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]
Category Archives: loco
As Tip O’Neill never said, “All politics is loco.”
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.
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):
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. …
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 98th, 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.]
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: Defense Needs To Be Part of Budget Debate
Defense Needs To Be Part of Budget Debate
By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff WriterThe 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.
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.”
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?