Because this will never get old...

O.K. Go's "Here it Goes Again."

Caffeine

A transcript of my recent interaction with the woman behind the counter at the place where I get coffee:

Me: You're not getting decaf anytime soon, are you?
Her: Well we have decaf espresso that we can make into an Americano for you.
Me: Maybe next time. I just don't like to get so wired.
Her: What, you don't like the shakes?
Me: No, not really.
Her: You're the only one.


By the way, a woman gave birth in the lobby of my office building today. And I finished 100% of my crossword puzzle.

Cool Ad

Man, I'm in a groove today. This comes from Andrew Sullivan:

If you Love Coffee...

You HAAAAAAAVE to watch this video. Via SpliceToday.Com:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6jluj_oldelaf-le-cafe-english-subtitles_music

Shutting Down Broadway (Avenue)

According to the New York Times, Mayor Bloomberg will announce today (Thursday) that Broadway Avenue around Times Square will be closed to traffic beginning in May and lasting at least until the end of the year. The cross streets and 7th Avenue will be open to traffic, but the closed portions will be filled with benches and cafe tables with umbrellas. I guess they're going for the European look.

This sounds cool, but it's a shame that the only people who'll get to enjoy the new plazas will be the throngs of tourists that make Times Square totally unappealing to the rest of us. That place is mobbed enough as it is.

UPDATE: Apparently they're doing the same thing to Herald Square, which is around 33rd and Broadway. Cool.

Chinese Food

Who among us doesn't like Chinese food? I, for one, have always been a fan. My favorite kind of Chinese food, however, is not the kind that you can get at a semi-nice sit down restaurant. No, the best kind of Chinese food to be had, especially here in New York City, is of the take-out-only variety.

I'm talking about the kind of Chinese food where 9 bucks (in NYC no less!) will buy you an entree, an eggroll, a soda and a fortune cookie. The kind of food where you recognize the ridiculously high MSG and sodium content, but love it anyway. From the kind of place where you can barely understand the person taking your order, and they can barely understand you.

When our favorite Chinese take-out place, conveniently located across the street from our apartment, closed down unexpectedly about a month ago, we roomates panicked. Where would we get our belovedly awful Chinese food?! We tried a few other local places, but the quality was too high; the order-takers too fluent in English.

Finally, about a week ago, my roomate Alex discovered, via MenuPages.com, a sufficiently hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout place where the MSG content is high, the English skills are low, and the prices are just right. If you ever visit, we'll have to get some.


Ah, Chinese food in its rightful habitat: plastic bags and cheap takeout boxes.

But Don't Take My Word For it...

This is David Brooks' reaction to Jindal's speech, via TNR:

"We Believe Americans Can Do Anything"

That was the recurring catchphrase from Bobby Jindal's GOP response to Obama's speech. And it didn't get much smarter from there. Jindal's speech felt like it could have been directed towards middle schoolers - the type of audience that Karl Rove believes America is. If anything, it demonstrated the GOP's inability to engage and help solve the current problems plaguing the country.

Dance Mix

Ely Kim's BOOMBOX. This will probably be all over the net within the next couple of days.


BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

Good Mark Twain Quote

I empathize with him:

"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must."

Holocaust Oscars

Kate Winslet explains why she decided to do The Reader. So true, so true.

What's Government Good For?

Leon Weiseltier, literary editor at The New Republic, ventures into the political arena with this article encouraging Obama to, in a word, be more liberal. If you’re someone who appreciates government’s role in society, you’ll love this sentence:

"I want the president to tell the American people that, contrary to what they have been taught for many years, government is a jewel of human association and an heirloom of human reason; that government, though it may do ill, does good; that a lot of the good that government does only it can do; that the size of government must be fitted to the size of its tasks, and so, for a polity such as ours, big government is the only government; that strong government comports well with strong freedom, unless Madison was wrong; that a government based on rights cannot exclude from its concern the adversities of the people who confer upon it its legitimacy, or consign their remediation to the charitable moods of a preferred and decadent few; that Ronald Reagan, when he proclaimed categorically, without exception or complication, that "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem," was a fool; and that nobody was ever rescued, or enlarged, by being left alone."

Liberalism, at its heart, is about guaranteeing the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number of people. For liberals, government isn’t about suppressing liberty; it’s about ensuring opportunity.

Government will never be perfect, but as Weiseltier writes, “For all its grotesqueness, American government is a beautiful thing.”

Journalism

Everyone knows that the field of journalism is rapidly changing these days. Everyone also seems to agree that "old" media, like newspapers and print magazines, are going to die and that some as-yet-unknown "new media" platform will emerge triumphant. No one really knows what journalism will look like in the 21st century; just that it will look different than it has in the past.

That being the case, why would a timid 24 year old stuck in an entry-level job consider entering the field when everything is in flux? I don't know. I don't have a vision of what the journalism field should look like; conversely, I don't have a clear sense of how old media might yet be saved.

I'm envious of my peers who truly love their jobs, though if forced I could only name two or three who really do. What about the rest of us?

As a history and english major I've always been fascinated by two things: writing and facts. A straight-up history degree provides plenty of both but I imagine it could easily become too stifling. An english degree...well, there aren't enough facts.

In my fantasy world, journalism provides both writing and facts. In addition, it provides constantly evolving challenges. As a history person, you're dealing with events that have already finished. As a journalist, you're dealing with events that are constantly evolving. In my mind, the latter seems more exciting than the former. Plus, I think switching from journalism to history would be easier than the opposite route. Robert Caro, author of the Lyndon Johnson biographies I like so much, started out as a journalist.

But are all these tiny reasons reason enough for me to really pursue journalism as a career? I have basically no experience. I have few friends in the field. And the more well-established people I've spoken to usually say something like "well...things are different now than they were when I was coming up." Would I be a good journalist?

What next?

Bathroom Poster

Should I buy this?

Who's More Snooty?

Someone who reads The New Yorker or someone who reads The Economist?

The results of my informal poll:

New Yorker - 4 votes
The Economist -4 votes

A tie. That's disappointing and surprising. I would've thought it would be The New Yorker in a landslide.

Best President Ever

C-Span published a poll of 65 historians ranking our Presidents in order. My first response was: Truman and Kennedy above Jefferson?! WTF?!?!?!

I'll give my own personal Top 5 here:

1. Washington
2. Lincoln
3. FDR
4. Jefferson
5. Teddy Roosevelt
Hon. Mention: George W. Bush. Just kidding.

It's also sad for me that the only US President Dickinson College ever produced is pretty much the consensus "Worst President Ever." I guess that's why you never hear him mentioned in Dickinson's recruiting literature.

Japanese Finance Minister Drunk at G-7

Apparently Hoichi Nakagawa had about 10 too many drinks before taking the stage at the recent G-7 summit. According to the NYTimes, he ended up resigning. But really, can you blame the guy?

The Myth of the Centrist

Ross Douthat doesn't buy the myth of the magical centrist Senator. At best, Douthat thinks that centrist Senators make extremists a tiny bit less extreme:

“In this world, centrist Senators exist to take politics as usual - whether it's tax cuts in Republican eras, or spending splurges in Democratic ones - and make it ever so slightly more fiscally responsible. So if the GOP wants, say, $500 billion in tax cuts, the country clearly needs $400 billion in tax cuts - but not a penny more! And if the Democrats want $900 billion in stimulus, then the best possible policy outcome must be ... $800 billion in stimulus! To read this Arlen Specter op-ed, justifying both the stimulus package and the cuts the "gang of moderates" have attempted to impose, is to encounter a mind incapable of thinking about policy in any terms save these: Take what the party in power wants, subtract as much money as you can without infuriating them, vote yes, and declare victory.”

Centrists: make up your mind!

Pavarotti - Nessun Dorma

For the younger crowd out there...

Cat Leaps to Freedom

Steve-O's out!

There are few who can appreciate the amazingness of this line from an MSNBC article:

"Former "Jackass" star Steve-O is celebrating his release from a California mental institution, where he spent four months recovering from drug abuse last year, by appearing on the eighth season of "Dancing With the Stars."

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29017688/

National Geographic has some sweet pics

Turned onto this link by my friend J.

http://books.nationalgeographic.com/visions-of-paradise/voting-machine

Drugs are Bad, mmkay?

"Why is this happening to me?" says the drugged out kid.

So you're supposed to PAY your taxes?

Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority leader from South Dakota and Obama's nominee for director of Health and Human Services, pulled out of the running today a week or so after it was revealed that he failed to pay more than $100,000 of taxes over the past several years. So, apparently, ends the nascent second-chance political career.

This in addition to the withdrawl from consideration by Nancy Killefer, White House performance officer, earlier in the day, also for tax reasons. I guess Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary nominee whose tax problems have been well documented over the past several weeks, got lucky because he was the first one we learned about. Things might've been different if Daschle's and Killefer's problems had preceded him.

So Obama's honeymoon officially lasted about a week. Since then, problems with his nominees and the looming fight over the stimulus plan have given him loads of problems. How will he handle it? There's nothing we can do but wait and see.

More Winter? Dang...

Punxatawney Phil saw his shadow, I'm afraid. Six more weeks of winter. And on such a nice day, too.

High Fructorse Corn Syrup: "The Facts"

My girlfriend sent me a link to this website - http://www.hfcsfacts.com/ - which purports to "correct the record" regarding high fructorse corn syrup's bad reputation. The website looked a bit too slick, so I looked into who owns the site, and it turns out that it's run by the Corn Refiners Association, which is a corn industry trade association that represents, among other companies, Archer Daniels Midland.

A Wikipedia search says this about ADM:

"Archer Daniels Midland has been the subject of several major federal lawsuits related to air pollution. In 2001 the company agreed to pay a $1.46 million fine for violating federal and Illinois clean-air regulations at its Decatur feed plant and to spend $1.6 million to reduce air pollution there. [6] Based on year 2000 data,[7] ADM was listed as the tenth largest air polluter in the USA by the Political Economy Research Institute.[8] In 2003, ADM settled federal air pollution complaints related to the company's efforts to avoid New Source Review provisions of the Clean Air Act that require pollution control upgrades when a plant is modernized."

The Corn Refiners Association also represents Cargill, which is the largest privately held company in the world and, also according to Wiki, is responsible for 25% of all US grain exports. Michael Pollan mentions the company frequently, and not in a good way, in Omnivore's Dilemma because it refuses to divulge information about its foodmaking processes.

An interesting website, nonetheless. But I hesitate to trust "facts" that are coming from a source with such a clear bias.

The Morality of Abortion

Damon Linker, following up on his earlier post about the end of the culture wars, offers a useful insight:

"A final point. As a (moderate) liberal, I feel the force of the classic rallying cry with which Ed ends his post: "Oppose abortion? Don't have one!" We liberals love this argument because it makes us feel like we're being morally neutral on the issue: whereas abortion opponents want to force all women into one box, the pro-choice position can be affirmed by those who for moral reasons would never choose to have an abortion as well as by those who wish to undertake the procedure. Who but a misogynistic tyrant could argue with such an open-minded position?

But here's the problem: the position isn't morally neutral at all. Consider: Can you think of any other matter in which the state grants individuals the right to determine for themselves what does and what does not constitute murder? Of course not. It only does so on the issue of abortion because (since Roe) the Constitution implicitly denies the humanity of the fetus. Don't think so? How would you feel about a slogan like this: "Oppose slavery? Don't own one!" You'd probably find it morally offensive. Why? Because you think that owning slaves is just plain wrong and that failing to publicly affirm this principle is tantamount to saying that owning slaves is a matter of moral indifference."

Linker has a point, but certainly there are more than two sides to the moral debate. Comparing the issue to slavery is a bit inaccurate because the crushing moral inequality is borne only by the slave, not by his/her master. When it comes to abortion the moral, and physical, burden is shared by both mother and fetus.

Choosing not to have an abortion is different than choosing not to own a slave because if you choose not to own a slave, then your responsiblity ends -- you simply don't own one and you go about your business. If a woman chooses not to have an abortion, then she bears the emotional and physical responsibilities of bearing and rearing a child.

I'm not saying that I'm disagreeing with Linker's point that the abortion issue is a moral one. I'm just saying that I think the issue is a bit more dynamic than he makes it out to be.