mjh's blog

NewMexiKen | H(enry) L(ouis) Mencken

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. – H.L. Mencken [hattip to NewMexiKen]

How many men? [updated]

Just days ago, NewMexiKen reminded us of the conquest of New Mexico by the USA. Nearly 200 years before that, the Pueblo’s gave the boot to the Spanish:

NewMexiKen | The Pueblo Revolt

On this date in 1680, the surviving Spanish settlers under siege decided to abandon Santa Fe and began the trek to Chihuahua. The Spanish did not return to Nuevo México for 12 years. …

The Puebloans removed all signs of the Spanish — the churches, the religion itself, the crops, even the animals (the horses let loose on the plains, eventually transforming the culture of the Plains Indians) [mjh: That fact always blows my mind.]. One vestige remained: one man rule. Popé declared himself that man and moved to the Palace in Santa Fe.

Spanish attempts at reconquest failed until 1692.

NewMexiKen | The Pueblo Revolt

But, wait, there’s more!

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 By Joseph Sando | Published  07/1/2002

In 1675, Governor Juan de Trevino arrested 47 Pueblo men and charged them with sorcery. Four were hanged and the rest were publicly whipped in the plaza in Santa Fe.

Among those whipped was Popé, of San Juan Pueblo. Upon his return home, Popé began to think of a way to get rid of the Spaniards. He set up meetings that soon included nearby pueblos. The word of an organized Pueblo revolt spread to include Taos, Picuris and Jemez, as well as the Keresan-speaking pueblos of Cochiti and Santo Domingo. The meetings were highly secret, held generally at night, and composed mostly of each pueblo’s war captains.

Five years later, at one of their last meetings, at Tesuque on August 8, 1680, two messengers were detailed to carry a knotted rope showing the number of days before the revolt would begin.

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680

And today, we all live in glorious harmony and love. [Insert cartoon of characters laughing and hugging and suddenly glowering at each other before laughing and hugging again. Loop endlessly.]

PS: OK, yes, what would we (er, I) do without NMK? (Well, I remembered the 47 connection from long before.) I even have a NewMexiKen blog category. (As well as, 47, of course.)

[Update]

This just in: Writing after NewMexiKen about a time before Ken’s subject, but essential to that topic, Rudolfo Carrillo invokes that number, too. It’s all coincidence; it’s all connected.

los que llegaron con caballos y acero – Duke City Fix

Four hundred and seventy years later, there is a large and beautiful shopping mall, miles from the river, named after the man.

los que llegaron con caballos y acero – Duke City Fix

[Update Two]

As chance would have it, the original post floated over to Facebook before the previous update, then found its way into Google Reader at 3:47pm – really! Moreover, Reader said parenthetically “(5 min ago),” but I’ll bet it was just rounding up from 4.7 minutes.

Happy Dependence Day!

Head over to NewMexiKen’s for the story of the conquest of New Mexico (a continuing saga of 13,000 years or so):

NewMexiKen | New Mexico

New Mexico officially became part of the United States 164 years ago today when 1,600 troops under General Stephen Watts Kearny raised the American flag over the plaza in the Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis (Santa Fe), reportedly as the sun broke through the overcast sky. There had been little or no resistance. (It came at Taos the following January.)

August 18. Gen. Kearney proceeded through the pass and at 5 pm reached hill that overlooks Santa Fe. …

NewMexiKen | New Mexico

Let’s Go Swimming after Golf–Ignoring the Reality of Here and Now

Oh, gawd, not another one. The Beach failed, finally. Is this an idea that has to be batted down every few years?

Albuquerque developer plans West Side water park

Dan Serrano, who built the water park at the Radisson Hotel at Carlisle and I-40, is planning a new water park on the West Side.  He’s billing it as much easier to access and more affordable.

As far as the probability of the project actually going through, Serrano calls it a 50/50 chance.

“If we can get the financing, it would be an ideal opportunity to go out there and create economic development,” says Serrano.  “It’s going to bring jobs during development, construction, thereafter.” [mjh: Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! That’s all you need to say? What about water, water, water, ya fool.]

The 36,000 square foot water park would be built somewhere west of 98^th, off I-40.  It would be indoors, and have a similar design to Radisson’s water park, but would be 3,000 square feet larger. Admission would be anywhere between $18 to $24 for a day pass.

The cost of the whole project would be around $8 million, about three times less [mjh: is that a third as much?] than the cost of the Radisson Hotel and Water Park. The hotel’s water park project was more expensive because a building had to be demolished, and land costs have changed.

“There are a couple of land owners saying you know what, I’m having a tough time selling this land now, I would be more than happy to come down and deal with you and bring the land as part of my investment,” says Serrano.

People that Eyewitness News 4 interviewed in Albuquerque think it’s a great idea.

“I would love a water park,” says Adrianna Zachary, who moved to Albuquerque four months ago from Maine [mjh: get used to the desert, Adrianna – this isn’t Maine].  “I think it’s so hot here, we need to cool off and there aren’t a lot of places to do that; there’s Tingley Beach, but who wants to swim in Tingley Beach?”

“I think it’s a great idea, I really do,” said Linda Vikdel.  “I think it would be a very healthy, fit way for kids to get some activities in.”

Serrano wants to have the water park built sometime within the next two years.  The design work is about 70 percent complete.  He says the biggest hurdle now is getting the financing. [mjh: because getting the water is no problem at all. Yeah, right.]

KOB.com – Albuquerque developer plans West Side water park

Hear! Hear! Gun Nuts Safe but Never Secure

Law Struggles To Keep Up in Arms Race
By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff Writer

Even though some gun owners believe Barack Obama or other conspirators are on the verge of dispatching the military to disarm us all, ours really is a nation of laws. The tradition and culture underlying that reality is what makes the United States strong, not its armament. The law of the land, per the Supreme Court, is that Americans who can pass a background check have what appears from the Alito decision to be a virtually unfettered right to own firearms. Civil and military authorities can be relied upon to respect that decision.

        The old arguments probably won’t stop, but the court has rendered them moot. It is now pointless to say that if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns. Guns can’t be outlawed. It is immaterial to say that guns don’t kill people; people kill people. The court has ruled that guns are a constitutionally protected fixture of our society, so if people choose to kill people, guns can be part of their armory.

        This leaves us with yet another technological complication the framers of the Constitution could never have anticipated. The musket that George Washington was familiar with took 10 to 30 seconds to load. It had very limited range, and its accuracy was problematic. The thug’s weapon of choice (because there wasn’t much choice) when I was a kid in Cleveland was the Saturday night special. If the thing didn’t jam or blow up in your hand, the round it fired sometimes didn’t have enough kick to break a car windshield.

        Robert Reza, who killed two people and himself and wounded four at Emcore, was armed with a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun capable of firing 13 powerful and accurate rounds in less time than the most skilled minuteman needed to load a musket once. With today’s technology, the most inept gunman firing into a clutch of people will almost inevitably hit someone. Statistics suggest that people aren’t any more inclined to violence than they ever were, but technology has made the few people who are so inclined far more successful at violence than ever before.

        Technological realities inevitably lead to political conundrums.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Law Struggles To Keep Up in Arms Race

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Defense Needs To Be Part of Budget Debate

Defense Needs To Be Part of Budget Debate
By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff Writer

The United States spends more on its military than the defense budgets of the next 17 biggest spending nations combined. China, the second biggest military spender in the world, has a military budget of $98.8 billion. Russia, our traditional rival, has budgeted $61 billion.
        The American military owns, leases or otherwise controls acreage approximately equal to that of the state of New York. It has 539,000 buildings and other structures located at 4,700 sites in every state in the country, plus Washington, D.C., 121 sites in American territories and 716 sites in 38 other countries.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Defense Needs To Be Part of Budget Debate

The Hundredth Monkey Asks, ‘What are we doing to ourselves?’ [updated]

But, is the Internet – the Web, really – worse than TV? Didn’t people wring their hands over kids sitting passively in front of the TV for hours – even as many used them the boob-tube as an electronic babysitter?

We never seem to know what we need to when we need to. It always takes too much time to recognize the lead in the pipes. Lives are ruined in the meantime.

Ruth Marcus – Our gadgets, ourselves

I must know — now — what has arrived in my inbox, even though almost all of it is junk. I live an alt-tab existence, constantly shuttling among the open windows on my browser. I have switched, in Carr’s formulation, from "reading to power-browsing." I am a lab rat "constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment."

I love technology. It lets me work better and faster. It untethers me from a physical office and allows me to, well, alt-tab efficiently between work and family. E-mail and social networking, with the combination of ease of access yet remoteness of interaction, help make and renew personal connections.

But technology also takes its toll — including physically. "The technology is rewiring our brains," Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, told the New York Times. The brain is malleable, and, like any regular exercise, the instant gratification world of the Web helps build certain neural connections while others molder.

Ruth Marcus – Our gadgets, ourselves

Is Nicholas Carr right about the Internet and attention spans? – Newsweek 

There’s a lot that’s been written lately about how the Web is puréeing people’s gray matter. The most thorough take on the topic is Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, but anyone who’s been spending a lot of time surfing is probably going to be so distracted by e-mails and Facebook, etc., that he won’t be able to finish the book. Instead, he’ll turn, with irony, to the Web, where he’ll find plenty to read, especially if he’s looking for it today: The New York Times has just published two stories, a blog post, and an interactive feature arguing that the electronic methods by which they themselves are delivered are “intrusive, have increased [people's] levels of stress and have made it difficult to concentrate.” [mjh: Even more links in the rest of the article.]

Is Nicholas Carr right about the Internet and attention spans? – Newsweek

[Updated 9pm] Newmexiken posts a different view, but don’t let that distract you:

[begin Newmexiken’s entry]

‘[E]very time we learn a fact or skill the wiring of the brain changes’
[mjh: for some reason, this post title makes me think of the assertion that smell involves aroma molecules impacting smell sensors, therefore, when  you smell a fart …]

Originally posted Friday, June 11, 2010 

If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, mobile phone or e-reader, please stop what you’re doing immediately. You could be making yourself stupid. And whatever you do, don’t click on the links in this post. They could distract you from the flow of my beautiful prose and narrative.

Nick Bilton – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com

Bilton goes on to discredit that theory and survey some recent thinking on the topic. Among other things, his discussion led me to this:

“And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate. They are not granted by propping a heavy encyclopedia on your lap, nor are they taken away by efficient access to information on the Internet.”

Steven Pinker

Both are worth reading if you’re not too distracted.

[/end Newmexiken’s entry]

I’m reminded of the word-nerds in Word Wars or Wordplay. They shaped their minds to be very fast with words. Did their checkbook-balancing skills suffer as a result?

The Company She Keeps

This may be all we need to know about Susana Martinez: She is in bed with the devil.

Swiftboat financier gives big to Martinez; Weh loans his campaign another $600K « New Mexico Independent
By Matthew Reichbach 5/28/10 7:52 PM

Bob J. Perry, the Texas developer behind the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for “Truth” [mjh: emphasis added] 527 group gave $450,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Susana Martinez and airline service company owner Allen Weh loaned his campaign another $600,000. Those are the highlights of the most recent campaign finance reports, available now on the Secretary of State’s website.
Perry and his wife’s donation of $450,000 is nearly two-thirds of Martinez’s $720,000 haul in the three-week fundraising period that ran from May 4-25.

Swiftboat financier gives big to Martinez; Weh loans his campaign another $600K « New Mexico Independent

A Finger in the Eye

Another recycled post for Earth Day 2010 (originally posted 3/28/07):

Billboards are a finger in the eye. An erect middle finger. A billboard is a selfish and cowardly statement. It says anonymously, “my profit is more important than the environment.” It places personal gain ahead of community values. Every billboard in the world should be pulled down by angry mobs.

Isn’t this picture beautiful? Doesn’t it make you proud to live in New Mexico? The mighty Tijeras Arroyo is already doomed by Mesa del Sold. In the meantime, enjoy the view. As you drive this stretch with its dozen billboards, notice most are for Clear Channel, the owners of most billboards. Buy stock and demand they get out of this business.

Farther south, Isleta shows what Indians really think of Mother Earth, with their dozens of billboards north of Los Lunas. No stoic native with a tear in his eyes at the sight of all the garbage — those are dollar signs.

Where’s your shame? mjh

‘Billboard King’ Reid Looks to Leave Mark on Senate War Funding Measure By Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Continue reading A Finger in the Eye…

You Should Care About This Judicial Contest

Judicial Candidate Faces Ethics Complaint
By Mike Gallagher
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Investigative Reporter

Most appellate court election campaigns in New Mexico are understated and don’t generate much buzz in the legal community or beyond, and it is rare for a judicial candidate to run while under the cloud of ethics charges and a malpractice lawsuit.

But that is the case with attorney Dennis W. Montoya, a lawyer with offices in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho who is seeking to unseat Appeals Court Judge Linda Vanzi in the Democratic primary election.

The election contest isn’t their first confrontation.

Vanzi, while still a state District Court judge in Albuquerque, filed a complaint against Montoya with the board that investigates allegations of attorney misconduct. …

Vanzi and Montoya will face off in the Democratic primary June 1. There is no Republican in the race, so the winner of the primary wins the seat on the Appeals Court. …

The case also highlights an unusual aspect of New Mexico’s merit selection system of judges.

Before her appointment to the district or appellate court positions, Vanzi submitted her name to a judicial nominating commission, which screens applicants, reviews credentials and recommends several nominees to the governor to consider for appointment. Questions include disciplinary complaints.

But legislators insisted that any appointed judge stand for election in one partisan contest after that appointment. Judges face only retention votes in subsequent elections.

As a candidate in the partisan race, Montoya has not gone through the same vetting process as Vanzi. …

ABQJOURNAL NEWS/STATE: Judicial Candidate Faces Ethics Complaint

Lawyer Draws Rebukes From Federal Judges
By Mike Gallagher
Copyright © 2010 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Investigative Reporter

"The conduct of Mr. Montoya in the case at bar, like his conduct in the three above referenced cases where Mr. Montoya was personally sanctioned or his clients were sanctioned as a result of actions taken by Mr. Montoya, fell well below the professional standards expected of attorneys who practice in federal court," Johnson wrote.

"Having failed to learn from the experiences of being sanctioned by Judge Parker, Judge Armijo and Judge Garcia, Mr. Montoya can now add me to the list of judges who have sanctioned him."

Johnson ordered Montoya to pay the more than $12,000, plus interest to the opposing attorneys.

Montoya appealed, and the appeal was denied.

He declined to comment for this story, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk about matters pending before the disciplinary board that handles professional complaints against lawyers.

ABQJOURNAL NEWS/STATE: Lawyer Draws Rebukes From Federal Judges

It’s my personal opinion that Montoya is running against Vanzi to punish her. It’s strictly personal. That might be fine if they were equally qualified for this office. They are not.

The Albuquerque Journal Website

Over at NewMexiKen, there has been a discussion about the Albuquerque Journal’s awful, awful website. Someone called it an embarrassment to the community, and I agree. I’m not going to waste time collecting screenshots to make my point. I’ll just add here that my latest effort to read a couple of articles online reminds me – if I could only forget, but cannot – just how freakishly awful the Albuquerque Journal website is.

Check it out for yourself. Scan the first page. Notice how it loads in fits and starts. Try to grasp the layout – what’s important on this page? Can you figure that out? Can you relate this page to the front page of the paper itself? Follow a link – any link. Have you ever seen another site like this one?

As a blogger, I like to quote directly from sources on the Web. The Journal website makes this very painful, in part, because it uses linefeeds instead of paragraph codes – quoted text runs together badly. Yeah, it’s a nerdy gripe and the Journal could not care less about pleasing bloggers, but it contributes to my belief that whoever works on this site has never seen another website anywhere. I’m reluctant to beat up a 14-year-old who gets minimum wage, but the Journal could and should do much better than this, especially after so many years of the same awful stuff. Send that kid to classes. Buy him a Dummies book. (Sorry, kid, I know your bosses don’t give a shit.)

It’s Time: US Out of Afghanistan

I’ve quoted Quigley before. He’s an insightful writer.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: In Afghanistan, the Question Is Everything 

By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff Writer
      As President Obama weighs his options in Afghanistan, the disquiet that Afghanistan will become another Vietnam grows.
    If the United States is to avoid another Vietnam in Afghanistan, the Obama administration needs to understand the short-term failure in Southeast Asia (short-term because Vietnam became a trading partner and regional ally of the United States) was a result of our complete lack of understanding about Vietnamese culture and society. American policymakers, products of a Western, rationalist, future-oriented culture, kept pushing buttons and pulling levers that connected to nothing in Vietnam’s Confucian, animist, ancestor-focused culture. The Americans could never find the buttons and levers that did connect to something.
    Afghanistan’s culture and society could not be less like our own. Until Barack Obama is certain he knows what buttons and levers connect to something in Afghanistan’s tribal, multilingual, Islamic culture (and there is not a lot of evidence that he does), additional troops won’t accomplish anything useful there.

ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: In Afghanistan, the Question Is Everything

Water Grab in Central New Mexico – Greedy & Destructive Madness

El Defensor Chieftain: Protesters to fight ‘water grab’ 

The New York City based corporation [Augustin Plains Ranch LLC] filed an application with the state Office of the Engineer two years ago, to drill 37 wells with 20-inch casings in order to pump 54,000 acre-feet of groundwater (about 17.6 billion gallons) from the San Agustin Basin each year. The wells would be located north and south of U.S. 60 just inside Catron County’s eastern boundary, between the Very Large Array and the town of Datil.

An amended application, filed in May 2008 and approved by the State Engineer in August of that year, called for an increase in the depth of the drilling from 2,000 to 3,500 feet. It also expanded the area of proposed places of use to any areas within Socorro, Catron, Sierra, Valencia, Bernalillo, Sandoval and Santa Fe counties that are in the Rio Grande Basin.

El Defensor Chieftain: Protesters to fight ‘water grab’

This Week’s WTF?!

By the following logic, no one has ever had a mandate.

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: U.S. Needs To Return to Its Roots

Only 30 percent of eligible voters participated in that election. Of that number, barely 52 percent voted for Obama. That means only 15.6 percent of eligible voters in America chose Obama as their president. The other 84.4 percent either actively voted against him or chose not to participate…. That is hardly a mandate from the people! [mjh: But better than Raygun did.]
       Who is this man elected by a scant 15.6 percent of the voting public? Does he care about you and me? Clearly he does! He feels we are too stupid to intelligently manage our money, so he is going to have the government do it for us. We are too ignorant to manage our health care, so he is going to manage it for us. Do we sense a theme?… [mjh: er, yes, the theme is utter cluelessness over what’s really going on in DC.]
       What we need is to mobilize the 70 percent of the voting population that did not speak up in 2008, and in 2010 we need to radically change the population of Washington, D.C. We need people who are truly our representatives. The majority of Americans identify themselves as conservative. We need to get them out to vote and move America back to its roots. Hard work, quality of life, the nuclear family and a government that lets us run our own lives — that’s what we need.
       GENE and GRETCHEN LINCOLN
       Albuquerque

ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: U.S. Needs To Return to Its Roots