Apt. 11D

Settling In

After clearing the leaves out of the gutter...

he and the boys settled into a Three Stooges marathon. 

Opportunities for Photography

 Storm are bad things, except when they provide opportunities for great photography. 

The New York Times is asking for readers to submit photographs. Do it until you lose power. 

UPDATE: This blog post originally included an awesome photo of the storm over the Statue of Liberty. I took it down, because it's a fake. 

Photos of empty subway stations. 

Storm Blogging

The rain has started. I'll  keep blogging as long as we have power. 

Sandy in Jersey.

Here's the river at the end of my block. 

After Hurricane Irene, the water was above the railing on the bridge. 

Here's the stream next to our house. It's dry right now. 

The Weather Is...

Steve and I just went for a walk to stretch out my back. We took some pictures of the stream on the edge of our yard and the river at the end of the block. The stream is dry, but the river is already at its normal peak. 

The streets were empty except for a crew of town guys who were cutting down a tree that had toppled over already. And the storm hasn't even arrived yet. 

I'm still doing cumpulsive cleaning. The floors are vaccumed, and the kitchen drawers are tidy. Sandy is like some nasty guest who will inspect the dust on my shelves and the cobwebs in the corners. I have to prepare for her. 

The Wind is Picking Up

We spent two days preparing for Frankenstorm.

Steve went up on the roof and cleaned out the gutters. I blew out my back cleaning out the basement. We raked the leaves off the street and piled them onto the lawn. We bought water and beer -- all the essentials. 

The biggest worry is the stream that runs next to our property. It's dry as a bone right now, but we're expecting white water rapids a few feet from the foundation of the house.  All the swamps have been drained and filled with McManions in this area of Jersey, so the streams and rivers overflow too easily. 

I'm not sure how long we'll keep power. No computers or TV might mean we'll have to play board games. Horror. 

Nanny Kills Kids, Blame the Mother

Everyone is talking about the horror story in Manhattan. No, not the cop who tried to kidnap women, kill them, and then eat them. I'm talking about the nanny story.

A nanny who worked for a family on the Upper West Side for nine years stabbed two of the children to death, and then tried to kill herself. Just awful. 

But equally awful has been the newspaper coverage and the comment sections. 

The New York Times article went completely overboard on this story and gave way too much information about the mother's reaction to finding her two children in a pool of blood in the bathtub. 

On the Upper West Side, neighbors described seeing Ms. Krim, a towel over her head, clinging to her one surviving child, being escorted by the police to a waiting ambulance.

Ms. Starr said that when she saw Ms. Krim in the building’s lobby, she was in a state of shock. “She was screaming in a psychotic state,” she said. “She was not lucid.”

Overboard.

And then there's the comment sections on this piece and the article in Gawker. I guess the real bad guy in this story is the rich woman who had a nanny. Can't we wait 48 hours before the Internet assholes come out to play? 

Spreadin' Love 522

Steve was very excited about the finding of the transcript of the Bretton Woods Conference. He loves the romance of a humble historian finding a dusty gem in the library. More commentary from Eric Rauchway at CT. 

Random House and Penguin are merging. They will control 25% of the American book market. 

The killer nanny story. Ugh. 

Spreadin' Love 521

In honor of yesterday's Minecraft update (yes, I know all about that), here are pictures of Mojang's offices. (Thanks to Jeremy T.) 

I'm reading about this island outside of Turkey, where people live for a really, really long time. 

Someone is trying to sell a book on eBay for $2 million. The book is "Dutch Rosicrucian Shape Shifting Universal Symbols in Book - Amazing Unique." The good news is that they offer free shipping. 

Least Likely to Be President

Ian's working on a campaign poster for a class assignment. He came up with a campaign slogan. "Vote for me and be my minion." 

Waitress Moms

Please check out Katharine Q. Seelye's article and video on the female vote. Seelye doesn't point out that women rarely vote as a block, but don't mind that. I just want to you to listen to the women that she interviews on the video. Things are tough out there. 

 

Presidents and The Economy

A few weeks ago, I wrote:

The Democrats have been amazingly on message during this convention. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Yes, they said over and over. I almost believe it. I'm not sure how much blame or credit for the economy should go to presidents. Forces beyond their control shape the economy, though they can tinker around the edges to make things better or worse. They can lay the groundwork for long term changes and can support groups that are the big losers in a bad economy. But politics doesn't work in these subtleties. 

Megan McArdle has an op-ed and a super pretty video that illustrates, literally, this point.

I am enjoying the role that art is playing in modern opinion writing. That's the second blog post today that include illustratrators. (Here's the first.) I'm sensing a theme for the day! 

 

Framing Romney: Another Rush or a Rich Stiff

In the Caucas blog at the New York Times, Matt Bai argues that Bill Clinton may have given the Obama campaign some bad advice. He convinced them to stop painting Romney as a "flip-flopper" and instead label him an "extreme conservative." This label isn't sticking, Bai argues, because Romney isn't an extreme conservative. 

The bottom line here is that one can over-think this whole notion of framing your opponent. Ninety-nine times out of 100, the line of attack that works best is the one that really rings true. In the case of Mr. Romney, whatever his stated positions may be, the idea that he’s a far-right ideologue, a kind of Rush Limbaugh with better suits and frosty hair, just doesn’t feel especially persuasive.

I'm not sure that Bai gets it right. Obama, at least during the debates, has been trying to frame Romney as a boardroom stiff, who is out of touch with regular Americans. Maybe they need to do a better job pushing that message, because I think that the Rich Stiff frame is very powerful. 

The Yin and the Yang of Introverts and Extroverts

Stolen from Andrew Sullivan.

 

The Market for Stolen Art

If I could do it all over again, I would like to work for the FBI tracking stolen artwork. 

Last week, artwork by Monet, Picasso, and Matisse museum in Rottendam was stolen. 

Robert Wittman reports that it's impossible to sell these extremely well-known masterpieces. 

The stark reality for the thieves who pull off these headline-grabbing capers is there is no market, black or otherwise, to sell a stolen masterpiece. Even in the criminal world, someone who traffics in guns or drugs would have no interest in a stolen painting that cannot be resold when they have cash-convertible goods on hand. These stolen masterpieces will languish in closets and warehouses until they are discovered and returned to their rightful owners by law enforcement operations or simply the passage of time.

Stealing art work from a major museum is not liking knocking off the 7/11. You really have to know what you're doing to get past all that security. The criminals who are smart enough to steal that work, also have to be smart enough to know that they can't fence those objects later on. So, why do they do it? It might be better to steal artwork by artists who aren't as well known as Picasso. There's always a Russian mobster or a Dubaii Kingpin who will buy that stuff. 

So, why do they do it? It's the glory. 

O is For Ovulating AND Obama

CNN profiles amazing study on women's voting patterns. 

The researchers found that during the fertile time of the month, when levels of the hormone estrogen are high, single women appeared more likely to vote for Obama and committed women appeared more likely to vote for Romney, by a margin of at least 20%, Durante said. This seems to be the driver behind the researchers' overall observation that single women were inclined toward Obama and committed women leaned toward Romney.

The Military Doesn't Take Rape Seriously

Amy Sullivan writes a great column in The New Republic about military rape.

Ever since the Navy’s Tailhook scandal in 1991, the Pentagon has declared a “zero tolerance” approach to sexual assault and rape by troops. But as “The Invisible War,” a powerful new documentary out on DVD this week makes clear, the U.S. military’s actual measures to prevent rape and punish rapists range from insulting to laughable to virtually non-existent. Meanwhile, women (and men) who sign up to risk their lives for our country are being driven out of the armed forces after having their bodies assaulted and their careers ruined.

Tom Hanks Does a Slam Poem About "Full House"

The "R" Word

During the last president debate, Ann Coulter tweeted, "I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard."

Because I follow quite a number of people in the autism politics world, backlash to this comment showed up in my Twitterfeed almost immediately. I didn't weigh in, because responding to Coulter's stupidity could be a full time job. 

But this story is picking up steam, so here's a few links:

Here's a response from a man with Downs' Syndrome. 

Higher Education Stress

We've had a fair share of stress in the past ten days, so I completely related to this article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which discusses the results of a new survey of university faculty. 

Faculty, particularly younger faculty and temporary employees, were under a great deal of stress. Full time professors had less time to teach, because of research demands. "Self-imposed high expectations, lack of personal time, and working with underprepared students were the leading sources of stress for faculty." 

Those who weren't lucky enough to have a tenure-track position were in a worse position as they realized that they were on a dead-end to employment. 

Autumn in the Burbs