Category Archives: NewMexiKen

NADA, NewMexiKen

This Requires Repeating Until We All Understand

President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and a war hero, saw the insanity of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (his phrase) and tried to warn us January 17, 1961. Half a century later, we continue to piss money away on war and fight each other over the crumbs. Madness. Hat tip to NewMexiKen.

NewMexiKen | Best line to start the day

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953 quoted by Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

NewMexiKen | Best line to start the day

Military–industrial complex – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the penultimate draft of the address, Eisenhower initially used the term military-industrial-congressional complex, and thus indicated the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry. But, it is said, that the president chose to strike the word congressional in order to placate members of the legislative branch of the federal government.

Military–industrial complex – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

47, 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.

NewMexiKen, Theirs

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

NewMexiKen, Theirs

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?