Month: March 2008

Easter Saturday

Thought this was a nice article on the teahouses of NYC by Seth Kugel. Tea and Sympathy‘s just lovely (despite the tightness of space and following the rules, it’s so worth it!). Franchia‘s pretty cool (so I recalled, anyway). So love tea, and wish I had the money to do more teahouses.

“Lost” — interesting episode, as it fills in a missing gap in the saga of “Lost.” Well, still don’t quite understand what happened with young Walt, but that’s probably for another time.

“Law and Order” — uh, yeah, weird episode. Christians Taking Righteousness Too Far. Cutter tries to prosecute. McCoy sighs. Hmm. I know, I know – I can’t expect “L&O” to go into characters too much (if at all) when the show’s really about plot (or, rather, Ripped From the Headlines), but really, sometimes I’d like to say to the characters of “L&O”: who are you and why do you care about this situation? Cutter seems to be about Law and Order – or rather, getting the conviction – but isn’t it more than that?

Plus, the cops Green and Lupo seemed a little duller than usual in this episode, although I’d have thought they’d be a little perturbed by the case’s weirdness. Frankly, I’d be a little nauseous about 10 year old Christian zealot yelling at me for being a sinner (meanwhile the kid’s an accessory to murder? Uh…). Considering the weak writing, I think it was a little obvious that the episode was the last one in the can before the writers’ strike came down.

The “L&O” episode also had a mini-“Kidnapped” reunion, in bringing Will Denton (who played the kidnap victim on that canceled NBC series) as a guest star – but no big scenery chewing with either Jeremy Sisto (the rogue detective of “Kidnapped”) or Linus Roache (the rogue FBI agent from “Kidnapped”). (oh, and the Universal HD channel has been airing those canceled episodes of “Kidnapped” of late – kind of an interesting show, but I could see why it got canceled).

Plus, playing the defendant on “L&O” – a creepy pastor who had his role in producing the juvenile Christian zealots who kill people – was Sean Astin, the former Rudy from “Rudy” and the former Sam from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

No new “Lost” or “L&O” until April, though, due to the writers’ strike.

NCAA basketball – oh-kay: my brackets are looking a little ragged. In the East region, I had Winthrop as my Cinderella into the Sweet 16; goodbye, Winthrop. I also had Indiana at least into the second round; again, too bad. In the Midwest region, I had USC into the Sweet 16; Vanderbilt and Gonzaga into the second round; bye-bye. The South region’s still okay, but not the West – Duke, Drake, and U.Conn – bye. I had a feeling that Duke wouldn’t have made it, but thought The NCAA Powers That Be knew what they were doing by ranking Duke so high; who were they kidding?

Serious stuff:

YC beat me to it in posting on the Taiwan elections. I’m no follower of Taiwan politics, but it’s fascinating stuff. Plus, I had been wondering if the Tibet developments had any effect.

Speaking of Tibet – in Time magazine this week: Pico Iyer has an fascinating look at how the Dalai Lama has been grappling the recent Chinese-Tibet tensions. Quite a read.

This was a fascinating excerpt of the video-blogged conversation between John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute, left, and Glenn Loury of Brown University on the meaning of Barack Obama’s speech.

I also thought that Joe Klein’s column in Time about Obama’s speech was also interesting – the real question is: are people (the media, the voters, the People) willing to hear complex questions?

Last, but not least: John Dean (yes, that John Dean), who admires the intellectual heft that Obama brought in the recent speech on race, posits that people might prefer their presidents to pretend (or actually be) not that intelligent. I thought Dean’s closing paragraphs were eloquent:

Let’s hope that Senator Obama continues to be willing to publicly perform at his intelligence level. Perhaps he will trust voters to realize that the key criterion to serve in the highest office should not be which candidate is the person with whom you would most enjoy having a beer. To the contrary, presidents should not be encouraging C students to continue to earn Cs so they can become president. Presidents should be telling all Americans that we can do better – which is one of the core points in Obama’s message.

Anti-intellectual Republican presidents have led this nation into a new age of unreason, as former Vice President Al Gore argued in The Assault on Reason (2007) and more recently, Susan Jacoby has reported in The Age of Unreason (2008). As Senator Obama campaigns, he can truly change America by simply refusing to play dumb. That strategy, if Obama continues it, may turn out to be not only courageous but also wise, for it is very possible that, after so many years, Americans are tired of having their innate intelligence insulted by their presidential candidates.

Mid-March and More

And so it begins – it’s NCAA bracket time!

Next week: 3/24/08 to 3/31/08 – Brooklyn Restaurant Week.

The passing of Anthony Minghella, director of the movie “The English Patient” and other films.

The passing of Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer.

Harvard Law’s attempt to persuade law students to consider the public service/public interest practice of law seems to be pretty ambitious – a tuition waiver? Will it change anything, in terms of getting law students and new lawyers to think about more than Big Firms and stuff? Hmm!

Finished reading “Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction” by Eric Foner, with visual essays by Joshua Brown (commentary on the visual arts during that era) — powerful and well-written, it’s apparently a book that was a companion to a documentary. It covers a lot of ground about race relations and politics of the pre-Civil War, Civil War, and post-Civil War eras – and Foner also demonstrates the eras’ legacies to today’s politics (coincidentally, I finished reading just as the reactions are still evolving about Barack Obama’s speech on race). The pictures and the text about the horrific crimes of terror against black Americans during Reconstruction and the complexities of Reconstruction – it makes one think, emotionally and intellectually. Highly recommended book.

My one big regret from college was not having been able to take Foner’s class on the Reconstruction period (i think it was due to scheduling conflict) – not only is Foner amazing as a history professor (and quite a writer), but the period just leaves so much food for thought, because we’re still grappling with the implications. Not only did it affect black-white interaction, it affected everything else – how to define race; who has political power; immigration policy – who gets to be let into America, who gets to be “American” (not to mention telling Chinese people at that time that they were not welcome – and letting Asians and Latinos not fit in either the black-white paradigm).

And, following up on my referring to the Obama speech – I do recommend hearing/watching the whole speech. Soundbites do not do it justice – Obama’s raising a big topic that should be discussed, carefully, yes, but with the aim to resolve relations – almost in a mediation/conflict resolution kind of way, I’d like to think. It’s not easy, and there are lots of other things to deal with (economy, national security, gender relations, etc.), but we can’t ignore it either. Nuance is hard to accept for a lot of people (it didn’t help, say, John Kerry’s campaign), but maybe the American voter will take into consideration the totality of the circumstances, as we’d say in the area of law?

We are living in interesting times.