quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

NYC wedding pages are mostly personal mergers.

haha

curious to see if some friends' wedding ends up in the nyt

I dj'd a wedding that made the wedding page a few summers ago. It was a halloween costume party in the prospect park picnic house featuring several burlesque/performance art type performances. It was a friend from college marrying someone who worked for Henson so everyone there was a puppeteer of some sort. They even had puppets of the bride and groom.

I am mostly tired of the "we can't just throw money at failing schools" canard

YES YOU CAN, DUDE

― ilx user 'silby' (silby), Monday, September 26, 2011 1:27 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well there's a big logical flaw in the argument. I mean yes, throwing money doesn't NECESSARILY fix anything, but that's a poor reason to not spend more or to cut. There is plenty of wasteful spending in some school systems. But the answer is probably to spend more AND spend better. Cutting budgets doesn't mean spending better.

Tax cuts huh? You can't just throw money at a family, jeez!

Cut the corporate tax rate? You can't just throw money at a failing corporation and expect them to create jobs with it! Are you daft?

tbh not even sure what sarcastic point I am trying to make now, have crossed the meta event horizon

Dowd: Killer Yoga?
Friedman: Leadership
Kristof: Raped Babies

hahaha I SAW THAT TOO and thought of this thread

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/nyregion/locker-decorations-growing-in-popularity-in-middle-schools.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1&hp

I guess there's not that much agony here, but still: Barf.

This article about the food options at Occupy Wall Street seems right for this thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/dining/protesters-at-occupy-wall-street-eat-well.html

I wouldn't underrate the importance of food for morale at this thing!

the toggery

NYT has been quiet on this front so I turn to the food reviews

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/dining/reviews/per-se-nyc-restaurant-review.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Juvenile lol: "Per Se in its early days could be a marvel of pretension and clock-gobbling silliness. "

lol, I also did a double-take at that line

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/10/no-more-servants/246569/

In effect, we rent servants by the hour, and some of them are mechanical.

http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/D3/7F20B098A856F4B2922AD21CB8DC2.jpg

<3

5. Labor saving devices Servants were often standing in for things that machines now do more cheaply, and without stealing the silver.

Well then.

The Lost Asimov Directive there

Hance (err, sic?) Saki's memorable epigram: "She was a good cook, as cooks go. And as cooks go, she went."

This is great! C'mon, that article was gold.

x-post-

Within the last decade, DC spending per pupil has gone up higher than I recalled from the '90s, but according to the Washington Examiner

The greater needs factor helps to explain why D.C. schools appear so lavish in their spending, as well. Compared with the 50 states, and especially its relatively wealthy neighboring states, the District has a far greater percentage of students with needs that require ?-- often by law -- higher staffing levels.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2011/05/dc-maryland-rank-near-top-pupil-spending#ixzz1amhOAhy2

Wow, hadn't read that Per Se restaurant review till now:

Dinner for two can scratch at $1,000 — or about the same as the median weekly household income in New York State.

By point of context, though, an aisle orchestra seat at the Metropolitan Opera for Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” runs $330, also excluding wine.

seeing d'Amore without wine would be completely missing the point of course.

hey, if i could, or had someone who would take me, would love to dine at per se, don't see that as that evil
was, and have been, drooling ever since reading that piece

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/fashion/nose-jobs-arent-for-everyone-the-mirror.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/nyregion/once-wall-streeters-and-now-cabbies.html?pagewanted=all

Janet was finishing an afternoon shift the other day in her work uniform: a navy blazer, floral scarf and Ralph Lauren sunglasses. She was raised in Manhattan; cab driving was never part of the plan. “I always thought cabdrivers were idiots,” she said. “I still do. If anything, that has been reaffirmed.”

yes but do they know what i mean when i say "myrtle and washington"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/realestate/the-hunt-a-high-rise-change-of-plans.html

They had a problem with the refrigerator, which wouldn’t make ice. It took months of attempted repairs to fix the problem, which seemed to be a kink in the water hose, Mr. Fuller said. The situation would have been comical were it not so depressing, he said. For their summer beverages, “we had to make sure to buy a bag of ice, as opposed to using our icemaker,” he said. When the problem was finally resolved, “I never thought I could be so happy over ice.”

Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner

They would have to walk their Shih Tzu, Kravitz, near auto body shops and beware-of-dog signs.

I love the poker face that NY Times reporters do with sentences like this one

though the circumstances are kinda deplorable, the general tenor applies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arrest-occupy-wall-street
"What did I take away? Just that, unfortunately, my partner and I became exhibit A in a process that I have been warning Americans about since 2007: first they come for the "other" – the "terrorist", the brown person, the Muslim, the outsider; then they come for you – while you are standing on a sidewalk in evening dress, obeying the law."

Yeah, I was kinda torn on that one between "she's basically right" and "man is she exaggerating."

I mean she compares being taken to a different city jail than the ones protesters thought to extraordinary rendition (where literally NO ONE has any idea where you are for months or years).

also as others have pointed out she is wearing a cocktail dress not an evening dress

Yeah, I was kinda torn on that one between "she's basically right" and "man is she exaggerating."

― pass the duchy pon the left hand side (musical duke) (Hurting 2), Thursday, October 20, 2011 9:40 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ladies and gentlemen... naomi wolfe

The cop in that video is absolutely not screaming at her. There are not twenty policemen taking her away. There are about twenty photographers on hand though and press shouting questions at her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/world/africa/in-his-last-days-qaddafi-wearied-of-fugitives-life.html?pagewanted=all

Under siege by the former rebels for weeks, Colonel Qaddafi grew impatient with life on the run in the city of Surt, said the official, Mansour Dhao Ibrahim, the leader of the feared People’s Guard, a network of loyalists, volunteers and informants. “He would say: ‘Why is there no electricity? Why is there no water?’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/us/personal-eco-concierges-ease-challenges-of-going-green.html?_r=1&hp

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/realestate/childhood-homes-the-toys-are-gone-but-its-still-home.html

“I’m still very ambivalent,” said Mr. Geist, whose mother lives in Greenwich Village and whose father died in 2005. “I appreciate how much space I have compared to many people, but it’s an odd mix of cozy and entrapment. I look out the bedroom window and see the same view I’ve seen for as long as I could remember. I can alter the space, I can rearrange the furniture, but there’s very little I can do about the view.”

dayo - A+

Emoticons can produce another layer of confusion, however: they don’t always read the same way across different technical interfaces. “In the text function of my BlackBerry there is a sidebar menu of emoticons (how ridiculous is that?) that shows the yellow smiley faces, except they are also crying and raging, and winking and blowing kisses, etc.,” Dr. Bates wrote. “I sent a fairly new acquaintance a ‘big hug’ emoticon — which, for the record, was ironic. But anyway, on his iPhone it came up with the symbols, not the smiley face, which don’t look anything like a big hug. From his perspective they look like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({}).“He then ran around his lab showing colleagues excitedly what I had just sent him. Half (mostly men) concurred with his interpretation, and the others (mostly women) didn’t and probably thought he was kind of a desperate perv.”

like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})
like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})
like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})
like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})
like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})
like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})
like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({})

the new york times printed that.

The great splayed lady

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/can_a_portlandia_comedy_sketch_destroy_a_fashion_trend/

"I made a mental inventory of my own birded totes and T-shirts and saw them as trite for the first time. Ashamed, I recognized myself. "