There’s been endless caterwauling over whether a structure of Islamic inclination has the right to be built near New York City’s hallowed Ground Zero. Politicians and most other professional talking assholes have phoned in on this weighty cultural matter. But very few scribble or shout in split-screen on T.V. about the truly disturbing aspect of the debate: that there is still a Ground Zero at all.
Continue reading ‘The Problem With The ‘Ground Zero Terror Mosque’ Is Ground Zero’
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Tags: freedom, ground zero, hypocrisy, mosque
A Tree Falls In Brooklyn
It’s raining, it’s pouring. The city weeps. Or maybe that’s me: birthday.
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Radar Online, a website that was once great and is now an eyeball-skewering tabloid, reported exclusively on March 4 that conservative Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts would be resigning. Roberts had served only five years of his life sentence and is 55 years old.
Radar Online had exclusively been told that Roberts (who has suffered seizures in the past) would be absconding for “personal reasons,” paving the way for Obama’s second Supreme Court appointee.
Other news outlets scrambled after the story, and some of us gleefully held our breath. We batted around ideas on the internet about what could be in Roberts’s closet. We have to admit that in this day in age the tabloids, especially the up-to-the-minute online outlets, are often the first to know the news.
Alas, quickly disproved, the post soon disappeared, and Radar retracted with a weak “Despite considering resigning from the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts will stay on the bench, RadarOnline.com has exclusively learned.”
If John Roberts had died, or had a love child or a drug problem “breaking,” TMZ and Radar Online and The National Enquirer would have outsourced and outpaced the papers of record.
Turned out it ’twas a tale of a Georgetown law professor making a point about the unreliability of sources and web-addicted, distracted students doing exactly what they weren’t supposed to do. The lesson therein: pay more attention in class. Stop surfing. Take notes. You’re studying to be servant of the law, for God’s sake.
On second thought, carry on. All is well.
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Tags: chief justice john roberts, john roberts, john roberts resigns, journalism, radar online, radaronline.com, tabloids, the national enquirer, the news, the supreme court of the united states, the web is lie, tmz
Niall Connolly and the Best of Humanity
Three Mondays a month, the storied Red Lion on Bleecker street features three groundbreaking hours of music. With musicians vetted by singer-songwriter and host Niall Connolly, the line-up sees a weekly mix of returning favorites and innovative visitors.
Recent performers include The Third Wheel Band, E.W. Harris, Warren Malone, Kelley Swindall, Justin Storer, Steven Capozzola, Roesy, Adnan Sabir, Jessi Robertson and more.
The Bleecker Street Folk session runs from 7-10pm the first three Mondays every month. There’s no cover, and a fine array of beer to choose from at the bar or from the attentive waitstaff. The space is big enough to accommodate groups and also has a Village-enhanced bar menu (hummus alongside nachos).
[The Red Lion, 151 Bleecker Street, New York City. 6 train to Bleecker Street, ABCDEF to West 4th]
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Tags: acoustic, bleecker street folk session, folk, free events, free music new york city, new york, the red lion, west village
I helped cover the New York City Comic Con in February ’09, and this post never ran. Its themes are eternal.
The Authors Round Table saw a standing-room only turnout at Comic Con: the moderator announced that it was one of the largest crowds ever gathered there for writers.
The panel featured ten popular genre authors, with grand dame Tamora Pierce a particular draw, judging by the cheers her introduction and answers generated. The gathering of so much talent could have been handled more smoothly — the experience was muddled by asking too-typical, boilerplate questions like “What made you want to write?” across the board, then waiting for ten separate answers. But as it turned out, we had a lot to learn.
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Tags: alex c. irvine, carrie vaughn, comic con, fantasy, genre writing, j.r.r. tolkien, jackie kessler, jeff somers, john birmingham, kim harrison, l. frank baum, new york comic con, nycc, peter v. brett, round table, s.c. butler, science fiction, tamora pierce, the lion the witch and the wardrobe, the lord of the rings, the princess and the goblin, the wizard of oz, vicki patterson, writing
A Tale Of Two Siblings
Over at The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan posted a wrenching picture of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian demonstrators. A series of clashes has followed the Israeli decision to add “The Tomb of the Patriarchs” to their national register; the site is part of a complex called the Ibrahimi Mosque, sacred also to Muslims. The Middle East is not a sandbox where sharing happens.
And so two nations continue a senseless, gruesome intolerance of the other, each rallying to ancient symbols in their holy land that name the same ancestors. The Jews’ patriarch is the Muslim’s Ibrahim/Abraham.
Abraham, a guy mostly concerned with sex and sheep, would not believe the shit going down in his name.
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Tags: abraham, hagar, ibrahim, isaac, ishmael, israel, israelis, palestine, palestinians, peace in the middle east, the ibrahimi mosque, the tomb of the patriarchs
I guess “constitutional judges in Colombia reject a referendum to allow President Alvaro Uribe to stand for a third term in office” wasn’t quite sexy enough by itself to warrant a click.
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Tags: bbc, bbc news, colombia, president alvaro uribe
On Hit Counters
Do you remember the early wild west internet days when all of our personal pages and fan sites and shameful hidden shrines sported visitor number counters at the bottom? We used to wear our pageviews on our pieced-together sleeves, often in glowing neon or starkly digital numbers.
It was fun to watch the number creep up, and to sometimes share banners and proudly place badges and affiliations near the hit counter to draw others there. In the web’s wild west, there was no Twitter to show off your latest brilliant creation, and Mark Zuckerberg was screwing around in AOL chatrooms with other middle schoolers.
These days, we rely on sites that neatly aggregate that data for us to its statistical teeth, offering up more information than we could ever need or want to obsess over like links, trackbacks, and referrals. We pour over the bizarre haiku of search-term words that lead readers to our sites.
We want more, dammit. We need to know more about how people are finding us when we put ourselves out to be found on the internet. We want to know how and why people are clicking on you instead of me when they’re sucking the digital teat. We want your clicks.
You don’t spot many neon web counters still registering today, and the fall of Geocities killed many. Their memory lives on in your Google Analytics.
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Tags: hit counters, stats, the internet, web counters
E.W. Harris – “Supernova”
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Tags: e.w. harris, supernova
At New York City’s Rockwood Music Hall on February 22, Athens, Georgia mainstay/NYC transplant E.W. Harris electrified the crowd with his genre-bending set. Harris, seen the day before on the same stage with the indie-folk band Niall Connolly and the Best of Humanity, has long displayed an evocative playing style and penchant for eclectic chords. As a solo act, he showed impressive range, with stand-out vocals and a smart use of stage and props, making for a night’s worth of surprises.
Harris’s music traces deep folk roots but mischievously refuses classification. The Rockwood show saw soaring ballads followed by snazzy, jazzy guitar lines. Richly narrative sagas of space travel and robots were intermingled with more traditional folk sounds and comedic riffs. Always keeping the crowd on their toes, Harris introduced experimental electronic elements into several songs, mixing and keyboarding on-stage while never missing a lyrical note.
E.W. Harris @ Songs For Haiti Fundraiser. Photo by Debra Reschoff-Ahearn
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Tags: acoustic, e.w. harris, electronic, folk, guitar, indie, live, music, new york city, niall connolly, rockwood music hall
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- The Problem With The ‘Ground Zero Terror Mosque’ Is Ground Zero
- A Tree Falls In Brooklyn
- The Week That Was: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Doesn’t Resign
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- Parental Encouragement, Pot Smoking and Other Tips From The NYCC Science Fiction, Supernatural, and Fantasy Authors Round Table
- A Tale Of Two Siblings
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- E.W. Harris – “Supernova”
- E.W. Harris Live At Rockwood Music Hall
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