NY Times’ David W. Dunlap on memory and imagery, and the Tower of Lights’ dress rehearsal. Even as I’m never quite sure where I stand on the re-building process, I’m of the view that the Tower of Lights are the best kind of tribute.
Month: September 2008
End of world averted once again, one Connor wins, and one loses
CERN launches world’s largest particle collider As SSW mentioned, there was some hysterics that a mistake could cause a mini black hole and end civilization as we know it. But thankfully that did not come to pass – it only made two dots on a CRT screen.
Season opener of Sarah Connor Chronicles – AWESOME! Usual EW major spoilers here. Fantastic Terminator action in this first episode, where Camaron turns on John. Wrecked more vehicles in one episode than they do in most movies. And the first appearance of a T-1001 – look out!
Primary results: Daniel Squadron defeats incumbant Martin Connor. For someone who has been in office since the ’70’s, and is actually my state senator, I have almost zero knowledge about Connor. I’ve never met him in person or seen him at public events or anything, and I have met or seen most of my other elected officials at one point or another. But for crying out loud, Squadron’s clipboarding posse was really annoying. They were worse than the canvassers described in the recent issue of the Village Voice. They even had people come up to my apartment twice to ask if I was voting, and that kind of turned me off. But at least he’s trying. The clincher is that Squadron had Chinese on his banners, and Connor didn’t. That might seem to be a small thing, but it’s often the small things that count.
Eve of the World’s End (or Maybe Not) and Other Stuff
So, Tropical Storm Hannah went up the eastern sea board. We had humidity. And, rain. Lots of rain.
More people watched the RNC than the DNC on tv? Ok, fine, you had the curiosity factor going, since people were still going, “Sarah Who?” about the Palin as VP choice and maybe people were still in Olympics withdrawal with the DNC on tv (but only on PBS and C-Span with much more coverage – I’m not going to wonder how much the FOX/CNN/MSNBC folks really put in it). But, it’s not really cheering me up that more watched the RNC.
So, a few weeks ago, I linked to an article about how science ought to consider issues of ethics. Yeah, well, the point is that the big ass super collider is going to be turned on and maybe the microscopic black holes could suck us alive. Or maybe help us find those missing socks that the black holes keep sucking anyway.
Well, anyway, black holes would probably kill us, not just suck us in.
Yeah, I’m really excited to find my missing socks. Not so excited about the end of the world due to black holes or uncontrolled singularities; pretty unsure if I really want o know how the world began (not if it means causing the world to end – as seen in an episode of “Eureka” – where the experiment to recreate the start of the universe rendered the smart people stupid and almost destroys the universe. oops.)
On Sept. 14, 2008, it’s going to be the Brooklyn Book Festival! I’m going to miss it this year due to my vacation in Chicago, maybe someone else can go and let me know how it goes?
Politics… I ought to stay away from politics. But… I can’t.
In this linked article, “Whatever Happened to Family Values?”, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg raises the excellent point that this isn’t Dan Quayle’s GOP anymore; the party that criticized tv’s Murphy Brown for choosing to be a single mom would now praise her for being… pro-life (ironically, Murphy Brown made a choice – presumably, she had one). Down with absolutism, I say; Weisberg’s right that absolutism ended up tossing all those other so-called values – which supposedly were pretty important too.
Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has tips to Joe Biden on how to debate Sarah Palin – treat her like a man, Lithwick says; I think I’m going to have to agree with that; if you go in scared, you don’t look good for it.
Newsweek’s Andrew Romano on how Joe Biden may have already gotten on the right track with regards to Palin; Biden works with women in the Senate; it’s not like he can’t figure this out; umm, hopefully?
I don’t consider myself a liberal, but in this column of NY Times’ Bob Herbert, he highlights why liberals should be proud – they made great contributions to American history; they made history. (considering that the whole point of being progressive or liberal is to take action, should we be surprised? Conservatives are about status quo – not necessarily about action, at least not usually).