My friend Darius posted this mashup of Fox News screens on his FB page. Click on it to enlarge.
Individually, the captions shown are mildly irritating and sometimes laughable.
Collectively, their fundamental wrongness is just crazy.*
*Except, I have to say, for the one frame that includes an ex-girlfriend of mine. That one’s fine.
So I’m online looking for Yanks tickets and decide that it’d be great to to get two tickets to the Yankees and the Mets on June 13. I search for “best available,” and to my delight find two seats above the visitors dugout (at Yankee Stadium) for $59 apiece.
Going through the process of ticketing, I notice that I made a mistake. $59 turns out to be the ticket “convenience charge.”
(A $60 per ticket “convenience charge”?)
The actual price?
$ 2, 625.00.
Each.
For a total of $5368.
Good luck with that, Yankees…
For those of you who think Washington pols have gone over the top on the subject of AIG bonuses, the New Republic points out that some of AIG’s most vociferous critics were happy to take campaign contributions from the company.
Of course, one could argue that there’s something encouraging about this apparent hypocrisy—we want our pols to feel free to chastise even the fat cats who give them money…..
…make sure it doesn’t see you. Seriously.
No, this blog is not turning into Animal Planet. And yet, it would be wrong not to relay some of the curious animal news that takes the e-train to me.
For instance: Did you know that komodo dragons can run as fast as a dog, jump, and kill large animals with a blow from their tail? Or that one of their toxic bites can slay a buffalo?
Didn’t think so. Nor did an Indonesian fisherman who was killed by the vicious critters while searching for fruit on a remote island.
Muhamad Anwar, 32, bled to death on his way to hospital after being mauled by the reptiles at Loh Sriaya, in eastern Indonesia’s Komodo National Park, the park’s general manager Fransiskus Harum told CNN.
Then there’s this:
In June last year, a group of divers who were stranded on an island in the national park — the dragons’ only natural habitat — had to fend off several attacks from the reptiles before they were rescued.
Park rangers also tell the cautionary tale of a Swiss tourist who vanished leaving nothing but a pair of spectacles and a camera after an encounter with the dragons several years ago.
Nothing but a pair of spectacles and a camera. Perhaps he was trying to befriend it?
I feel awful for the Indonesian fisherman; that can’t be a good way to go. Nonetheless, I’m glad that there are dangerous man-eating animals on Earth, as it makes the planet more interesting and keeps humans sort of humble, and of course one always wonders how one would fare in a battle against a komodo dragon. My brother once wrote a gripping grade-school short story on pretty much this exact subject, only—ahem—it turned out that he plagiarized the whole thing from Star Trek. He got away with it—until now.
My point is, Phil Bronstein should consider himself lucky.
A photo from last night’s Bloc Party show at Terminal 5. (Sorry about the quality—Apple really needs to get that new generation iPhone out.)
It was a good show—the band was super fun (here’s the set list), and there was even some crowd-surfing, which I haven’t seen in a while. Terminal 5, though, wasn’t so hot—too crowded, too loud,spotty acoustics, bad sightlines, and ridiculous, self-important security people. (Was there really a reason that they had to confirm that those were Skittles in my pocket?)
You can see from the photo below that a) if you’re on the upper levels and you’re not right next to the railing, you’re pretty much out of luck, and b) if you’re not about my height and you’re standing on the floor, you’re pretty much out of luck.
The Washington Post reports on two rare clouded leopard cubs born at the National Zoo. (WashPo photo by Tracy A. Woodward)
Over at FUPenguin, the madness continues.
In Slate, the very talented Dalia Lithwick has a terrific piece about the hypocrisy and stupidity of Republicans, specifically when it comes to the way they consider Barack Obama’s judicial nominees.
See, for instance, Senate Republicans roughing up Obama’s pick for his solicitor general, Elena Kagan, this afternoon on the Senate floor as they voted on her confirmation. She was confirmed by a vote of 61-31. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., voted nay. Now, Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law School, has been endorsed by every solicitor general serving from 1985 to 2009, including Charles Fried, Ken Starr, Drew Days, Walter Dellinger, Seth Waxman, Ted Olson, Paul Clement, and Greg Garre. While at Harvard, she was acclaimed for brilliant scholarship and an unprecedented willingness to hire scholars from across the political spectrum. So what is it that Kagan is being hassled about by Republicans on the judiciary committee? Her failure to provide sufficient information about her ideological views….
Apparently that brief she signed on to opposing anti-gay discrimination by the military didn’t go over well….
Nowhere good, that’s for sure.
Anyone else going to see Bloc Party tonight?
The Globe reports that Harvard’s top cops have been using university money to fill up their university-provided SUVs…when they’re driving to places that have nothing to do with keeping the campus safe. (Like, oh, a Harley-Davidson show.)
Kevin Regan, associate director-chief of the private force, was tracked using his Harvard-issued gas card to fill up a university police vehicle while traveling to a motorcycle rally in South Dakota on a personal trip in 2007, according to two university employees with knowledge of the case.
A photo of Regan, straddling his motorcycle parked in front of his Harvard-issued sport utility vehicle, was posted on a website for law enforcement motorcycle enthusiasts. The photo has since been removed from the site.
And the chief himself, Bud Riley, has been using Harvard money to pay for trips to his weekend house in Vermont. Nice!
It’s kind of an interesting problem, right? What do you do when your top law enforcement officers turn out to be petty thieves?
Someone should ask the cops involved if they believe in the broken windows theory of policing. You know—small crimes lead to bigger ones?
I’m constantly amazed—though I should know better by now—at how little it takes for someone to sell his integrity. In Washington, a campaign contribution of a few grand can get a lobbyist a line in legislation that costs taxpayers hundreds of millions.
Here’s another example: Over the weekend, I saw a car parked on Broadway at 92nd Street with a big sign on the dashboard that said something like “Federal Law Enforcement—Official Business.” It’s what cops do when they don’t want to pay for parking.
The car was parked outside a Le Pain Quotidien. Now, I could be wrong, but somehow I doubt there was bad behavior going on within an overpriced French bakery, unless you count paying $5 for a cappuccino.
And it was a Sunday, when you don’t even have to feed the meters—which cost, by the way, a manageable $1.50 an hour.
So here was a cop, flashing a totem that says, I deserve special trust, privileges and responsibility because of my job…and on the other hand, flashing that totem in order to do something dishonest, even if only in a small way.
Here’s my favorite (but not in a good way) part of the Globe story.
When asked about the allegations last week, Steven Catalano, Harvard police spokesman, replied, “I do not speak to the Globe directly.”
I’ll admit: It is a pet peeve of mine when spokespeople dissemble. And in this case, it’s both unnecessary and incriminating.
Does Mr. Catalano mean to say that he speaks to the Globe indirectly?
In other words, does the spokesman for the Harvard police have a spokesman?
Or does it mean that the police spokesman doesn’t speak to the Globe at all? In which case, why is Harvard paying him?
Either way, Mr. Catalano should know that taking the 5th makes you sound guilty, which is kind of not what you want when you’re talking about cops.
Here’s a tip for press flacks from a reporter: If you can’t say anything, say, “I don’t have the facts now, and I don’t want to tell you something that may prove to be wrong, but as soon as I can tell you something I’ll call you back.” But don’t lie and obfuscate—your bosses have already done enough to damage the image of the Harvard police department without you making it worse….