the sixth floor

8 lbs., 11 oz.

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:12:00 +0000

Caralyn's new weight!

It Snowed in Brooklyn Last Night

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Let the shoveling begin.

"He Had To Die"

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:57:00 +0000

It had been coming for a while, but it finally hit me tonight as I watched some TV coverage of the Michael Jackson celebration in L.A. I cried. He was so talented, musical, and joyful. He saw the world through a rose-colored lens, despite his torment. The outpouring of sorrow and remembrance in cities around the world was a testament to his unifying spirit.

So many of us didn't remember him until now, and that is sad. Today, Berry Gordy told Barbara Walters the tragic truth: Jackson had to die so the world could realize how much it actually loved him.

Cases

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:05:00 +0000

My once-again favorite section of the NYT: The Science Times.

It still features the usual science-news stories it always did, but in recent years has branched out and become so much more reader-focused. Besides the usual servicey Q&As and the contrarian column/blog by John Tierney, the Cases column also manages to add a moving, human touch to the section.

"Comforter and Comforted in an Unfolding Mystery," from two weeks ago, tells of how a young man named Josh, crushed by the loss of his girlfriend, finds a way to honor her memory. It got me all misty on the subway ride home one night. Check it out.

+ art: NYT/Yvetta Fedorova

ASUS 1000HE

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:10:00 +0000

This may revolutionize my travel habits.

No Time To Watch Melting Ice Cubes?

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:22:00 +0000

Do it here, in six seconds. Mel wanted to do a time-lapse video for school, so here it is!

(The half-second of darkness was when we turned off the lights for five minutes by accident. Oops!)

The (Non) State of the Union, Live

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:02:00 +0000

(photo from MSNBC)

10:06 PM
"We are not quitters," he says, quoting the girl from a poor S.C. school, Tyosheoma Bethea, who wrote Congress and POTUS for help. "We are not quitters," he repeats. Very smart, Mr. Obama/Mr. Obama's speechwriter.

Yep, he uses it here, at the end: We must "summon that enduring spirit of an America that does not quit."

9:58 PM
Nancy Pelosi continues to impress me with her youthful sprightliness.

We've closed Guantantamo, he says. "Living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer, and it makes us stronger," and "That is why I can stand here and say, without exception or equivocation - the United States of America does not torture."

9:55 PM
On fiscal responsibility. Hooting and cheering and booing. This Congress is starting to sound like some the gymnasium at a college basketball game.

He wants to end tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas.... and Pelosi is giddy.

The stimulus provides "a tax cut - that's right, a tax cut" for every family making under $250,000. He is sounding a little too much like a salesman here. "But wait... there's more!"

9:50 PM
Nice reference to Ted Kennedy - talking about bipartisan cooperation in the legislature, Obama refers to Sen. Kennedy, "who has never stopped asking what he can do for his country."

"I speak to you not as your president, but as a father... responsibility for our children's education begins at home," he says emphatically. People like that one.

9:46 PM
He will begin convening meetings on health care next week. "Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

On to education reform. Nancy Pelosi once again appears to be getting a workout from that Speaker chair. But I think he's starting to lose people a little bit with the standard litany of promises. Just now Biden and Pelosi seem to be staring into the middle distance and a couple of times clapped absently at some education initiative.

9:43 PM
Trying to be cheesily hopeful and also starkly realistic: "This is America! We don't do what's easy, we do what's necessary" to "Every 30 seconds another company goes into bankruptcy."

Now, on to health care. He mentions the new S-CHIP legislation, and Pelosi SHOOTS up out of her chair, clapping! For a second there, I thought we had ignition.

9:37 PM
This country has always reacted with bold action when we've had crises, he says. Government never supplanted private enterprise, it catalyzed private enterprise. We're a nation that has "claimed promise from peril; opportunity from ordeal."

Energy, health care, and education are the three pillars to our future economy.

9:35 PM
Fox News hed: "Obama hits hope theme." Definitely true. He's talking about the bad stuff but he's definitely upbeat. I haven't seen him move and gesticulate this much in the last couple of years - it's somewhat reminiscent of his 2004 DNC speech.

9:30 PM
"I intend to hold banks fully accountable." Something else that he had to hammer home. Lots of people are upset about the bank bailouts, and he has to sell them on it. He says "those days are over" of fancy drapes and excessive private jets.

He knows how tough it is to see banks getting bailed out after all this bad behavior. "I get it," he says. But, "we can not afford to govern out of anger" and "it's not about helping banks; it's about helping people."

9:28 PM
Explainer in chief. Credit crisis. I wonder how this is working? I understand it all, and I think he needs to do this, but does it confuse or muddle the matter?

He's coming off as confident and almost aggressive. That's the right body language, I think - too much of this serious, somber stuff is no good for the country's mood.

9:25 PM
McCain - he looks amused, almost thinking, "Man, I'm glad I'm not in his position."

Introducing Biden as the man in charge of the domestic recovery: "Because nobody messes with Joe! Am I right?" That's some casual flair I've never seen in this setting before.

9:23 PM
He's into this stimulus thing "Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited – I am. I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships." That's something people want to hear.

"There are 57 police officers still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight" because of the stimulus plan. Great detail.

9:19 PM
We will rebuild and emerge stronger than before. This is the first time Obama has used his campaign-rally voice in Washington DC.

Funny. Pelosi and Biden are reading the speech in the background. They're probably preparing themselves to stand for the applause lines.

9:15 PM
POTUS continues to hobnob with the Capitol elite. He finally arrives to the VP and Speaker. He says "thank you" or "thank you very much" 15 or 20 times before everyone settles, then it all happens again after Speaker Pelosi formally introduces him.

9:10 PM
Madame Speaker: The POTUS. Lots of applause. (Side note: Pretty amazing - Madame Speaker, I introduce to you the (first black) President of the US.)

9:05 PM
All the pomp at circumstance is funny, yet fun. The cabinet is introduced. Hillary in her shocking magenta pantsuit, Tim Geithner, and Robert Gates come out first. Lots of power right there.

We see Gary Locke, the new commerce secretary-designate. He was the first Asian American governor, heading Washington State from 1997-2005.

9:00 PM
AG Eric Holder has sat out this round. Really though... if the Capitol dome blows up, can Eric Holder run a functioning government? Maybe more of the cabinet should sit it out.

Citrus Bliss

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 02:07:00 +0000

Per Robin Lee's suggestion, I bought a crapload of Cara Cara navel oranges. It is the height of citrus season, and these small, ruby red fruits are pretty darn amazing. Sweet and juicy but not too tart, they go down easy.

I also got some regular navels and a whole bunch of ruby red grapefruits. Vitamin C, here I come!

Defending DoD Spending

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:32:00 +0000

President Obama's 2009 defense budget is set for $527 billion, a $14 billion increase from 2008. That $527 billion is actually boosting 2009 defense spending to the number that the Bush Administration had projected for 2010.

But there's an emerging partisan argument that Obama is "cutting the defense budget" this year because the $527 billion is less than the DoD had requested. (As you know, when requesting funds, everyone always OVERrequests so they can get the right amount.) It's designed to make the new administration look bad, and weak.

Let's be clear - the defense budget is scheduled to INCREASE to $527 billion this year, from $513 billion last year.

The Eye Of God

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:01:00 +0000

This is the Helix Nebula, also called "The Helix," or NGC 7293 in the New General Catalog. It appears in the constellation Aquarius and resides 700 light-years from Earth, which means that if you were to point a really powerful flashlight at it and hit the switch, it would take 255,000 days for that light to get there. That's thirty-six-thousand four-hundred weeks. Seven hundred years.

But the most impressive thing about it isn't its distance from us. The Helix is one stunning example of what's called a planetary nebula, the massive cloud of ionized gas that three-billion-year-old stars become in their last throes, after the red giant stage, and before settling as a remnant star - a white dwarf - for eternity.

Why's it called a "planetary nebula," if it was in fact once a massive star? Because when we first discovered them, these things looked like large gas planets, like Jupiter. What do you expect? Hundreds of years ago, all we had were itty-bitty ground-based optics. Today, with telescopes like the Hubble orbiting in space, there's no mistaking it.

But I love that it has kept the name - it's a planetary nebula. Like so many other terms in astronomy, it bespeaks the mystery, romance and mythology so deeply embedded in this outlandish search for gigantic objective truths. The stars are infinite, and perfect. We are only human.

Through the odd workings of the Internet, the Helix Nebula has gained a reputation as something else: the Eye of God. That's silly, I thought at first. But look at it again. I did, and it gave me chills.

+ Click here for more ridiculous pictures of galaxies, nebulae, and globular clusters.

A Long Time Coming

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:55:00 +0000

This country has just realized a whole lot of its potential, and everyone knows it. Let's revel in it, just a little longer.

/ a change is gonna come /

/ cheer / Celebration at Fort Greene
Senior Action Center, Brooklyn, Jan. 20, 2009.

/ weep / Vertie Hodge, 74, in Houston on Jan. 20, 2009,
after Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address.

/ rejoice / US Army Command
Sgt. Maj. Julia Kelley watches the inauguration
from Camp Liberty in Baghdad, Iraq.

+ photos from The Boston Globe
+ "A Change Is Gonna Come," performed by Seal

The Inauguration

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:26:00 +0000

It happened. And after two and a half months, it's still hard to believe.

361 Days To Go

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:42:00 +0000

The new year has begun, and everyone's doing it, so I will too. My resolutions for 2009:

1. Per last year's utterly failed resolution: Read at least a book a month. I'm a slow reader. Plus, the last 12 months have been ridiculous for election fans, so I grant myself amnesty for 2008. But this year, I have no excuse. (Wait, aren't Obama's First 100 Days beginning soon?)

2. Call my family more. It's easy to lose track of mom, dad, and siblings when I don't see them - I'll never not be family, so what's the harm in losing touch for days or weeks at a time? Well, the harm is this: I miss their lives. And, while I'm at it, call my grandmother too. Not only does she miss us bad out there in California, I'd give my pidgin Chinese a workout too. ;)

3. Give. When I first graduated and started pulling in paychecks, I gave a bit of money here and there. March of Dimes, St. Jude's. But now, no longer. This year, find something worthy to give to. And volunteer.

4. Become a solid 5.0 tennis player. I've been hovering at around a 4.5 NTRP rating for much of the last decade or so. It's time to bump it up to an indisputable 5.0. Get match tough; and regain that confidence I had with on-the-rise shots that I had in 2003, back when I used my 95-square-inch Prince Precision Equipe frames (since bequeathed to my father).

5. Acknowledge when I understand something, and acknowledge when I don't. Otherwise, I just make a fool of myself, and in the process fool myself into thinking I'm smarter than I am.

Happy New Year!

+ photo from blr60 @ flickr +

And I Couldn't Eat It

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:31:00 +0000

Playing mah-jongg yesterday, I encountered this happy-go-lucky chocolate-covered peanut. Its particular joie de vivre, and its brazen disregard of the norms for bite-size snacks, made it a fascinating and compelling subject.

For other choco-nut pics in the new Christmas album, go here.

Manna-hatta

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:19:00 +0000

Going on in this way [in the 1630s], with every muscle and every ounce of guile put into maintaining survival, the Dutch settlers of Manhattan might scarcely have noticed what was happening over the next few years.

The sails out in the harbor appeared more frequently, bringing more faces, and more varied ones. Ebony faces from the central highlands of Angola. Arab faces creased from North African sandstorms. An Italian, a Pole, a Dane.

Something was happening that was quite unlike the unfolding of society at the two English colonies to their north, where the rigid Puritans, who arrived in 1630, and the even more rigid Pilgrims maintained, in their wide-brimmed piety, monocultures in the wild.

Manhattan was a business settlement, a way station on the rising Atlantic trade circuit. News of its existence spread to places as far afield as the Amazonian thickets of Bahia and Pernambuco in Brazil...

A trickle had started. In small clusters, the world began coming to North America via this island nestled in its inviting harbor.

--Excerpted and edited from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America, by Will Shorto (Vintage Books, 2004)

Photos From New Cameraland

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:47:00 +0000

UPDATED

Click the photo to see a small selection from Thanksgiving - and more!

Mundane in Maryland

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:45:00 +0000

Doing some last-minute shopping before cooking. Happy Thanksgiving!

Life Sucks For Lehman

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:16:00 +0000

11 Nov 2008 15:57 EST DJ Lehman Brothers Plans To Sell Art To Help Pay Off Creditors

     By David McLaughlin     Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ), which is in the process of unloading billions of dollars in assets to raise money for its creditors, now plans to put its art collection up for sale.

Lehman has art stored in warehouses in Manhattan and in Paris that it says is worth about $8 million. But before it can sell any of it, it needs to pay bills owed for storing, transporting and framing the art.

Lehman owes $20,000 to three companies that have liens on the art. Its asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan for permission to pay the bills so it can begin looking for buyers.

Lehman didn't provide details about the artwork in its court filing Monday. The investment bank also said it has valuable art in its offices, though it didn't say how much that art is worth.

The art sales is the latest move by Lehman to sell its assets following its historic collapse in September. Lehman said the art collection represents "significant value" to the company, but the sales won't make much of a dent in the $600 billion Lehman owes to creditors.

Since its Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing, Lehman has sold its U.S. broker-dealer operations for $1.54 billion and its energy unit for $230 million. It has also sold a plane for $24.9 million and a stake in a hedge fund for $250 million, plus a $250 million stake in a new fund.

The Open-Source President

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:18:00 +0000

About that "open-source" president we were talking about a few nights ago: In a column in today's NYT business section David Carr leads with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and his meeting with Barack Obama in the spring of 2007. An excerpt:

Always game for something new, Mr. Andreessen headed to the San Francisco airport late one night to hear the guy out. A junior member of a large and powerful organization with a thin, but impressive, résumé, he was about to take on far more powerful forces in a battle for leadership.

He wondered if social networking, with its tremendous communication capabilities and aggressive database development, might help him beat the overwhelming odds facing him.

“It was like a guy in a garage who was thinking of taking on the biggest names in the business,” Mr. Andreessen recalled. “What he was doing shouldn’t have been possible, but we see a lot of that out here and then something clicks. He was clearly supersmart and very entrepreneurial, a person who saw the world and the status quo as malleable.”

And as it turned out, President-elect Barack Obama was right.

...

“I think it is very significant that he was the first post-boomer candidate for president,” Mr. Andreessen said. “Other politicians I have met with are always impressed by the Web and surprised by what it could do, but their interest sort of ended in how much money you could raise. He was the first politician I dealt with who understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.”

The juxtaposition of a networked, open-source campaign and a historically imperial office will have profound implications and raise significant questions. Special-interest groups and lobbyists will now contend with an environment of transparency and a president who owes them nothing. The news media will now contend with an administration that can take its case directly to its base without even booking time on the networks.

A new paradigm in governing? The level of intimacy that Obama has developed with the electorate via text message and the Internet has already shown what is possible - the first post-modern presidential campaign. What's next?

The President-Elect

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:41:00 +0000

What a crazy place.

I was moved far more than I expected tonight. Forget the electoral maps and 3-D graphics, the talky pundits and bloggerheads, and the day-to-day madness of the last 22 months. It's all over, and what we've ended up with is a genuinely historic moment.

Tom Friedman said (as have some bloggers) that the election of this black man brings us to the symbolic - and true - end to the American Civil War:

And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.

...

This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.

Look at all the screaming faces of excited young black children on TV, and you know that they - and all children - now have a new kind of hero.

On a smaller scale, many are relieved the Bush years are over; it's a democratic coup. The cheering, screaming, banging, honking and clapping that has not stopped on my block (and elsewhere across the country, literally) since 11 p.m. are not only hundreds of Brooklynites (hipsters and cab drivers alike) expressing support for Obama. It's also the very real, very palpable manifestation of that great catharsis.

On an even closer level: I've spoken with Republican friends and acquaintances, and universally the fear among them is that Obama is a reckless big-government liberal who will conspire with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to ruin America, morally and financially.

But maybe, we hope, this new president of ours will run a modest, useful, efficient government.

NYT:

Mr. Obama won the election because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He promised to lead a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Sounds like some neophyte fantasy-world gobbledy-gook, right? Washington is gridlocked, impossible - "gummed up," as Obama so illustratively said in the video announcing his candidacy in 2007.

Still. Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, just this minute on CNN asked - rhetorically yet genuinely - if Barack Obama is going to be the "open-source" president for our new generation - by building government that serves the people. Working from the bottom up, not top-down. He meant it admiringly, in response to this, from Obama's election-night speech:

"And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."

I, for one, am hoping.

Last Days

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:23:00 +0000

A great video. It captures the size and scope of the Obama campaign.

Oh, Students

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:52:00 +0000

From a press release today:

30 Oct 2008 11:30 EDT Students hold mock funeral at Queen's Park to mark the Death of Affordable Education; Zombies claim students are being "buried by debt"

TORONTO, Oct. 30 /CNW/ - College and university students from Toronto campuses hosted a mock funeral procession through a tombstone-lined cemetery on the Queen's Park lawn this morning. Meanwhile, students dressed as zombies rose from graves to illustrate that they are being "buried by debt" in order to finance their education. "Dalton McGuinty was elected on the promise that he would be the 'Education Premier' but, from where we sit, he looks more like the Grim Reaper," said Toby Whitfield, Vice-President Finance and Services of the Ryerson Students' Union. "Under McGuinty's plan, the tuition freeze was cancelled and Ontario students faced the largest tuition increases in the country."

The GOP Goes Subliminal

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:11:00 +0000

Hmmm, the GOP must think that Barack Obama's design team is responsible for the Democrat's lead down the homestretch, because they seem to have ripped off BarackObama.com's sans-serif-and-italics look, replete with shiny red donation button.

Perhaps they're just hoping people will donate to the GOP, thinking it's an Obama ad? My take is that it just ain't gonna work without a car magnet.

Screenshots: GOP.com | BarackObama.com

"I Do Not Want A Black Man Running My Country"

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:02:00 +0000

+ via The Daily Dish +

Sea of Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (chris) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:54:00 +0000

October 27, 10:48 a.m. | Climbing into the atmosphere, outside of Detroit.