Me: Frank Lynch
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commentary)
These are my mundane daily ramblings.
For something
less spontaneous, I maintain The
Samuel
Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,700 Johnson quotes), with a
weekly essay springing from one of
Johnson's quotations.
Bio:
Born 1957, raised in Florida, moved to New York
area in 1982; now live in Brooklyn.
Married, with one kid
unit.
Former marketing research professional. Now drawing no
salary, but working on a book.
Email:
frank
dot
lynch2
at
verizon
dot
net
No more worries about a flag amendment now. Not now that we have the pic of the POTUS defacing a flag. (Even if it's your autograph, it's defacement.)
What if the White House gave a briefing and no one showed
up? Josh Marshall has done a great job of detailing how the
White House refuses to take any steps to clear up confusion in
the daily briefings (
here, for instance). And of course, it happened under Ari
Fleischer. Now, when you think about all the misstatements and
exaggerations which the White House has put out, why do
responsible journalism channels give the White House air or
ink?
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42nd Street felt very weird, as if I was in another town. Tonight I walked east and west on 42nd street in Manhattan, looking for friends' hotel, and so much had changed that I could have been on Michigan Avenue in Chicago for all I knew. You expect the change in stores, but there was more than I expected, and was surprised to see that Coliseum Books had re- opened on 42nd street; somehow the real estate seemed too prime for them.
People come through for you when the city itself
doesn't. I was given an incorrect address for the hotel, and
walked east to 2nd Avenue with no luck, then consulted a police
woman sitting in a booth, who said she thought the hotel I'd
named was on WEST 42nd street, not east, so I trudged all
the way to 8th avenue with no success. Police there had no clue,
and said I should call directory assistance. But now the phones
in the Port Authority Bus Terminal require 50 cents for directory
assistance (I think this is a crime; any firm that gets the
opportunity to put their friggin' phones in the PA bus terminal
should be required to make 411 free). And the PA staff couldn't
direct me to a phone where 411 was free, but a gentleman
spontaneously gave me 50 cents on the spot. Enabling me to call
411 (who didn't have a listing for the hotel, even though it
was on 42nd street, close to where my friends said, in
between 3rd avenue and 2nd avenue. Like, it's the
Helmsley,
and the cop in the booth at 42nd and 2nd avenue sent me to the
other side of town!
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Okay, I fulfilled my civic duty, and hopefully I contributed to the service of justice. Today we reached a verdict on an assault case, and while we are confident we reached a just verdict, we all pray (of course) that our verdict was correct. It was a complex case, with a complex series of charges, and I hope our verdict was neither more nor less severe.
It was an assault case arising out of a domestic dispute,
where we had to determine whether or not the claim of
self-defense was appropriate, but also make determinations
regarding the level of force which the defendant used was
justified, as well as the defendant's intentions. In many cases
there are no eye-witnesses, and the prosecution and the defense
have challenges in presenting their cases, as they try to make it
"crystal clear" to a jury. I think we did our best, and I hope we
were correct. The interesting thing, to me, anyway, is
that the prosecution case failed on the basis of intent, and that
the post mortem questions from the prosecution started
with a presumption that the hurdle on which they'd failed was
intent. A good focus group moderator would have let that
conclusion materialize more organically, that is, led with a
question like "what were your thoughts?" instead of, "did we fail
on intent?" Juries may sometimes go away with misgivings, but
when the DA's post mortem starts with a presumption of where they
failed, it's unlikely.
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Jury duty. I'm on jury duty, and have been assigned to a case. No further comment on this 'till the case is over.
Aspects of jury duty aside from the case itself... Well, serving jury duty puts me closer to Sahadi's, and that means I can easily add to our cheese variety. This is of immense value to Abigail, who is flirting with the Atkins diet. Jury duty also puts you in close contact with people you wouldn't ordinarily meet: New York has a reputation as a melting pot, but most of the contact is transitory. Diversity is a good thing, and even better when its reality manifests itself.
Was this the blackest of all black comedies? One of my
favorite movies, Funny Bones, will soon be released on DVD. If you
haven't seen it, this is a very edgy comedy-drama, and it nudges
you about the black comedy idea in multiple ways. First, much of
the story takes place in Blackpool England. Second, the music:
practically every track is a Black (or, as we would say in USA,
African American) musician (Ellington, John Lee Hooker, and so
on...) Ooooh, it gives me shivers, and I can't wait till my copy
arrives!
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Condoleezza Rice quantifies the issue for us. Yesterday, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice pointed out that the controversy over the State of the Union address reference to the forged uranium purchase order amounted to an overblown focus on a mere 16 words. Let's compare:
- "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (President Bush's State of the Union Address)
- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." (President Clinton's statement to the press)
Let's see, Bush had 16 words, Clinton had 11. The Bush issue is therefore greater, by 45%. Full steam ahead, me buckos!
Seriously, isn't this the silliest argument you ever heard, that the import of a statement is measured by the word count? This hearkens back to disappointment that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was too short.
And the other argument, that the statement is factually true
because the attribution is correct, is nothing less than
weaseling.
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Day Link
Back from the vacation... Our 2nd au pair got married on the 4th of July, and so we wrapped twelve days of sightseeing in the Netherlands and Belgium around the occasion. Had we not earned all those frequent flier miles through our American Express purchases (the Delta card gives you double miles on groceries; hooray!) we probably wouldn't have been able to afford it. We had to pay for the Kid Unit's flights, but ours were through miles.
The wedding itself was beautiful, enough for another day's entry in and of itself. And we were very glad to see not only our Dutch former au pair, but also our third au pair, in Belgium.
It's astonishing that Leiden is on the 
radar screen of so few visitors to the
Netherlands. At least among American travelers, anyway. It's
about 20-30 minutes from Amsterdam on the train, is beautiful,
less hectic, offers a variety of museums and great restaurants,
botanic gardens, canal tours, and more pannekoeken than anyone would want. Oh, and it's also
got a couple windmills. The windmill in the picture the Valk, the
only windmill left of the nineteen that were originally near
Leiden's city walls; it's now a windmill museum. (Picture was
taken from Annelies' balcony, no tripod, sorry it's so fuzzy.)
The Ardennes were
breathtakingly beautiful. The Belvedere, on the road between
the caves in Rochefort and Les Halles had to be one of the most
beautiful sights I've ever seen, an incredible vista. The
caves in Rochefort were nothing to sneeze at, either, with a
huge vertical chamber that's 37 meters high. (We didn't visit the
caves in Les Halles, but added it to our list of what to see on a
return visit. That list is very long, fortunately and
unfortunately.)
Bruges lives up to its reputation as beautiful and tourist- mobbed. It felt as if it was the single place on the planet with the highest concentration of tourists (Disney World would be close, but I think Disney has more staff), with few venturing beyond the basic town center. One can't complain that the tourists were there — it is, as I said, beautiful — but very few seemed to be thinking about what lay elsewhere. No one was peering down side streets with an inquisitive look.
But why do the brewers of Belgium insist on marketing their
beers in dorky glasses? I had no idea, that when the 
waiter said he would bring me a very good
amber — the Kwak at right — that it would come in
such a horrendous glass. How do you drink it? How does the
newcomer figure out that the wooden stand is only a stand and not
a handle, that you are supposed to lift the glass up from the
stand, and then away from the brace?
To me, there's something a little wrong when you're presented a glass which you don't know how to use. But the surprises don't end with the mystery of how you're supposed to free the glass from the stand. See that globe at the bottom? When your glass gets so low that, held horizontally, air gets into the globe, the ale at the bottom rushes out with greater speed. I was forewarned, and now so are you. But imagine needing to be warned about a glass! The beer was good, but the glass will stop me from having it again.
All I have time for, for now...
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