Category: Brooklyn

Good grief — two of my Final Four picks are gone – Gonzaga and Stanford. Worse – I had picked them to be the final two; and Stanford was my ultimate champion. That’s March Madness for you (and proving that I’m no prognosticator). Perhaps it’s no surprise that Stanford would have fallen so soon – it had a great regular season, but had to be ultimately tested. And, Gonzaga – well, it’s not the Cinderella darling it once was, so perhaps it too was bound to drop off in the brackets. Is Alabama, which beat Stanford, on its way to something? Hmm.

The two local schools, Seton Hall and Manhattan, lost to the ACC schools, Duke and Wake Forest – in North Carolina. I didn’t expect Seton Hall to get passed Duke (and didn’t pick Seton Hall in my brackets), but went with my heart in picking Manhattan to be the upset over Wake Forest in my brackets. Of course, that was a Cinderella pick that didn’t work out. In further hindsight, it just seems a little unfair – Duke and Wake Forest were in their home area of Raleigh, NC, so perhaps they had the home field advantage. But, give Seton Hall and Manhattan credit for trying.

Let’s see how Round 2 goes tomorrow.

Well, I get on the plane and then the next day there’s a few substantive blogs to read. Woo, I should needle more often hehe….

I feel… traveled out (I think that can be a feeling or emotion?). About 7 weeks out of the country going from one place to another and now I’m back. Not sure how I should be feeling other than…. tired ? I’m glad I wasn’t hassled at SFO immigration and customs. I get off and while immigrations was easy, “Hi, Mr Blah, Bleh?” “Yes,” [stamp] “Thank you”. I saw a huge line in customs “Nothing to Declare” Line. The custom’s officer seeing my 2 large suitcases and carry on says, “Please exit” when I try to head to the big line. Cool! I feel bad for all those people probably still waiting to get cleared from customs.

I don’t know but the airlines look pretty full to me. All my Asian flights were fully booked and no detection that there’s an airline slump. I flew EVA unfortunately not a UA code share partner. I will try to see if I can get my trip miles post flight. I worry that all my air miles will go poof when UA decides to go out of business. I think it’s about 75% sure in 2-3 years. They just can’t seem to get themselves fixed up…. Oh, and why is Boeing getting their lunch eaten by Airbus? Because those seats are simply too small!!! I flew the Boeing 747-400 and sorry, it was really uncomfortable. Now, I know I’m a pretty big guy by comparison but people are getting bigger all the time. Boeing hasn’t kept up with the times and will soon be obsolete too.

I’ve survived my trip not having totally gained back all the weight I lost going there… Now it’s sorta back to semi-normal US California life although it’s sort of weird to say that since I have no idea what that means anymore. Given that I am going back to my “un-rooted” phase of life again, I guess emotionally, I can’t be attached to any one place. From the East Coast, I’ve moved out West for almost 5 years. I’ve made a number of friends and have started to get completely used to the lifestyle here. I’ve always missed the NYC Metro area and my friends there. In the back of mind, I’m still in NYC. I’ve traveled and moved to many places that making friends and keeping them is really tough. One of my oldest friends is returning to his roots, and moving to Chicago with his wife and kid. Without IM, e-mail and hopefully soon for more people, video-cam; I’m not sure how to keep it all together. It’ll be so much harder as I’m moving to Taiwan in May.

=YC

I’m awake and a game is on tv – Duke v. Seton Hall. In my brackets, I picked Duke, but Seton Hall’s a sort of hometown team – I feel almost torn. CBS has also showed way too much Duke stories on tv – good grief, they’re like the NY Yankees – on all the time.

NY Times has a nice story on the two NY metro area Catholic schools (who are both strangely detached from the urbanities of their connected areas) – Seton Hall (leafy university campus far from Newark, although the law school is still by the PATH station in Newark) and Manhattan College (which is actually in the lovely land of Riverdale, Bronx).

For the record, I’ll let you all know that my final four picks are: Gonzaga, St. Joseph, Duke, and Stanford. Unknown if it’ll happen, but each team is still alive at this hour. The only corner in my bracket where there’s much still standing is the Phoenix (West) region – only one out of 16 picks wrong – not bad. Not an altogether bad bracket this year. But where’s a Cinderella I can be content with?

And, no, I’m not that big NCAA junkie – just a mildly interested one (if I were a real junkie, then I ought to have followed all season, not just in March).

Historiography in action – what is history and what does the history of history reflect, and what does it mean when politics uses history for its own purposes? In an article for the NY Times, Antonio Feros shows how it’s getting messy when Spain’s elections seem to suspiciously recall its civil war of 70 years ago:

“But many historians in Spain are still troubled by the trend toward using history as a weapon in political debates. “The use of the civil war to interpret the present is very dangerous,” [Enrique Moradiellos, a historian at the University of Extremadura, Spain] warns. ‘And I am afraid that if we continue to do this we might provoke a radicalization of the political situation that could bring unwanted results.’”

Interesting point.

Other interesting questions about historical (so to speak) research: more on the Blackmun papers, and wondering whether they really reveal much at all, according to one of his former clerks , (who is very much a direct source as we can probably get for now).

In a NY Times op-ed, William B. Rubenstein, UCLA professor of law, goes into an interesting analysis on politicians’ use of framing arguments along Constitutional lines (i.e., asking how we keep within the governmental structuring), rather than getting to the heart of an issue (i.e., discussing what we want society to be and to do). He notes that maybe this Founding Fathers of the USA made the political system as it is to raise possibilities of compromise (evade the harder discussion of what kind of society we want by making us talk about the “easier” one – how do we stay within the Constitional frame – first; the Founding Fathers’ plans certainly would keep (and already have kept) the country stable before we tumble into disarray over the battle of issues). But, as Rubenstein notes, it is a real odd way to “discuss” politics.

Taiwanese election results just out; curious developments there.

Back to basketball…

Spring has sprung, and there is some traces of snow melting before our eyes, but can we remember what we want to forget? Haven’t seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but based on the reviews, I can see that we live these attempts to remember and forget every day. I’d love to wipe out the memories of this winter. The movie sounds awesome — it has a high Fresh-o-Meter — maybe we’ll see it on the way to San Diego next weekend with P-.

Saw The Big O Part 1. This anime is basically (dark) Batman meets big-ass Godzilla sized Japanese robot warrior. The major premise is that because of some unknown type of warfare, the entire city-state has lost their memory, but nothing physical has been destroyed, so they are reconstructing civilization based on what they have around them. Recommended.

Judged a moot court competition on Thursday. The plot: reality show producer puts cast(aways) on U.S. territory out in the middle of the Pacific. Turns out it was a former nuclear and biological weapons test site and everyone gets sick and dies, including the producer. The network scores high ratings. The producer, 2 weeks before kicking the bucket, pleads guilty of manslaughter for the castaways’ deaths and points the finger at the network. The government wants to prosecute the network using what the producer said in court, but she’s dead and she can’t be cross-examined. It’s much more intricate, involving attorney-client privilege, public relations firms, Homeland Security, and a bothersome Supreme Court case, but that’s the outline. For those legal geeks here, the bizarre thing is that we have an inanimate defendant pressing its Confrontation Clause rights against a dead woman. Definately not what the Founding Fathers were thinking about.

Food craziness : today dimsum at Dim Sum Go Go, a work dinner party at Tavern on the Green. Thursday, we did La Paella in the East Village, recommended.

And the basketball stuff continues. And my bracket’s not looking too bad right now. Sort of. Depends on the results of the Pittsburgh-Central Florida game.

Developments in the case of James Yee, the Asian-American/Muslim/army chaplain who was in Guatanamo Bay; Army appears to be dropping the espionage charges – but Capt. Yee will still face a (relatively minor) penalty for downloading porn on the government-issued laptop. Oh, and apparently, the adultery charges too. Ah, well.

Friday’s arts: NY Times’ Holland Carter writes on the Asian art exhibit in Washington, D.C. – such nice writing and sounds like a great exhibit.

I’ve been noticing the latest commercials on Mr. Peanut (the Planters mascot), and they never seemed to stir much in me; plus the latest Mr. Peanut appearance during the NCAA games are odd – where Mr. Peanut plays some basketball with the various college mascots – the animation uses too much bold, black lines. Looks too fake-cartoony to me. Personally, I think Mr. Peanut has too much of a shiny sheen that doesn’t look right. NY Times ad man, Stuart Elliot, notes that Mr. Peanut’s transformation is less about his Fred Astaire debonair but more on a slick attitude that goes with the times – and change may not be too good for Mr. Peanut.

The latest Entertainment Weekly’s interesting – Hugh Jackman on the cover and a preview of his upcoming movie – “Van Helsing.” More curiously, EW profiles the tv show “Las Vegas,” which I concede isn’t too bad a show – watchable (although I haven’t watched a full hour of it in awhile – it is admittedly nothing too heavy-weight) – but the article clarified some of the characters who kept confusing me (i.e., James Caan’s character is a higher level executive in that casino after all; and yeah, Nikki Cox’s character was a prostitute in the pilot episode, wasn’t she?). So, maybe “Las Vegas” deserves a second look one of these days.

Back to basketball – get ready for Round 2 of the tournament.

Back to blogging; the hiatus, due to the fact that
(a) been busy – work can be exasperating;
(b) I did do two blogs on 3/15 – and even added that postscript on 3/16, so that wasn’t good enough for you? 😉 Eh;
(c ) did you really want more pointless rambling from my messy mind that soon anyway?; and
(d) spent last night on-line shopping on Barnes and Noble – got to take advantage of the discount that was good until 3/21. I bought yet another Learn-Chinese (Cantonese) item, as part of the neverending-yet-to-be-fulfilled quest to improve my pathetic Chinese language speaking ability.

I was watching first round NCAA basketball tournament, Division I, as we speak – and I was actually (gasp) rooting for Princeton. Yeah, I’d root for the alma mater rival, just to see the not-likely-hope of seeing an Ivy League team progress in the March Madness – but that was just a dumb move on my part, as usual (N.B.: Princeton, seeded 14, lost to Texas, the 3rd seed; fortunately, what I had actually put down on my brackets was Texas, but I was still hoping for Princeton, so that part of my brackets wasn’t completely screwed). But, if you really want to see a school with great academics and athletics, you’re better off rooting for Stanford or Duke, I guess. I’m still waiting to watch some part of my brackets go bust by the end of tonight.

And for timeliness, Slate.com’s Explainer explains “Why is it Called ‘March Madness’?” There are tidbits in that article to amuse trademark law enthusiasts.

Slate.com tends to have moments where there are lacking of articles to note and then strange bursts of great reads. The last couple of days were some of the greater reads days. Among other things, check out Dahlia Lithwick’s “Jurisprudence” articles for yesterday (Lithwick notes how some members of Congress apparently do not understand the concepts of having three branches of government or having checks and balances, as demonstrated by their proposing a bill to “veto the Supreme Court” – or, as the bill is officially called, “The Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004”) and for today (Lithwick’s comments on Justice Scalia’s memorandum explanation for his refusal to recuse himself in the case against VP Cheney).

Fascinating NY Times article on the whole issue of social promotion of NYC grade school kids (recap for those not in the know: NYC Mayor worked his way to have the Panel on Education (the ex Bd. of Ed.) to vote to approve his end-to-social-promotion policy). For me, the article encapsulates a problem: we debate about “issues” but the reality is that we keep changing how we frame or define the issues anyway and, the bottomline is that, by constantly framing the issues differently, we can’t even abide by our own discussions and thus we have no answers to real, perennial, social problems.

As the article notes, political liberals say that the issue is about “nurturing kids” (ending social promotion = bad; repeating 3rd grade is humiliating) and political conservatives say that the issue is about “mastering basic skills” (ending social promotion = good; get left back and you’ll finally learn how to do math and read). But, real education experts cut through the chase and say that it’s neither/nor – it’s about what services do you provide for kids. This is a question to which the usual partisan politicians have no real, easy answer (after all, they’re thinking that saying “I don’t have one quick solution” is not what they want to tell the voters – and that assumes that they believe the voters are so stupid as to reject the complicated, grayer answer).

Fascinating NY Times article on language and world views: contrasting how China and Japan view their own places in the global neighborhood and noting how such world views are expressed in their respective written languages. The Japanese language apparently distinguishes between who are Japanese and who aren’t (even if one is of Japanese ancestry), while the Chinese language apparently considers overseas Chinese as, well, Chinese (even if one is as incapable of speaking the mother tongue). My conclusion: there’s no such thing as a monolithic “Asian.” China and Japan have their own self-perceptions to deal with.

Food articles!… Ed Levine on Cheesecake! (the debate on what’s the best cheesecake in NYC will never go away), and Nigella Lawson on cooking for one’s own comfort (I’ve read the criticism about Lawson as a foodie writer, but I’ve enjoyed how she really displays the comfort in comfort food).

Now back to the brackets…

So it’s nearly 2am, working to get a presentation out for 9:30am meeting. Looks like winter still hasn’t left NYC. Meanwhile, it is cold here in Taipei but am getting ready to go back to California.

Working late and all the way until I fly out. It’ll be weird.

Seems like everyone is busy, no time to blog for 4 days hmmmm.

=YC

I finished reading the latest Star Trek: New Frontier book, “Stone and Anvil” (2003, hardcover edition). I read Star Trek books depending on the plots and characters and writers writing (and how frustrated I am with “Star Trek: Enterprise”). I’ve enjoyed Peter David for his good humor and fascinating characters. They do tend to get cartoonish and outlandish – but if done right, his writing is good reading.

Basically, “New Frontier” follows the adventures of the crew of the USS Excalibur (yeah, there are some blatant allusions to the Arthurian mythos), led by Starfleet Capt. Mackenzie Calhoun – a Capt. Picard protege who was M’k’n’zy of Calhoun on his home planet Xenex. When he was a teenager, M’k’n’zy led his people to overthrow the alien overlords, the Danteri, who were never the nicest of people. Since then, Calhoun, as he is now known to the humans and so on, is barely holding onto the grips of modern civilization and Federation ideals of diversity, democracy, exploration, and so on. Reminding him of those things is his sidekick, Elizabeth Shelby (best known as the tough blonde Starfleet officer of the “Star Trek: the Next Generation” penultimate Borg episode, “Best of Both Worlds” (wherein Picard became a Borg)).

In “Stone and Anvil,” Calhoun is confronted by the sad reality that one of his most loyal officers, Ensign Janos, is a murderer of one of Shelby’s subordinates. But, how did this happen and why; and meanwhile, Peter David (as usual) shifts from the storyline taking place in the present to chapters where we examine Calhoun’s past – how “Mac” got through Starfleet Academy (struggling) and came to accept his destiny as a Starfleet officer (grudgingly, yet loving the idea of command) even if it meant moving away from the love of his life (and, fortunately for him, regaining her later on; but it took about 11 books to get there).

The book is very much about one man’s journey (Calhoun), in parallel to another man’s downfall (Janos). I had quibbles about Peter David’s writing of the “Now” parts (i.e., the Janos storyline, wherein the Excalibur crew try real hard to help him) – the humor got a little overdone (Calhoun, you see, has the strangest crew on this side of the galaxy); but the “Then” parts (i.e., Calhoun’s past) were nicely portrayed – Calhoun was such an imperfect young man and he knew it – sort of, but he learned it the hard way. I still think that Peter David’s portrayal of Shelby tended on the Ally McBealish side, but I liked how she had her more sensible moments (in both the “Then” and “Now” parts). All in all, good subway reading.

Postscript (I thought I’d make this a comment, but, nah…): if you’d like, you can check out my thoughts on the previous New Frontier book, “Gods Above”, wherein Calhoun and Shelby deal with Beings who say they’re gods, but sure are mean about it. Thankfully, “Stone and Anvil” ended without the usual cliffhanger – heartwarming/heartbreaking ending. Peter David really ought to give his New Frontier books endings like these more often.

Bracket time for the NCAA basketball championship, which begins Thursday (or is it Wednesday?) – let the Madness begin!

Some interesting Slate.com reading:

Dahlia Lithwick reviews Ch. Justice Rehnquist’s book on the other closest election in US history (the 1876 one, where Hayes beat Tilden – which led to the end of Reconstruction and somewhere in all that Tilden had his own sex scandal). She posits that Rehnquist’s writing on that subject may actually hint at his thought processes of the Bush v. Gore (S. Ct. 2000) case. She notes:

“And while [Rehnquist] concludes that virtually every time a justice took on some executive function, it proved disastrous—from John Jay’s efforts to negotiate a peace treaty with Great Britain, to Robert Jackson’s yearlong prosecution of the Nuremburg trials, to Earl Warren’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination—he ends, oddly, with a resounding defense of the five justices who took part in the 1876 commission [that gave the presidency to Hayes].”

Hmm. Maybe I ought to read this book – it’s curious that Rehnquist would view the actions of Jay/Jackson/Warren so poorly – each action had such incredible impact on global/American affairs and was only fitting due to each man’s experiences (Jay was a diplomat in an earlier career; Jackson the judge from a country that beat the Germans in WWII; and Warren, a former prosecutor, if memory served me correctly).

“How do you say Pres. Roh’s name?” – Slate.com’s Explainer explains that, despite the Romanization, the impeached South Korean’s president’s name is pronounced “Noh” not “Roh.” No one ever said that transliteration/Romanization of Asian names is easy, I guess.

The latest Bushism gives new meaning to saying “Huh?” toward the things out of the American President’s mouth.

The latest “Ad Report” – Seth Stevenson gives an “A” grade to the Nike ad revolving around an alternate universe where tennis champ Andre Agassi is a Boston Red Sox shortstop (my thought, when I first saw the ad: “What? Andre, how could you?!”); Marion Jones, Olympic track runner, an Olympic gymnast (really odd); Randy Johnson, major league baseball player, a major league bowler (a tall one at that); Serena Williams as a volleyball player (transporting her tennis moves, apparently); and NFL Michael Vick as a NHL hockey player. I’d had to agree with Stevenson – that is an awesome Nike ad (and a scary alternate universe).

NY1.com – cool story about the Second Avenue Deli celebrating its 50th anniversary, with its 1954 prices (for Monday only). That means a $10.00 corned beef sandwich (2004 price) is 50 cents, plus cup of java for a nickel. Hehe.

So it goes…

Spring’s not coming soon enough, and March has too many weird fluctuating temperatures. ‘Nuff said there.

Yesterday’s NY Times’ article, “Brown University to Examine Debt to Slave Trade” was interesting: Brown – being the Ivy League school with an African-American president, a long history and influence in American history, and a liberal institution – might very well be the ideal place to explore the issue of reparations for the descendants of American slaves. Dr. Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown, is appointing a committee to explore the historical and other relevant issues of Brown’s ties to American slavery and the feasibility of slave reparations (if it is recommended or maybe something else may help reconcile slavery’s effects). I’m always not sure of what to make of slave reparations in the American context and worry about what it really means (yeah, yeah, wishy-washy lawyer talk/political moderate or what have you talking). So, I at least felt relieved to read the following paragraphs on Dr. Simmons’ view and Brown will consider in its impending two-year investigation:

“Dr. Simmons [the great-granddaughter of slaves], one of 12 children of an East Texas tenant farmer and a house cleaner, said she was motivated by a sense that the multifaceted subject of reparations had too often been reduced to simplistic and superficial squabbles.

“‘How does one repair a kind of social breach in human rights so that people are not just coming back to it periodically and demanding apologies,’ she said, ‘so that society learns from it, acknowledges what has taken place and then moves on. What I’m trying to do, you see, in a country that wants to move on, I’m trying to understand as a descendant of slaves how to feel good about moving on.’”

I certainly agree that “reparations” (whatever they may be) do get reduced to simplicity and superficiality. Too many complicated matters get reduced to simplicity: i.e., when society discusses race, the discussion gets reduced to mere “you bad/me good” stuff. But, nothing is that simple (although, hey, I may be wrong about that – maybe something out there is that simple). Personally (and I may be completely wrong on this), there are lots of good questions that need to be addressed: how do you repair the social breach in human rights? Can we look at a combination of options, and not just put the weight of the world on one option or another? Can we do that without condemning one option or another, as if the option selected is still entirely bad? ( – because, it probably isn’t). Part of dealing with race in America (or other similar kinds of dilemmas in the world) is education – litigation and settlements and things like that may not be the best ways to do. We may never be able to grant the promise that was never quite provided to former slaves back in the end of the Civil War (somehow, I figure the mule and 40 acres of land aren’t that useful the 21st century and I don’t think that throwing money at people will work either), but can we try something and at least go with it with the positive view that trying can be considered a good start? Hmm.

NY Times had a nice profile on Al Leiter, NY Mets pitcher, and his renaissance man ways – he’s a Republican with liberal leanings (i.e., he may have a political future, after his pro baseball career end); he likes Bruce Springsteen (umm, I can’t say much about that); he can talk articulately about baseball (i.e., he would make a great commentator); and he cares enough about baseball that maybe he might stick around to help it remain America’s institution. Hmm.

Now, I’m no drinker and I know next to nothing about whisky, so reading this article by Slate.com’s David Edelstein about whisky tasting was intruiging. Not only did I get to learn a heck of a lot about whisky, I thought it was nice, tight writing.

If you like, check out today’s Sunday Doonesbury. Incredibly funny and a nice point, too, about George W. Bush (or, referring him as the way Doonesbury cartoonist Trudeau draws him as “the guy symbolized by an asterisk”) vs. his father, George H.W. Bush (the president who I’d give a lot of credit for taking foreign affairs seriously, even if he seemed too internationalist and chummy with world leaders for his own good to the mind of a lot of people).

And, going for alliteration, today is Selection Sunday – NCAA will announce who’s going to the Championship tournament and what rankings. Time to make one’s brackets ready and by the next Sunday, I and lots of others will rip those brackets in half. And, yeah, it’s not like my alma mater is in the Tournament (like, ever?), but I always have hope that one day that our league (no, we’re not a conference like Pac-10 or ACC or what, and we’ve no Dukes or Stanfords, with the balance of athleticism and intellect) will make a good show at the NCAA (even if it means that the dreaded rival is the one doing the good show).

Yes, yes, I said that I would blog about a book and I will (tonight or tomorrow; I have to get my thoughts collected about that book). Otherwise, have a nice week.