Category: Current Events

Forgiveness

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Donald B. Kraybill:

The blood was hardly dry on the bare, board floor of the West Nickel Mines School when Amish parents sent words of forgiveness to the family of the killer who had executed their children.

Forgiveness? So quickly, and for such a heinous crime? Out of the hundreds of media queries I’ve received in the last week, the forgiveness question rose to the top. Why and how could they do such a thing so quickly? Was it a genuine gesture or just an Amish gimmick?

The world was outraged by the senseless assault on 10 Amish girls in the one-room West Nickel Mines School. Why would a killer turn his gun on the most innocent of the innocent? Questions first focused on the killer’s motivations: Why did he unleash his anger on the Amish? Then questions shifted to the Amish: How would they cope with such an unprecedented tragedy?

Via Gulker.

Our Federal Tax Dollars (and politicians) at Work: Intrastate Internet Gambling OK, but other Internet Gambling is Not

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Cringely:

Last Saturday the United States Congress passed a port security bill that carried an amendment banning Internet gambling. This was a huge mistake, not because Internet gambling is a good thing (it was already illegal, in fact), but because the new law is either unenforceable or — if it can be enforced — will tear away the last shreds of financial privacy enjoyed by U.S. citizens. The stocks of Internet gambling companies, primarily traded in the UK, went into free-fall as their largest market was effectively taken away. I don’t own any of those shares, but I guarantee you they will fully recover, which is part of what makes this situation so pathetically stupid.

Ironically, many of the senators who voted for this legislation may not have even known the gambling bill was attached, since it didn’t appear in the officially published version of the port bill. But such ignorance is common in Congress, along with a smug confidence that people and institutions can be compelled to comply with laws, no matter how complex and arcane. The amendment was a surprise late addition, pushed by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has presidential ambitions and reportedly sees this battle against Internet gambling as part of his eventual campaign platform.

Only the new law isn’t really against Internet gambling at all, since it specifically authorizes intrastate Internet gambling, imposing on the net the artificial constraint of state boundaries. So the law that is supposed to end Internet gambling for good will actually make the practice more common, though evidently out of the hands of foreigners, which in this case includes not just operators from the UK but, if you live in South Carolina as I do, it also includes people from Florida and New York. Let a million local poker hands be dealt.

What the new law actually tries to control is the payment of gambling debts through the U.S. banking system, making such practices illegal (except, of course, for intrastate gambling, which probably means your state lottery). Once President Bush signs the bill, your bank and credit card companies will have 270 days to come up with a way to prohibit you from using your own money to pay for gambling debts or — though far less likely– to keep you from receiving your gambling profits. The law covers not just credit card payments but also checks and electronic funds transfers.

Congressional and Senate votes here. Tammy Baldwin voted yes as did Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl. It would be interesting to know if any of them were aware of what was in this bill.

Requiem for Johnny Apple

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Todd Purdum:

With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.

Mr. Apple enjoyed a career like no other in the modern era of The Times. He was the paper’s bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered 10 presidential elections and more than 20 national nominating conventions. He led The Times’s coverage of the Vietnam war for two and a half years in the 1960’s and of the Persian Gulf war a generation later, chronicling the Iranian revolution in between.

Apple’s cuisine articles over the years were a treat – particularly when he sampled things I’d never touch. Apple visited Sheboygan in 2002 to write about brats.

Colliding With Death at 37,000 Feet, and Living

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Joe Sharkey:

With the window shade drawn, I was relaxing in my leather seat aboard a $25 million corporate jet that was flying 37,000 feet above the vast Amazon rainforest. The 7 of us on board the 13-passenger jet were keeping to ourselves.


Without warning, I felt a terrific jolt and heard a loud bang, followed by an eerie silence, save for the hum of the engines.


And then the three words I will never forget. “We’ve been hit,” said Henry Yandle, a fellow passenger standing in the aisle near the cockpit of the Embraer Legacy 600 jet.



“Hit? By what?” I wondered. I lifted the shade. The sky was clear; the sun low in the sky. The rainforest went on forever. But there, at the end of the wing, was a jagged ridge, perhaps a foot high, where the five-foot-tall winglet was supposed to be.

Milwaukee Passenger Detained over “idiot” barb

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IAG:

A Wisconsin man who wrote “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat.

Ryan Bird, 31, said he wrote the comment about Hawley — head of the Transportation Security Administration — as a political statement. He said he feels the TSA is imposing unreasonable rules on passengers while ignoring bigger threats.

Pelli’s $200M Orange County Work

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Overture’s architect, Cesar Pelli recently completed the $200M Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. Christopher Hawthorne:

At age 79, the Argentine-born, Connecticut-based architect Cesar Pelli is inevitably described in newspaper and magazine profiles these days as diplomatic and genteel. In his design for the $200-million Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa, which opens Friday night, he and his firm have produced a building that brings the very same adjectives to mind. In other words, if you are optimistic enough to believe that classical music — or architecture, for that matter — is an evolving art form with the capacity to provoke as well as merely soothe, you will likely find it enormously disappointing.


The 250,000-square-foot building, which work crews have been racing to prepare for Friday night’s performance by the Pacific Symphony, resembles a high-end hotel lobby or a luxury-car showroom, spaces in which every visible surface is used to promote a buttery handsomeness. Its undulating glass façade wraps gently around a foyer lined with white Spanish granite floors and rich yellow-beige carpeting, and topped with a glimmering silver-leaf ceiling. Beyond that is the auditorium, a stately, old-world and surprisingly tall room with 2,000 seats upholstered in deep red velvet.

Lots of similarities to our State Street building. More photos here.

Go, Fish! Muskie Love, New Wisconsin-Set Musical, Begins Sept. 20 in Madison

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Kenneth Jones:

In Wisconsin, where audiences like their new musicals quirky and with lots of local color, Madison Repertory Theatre opens its season Sept. 20 with Muskie Love — a rare musical named after a freshwater game fish.

Don’t discount the show. After all, this is the same state where the ice-fishing comedy Guys on Ice and the great-outdoors comedy Lumberjacks in Love were smasheroos.

Muskie Love opens Sept. 22. Performances continue to Oct. 15, in The Playhouse at the Overture Center for the Arts.

Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing “is a home grown Wisconsin delight” by the winners of the Richard Rodgers Award, Dave Hudson and Paul Libman, featuring Doug Mancheski and Lee Becker from Madison Repertory Theatre’s earlier Guys on Ice (which was also a hit at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre).

The Rep has a great deal for first time subscribers.

Noting Sarah Ruhl’s MacArthur Fellowship

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Madison Rep Artistic Director Rick Corley:

Dear Folks: It was a delight to awaken this morning to the news that Sarah Ruhl was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship. These awards are in the amount of $500,000 – one hundred thousand for each year of five years. Sarah is the only playwright to receive the award this year. For new staff and board members, we at Madison Repertory Theatre can take pride in giving Sarah her very first professional production when we produced EURYDICE four years ago. Since then Sarah’s plays have gone on to major productions in Seattle, Atlanta, Berkeley, Chicago, New Haven, and many, many other cities.

This fall her Pulitzer-finalist play, THE CLEAN HOUSE, will have its New York premiere at Lincoln Center Theatre, and there is talk of EURYDICE appearing in New York as well. Bravo, Sarah! And congratulations to all of you who support the Madison New Play Festival and the development of new work. Sarah’s success is a tribute to you.