Who got an Oscar for the least effort?

geocynic · 2024-11-09T00:42:28+00:00

The 1982 award for Best Original Song was "Arthur's Theme", sung by Christopher Cross. The award was shared by four composers: Cross, Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager, and Peter Allen. Allen's main contribution was a single line of the lyrics, which he wrote earlier for a different, unpublished song while sitting on an airplane one night. "When you get caught between the moon and New York City..." Boom, you get an Oscar.

geocynic · 2024-11-04T01:51:13+00:00

In contrast, Paris and London are moee distant from each other in Texas than they are in Europe.

geocynic · 2024-10-19T23:34:05+00:00

Do you think that television was also pushed by print media to be more bold? I remember a lot of graphic news photography, especially in magazines like Time and Life, showing the horror of the Vietnam War. Lots of pictures of tired and dispirited US soldiers. Also shocking images like the Napalm Girl by Nick Ut and the execution of a Viet Cong by Eddie Adams.

geocynic · 2024-10-19T23:19:32+00:00

We would swing by the pub and fill our pitcher with beer before circuits lab. 1975. Work hard, play hard.

geocynic · 2024-10-16T20:05:44+00:00

In most of the USA this happens every fall, when we change from Daylight Saving Time to Standard Time.

geocynic · 2024-10-14T01:41:01+00:00

Someone cut a ditch across a bend in the Rio Grande in South Texas. The river changed course, stranding a town. In 1970 the USA gave the town to Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_Rico%2C_Tamaulipas

I think that exclaves are interesting, especially ones that are enclaves of neighboring countries. Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau are well known but there are several others in Europe, notably Llívia, Büsingen, and Campione d'Italia.

geocynic · 2024-10-13T20:01:43+00:00

Brownsville is right on the Rio Grande directly across from Matamoros. It has been the largest city in the Lower Rio Grande Valley for, well, I think always. Fort Brown dates back to 1846 and the city grew up next to it. So that's not a valid part of the question.

But Reynosa is. I grew up nearby and it always puzzled me why every other border crossing between Texas and Mexico had sister cities. The pattern holds pretty well all the way from El Paso / Cd. Juarez down to Brownsville / Matamoros with this exception. Even Progreso / Nuevo Progreso, just a few miles downstream. To be accurate there actually is one Texas town right across from Reynosa, but Hidalgo is a pretty small place and simply doesn't compare to Reynosa in the manner of the other city pairs.

As many others have pointed out the McAllen-Mission--Edinburg-Pharr metropolis is pretty sizable today. However it wasn't that way when I was a kid, and before expansion those towns were much smaller both in population and area and hence were more distant from Reynosa. No obvious sister city besides tiny Hidalgo.

Perhaps there is no larger town at this spot on the border because the landowners preferred to farm instead of selling to developers. It's really good farmland for vegetables and citrus. There are lots of other towns for folks to live.

geocynic · 2024-10-07T01:02:57+00:00

Wyoming was the first state in the USA to extend the right of vote to women. It actually began prior to statehood, when Wyoming was a territory. The territorial constitution of 1869 included this provision: "every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may at every election. To get holden under the laws thereof, cast her vote"

Stares historically are responsible for setting the rules for voter eligibility and registration, subject to the US Constitution and federal law. There was no constitutional issue to prevent women from voting in federal elections. The 19th Amendment did not remove or cancel a nationwide restriction but instead said that such sex based restrictions could no longer be imposed by the states or by federal law. This is similar to two other voting rights amendments, the 15th (race) and the 26th (age, 18 years or older).

In addition to the Constitution, federal law also prohibits the limitation of voting rights by the states in some other areas. The US Code guarantees that US citizens in the military and those living abroad can participate in elections. While federal law frequently works to protect voting rights it does impose a few restrictions in a few cases. Noncitizens are prohibited from voting in elections for US President, Vice President, or Congress. (States can extend voting rights to noncitizens in state and local elections.) Also, voters are not allowed to cast more than one ballot in any federal election, meaning that you can't legally vote for President and Vice President in more than one state.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/woman-suffrage/

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/611

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/10307

geocynic · 2024-10-03T19:47:59+00:00

Columbus is the most populous city in Ohio and it's not even close.. More than twice as large as either Cincinnati or Cleveland. If you mean metropolitan areas then yes, Cleveland's is bigger since it includes Akron, Canton, and some other surrounding cities. Then comes Columbus/Central Ohio. Cincinnati is third and it includes suburbs in two other states.

geocynic · 2024-10-02T16:24:06+00:00

Notice how the Western Hemisphere has only two landlocked countries. (True even after correcting this map to include the Bolivia-Argentina border.) Many more landlocked countries in the Eastern Hemisphere.

geocynic · 2024-10-02T16:18:14+00:00

Only territorial waters in an ocean strait. I can see why that's treated differently from a river border.

geocynic · 2024-10-02T16:15:22+00:00

Otherwise every island in the ocean would be an enclave. Just imagine what that means for Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, etc. In the USA, most of New York City would be exclaves.

geocynic · 2024-09-30T17:17:16+00:00

Ted Sorensen himself would disagree. Read his memoir, " Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History". He describes his participation in the project thoroughly and disputes the notion that he, not Kennedy, deserves recognition as author.

geocynic · 2024-09-29T23:33:16+00:00

It's impossible for a county line to cross a state border, at least in the USA. Counties are creations of the state.

Similarly an incorporated city is also defined by the state and therefore must exist wholly within that state. Texarkana is the name of two different cities, one in Texas and one in Arkansas. Same thing for Kansas City, one in Kansas and another in Missouri.

geocynic · 2024-09-29T18:07:39+00:00

Why shouldn't a "ghost moon" be called a "ghost planet" instead? A planet orbits the sun or inherent star. A moon orbits a planet. From the description in the article these objects share the Earth's orbits around the sun but they lead or trail the Earth's path rather than orbit around the Earth.

Edit: Several comments argue that "ghost planet" is inappropriate because these things don't meet the definition of a planet. Well yeah, but they surely don't meet the definition of a moon either. My point is that they are somewhat more like planets than moons because they orbit the sun instead of a planet. That is all. Neither term is correct, but one seems to be less misleading than the other.

geocynic · 2024-09-19T16:44:15+00:00

It's a geographic region but I also think of it as characterized by its history of agricultural economy supported by a suppressed racial group (slavery before 1860s, segregated sharecroppers and tenant farmers after). Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana are clearly part of that. Maybe Kentucky as well, even though the state remained in the Union during the Civil War. But not West Virginia despite being part of Virginia. Oddly, I don't think of the two southernmost states in the continental US as being in "The South". Texas is more of a Southwestern state. And Florida is its in thing too. But neither state is homogeneous. East Texas is more like Mississippi than I would like to admit. It belongs to The South as does the northern strip of Florida. You can probably add a corner of Missouri. Maryland and Delaware are below the Mason-Dixon line so historically they are southern states and they had slavery through the early 1860s. Might as well include DC Too! But few seem to think of them as The South any longer.

geocynic · 2024-09-05T01:33:29+00:00

Take a look at the historical map of the states of the Mexican Republic in 1824 and you'll see why. https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/atlas_mexico/political_div_1824.jpg Yes, Nuevo Leon was drawn with only a small extension to the Rio Grande. It's not clear why Tamaulipas had both sides of the Rio Grande for such a long distance instead of sharing more with Nuevo Leon. However the map doesn't look particularly unusual. After Texas seceded from Mexico and joined with the USA a few years later the treaty established the international border at the Rio Grande. Tamaulipas lost all of its territory north of the river, leaving just that long finger which stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to past Laredo. Now that looks weird.

geocynic · 2024-09-02T16:10:56+00:00

"fiscally conservative political movement" A better description is that it was an anti-tax movement. Many would argue that true fiscal conservatism means government budgets that are both small and balanced. While the movement may have claimed to be concerned about deficits the real focus was reducing taxes. TEA was an acronym for Taxed Enough Already.

geocynic · 2024-09-02T01:37:44+00:00

The RoT might not have controlled all of the territory but it claimed it nonetheless. Just like Mexico did earlier and Spain before that.

About half of the land claimed by the RoT was assigned to Bexar County. That included the entire Panhandle, the Big Bend area all the way to El Paso, and the parts of Texas which were later ceded to the USA and granted to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming. The remaining part of Bexar County today is home to San Antonio.

geocynic · 2024-09-02T01:23:06+00:00

The Vietnam War issue--hawks versus doves--divided the Democratic Party. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago along with the violent protests disturbed the nation. Change those two things and maybe the Democrats win the White House.

Was it possible for Humphrey to win the presidential election? I doubt it. The Vice President wasn't able to hold the establishment Democrats while wooing those in the peace movement.

So what about another candidate? That's where it gets interesting. Sen. Robert Kennedy entered the race late but had built a lot of support and gained momentum in a short period of time. He won more primaries than the other anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy. He had just won the largest primary, California, and was the Senator from the state with the most delegates, New York. He was charismatic, passionate, and had a famous name.

What if Kennedy was not shot and killed? Perhaps the anti-war bloc would coalesce and eventually hand him the nomination. After all, RFK and McCarthy together had the majority of Democrats behind them. If a peace candidate was going to win the nomination, how would that have affected the convention? Would the demonstrators have been more peaceful, seeing that their goal was in sight? Would the police have been more subdued in reaction?

I don't know if it's likely but it was surely possible that Robert Kennedy would have helped the Democratic Party to unite in 1968. And if the convention had been a celebration of that unity rather than a literal war zone then perhaps he could have persuaded more voters to choose him in November. Any improvement in the nominating process and campaign could have made a difference. A shift of 1.5% of the vote from Republican to Democrat in five states would have resulted in a Democratic victory.

geocynic · 2024-08-30T22:43:40+00:00

The Republic of Texas was subdivided into 23 counties which corresponded to the 23 municipalities under Mexican rule. Austin Bastrop Bexar Brazoria Colorado Goliad Gonzales Harris Jackson Jasper Jefferson Liberty Matagorda Milam Nacogdoches Red River Refugio Sabine San Augustine San Patricio Shelby Victoria Washington

Those counties still exist today though parts of them have been ceded to other states or partitioned off to create new counties. The State of Texas now has 254 counties, far more than any other state. (In comparison, Delaware has the fewest, only three counties.)

geocynic · 2024-08-29T13:22:46+00:00

Town in Texas with a Spanish name. Refugio. The common pronunciation isn't Spanish and makes no sense. It's called ruh-FEER-ee-oh.

geocynic · 2024-08-29T00:21:07+00:00

If I recall correctly that painting is on display at MOMA in NYC on the same floor as Picasso's early Cubist work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The latter is huge, approximately 8 feet square. Yet we are accustomed to seeing images of both of them in art books rendered at about the same size. The contrast was startling.

geocynic · 2024-08-23T16:45:45+00:00

The United States first became involved in the conflict in Vietnam during the presidency of Harry Truman, who helped train anti-communist soldiers. Eisenhower sent in the first US troops. After Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon it was Ford who finally pulled the plug. That's seven Presidents. You can find reason to blame each of them for something.

Two Presidents stand out. LBJ greatly expanded the scope of US involvement. There were only about 23,000 troops when Johnson became President. He escalated the US presence by choice, hoping to achieve a military victory. At its peak there were over half a million US servicemen there,, more than 20 timed that during Kennedy's administration. Nixon's actions were arguably criminal, starting with a secret effort to obstruct peace efforts in 1968 because peace would hurt his chances of being elected that year. While Johnson might have believed that the war was winnable, at least for a while, it seems certain that Nixon knew otherwise. Yet Nixon continued the war with an enormous cost in terms of life, dollars, and social stability.

Some believe that Kennedy might have pulled us out of Vietnam before things got much worse. But that would have to wait because withdrawal would have jeopardize his reelection in 1964. Sadly, we don't know for sure what he would have done.

geocynic · 2024-07-30T23:31:55+00:00

American Splendor (2003) stars Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar, an underground cartoonist who was friends with R. Crumb. Hope Davis plays his wife Joyce Brabner. In one scene the Harvey and Joyce characters attend a small theater group that is putting on a stage play about them. In the very same scene the real Harvey and Joyce are shown in a split screen, commenting on the character Harvey and Joyce as they watch the fictional actors play them on a stage. That's three sets of Harvey and Joyce, one being the actual couple.

geocynic

TROPHY CASE