Chatter

Intelligence agencies are picking up a lot of chatter these days — Bush’s military record, Cheney’s staff involved in alleged criminal misconduct, budget duplicity, Kerry winning election after election.

Must be time to put the country back on orange alert.

Where the Desert Comes Alive

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum is a world-renowned zoo, natural history museum and botanical garden, all in one place! Exhibits re-create the natural landscape of the Sonoran Desert Region so realistically you find yourself eye-to-eye with mountain lions, prairie dogs, Gila monsters, and more. Within the Museum grounds, you will see more than 300 animal species and 1,200 kinds of plants. There are almost 2 miles of paths traversing 21 acres of beautiful desert.

 
 

Carter blogs

Jimmy Carter writes about his trip to Africa.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, are traveling in West Africa Feb. 2-7, 2004, on behalf of The Carter Center. The purpose of their trip is two-fold: to call international attention to the need to eliminate the last 1 percent of Guinea worm disease remaining in the world and to launch the Development and Cooperation Initiative, a multiyear effort to help reduce poverty in Mali.

Members of the general public can accompany President Carter virtually as President Carter “blogs,” or publishes regular journal entries from the field. Reports will be posted as they are received from President Carter, who will share his thoughts and feelings during his journey in West Africa.

Intuit, TurboTax and rebates

TurboTax is a useful, staightforward product. It makes preparing a tax return easy and relatively painless. At least it does for NewMexiKen.

However, the only way that TurboTax is reasonably priced is to buy it bundled with rebates — a rebate for the actual purchase price; a rebate for the downloaded state software; a rebate for electronic filing. That’s $55 in rebates.

Two things come to mind.

First, just how much income does Intuit make each year on these interest free loans from its customers? They have our money for “approximately 8 weeks” after they receive the rebate paperwork. $55 times 4.2 million copies sold. Gee, that’s a $230 million float for eight weeks.

Second, I figured out today that I will spend considerably more time completing rebate paperwork for Intuit than I might have spent doing my taxes by hand.

The Mozart Buffet

NewMexiKen may have mentioned this before, but if you have a broadband connection and are at your computer anyway, The Mozart Buffet from noon to 1 MT on KBAQ in Phoenix is a delightful way to improve the ambience.

Birthday present past

NewMexiKen was a Michigander in those days, though young enough to still be just a Michigosling.

Children didn’t get driven to school then. They walked. Or they took a bus. Or they rode a bike. And my bike was gone. Fortunately it was Saturday.

Still, it was my 11th birthday and it was depressing to have my bike missing on my birthday. We looked everywhere.

Finally Mom called the police. She described the vanished bike to them. “There was? Where? Downtown. OK!”

Dad and I drove the mile or so downtown to the bike shop. The missing bike was reportedly there.

We went in and Dad asked about the bike in our name. Sure enough, there was one.

Trouble was it wasn’t my bike. It was a brand new three-speed English racer.

“That’s not my bike.” I protested to Dad.

“Yes it is,” he said. “Happy Birthday!”

MacKinlay Kantor…

was born on this date in 1904. According to the Writer’s Almanac

[Kantor] first became interested in the war when he was ten years old, after a salesman left some sample pages of a Civil War encyclopedia in his parents’ house. He later discovered that his great-grandfather was an officer in the Union Army, and one of his aunts was a friend of Ulysses S. Grant. As a teenager, Kantor marched with the Grand Army of the Republic in Memorial Day parades and became an expert fife player. He spent more than 25 years researching his novel Andersonville (1955), about the Confederate prison camp where 50,000 Union soldiers were held. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956.

Forecasting the big game

TMQ seemed to know what he was talking about:

Here from last week’s column is a condensed version of what I called the four keys to the game:

  • On offense, New England must surprise Carolina by power-running.
  • On defense, New England must resist the urge to go blitz-wacky.
  • On offense, Carolina can’t lose its nerve; it must continue trying the home-run passes that have recently livened up its attack.
  • On defense, Carolina must get to male-model-esque Tom Brady. Since before Christmas, Brady has done nothing but stand behind perfect protection and listen to the home-crowd cheers. Acquaint him with the ground, and New England might sputter.

Well, on my point one, New England did great — it surprised Carolina by power-running 35 times for 127 yards, including several power-runs from heavy formations on the kind of critical short-yardage downs when the Flying Elvii normally go five-wide pass-wacky.

On my point two, New England resisted the urge to blitz. Two years ago, the Patriots played the Rams in November during the regular season, blitzed 39 times and lost. Later in that season’s Super Bowl the Patriots again played the Rams, blitzed eight times and won. As I wrote last week, “Romeo Crennel may remember this.” He did, calling four blitzes, surely the Pats’ season low.

On my point three, Carolina did not lose heart, trying the home-run throw and hitting it twice for beauty long touchdowns.

But on my point four, Carolina did not acquaint the male-model-esque Tom Brady with the ground. The Panthers never sacked Brady, and knocked him down only occasionally. The Carolina front seven was seriously outplayed by the New England offensive line, including Tuesday Morning Quarterback Super Bowl XXXVIII MVP Tom Ashworth.