The Apprentice

$40,800 for a one-night lease. I’m sorry, but that wasn’t a sale, that was luck. This show needs better assignments/projects next time around. (And less lives of the rich and famous to fill the middle of the hour.)

Guess Trump isn’t going into auto sales because Troy would be his guy and Troy is gone. He seemed the most surprised of any when Trump said the magic words.

Just two more shows.

What to read on the plane

The Blog of a Bookslut has some suggestions for books to read on a plane ride. Better yet are the:

Rules for reading on the plane:

Do not bring well known books unless you want to get into conversations with annoying people. Once you pull out Harry Potter or the Da Vinci Code, your neighbor will feel free to tell you what they thought of the book, how amazing it is, and will never let you actually read it.

Don’t forget to pack books. Looking for something decent to read at the airport is like a vegetarian trying to eat at Red Lobster.

Don’t be like me. Do not bring a dozen books in your carry on just because you haven’t decided what to read on your three hour flight. You’ll hurt yourself.

Smear Without Fear

Paul Krugman has a few words about Letterman and Clarke, CNN and the White House.

Teddy Roosevelt coined the term “bully pulpit” to mean the White House was a terrific platform from which to persuade. The current inhabitants are intent on restoring both “bully” and “pulpit” to their more traditional meaning.

New free email coming from Google

Welcome to Gmail

Gmail is a free, search-based webmail service that includes 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of storage. The backbone of Gmail is a powerful Google search engine that quickly recalls any message an account owner has ever sent or received. That means there’s no need to file messages in order to find them again.

When Gmail displays an email, it automatically shows all the replies to that email as well, so users can view a message in the context of a conversation. There are no pop-ups or banner ads in Gmail, which places relevant text ads and links to related web pages adjacent to email messages.

Where’s the snow?

Driving from Albuquerque to Denver, as NewMexiKen did yesterday, one is simply amazed (dismayed) at the absence of snow. While evident on the highest peaks, there is nothing but a few melting patches at 10,000 feet, and none below. At least that was the case in the New Mexico Sangre de Cristos, above the San Luis Valley and around South Park.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports on New Mexico.

Snowpack in the Sangre de Cristos dropped from 89 percent of normal at the beginning of March to 50 percent of normal at present. The Rio Chama Basin and the upper Rio Grande exhibit similar statistics. The Jemez Basin snowpack dropped from 79 percent to 16 percent of normal.

Those figures are dramatic, Liles said, given that snow is usually accumulating in the mountains in March. But they are not isolated: Snowpack is turning into an early runoff throughout the West.

The Rocky Mountain News sums it up for Colorado.

High country snowpack dropped alarmingly in March, pushing the state into its fifth year of drought and making strict summer watering rules almost a certainty for many communities.

The statewide snowpack – a critical indicator of fresh water supplies – measured just 65 percent of average Thursday, well below the 94 percent of average recorded one year ago, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The Apprentice

So, how will The Apprentice go this week?

The promos make it look like the board room comes down to Nick and Amy. Could it be? This soon?

Those who commented here last week had these predictions for the final winner:

  • Amy
  • Nick, but Bill best overall
  • Amy, dark horse Bill
  • Troy
  • Amy, but Bill next

Letterman vs. the White House and CNN

On Monday night, David Letterman showed a clip of the President giving a speech. Behind the President was a young teenage boy clearly not too involved in what the President had to say. The film is edited to show the boy’s yawns, his stretches, his all but falling asleep. It’s pretty funny, but not exactly newsworthy.

On Tuesday night, Letterman showed a clip of a CNN anchor woman reporting that according to the White House the kid wasn’t at the speech. Letterman calls this a lie. Then he showed another clip of CNN saying that the White House now says that the kid was at the speech, but not where Letterman shows him, i.e., directly behind the President. Letterman calls that a lie, too.

You can see both Letterman clips at Over/Spun.

All of this was brought to NewMexiKen’s attention by Atrios at Eschaton.

Merrillville schools ban pink clothes

From AP via the The Indianapolis Star:

Officials have banned pink clothing for the remainder of the school year out of concerns that the color has become associated with gang activity. …

“There is no evidence of gang activity. But because of the growing use of the color pink we decided to be proactive. Girls and boys are supposed to avoid wearing pink,” Berta said Monday.

None of the district’s 6,500 students have been disciplined for wearing pink, he said.

Baseball 2004

In case you were wondering, the two “regular season” games played in Tokyo were Yankee road games, Tampa Bay home games. (They split the series 1-1).

The MLB season opens on this side of the Pacific on Sunday evening, Boston at Baltimore.

Mr. Hockey

The incredible Gordie Howe is 76 today.

Gordie Howe is referred to as simply “Mr. Hockey”. World War II had just ended when he first entered the National Hockey League, and when he played his final NHL season 33 years later, Wayne Gretzky was playing his first. Over those five decades, Howe didn’t just survive, he was dominant – on the scoring lists, in battles in the corners, on game-winning goals and when the year-end awards were handed out. He was a big man, though by modern standards no behemoth, but what set him apart was his incredible strength.

Read more from the Hockey Hall of Fame.

On Broadway

March 31st is apparently a good date to open on Broadway.

The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ”Oklahoma!” opened on Broadway on this date in 1943.

”The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway on this date in 1945.

Morning Briefing

A couple of items from the Los Angeles Times Morning Briefing today.

Different recollections: A number of readers e-mailed in response to an item about Bill Walton’s 21-for-22 effort against Memphis State in 1973, disputing reader Cy Bolton’s claim the one miss was actually an illegal dunk.

Some thought the one miss was because of an “offensive basket interference” call, but we’ll go with older brother Bruce Walton’s version. He and a few others said Walton did miss a shot in the first half — a tip of a lob pass from Greg Lee that rimmed out.

Added Bruce Walton, “He was called for offensive basket interference four or five times in the game. Without those ‘bad calls’ he would have been 25 for 26 or 26 for 27, which would have been even more incredible.”

A torch of irony: Regarding the status of Olympic Stadium in Athens, Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle writes, “If everything goes smoothly, the torch relay will end at the opening ceremony when the last torch bearer runs into the stadium and welds the roof in place.”

Tax cut story follow-up

On Sunday, NewMexiKen posted Tax Cuts 101 (or one way of looking at it). Today, an individual commenting wrote, “the phd from georgia says that he didnt write the example on taxcuts.”

NewMexiKen contacted the person who commented and he replied with a copy of an email from David Kamerschen, the professor to whom the story is attributed. Kamerschen wrote, “I DID NOT WRITE THE TAX STORY AND I DO NOT KNOW WHO DID.” The email is dated today.