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February 14th, 2009
 | 01:14 pm
The way the Pentagon edits the video it sends out influences the way you see the war.
I'm grieved by the plane crash in Buffalo yesterday; among those who were aboard was Gerry Niewood, who played sax in Chuck Mangione's various bands for upward of 40 years. I met him during an interview with Chuck Mangione during the 80s, and had such a wonderful time talking with them about music and touring. (One of my favorite vinyl albums is a Mangione concert album from about 1970; the version of Hill Where The Lord Hides that has the two of them trading off on the main theme against a barely rhythm-punctuated silence at the beginning still puts shivers down my spine. The album, unfortunately, has never made it to commercial CDs, and the versions of the songs on it that are recorded elsewhere do not have the same energy.) Here, a pilot has thoughts on exactly what happened to the plane and why.
Congress went beyond Obama's views in limiting CEOs' bonuses -- but remember, the recent flurry of government funding to stimulate the economy was pushed entirely by the Democratic party, so some of this may be seen as a slapdown to fatcat Republicans who profited during recent bad economic times. But some is certainly in answer to questions about what, exactly, was done with your money.
Three years ago, Republicans all but lynched Democrats over the possibility of filibustering their bills. Now, the same twofaced Republicans think of the filibuster as their dearest friend.
In term of religion, Alabama = Iran.
In Kansas, Shawnee Mission High School kids turn a Fred Phelps protest into a money-raiser for AIDS research.
In Arkansas, some people will be out of electric power for weeks. Sunfell suggests donating to the Arkansas Rice Depot, or buying one of their gift baskets or soup kits (which are yummy.)
How is the brushfire recovery going in Victoria, Australia? This article mentions places donations may be sent to help with wildlife and humans.
In France, in 1999, civil unions were made available for same-sex unions; now, 92% of straight couples use them as well. But more than a sixth of them end their civil unions in order to get married.
In Utah, of all places, an interesting move: the governor is supporting civil unions.
Free speech on campuses? Not so much these days, to the detriment of both thinking and education. If you only listen to those who agree with you, what do you really learn? If you have only a thesis, and no antithesis, where is your synthesis?
How are the pension funds doing? (Bear in mind, this is from a fairly free-market/Republican viewpoint.)
The Wilson Quarterly considers McCulture -- do Americans really have a taste for things that are completely foreign? If we do, why are so few books translated? I'd also like to ask -- why does the ISBN system only catalogue books published in the US, not all books in English? [Correction: I said ISBN, but I was thinking of Books In Print, the reference used by all US booksellers, which doesn't go outside US borders.] I have done a considerable amount of business with British, Canadian and New Zealand online bookstores over the year, simply because the books I wanted (not even translations) were unavailable in the US and nobody here would order them for me at all. It's possible that the reason I keep trying to learn other languages was that my father purposely forgot the Italian he learned, growing up, because the anti-Italian prejudice was such that he could not be hired in his chosen profession at the time, and my mother refused to learn it when she came to the US which put her at a disadvantage when dealing with critical inlaws. Whereas I would rather attempt to learn the language and argue back.
I'm glad I'm allergic to peanuts, though. They're looking increasingly dangerous.
How an Italian town rescued a priceless film collection.
A thought on last night's Battlestar Galactica: ( the symbolism is hitting me like a frying pan to the head )
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