Day: July 24, 2009

Hey, wait a minute

An individual who I’ve known for some years — and whose opinions I regard highly — posted something today that troubled me. He said he “just wants to point out that Cambridge cops have a seriously bad reputation when it comes to race.”

That statement may very well be true. The problem with it is, the “Cambridge cops” did not go to Professor Gates’s home. Sgt. James Crowley did.

Do we assume then that if the “Cambridge cops” have a race problem, that Sgt. Crowley has a race problem?

That sounds like profiling to me.

Idle food thought

Chocolate cake.

Top American word association: “Guilt”.

Top French word association: “Celebration.”

Perception vs. Reality

Scot Key writes about how this boy —

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – An Albuquerque woman faces a criminal charge after her 13-year-old son was dropped off at a hospital unconscious and extremely drunk.

Crystal Deleon, 31, faces a charge of child abuse resulting in great bodily harm.

The boy told police he was drinking with his mom and others on Wednesday.

— and those like him undermine the reality of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind.

And Annette links to an article that says that the war on drugs in Mexico doesn’t exist. It’s really a war for drugs.

I couldn’t live like that

Eight times so far this month the LOW temperature in Phoenix has been 90º or higher.

On the 17th the official high was 114º and the low was 93º. The AVERAGE temperature in Phoenix that day was 104º. In the shade.

Albuquerque’s official high Sunday was 100º. It’s only the second day since 2003 that we’ve hit 100 officially.

Best line of the day

If I’d written about, say, the Cleveland (61-101) Indians in August of 1987 as though the team were a serious pennant contender, I’d have been fired before I got back to the hotel. And yet, there they were on Charlie Rose: serious political pundits, talking seriously about what a power Sarah Palin is in the Republican party without any of them pointing out that the very fact that she is a power is prima facie evidence that the party is a festival for fruitcakes.

Charles Pierce

Oops

New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley apparently doesn’t have Internet access when she writes her columns.

Correction: July 22, 2009
An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

96th Tour de France

The 96th Tour de France cycling race is currently underway, with the final, 21st stage of the 3,445 km (2,141 mi) race coming up on Sunday, July 26th. At this time, Alberto Contado[r] of Kazakh team Astana appears to be headed toward a second tour title, currently leading riders Andy Schleck of Team Saxo Bank and Luxembourg and, in 3rd place, Lance Armstrong, also of team Astana. Armstrong’s recent emergence from retirement to return to this year’s tour has been the focus of much of this year’s media coverage. 180 riders in twenty teams started in Monaco on July 4th, heading for the final ride into Paris this weekend. Collected here are a handful of images from the 2009 race. (40 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com