humane in his use of police powers–my idealistic young idea of what every cop should be but sometimes isn’t.

*****

Jim Chee emerged several books later. I like to claim he was born from an artistic need for a younger, less sophisticated fellow to make the plot of PEOPLE OF DARKNESS make sense–and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheever’s “Days of Old” modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in universe of consumerism.

The Da Vinci Code

From Steve Schrader in the Detroit Free Press

A lot has been made about [Tayshaun] Prince’s wingspan during his two-year career — and now about how it helped him block Miller’s shot. (His hustle, speed and leaping ability certainly helped more, of course.)

Think back to Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of Vitruvius’ theory. (That’s the naked guy standing with his arms spread wide.) Vitruvius, an architect and engineer under Julius Caesar, created his measurements of the human body. (Four fingers make one palm, four palms make one foot, six palms make one cubit, etc.)

Vitruvius declared that the length of a man’s outspread arms was equal to his height.

This is where Prince comes in. He is 6-feet-9, or 81 inches. But from fingertip to fingertip he supposedly is 86 inches. That’s the wingspan you’d expect of someone 7-feet-2.

Prince isn’t some freak of nature, but, obviously, five extra inches of reach is a huge advantage in basketball.

Don’t trust Vitruvius? We didn’t around the Free Press. So we grabbed a tape measure and, sure enough, everyone’s wingspan was within 1-3 inches of his height.

Hey Dad, you always told me that wingspan equalled height when I was a kid. I didn’t know you knew Da Vinci.

Top Ten Things Never Before Said on “The Sopranos”

From the Late Show with David Letterman

10. “You don’t have any money? That’s cool”
(Dominic Chianese) [Junior]

9. “Screw this home cooking — I’m going to the Olive Garden”
(Aida Turturro) [Janice]

8. “In addition to disposing of bodies, you’ll need to know how to use Powerpoint and Excel”
(Steven Van Zandt) [Silvio]

7. “Wasn’t that the guy from Springsteen’s E Street Band?”
(Robert Iler) [A.J.]

6. “I just hooked up an illegal cable box. Now I’m getting free HBO”
(Jamie-Lynn Discala) [Meadow]

5. “Tony, I’m gonna need to leave early today for Rosh Hashanah”
(Tony Sirico) [Paulie]

4. “I want a bigger part — what are you gonna do, kill my character?”
(Drea de Matteo) [Adriana]

3. “Hey Paulie, how about you and me going up to Massachusetts and getting married?”
(Michael Imperioli) [Christopher]

2. “I can’t go to prison — Martha Stewart will eat me alive!”
(Edie Falco) [Carmela]

1. “I just whacked myself”
(James Gandolfini) [Tony]

The sun will come out tomorrow

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

KFWB’s Bret Lewis, on the supposed doom and gloom faced by Andre Agassi after losing his first-round French Open match to Jerome Haehnel, ranked 271st in the world:

“His trainer says, ‘We’re in uncharted waters right now. We need to find a reason to wake up tomorrow.’

“Let’s see. Andre is 34. A multimillionaire and an international superstar. With a famous wife and a happy family. Gosh, I hope somehow he can find the will to go on.”

Top Ten Signs Your Team Is Not Going To Win The NBA Finals

From the Late Show (thanks to Sideline Chatter for the pointer)

10. “Owner won’t pay for team to travel to away games” (Oscar Robertson)

9. “Coach used time-out to go get Spike Lee’s autograph” (Robert Parish)

8. “Your teammate spends whole game guarding the ref” (Rick Barry)

7. “Power forward has been out two months with the hiccups” (George Gervin)

6. “During the season, you lost to the Lakers and the Laker Girls” (Willis Reed)

5. “Your team logo is a guy asleep in a hammock” (Walt Frazier)

4. “Much of the 24 seconds is spent on uncontrollable sobbing” (Clyde “The Glide” Drexler)

3. “No one can dunk without using a stepladder” (Bill Walton)

2. “Your best player is named Shaquille Wasserstein” (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)

1. “Many nights you have more groin pulls than points” (Bill Russell)

A real power pitcher

From Dwight Perry, Sideline Chatter, in The Seattle Times

Talk about a pitcher helping himself at the plate: Andrew Kinney of Ida (Mich.) High School hit three bases-loaded home runs — tying a state single-game record with 12 RBI — and got the win in a 21-11 romp over Monroe Jefferson on Saturday.

“After he got that third grand slam, he couldn’t throw a strike to save his life,” Ida assistant coach Matt Brannan told the Monroe (Mich.) Evening News.

“But that’s OK.”

That was big of him.

Frank Oz…

the voice of Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Cookie Monster, Bert, Grover, Yoda and so many more, is 60 today.

How good was Jesse Owens?

On this date in 1935, in a period of about 70 minutes, Owens broke three world records and tied another.

Competing for Ohio State at the Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Owens tied the 100-yard-dash world record at 9.4, Fifteen minutes later he long jumped 26 feet 8¼ inches, besting the existing world record by nearly 6 inches. He then beat the existing record in the 220-yard dash by three-tenths of second, running it in 20.3. Finally, Owens ran the 220-yard low hurdles in a world record 22.6.

Miles Davis…

was born on this date in 1926. If you do not own the Davis album Kind of Blue, you should purchase it immediately. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine tells us at the All Music Guide,

Kind of Blue isn’t merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it’s an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence. … It may be a stretch to say that if you don’t like Kind of Blue, you don’t like jazz — but it’s hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection.

Kind of Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. Listen to their report here.

No No No

MoveOn.org, which has done some good stuff, apparently is set to run an ad showing an Abu Ghraib-esque hood over the head of the Statue of Liberty as a way of drawing attention to the prison scandal.

Electablog* thinks this is a very bad idea. NewMexiKen agrees. John Kerry and the Democrats, including groups like MoveOn, should be raising the level of the campaign, not dragging it down.

No seat belts for dogs

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports that, “The proposed rewrite of Santa Fe’s animal-control ordinance has been amended to remove the possibility that dogs would have to wear safety belts.”

Dogs, however, are no longer permitted to smoke in Santa Fe.