NY Times reported on the recent passing of Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize DNA person (who would have preferred to not have been typecasted as the DNA person).
Some final thoughts on the Democratic convention? Well, I’d like to read the upcoming Time magazine issue for any other comments (haven’t gotten to be on Time’s website to see what’s there). But, I do like to refer to Slate.com’s William Saletan blogging on the convention – good stuff. Loved that Saletan thought the same way I did about Kerry and the Hamster story from Alexandra Kerry – that really says something curious about the man (Saletan says its courage; I think it’s about life affirmation or good dad being too good), putting aside what we think about the politician (whether we should accept that story as gospel truth or political spin, I don’t know).
Slate.com’s Dana Stevens, the “surfer girl” (blogging on tv) – had this interesting take on Ted Koppel’s interview of Jon Stewart on “Nightline” the other night. She thought it was about Koppel resenting the erosion of Network News Idealism and that his picking on Stewart was curiously harsh. When I had watched this interview, I didn’t sense that Koppel was that mean-spirited toward Stewart (and yet Stewart tried so hard to be respectful to Koppel). And, even if he was, I kind of got the sense that he just felt confused why people tune in to Comedy Central and its satirical news so much (well, Ted, I personally don’t have cable, so I would tune in to you – sometimes – so don’t feel so bad).
Tavis Smiley on PBS had a great interview with Peter Jennings (or, at least, I thought it was great because I got to see that casual side of Jennings that doesn’t happen too much). Jennings, appeared just as bewildered as Koppel as to why the networks are so turned off by the conventions (he made a point on one of the World News that I managed to catch on Tuesday night that he liked conventions for being opportunities to observe politics at the ground level (my paraphrasing entirely; he said it in a nicer way). But, Jennings seemed hopeful that ABC still carried some weight with its experimental all-news cable and Internet venture for 2004 elections. Whether this works remains to be seen – I read some editorial (I forget where just now) that the news these days covers too much on the trivial by spending hours on trying to cover everything (including those media stories about the media – NY Daily News tv critic David Bianculli and others have referred to this as “journalistic incest” (his words in Thursday’s column, not mine).
Enjoy the weekend.