There are a couple of big votes coming up today here in NY State, neither of which have anything to do with me. First off, there’s a special election to fill the seat left vacant when the NYS Senate expelled Hiram Monserrate in conjunction with his conviction for slashing his girlfriend’s face. Of course, Hi’s running for his old seat, so it’ll be interesting to see if voters in the NY’s 13th district return him to office or not. He’s running against NYS Assemblyman Jose Peralta, who has been endorsed by pretty much all the Democrats and lefties in NY (mostly, I think, because he’s yet to be convicted of anything). He’s also a supporter of marriage equality, which is appropriate, since he’d be representing Queens.
Also today, the village of Seneca Falls votes on whether or not to dissolve and be absorbed into the town that surrounds it (which is also named Seneca Falls). The village is probably best known as the birthplace of the women’s rights movement, having held the first documented women’s rights convention in 1848. It’s also the home of the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Women’s Rights National Historic Park.
Seneca Falls was also an abolitionist hotspot, and the home of Amelia Bloomer, who popularized the women’s garments know today as – you guessed it – “bloomers” (though they were actually invented by Elizabeth Smith Miller of Peterboro, NY – another big abolitionist hotspot – and Fabrizia Flynn, who women can also thank for the galvanized rubber girdle).
Plus, it (Seneca Falls, not the girdle) was the inspiration for Frank Capra’s Bedford Falls (you know, from “It’s a Wonderful Life”).
Oh, there’s more, but I’m afraid it’ll just have to wait for another day, ‘cuz it’s getting late and is time for me to hit the road.
Seneca Falls is in between Rochester and Syracuse, and this morning I am listening to WYSL in Rochester and the clowns Quinn&Rose. It’s funny as they get closer and closer to going apoplectic. They say that the Tea Parties are exactly the opposite of AAR, as Air America needed money to get started while the tea parties were spontaneous.
As you can see, I still can’t find a good morning radio show to listen to.
At night the local station switched to Leslie Marshall. WTF. What’s up with her? She talks like a progressive Marc the Shark, or Stephanie Miller when she is impersonating a morning zoo DJ.
HELP :crap:
And this is why I don’t jog.
I try to jog but my deformed hip is a pain. I can do short spurts every now and then, though generally it’s walking. I can’t even sit cross-legged because of the pain and limit range of motion.
I was the weakest player on my hs baseball team
I complain more than a wounded soldier, I know.
Not that I wasn’t rather fond of Heidi Klum to begin with, but if I needed another reason to like her, this would be it.
No federal health agency changed more during the Bush administration than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It got new buildings, new managers and an entirely new operating structure.
A year into the Obama administration, only the new buildings remain. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the agency’s director since June, has quietly scrapped nearly all the administrative changes that the previous director, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, spent much of her six-year tenure conceiving and carrying out.
Gone are the nonscientific managers whom Dr. Gerberding sprinkled throughout the agency’s top ranks. Gone is a layer of bureaucracy, agency officials said. Gone, too, are the captain’s chairs with cup holders from a conference room so fancy that agency managers dubbed it the Crown Room.
In their place, Dr. Frieden has restored not only much of the agency’s previous organizational structure and scientific managers, but also its drab furniture. And he has brought something new: a frenetic sense of urgency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/health/16prof.html?ref=science
In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.
The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/science/16archeo.html?ref=science