Uncooperative Crickets

NYC

Skye and I just got back from my first trip to New York City (for the purposes of this post, NYC=Manhattan). I found that I don't particularly care for New York. I could grow to like it, I suppose, but I liked Madison and Boston immediately. Ultimately, I think that the city is too crowded, lacks chlorophyll, and the buildings block out the sun and sky too much for my liking. That being said, I could live there; I just would prefer to live in Boston, Madison, or Minneapolis.

Here were the highlights:

1. We went to Liberty and Ellis Islands first. The Statue of Liberty was nice, although I had seen it by plane. These two islands were interesting, although Skye was more excited by them, so I'll let her describe them.
   
2. We saw the World Trade Center location. It was an impressively big hole, although you couldn't see much of it.
   
3. We took a tour of the UN. This was the highlight of the trip for me. The UN is an organization that I can really get behind; check out their goals for 2015. It just makes me all the madder that President Bush tries to screw it up by attempting to put John Bolton in there.
   
4. We went to the Museum of Modern Art. Frankly, I can only handle about 10 minutes of art at a time, although I enjoyed the Van Goghs (I like expressionism a lot, in so far as my ignorance of art allows me to have a favorite) and Dan Perjovschi's mural.
   
5. Central Park was okay. It was big, it was crowded, and it was a park.
   

I think that I would have been just as happy spending 2 days there, but Skye was happy that we stayed for a third, so it was worth it.

I still love traveling by bus.

I just read a book on the Revolutionary War, saw the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, viewed the site of the World Trade Center, took a tour of the UN, and re-watched Fahrenheit 9/11. I cannot believe how much President Bush is demolishing the ideals of this country; it is borderline treasonous. I cannot believe that any of our founding fathers would support his general policies.

(I am not an expert on American history).

I also re-watched the video for "The Saints are Coming." This might now be my favorite video of all time, as I find it extremely moving. The video is below, and let's remember that point of this video is not that the U.S. military is incompetent because it drops stuff into the water.




Congratulations to Santana on his 17 Ks. Remarkable.

Now that it is official, I will say that I hope Michael Vick gets the maximum possible sentence.

Speaking of sentences, why don't we complain more that fines are too regressive? I'm not saying that we should complain, I am just wondering how this works. How much is a $250,000 fine going to hurt Vick? Not much. How much would it hurt me? Quite a bit. Do the judges take this into consideration? If so, this might be an appropriate fine for a mult-millionaire, but then the billionaire would get away with only a slap on the wrist.

Or maybe I don't understand why we fine people. I have been assuming that it is for punitive reasons, but maybe $250,000 is the theoretical maximum restitution that would be needed to repair the harm done to the country for dog-fighting. Or maybe losing $250,000 hurts no matter if you are worth $10 million or $100 million. These are questions I don't have answers to.

I'm all for punishing Vick harshly, though; I really like dogs.

posted by Dirk Awesome @ 3:31 PM