Author: ssw15

Mail still goes to the World Trade Center – weird and depressing to think about. Don’t we know that zip code doesn’t exist anymore? What asses (sorry – that’s the only word I can think of) don’t have the sense to update their bulk mail? Guess no one knows that the zip code 10048 was the World Trade Center. (or the addresses – World Trade Center 1 to 6 – aren’t any good).

Leonardo DaVinci’s fingerprint may actually lead to any new research about him – even what he ate or that his mother was from the Middle East? Oh-kay – I had no idea that mere ‘prints could do that. Really.

A story on the mental health of Asian immigrants in America:

Asian immigrants in the United States have lower rates of mental health problems than people, including those of Asian descent, who were born in the country, a new study finds.

For example, the study found that American-born women are twice as likely to have a depressive disorder as Asian-born women living in the United States.

The researchers interviewed nearly 2,100 native-born or immigrant Asian Americans, 18 and older, about their history of a number of mental health problems: depression, anxiety, phobias, eating disorders, substance and alcohol abuse, and post traumatic stress disorder. [….]

I’m always a tad skeptical about psych studies involving the completion of surveys. Only 2,100 people interviewed? That’s what, statistically +/- 4 percentage points of accuracy? Who’s to say that the interview subjects weren’t lying; the stigma of mental illness being what it is and cultural differences on what is mental illness and how one deals with stress may skew who among the Asian populace even has a mental illness. Oh well; just my two cents on this topic; it’s not like I read the study or know enough about psychology or the psychology of Asians in general.
The passing of Robert Volpe, NYC’s art-theft NYPD detective. The obit’s quite interesting; sad about a NYC figure:

Mr. Volpe began his art career painting pictures of tugboats as a teenager and selling them for $250. By the mid-1970s, after his work had turned more abstract, he was selling paintings for $1,500 when he was not on the job for the police, browsing galleries, attending auctions, lecturing at the Smithsonian, traveling to Paris or Rome or tracking down fiendishly clever criminals.

European law enforcement authorities have estimated that crimes involving art and antiquities are third on the list of illicit trade, after drugs and weapons. As epicenter of the art world, New York brims with priceless art in museums and private residences, and according to Mr. Volpe, is the world’s clearinghouse for stolen art.

Before Mr. Volpe was unleashed in 1971 as the city’s first and only art detective, art crimes were handled by the burglary division and other units. After his retirement in 1983, regular details took them up again.

Mr. Volpe’s accomplishments as a painter and curator earned him a place in “Who’s Who in American Art,” and his sweeping mustache, shoulder-length hair and flamboyant clothing fit the part. He had an Armani suit to wear to auctions and a Groucho Marx disguise for no known reason.

In later years he was an object of unwanted attention when his son, the former police officer Justin Volpe, was convicted of brutalizing Abner Louima in a Brooklyn station house in 1997. Mr. Volpe condemned his son’s action but publicly and repeatedly expressed his love for him. The New York Daily News reported in 2004 that Mr. Volpe had found some peace knowing that his son was creating art behind bars.

Mr. Volpe essentially created his detective’s job after computer analyses pinpointed art theft as a growing problem. Asked to make a survey, he came back with actual arrests instead of a report — underlining the need for a special effort.

He became that effort, making the New York Police Department the nation’s only one with a separate bureau for art crime. Around the department, Mr. Volpe was known as Rembrandt. Fellow policemen sometimes put nude centerfolds on his locker with the handwritten question, “But is it art?”

His cases included art thefts, dealer fraud, vandalism and forgeries. He fielded 40 or 50 calls a day, as many from overseas as from Madison Avenue and SoHo.

He recovered two Byzantine ivories worth $1.5 million, stolen from a museum in Pesaro, Italy. A photo of Italy’s foreign minister congratulating him hung over his desk.

Robert Volpe was born in December 1942 and grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He studied art at the High School of Art and Design, Parsons, and the Art Students League. Fresh out of the Army, he joined the police to have an “offbeat” job while he painted, he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1977.

He first walked a beat on the Lower East Side, did undercover work on organized crime cases, and was part of the narcotics squad that investigated the heroin-smuggling operation known as “The French Connection.” [….]

Mr. Volpe recovered art pieces that were stolen before he was born. Other cases evolved faster: on Dec. 22, 1980, the British authorities notified him about a missing candelabrum, dating from 1858 and once in the possession of the king of Egypt. He recovered it by Jan. 2, 1981.

Detective Volpe saw a little bit of everything: from stolen pictures worth $50,000 being sold on street corners, to suspected thieves eager to keep up with art-market trends sitting next to him at lectures. He learned that September and October were especially busy months, as the wealthy returned from abroad to find their homes looted. He was frustrated more than once when judges found convicted art thieves entertaining and romantic and declined to sentence them.

Infrequently, his chases became dangerously dramatic, as when he pointed his gun at thieves of a Russian icon.

“Grade B movie stuff,” he told The Times. “You find you have to behave that way. You don’t come right off with authority, you’re done.” [….]

Newsweek has a Q & A with US-based Chinese writer Qiu Xiaolong, a writer of the Inspector Chen of Shanghai crime series. I just borrowed his book from the library – never heard of Qiu or his books before, so I’m really looking forward to reading this book.
I’m a year older and only God knows if I’m any wiser. Eh. Here’s to many more…

Since FC mentioned his and P’s latest foodie outing, I guess I can mention that, Friday night, my co-workers and I, in honor of co-workers who are leaving us for greener pastures, went to Negril Village (Carribbean food in the – what else? – Village). Food was pretty good – I had the Salmon-Crab burger, which was good. My co-worker had a roti that looked delicious. Appettizers were terrific; dessert – well, who resists dessert? (not me). The music was a little loud; bathroom was nice and pretty. (yeah, I notice that!).

A weird and interesting article on whether this Ancient Greek device might actually be a kind of computer. The NY Times’ John Noble Wilford reports:

The instrument, the Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers deciphered inscriptions and reconstructed the gear functions, revealing “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period,” it said.

The researchers, led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth and the astronomer Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting their results today in the journal Nature.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions, and the gears were a representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.

The Roman ship carrying the artifacts sank off the island of Antikythera about 65 B.C. Some evidence suggests it had sailed from Rhodes. The researchers said that Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes, might have had a hand in designing the device.

In another Nature article, a scholar not involved in the research, François Charette of the University of Munich museum, in Germany, said the new interpretation of the mechanism “is highly seductive and convincing in all of its details.” It is not the last word, he said, “but it does provide a new standard, and a wealth of fresh data, for future research.”

Technology historians say the instrument is technically more complex than any known for at least a millennium afterward. Earlier examinations of the instrument, mainly in the 1970s by Derek J. de Solla Price, a Yale historian who died in 1983, led to similar findings, but they were generally disputed or ignored.

The hand-operated mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers said. A pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon’s elliptical orbit around Earth.

The numbers of teeth in the gears dictated the functions of the mechanism. The 53-tooth count of certain gears, the team said, was “powerful confirmation of our proposed model of Hipparchos’ lunar theory.” The detailed imaging revealed more than twice the inscriptions recognized earlier. Some of these appeared to relate to planetary and lunar motions. Perhaps, the team said, the mechanism also had gearings to predict the positions of known planets.

The AP article discusses the debate:

“It was a pocket calculator of the time,” said John Seiradakis, a professor of astronomy at the University of Thessaloniki who served on the international team.

Ever since its discovery a century ago, the complex mechanism has baffled scientists.

Edmunds said the 82 surviving fragments, dated to between 140-100 B.C, contain more than 30 gear wheels, and “are covered with astronomical, mathematical and mechanical inscriptions.”

“It was a calendar of the moon and sun, it predicted the possibility of eclipses, it showed the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, and we believe also it may have shown the position of some of the planets, possibly just Venus and Mercury,” he said.

The box-shaped mechanism — the size of office paper and operated with a hand-crank — could predict an eclipse to a precise hour on a specific day.

The new study of the ancient device, with the aid of Hewlett Packard and the British X-ray equipment maker X-Tek, more than doubled the amount of the inscriptions readable on the mechanism.

“We will not yet be able to answer the question of what the mechanism was for, although now we know what the mechanism did,” Edmunds said.

His fellow team member, Xenophon Moussas, an associate professor of space physics at Athens University, speculated that the device could have been used for navigation at sea or for mapmaking.

The first comparable devices known in the West were clockwork clocks developed during the Middle Ages.

Personally, I just think that the name of the device, Antikythera Mechanism, is just plain cool. A mouthful, but cool.

As I have relatives in Canada, I can’t help but check in on what’s up in Canada. Methinks that the Liberal Party there can be as confused as the Democrats down here. In what was the most competitive party leadership election the Liberals had since the Pierre Trudeau days, the leading candidate for their party leadership, the intellectual-former Harvard professor-writer Michael Ignatieff, surprisingly lost. Stephane Dion won – the ex-environmental minister who apparently was someone with federal experience and no (apparent) corruption connection (which was apparently what got the Liberals out of office in the first place). He’s a politician from Quebec, but even people in Quebec don’t exactly love him, according to the Reuters article I linked here. Oh-kay, sounds like politics in Canada has craziness like anywhere else.

Thursday night’s Grey’s Anatomy – wow. I don’t think it was the kind of episode where the promo (“You have to see it to believe it!!”) – sorry, not that kind of gripping – but it was the emotionally strong sort that I expect from Grey’s Anatomy. None of the kooky excessive romantic relationship stuff – at least, not tonight – but more about what is friendship and family? Meredith’s mom, the ex-great surgeon Dr. Ellis Grey is succumbing more and more into the Alzheimer’s – probably as result of realizing that Chief Webber wasn’t going to visit her anymore – and the fact that she doesn’t remember Meredith – and hurts Meredith by reminding Meredith of the miserable childhood she must have had with Ellis as the workaholic-not-there mom. Dr. McDreamy and Dr. McSteamy have a moment of remembering how they were once friends. Meredith has to deal with the other Grey relatives – people she can’t emotionally accept as relatives. Cristina Yang deals with the fallout of exposing her boyfriend attending Dr. Burke; Dr. Burke – well, he’s pissed, but he has to deal with the fallout too. Maybe McSteamy isn’t a total jerk (although he has a lot to go to grow up). Oh, and George – uh, the raw emotion of his helplessly trying to help his sick dad -that made me teary eyed. Bailey’s anger over Burke and Yang – and her moment of inspiring McDreamy. Meredith’s decision that what she considers family – well, it’s what she chooses for herself.

Missed the season premiere of Scrubs. NBC certainly bolstered its comedy night on Thursdays by placing Scrubs on. But, man, to be up against Grey’s Anatomy and CSI? Tough luck, even if NBC’s sort of endorsing you to do the job (considering how NBC treats the show like crap by placing it in so many time slots over the years). I’m so glad to be able to at least kind of catch up on Scrubs by watching the syndicated reruns (but then they don’t even bother trying to show the reruns in correct order!). Funny show anyway – catch it while you can!

Time’s Perry Bacon explains how Gov. Tom Vilsack (Iowa, D.) might actually have a shot at his Presidential candidacy thing. I do confess, I found the announcement a little dubious – who outside Iowa knows who Vilsack is? But, then in reading this article, I remembered watching Charlie Rose interview Vilsack and thinking that Vilsack was impressive. He seemed to be serious about improving the country and it sounded like he’s doing well in Iowa – and, these days, apparently doing time as governor helps with the path to the presidency. Well, we’ll see; 2008 is still awhile away.

Let the holiday madness begin.

Saw Casino Royale on Thanksgiving Day – quite a movie. Plot was… well, it’s a Bond movie; plot doesn’t get in the way of making a visual movie. But, there is more of a plot than there has been in a while – bad banker takes money of terrorists to set up a wild poker game; British Secret Service wants banker taken in for his info; banker turns out to be more trouble than he’s worth, as Bond realizes that his work is sucking his soul away, whatever his soul once was. Action sequences were really something. Daniel Craig is Bond, James Bond. He’s not classically handsome, but he’s hot. And, Bond as a human being – thumbs up that we got o see this side of him. You watch him do the dangerous stuff and you actually feel his pain (yeah, Bond – jumping off buildings and trying to kill bastards ain’t easy, even if your Connery/Moore/Brosnan versions made it seem effortless). M as Judi Dench – still cool as ever. Eva Green as Vesper Lynd – um, ok -but I see her as a bit of a cipher. Jeffrey Wright as Felix, the CIA guy – cool. He had a great line; wish he was in the movie more and actually got to do stuff. Anyway, ultimately, I recommend watching it (not like anyone needs my approval to do that!). As the Entertainment Weekly review by Owen Gleiberman says:

Yet Craig, speckled with facial cuts, plays Bond with an almost bruised virility, making each of these actions an expression of unruly will. Casino Royale, the most exciting Bond film since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, has everything you want in a pop entertainment: physical audacity, intrigue, romance, but also a charge of personality that stayed with me for days.

I agree with Gleiberman – Craig as Bond was something.

Thanksgiving dinner – much food; leftovers to enjoy for the rest of the week.

Interesting article – an impromptu hoc book club on the No. 3 subway – I do notice that: sometimes, people in the NYC subway definitely read some interesting (and some rather loopy) reading.

So, how do you close your e-mails? “Your truly” isn’t enough, apparently.
Got to love Entertainment Weekly:

EW’s on-line coverage of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic book effort.

Brooklyn law profs talking about Domino’s Brooklyn-style pizza – may or may not be something that ought to be regulated (kind of like how in France, Champagne is only the stuff made in the Champagne region; anything else is sparkling wine). At the least I would agree with the profs: the ads for the Domino Brooklyn-style pizza doesn’t exactly move past Brooklyn stereotypes — which isn’t fair to Brooklyn.

Dahlia Lithwick commenting on Slate about this sexy ad in a Massachusetts legal magazine. The debate is whether this ad is that demeaning toward women (ad wherein scantilly-clad sexy lady’s smooching what appears to be a pretty boy lawyer – promoting custom tailors for lawyers – yeah, right). Personally, if such ads were to show up in the ABA Journal or even the NYS Bar Assoc’s publication – well, maybe more people would read the stuff. Sex sells, unfortunately; James Bond certainly knows it. But is it discrimination? Uh, well… don’t know. Got to think about it more. At least the man on the ad looks mighty nice, except not as scantilly-clad – so, equal opportunity would be nice.

Anyway, hope my linking to legalish articles doesn’t mean I’m violating professional ethics in any way – this isn’t meant to advertise my lawyer services or even to hold myself out as an expert in any way. Geez, I wonder if changes in the ethics code would affect whole websites like Findlaw – where lawyers abound – or even someone like Dahlia Lithwick (who’s more journalist these days than lawyer)… Heh…

Miscellaneous:

Was Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame a real colonel?
The Mars Global Surveyor may have met its end.
The idea of college presidents blogging… well, it’s kind of weird to think about, to say the least.

So… no more nasty election campaign ads. They get replaced by… Christmas shopping ads. Crap: it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, people! Sheesh!

FC: great photos from the wedding/reception. Looks like everyone had a great time!

I’m getting very excited about the new Bond movie. Probably not seeing it this weekend (the opening weekend gets the crazies out, don’t they?), but will have to see it. My man Clive Owen might not have gotten the role, but Daniel Craig’s looking mighty fine to me. Not classically handsome (but then I don’t consider early Sean Connery to be classically handsome either), but looking – well – rather hunkish anyway. Mmm. 😉

Today, Princeton’s going after the Ivy League football championship title, and Harvard’s playing Yale. The reason why I mention this: well, I don’t know – just kind of weird seeing this Harvard-Yale game on my tv right now. Not like my Alma Mater’s team was any good this year (as usual). Interesting story in the NY Times concerning Ivy League football and why they can’t seem to be on the same level of similar schools that find a way to balance sports and academics (like Stanford or Duke or something):

But less than a month after the 1981 season ended, the Ivy League was expelled from big-time college football. In a squabble over television revenue, the eight Ivy institutions were demoted to the N.C.A.A.’s Division I-AA. Given the chance to appeal, the Ivy League presidents did not protest and instead willingly walked away from the highest level of a game their teams created.

Twenty-five years later, that quiet act of rebellion stands out all the more in the increasingly commercial world of major college sports. Ivy League leaders say they have protected the academic stature of their institutions, avoided the stain of recruiting and classroom scandals, and nurtured athletics as a truly amateur endeavor.

“Thank goodness,” said Derek Bok, Harvard’s president in 1981 and its interim president now. “The quality of football is not the primary objective of the institution.”

But there have been tradeoffs: fewer victories, diminished television exposure, disappointed alumni and dwindling attendance. On the eve of tomorrow’s annual Harvard-Yale game, the wisdom of the 1981 downsizing of football is still broadly debated.

“It has been painful to watch the unnecessary atrophy of the league,” said John Rogan, Yale’s quarterback in 1981. [….]

The debate intensifies when the Ivy League is compared with institutions like Stanford, Northwestern, Duke and the service academies, which still compete in Division I-A and adhere to high academic credentials. It is often suggested that the Ivy teams could have maintained their Division I-A status, which would have likely boosted recruiting and attendance, while playing league opponents and a mix of games against institutions with similar academic standards. [….]

“Once you start worrying about a national football championship, then you begin to worry about getting the quality of athlete, and the numbers needed, to win a national championship,” Bok said when asked why football is kept out of the postseason playoffs. “And that worry leads to pressure to compromise academic standards to admit those athletes. That’s how even responsible institutions end up doing things they don’t like doing.”

With that kind of thinking dominating the positions of leadership, a scenario in which the Ivy League would step up in class to join Division I-A football programs like Stanford or the service academies seems unlikely.

Jeff Orleans, the Ivy League’s executive director, said, “For those who wonder why we didn’t stay in Division I-A as Duke, Stanford and Northwestern did, I would ask, what do you think of their football experience this year?”

Duke’s football team is 0-10 this season. Stanford is 1-9 and Northwestern is 3-8.

“One could argue,” Orleans said, “that the Ivy League has had the better football experience than those institutions have had for the last 25 years. You might want to ask why they didn’t do what we did.”

But others say Ivy League football is too central to the game’s history to be in its current position. The teams were perennial national champions from 1869 to 1939 and were still nationally ranked well into the 1970s, but now they frequently lose to less established programs with no national reputation. More demoralizing might be that these games are often played in storied locations like the Yale Bowl and Harvard Stadium before crowds that fill only one-fourth of the seats.

“It’s depressing when you can walk up to one of those great old Ivy League places 15 minutes before game time and buy a ticket without even waiting in line,” said Joe Restic, who coached at Harvard for 23 seasons beginning in 1971. “It all started with the I-AA classification. Right away the recruits said to us, ‘I don’t want to play with the second-class citizens.’

“The Ivy presidents should have fought it. A great institution should try to excel in whatever it undertakes. We didn’t have to play Notre Dame, but we should have held the line so we could still compete with our traditional nonleague rivals. Instead, before the season started I could look at the schedule and see three games where I knew our chances of losing were very high.”

A balancing of interests indeed.

The week:

ABC’s “Ugly Betty” had their Thanksgiving episode a week early. Debbi Mazar plays a shady immigration lawyer (oops) who managed to take the money but not really help Betty’s dad’s illegal status issue. Betty is torn between trying to balance her career and her family, but realizes that it probably is ok to give her sister (a bossy sort if there ever was one!) a shot at doing more for the family too. Betty tries to support her boss, Daniel – the man who’s trying to get over his himbo (rather than bimbo) image in being an editor of his dad’s fashion magazine (Vogue-like magazine that’s part of the dad’s big corporate media empire); nice friendship thing developing, as Betty becomes the one to recommend that he wear a purple shirt on his sort-of date and has to get him home because he drunk after getting spurned bythe newest editor in his dad’s Media Empire, well played by the show’s producer Salma Hayek.
After seeing a few episodes of “Betty,” I think it’s a pretty well done show – characters are interesting, touching and funny moments are balanced. It’s very much an Americanized network version of the telenovela of Spanish tv – some over the top moments, but still some quality stuff. Heck, if you can make Vanessa Williams’ villainous Wilhemina a human being (particularly in the area of her dealing with her estranged teen daughter), you’re doing a pretty good job in developing a good tv show. The stuff I don’t care about (probably because I missed the first couple of episodes and therefore don’t really understand what’s going on): this weird conspiracy Wilhemina and Fey are doing on Daniel’s dad. Apparently, Fey is pretending to be dead to make her ex-lover the Media Mogul go crazy (Medial Mogul apparently treated Fey as his beloved mistress, since his wife, played by the ex-“Who’s the Boss” star Juditch Light, is an alcoholic). Don’t know why they’re doing this storyline since it’s annoying. Otherwise, I like Betty and her family – they bring a nice element of diversity that’s sorely needed on tv.

“Grey’s Anatomy” this week – interesting. I usually do like Meredith Grey, but even I realize how annoying she can be. I like it best when Meredith’s trying to deal with her Alzheimer afflicted mother – it make Meredith more human again, not just as Surgical Intern or Dr. McDreamy’s Girlfriend. Meredith has issues to get over regarding her parents, so it’s interesting to see her stumble over them again and again. The Chief, Dr. Webber, has decided to stop visiting Ellis, Meredith’s mom and his ex, because – well, apparently he wants to go back to his wife. Funny how he confessed this to McDreamy and Dr. Addison and neither were listening to him! Dr. McSteamy continues to treat Alex like crap; sooner or later, someone’s got to realize that. And, will Dr. Burke’s malady be officially discovered? As Cristina told him: George knows! Dr. Webber will not be happy with Burke, forget even Dr. Bailey (who probably should murder him, forget Cristina).

I watched most of this week’s “Heroes” on NBC. I’ve watched some of it before, but haven’t had the discipline to watch a whole episode and figured I’d ought to, since I’m such a big superhero fan (but having been disappointed in seeing these shows not meet up with potential). Looks like they’re finally moving to get the disparate people with superpowers together very soon. Gosh, I hope so – the too many characters and the rather slow pace gnaws on me. I keep wondering if these storylines will meet up already. Next week is apparently the big episode. Ooh!

Election Night had the feeling of Living In the Middle of History. Exciting to think “Good Grief, the Dems are really pulling it off?!” Montana and Virginia pulled through for Democrats in the senate races. The Founding Fathers’ checks and balances (and compromises) may prove victorious – and an end to one-party rule in this country for the last several years.  Indeed, the whole Election season reminded me of the time when I was young and watching the Democratic convention of 1992 on tv – when VP candidate Al Gore made that stirring speech of “It’s Time for a Change!” Time for a change all right.

Bob Menendez keeps NJ Democratic. Elliott Spitzer is Governor-elect, finally – kind of felt anti-climactic. I guess the hard part is the governing part now – something our friends in D.C. and Albany are going to have to pull off now.

TV coverage was kind of odd – I watched mostly ABC (considering that we segued into Election Day coverage after Dancing with the Stars – where more Americans probably called in to keep Joey Lawrence on tv than actual voting) – well, I kept wanting more from Charles Gibson. Katie Couric didn’t bother me, but I felt a little weird when Couric and the CBS crew seemed to be pulling out the exit polls stuff (when I thought we were moving away from the lack of accuracy in exit polls). I found myself wanting to watch more of Brian Williams and the NBC crew (they even brought back Tom Brokaw as an analyst), but kept going back to ABC, since that’s been my habit. ABC News Now on-line, via Yahoo, was entertaining actually – Sam Donaldson being funny; then into the wee hours as Sam in DC and the NYC ABC News Now pair kept hoping something would come out of Virginia but knowing “not really” and the NYC pair realizing that they haven’t eaten food yet (me thinking, “umm, you ABC guys are on the West Side and you can’t just order food in? Embarrassing!”).

NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley felt the whole coverage seemed to have a bit much testosterone. Can’t say that I disagree. Slate’s Troy Patterson thought there was some color – well, that and how Anderson Cooper had a nice suit.  Of course, I don’t have cable, so I wouldn’t know if Anderson had a nice suit or not – but I went to CNN.com and they had a photo from Election Day – mmm.  Yeah, that’s a nice suit.  He wears things very well (considering he was once a model – is it a surprise?).
The end of Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Time for a change… Change for good? Well, I’m in the middle of some interesting reading, and the thought that kept coming up in my reading is that when Pandora opened the box, at least hope stuck around. Kind of an apt thought for the age we’re living in.
An amusing profile on Senator Harry Reid, Democratic Party leader, in the NY Times:

Harry Reid began Election Day with 50 situps and 80 push-ups (very red state of him) and 40 minutes of yoga (very blue state of him).He spent most of the momentous day in his Senate office, waiting. Just after 2 p.m., he finally heard some actual news: Britney Spears was filing for divorce.

“Britney Spears,” Mr. Reid said, shaking his head. “She loses a little weight, and now she’s getting all cocky about things.” He added, “Britney has gotten her mojo back.”

Few would peg Mr. Reid, 66, as someone with anything to say about Britney Spears or, for that matter, someone who would ever use the word “mojo.” But he is a tricky figure to pigeonhole or predict, a Democrat who is a Mormon opposed to abortion and who looks more like a civics teacher than someone set to become the most powerful person in the Senate.

As much as I think he must be excited to become majority leader, it is really weird to imagine that Harry Reid would (a) care about Britney Spears (who really did the GOP a huge favor by filing for divorce and taking some attention away from them) and (b) use the word “mojo.” Heck, would any senator use the word “mojo”? That was probably the one word not coming up during the whole Menendez v. Kean campaign and the mudslinging.
The passing of Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes. It’s just so sad and sudden. He was different and interesting as a journalist – not just a model as a journalist who was a person of color. The obituary that I linked was from the NY Times and it had a moving quote from one of Bradley’s close friends, Charlayne Hunter-Gault (formerly of MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour):

For Ms. Hunter-Gault, who left The New York Times for the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour” on PBS in 1978, Mr. Bradley was more than just someone who helped clear an early path to national television for herself and other black journalists — a distinction he shared with, among others, Max Robinson and Lem Tucker.

“I think people might want to characterize him as a trailblazer for black journalists,” she said yesterday, by cellphone from outside Mr. Bradley’s hospital room just after his death. “I think he’d be proud of that. But I think Ed was a trailblazer for good journalism. Period.”

In the weeks before his final hospitalization, Mr. Bradley had been scrambling to finish the Duke report in particular, while fending off what would become the early stages of pneumonia.

“He just kept hitting the road,” Ms. Hunter-Gault said. “Every time I talked to him, he was tired. I’d say, ‘Why don’t you go home and rest?’ He’d say, ‘I just want to get this piece done.’ ”

“He was proud of what he did,” she said. “But he never allowed that pride to turn him into a star in his own head.”

“In his own head,” she added, “he was always Teddy.”

As of the hour I write this, the polls in NY are still open until 9pm – if you haven’t voted, go vote!

I did vote, but at least two areas of voting in which I was not terribly happy. Oh well.

At least see what tonight will bring!

Poking around Time’s special Midterm Blog (fascinating stuff – heck, they got Time tv/media critic James Poniewozik on board!) and they linked to Cute Overload as a way to make us feel better on this Day of Madness (can’t find the original Midterm Blog post, but it’s somewhere there). I’ve passed by this Cute Overload website before – sooo cute!