October 05, 2004
The fight in the dog
Today, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to three American scientists, one of whom commented on education: "Dr. Wilczek used the Nobel occasion to put in a plug for reviving the commitment to excellence in American schools. "I want to thank the U.S.," he said, "for supplying the system of public education that did so well by me."
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
I'm not mad at Dwight D Eisenhower any longer. I found that quotation -- his, apparently -- at the Cost of War site, which features dismal accounting for the current US military involvement: "we could have hired 275,837 additional public school teachers in California for one year."
See me got photo photo
After about 30,000 shutter clicks, my trusty camerastarted to register errors. So I got a new one. And here, of course, is the inaugural photograph:
I was a little upset about the old camera bugging because I saw a beautiful chopper outside the Toronado: a bicycle in the shape of the Golden Gate Bridge!
Nico finds the words. And a picture is worth a thousand words.
The sincerest form of flattery
Janet Leigh died this past Sunday, which also saw the "Itchy and Scratchy and Marge" episode of The Simpsons reappear in syndication. Janet Leigh appears in three of my favourite films: Touch of Evil; Psycho; and The Manchurian Candidate. Of her chilling rôle in Psycho, she remembered Hitchock saying, "Whatever I put you in, the audience would immediately think of 'Psycho.' It wouldn't be fair to the picture or the character." That scene has been parodied almost as often as Grant Wood's American Gothic. And the Simpsons episode has a go at the famous shower scene from Psycho.