Author: ssw15

Last night’s “Super Millionaire” had a Korean-American attorney as the contestant – Todd Kim (or “Kimmer” to Regis Philbin) of the U.S. Dept. of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. An obvious attorney, he talked his way through all the questions, and used his all his lifelines to make it to $500,000 award. He even called his colleague at the DOJ as a lifeline to answer the question of “Who was Amelia Earheart’s navigator, during the flight in which she disappeared?”* Even harder – Todd had to answer the question, “The first condom commercial on TV aired in 1991 during what show?”* (his jokes were amusing: “I can’t believe $400,000 depends on a condom…” and a little “I don’t think my mother would want to know this…”) The Three Wise People lifeline seems like a cute idea – among yesterday’s troupe was Neil de Grasse Tyson, the director of the Rose Center for Earth and Space (aka the Hayden Planetarium).

Kudos to Mr. Kim for being almost a millionaire.

* check the comments for the answers.

Interesting stuff in today’s NY Times:

What does it take to be The Man – in the NBA, that is. Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, and Tim Duncan – can they be The Man? Duncan has the championship rings, so does O’Neal – and yet… Or, do they lack the “killer instinct” that it takes to be The Man?

What does it take to be The Woman? The NY Times’ Maureen Dowd comments on the revitalized Laura Bush and, once again, I wonder what we expect from the First Lady in the turn of the 21st century – fighting for her man, being her own woman, or what?

Continuing a running thread on the blog, I’ll note Tom Friedman’s column today about the outsourcing issue. Friedman highlights a question posed by Robert Reich (ex-secretary of the Dept. of Labor under Clinton): “‘The fundamental question we have to ask as a society is, what do we do about it?'” Friedman closes with his response: “Either way, managing this phenomenon will require a public policy response — something more serious than the Bush mantra of let the market sort it out, or the demagoguery of the Democratic candidates, who seem to want to make outsourcing equal to treason and punishable by hanging. Time to get real.”

The Arts section of the Times profiles actor Christopher Plummer – hmm. I know that he’s an amazing actor, but I’m one of those nuts who still sees him as Capt. von Trapp. Well, time to sing the “Sound of Music” farewell song and bid adieu…

Yesterday, I finished reading the medieval England book that I had mentioned previously in the blog. I enjoyed it, and had read the other book in the series back in January. Both books were good subway reading: “The Queen’s Man” and “Cruel as the Grave,” by Sharon Kay Penman (the books’ Amazon links refer to the paperback versions; the author’s official website looked nice, I think).

The series follows the adventures of 20-year old Justin de Quincey, the illegitimate son of the Bishop of Chester in England, in the years 1192 to 1193. In “The Queen’s Man,” Justin becomes (what else?) “The Queen’s Man,” serving the dowager queen of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Justin accidentally came across the murder of a loyalist of the queen. The loyalist had information on the capture of the queen’s son, the King Richard the Lionheart; Eleanor asks Justin to investigate the murder – was it to prevent the information from getting to the queen? Was it because the victim had a nutty family who contracted the murderer to do it; or because of something else entirely? Meanwhile, Justin becomes entangled in the craziness that is medieval England, with spies and other double agents. Who shall he trust? Prince John, Richard’s brother, also makes an appearance and hovers in the background; he is apparently the bane of his family, and has his issues about his family (probably a parallel to Justin’s issues with his father; neither man seems to get it that maybe their respective parent isn’t as horrible as they believe).

“Cruel as the Grave” takes place a month later; Justin’s settling nicely in London, and the Queen’s assigning him to get a message to John, who’s trying to keep himself inside Windsor Castle to make a point. Meanwhile, Justin is trying to solve who murdered a 15-year old girl, whose only crime was that she fell in love with someone outside her class – and would this be the reason for her murder?

As mysteries go, “Cruel as the Grave” was a stronger one than “The Queen’s Man” – although the case there was easy to solve (I thought), at least one gets to watch Justin be the detective. “The Queen’s Man” seemed more like an unfolding coincidence, even though there were plenty of suspects; Justin seems to have incidentally figured out the situation. But, both are good yarns, as one follows along Justin’s journeys. The characters come alive, and don’t feel anachronistic at all. And, the context feels right – Penman notes how the Saxons spoke English and the Normans spoke French (and thus the upper crust spoke French), and yet she doesn’t bog down on “thou” or “thee” or whatnot. Justin is also a sweet protagonist, even when he acts tough. Not perfect, he matures in each situation he gets himself into.

Penman clearly did her research and I like her style. Yeah, so she’s an ex-tax attorney, but she has an imagination that works nicely.

Other reading? Note the following:

NY Times article on the Chinatown vans was educational , so to speak.

NY Times on the impending odd NYS election; getting ready for Super Tuesday?

NY1 (the all-news tv cable station) has an interesting series on academia, 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education.