Able to leap tall buildings, but . . .

Anal IEDs

With all of the West's technology expertise, how come we can't detect and trigger detonators and explosives from safe distances?  That's the way to stop suicidal martyrdom - - drop them in their tracks to explode alone or, even better, with their accomplices.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Way too late

Safire - RIP

PR man, White House speech writer, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist, wordsmith, grammarian and libertarian conservative, dead at 79.  Makes today's breed of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter and Beck look small.

I'm guessing this obituary from The New York Times was reviewed and approved in advance by Safire.  Today's Wall Street Journal opinion page also honors Safire as "a competitor who had our back when we needed him."

Safire's PR genius, for GE appliances at the time, led to the Nixon Khrushchev "kitchen debate."  Safire recalls it here.  Fascinating.

It's like renting out the Anne Frank house for a bachelor party

We saw Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds yesterday on a rainy, winter's-coming Sunday.  What a glorious mess of a film.  It's interesting how much mileage Tarantino has gotten out of Japanese and now Germans in his films, though he's clearly an equal opportunity offender.  That's a bingo.

Yankees' 100th Win Clinches AL Title

The Yankees win, theeeeeee Yankees win!

I don't care. I really don't care.

Weeks after the ACORN videos hit YouTube, The New York Times public editor, Clark Hoyt, makes as close to an admission that you'll ever read that the paper's reporting has a liberal bias.

Read his latest column, Tuning in Too Late, in response to criticism that the paper failed to report the ACORN scandal, where he quotes NYT execs as saying the paper was “slow off the mark,” and blamed “insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio.”

Target Iran

Is there any doubt Iran's nuclear program is for military purposes?  Though Ahmadinejad continues to call Iran's program peaceful, his belligerence as a Holocaust denier and oft-made threats to "wipe Israel off the map" suggest otherwise.  Now the world knows  - Iran is hellbent on developing and deploying nuclear warheads.

So what's next?  More speeches, hand-wringing and toothless sanctions?  Was Obama's capitulation to Russia on missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland a pretext for Russia's UN Security Council cooperation (read no use of its permanent member veto) for action against Iran?   Israel went it alone in 1981 with Operation Opera destroying Iraq's French-built reactor at Osirak.  The UN, including the U.S., condemned them, but all heaved a great sigh of relief.

And why does Iran need "peaceful nuclear energy" in the first place?  Their sand sits on some of the world's largest oil reserves. But why waste your own oil generating electricity when a nuclear plant can produce it far cheaper and cleaner? Can't argue with that logic. Unless the real goal is enriched weapons-grade plutonium. 

Staffordshire Hoard

You know the people you see waving metal detectors along the beach?  Once in a while they make real discoveries.  Like Terry Herbert who found the 1.500-piece Anglo-Saxon Hoard in Staffordshire, England.  What a thrill that must have been.

The New York Times reports:

"Tentatively identified by some experts as bounty from one of the wars that racked Middle England in the seventh and eighth centuries, they included dagger hilts, pieces of scabbards and swords, helmet cheekpieces, Christian crosses and figures of animals like eagles and fish."

Bad Medicine

Delaware Governor Pete du Pont's op-ed in The Wall Street Journal today makes several salient points about the flaws in ObamaCare.  Some excerpts below.

"President Obama addressed Congress two weeks ago on the issue of health care, and on the same day an Associated Press GfK poll showed that the proportion of Americans who strongly approve of the way he is doing his job has fallen from 41% in December to 24% now. And the percentage of people who strongly disapprove of his performance has risen from 6% to 35%.

Those serious declines no doubt have to do with many issues--economic decline, the massive spending increases (enacted and proposed) of $6.5 trillion over the next decade, the coming massive tax increases that are presidential and congressional priorities, and currently most important, the proposed governmental takeover of health care. On that matter, more than 1.3 million people have signed and sent to Congress the Salem Radio Network's Free Our Health Care Now! petition to make sure individuals, not the national government, make their health care decisions.

But the Democratic congressional leadership, led by Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, has now offered a bureaucratic, government-intrusive health care proposal. The details change daily as the bill works its way through the Finance Committee, which Mr. Baucus chairs, for there are more than 500 proposed amendments being considered. But the bill would start off by imposing annual fees of $6.7 billion on health insurance companies, $4 billion on medical device producers, $2.3 billion on drug manufacturers and $750 million on clinical laboratories, all of which would surely be passed on to consumers in higher prices. The insurance companies' $6.7 billion fees alone would come to some 60% of the industry's after tax earnings.

But America's health care is not doing badly. Indeed a National Center for Policy Analysis study from last March shows how much better we are doing than countries like Canada, Britain, and other European nations that have government health care control:

• Breast-cancer mortality is 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in Britain than in the U.S.
• Prostate-cancer mortality is 457% higher in Norway and 604% higher in Britain than in the U.S.
• Eighty-nine percent of middle-aged women in the U.S. have had a mammogram, compared with 72% in Canada.
• Fifty-four percent of men in the U.S. have had a prostate-specific antigen test, compared with 16% of Canadian men.

As for the availability of health care, another study shows that 74% of those in the U.S. meet for scheduled doctors appointments within four weeks, while only 42% of British and 40% of Canadians do. Only 10% of Americans wait longer than two months, while 33% of Brits and 42% of Canadians wait that long.

On average, doctors in a survey say neurosurgery should be performed within 5.8 weeks, but in Canada it takes about 31 weeks. And orthopedic surgery should be within 11 weeks, but in Canada it takes 37 weeks. So it is pretty clear that government health-insurance monopoly is dangerously inefficient."

They took my Kiehl's stuff!

It happened again.  Airport security, this time at O'Hare, cherry picked and seized my favorite Kiehl's shampoo, face and body stuff at the security gate.  With uncalled for delight, she tossed them in the garbage.  I huffed and walked around the corner and then peered back to watch her take them out of the garbage and put them in her bag. 

I just went to kiehls.com and discovered they have a line up of "travel ready formulas" that meet the 2.5 fluid ounce restrictions.  I'll be ready next time with the right sizes . . . and one $15.50 8.4-ounce bottle of urine shampoo - - ready for the taking.

Talker in Chief

In case you still weren't sure if there's liberal media bias, the Monday edition of The New York Times didn't just report, over and over again, the fact that Obama made appearances on five Sunday morning talk shows which were taped last Friday at the White House, it published front-page, above-the-fold photographs of each as well.  The only show missing?  Obama's refusal to appear with Chris Wallace on the Fox News Channel.  Funny, you'd think the president would jump at the chance to take his message to independents and conservatives.  Nope.

Here's a good analysis of the "tribulations" of national health care in the United States from The Wall Street Journal's Dan Henninger.

Roll your own

Very clever Weeds season 3 on DVD poster.

Take Your Tent and . . .

First New York City's Central Park said no, then New Jersey said no, and now Bedford, New York has issued a stop work order to Muammar el-Qaddafi, the man Ronald Reagan called the "mad dog of the middle east," from pitching his bedouin tent on Donald Trump's Seven Springs estate.  Qaddafi's in the U.S. for the UN assembly, as is Iran's "elected" president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Couldn't the City of New York find them each a nice room and friendly roommate on Rikers Island?  The views and security are top notch.

According to The New York Times:

"First thing Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama is to give his big address to the General Assembly, his first as president of the United States, and also as president of the Security Council. The big question: will President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran stick around to listen?

"Mr. Obama’s address will be followed directly by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, and then by Mr. Ahmadinejad himself, so it should make for an interesting day."

Empty Nest Syndrome

Yep.

Roz Chast ~ The New Yorker

Jung's The Red Book

Utterly fascinating account on the origins, secrecy and imminent publishing of Carl Jung's The Red Book, from The New York Times.

"He described his visions as coming in an 'incessant stream.' He likened them to rocks falling on his head, to thunderstorms, to molten lava. 'I often had to cling to the table,' he recalled, 'so as not to fall apart.'

"For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him. Between appointments with patients, after dinner with his wife and children, whenever there was a spare hour or two, Jung sat in a book-lined office on the second floor of his home and actually induced hallucinations — what he called 'active imaginations.'

 "Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings."

 "He worked on his red book — and he called it just that, The Red Book — on and off for about 16 years, long after his personal crisis had passed, but he never managed to finish it. He actively fretted over it, wondering whether to have it published and face ridicule from his scientifically oriented peers or to put it in a drawer and forget it. Regarding the significance of what the book contained, however, Jung was unequivocal. “All my works, all my creative activity,” he would recall later, “has come from those initial fantasies and dreams.”

Making Friends Enemies

Remember all the explosive Obama campaign accusations about how the Bush administration alienated both our enemies and friends abroad, sullying the reputation of the United States?  Remember Obama's campaign debate pledge to follow through on the deployment of missile shields in Eastern Europe?  Well, fuggeddiboutit. That was just campaign speak. Tell it to the Czech Republic and Poland who stuck their necks way out for us.

The flip flop is based on "military intelligence," an oxymoron if there ever was one.



When ballistic missiles hit our and allies' shores, you can bet on hearing a new military intelligence estimate.  Remember Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, or what his critics called Star Wars?  Well, that led directly to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and varying degrees of freedom to many of its satellite Eastern European countries.

And so now Obama is letting Putin and Medvedev off the mat, making them more likely to use their oil and gas reserves as economic and political weapons, or worse, to cross borders to punish and kill emerging democracies like Georgia when they attempt to join Nato.  All this for Putin and Medvedev who actively trade with Iran and use their UN Security Council vote to weaken sanctions there.

Just last summer, VP Biden visited Ukraine and Georgia and then, in typical Bidenesque fashion, spouted off about how "the U.S. and Russia aren’t strategic equals.  I  think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold,” he said, noting that Russia’s economy and population are “withering.” “They’re in a situation where the world is changing before them and they’re clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable.” As for the arsenal Russia inherited from the U.S.S.R., Mr. Biden said, “They can’t sustain it.”

So now we embolden the injured bear?  By the way, where is Secretary of State Clinton, our chief diplomat, on all of this?  I imagine she's not a happy camper.

Vineyard Vistas

  

Photo: Meg Reinhart

Zoo York

Great New Yorker story about the origins of Broadway.

I didn't know that what the Indians called Wickquasgeck and the Dutch called Brede Weg was anglicized to Broadway, now a theme park.

Sentiment

What an emotional and gentle word for Wall Street.

Da Bronx

C'mon championship number 27.

Evolution - The Greatest Show on Earth

Two fascinating essays on God's existence/nonexistence, by former nun and TED-prize winner Karen Armstrong, and ethologist and aetheist Richard Dawkins, aka Darwin's Rottweiler.

Some Armstrong excerpts:

 "By the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.

"Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history."

 Some excepts from Dawkins:

"Look, through the eyes of a physicist, at a bounding kangaroo, a swooping bat, a leaping dolphin, a soaring Coast Redwood. There never was a rock that bounded like a kangaroo, never a pebble that crawled like a beetle seeking a mate, never a sand grain that swam like a water flea. Not once do any of these creatures disobey one jot or tittle of the laws of physics. Far from violating the laws of thermodynamics (as is often ignorantly alleged) they are relentlessly driven by them. Far from violating the laws of motion, animals exploit them to their advantage as they walk, run, dodge and jink, leap and fly, pounce on prey or spring to safety.

Never once are the laws of physics violated, yet life emerges into uncharted territory. And how is the trick done? The answer is a process that, although variable in its wondrous detail, is sufficiently uniform to deserve one single name: Darwinian evolution, the nonrandom survival of randomly varying coded information. We know, as certainly as we know anything in science, that this is the process that has generated life on our own planet. And my bet, as I said, is that the same process is in operation wherever life may be found, anywhere in the universe."

Bad Form

Listen to Kim Clijsters' reaction here. She exposed the real "fault" in Williams' behavior without saying so directly. You either have class . . . or you don't.

Biking Byrne

Brilliant.

"As someone who has used a bicycle to get around New York for about 30 years I've watched the city—mainly Manhattan, where I live—change for better and for worse. During this time I started to take a full-size folding bike with me when I traveled so I got to experience other cities as a cyclist as well. Seeing cities from on top of a bike is both pleasurable and instructive. On a bike one sees a lot more than from a freeway, and often it's just as fast as car traffic in many towns."

Plus, David Byrne has a new book coming out next week, Bicycle Diaries.

I just love riding a bike.

2,722 - Number 2 is Number 1

After 72 years, on 9/11, with 64 fewer plate appearances than Lou Gehrig, and 24 years to the day that Pete Rose passed Ty Cobb's record for most hits.  Right as rain.  Congratulations to the Cap'n.

Twitter TOS

 

Did you just get Biz Stone's note about Twitter's new terms of service?

Basically, "You are what you tweet."

The founding fathers would be proud.

September 11 Digital Archive

 

It's all here. 

"The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath. The Archive contains more than 150,000 digital items, a tally that includes more than 40,000 emails and other electronic communications, more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images. In September 2003, the Library of Congress accepted the Archive into its collections, an event that both ensured the Archive's long-term preservation and marked the library's first major digital acquisition."

For It Before I Was Against It Redux

 

Yep. Via WSJ.

"John Kerry, the former junior Senator from Massachusetts, was back in Boston Wednesday, urging the state legislature to change the law governing U.S. Senate vacancies. The seat held by Edward Kennedy from 1962 until his death last month is to be filled in a January special election. Mr. Kerry, echoing a letter Kennedy wrote not long before he died, asked lawmakers to enact legislation allowing Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a Senator to serve in the interim.

"What Ted proposed is a plan that is hardly radical," Mr. Kerry declared in his prepared testimony. "It's hardly even unprecedented, even in Massachusetts." That's for sure. The law in the Bay State provided for interim appointment by the Governor as recently as 2004. That, of course, was the year that Mr. Kerry won the Democratic nomination for President. Just in case he won, the state legislature changed the law to strip the Governor of this power. That change also came at Senator Kennedy's urging.

What changed in the ensuing five years? In 2004, the Governor, Mitt Romney, was a Republican. Mr. Patrick is a Democrat. So are the overwhelming number of state lawmakers, who overrode Mr. Romney's veto. Raw partisan advantage explains why Mr. Kerry, like his departed colleague, was for the 2004 change before he was against it."

Mannahatta & Recovery and Renewal

 

Fascinating op-ed on Manhattan's "remarkable capacity to recover and renew" from today's New York Times.

"In September 1609, the beach near the tip of the island was surrounded by thickly wooded hills. Passenger pigeons flew overhead; porpoises hunted in the harbor. Around 600 Native Americans lived on the island. And they were the ones who, on Sept. 12, must have watched as a European, Henry Hudson, guided his small wooden ship into the Muhheakantuck (later Hudson’s) River, cleaving the waters with the narrow prow of history that would one day create New York City in its wake.

To the native Lenape people, whom Hudson met and traded with, Mannahatta meant “island of many hills.” Modern ecological research has shown that Mannahatta was an island of remarkable biological diversity. Its 55 ecosystems encompassed stately forests, rich wetlands, sandy beaches and rocky shores, eel grass meadows and deep marine waters. This 25-square-mile island had 66 miles of streams and more ecosystems per acre than Yellowstone; more plant species than Yosemite; and more birds than the Great Smoky Mountains National Park does today.

 Today, we honor the memory of all that was lost and sacrificed on 9/11. But in thinking back 400 years, in imagining the Lower Manhattan of the distant past, we can join that memory to another realization: that we, and the world we live in, have a remarkable capacity to recover and renew."

9.11.01 & 11.22.63

Another thoughtful editorial by Peggy Noonan.

"I'd never fully realized this: 9/11 was for America's kids exactly what Nov. 22, 1963, was for their parents and uncles and aunts. They were at school. Suddenly there were rumors in the hall and teachers speaking in hushed tones. You passed an open classroom and saw a teacher sobbing. Then the principal came on the public-address system and said something very bad had happened. Shocked parents began to pick kids up. Everyone went home and watched TV all day, and the next."

Baseball's Worst Beer Value

 

From today's Wall Street Journal.

"According to data collected by Team Marketing Report for the 2009 season, beer prices vary dramatically among big-league teams. A 21-ounce beer costs $4.75 in Pittsburgh, but you'll shell out $8.75 for a 20-ounce brew at San Francisco's AT&T Park. This led us to wonder: Does quality have anything to do with beer prices?

Surprisingly, it does. A team with a .600 winning percentage charges, on average, about $1.30 more for a 16-ounce beer than does a team with a .400 percentage.

Nothing compares to Boston's Fenway Park. There, you'll pay $7.25 for just 12 ounces—a rate that is, ounce for ounce and win for win, the worst beer value in baseball."

Mooning the Moon . . . on a Bicycle

A Darwin Award candidate.

From The Martha's Vineyard Times: Full moon over Ocean Park lit nude thief's way

"Under the brilliant moon, Officer Oteri ran after the cycling suspect. 'I continued running down Samoset Avenue where I observed a male who appeared to be naked riding a bike.'

The officer caught up with the cyclist and identified himself as a police officer and ordered the naked man to the ground.

Mr. Robinson dropped the bike and faced the officer. The officer again ordered him down. The man said, 'Why, I didn't do anything, what the [expletive] is your problem?'

Officer Oteri drew his pepper spray and told the man he would use it if the culprit did not comply. He did.

'Mr. Robinson was attempting to wear a dark colored T-shirt as if they were shorts," the officer wrote in his report. 'Robinson had stepped through the arm and neck hole of the shirt with his legs, and nothing else.'"

Rhetoric

 

Obama certainly gives good speeches, including last night's exuberantly confident health care address to Congress.  Too bad the campaign's over now and that so little really happens after his rhetorical flourishes . . . other than his ever-lower poll numbers.  Also, he's pretty loose with the facts.  Stories abound this morning about South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson's "You Lie!" outburst (how foolish can one be?) but let's remember that calling "Bush a liar" was a core Obama campaign message so let's not all get too tied up in our nappies.  Americans also remember the crisis lamentations that were used to rush the Stimulus bill through last fall, written and passed by a Democratic super majority that has not delivered on its promise of growth and employment.

Now we have the health care crisis, that unless fixed right now, repeat right now, the sky will fall.  This is all about the Obama administration's dwindling political capital.  If the administration can not  pass its 1,000+ page healthcare bill now and score a success, Obama's remaining three years will be hobbled and the coming 2010 mid-term Congressional election will result in a realignment of Democrat and Republican numbers and clout.

From The Wall Street Journal's editorial page:

"Mr. Obama's most remarkable sleight-of-hand was his claim that he "will not stand by as the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are." The reality is that nearly all of those "special interests" are standing with him. The doctors' lobby, the hospitals, Big Pharma, even the largest insurers have all invested enormously in government health care.

Mr. Obama's speech was less about persuading the public than it was a political pep talk to this Beltway constituency. He hopes to buy enough political breathing space with a bump in the polls—however short-lived—to steel their nerves to power ObamaCare into law. The only way to stop it now is with a giant wave of popular opposition."

One of the reasons so many Americans oppose this massive government takeover of health care is because the economy still isn't growing again and unemployment is about to climb over 10 percent.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Very cool.


Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Derek Jeter, Derek Jeter

 

2,721 hits as a New York Yankee, tieing Lou "The Iron Horse" Gehrig's record. 

As Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto would say . . . HOLY COW!

Number 9, Number 9, Number 9

 

09/09/09.  And The Beatles still reign.

Monopoly goes online

Monopoly City Streets, powered by Hasbro and Google, goes online today.

Hope & Change?

 

Insightful article in today's Wall Street Journal titled, "Obama and the Left - The lesson of the rise and fall of Van Jones."

The abrupt resignation of White House aide Van Jones, deep in the news hiatus of Labor Day weekend, will probably be forgotten in a few days. But it's a story that still deserves elaboration for what it says about the political coalition that helped to elect President Obama and whose demands are leading him into a cul-de-sac.

Mr. Jones's incendiary comments about Republicans and his now famous association with a statement blaming the U.S. for 9/11 had to have been known in some White House precincts.

Our guess is that Mr. Jones landed in the White House precisely because his job didn't require Senate confirmation, which would have subjected him to more scrutiny. This is also no doubt a reason that Mr. Obama has consolidated so much of his Administration's governing authority inside the White House under various "czars." Mr. Jones was poised to play a prominent role in disbursing tens of billions of dollars of stimulus money. It was the ideal perch from which he could keep funding the left-wing networks from which he sprang, this time with taxpayer money.

No President is responsible for all of the views of his appointees, but the rise and fall of Mr. Jones is one more warning that Mr. Obama can't succeed on his current course of governing from the left. He is running into political trouble not because his own message is unclear, or because his opposition is better organized. Mr. Obama is falling in the polls because last year he didn't tell the American people that the "change" they were asked to believe in included trillions of dollars in new spending, deferring to the most liberal Members of Congress, a government takeover of health care, and appointees with the views of Van Jones.

United Steaks of America

 

Yum.  Via photographer Dom Episcopo.

Congress @ Work

Do you have time to fritter at work playing solitaire? Members of Congress do. With a 30 percent approval rating, I'm hoping most get the boot in November 2010, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Good editorial from Dan Henniger at The Wall Street Journal.

"The ever-entertaining Karl Marx described a society's least politically engaged people as the lumpen proletariat. Well, it's beginning to look as if the globe's lumpen proletariat has decided they've had about enough of the lumpen bureaucratariat. It could be a revolution under way, though not the one predicted by the boys at the barricades.

To Mr. Marx, the lumpen proletariat (often slurred into a single word, lumpenproletariat) was the most marginalized, hopeless, faceless swath of the underclass. Were he alive at this moment, it is not beyond imagining that Karl would have joined the charge against what has become a lumpen bureaucratariat—the permanent, often faceless overclass of gerrymandered politicians, bureaucrats for life and the public unions and special interests that swim alongside like pilot fish."

MetSloppily

 

Play the new game - MetsSloppily!

As columnist Rick Horowitz said, "In a perfect world we'd all be Yankees."

Act Now and Get the Bass-O-Matic!

Who you gonna call for alcohol in the "most challenging arena of the legal consumables industry?"

But that's not all.  It's quadruple distilled using Herkimer diamonds!

Makonikey Sunset . . .

with Meryl and Walter . . . and Georges De Latour 2003.  Namaste.

                        

The Vineyard’s Yankees fans

 

From the October issue of Martha's Vineyard Magazine.

"They live among us. They sort our mail. They butcher our meat. They deliver our propane. They date our daughters. They scarf chowder like ordinary Vineyarders. But citizens, beware: They are New York Yankees fans, embedded right here in Red Sox Nation. Never mind the aliens who infiltrate the Island in summer, sporting those dark navy baseball caps with the white logos. We’re talking Yankees fans who are year- round Vineyarders of long standing. They are countless in number. They have no shame. You got a problem wit dat?"

Empty Nest

 

This article, "As College Begins: What's Lost, What's Gained," really hit home, wherever that is.  Our second and last son at home left for college Wednesday.

Joe College's Debt

 

It not just banks, homeowners and federal, state and local governments that are drowning in debt.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the unprecedented levels of student debt in an article titled "Students Borrow More Than Ever for College, Heavy Debt Loads Mean Many Young People Can't Live Life They Expected."

New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements—the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools—in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget.

The new numbers highlight how debt has become commonplace in paying for higher education. Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college, and their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they graduate, according to an analysis of the government's National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by financial-aid expert Mark Kantrowitz. Only a dozen years earlier, according to the study, 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.

 The ripple effects for today's heavily indebted young people are becoming palpable. A growing body of research suggests that tough loan payments are affecting major life decisions by recent graduates, forcing them to put off traditional milestones—from buying a first home to even marriage and having children.

In a 2006 survey of 1,508 graduates under age 35, 39% of college graduates say it will take them more than 10 years to pay off their household's education-related debt. The survey says that this has caused a delay in certain key "rites of passage" associated with adulthood. Forty-four percent of respondents said they delayed buying a house because of their student loans, while 28% delayed having children.

Swine Flu Couture

It was the 3rd of September . . .

The CLIO Awards

Other than cutting grass, painting houses, and oh yeah, delivering beer in Burlington, Vermont, my first real job was as publicity director for advertising's CLIO Awards in Manhattan. Writing about and publicizing the world's best television commercials was a hoot.  Plus, being in your early 20s and hanging out with celebs in the green rooms of the network morning and evening talk shows was pretty cool.  I left in 1984 due to tragic substance abuse problems with the owner that finally caught up with him in 1991 and forced the sale of the company to new owners.

So, this advertisement for next year's competition has a real deja vu meaning.

Spiderman Summits Petronas Towers

Though the original in this urban exploration genre is Philippe Petit, another Frenchman, Alain Robert, aka Spiderman, continues to defy and conquer the world's tallest buildings.  Petit wirewalked, Robert climbs.  Yesterday, Robert summited the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur after two previous attempts . . . and arrests.

P.S.  The documentary on Petit, Man on Wire, c'est magnifique.

Top 10 Impressive Single Game Baseball Feats

 

Guess I'm getting pre-playoffs fever. This is a cool list from Listserve.

I never knew Ty Cobb stole home 54 times in his career, along with 852 regular base steals.  Known as The Hammer for his aggressive style of play, look at how he's stealing home in mid-air, spikes out, ready to collide with the catcher.  No wonder he stole home so many times.