Barack Obama and Dick Cheney… are related. Well, geez, if we go far back enough, everyone’s related. Just scary to think about though – being related (distantly anyway) to Cheney. I’m sure Cheney’s a nice guy and all that; I just don’t agree with his politics.
I did it – I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Whether I’ll pull off a “novel” in November is another story. But, what the heck. Got nothing to lose but to try. At least hammer out a first draft that I can then fret and mull over.
Okay, now this may be me as a hypochondriac – but the bulk of news on the rise of staph infections is just creeping me out. The overuse/abuse of antibiotics (and evolution making for hardier germs) – just scary. Alcohol-based lotions just make more sense just for not being penicillin. At least Time’s article that these worser staph infections are treatable kind of made me relieved. Kind of.
Time’s Art Critic Richard Lacayo reviewed the J.M.W. Turner exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in DC in last week’s Time (which I’m noting this week, as I finished reading this issue with Ch. J. Roberts of the US Supreme Ct on the cover, and then awaiting the next issue). Will be excited once this Turner exhibit gets to NYC – Turner’s neat stuff.
An interesting NY Times article on a train conductor who tries to make his announcements more interesting. The train(s) I’ve taken haven’t had this kind of conductor, but I almost don’t mind them – at least it’s not boring.
Really cool: an article in the NY Times on the changes of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It even had a picture of 18th Avenue – pretty much my neck of the woods. It ain’t Italian-dominated anymore; I can tell you that without a NY Times in-depth article. But, is it “better”? Hard to say. I doubt we really compare to the diversity of a Queens neighborhood yet, but it’s getting there. It’s still weird that there’s a Starbucks on 18th Avenue.
And, last but not least: an Indian-American, Bobby Jindal (Republican), won the election to be Louisiana’s governor, the first non-white person to be Louisiana governor since Reconstruction. An example of how the APA population and its politics is not monolithic, so this is particularly interesting. Plus, as a Brown and Oxford graduate – well, let’s say that Jindal isn’t even typical of a conservative Republican either (maybe it’s a stereotype that I have in my own head, but conservatives aren’t usually from Brown, anyway). Let’s see how things may or may not change in Louisiana with a new governor. Heck, gubernatorial politics in NYS hasn’t exactly been terrific either, now that the executive branch went from Republican to Democratic, so who am I to say?