« December 2003 | Main | April 2004 »
January 16, 2004
PREDICTABLE
Earlier this week, The New York Times ran an article on Subaru's
decision to
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/automobiles/13SUBA.html">modify
its Outback sedan in order to make it a light truck, which exempts
it from more exacting fuel economy standards.
Subaru's strategy highlights what environmentalists,
consumer groups and some politicians say is a loophole in the fuel
economy regulations that has undermined the government's ability to
actually cut gas consumption. The average fuel economy for new vehicles
is lower now than it was two decades ago, despite advances in fuel-
saving technology.
This is a classic case of unintended, but predictable,
consequences. I think a lot of consumer demand for light trucks like
extended cab pickups and SUVs has to do with the increasing flimsiness
of sedans that meet today's mileage regulations. You can put all the
safety geegaws and gimcracks you want--like airbags and OnStar systems
that automatically phone 911 when your head is mounted on your
dashboard--but most people understand that surviving a car crash is
mostly a matter of physics. If you're encased in a light-weight car
composed of a plastic and light-weight aluminum body, you're going to
get creamed when involved in a serious accident. With reasonably
sturdy sedans ruled illegal through fuel economy standards, many
consumers--wealthy consumsers that can afford them--are opting for more
expensive SUVs or light trucks. That these may prove more dangerous to
their owners through rollover risk or to other drivers via reduced
visibility on the road is an ironic side effect. SUV haters have only
themselves to blame for the vehicles' incredible popularity. Mandating
ever-stricter fuel economy standards has driven increasing numbers of
drivers out of their formerly sturdy sedans and into the barreling
behemoths that are now so loudly decried. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:05 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 15, 2004
CUPPA' JOHANN
An Associated Press story about the opening of the
href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=509&e=16&u=/ap/fr
ance_starbucks">first Starbucks coffee houses in France asserts
that Paris is the originator of the caf? culture. It's been my
understanding that coffee houses in Europe originated in Vienna, Austria, after
coffee was introduced to the populace by attacking Ottoman Turks in the
18th century. The Ottomans were repulsed, but a taste for coffee
remained and a coffee house culture grew, flourished, and persists to
this day.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:10 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 13, 2004
INTERNET BUY BACK
Last year I reviewed Ty Wenzel's memoir of the bartending life at
Marion's Continental,
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-
/0312311028/qid=1074020526//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-2785111-
6174244?v=glance&s=books&n=507846">Behind Bars. I'm
flattered to see that she chose
href="http://www.tywenzel.com/lexiphane_review.htm">to include that
piece on her site. It probably explains why it's the most-read review
posted. Regardless, her account of life as a Manhattan bartender
resounds with the ring of truth--warts and all--and warrants one's
attention. Her site also
href="http://www.ifrc.org/HELPNOW/donate/donate_iran.asp">draws
attention to the relief efforts for the Iranian city of Bam,
something I've
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=425">mentioned here in the past.
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:11 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
TO YOUR HEALTH
The New York Times runs a story today on an
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/nyregion/13waiver.html">upstate
bar that was granted a waiver from the smoking ban the state
enacted last year in imitation of the one that Mayor Bloomberg put in
place in New York City. Ostensibly, the ban was meant to protect the
health of bar employees, who were exposed to the
href="http://www.junkscience.com/news2/zion.htm">non-existent
threat of second-hand smoke. With the phantom menace vanquished,
many former hospitality workers are unable to afford more quotidian
concerns like health insurance and their rent. Many establishment
owners are shuttering their bars as business went up in smoke:
"I got killed," said Mr. Damon, 69, a retired engineer.
"I didn't just lose the smokers; I lost the friends of the smokers, the
nonsmokers, who didn't want to hang out without them."
I can't say I'm uniformly against the ban. It's nice to be able to go
out at night without leaving with your clothes stinking of smoke, but
it's a luxury bought at the price of the liveliehoods of waitstaff,
bartenders, and bar owners--the alleged beneficiaries of the smoking
ban. It's unfair to kid ourselves otherwise. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:53 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CRIME IN THE CITY
href="http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2004/01/13/2_train_subway_slash
ing.php">Gothamist notes a story in today's New York Post
that belies the stats on falling crime in NYC. It's unusual in both
time and location. Normally,
href="http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/15607.htm">robbery and
slashings are relegated to the non-Manhattan boroughs, or at least
above 96th Street in Manhattan. Yesterday, however, a good samaritan
telling a punk to lay off a fellow commuter on the 2 train at one in
the afternoon and 72nd St. was slashed in the face with a box cutter
when he struggled with his assailant. Why is this unusual? 72nd St.
on the West Side at one in the afternoon engenders the personal comfort
level--even while in the subway--of the average person's living room.
Nothing bad could possibly happen to you at that place and time.
Still, this ties in nicely with the
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/science/06PROF.html?8hpib">rece
nt findings that localized crime levels correspond inversely with
neighbors' willingness to intervene in criminal transgressions.
Lesson: don't be afraid to step up and beat down thugs, just be
prepared.
Posted by Lexiphane at 12:14 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
POOR BABY
The Washington Post take empathy to a
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11404-
2004Jan12.html">bizarre extreme today with a sympathetic account of
the hardships that a former Mukhabarat, or secret policeman, and high-
ranking Baathist now faces in post-Saddam Iraq. The Mukhabarat were
the worst of the worst in fascist Iraq. When one hears tales of eyes
being gouged out, obscene torture, summary executions, mass graves, and
the thirty-year reign of terror that froze Iraq in poverty, that was
the Mukhabarat doing Saddam's bidding. In exchange, they were accorded
priveleged status in the country and a comfortable living. Now that
the gravy train is over, some are unhappy. I think this guy is lucky
that he and his fellow secret policemen weren't rounded up and hung
from lampposts.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:04 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SANCTIONS AND STARVATION
The late Michael Kelly recorded his personal account of the first Gulf
War in what might be the best piece of war writing ever published,
called Martyr's Day,
Chronicle of a Small War. Toward the end of the book, he
revisits Iraq to note the consequences of U.N. sanctions on the
population, as well as its Shi'ite and Kurdish refugee problem. Some
passages dispel the notion that the suffering of Iraqis was the result
of sanctions.
All that this woman said was true. The war that had liberated Kuwait City had also liberated Baghdad, freeing it to reach, you might way, its fullest expression of self. It had become the ideal mob town, the perfect capital of a gangster nation. The new millionaires, Baathist bosses and government ministers and their merchant friends, tooled around the city in Mercedes Benzes the color of creme fraiche and swaggered though the casinos tossing stacks of new money on the baccarat tables.No wonder the U.N. didn't want the party broken up; it sounds like a great place for the well heeled, the poor and persecuted be damned. Meanwhile, some NGO workers' frustration boiled over at the perverse insanity of Iraq under Saddam. Here's Doug Broderick of Catholic Relief Services:
The biggest man about town was Udai, Saddam's oldest son, whose new newspaper, Babel, had attracted great numbers of readers with its gossipy tone and its daring columns poking fun at bureaucrats. Udai and his entourage were out most nights, dancing and drinking and whoring and gambling, and occasionly beating up passerby. People avoided them when they could.
Only the rich and politically connected could afford to eat much. The government doled out some food, but never quite enough, and the Western relief workers in Baghdad had come to realize, after their offers had been stymied time after time, that the government wanted things the way they were. The deaths of the very poor served to turn the national anger outward, toward the United Sates, and the hunger of the middle classes kept them too preoccupied to plot rebellion.
If you had money, though, the city was a treasure pot. You could buy a two-hundred-year-old carpet for $150, a hundred-year-old gold pocket watch for $50, a twenty-year-old virgin for $20. The streets were crowded with trucks loaded down with liquor and cigarettes from Amman. The lobbies of the big hotels were busy with formerly respectable young women sipping tea and pretending they were waiting for someone they knew, with United Nations officials staggering under the trophies of their daily shopping sprees, with sleek, sly Jordanian husterlers whispering in the ears of large men in too-tight suits who looked like aging mob muscle, but were in fact ministers of state.
The dead-baby situation made Doug Broderick so angry that his face twisted up when he talked about it.Of course, the anti-U.S. anti-war anti-sanctions crowd played into this propaganda ploy like the perfect useful idiots they were supposed to be.
"The terrible thing is that Iraq is, technically, overfed. The food stocks are at one hundred and twenty percent capacity, seventy percent of which is imported, thirty percent homegrown. But the government will not distribute the food, or allow anyone else to. They are only giving out twenty-five to thrity percent of what is necessary for the people to be decently fed. We--Catholic Relief Services--have fourteen hundred metric tons of food in this country right now, sitting in warehouses, waiting to be distributed. We cannot distribute that food because the government will not allow us to. They have blocked us from distributing it through the existing network of Women's and Children's Heath Care Centers.
"It is simply a fact atht the Iraqi government is free to buy food and medicine if it wants to. Nobody is preventing the government from going to Amman and buying truckloads of baby milk and bringing it back here. It costs thirty tousand dollars to buy a truckload of baby milk in Amman, and twenty four metric tons of baby milk would be enough for the whole country, based on the number of births. So all it would take to stop all infant deaths would be seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars. You telling me these guys don't have that amount of money?
"Of course they do. They could cope with this if they wanted to. But who wants to be seen coping with it? That would be a message they do not want to send. If they sent that message, it would take pressure off the United Nations to lift the sanctions. The fact is, the sanctions make Saddam strong. He can take the time to get rid of his enemies, take care of the Shiites and the Kurds, while his people are busy pointing their fingers at the U.S. and looking for food. Everybody in the country is too preoccupied with food to think about rebellion. The whole nation is dreaming about a nice dinner."
In the run-up to the first Gulf War, a young Kuwaiti woman testified before Congress about Iraqi atrocities in occupied Kuwait, including a story about the theft of incubators from a hospital that left premature infants on a cold floor to die. This story was later debunked, but it shouldn't obscure the fact that real atrocities--murder, rape, torture- -were committed during Iraqi occupation of the country. Earlier in his book, Kelly writes of what he saw in the just-liberated nation. Here is his most chilling passage:
Most of the bunkers and pillboxes were clean, the only clean Iraqi living quarters I ever saw in the city. There was one exception, in which we found a deep litter of trash and clothes. It was disturbing trash, a lot of the clothing belonged to women. There were several dresses and a brassiere and a pair of peach-colored nylon tap pants. A few feet away was a doll, with yellow hair and blue vacant eyes and a neat little plaid dress. There was also a very little girl's pair of underpants, white with a picture of a giraffe on them. The giraffe was holding a teacup, and underneath was written "A Giraffe's Party!" Nearby was an open, mostly full jar of petroleum jelly.Michael Kelly was killed in Iraq while traveling as an embedded reporter during the second Gulf War.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:15 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
HELLO CHOIRE!
href="http://www.gawker.com/archives/conde_nast_editorial_snapshot.php"
>Gawker makes the connection between the new CEO of Conde Nast and
the Forsythian man behind the speakerphone today. It's a little slow
on the uptake. Lexiphane.com imbibed the angels' share of this story
href="http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=News&file=article&s
id=439&mode=&order=0&thold=0">yesterday afternoon.
Posted by Lexiphane at 8:40 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 12, 2004
OH MY GOD, I'M AN OLD MAN
I recently celebrated my 30th birthday with a minimum of hand-wringing
about the significance of passing into my fourth decade of life. So
what if I'm still single, childless, haven't yet accrued my first
million, and, most importantly, still rent rather than own? It's still
all good to be me. I'm luxuriating in 30 with a good dose of tempered
youthfulness. 30, it's the new 25.
That was until I read
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/business/media/12classic.html?8
dpc">this article in The New York Times regarding how
there's currently a renaissance in the classic rock radio format,
spearheaded by bands that constituted the soundtrack of my youth:
Nirvana, Soundgarden, REM, Weezer, and Beck, for example. Radio
stations across the country are dropping modern metal and rock/rap acts
in favor of music that topped the charts and were legitimately cool
over a decade ago. Looking at the picture of the young members of
Nirvana and contemplating Kurt Cobain's suicide, I find myself
disconcertingly identifying with the sad sacks that still hang outside
The Dakota with lit candles once a year to memorialize the anniversary
of John Lennon's murder.
One of the things I've always found contemptible about baby
boomers was their inability to let go of the music of their youth.
Yeah, yeah, The Beatles were fucking great, The Rolling Stones really
knew how to rock. Get over it you losers and give up some airtime to a
band that's written a new song sometime after 1980. Such was
the folly of my youth. Now I am the culprit wallowing in nostalgia for
the Seattle sound, when music was about more than album sales and bling
bling. Can I even bear to listen to myself? The article ends on a
particularly cruel note:
But being a compelling station and a successful station
are not always the same thing. No one will go broke playing Nirvana's
"Smells Like Teen Spirit," Mr. Tolkoff said. "There will be a
generation that that will be their 'Free Bird,' that will be their
'Stairway to Heaven.'"
If Cobain hadn't already killed himself, this alone would have
him reaching for his shotgun. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:34 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NOW THAT'S A CEO
The New York Times
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/12/business/media/12CND-
MAG.html">reports today that Steven Florio will soon step down as
the head of Conde Nast Pulications and be replaced by the current COO
of Advance Magazine Group, Charles Townsend. AMG handles the back-
office publishing tasks for Conde Nast and a number of other magazines
under their parent company. Charles Townsend, of course, will be
conducting all his CEO business over a speakerphone and with the able
assistance of his office manager, Bosley. He will also utilize a
href="http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0160127/">trio of stunning
beauties to foil nefarious criminal plots, in addition to
publishing a wide variety of titles that include Vogue and
Vanity Fair. Graydon Carter, watch your back. [via
href="http://www.gawker.com">Gawker]
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:19 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 10, 2004
LEXIPHANE ON THE GO
For those of you who'd love to read this site away from your desks,
during a commute, or just would like to grab a week's worth of content
at a time, Lexiphane.com is now available on your handheld PDAs via
href="http://www.avantgo.com">AvantGo. This is a popular program
for pulling content from a number of different sites and making them
available on your Palm Pilots, Handsprings, or other popular
devices.
To receive Lexiphane.com on your handheld, go to AvantGo's site and
download its software to your computer and PDA. It's a short and
simple process that will only take a few minutes. Once your device is
configured, go to the My Account page at AvantGo. On the right-
hand side of the screen, there will be a link that says
Subscriptions. The second link under that will offer the chance
to Create a custom channel. Click on that and you can fill in
the information for Lexiphane.com. Here's what you should
enter:
Title: Lexiphane
Location:
http://www.lexiphane.com/lex/modules.php?name=AvantGo
Channel Size: 100K
Link depth: 2
Include images: Yes or no, depending on your handheld's ability
to display images and your memory priorities
It's as easy as that. Now you can take Lexiphane.com wherever you go
with your handheld.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:53 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 8, 2004
END OF THE HOLIDAYS
storefr
ont snowmen and the holiday train show at the Transit Museum in
Grand Central Terminal. Along with the above shot from the Fulton Fish
Market, there's also a series of pictures showing the hustle
of Grand Central the first weekend after New Year's.
Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:06 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SEND HER BACK
Maureen Dowd
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/opinion/08DOWD.html">reappears
on the op/ed page of The New York Times today after
returning from her vacation. Her premier 2004 column reads like Dowd is
still half in the bag from too many Margaritas on the beach where she
vacationed, as it stumbles and lurches from topic to topic. Bush is
afraid of getting fat. Things in Iraq are a disaster. Al Qaeda,
Saddam, and Osama are still on the loose. Saddam
wasn't hiding weapons from U.N. inspectors, just the plans for
weapons. Bush is solidifying his core bases by offering asylum to non-
voters and alienating conservatives. Let's equate homosexuals with
murderers! Then, like a college student straining to fill a bluebook
during a mid-term exam when she missed the last three weeks of classes
during the semester, Dowd jumps the tracks and starts babbling semi-
coherently about lesbians for five more paragraphs before wrapping up
with a non sequitur. Dowd is now the official intellectual love
child of Andy Rooney and Larry King, merging confused inanities with
scattershot precision. And this is her first column after a several-
week vacation, when one would think the well was being replenished.
Posted by Lexiphane at 2:33 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
WHAT NEW YORK?
Taking a page out of Prime Minister Tony Blair's book, when he tried to
re-brand the UK from Rule Brittania to Cool Brittania, Mayor Bloomberg
is kicking off a month of special attractions in a program called
href="http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/coolny/">Cool New York. This
is incredibly lame. First of all, Cool Brittania was a playful bit of
assonance, meant to discard previous associations of the UK with
stuffiness and reserved character in favor of a more wild and
freewheeling style. Think Robbie Williams on a coke binge. There is
no need for NYC to undergo such an image makeover and copying our
neighbors across the pond smacks of pathetic me-tooism. If imitation
is the sincerest form of flattery, it is also sometimes just a sign of
a desperate lack of creativity. Then there's the timing. Cool New
York is scheduled from January 9th to February 2nd and we're in the
middle of a serious cold spell. They couldn't name it F**KING FREEZING
NEW YORK? Thank God this wasn't scheduled for the month of August or
they would have named it Hot New York, to highlight how on-fire the
city was, culturally. It still looks like there are a lot of cool
things to do during the Cool New York campaign, I'm just disappointed
with the name.
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ZISCAM
Especially during cold and flu season, the television airwaves are
saturated with commercials for medicines and remedies to ease people's
discomfort when they are sick. I recently saw one that looked like
almost all other pharmaceutical ads; it was for a product named
href="http://www.zicam.com">Zicam. What struck me about the
commercial was that it claimed Zicam could "shorten the duration and
severity" of cold symptoms, such as runny nose, stuffed-up nose, cough,
etc. Most cold remedies claim to relieve the symptoms, not shorten the
duration or severity of an illness. And then I saw it; displayed on
Zicam's box was the word Homeopathic. For those of you not familiar
with homeopathy, it is the belief that trace amounts of a substance
dissolved in or placed in a solution of purified water will have
medicinal properties. This is what magicians Penn & Teller would
eloquently describe as
href="http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/about.do">Bullshit.
On my way to work this morning, I stopped at a Duane Reade
drugstore to see if it stocked Zicam, and it did. Examining the
packaging, I read that the active ingredients are Zincum Gluconium 1X
and Zincum Acetate 2X. In the shorthand of homeopathy, this means that
one part in ten was zincum gluconium and one part in a hundred was
zincum acetate. As far as homeopathic remedies go, these are fairly
high concentrations. Other products tout dilutions of 200C, which is
one part in a hundred to the 200th power--essentially one in a
gazillion, or undetectible. The inactive ingredients were purified
water, fructose (sugar), and peppermint flavoring.
Zincum gluconium is commonly known as zinc salt. Along with zincum
acetate, it is also the active ingredient in the popular lozenges Cold-
Eez. Despite their claims to the contrary, there is no conclusive
clinical evidence that zinc is effective in reducing the severity or
duration of cold symptoms. In trials of zinc lozenges that did show
some evidence, there were signs that the experiments were not
completely blind (due to the perceivable taste of the zinc versus
placebo lozenges) and that the placebo effect may have accounted for
any small perceived effect. In other tests of zinc solutions applied
as nasal gels or topical sprays (like Zicam), where taste was less of a
factor, there was
href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=Pub
Med&list_uids=11073753&dopt=Abstract">no evidence that zinc had any
effect on the duration or severity of cold symptoms.
The claim of being able to "shorten" is the key to Zicam's
marketability. Objectively, a true cure halts the run of an infection,
primarily by modifying the immune system so that it can effectively rid
the body of a pathogen. There is no cure for the common cold since it
is the result of infection by a virus that mutates regularly enough
that the design of an effective vaccine is impractical. Antibiotics
are ineffective against viruses and only work to fight bacterial
infection. More common and conventional cold remedies use
antihistamines to dull the immune reaction against a cold infection.
Histamines are produced by the immune system to fight infection and
cause inflammatory symptoms, such as runny noses and watery eyes.
Antihistamines do not help cure the common cold, but rather reduce the
unpleasantness of the body's regular immune reaction to infection. Any
claim that Zicam can shorten the duration or severity of a cold is
completely unverifiable. Since, the ultimate length of infection in
any one person is open-ended, the marketers of Zicam are hoping that
any cessation of symptoms will be attributed to their product, even if
it is the natural result of the body healing itself.
When confronted with the fact that there is no indication that
zinc has any effect on easing cold sufferers' discomfort, proponents
will say that there is no evidence that zinc doesn't work, and
anyway, what's the harm in taking zinc just in case it does? This is
true; one cannot disprove a negative. And if one doesn't mind
introducing substances of dubious effectiveness into their mouths and
nasal passages four times a day (as indicated), go ahead. But why
would one want to? There are, in fact, indications that the direct
application of zinc salt to nasal passages can cause anosmia, or the
loss of smell, sometimes permanently. The makers of Zicam are
href="http://www.homeowatch.org/legal/zicam.html">being sued
precisely for this after a man in Michigan used their product and
permanently lost his sense of smell. Because Zicam is not actually a
pharmaceutical product, its makers are not required to disclose
possible adverse side effects as makers of actual drugs must.
Zicam is offered in 11 different formulations, including sprays,
gels, and lozenges, whose costs are in the $11-$12 range. That is for
purified water with sugar and a mineral additive with no proven
effectiveness at doing what it claims. Judging by the out-of-stock
status of Zicam at an
href="http://www.drugstore.com/search/search.asp?search=zicam&searchtyp
e=1&trx=28198&trxp1=60&srchtree=1&Go.x=0&Go.y=0">online drugstore,
it is extremely popular. Let me save you some money. If you have a
cold, help your body fight the infection by getting plenty of rest and
staying hydrated. If your cold symptoms become unbearable, take an
over-the-counter product containing antihistamines. Don't bother your
doctor for antibiotics; they will be ineffective against the common
cold and possibly harmful by generating drug-resistant strains of
bacteria. And don't waste your money on Zicam.
For more information on homeopathy, visit href="http://skepdic.com/homeo.html">The Skeptics Dictionary.
Posted by Lexiphane at 10:30 AM | | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 6, 2004
CYCLING THROUGH THE SYSTEM WHILE THE INNOCENT DIE
This story is so sad it transcends the tragi-comedic
nature of how our criminal justice, medical, and legal systems deal
with the violently mentally ill. Eric Wallace was considered mentally
unfit to stand trial on a number of criminal charges. Not well enough
to go to jail or be held accountable for his actions, he was released
from St. Elizabeths, D.C.'s mental hospital, and set free on the
streets of the capital:
Wallace was in St. Elizabeths, the city's mental hospital, where he had
been confined for about eight months. He was kept there while awaiting
trial on assorted criminal charges, after a series of psychiatric
examinations.
But after doctors at the hospital concluded that Wallace was unfit to
stand trial on those charges and would not recover any time soon, the
judge in the case, Frederick D. Dorsey, ruled that the law required him
to release Wallace.
Dorsey noted that even if Wallace had been convicted of the misdemeanor
assault counts with which he was charged, he probably would not have
been given a longer jail sentence than the time he already had spent at
St. Elizabeths.
The judge agreed to hold Wallace for an additional 72 hours to allow
prosecutors time to appeal his decision. But the U.S. attorney's office
concluded that an appeal would be fruitless, and the D.C. government,
which was in the process of trying to have Wallace committed, did not
seek an emergency order seeking to have him held until a final
ruling.
So, on Oct. 10, Wallace walked back onto the streets of the city. He
soon came across McCants, an only child from Jackson, Miss., who had
come to Washington with big dreams. McCants had just completed a year
as an intern for Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.). His internship
focused on health care policy, and McCants had hoped one day to make
changes that would improve services for people in the rural South.
McCants was attacked at 9:15 p.m. outside his home in the 1100 block of
Fourth Street NE. He had been on the phone with his girlfriend when a
sharp steak knife was plunged into his carotid artery, according to
prosecutors. A trail of blood traced the short path from where he
dropped the cell phone to where he collapsed.
Claude McCants died on the scene, bleeding to death in the street. Eric
Wallace pled guilty to his murder shortly before his lawyer was going
to argue again that he was mentally unfit to be held accountable
for his actions. It is likely that he will spend the rest of his life
behind bars. Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:37 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 5, 2004
YOU REALLY SHOT ME
Ray Davies, lead singer of the British rock band The Kinks, was in New
Orleans last night when the woman he was with had her purse snatched.
When Davies gave chase, one of the thieves
href="http://www.wnbc.com/entertainment/2741538/detail.html">shot
him in the leg. He's expected to make a full recovery.
Posted by Lexiphane at 3:09 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 2, 2004
SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY
Best-selling author Michael Crichton proves himself a kindred spirit in
the fight against junk science pushing dubious public policy. His
website has the transcript of a speech
he delivered at CalTech that I heartily recommend everyone read. Here
he is contemplating the ludicrousness of climate modelers by wondering
how the people of 100 years ago could have predicted the world we live
in today:
Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?
But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport.
And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source
that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were
getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember,
people in 1900 didn't know what an atom was. They didn't know its
structure. They also didn't know what a radio was, or an airport, or a
movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an
antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA,
EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay,
remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene
splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards,
lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive,
plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish
antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon,
rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy,
corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS? None of this would have
meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn't know what
you are talking about.
Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it's even
worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the
future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's
thought knows it.
[Link via Instapundit] Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 5:04 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
NEW YORK CANCER HOSPITAL
The New York Times has an
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/realestate/owning/28SCAP.html">
interesting profile today of what was originally the New York
Cancer Hospital on Central Park West between 105th and 106th Streets.
I have a friend that lives a few blocks down CPW from the building,
which looks about as haunted as architecturally possible, having been
allowed to deteriorate. Characterized by its large circular wards, the
hospital was the site of pioneering cancer treatment and was even
visited by Madame Curie, who wanted to look at the hospital's
significant store of radium. The hospital eventually moved to another
location further south and was renamed The Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Institute. After a stint as a nursing home, the building was
abandoned and became decrepit. Like all old structures in New York
City, however, the building is getting a second chance through its
conversion to condos. I think that would be an incredible building to
live in--if not slightly creepy living where so many people drew their
last breaths.
Posted by Lexiphane at 4:26 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
ALL THE NEWS
Andreas Feininger in 1940. It's called The News Building
because it used to be the home of The Daily News. If you've
ever seen the movie Superman, it was
the model for the home of The Daily Planet and actually has a
giant globe in the lobby that makes a full rotation once every hour.
In the photograph, one can see 42nd St. running vertically on the left
side of the image. Directly across the street from The News Building
is now the world headquarters for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. There's a
large waterfall in that building.s lobby that employees jokingly refer
to as Viagra Falls. Behind The News Building, closer to the East River
are a number of matching buildings that make up Tudor City and one can
just make out the rooftop sign on one of them to the left of The News
Building. Tudor City still exists--it's extreme luxury housing--and
sometimes I eat lunch in the parks that sit in front of the buildings.
Hidden in the shadow on the left side of the image is the building that
now houses McFadden's Saloon, directly on the corner of 42nd and 2nd
Ave. and home of the best buffalo chicken salad I've ever had.
Directly above the shadow, the two-pronged building has been replaced
by The Ford Foundation, which features a giant open-air atrium filled
with tropical plants. I imagine it's like working in a greenhouse.
I'm familiar with this neighborhood because I've been working in The
News Building for the last several years. This photo couldn't be
replicated today because a Helmsley Hotel now sits directly in front of
The News Building (to the west) and would block the first 20 of the 36
floors. Interestingly, Feininger took this picture from The Chanin
Building, further west down 42nd St., which is where my dad worked when
he was a young man in NYC. [via Gothamist]
Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 11:18 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
OLD SCHOOL
Charles W. Cushman
Photograph Collection and it's fascinating because it gives one a
look at New York City during WWII in full color, less than a year after
the attack on Pearl Harbor. The second shot is of McSorley's Old Ale
House. It still looks exactly the same today, probably because at that
point the bar had been open for 90 years, so what's another 60 going to
do to change it?
Tagged:
Posted by Lexiphane at 9:57 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
About
- .edu
- 2nd avenue
- 300
- 9/11
- Cal poly
- Ireland
- abuse
- actors
- adobe
- adoption
- ads
- advertising
- al smith
- allowance
- amputee
- amsterdam
- animation
- anna nicole smith
- answers
- architecture
- arizona
- assembly
- atlantic yards
- authentication
- bacardi
- basketball
- bayamon
- bicycles
- big east
- blog
- bloomberg
- bondage
- books
- bronx
- brooklyn
- burning
- bus driver
- byrne
- calories
- cats
- cbs
- celebrity
- celebutante
- censorship
- charity
- cherokee
- china
- chocolate
- circus
- clara lemlich
- club
- college
- college basketball
- collide
- comedian
- commies
- conan
- condos
- coney island
- contest
- cops
- cruelty
- cuza
- d.a.
- dc
- dea
- democrats
- descendants
- development
- diplomat
- dirt
- dogs
- drugs
- drunk
- drunk drivers
- east village
- el salvador
- elephants
- error
- espn
- evangelical
- evelyn
- fakes
- famous
- features
- ferrell
- film
- final four
- finance
- flag
- flickr
- fonts
- food
- forgotten ny
- france
- free
- gaffigan
- gangster
- gay
- georgetown
- global warming
- golf
- gotham gazette
- gothamist
- greeks
- guilty
- guns
- hamptons
- history
- homicide
- hospitals
- hostages
- hoyas
- hudson river
- humor
- hynes
- imus
- in other words . . .
- independent
- indians
- innocence
- insanity
- internet
- ira glass
- irish
- israel
- janitor
- jitney
- job
- journalism
- kevin walsh
- kids
- killed
- kittens
- ky
- larry bud melman
- late night
- lawyer
- leash
- legislators
- les
- letterman
- lewitt
- lexiphane
- lexiphotos
- library
- lightroom
- links
- louisville
- lucy
- magic negro
- malapropism
- march
- marijuana
- marion barry
- marist
- mascot
- mass transit
- masters
- matzo
- media
- mexico
- msg
- mta
- murder
- music
- native americans
- nbc
- new york times
- news cycles
- notre dame
- ny1
- nyc
- nypd
- nytimes
- nyu
- obama
- ohio state
- oldman
- pale force
- pathetic
- penn
- persians
- pet food
- pets
- photography
- photos
- pictures
- pitbull
- pitt
- pizza
- poison
- politics
- porn
- posts
- pot farm
- ppv
- president
- principal
- prison
- private
- psychic
- public
- pulp fuction
- racism
- radio
- rankings
- rape
- rats
- real estate
- republicans
- rivalry
- rnc
- schools
- sculpture
- selective
- showtime
- sin-é
- site
- slavery
- slocum
- software
- spartans
- sponge bob
- sports
- sports illustrated
- st. patrick's day
- staten island
- subscription
- subway
- suicide
- summer
- sweet 16
- taco bell
- television
- thermopylae
- this american life
- thor
- tiger
- timesselect
- tips
