All I want to do in life is drink coffee and read the New York Times. Six days a week I go out and I pay $2.50 for the hardcopy NYT. It is my ownly luxury, my addiction, my Zeitvertreib and my communication with the tides and tidings of history. Oftentimes I get the urge to respond to what I read in the NYT, so today on Easter Sunday I am bored as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Oh, did I just hear a Thud? Did my Sunday New York Times just arrive? Gotta defenestrate the line of view. No, not yet, not for at least another half hour. A few Sundays ago I did not feel like waiting for the Thud so I went to Starbucks and paid $6.50 for a redundant copy of the NYT, which I then took to another coffee shop (I call it the Eigerwand, but that's another story) and left it lying around for others to enjoy reading.
In recent weeks I have been reading some pricelessly good writing in the NYT, and I have wanted to voice my opinion about it, so here goes. Just yesterday I saw a mention of my favorite New York Times writer of all time, Vincent Canby, describing the cinematography of someone who just passed away after a lifetime of making great movies. Vincent Canby said that the best thing about a certain movie was not the movie itself as such and per se and all those other qualifiers, but the photography of this great fellow who lived from 1927? until a few days ago, but I can't remember his German name. Most of the time I can't remember Vincent Canby's name, but for me he is the gold standard of New York Times writing.
The Jungle Prince of Delhi2019-11-22 Fri. * * * * * Today as usual I went to Bulldog News on the Ave and I shelled out three dollars in cash for the NYT national edition. Then I took it to a Starbucks, where since August 2019 they no longer sell The New York Times. There was a special Section F with an amazing photograph by Bryan Denton. The whole section was "THE JUNGLE PRINCE OF DELHI" by Ellen Barry. I did read every word of it, fascinated and enthralled. It was about this guy she knew who called himself the "nawab of Oudh", or "Prince Cyrus of Oudh". It was like "Gunga Din" in miniature, or "A Passage to India." The story was so intriguing that I rate it with five stars out of a possible five.
2020-01-08 Wed. Since I fluently speak, think, read and write in a dead language called Latin, NYT articles about dying languages are terribly upsetting to me. Today 2020-01-08 on page A19 of the national edition of the New York Times, Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura reports on the work of the Endangered Language Alliance trying to preserve the rare language Seke that has only about seven hundred speakers left in the world. Photographs by Diana Zeyned Alhindawi show speakers of Seke in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, USA.
May I suggest a way to preserve dying languages? No? OK, Doomer, I will take my ideas elsewhere. I will go somewhere else and explain how it is possible to embed the grammar and vocabulary of a dying language in the AI Mind of a robot endowed with artificial intelligence.
2020-02-02 Sun. Today I have not yet read my Sunday New York Times, but at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22219023 I found the above link to a recent NYT article about the Super Bowl. It contained passages such as
And on Madonna’s night, in 2012, Aaron Hernandez scored one of the Patriots’ touchdowns. Six months later, he shot and killed two men.and
Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett and their fellow protesting players knelt for ideals that I, too, believe in. Pleas for justice and equality are controversial coming only from black athletes expected — hired — to run, throw, catch and dunk.On 2019-12-12 I gave a talk to the Board of Regents of the University of Washington in which I complained about Husky Football and Brain Damage. To each member of the Board of Regents I passed out a 2019-08-20 NYT article about sub-concussion brain-damage caused by playing football. According to the NYT article, when the human brain of the football player stops suddenly, tissues in the brain will be ripped apart and permanent brain damage occurs. On the day that I was reading that NYT artcle -- August 20, 2019 -- I walked into a photocopy shop on the Ave and I made 107 photocopies of the article for my personal use. On the next day, I leafletted the main campus library with the photocopies. On the following day, I leafletted the Allen Library with the photocopies. On the third day, I leafletted the Husky Union Building (HUB) with the anti-football photocopies. A few months later, the head Husky football coach suddenly resigned -- perhaps he had read one of my leaflets. The money-grubbing yes-men Regents then hired a new Husky football coach to be paid three million dollars a year to damage the brains of young men. O tempora, O mores!
2020-07-14 Tues. Today I went out and bought The New York Times for three dollars in cash and I did read the Tuesday Science Times first. Then on pages A1 and A17 of the national edition I started reading "Weeks of Pressure Erase an 87-Year-Old Identity" by Ken Belson and Kevin Draper about the quest to rename the Washington Redskins. I started thinking up possible new names for the team, such as "Movers and Shakers," which is too long, so it would have to be either "The Washington Movers" or "The Washington Shakers." I felt hindered because I do not know the names of all the NFL football teams. I kept thinking that Washington, D.C., is the capital city of the United States, and so the new name of the team should somehow make reference to the capital.
Then in a blinding flash I got the idea of recommending that the Redskins be renamed as "The Washington Powers". I fired up my computer so that I could post my suggestion to the Medium Publishing Platform.
Although it is safe to name a team after animals like bears, cubs and Huskies, I could not think of a good animal name for Washington, D.C. Snakes would not work, would it? Polecats? Lizards? The Washington Vipers? No, we do not want to transfer the negativity of Washington politics onto a football team.
When The Washington Powers came to me, I also thought of all kinds of good connotations. Sportscasters would have a field day saying that such-and-such player is a "a real power on the team" or "a powerhouse." Reporters would refer to the team as "the powers that be." Wags would taunt other teams with questions like, "Do you want to go up against The Washington Powers?"
So I offer the possible new name free-of-charge. If there is some kind of contest to come up with a new name for the team, I hereby submit "The Washington Powers" as a suggestion.
Labels: Football; New York Times; Redskins; Powers; Washington DC