Covered this week; The sad state of plastic, but perhaps some hope on the horizon… The absolutely incredible (free) archives of the Library of Congress… It’s official, Democrats will control the House of Representatives… A final proving ground for guide dogs to the blind, Midtown Manhattan… If you want to hook someone on baseball, show them this inning… The 31 best dance scenes in movies… Trump’s Nationalism, rebuked at World War I ceremony…
November 5, 2018
Two hundred and fifty organizations, including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Colgate, SC Johnson, and H&M, signed on to the new commitment, which sets out a vision with multiple steps. Companies are committing to eliminate plastic when it’s problematic or unnecessary, and to shift to reusable packaging in some cases. By 2025, they plan to make all plastic packaging either reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Every year, they’ll put out public reports on progress.
“We don’t know where it goes,” she says. “It’s just lost. It disappears, presumably, in the environment in streams and rivers, and then ultimately in the ocean.” The organization calculated that by 2050, there could be more plastic in the ocean, by weight, than fish.
November 6, 2018
Aside from their new, lame head scratching logo which I’ve posted about previously… the digital collections of the Library of Congress which are expanding on a daily basis… are nothing short of astonishing… but there is a darker side to things…
And since its digital collections came online, anyone, anywhere in the world can call up these vast resources with an internet connection and a few clicks. Though we tend to take such things for granted in our fervidly distracted times, a little reflection should remind us of how incredible that is. But before we wax too rhapsodic, let’s remember there’s a business end to the LoC and it’s called the U.S. Copyright Office, that guardian of intellectual property that both ensures creators can profit from their labors and prevents the free and open use of so many enriching materials long after those creators have need of them.
November 7, 2018
One lever of power is better than none… we also flipped a lot of State Governor’s Mansions, also huge with a Census coming in 2020 and a redrawing of Congressional Districts… most importantly though, so many people worked so long and hard to affect change… if they had been left empty-handed, I can’t imagine the blow to esteem. Big sigh of relief.
Tuesday night’s win is a victory for the Democratic Party, regardless of the final breakdown of seats. Party enthusiasm was high in the Trump era, but gerrymandering gave Republicans a big structural advantage going into the midterms.
House Democrats will wield the speaker’s gavel once again, and with it, the power to investigate the Trump administration. They will also have more leverage on policy than they did in the minority.
November 8, 2018
An example of one of those things you never think about if it doesn’t have a relevance to your daily life… blind people navigating major cities with only a dog to hold on to… has to be a harrowing experience for both master and servant.
There’s no more intense place than New York City to train the dogs — it’s the craziest environment they’ve ever been in,” said Brian O’Neal, a Seeing Eye trainer. At the end of the training, the idea is, ‘O.K., they know the basics. Now can they handle the grind of the city?’
November 9, 2018
No words, what an analysis.
New York’s hottest baseball game is BLOOD RIVALRY DEATH MATCH. This game had everything. Tiny, bearded closers melting into a puddle of goo. Little men in blue hats deciding the fates of millions based on what they were hearing in their headphones, one of the greatest grand slams in history caught on the warning track. Everyone watching it died and was reborn as a relative they didn’t like.
Which is all to say, holy crap, did you see that final ninth inning of the Red Sox-Yankees series? I lost six pounds, and I didn’t even care who won. My hands are shaking. It was perfect, absolutely perfect — the perfect distillation of why we love this dumb sport.
November 10, 2018
If I’m not in a mosh pit, I don’t know how to dance… but I suppose one of my guilty pleasures is watching others, who know how to dance, dance well… so when I came across this post by Sarah Kaufman in the Post, I lost about an hour 😉
Taking stock of film’s dance treasury to pick the paragons was an irresistible challenge. In making my choices for the best dance scenes, I looked at several factors: mastery of technique, imaginative choreography, quality of the music — this is very important — and design and storytelling. I value authentic expression more than dance doubles and tricky editing. But, in the final analysis, transcendence won out. Does the dancing carry me away, give me chills, distill some truth about the human experience? Whether it’s a masterpiece of steps and skill, or an intentionally funny, hot mess, or a dreamscape that’s intriguingly weird — dancing that moves you is great dancing.
November 11, 2018
One of the most frustrating aspects of Trump is actually his (adopted) Republican Party, fellow Americans whose level of self-interest outweighs doing the right thing… they continue to protect, support, co-op and fail to call him out on the damage he does to America on a daily basis… that said, it’s fantastic to see that world leaders are less and less afflicted by such restraint having begun creating a pariah of our POTUS… doesn’t bode well for the US in the short term, but Trump isn’t forever, we’ll come back from this. A Happy Veterans Day to WWI vets and all vets.
No one has done more to break up the postwar global system in the last couple of years than Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. As the anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I was commemorated on Sunday, Mr. Trump’s brand of “America First” nationalism was rebuked from the podium while he sat stone-faced and unmoved, alienated from some of America’s strongest allies, including his French hosts.
