Down With the Grups

This David Brooks column from Sunday is freakin' funny. He's fed up with all the funky moms and dads running around and turning their offspring into Shrinky Dink hipsters.

I mean, don’t today’s much-discussed hipster parents notice that their claims to rebellious individuality are undercut by the fact that they are fascistically turning their children into miniature reproductions of their hipper-than-thou selves?

Later he administers the best line of the piece: "Let me be clear: I’m not against the indie/alternative lifestyle. There is nothing more reassuringly traditionalist than the counterculture . . . . What I object to is people who make their children ludicrous."

Of course none of this would be possible without last April's widely read New York mag story on the now-fabled Grups.

Adoration

FEB. 25, 2007  |  Dustin Kirby, who served as a medic for a Marine battalion in Iraq until he was shot through the head in December, now with his wife, Lauren.

This photograph (click to enlarge), ran on the front page of the Times today, Sunday, and I kept looking at it all day. It was the main feature photo and the extended caption teased the full profile on page 17.

photo by Todd Heisler, The New York Times

Vil-sacked

I'm interested to hear what the Daily Show has to say about Tom VIL-SACK! dropping out of the 2008 presidential race . . . less than three months after jumping in as the first official candidate.

It got off to such a good start.

Picture Post

Feb. 15, 2007  |  Travel in Nanjing, China, days before the Chinese New Year. The transit system becomes overburdened for over a month; an estimated 156 million people will travel in that time.

photo by China Photos, Getty Images

One-Name Wonder

A fun little piece in yesterday's Times Op-Ed section noted that Hillary Rodham Clinton is taking the celebrity route and running her campaign for the U.S. presidency solely with her first name.

Someone has apparently decided that Mrs. Clinton will be the first major single-name candidate since 1952, when Ike’s P.R. gurus realized that “Eisenhower” was tough to fit on a bumper sticker.

Mrs. Clinton announced her intentions via the Internet on a Web site called “Hillary for President.” Incredibly, on the day of her announcement, the name “Clinton” did not appear anywhere in the long text on the site’s home page — except when linking to articles from The Associated Press and The Washington Post, and at the very bottom in the obligatory fine print: “Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President Exploratory Committee.”

...

... she knows that she’s the only candidate whose name lends itself to Oprah-ization.

Organizers for John Edwards and John McCain presumably considered, and rejected, naming their sites “John for President.” And it’s hard to imagine that President Bush would have gotten much traction from a site titled “George for President.”

I love it. She's famous enough and her name unique enough that she may be elected leader of the free world -- and need only her given name to do it. Maybe she'll make like Ichiro and make a request: Beltway reporters will refer to her as "President Hillary."

Survival of the Fittest

Today I saw a dirty little rat pull a nearly whole 10-inch pizza off the subway tracks into the darkness beneath the platform. For him, it must have been the mother lode. This was no piece of cookie or a chunk of candy bar -- we're talking a whole pizza.

It was at the Union Square N/Q/R/W downtown platform. I noticed the rat first weaving in and out beneath one of the rails of the express track. People always notice rats and are simultaneously horrified and fascinated; this was no exception. A gaggle of tourists on the uptown platform were watching, too, as the rat found the pizza. Someone had taken a bite, and the question that occured to me was, how did the thing end up there in the first place? The rat grabbed ahold of it with its teeth, and pulled and pulled. An N train pulled into the station, and the rat scurried away. The train pulled out, and seconds later he was back at it, pulling and tugging. Now he was pulling perpendicular to the rails, toward the shadow of the platform. The tourists were still watching, and so was I. The guy next to me was listening to music. Ten seconds later, the pizza, and the rat, were gone.

This is an intense town -- even for the vermin.

Crossword Vocab #3

AMBIT:
1. circumference; circuit
2. boundary; limit
3. a sphere of operation or influence; range; scope: the ambit of such an action

Happy Chinese New Population Boom!

It's not just the year of the pig -- fertility and virility, happiness and honesty! -- it's the year of the GOLDEN pig, an occasion marked only once every five zodiacal cycles (60 years for you non-technical people). What on earth does that mean, you ask? Well, let my mom explain it. Here she is in an email from today, talking about a friend of hers who was born in the last YOTGP:

She sure is a golden pig, she made so much money from her real estate business. She owns several houses in Southern Westchester, houses in NYC and Poconos. No wonder Fiona [my cousin's wife] wanted to have a pig baby this year. People are superstitious.

Tell me about it. Apparently, in the next year China, as if it needs it, is expecting an influx of little Chinese babies/Golden Pigs:

According to forecasts by the Shanghai population and family planning committee, the booming city will see over 137,000 babies born in 2007, almost double the number in 2006, Xinhua news agency reported from the eastern metropolis.

Family planning officials in Beijing have also forecast that the Chinese capital could see 150,000 babies born in 2007, compared to 129,000 last year.

The boom has begun to put strains on hospitals in major cities.

Stephen Colbert is right.

Photo of pigs by Eugene Hoshiko, AP Photo

Love Me a Slider

White Castle for Valentine's Day. (Where were Dan and Mel on this one?) The White Castle on East Fordham Road in the Bronx (just down the street from good ol' Inwood) has fully-decorated, fully-waitered Valentine's service for those who want to rekindle their romance over a sack of chicken rings.

Pragmatism

The thing I've always like about Nicholas Kristof: pragmatism. In response to Kristof's recent Times columns on Jimmy Carter's work in solving Third World health crises, a Harvard dean criticized him for ignorantly crediting Carter for his global-health efforts but not others such as the Gateses and Bono. In response, on his blog (which is TimesSelected) Kristof points out that of course Carter isn't the only one out there doing good things (but that he's been doing it longer than many), and that Kristof himself, in fact, helped inspire Bill Gates with an article he wrote years ago. Then:

In any case, I find it silly to be lectured about the importance of malaria from a crank at Harvard who has probably never had malaria or seen people dying of it. I’ve had falciparum malaria, the most lethal kind, and i’ve seen far too many people dying of it. That’s why I’m such a fan of Carter’s efforts. I’m not sure why Winsten doesn’t want to acknowledge Carter’s importance, but I’ve seen something similar in other people who disagree with Carter about the Middle East, or who scoff at his religious convictions. Either way, that seems remarkably petty to me. Carter’s book has been getting all the attention lately and is the basis for many Americans’ current views about Carter. But in 20 years that book will be forgotten, while Guinea worm will be wiped out and river blindness will be on its way toward eradication and vast numbers of people will be living better lives. So put things in perspective, folks, and have the grace to acknowledge that Carter over the last 25 years has helped put public health issues on the international agenda and is having an enormous impact on some of the most wretched corners of the planet. He is truly a great man.

We need more of that -- the ability to rationally,honestly sift out the good from the bad, even when they're in the same person.

Rudy Toots

The House approved a nonbinding resolution criticizing Bush's 20,000-troop surge in Iraq.

The best quote may have come from Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey: “What we’re doing with this resolution is not a salute to G.I. Joe. It’s a capitulation to Jihadist Joe.” I'm guessing he voted against the resolution.

Senate Democrats will probably soon follow with another bumbling attempt to debate The Surge.

[UPDATE: Yup. But they're getting there.]

Rudy Giuliani talked about this (and other stuff) last week when he made a 20-minute appearance on Larry King's show (on which he informally/formally announced his candidacy for 2008). I like the way he talks -- blunt for a politician, as a Brooklynite would be (although he's hedging like a politician more and more). I see his point on nonbinding resolutions, but I think they do have a measure of symbolic significance. (I also don't see how criticism within our own government won't give some degree of encouragement to "our enemy," but we shouldn't bite our tongues just because of that.)

Rudy on running for president and Iraq.

He talks social policy in another clip (that I can't find) and makes the intellectually honest -- and, as a Republican, politically necessary -- distinction that he is deeply against abortion but in favor of allowing women to have abortions legally:

KING: Do you still favor ""Roe v. Wade?""

GIULIANI: I am pro-choice, yes. But I -- I'm also, as you know -- always have been -- against abortion, hate abortion, don't like it, wouldn't personally advise anyone to have an abortion and -- but I believe a woman has a right to choose. And you can't have criminal penalties and I think that would be wrong.

I would select judges who try to interpret the Constitution rather than invent it, from my views as a lawyer. And I don't want to sound presumptuous, I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I have argued in the Supreme Court and I have argued in many of the circuit courts.

I've spent more time in court than I have in politics.

And I just think it's very, very important that a judge have a judicial philosophy that says I am going to try to figure out what the framers of the Constitution meant when they wrote this or what the people who amended it meant when they put it in, not what I'd like it to mean, not what I feel it means.

So he's pro-choice, won't say if he supports Roe v. Wade, but would appoint judges who may overturn it. This should be a very interesting candidacy.

Pete Posts

It's a Sampras Bonanza over at SI.com, where they've stuck an exclusive interview, Jon Wertheim's analysis on the best way to stage a Sampras vs. Federer exhibition, and a December post by current pro Justin Gimelstob on how Pete could actually still take on Federer.

Gimelstob thinks Pete could challenge him: "Pete Sampras is currently playing at a level as high as anyone in the world except for Federer."

photo by Damian Strohmeyer, Sports Illustrated

Green Mountain What?

"Gringo" is and has been a disparaging word. But I suppose things have changed too. From the American Heritage website, in a piece called Why Do We Say That? by Hugh Rawson:

In Spain, gringo does not have the same offensive connotations as in the New World, where it is, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, “a contemptuous name for an Englishman or an Anglo-American.” But as not infrequently happens with disparaging terms, the objects of the epithet have begun to glory in it. Gay and queer are examples of words that have followed this trajectory. So now we have the Gringo Gazette (“Baja’s English Language Newspaper”); Clark’s Gringo Foods, of San Angelo, Texas; Gringo Skateboards, of Dallas; Green Mountain Gringo Salsa and Tortilla Strips, from Hume Specialties, of Chester, Vermont; and so on. Even Spanish speakers are easing up. Thus the family with whom my daughter stayed for a semester in Costa Rica occasionally referred to her affectionately as la gringuita.

Pitt News: East End Rapist Caught

Has the notorious East End rapist -- since 1988 he has raped six women and attacked another -- finally been brought to justice? It looks like it. This was all big news while we were younguns at good ol' Carnegie Mellon. Now parents don't have any reasons not to send their fresh-faced college-bound teenagers to the Iron City. (Except for the depressing winters, oppressive courseloads, and general social ineptitude.)

Keith Woods was identified using DNA: One sample came from the latest apparent victim of his, an Edgewood woman raped in July of 2000; the other came from a sample taken while he was in prison in July of 2005. He was just released in December, and has now been picked up again.

You read right. He's been in and out of the prison system since 1988 for various other crimes (the article just says that he has a "long criminal history"). No wonder it's been so hard to find him. He's been hiding in jail.

link via Brad Grantz

Crossword Vocab #2

DOWAGER:
a widow holding property received from her deceased husband


APEAK:
in a vertical or almost vertical position or direction: "rowers holding their oars apeak"

POI:
staple plant food of Hawaiian diet; cooked taro pounded and thinned with water (among other definitions)

Bill Outshines the Rising Star

Bill Clinton swooped in on Hillary's behalf to win the endorsement of a prominent African-American South Carolina state senator, Robert Ford, who endorsed North Carolina's John Edwards in 2004 and whom Barack Obama was pursuing for the 2008 primaries. (Ford must have some street cred: Not only was he arrested 73 times during the Civil Rights movement, but it's a featured credential on his CV!)

It's simply an early demonstration of the huge presence everyone is saying Clinton will have in this race.

Maybe Clinton's "blacker" than Obama. It's been a topic of intense discussion recently, and I think that to assert that he's "not black enough" -- that is to say, he is not descended of African slaves of white Americans, was not raised in the face of racism and oppression, or otherwise hasn't had an authentic black American experience -- is antithetical to the notion of inclusiveness that black leaders have long petitioned for. In his TIME piece, sociology professor Orlando Patterson says that historically as an American, even a single drop of African blood would make you an African-American. He goes on to say:

Black identity was historically progressive in another important respect: from very early in the 19th century through the civil rights movement, it was strikingly cosmopolitan. Black leaders took a deep interest in oppressed peoples throughout the world. The Pan-African movement and early black nationalism were part of emerging notions of black solidarity. Blacks took deep pride in the Haitian revolution, and black American missionaries played an important role in the Christianization of Jamaican and other West Indian blacks. Black Americans were also open to the inspiration of black immigrants: W.E.B. DuBois's father was Haitian; James Weldon Johnson's mother, Bahamian. One of the first mass movements of African Americans was led by a Jamaican, Marcus Garvey, in the '20s. An impressive number of black leaders and civil rights icons--Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm, Louis Farrakhan, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, to list a few--were all first- or second-generation immigrants.

For some, "blackness" no longer connotes an inclusive family of the disenfranchised, but an exclusive club.

Mysteries of the Heart (Shape)

Slate.com's Explainer made a (half-hearted) attempt last year at discovering the origins of the modern-day heart shape.

Was it once the seed pod of an ancient contraceptive? Or the vision of a 17th-century Catholic saint? Or perhaps just a really bad medieval interpretation of our actual physiology? We may never know.

Ride Safely

Where do I get some of these NYC SUBWAY condoms? Sounds like a collector's item to me.

photo by Mike Nizza, The New York Times

Crossword Vocab #1

HOI POLLOI:
an expression meaning "the many" in Ancient Greek, used in English to denote "the masses" or "the people," usually in a derogatory sense

OGEE:
a term used to describe an S-shaped double curve, particularly those on bracket feet as used on first class mid-18th century furniture

JAI ALAI:
a Basque or Spanish game played in a court with a ball and a wickerwork racket

EMEND:
alter or correct in the text of a written work, as in: "The publishers hurried to emend the book before the next edition"

Addicted

Check out this piece in the WaPo Style section. More and more, brain researchers are finding, love and drugs are one and the same!

The author, Neely Tucker, swings violently back and forth between serious scholarship and silly asides. Makes for some interesting reading.

"Love is a drug," says Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and author of "Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love." "The ventral tegmental area is a clump of cells that make dopamine, a natural stimulant, and sends it out to many brain regions" when one is in love. "It's the same region affected when you feel the rush of cocaine."

Passion! Sex! Narcotics!

...

There are two shrimp-size things on either side of your brain called the caudate nuclei. This is the gear that operates bodily movements and the body's reward system: "the mind's network for general arousal, sensations of pleasure, and the motivation to acquire rewards," Fisher writes. And when the test subjects looked at their sweeties, these things started singing "Loosen Up My Buttons" with the Pussycat Dolls!

Also, did you know that things aren't nearly as fun ... once the fun dies?

Regan, the California researcher, notes that such cases are rare, and may have more to do with existing mental issues than simple unrequited love. Still, she says, passion is destined to end, whether mellowing into long-term love or blowing up on the freeway at 4 a.m. Given this, she wonders if "we do our self a disservice by glorifying passionate love so much."

"The search for eternal passion is very misguided," she says. "It's the search for the perfect high that keeps people discarding relationships right and left . You don't feel the same way you did; people want to break up, instead of seeing it as normal."

True.

Sullivan ♥ Federer

Apparently Andrew Sullivan is a Federer fan. Well, he's made some room for him on his blog anyway. And for Anna, too.

Zen K's

New Age endurance training for pitchers gains credibility in the big leagues.

Maybe they should just talk to Boston's new guy, Daisuke Matsuzaka. He threw a 17-inning, 250-pitch complete game victory. As a 17-year-old.

Nobel Warming

Al Gore is our new savior, apparently.

But good for him. I never disliked him, and An Inconvenient Truth should be required viewing. It's not wrongheaded -- though there certainly are nonbelievers.