Category: Brooklyn

Friday was the day that lasted the week. It included purchasing a burial plot for my parents, recovering the car from the movie people (they dumped it 9 blocks away with a $45 fine — boycott the movie version of RENT, folks), going to the funeral home.

Saturday was spent finding where the Kings County Morgue is to release the body to the funeral home people as well as getting appropriate clothes.

Sunday my bro came in. I bought Italian cross buns after receiving visions of baked goods, I kid you not.

Monday was when all of the final arrangements were made. It took three hours. More Italian food. Emails went to everyone.

Today was spent taking care of paperwork for my mom, and scraping up the cash for Thursday and Friday. Going to the airport to pick up my mom’s relatives.

I’m OK mostly because P– has been propping me up. Every other hour the sadness wells up and I have to force it back down before it gushes out uncontrollably. I still have to work on the eulogy tonight.

“Pop” — my father — died this morning. I got the call from my mother at about 3 am. P- drove me to the house, where half a dozen cops were present, including several Chinese cops and a Chinese sergeant, which I was surprised. Thankfully, he passed away peacefully in his sleep.

Upon leaving, P-‘s car was towed because of a film shoot. 5 hours later after frantic calling to every city hotline, we discover it is 8 blocks away.

Today I am going to make arrangements for the funeral. I have no idea how much this will cost, or whether it will be affordable, or even how it is to be done. But I have to do what I can to cherish his memory.

Tomorrow – yep, this is it. NCAA championship. Bracket time – watching the teams duke it out. Of course, Alma Mater is not in the tourney (and hasn’t in 30 years; plus, this season ended really poorly for the men’s basketball team, even if with the hope that Alma Mater will be better; it was a rebuilding year, I think; the women’s team had their own strange debacle). Let’s see who’s the Cinderella team this year. I got my brackets ready! (did not make the silly mistake of picking Stanford all the way this time).

Oh, and yeah, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

Yesterday – I saw “Hitch” with a friend. Fluffy movie, but funny. Will Smith in a romantic comedy – he’s good when he’s not in a blow ’em up movie. He plays Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, the date doctor, who will help hapless men earn their way toward love with women (hmm – the average men getting the beautiful women, by listening to what the women say and trying to be sincere, as per Hitch’s advice. Um, okay, sure, Hitch.). Hitch though won’t take his own advice in pursuing open, honest love, since he was scarred by the adulterous moves of his college sweetheart. He has to learn to be more open with Eve Mendes’ character, a tabloid gossip columnist, who takes his date consulting work the wrong way (at least in her excessive men-are-pigs viewpoint; but don’t women want men who make sincere efforts to want to get to know them and doing interesting and nice things for them? Didn’t get that about her character, since she seem to think all the moves are just to get into the bed).

Loved all the NYC background scenes – they filmed it right around the waterfront/Esplanade of the World Financial Center in downtown. And, Hitch’s Alma Mater (in a funny little flashback scene) – I laughed – it’s my Alma Mater! I swear, Alma Mater’s getting herself in all kinds of NYC setting movies these days, and it just looks great. (old buildings make nice facades, I guess).

NY Times’ editorial on Sunday – Adam Cohen discusses College Board’s dropping the analogies in the SAT (boo/hiss!):

We are living in the age of the false, and often shameless, analogy. A slick advertising campaign compares the politicians working to dismantle Social Security to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a new documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” Kenneth Lay compares attacks on his company to the terrorist attacks on the United States.

Intentionally misleading comparisons are becoming the dominant mode of public discourse. The ability to tell true analogies from false ones has never been more important. But to make room for the new essay portion of the SAT that was rolled out this weekend with much fanfare, the College Board has unceremoniously dropped the test’s analogy questions, saying blandly that analogical reasoning will still be assessed “in the short and long reading passages.”

Replacing logic questions with writing is perfectly in keeping with these instant-messaging, 500-cable-channel times, when the emphasis is on communicating for the sake of communicating rather than on having something meaningful to say. Obviously, every American should be able to write, and write well. But if forced to choose between a citizenry that can produce a good 25-minute writing sample or spot a bad analogy, we would be better off with a nation of analogists. [….]

Questions of this sort are the building blocks of arguments by analogy, which are a mainstay of many disciplines. Philosophers like Aristotle relied on analogies to reason about man and nature. Scientists have long analogized from things they know to things they do not, to form hypotheses and plot experiments.

Law is almost entirely dependent on analogies. In my first year of law school, my contracts professor, Gerald Frug, said something brilliant in its simplicity: “All things are alike in some ways and different in other ways.” It was a warning that for the next three years, we would hear endless arguments that a case must be decided a particular way because a previous case or a statute required it. The two cases, or the case and the statute, would always be alike in some ways and different in others – and law school was really about arguing whether the similarities or the differences were more important.

Nowhere are analogies more central than in politics. When Karl Marx wanted to arouse the workers of the world, he compared the proletariat’s condition to slavery and, in “The Communist Manifesto,” urged them to throw off their figurative chains. [….]

The power of an analogy is that it can persuade people to transfer the feeling of certainty they have about one subject to another subject about which they may not have formed an opinion. But analogies are often undependable. Their weakness is that they rely on the dubious principle that, as one logic textbook puts it, “because two things are similar in some respects they are similar in some other respects.” An error-producing “fallacy of weak analogy” results when relevant differences outweigh relevant similarities. [….]

The last election was decided, in significant part, on specious analogies. A man who went to war, and came back to protest that war, was compared – by a group whose name helpfully contained the phrase “for truth” – to men who betray their country. Today, the federal tax system – which through much of the nation’s history kept government income and expenditures in rough balance – is being compared to “theft” and recklessly dismantled.

The College Board’s Web site explanation that analogies are being dropped because they are “less connected to the current high school curriculum” itself shows a stunning lack of logic, since it does not explain what the “less connected” refers to. Less connected than they used to be? Than other parts of the test? But in any case, it is a dangerous concession. Since the SAT no longer contains analogy questions, here is one: A nation whose citizens cannot tell a true analogy from a false one is like – fill in your own image for precipitous decline.

Interesting points; food for thought, I daresay (and the analogies were never my favorite part, either, I might add). Plus, I can say that I do feel bad for high school kids and the new essay portion, but – you know what? – my best advice to high schoolers out there is: Don’t stress it. Do what the test prep people have advised me in my standardized test past – just read the damn question, spend a few minutes thinking and scribble what you’ll say, and then write – intro/middle/end, three sentences for 3 to 4 paragraphs, and move on to the next question. Then pen down and breathe. College Board graders only care if you can write a basic sentence, unless I’m completely wrong on that score. We’ll see how this all comes out after this new SAT grades come out.

So, I get to look forward to making a presentation at work tomorrow, to train others on policy. Umm, okay. We’ll see how that goes. I’m just looking forward to the Law School Alma Mater alumni dinner; mmm, free food…

Have fun travelling, FC. Keep us posted as to what’s up while on the road!

Spent part of today learning how I can be more involved with the Undergrad Alma Mater. Came to the conclusion, once again, the being Asian American isn’t simple; and that the dream that Asian America will one day learn to unite continues (or, as I’d joke, “Can East Asians and South Asians come and work together?” is going to remain a perpetual question). Numerically speaking, East Asians (particularly Chinese/Chinese Americans) outnumber the other Asians in the East coast (I’m just using that by way of example, not trying to be exclusive), which ends up making the East Coast universities’ Asian Alumni groups more East Asian by appearance – but it isn’t really the reality, not quite that. Just my own two cents, really; don’t attribute my opinions to others (particularly with whatever group I’m affiliated), please! Oh, and my own personal questions of how Alma Mater may reach out and be more effective with alumni (both alumni as a general population of the Alma Mater community, and alumni of color specifically) – those continue to persist too. Guess I have to be patient and remain open-minded, and learn more as I go along.

Some snow this morning, but nothing more than a dusting; supposedly warmer (but the air remained chilly; wind chill closer to the 30’s rather than the actual 40 odd degrees temperature).

Pay attention to the map on the right side of the page. I’m going on the road again for the next three weeks. Washington, DC on Monday. Tokyo on Saturday. Nagoya the following Saturday. Taipei the Tuesday after that. I am so not packed for this. Well, I have two days..

Don’t have too much to contribute above what SSW had to say, but it just hit me that nobody on Google News has used this title. Dan Rather is going to “60 Minutes” to go back to what he enjoyed doing, field and investigative reporting. I can understand how once when you get to the top of your game, you don’t feel like you can go back; it’s a good thing that Rather can go back to what he enjoys doing. Not too many people can do that. Yes, it does take “Courage”.

On the CD player right now: (the best of) NewOrder. That song “Bizarre Love Triangle” is one of my favorite sing-along songs – “Waiting for that final moment…”

Good bye to Dan Rather, the anchorman. I missed watching the actual goodbye itself (I just don’t get home early enough for the weeknight news anymore), but in the primetime slot, CBS broadcasted a tribute show, “Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers.” Daily News tv critic, David Bianculli, gave it 3 1/2 stars out of the 4 star range – and I have to agree, after watching it, that was a nice tribute. It gave a good roundup of the life and career of Dan Rather, Reporter. Rather the Reporter gave it as good as he got. As Bianculli notes:

[The tribute/retrospective] does exactly what so many of Rather’s critics lately have refused to do: It puts his career in a full and fair context.

“A Reporter Remembers,” airing at 8 p.m., doesn’t shrink from the so-called Memogate that cost four of his colleagues their jobs and shadowed Rather’s exit from the flagship newscast, but he doesn’t lead with or obsess over it, either. […]

This special makes clear, though, that Rather doesn’t feel defeated, and has a lot about which to feel proud. More than that, it shows flashes of defiance that are as much a part of Rather as any colloquial homilies.

“A Reporter Remembers” doesn’t seek out current colleagues to assess Rather’s personality and legacy. Instead, it turns for perspective to Rather’s former CBS News and network boss, Howard Stringer, who recently was promoted to run all of Sony.

“He’s inclined to be lightning,” Stringer says of Rather. “His personality,” Stringer adds, “resists the idea of anchor.”

Stringer says it, Rather says it, and the footage in “A Reporter Remembers” certainly supports it: Rather thinks of himself as a reporter, first and foremost.

And, I agree – the clips of Rather the Reporter, from his days in Vietnam, in the White House press corps (annoying LBJ and Nixon), were really good compelling stuff. And, Rather telling his anecdotes about being spat at while covering the Civil Rights movement stories were moving stuff, especially coming from his Texas background and having grown up during the segregation era. And, I felt for him as he was being accused of having “liberal bias” (frankly, Rather’s bias always seemed more about personal bias – as in “I’m Rather the Reporter, Out for The Story”; and anyway, I just don’t think “liberal” ought to be seen as some derogatory term). But, I was always underwhelmed by Rather the Anchorman. Maybe his post-anchorman news life can remedy all this that has happened to him. I think Dan deserves better in his twilight years.

Oh, and the way the tribute ended with clips of Rather’s weird commentary from the insane Election Night of 2000 – that was just hilarious. Rather: “The fat lady may not have sung yet, but she’s backstage humming…” 😉

And, other news stuff – Nightline had a story on bloggers last night. Really interesting stuff – the bloggers out there are convinced that they’ll take over the world – but, during a weekly discussion at Harvard Law, they’ll concede that this is still some work in progress, since the rules on blogging aren’t really there, even if, as a form of media, the power to post stuff makes them no less powerful than the NY Times or other media entities on line. Hmm.

I taped last night’s Fox’s “House, M.D.” and watched it – hilarious dramedy. The series has set in the pattern: Dr. House, brilliant diagnostician, is trying to bail out of clinic work, by driving the chief Dr. Cuddy insane; Dr. House all but kills the patient by trying to figure out what the mysterious malady of the week is; Dr. House drives his staff, Drs. Cameron, Foreman, and Chase, insane; Dr. House is ultimately proven right. The medical stuff is still too much to swallow. But, I love the character bits. Too many funny stuff, as the character development takes another notch up – with how Cameron, the young woman doctor who has chemistry with just about all the men in the show, teases Australian dr. Chase, after the patient’s fiancee queried about whether rough sex might have made the patient sick. Cameron pushes Chase’s buttons, making him sweat with her funny monologue on how physically dangerous sex is, but for the fact that “God makes it so much fun.” Hehehe. (Chase obviously thinks Cameron’s hot, but not wanting to admit it; and, anyway, he got all defensive on her last week, when he refused to confess why he was so upset with his own genius doctor dad). So glad to hear that FOX is renewing “House, M.D.” (even if it is a show produced by NBC-Universal’s production company!).

Ah, but I do swear, in an alternate, fantasy SSW universe, the perfect tv network would let me enjoy my shows without over-relying on my VCR. No time slot conflicts – “Amazing Race” and “House” and “American Idol” and “Alias” can happily co-exist. I would still be able to enjoy sampling “Veronica Mars” or PBS shows without feeling too guilty over missing episodes. Oh well.

Comics: “Doonesbury” is currently doing a tribute to the late Hunter S. Thompson, journalist. Thompson has passed away, but the Doonesbury character inspired by him, Uncle Duke, isn’t (well, he’s still more or less among the living, anyway). Even cooler – the Doonesbury website’s honoring Thompson by posting the comic strips that introduced Uncle Duke (ah, so now I see how Uncle Duke isn’t really Zonker’s uncle, but a Zonker Harris family friend. Still – Zonker inherited some of Uncle Duke’s weirdness).

I will unfortunately miss the Law School Alma Mater’s auction tomorrow – ah, the amusing law school social event. But, maybe I can catch something of it, assuming I head back to Brooklyn at an early enough hour. We’ll see.

Here’s a suggestion to the creative minds out there – invent a way to find missing keys (there was that episode on the Cosby show where the family bought Cliff a key chain that made noise when it’d go missing, assuming one has the remote control to set off the noise; what I wouldn’t do to have that right now). I’m just tossing the house upside down trying to find my keys…

Oh — Yay! I’m not insane after all – keys were in the pants pocket all along (ok, so I am insane after all for not having realized that at all – but oh well).

“Amazing Race” – Rob and Amber – I thought the part at the end where Amber says, “I could never have done it without him!” was too funny – I mean, yeah, Amber, you could never do anything without Rob (and that smirky lying self of his) (not to mention winning the million on “Survivor”). (on the other hand, what does Rob see in her anyway? other than being his ticket to championhood and another million, that is).

Hate frigid cold winter. Icy streets. Sucky subway. (the lousy MTA strikes again; not telling people why the train isn’t working isn’t a way to win over customers in the land of Bensonhurst, my friends). Two more weeks before spring…

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I’ve been investigating various means of teleconferencing at work, from IP Phones, Skype, Netmeeting (what a pain H.323 can be!), as well as checking out podcasting. I think it would be fun for us to try it. You really have to check out the Little Grey Book Lectures. They are a monthly long form variety show held at the Galapagos in Williamsburg. I thought the most enjoyable one was on “Hints on Public Singing”, specifically on the history of U.S. Patent 1,573,696, M. Fleischer’s “Song Motion Picture Film”, otherwise known as “Follow the Bouncing Ball”, the forerunner to the karaoke machine. And yes, the bouncing ball was invented in Brooklyn.

Monday’s New York Post Editorial honestly believes that we should suspend habeas corpus because nobody can figure out how to charge Jose Padilla with a crime. What kind of Republicans are these people?