Month: June 2004

Saw Bill Moyers at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. I totally didn’t know that he was going to be there — I had intended to rendevous with P– because she forgot her cell phone. However, he had just read part of his new book, Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times. We decided to get books signed. I didn’t know initially what to say to him, but then I recalled his Becoming American series, and I knew that I had to thank him for that, and also for the pivotal role he had in the passing of the 1965 Immigration Act. I wouldn’t be here if my parents weren’t able to come to this country, and I’m sure that is true of many others. Moyers retires this year, and this caps off his tour of the Three Estates. Thanks for everything.

Hmm. Got on the D-train tonight, and there were all these people with Yankee jerseys on. I kept thinking, huh? And then it hits me – the D takes people to and fro Yankee Stadium. D’uh – I got aboard a train just after the game ended. At one point, some guys teased (rather harmlessly, thankfully) a pair of Boston Red Sox fans off the train (they were at their stop, apparently). Oh, well. So it goes in this city.

Watched PBS the other night (without cable, it appears to be the only stuff I can watch these days without grumbling about how crummy tv is lately). “History Detectives” season 2 – wherein PBS does a twist on the Antiques Roadshow with History Roadshow; the scholars are presented items and they dig through various resources to see what’s the story behind the item. Cool stuff. I like how they get into what they’re doing and get really interesting stories. The other night, sociologist Tukufu Zuberi, is presented with watercolors of a Japanese-American internment/concentration camp from World War II, painted on the back of reused paper that had been postered notices that sent communities to the camps. He followed up on various resources (even sifting through the microfilm) to track down the artist himself, who didn’t get his apology/reparation from the federal government until 1990. Amazing story. Check out the website for the episode’s transcript on the camp’s story segment and other interesting slide shows and links.

I enjoy the moments where I appreciate that I went to law school; for instance, I can watch the Lehrer newshour talk about the Supreme Court decisions on the enemy combatant cases and actually understand what the talking heads are saying. Ooh.

Anyway, good read on the Supreme Court cases in the continuing dialogue between Lithwick and Dellinger on Slate.com. Their discussion on the enemy combatant cases are links 6, 7, and 8; loved how Lithwick tells Dellinger:

I have loads of questions for you, like what to make of the fact that the court decided Hamdi [the American-born enemy combatant who was caught in Afghanistan when the U.S. armed forces were getting rid of the Taliban] but punted on Padilla [the one who allegedly planned a dirty bomb]? (And does the decision in Hamdi mean that Padilla will necessarily have his day in court, so long as he files his next habeas petition in the right one?) I felt strongly at oral argument that the court was much less sympathetic to Padilla than Hamdi—that at least some of the justices appeared more worried about tying the president’s hands when an alleged “dirty bomber” (or as Breyer said, a “ticking time bomb”) was the bad guy, as opposed to some punk kid who may have been fighting for the Taliban.

Uh hmm. The justices may very well be only human in perceiving the differences between an alleged “punk kid” and an alleged “dirty bomber.” Maybe. 😉

An interesting story on the Statue of Liberty on NY1.com, for this week’s “One on One,” in honor of the upcoming 4th of July holiday.

The Yankees went ahead and used their bats on the Mets yesterday, beating them in both games of the doubleheader. Beaten them soundly. Met fans should at least take comfort that pitcher Al Leiter made it through seven innings and won on Saturday. There’s some hope in Metsville (but, seriously, wasn’t it expected that the interleague series was going to be 2 games to 1 one in the Yanks’ favor?).

Anyway, let’s thank the Supreme Court for making today an interesting day; rule of law prevails. Lady Liberty can continue to hold up her head and her torch real high.

Quick posts: it’s really easy to engage in inertia when you’re still jet lagged after 5 days. But that will be for later on.

My cousins from Toronto are in town through the 4th of July. However, they have no idea what they want to do.

Spent the day yesterday at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick. Very nice facility in the middle of nowhere. My ride woke me up at 6:30 in the morning –yuck. Met the incoming president of the ABA; very nice guy.

More pics later on today — have to put on a pot roast for the group family dinner tonight.

The Cheney thing continues – although for me, the story is the reaction to the story. As today’s NY Times and the Washington Post notes, the two parties are getting real nasty. The Democrats, via Senate minority leader, Daschle, was calling for unity and peace and all that, and various Republicans went with Cheney that Senator Leahy asked for the profanity. Despite Daschle’s (well, more or less) asking whether we can all get along, according to the NY Times article:

Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, said, “I definitely think it’s needed.” But, he added, “I think the Democrats are greatly responsible.”

Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said of Mr. Daschle: “He can talk the talk. The question is, Can he walk the walk?”

Umm. What? I thought Frist wanted to get the folks of Congress to get along too; but how can one expect to get along if one person curses the other out, and then calls for unity get laughed at? What? Am I missing something?

Oh, and there’s the Slate.com article trying to explain why, oh why, did the Washington Post put in the F-word (nicely spelled out), while the NY Times (in today’s article anyway) went coy. Acknowledging that the NY Times’ coverage had left out “the fact that what the vice president thought Mr. Leahy should do was anatomically improbable,” latest Slate.com Explainer observes:

Editors weigh the newsworthiness of the event in question against concerns about community standards. Readers can be just as distracted when a newspaper clumsily sidesteps profanity as when a paper uses it; it’s up to the editor to decide whether the journalistic purpose of the story is best served by bluntness or decorum.

Ah, a Slate.com article that mixes bluntess and explanation and a reference to a Supreme Court case. Cool.

I better stop it with this particular news stuff; if I’m more worried about profanity in Congress rather than about the rest of the world stage, boy, what does that say about me??? 😉

I will eventually read the commentary on the Supreme Court’s end-of-term decisions on Slate.com; Dahlia Lithwick and ex-solicitor general Walter Dellinger are good reads with their running conversation (not the resigning Theodore Olsen, who’s moving on with his life after three years with the administration; oh, and sorry, Dellinger’s a former Acting Solicitor General – as if that makes that much of a difference).

Mets v. Yanks on. Play ball.

It’s pouring right now; Mets v Yankees baseball is postponed for a doubleheader on Sunday.

Interesting Asian/Asian American stuff in the NY Times today:

“A Crash Course in Tradition for Modern Korean Brides” – according to this article, one may have higher degrees in Chinese literature and originally planned to get that Ph.d., but feel free (or just go along with Mom and Dad’s immediate commands) to matriculate in the Institute of Decorum and Wisdom’s bridal course in Seoul to learn how to stitch a shirt to please one’s honored and respected Mother-in-Law. Ah, and consider this, as writer Norimitsu Onishi notes:

A 31-year-old, who met her fiancé through a matchmaker, gave up a career to prepare for marriage. Though sent here by her father, she said she had found many of the classes useful. Since she had long lived in the United States, her parents worried that she had become Americanized.

Accustomed to walking in an assertive American way, she learned to walk on the balls of her feet so as to minimize the noise, she said, adding that she was too embarrassed to reveal her name.

Uh, ok. I can sympathize with the bride not wanting to reveal her name. But, to walk on the balls of one’s feet? There are women (American and otherwise) who are stuck with that, no thanks to being the slave to fashion (re: ridiculously high high heel shoes; namely the sad, sad example of Barbie Doll); walking like that has its implications…

South Asian music making strides in the club scene – with the folks behind the music carrying their identities along – children of the immigrants, having been exposed to all kinds of stuff… – Jon Pareles notes:

As often happens, the music follows demographics. In the 1960’s, a change in immigration law brought a wave of white-collar Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to the United States. Now their sons and daughters are establishing their place in the arts as well as in the wider American economy, and they are making sense of a musical upbringing that is likely to include Bollywood tunes alongside hip-hop, Western classical music, Indian classical music, rock and jazz. “Everybody’s got a different diaspora,” says the producer, vocalist and disc jockey DK Khambata.

Weird article from the Washington Post: VP Cheney uttered the nasty curse word at Senator Leahy, and Cheney then admitted to having “felt better” after having done it. Uh, ok. Could you please not make a habit of it? (at least, refrain from doing it in the hallowed halls of Congress). Oh, well. … Actually, the scary part is – the Washington Post published the word used; caught my eye, since family newspapers usually don’t do that, as the Washington Post conceded (and its explanation puzzles me – the editors wanted readers to decide for themselves, but hadn’t printed the F-word since… the Starr report days? Huh? I thought the NY Times had hubris, but this is just plain weird)…

So it goes. Enjoy the weekend.

Slate.com’s Seth Stevenson has the latest “Ad Report” to comment on (drum roll, please) – those Budweiser v. Miller ads. You know, the Miller ads have this dorky spokesman who’s running for president of beers against the Budweiser Clydesdale spokeshorse. Apparently, Budweiser got all mad and so unleashed their spokesreptilians and the spokesdonkey to say that Miller can’t be president of beers because it’s owned by a South African company. Stevenson notes:

This assumes, of course, that beer-president campaigns use electoral guidelines akin to those of standard, non-beer, U.S. presidential campaigns, and that corporate parentage determines beer-citizenship status. But I’m OK with that assumption—electoral beer law is hazy on the matter, and the beer constitution offers no clear answers.

Yeah, I’d have to wonder about that darn beer constitution. Is it even written? Do we have to be strict constructionists, or can we read it in a more interpretive manner? Will Scalia and Stevens have a field day over this? (do they even drink beer?) Stevenson gave the Budweiser ads a low grade; I have no particular opinion myself, although it’s interesting to see the lizards again and the cute donkey is still cute. And, yeah, I’m still wondering about the beer constitution. (I’m not a beer drinker, by the way; you can make your own assessment about this stuff).

Oh, and looky here – Hotmail’s jumping on the bandwagon to give e-mail account holders more bytes. Whoa….

This is the article we’ve been talking about at work and so on – “Fear in the Workplace: The Bullying Boss.” Consider the descriptions of the bosses, and see if it applies to your boss; research on the schoolyard bully may now help find ways to deal with the workplace (the adults’ version of the schoolyard soap opera madness).

A book on… Brooklyn. Cool. The article brings discuss this crime stories anthology by Brooklyn authors, “Brooklyn Noir,” with all of Brooklyn’s diversity.

I’ve caught some of the new Tavis Smiley talk show on PBS, and thought it is interesting. Smiley’s a good interviewer, making conversation with his guests. Nice to see a person of color in this role (Smiley’s West coast, so it’s a different perspective in interesting ways from the usual Charlie Rose mode). I’ll corroborate the view of Daily News’ columnist E.R. Shipp :

For so many years, blacks, Latinos and other journalists who form a minority within the profession have demanded greater access and a greater appreciation for a diversity of voices. [….]

In Smiley, who is something of an empowerment guru among blacks, PBS can attempt to build a new audience that is younger and more diverse in race, ethnicity and even geographical grounding (Smiley’s shows emanate from Los Angeles).

He does what too little of talk radio or television does these days: conducts civil conversations with a broad spectrum of politicians, newsmakers, performers and writers in a forum where one first has to declare one’s political alliances. He’s comfortable with conservatives, liberals and the undeclared; with the profound and the profane, with elder statesmen and the hip-hop nation. With such stratification in the country, he provides one place that helps promote dialogues that might not otherwise take place before audiences who might not otherwise think they have anything in common.

Since January, his guests have ranged from Bill .Cosby to Newt Gingrich to Gore Vidal to Alice Randall, a black novelist who has written hit country songs for singers such as Trisha Yearwood. He can discuss Iraq with Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat who advises John Kerry, but also with the nonpolitical comedian Paul Rodriguez. He has also featured the producer of a documentary on Al Jazeera along with one of its leading journalists. He raises questions about why “Baadasssss,” Mario van Peebles’ homage to the groundbreaking 1971 film “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” made by his father, Melvin Van Peebles, has received so little publicity and why so little attention was paid to the end of the Showtime series “Soul Food,” which had a five-year run depicting the complex layers of life in an African-American family.

I’m all for anything that expands the national dialogue and promotes, in more than a figurative sense, East meeting West. [….]

As I write this, Smiley’s interviewing with a Brooklyn ex-mob informant (after he finished interviewing Democratic Party consultant Donna Brazile). Uh huh. Nice going. Thumbs up for being different.

Enjoy the rest of the week….

Funny – I thought yesterday was summer solstice; d’uh, it’s actually today – the time of year when the natural light is out that much longer (even at the hour in which I’m writing this blog). See, I like summer for this one reason – the light (not the humidity – so help me Gosh, definitely not the humidity – I’ll can swallow the heat, but not the perpetual dampness that summer in NYC can bring).

Finally finished reading Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe”. Took forever, but I did it. Greene’s a good writer; very poetic stuff in trying to understand the mysteries of the universe and the possibility of one theory to explain all the theories of physics. Greene’s a string theorist and is real smart and it shows. Lovely. My only quibble is that try as I might, I still have trouble understanding the scientific explanations (yep, I’m the one who undermines the Asian-American stereotype by having not been good at higher mathematics and physics (which was not my best science subject)).

Then again, I liked how Greene showed how the latest thought in string theory specifically and physics in general almost cross into philosophy: what is reality; if Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says that the subatomic world is awfully uncertain, what can we be certain about at the normal level?; if Einstein says things are relative at the galactic level, that’s just… powerful stuff; are there alternate dimensions (Greene says yes; and there are bunches of them) – and what does that really mean for the rest of us (umm, besides being fodder for sci-fi consumers); and what is the meaning of what science is leading us? I liked this one line from Greene, which I’ll note here:

[S]cience proceeds along a zig-zag path toward what we hope will be ultimate truth, a path that begun with humanity’s earliest attempts to fathom the cosmos and whose end we cannot predict. – Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, p. 20, 2003 paperback edition.

It just sounds nice, that’s all. Although, keep in mind – the book is actually written before 9/11, so there was this odd reference to the World Trade Center (an analogy used to explain something about wormholes, if I recalled correctly); nothing bad, really; notably, Green’s 2003 preface notes that the latest scientific developments are still taking time (doesn’t help that particle accelerators take time to be built and cost serious moola), so his book is hardly out-of-date.

Greene’s from NYC, and he’s currently teaching at my Alma Mater, after having done stints at
other Ivy League institutions and Oxford (yeah, he’s really really smart); in fact, Alma Mater offers “Physics for Poets” (which I heard was no easy class anyway), so thanks to the good Prof. Greene, I guess I can now fully accept that physics can be poetic – no doubt… (sidenote – local PBS in NYC will be showing Nova’s version of “The Elegant Universe” in July – so, set your VCR’s – the three-part series is watchable, in a not-too-explanatory style, but-ok-for-the-junior-high-and/or-not-too-scientific set of folks out there)….

My streak this weekend sucks (pardon my language) – I managed to miss the Madonna interview on 20/20 this past Friday and the Clinton interview on 60 Minutes yesterday. Gee, I hope Barbara Walters and Dan Rather (forget Madonna and Clinton) will forgive me. (I had other things to do, to say the least).

Let’s go Mets; let’s hope we can at least be positive (maybe; hopefully; ideally; eh, whatever goes). The hometown National League team swept the Detroit Tigers this weekend; can we dare look forward to the upcoming games against the Yankees? Can Jose Reyes stay healthy and keep the team energized (and be mature about it)? Can the team owner himself keep things going without resorting to making things go bad? Hmm…

Have a good week….