Not quite over the hill

It interests NewMexiKen that he is just about exactly the average age of the first seven U.S. presidents at the time they took office.

Washington was the youngest of the first seven. He was 57 and 2 months. Adams 61 and 4 months. Jefferson 57 and nearly 11 months. Madison almost 58. Monroe 58 and 10 months. J.Q. Adams 57 and 8 months. Jackson a few days short of 62.

Average — about 58 and 9 months.

Sky Blue

NewMexiKen has signed-up for Sky Blue, a program to receive electrical energy from the New Mexico Wind Energy Center.

Located 170 miles southeast of Albuquerque and 20 miles northeast of Fort Sumner, the wind center is perfectly suited for eastern New Mexico’s windy landscape. Power production does not require water, produce emissions or generate solid waste.

The wind center consists of 136 turbines, each standing 210 feet high. The facility can produce up to 200 megawatts of power, or enough electricity to power 94,000 average-sized New Mexico homes.

The electricity coming into NewMexiKen’s home will come from the grid and not directly from the windmills of course, but it still seems like a worthwhile thing to do. There is a $1.80 surcharge for each block of 100 kilowatt hours (which means it could cost me $4 or $5 a month). I suppose that also means I am subsidizing those who don’t opt for the Sky Blue surcharge, but…

Dirty dining?

NBC’s Dateline surveyed 100 restaurants in each of 10 fast food chains around the country. “The 1,000 restaurants we sampled totaled 1,755 critical violations, and 613 restaurants were cited at least once. That’s more than 60 percent with problems inspectors consider potentially hazardous to your health.”

The 10 chains with the number of “critical violations” for each chain (100 different locations):

10. Taco Bell: 91
9. McDonald’s: 136
8. KFC: 157
7. Subway: 160
6. Jack in the Box: 164
5. Dairy Queen: 184
4. Hardees: 206
3. Wendy’s: 206
2. Arby’s: 210
1. Burger King: 241

The full story: Dirty dining?

More U of A football

As John notes in his comments to the earlier item, Arizona indeed has had a formidable 2003 schedule, but…

Arizona lost to LSU 59-13 currently ranked #3
Arizona lost to TCU 13-10 currently ranked #9
Arizona lost to Purdue 59-7 currently ranked #16
Arizona lost to Washington State 30-7 currently ranked #8
Arizona lost to USC 45-0 currently ranked #2

So, except for TCU of Conference USA, Arizona lost to four ranked opponents 193-27.

NewMexiKen wants the ‘Cats to do well. The old days of not quite good enough (10-2, 12-1) look pretty good now. But the hole is deep and they aren’t going to climb out of it soon.

And the tradition isn’t great. Arizona has not won a conference championship outright (Border, WAC, or Pac-10) in this alum’s lifetime. (They tied for first twice in the WAC and once in the PAC-10.)

Oklahoma!

…became a state on this date in 1907.

The official song and anthem of the State of Oklahoma is “Oklahoma,” composed and written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Brand new state, Brand new state, gonna treat you great!
Gonna give you barley, carrots and pertaters,
Pasture fer the cattle, Spinach and Termayters!
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom,
Plen’y of air and plen’y of room,
Plen’y of room to swing a rope!
Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope!
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, ev’ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk makin’ lazy circles in the sky.
We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say – Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma – O.K.

USC 45 Arizona 0

The score is misleading. It wasn’t that close.

Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times:

Forget, for a minute, those 45 points and 587 total yards and three interceptions against what may be the worst team from a major conference.

Consider, instead, these equally important numbers:

All 60 Trojans who traveled here, played here.

Three threw passes, eight caught passes, six ran the ball and 18 made tackles.

Greg Hansen, Arizona Daily Star:

Saturday’s game was the most accurate measure of what Arizona’s new coach will face. The Wildcats are woefully inadequate in all of the significant categories: speed, athleticism, skill, toughness, confidence.

The opinion here is that not a single Wildcat – not safety Lamon Means, not tight end Steve Fleming – could start for the Trojans. None. Zero for 22.

The ‘Cats hadn’t been shut out at home since a scoreless tie with Iowa State during NewMexiKen’s junior year.

I hate to see that evening sun go down

W.C. Handy was born on this date in 1873. Handy was the first to write sheet music for the blues and for that reason is known as the Father of the Blues. Though associated with Memphis and Beale Street, Handy’s most famous song is St. Louis Blues (1914).

Click to hear Bessie Smith sing St. Louis Blues accompanied by Louis Armstrong — possibly the most influential recording in American music history (1925). (This is a RealPlayer file.)

NPR told the Handy and St. Louis Blues stories as part of the NPR 100. Click to hear the NPR report, which includes Handy’s own reminiscences and the complete Smith-Armstrong recording. (Also a RealPlayer file.)

W.C. Handy died in 1958.

Inconceivable!

NewMexiKen missed some interesting birthdays during the week.

Tuesday, November 11, was the birthday of author Kurt Vonnegut. He was born in 1922.

Wednesday, November 12, was the birthday of Tracy Kidder, Pulitizer prize-winning author of The Soul of the New Machine. He was born in 1945.

Wednesday was also the birthday of actor and playright Wallace Shawn. He was born in 1943. Wallace Shawn is the son of William Shawn, editor of The New Yorker magazine from 1952-1987.

Friday, November 14, was the birthday of Astrid Lindgren creator of the world’s strongest girl, Pippi Longstocking. Lindgren died last year in Stockholm at age 94. When was asked what she wanted for her 94th birthday, she had said, “Peace on earth and nice clothes.”

From The Writer’s Almanac

Artfest

Today NewMexiKen visited the 2003 Weems Artfest at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds. The Artfest, in it 21st incarnation, is rated as New Mexico’s number one arts and crafts festival with 272 artisans. Hollywood and Broadway legend Lauren Bacall was the special attraction this year, but she wasn’t there when NewMexiKen visited.

Some of the art work was quite appealing.

“Tilting at Windmills”

By Charles Peters at the Washington Monthly.

The District of Columbia government has an Incentive Awards Committee that determines cash bonuses to city employees. Three percent of the employees get the bonus. Guess the percentage of committee members who get it? Fifty.
…

Emily Basile, a high school student in my hometown, Charleston, W.Va., got in trouble last winter for protesting the Iraq War. When her principal, an African American named Clinton Giles, objected, she told him, “Without Rosa Parks, you wouldn’t be where you are right now.”

Giles reacted by calling her “racist and bigoted” and suspended her from school. I think he should have hugged her and held an assembly in her honor. How many American high school students have any idea who Rosa Parks was, much less that her protest of segregation was an apt precedent for Basile’s protest of the war?
…

Gretchen Morgenson had a line about the recently retired president of the New York Stock Exchange that reminds one of what that institution is really about, when she described the “$140 million paid to Richard Grasso for his work as a casino greeter.”
…

William Robertson is my new hero. He’s suing Princeton to get back $525 million that his family foundation has given the university’s Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs. His reason for the suit-and the reason I’m all for it-is that Princeton officials knew that the money was given “to send students into federal government, and [the school has] ignored us.” Robertson’s foundation pays each student’s entire tuition. Princeton could easily require federal service in return for the tuition, but it does not. The result, reports Michael Powell of The Washington Post, is that “year after year, the [graduate] school has churned out bright young men and women who go to work in non-profit agencies and universities and private industry-just about anywhere but the federal government.”

This government desperately needs these bright people. Unfortunately, what is true at Princeton is true at practically every other prominent school of public affairs. At best, only a small percentage of graduates go into government. What’s sad about all this is that, if they got there, they’d find, as I did, that there’s a lot of interesting and challenging work, plus the enormous satisfaction of serving the public interest. So, why not encourage them to try it out by making any tuition subsidy dependent on their spending at least three years or so in Washington?

Zeta-Jones vs. Atkins

From The Smoking Gun

[L]awyers for Zeta-Jones assert that “her likeness and persona have been improperly linked” to the popular diet in press accounts, adding that the weight loss program “has been derided by nutritionists and other health care officials for decades.” By incorrectly reporting that Zeta-Jones “uses and/or endorses the Atkins diet,” the letter states, publications are “falsely representing to the average reader, including many young women who look up to my client and admire her beautiful appearance, that Ms. Zeta-Jones would recommend this diet to any person looking to lose weight.”

This explains a lot

From The Sacramento Bee

Driving Mr. Davis: Gov. Gray Davis faces a surprising challenge when he makes the move from chief executive to Joe Blow. He is clueless when it comes to motoring. Hasn’t owned a car. Can’t drive. “It’s been years since he drove a car,” a Davis friend said. “He has to get driving lessons from his security detail.” CHP officers have been joking about giving Davis and his wife, Sharon, a crash course in driving at the West Sacramento CHP academy. The Davises are looking at Lincolns. The CHP won’t confirm or deny anything. “We don’t comment on the governor’s security,” said CHP spokesman Tom Marshall. “We will have a detail with Governor Davis for several weeks after he leaves office. That’s all.” Davis has avoided driving since 1975, when he became chief of staff for former Gov. Jerry Brown. Gray cruised the streets in Jerry’s famous powder-blue Plymouth. There was always a state cop at the wheel. After that, Davis was in the Assembly, where legislative staffers stood by to haul him around. As state controller and lieutenant governor, he had CHP chauffeurs. As governor, Gray had a highway patrol entourage. Times change. If you see Gray nervously bearing down in his new Lincoln, back off. Way off.

First snow

No snow fell on NewMexiKen during the storm of the past two days, but welcome rain did — nearly 1/2-inch. Santa Fe had three inches of snow, Taos five, and most importantly, there was 13 at Taos Ski Valley (11,000 feet). The snow in the photo is among the trees and towers three miles from NewMexiKen’s backyard at 10,678 feet.

Instant Messaging everywhere

From PC Magazine

During its first few years of life, instant messaging was a trivial technology used in trivial ways. Offering little more than e-mail without the lag time, services like ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) were popular mostly with computer-savvy high schoolers and college students—a new way to exchange late-night gossip.

All that has changed: Today, IM delivers far more than just text chatting. Consumer IM software now lets you swap files, share applications, and interact via streaming audio and video. You can use it to send text messages to cell phones and pagers, as well as to make voice calls to telephones. You can even play games and trade digital greeting cards. E-mail minus the lag time was only the beginning.

The real news is how enormously popular IM has become. In 1998, according to research firm IDC, more than 63 million people held IM accounts. By the end of last year, that figure nearly tripled to 174 million. Somewhere along the line, instant messaging went mainstream. All sorts of people, not just Internet-mad teenagers, saw IM as a welcome alternative to more conventional means of communication.

Like a telephone call, an instant message gives you real-time interaction. Yet like e-mail, it feels less personal and more detached than a phone call. You can easily engage strangers—and just as easily cut them off. But this is only part of IM’s appeal. Unlike any other communication tool, IM tells you whether someone is waiting to be contacted before you try to contact them by indicating whether they’re on- or off-line.

As to which IM software is best, PC Magazine says, “It was a close call between Yahoo! Messenger and Microsoft’s IM product, but MSN Messenger delivers the slickest interface and the best integration.”

The week that was

Good Week for…
Fusion cuisine, after a man won a Texas chili cook-off by secretly taking spoonfuls out of 80 other contestants’ pots and mixing them together.

Bad Week for…
Self-deception, when a Cleveland man with a phony U.S. marshal’s uniform and badge pulled over a car and then called real marshals for backup. “It made me feel so special to put on a marshal’s uniform,” explained Donald Sebastian.

From “The Week Newsletter”