Topic: Around Town
The New York Times was first published on September 18, 1851.
[living like scandinavians]
Topic: Personal
It’s that time of year again: Daylight Saving Time! Personally, though I dislike losing an hour of my weekend and getting up an hour early, I love what Daylight Saving Time actually does for us. It may be a bizarre legislative hangover from a bygone era, but it gives us long summer evenings. And I love long summer evenings. I like to get out of work when the sun is still up and go walking for an hour or three through Manhattan, exploring the city in the extended evening glow. The end of Standard Time means the end of the Dark Months, even more than those first little leaves or a daffodil peeking through the soil. Summer is on its way.
DST also makes the time difference between sunset in December and sunset in June that much more extreme, so we can all feel just a little bit more like Scandinavians. And that’s pretty cool too.
[retracting the retraction]
Topic: Politics
As far as political crises go, a yawning kid at a Bush speech shouldn’t be a major one. CNN reported, though, that the White House was claiming the video was faked or manipulated, but then CNN backed off that claim.
I bought CNN’s line, but it has been pointed out to me that this is standard operating procedure for both the White House and CNN: the former likes to put out attacking rumors anonymously and see if they fly, then deny responsibility — revealing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, suggesting Richard Clarke is gay or hearing voices, etc. And CNN, perhaps out of some desperation for the crumbs of access it thinks it needs to compete with Fox, folded the instant the White House told it to. Which is why we don’t watch CNN.
Paul Krugman has a bit more on the matter in the New York Times [via Talking Points Memo].
[psychedelic drought]
Topic: Culture
Have you noticed how very unpsychedelic our current cultural moment is? As were the ’80s that we’re so tediously rehashing, this is an era of cocaine and Republicanism. Indeed, our whole society seems to be living in a cocaine cycle: blasts of grandiosity interspersed with hollow periods of baseless paranoia.
It turns out that the demand for psychedelics hasn’t dropped, but that the supply of acid has dried up. I know that as a good citizen I’m supposed to be happy about that, but I’m not. Psychedelic drugs have a way of knocking down dogmatism: how certain can you be about anything when you know your whole world view depends on the presence or absence of 30 micrograms of a particular chemical in your brain? (The moral effect of a strong psychedelic is a lot like that of traveling to a very strange country, which explains why they call it a trip.)
I like psychedelia. Whether it’s John Lennon pretending to be a walrus, Kurt Cobain standing too close to his amplifier, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreaming of the Khan’s pleasure dome, the exploratory, multilayered, richly hued aesthetic appeals to me. And I believe it does something positive for the culture at large.
Ah, well. It’s from played-out times like these — the late ’50s, the late ’80s, the Restoration — that something new rises. I just hope it’s noisy and weird.
[how time works]
Topic: Around Town
According to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, “One Millennium Comes to an End and a Next One Begins.” I believe this took place somewhere around January of 2000, though I’m sure Harlan Ellison would argue the point. But I just want to thank the marketing flaks at the Port Authority for clarifying what happens at the turn of a millenium.
[a yawning confusion]
Topic: Politics
Wonkette has an update on the Story of the Boy who Yawned. The video wasn’t faked, but apparently the White House response was: CNN now claims the Bushies never said word one about the affair. So my apologies to the White House for buying into the story.
And this is yet one more reason to stop taking CNN seriously. I gave up on CNN back at the start of the Iraq war, when even FOX News was taking a critical look at the slowing advance, but all CNN could talk about was the nonstory of Jessica Lynch, which had some compelling human interest and about zero political or military importance. And anyway, BBC World kicks both their asses. And has anchor Mishal Hussein, who is so dreamy. If I had a locker, her picture would be pasted to the inside of the door.
[teasing eve]
Topic: India
A couple of items about women in India:
- A BBC column on what Indians call “Eve-teasing,” which is what we call “sexual harrassment.”
- A disturbing report on the very high suicide rate among women in South India.
I hope to say more about this soon.
[bouncebouncebounce]
Topic: Personal
You know those coffee makers at work that fill up a whole urn? Ever get impatient and instead of waiting for the urn to fill, just stick your mug under the spout at the start of the brew cycle?
I did.
Guess what? The coffee’s really strong! Really, really strong!
*jiggle* *bounce* *twitch*
Maybe a li’l too strong. Next time, I think maybe I should wait until the urn fills up.
[nyc fact of the day]
Topic: Around Town
By the 1640s, 18 non-native languages were already spoken in New York City.
[okay, this is just sad]
Topic: Politics
It’s become distressingly obvious that the instinctive White House reaction to any sort of criticism is to go immediately on the attack without bothering to check facks and see if they’re, well, lying. It’s like honesty doesn’t even occur to them. But this, this is just sad.
Apparently the Late Show with David Letterman ran a clip of a Bush speech in which a boy of about 14, standing just behind the president, yawns conspicuously several times, scratches himself, checks his watch, and finally falls asleep. It was a comedy bit — a bored 14-year-old is hardly a major political crisis — but CNN picked up the clip, and the White House responded by declaring the clip a fake, claiming it was created by studio editing. Letterman responded by saying that was a lie, that the clip was real and the kid was there. Then the White House admitted that okay, maybe the kid was at the speech, but he was standing somewhere else. Except that wasn’t true either. The kid was really there. The White House felt it was better to lie than to allow the American public to believe that a 14-year-old boy could get sleepy at a Bush campaign rally.
Credibility gap, anyone? [via Wonkette; see still images here.]