Morning

¶ Siné: It’s a tough case: Siné (Maurice Sinet), the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist and, ipso facto, socio-political troublemaker, has been fired over a cartoon whose cynicism might be taken for anti-Semitism. I find myself on Siné’s side. Steven Erlanger reports.

Noon

¶ Mont-Saint-Michel: In Le Figaro: Who owns Mont-Saint-Michel? The French state has owned the abbey since the Revolution, but as for the village nestled on its flanks…

¶ That’s all very well, dear, but what about the Pines?: At a restaurant in Cherry Grove, on Fire Island, you can enjoy a drink called the “JoeMyGod.”

Night

¶ Boredom:  Here’s a valiant attempt to make boredom sound creative. It doesn’t quite fly.

(more…)

Morning

¶ A6: Page A6 of today’s Times (a/k/a “International Report”) features three stories. The one without a picture discusses the “covenant” that the Archbishop of Canterbury has coaxed from his colleagues at the Lambeth Conference. The one with a black-and-white picture concerns the legacy of the reviving Zeppelin industry in Friedrichshafen — one so complicated that I long to read a book about it. The story with the horrific picture, showing a stairway littered with colorfully-clad dead people, recounts the melee that broke out at a hilltop temple in Naina Devi when rumors of a landslide set off a stampede, killing 150 — or 148, at the newspaper’s presumably more up-to-date Web site.

Noon

¶ Pie/Sky?: Two stories (CNN, ABC) about really cheap source of power.

Night

¶ Smooth Guide: BBC’s Jennifer Pak presents video guides to getting around in Beijing, in case you’re going to the Games. Even if you’re not, you can see how spanking everything — and hear about how hot it is.

(more…)

Morning

¶ Fits: The interesting thing about Chris Irvine’s little story in the Telegraph is that it’s doubly true: the Chinese government will spy on Olympian cell-phone calls, and it will be furious that anybody accused it of doing so.

It’s a Remicade day — I’ll be to-ing and fro-ing from the Hospital for Special Surgery for my now quarterly infusion (down from six a year!). I won’t be getting much done on any other fronts, which is why I went to the movies last night and saw Brick Lane. Tune in tomorrow… Meanwhile, a great weekend to everyone! Hey! It’s August!

(more…)

Morning

¶ Antikythera: I’m not sure what prompted the report in Nature (which prompted the Times), but the Antikythera Device is always cool. Hey, it’s the world’s first analog computer!

Noon

¶ Uncle Bobby: Jamie Larue, a librarian in Colorado, was recently asked to reconsider the shelving of Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, by Sarah S Brannen.  Aimed at children between the ages of two to seven, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding deals with a little girl’s fear of losing her favorite uncle when he gets married. Incidentally, Uncle Bobby is marrying another man.

Mr Larue’s thoughtful — and effectively all-purpose — reply appears at his Web lob, Myliblog.com. I urge all Daily Blague visitors to read it.

Night

¶ Lordly Hudson: Among New York City’s totally unfair stack of natural advantages is the mighty Hudson, an estuary posing as a highly scenic river that, for most of the Twentieth Century, was treated as a giant sewer. John Strausbaugh’s update on improved conditions features a flabbergasting image of the deserted  castle on Bannerman’s Island, which seems second only to Chicago’s Merchandise Mart in square footage.  

(more…)

Morning

¶ Intellectual Property: A core tenet of free-market capitalism is that the best product or service wins. On the level playing field, blah blah blah, consumers beat a path to buy the better mousetrap. The brouhaha over Scrabulous, however, shows just how bent our markets have become, as corporations have pushed for expansive application of intellectual property laws — yet another instance of socialism for the rich.

Noon

¶ Wallonia: The march toward breaking up Belgium inches forward. In a poll, half of the nation’s Francophones (or Walloons) say that they’d be happier as Frenchmen — and an even higher percentage of Northern Frenchmen agreed!

Night

¶ Naughty Bits: Father Tony went to a wacked-out art show in Chelsea. So far, it seems, none of Robert Fontinelli’s furniture designs have been executed in three dimensions, but that may change.

(more…)

Morning

¶ Junk: For me, the political problems attending the Beijing Olympics have taken second place to the terrible air pollution that has bedeviled the city ever since — well, I don’t know for how long, but certainly since the easing of economic constraints in the 1980s. How would you like to run a mile in this?*

Noon

¶ What’s the Worst That Could Happen?: Want to know why I have trouble getting to sleep? Worrying about doofuses who ask the referenced question. Because the worst that could happen is often catastrophe, the question is not a very intelligent one. Adam Brown reports, at Cracked.  

Night

¶ Faculty: Here’s an interesting article in the Times — if you know what I mean by interesting — that appraises Barack Obama’s career as a law school professor (actually he was a “senior lecturer”).
(more…)

Regular riders of these BMT lines affectionally refer to them as “N”ever, “R”arely, and “W”henever. As discerning observers may deduce, the W is a relatively recent creation, as MTA routes go.

Morning

¶ Guest: Perry Falwell has been soliciting contributions to his great new site, Booksaga. The other day, I wrote to him to explain that, while I wished I had some interesting stories for him to post, my times in old bookshops have been happy but dull.

The real purpose of my note was to encourage him to stick with blogging. I think that he has a natural gift for the form. He could write about any old thing, and I’d probably want to read it. But I did throw in a few proofs of “happy but dull.”

¶ Subisdy: When you hear of “foreign subsidies,” you probably think of agricultural supports and turn over to go back to sleep. This story, about foreign subsidies of fuel consumption, may wake you up.

Noon

¶ Soin de soi: Further proof, if needed, that habits (good and bad alike) are contagious: Stephanie Plentl finds her inner Frenchwoman, in the Telegraph.

Night

¶ Up: Chris and Father Tony went up, up, but not away, in a balloon in the middle of Central Park.
(more…)

Morning

¶ Vincit Max: Max Mosley won his libel suit against The News of the World. The Judge, Sir David Eady, found that the newspaper’s imputation of Nazi-themed sadomasochism was bogus. He also found that Mr Mosley had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” when submitting to bodacious discipline. John J Burns reports.

A good (and cooler) weekend to everyone!

(more…)

Morning

¶ Reserves: Help me out here: While Times Op-Ed writer Timothy Egan hails T Boone Pickens for his windfarming campaign against the idea that drilling for oil will lead to lower gasoline prices, Jad Mouawad reports, in Business Day, that the “Arctic may contain as much as a fifth of the world’s yet-to-be-discovered oild and natural gas reserves,” according to the United States Geological Survey. Which way are we going, here?

Noon

¶ Pathetic: We interrupt our non-political coverage to link to Jacob Heilbrunn’s comment at HuffPost: “Bush Bans State Department Officials From Obama Rally.” 

Night

¶ Manipulation: If you read just the top of the story, it looks as though the pipe dreams of demagogues have come true, and speculators are making fortunes by manipulating the price of oil. (more…)

Morning

¶ Manners: Whether or not there is any truth to the story that Senator John Edwards has fathered a “love” child with documentarian Reille Hunter (thanks, Joe), I’m far more distraught by David W Chen’s report on the bad workplace conduct of Representative Anthony Weiner of New York (Brooklyn and Queens).

Noon

¶ Quilts: Ian Hundley designs quilts that look like World War I aerial photographs of the French countryside. Well, that’s what they look like to me.

Night

¶ Moses: Wow! Joe Lieberman, who addressed John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel Washington-Israel Summit yesterday, compared Rev Hagee to Moses! To think that Senator Lieberman might be our Vice President today! D’you think he’d be cuddling up to the man who blamed the devastation of New Orleans on the Big Easy’s having hosted a Pride parade?

(more…)

Morning

¶ Verdigreen: Two stories in this morning’s Times sound a retro-green note. Kim Severson writes about locavores who want to grow their own produce but can’t — or oughtn’t to — do their own gardening.* And John Tagliabue reports on the windmill revival in the Netherlands.

Noon

¶ Communion: Communion is a good thing, generally, but in the case of the Anglican Communion, I think it’s time for a sundering. (Not that it’s any of my business.)

Night

¶ Disguise: War criminal Radovan Karadzic has been arrested in Belgrade, after years of disguising himself as me. “For Bosnian Serb, a Life of Hiding in Plain Sight.”
(more…)

Morning

¶ Polish Joke?: We begin the week with news of — drag racing in Łodz, Poland (pronounced “Woodge,” according to the Times). Now with legal status! Nicholas Kulish reports: “Where the Street Racing Is Fast And the Police Aren’t Furious.”

Noon

¶ No, Your Leader:  Below the jump, a picture of HM the Extraterrestrial, pointing to her spaceship, at the RAF Fairford flypast.

¶ Paradise Unpaved: From one little house in Toronto, may a great idea fly throughout the denser parts of suburbia. Franke James’s My Green Conscience.

Night

¶ Cake Wrecks: This just in, from my good friend Y—: Cake Wrecks. Celebrating disasters crafted by professional bakers and paid for with cash American! Blinded by tears of hilarity, I can hardly type. What was I saying about frivolous Mondays?

(more…)

Morning

¶ Mamma: I’m off to the movies — to see Mamma Mia!, if the winds are propitious (if the line, if any, isn’t too long, if the projectionist got a good night’s sleep, &c &c).

A great summer summer weekend to all — stay as cool as you can!

(more…)

Morning

¶ Waste: The story is so depressing that I can barely bring myself to read it, much less post about it; but there’s no getting round its importance: In what I hope will turn out to have been the grossest civic failure of this decade, Seattle has scrapped its pay-toilet system.

Noon

¶ Yeastless: Catch up on all the new slang from Sloane Square.

¶ Rope: Jon Stewart’s montage of Talking Heads denouncing The New Yorker cover (you know which one) as tasteless, offensive, &c &c, ought to be enough, my friends, to convince you that watching any news program other than his own is bad for your brain.

¶ Department of Ahem: Just the other day, Perry Falwell of Booksaga, the Internet’s favorite bookselling blogger, solicited guest entries. It seems that “solicited” was the key word, as the last word in the entry’s first paragraph makes clear.

Night

¶ Tacet: What’s interesting about Rachel Cathcart’s story in the Times, “Donation to Same-Sex Marriage Foes Brings Boycott Calls” — aside from the story itself, which is, in the end, depressingly not-so-interesting — is the newspaper’s colossal discretion: the hotels that would be the object of the boycott are not named. Nor is a link provided. Anyone who wants to act on this story is going to have to do a little Googling.

(more…)

Morning

¶ Poll: Behind the brouhaha about The New Yorker‘s Barack and Michelle Obama spoof cover, entitled “The Politics of Fear,” there’s the deepening impression that “race” (skin color) is still a matter about which black and white Americans don’t share a perspective.

Noon

¶ Turner: I took another look at the Turner show at the Met this afternoon. It’s growing on me!

Night

¶ Stone: Incidental to the Museum visit, there as a bit of book-buying, both at the Museum itself and at Crawford-Doyle, the favorite-bookstore that happens to be right around the corner on Madison, between 81st and 82nd. I could have bought this at C-D, but I’d already fallen for it at the Museum.

(more…)

Morning

¶ Deck Chairs?: Something in Joshua Rosner’s tone, in “Goodbye capitalism,” his piece in the Financial Times,  makes me think of a cranky gent on one of the Titanic‘s lifeboats, complaining that passengers are no longer dressing for dinner.

Noon

¶ CrocEatDog: Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand giggles. All right, ten giggles. Okay, a chuckle.

Night

¶ Lawn: This internal-exile/vacation thing is working so well that, after I dealt with the Book Review, I sat outside on the balcony and read. And read. And read. And then I decided to watch a movie…. But you know that prayer that Jewish men are said to begin the day with? My version goes like this: “Thank God I don’t own a car.” If I’m being really thoughtful, I add, “or a lawn.”
(more…)

This week’s images were taken one afternoon not too long ago; they show the storefronts and other edifices on the south side of 86th Street between Second and Third Avenues.

Morning

¶ Rental: From Sam Roberts’s story in the Times, this morning, about the dodginess of “1625” as the founding date of our fair city (Nieuw Amsterdam):

The first settlers apparently arrived in 1624 (or 1623) and encamped on Governors Island. In 1625, they shipped their cattle to Lower Manhattan, where more land and water were available, and a fort was planned there. In 1626, Peter Minuit made his famous purchase of Manhattan (except that he bought it from Indians who did not own it and that in their view, he was, like many subsequent residents of Manhattan, merely a renter, not an owner).

You gotta love it.

Noon

¶ Supreme: Try to make some time — this evening, perhaps, or first thing tomorrow morning — to read the envoi of Times Supreme Court commentator, Linda Greenhouse. After nearly thirty years on the beat, she is retiring (to Yale).  

Night

¶ Warrant: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, has submitted a warrant for the arrest of Omar Hassan al-Bashir, president of Sudan, charging him with genocide. It’s a first.
(more…)

Morning

¶ Beady: Is there any language quite so jaundiced as the English in which the British discuss the French Revolution? In the Telegraph, Anthony Peregrine conducts readers on tour of Parisian Revolutionary sites, from Tobias Schmidt’s harpsichord shop (home of the guillotine) to La Fayette’s tomb.

Americans in contrast, might be less informative on the subject, but much more interesting, as, for example, La Maîtresse.

Bon week-end a tous!

(more…)

Mars attacks!

Morning

¶ AntErnauts: It looks fussy, with the capital ‘E’ and all, but it’s easy to say: anternauts. It’s my coinage to describe people who don’t know enough about the Internet to be able deal with it intelligently. Combine such ignorance with police power and watch out!

Librarian William Hallowell, sadly for him, knows a thing or two about the type. He was held for thirty hours, among other affronts, because police officers lacked the basic Internet competence to know that they had picked up the wrong man. Benjamin Weiser reports.

 Noon

¶ Cool: I just bought one of these. Now I wonder if I needed it.  

Night

¶ Patience: How did flounder evolve, with both eyes on one side of their head? Slowly but surely, that’s how.

(more…)

Morning

¶ Yet More Mad Max: I may have spoken too soon yesterday. Now I’ll seem obsessive. But I really have to had it to Britain’s most interesting plaintiff.

Unlike many high-profile figures caught in embarrassing sexual adventures, Mr. Mosley has chosen to make a fight of it.

Noon 

¶ Bizarre Attack: Unidentified assailants attacked the police detachment outside the US consulate in Istanbul, leaving three dead on each side.

Night

¶ Temps Perdu: Good grief! I’ve spent the past half hour trying to locate a swimming hole in New Hampshire! It was a favorite spot — twenty-nine years ago.

(more…)