Category Archives: Worth Reading

Sam needs a time out

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Justice Samuel Alito’s middle-school antics (by Dana Milbank, Washington Post)

The most remarkable thing about the Supreme Court’s opinions announced Monday was not what the justices wrote or said. It was what Samuel Alito did.

The associate justice, a George W. Bush appointee, read two opinions, both 5-4 decisions that split the court along its usual right-left divide. But Alito didn’t stop there. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, Alito visibly mocked his colleague.

Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, was making her argument about how the majority opinion made it easier for sexual harassment to occur in the workplace when Alito, seated immediately to Ginsburg’s left, shook his head from side to side in disagreement, rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling.

His treatment of the 80-year-old Ginsburg, 17 years his elder and with 13 years more seniority, was a curious display of judicial temperament or, more accurately, judicial intemperance. Typically, justices state their differences in words — and Alito, as it happens, had just spoken several hundred of his own from the bench. But he frequently supplements words with middle-school gestures.

This guy needs to go to the principal’s office. Sam is a big boy now and really should know better.

Shame.

And why are we here, exactly?

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In the Bible Belt, Offering Atheists a Spiritual Home (New York Times)

BATON ROUGE, La. — It would have been easy to mistake what was happening in a hotel ballroom here for a religious service. All the things that might be associated with one were present Sunday: 80 people drawn by a common conviction. Exhortations to service. Singing and light swaying. An impassioned sermon.

There was just no mention of God.

Billed as Louisiana’s first atheist service and titled “Joie de Vivre: To Delight in Being Alive,” it was presided over by Jerry DeWitt, a small, charismatic man dressed all in black with slick, shiny hair.

I’m always happy to see people who are happy, but this just seems ridiculous to me.

“Atheist church” is an oxymoron. And congregating with other like-minded people to sing songs and celebrate your communal disbelief in an imaginary man in the sky is just . . .

Well . . . silly.

I’d much rather go to the ballpark.

Worth reading, 06/21/13

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My Abortion, at 23 Weeks (op-ed by Judy Nicastro in the New York Times)

KIRKLAND, Wash. — I BELIEVE that parenthood starts before conception, at the moment you decide you want a child, and are ready and able to create a safe and loving home for her or him. I support abortion rights, but I reject the false distinction between the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” Here’s why.

This is a very compelling argument against limiting abortion to the first 20 weeks, or the first trimester, or to whatever the next set of restrictive laws will try to achieve. Nicastro, carrying twins, learned in her 23rd week of pregnancy that one of the fetuses had a hole in his diaphragm.

Only one lung chamber had formed, and it was only 20 percent complete. If our boy survived birth, he would be on oxygen and other life supports for a long time. The thought of hearing him gasp for air and linger in pain was our nightmare.

Anti-abortionists say abortion is murder, period, end of conversation. (Though they often permit exceptions for rape and incest, which I think is inconsistent with their doctrine. The fetus is not responsible for the conditions of its creation. If abortion is murder, isn’t it also murder to abort a fetus that results from incest or rape?)

I say the writer made the right decision, however painful. Aborting a fetus in this sort of condition at 23 weeks is much more merciful and compassionate than condemning it to a short lifetime of constant agony once it’s born.

Read the op-ed. You decide.

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Seen on Facebook:

(h/t Lori Day)

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Men Over 40 Should Think Twice Before Running Triathlons (Bloomberg)

(h/t Mike Regan)

For men competing in triathlons past the age of 40, the grueling slog to the finish line could be their last.

As the average age of competitors in endurance sports rises, a spate of deaths during races or intense workouts highlights the risks of excessive strain on the heart through vigorous exercise in middle age.

OK, I’m convinced. No more triathlons for me.

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Masthead_Solstice_2012

Solstice in Times Square: Athleta Mind Over Madness Yoga

(h/t Josh Miller)

Anyone can find tranquility on top of a mountain.
Can you find it in the middle of Times Square?

Find tranquility and transcendence in the midst of the world’s most commercial, frenetic and urban place, Times Square. Thousands of yoga enthusiasts will come together for a collective ohm on the longest day of the year (June 21st) to participate in an all day yoga festival.

Celebrate the sun, summer and creativity at the Crossroads of the World with five free outdoor yoga classes. Participants will receive a Solstice gift bag* and Athleta will provide free yoga mats* to the first 1,200 that arrive to each class.

Oh, I’m just dying to be one of a few thousand fools practicing yoga in Times Square. Sun salutation, anyone?

On the other hand, it’s so hard to pass up a free Solstice gift bag.

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New Jersey Bans Trash-Talking in High School Sports (nbcnewyork.com)

New Jersey high school athletes who talk trash could find their teams penalized and themselves under investigation by state officials.

In announcing the new policy, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association and the state Attorney General’s Office said it brings athletic events into line with the state’s anti-bullying law for schools.

According to the policy, sports participants could be in trouble and under investigation by the state Civil Rights Division if they make harassing statements related to gender, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or religion.

There once was a baseball player named Dummy Hoy. These days, you could never call him Dummy (not that he could hear you if you did). I guess it’s a good thing that we’re going to ban trash-talking. But the world sure has changed, hasn’t it?

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In Ali’s Voice From the Past, a Stand for the Ages (William C. Rhoden in the New York Times)

I woke up Thursday morning and heard a familiar voice that I thought was part of a dream: Muhammad Ali was discussing why he had refused to be inducted into the Army….

I have stopped using the word hero to describe greatness.

In an era of unimaginable intrusions into our private lives, the would-be hero walks on a rug that can be snatched away at a moment’s notice. Better to talk about someone’s heroic moment or performing a heroic act.

Muhammad Ali is a great man. What he did 46 years was a heroic deed for the ages.

Each generation has its own method of protest and resistance. Listening to Ali on Thursday morning was a reminder that courage, honor and integrity are timeless.

Excellent piece. Don’t miss this one.

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Checking Out (Timothy Egan in the New York Times)

[T]he main factor in workplace discontent is not wages, benefits or hours, but the boss. Yes, that cretin from Kentucky Fried Chicken, in countless forms. The survey said there was consistent anger at management types who failed to so much as ask employees about their opinion of the job. Ever….

What the Gallup survey makes clear is that the easiest way to make life better in the workplace is the simplest: all those unctuous, self-important, clueless bosses out there could notice the toiling subordinate who’s been taking up space for many years. Fake it, if you have to, just to see what it feels like.

If you’ve ever had an abusive boss, you need to read this. If you’re a boss, you need to read this even more.

Gandolfini

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This piece by Matt Zoller Seitz is just terrific. It explains why we’re all feeling a sense of loss today. Gandolfini was us. RIP.

Seitz on James Gandolfini, 1961-2013: A Great Actor, A Better Man

James Gandolfini was real. He was special. You could feel it.

Friends felt it. Colleagues felt it. People who talked to him for five minutes and never saw him again felt it. People who never met him in person and knew him only through his performance on The Sopranos felt it.

It was real. It was deep. It was true.

James Gandolfini had an authentic connection with viewers. Everyone who watched him perform, in a starring role or a bit part, came away feeling understood. You watched him act and you thought, “Yes. He gets it. He understands.”

He wasn’t one of them. He was one of us.

Worth reading, 06/20/13

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Tom Sietsema: Just say ‘No, grazie’ to La Tagliatella (Washington Post)

La Tagliatella in Arlington makes a strong case for hazard pay for restaurant critics. The Italian concept, an unfortunate import from Europe that plays up 400 combinations of pasta and sauce, is so distasteful on so many different levels, I was tempted to dismiss it after just one visit. I changed my mind when I considered its prime corner real estate in Clarendon and the Poland-based chain’s intention to expand elsewhere in the United States.

Someone needs to put a stop to this threat to our nation….

The slick menus with their commercial-grade food shots suggest the sort of reading you might find on the desk of a budget hotel or the seat pocket of an airplane….

The wines by the glass will remind you of the stuff you left behind in college, but the drinks here are generous and strong. Cocktails, it turns out, are one way to get through a meal at La Tagliatella, a brand unleashed on America last year with two branches in Atlanta, poor thing.

Yeah, he didn’t like the place. And the Washington Post asks on its homepage if this may be its harshest food critique ever. But Sietsma’s review pales in comparison to the standard set last November in the New York Times, Pete Wells’ unforgettable review of Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen & Bar Restaurant in Times Square.

Bon appétit!

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Wait, Am I That Baseball Dad? (Slate)

Excessive behavior is embarrassing to your child, it’s embarrassing to yourself, and it teaches your child all the wrong lessons about sportsmanship, character and grace. But even if you’re not risking those outcomes, there is a challenge to finding the line between unconditional love and intensity. Even if you stop short of acting like the horrible parent, there’s a finer line to walk. You don’t want to smother the experience for them with too much engagement. It’s their game—just as it’s their life. Know when to butt out.

I’ve seen the worst of parents at Little League games. Smoking was not allowed on school grounds where my kids played Little League. One day, a mom lit up a cigarette from her seat on the grass berm behind the team I managed. One of the kids complained to me that she was smoking. I asked her nicely to put out her cigarette. She stood up, and loudly — so that everyone at the game could hear — told me she’d do whatever she want. Then she flipped me the bird, for added effect.

I once was umpiring a game at first base. A dad sat down in a chaise longue (yes, I spelled that correctly) with a six pack of beer and booed every call I made throughout the game.

I was umpiring behind the plate once when my second-base umpire made a bad call. But it was HIS call and I couldn’t reverse it. The fans from the team that got screwed spent the next inning booing loudly at every ball or strike I called. It got ugly. I told them if the abuse continued, I would have to stop the game, which would mean a forfeit. I was told that if I did, I wouldn’t make it to my car in the parking lot. They were serious. A kid I knew was on the team and he literally told his teammates, the umpire is OK. It’s Mr. Bromberg. I felt bad for him, because he felt bad for me.

Little League parents are the worst.

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‘Ex-gay’ group says it’s shutting down; leader apologizes for ‘pain and hurt’ (nbcnews.com)

A Christian ministry that led the so-called ex-gay movement, which professes to rid people of their homosexuality, has announced that it will shut down, and its leader apologized extensively to gays for causing “pain and hurt.” . . . .

The president of Exodus, Alan Chambers, said late Wednesday on the ministry’s website that he had “conveniently omitted my ongoing same-sex attractions” but now accepts them “as parts of my life that will like always be there.”

Addressing gays, Chambers, who is married to a woman, wrote: “You have never been my enemy. I am very sorry that I have been yours.”

“Sorry” doesn’t quite cut it here. The damage Exodus International has done for more than a third of a century is incalculable.

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Strategist Out of Closet and Into Fray, This Time for Gay Marriage (New York Times)

As the Supreme Court considers overturning California’s ban onsame-sex marriage, gay people await a ruling that could change their lives. But the case has already transformed one gay man: Ken Mehlman, the once-closeted Republican operative who orchestrated President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election on a platform that included opposition to same-sex marriage.

Now Mr. Mehlman, a private equity executive in Manhattan, is waging what could be his final campaign: to convince fellow Republicans that gay marriage is consistent with conservative values and good for their party. His about-face, sparked in part by the lawyer who filed the California lawsuit, has sent him on a personal journey to erase what one new friend in the gay rights movement calls his “incredibly destructive” Bush legacy.

To his credit, Mehlman is trying to undo much of the harm he helped inflict before he came out.

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Tea party scalds Marco Rubio (Dana Milbank in the Washington Post)

The tea party returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, but this time the don’t-tread-on-me crowd trod upon one of its own.

Much of the scene was familiar: the yellow flags, the banners protesting tyranny and socialism, the demands to impeach President Obama and to repeal Obamacare. But there was a new target of the conservatives’ ire: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and his “amnesty” plan for illegal immigrants. The loathing of this onetime darling of the movement — Rubio rode the tea party wave to office in 2010 — could be seen in the homemade signs on the East Lawn of the Capitol proclaiming, “Rubio RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and “Rubio Lies, Americans Die.” Rubio antagonism became a main theme of the event, held by Republican Reps. Steve King (Iowa), Louie Gohmert (Tex.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and other opponents of the bipartisan Senate immigration legislation that Rubio negotiated.

Et tu, Tea?

Worth reading, 06/19/13

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A couple of fine columns today by two of the best.

Read Maureen Dowd in the New York Times for her insights on the Whitey Bulger trial:

Johnny “The Executioner” Martorano, who turned government witness and copped to killing 20 men and women as part of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang, explained to Whitey’s lawyer Tuesday in federal court here that he was motivated by love of family and friends.

“I didn’t enjoy killing anybody,” he said. “I enjoyed helping a friend if I could.”

If anybody insulted, implicated or roughed up his brother or a friend’s brother, if anybody looked at him funny while he was with a date, if anybody ratted on his fellow gang members, if anybody could eyewitness a crime committed by an “associate,” he grabbed a .38 or a knife, a fake beard, a walkie-talkie or a towel to keep the blood off his car, and sprang into action. And somebody usually ended up in a trunk somewhere, sometimes still groaning.

And read Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post because, hey, you gotta love a column that features the word fecundity:

Distilled to a slogan, politics of late goes something like this: “I’m more fertile than you are.”

It seems fecundity is emerging as the best argument for public office, policy or even citizenship. What was once an unconscious appraisal — Is this person strong, healthy and vital? — has morphed into the sort of explicit review one usually associates with an X rating….

This brings us unavoidably to Sarah Palin, who reminded us recently that fertility is the ultimate trump card.

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Study Finds Sharp Drop in HPV Infections in Girls (New York Times)

Imagine that. You vaccinate girls against HPV, and the world doesn’t come to an end. And fewer women will get cervical cancer. This is awful news, right family-values types?

Waiting to hear from Michele Bachmann on this.

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The Privilege of the Unpaid Intern (New York Times)

I’ve worked at places where the internships were unpaid. The kids got a great experience, and the companies took full advantage of their hard work. And mommy and daddy picked up the tab. And that’s just plain wrong.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that if internships are unpaid, the only kids who will be able to fill the “jobs” will be those who can afford not to make any money. Try to work your way out of poverty with that restriction. Hey kid, your mom gets food stamps? This internship — your pathway to a good career — just isn’t for you.

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Columbia’s Cons: Ivy League social work program run by team of former prisoners (FOXNews.com)

EXCLUSIVE: In the hallowed halls of Columbia University, a nest of ex-cons — who have served time for murder, attempted murder, robbery and assault — hold court on their unique brand of social justice for admiring students enrolled in the school’s social work program, a FoxNews.com investigation has found.

The ex-cons work for or with the Criminal Justice Initiative (CJI), co-founded in 2009 by former Weather Underground operative and Columbia adjunct professor Kathy Boudin, who pleaded guilty to felony murder for her role in an infamous 1981 armed robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. And while that case was well-publicized, the group is hardly upfront about the “practical experience” of Boudin and others associated with the CJI.

I lived in Nyack for 25 years, and the 1981 murder of Officers Waverly Brown and Sean O’Grady will never be forgotten. I still can’t figure out how Kathy Boudin went from a life of privilege to a murderer. But I also can’t figure out why she’s an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

Say what you will about Fox News’ motives in this story. I’ll say this . . . They’re right.

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Corrections and amplifications (Wall Street Journal)

A Bloody Mary recipe, which accompanied an Off Duty article in some editions on June 8 about the herb lovage, called for 12 ounces of vodka and 36 ounces of tomato juice. The recipe as printed incorrectly reversed the amounts, calling for 36 ounces of vodka and 12 ounces of tomato juice.

Springsteen of the nerds

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Portraits of Bill Nye at his home in Studio City, California.

“If you want to deny evolution and live in your world — in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe — that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it, because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.”

So says Bill Nye, the Science Guy, quoted in this wonderful piece in the New York Times. The writer, John Schwartz, calls him “Springsteen of the nerds.” I love that almost as much as I love Nye, an American hero who is not afraid to tell truth to power.

When science contradicts your religion, try to reconcile one with the other. The science is fact. Your religion shapes who you are, but it does not allow you to deny scientific fact.

Wish I’d said that

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Stuff I do that falls below my expected level of maturity:
Say funny things at serious meetings.
Swivel around in desk chairs at Board Meetings.
Jump with two feet into puddles.
Lick the plate of tasty gooey food I just finished, even in a nice restaurant.
Order Milkshakes when others order Soft Drinks.
Catch gently falling Snowflakes in my mouth.
Order Lemonade when others order Beer.
Order a Hot Chocolate when others order Coffee.
Order Ice Cream for dessert at a restaurant when others order Creme Brulée.
Crouch down when I talk to kids so I can communicate face to face.
Sip loudly to get the last drops at the end of milkshakes.
High-five toddlers in passing strollers.

Respectfully Submitted,
-NDTyson

(Posted on Facebook by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History.)