Filed under Politics
Should Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice Presidential nominee in 2008 and the former governor of Alaska, run for President in 2012? Some Republicans want her to. And, curiously, some Democrats want her to as well.
At the Netroots Nation Convention, a gathering of progressive activists, over the weekend, a straw poll there gave Palin the overwhelming nod (48 percent, with #2, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, garnering 11 percent) for the preferred GOP candidate two years hence.
It’s not hard to see why. Her negatives, especially with independent voters in the center, are very high. She has a rocky relationship with the media, avoids interviews with mainstream outlets, and shuns press conferences. She has demonstrated a lack of perseverance. As …
Filed under News
I have a routine on Saturday mornings. I fix coffee. I listen to Weekend Edition Saturday with Scott Simon. And one of the things I listen for each week is Simon’s weekly discussion with Daniel Schorr.
Simon tweeted a few minutes ago that “My longtime friend and colleague Dan Schorr has died. Please find a moment today to say goodbye to him today in your own way.”
On Saturday’s edition, I didn’t recall hearing Schorr. I kept waiting for it, and then the show was over, and no Daniel Schorr. I wonder, now, if Schorr, who was 93, was already ill and hospitalized.
Simon reflects on Schorr’s career at greater length than a Tweet will allow on NPR’s website, and …
Filed under Life
Yesterday, I lost my wristwatch.
There’s nothing profound to the story. It’s a case of simple human mistake-making. This happens.
At some point, maybe five years ago, I stopped wearing a watch on a regular basis. Actually, it was more recent than that, come to think of it. After I moved to Baltimore. I had a Lord of the Rings watch, and the battery died. I had an XBox Live watch, and the battery died. I could have gotten the batteries replaced, and I didn’t. I found it was just as easy to go without a watch. Time isn’t something I concern myself with.
And, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t like the feel of the watchband on my …
Filed under Television
Stephen Fry — writer, actor, all-around personality — has revealed that he will be making a series for BBC2 on language — Planet Word.
I haven’t seen a good documentary about language, where it comes from, how we speak it, the variations of it, whether languages are dying, whether we are better at speaking than we were. There are so many questions.
Language is my real passion. So, I’m going to Beijing to interview the man who invented Pinyin, a phonetic version of the Chinese language. He’s 105 years old … if he dies on me I’m going to be so annoyed.
Fry, much like George Plimpton, is a bit of an expert on almost everything. When he appeared on Craig Ferguson’s show a
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Filed under Music
Courtesy of Dayton Ward, “The ‘When I was 12′ movie meme thing.”
Here’s how it works: go to Wikipedia (as the most convenient resource), and copy the list of movies that were released in the year when you were 12 years old. Mark in italics the movies that you’ve seen. (Not necessarily that year.) Mark in bold the movies that you own on video, DVD, Blu-Ray or whatever. If you’re not sure if you’ve seen a movie, you haven’t.
So, 1985…
The Adventures of a Two-Minute Werewolf
The Adventures of Mark Twain (I’ve seen this one many times)
After Hours
Agnes of God
American Ninja
The Annihilators
Avenging Angel
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
Back to the Future (No, I don’t own this on DVD)
Bad Medicine
Better Off Dead
The Black Cauldron
The Boys Next Door
Brazil
The …
