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Talk Is Dead

Farhad Manjoo applauds the apparent death of voice mail:

Every new way we develop of talking to one another—e-mail, text messaging, instant messaging, Twitter, etc.—is faster and more useful than leaving an audio message on someone's phone.

Improving on voice mail is just the beginning. All those means of "talking [sic] to one another" are all also much faster than actually talking to one another. If you have to converse on the phone or in person, you waste time saying hello, asking how the other person is, and then listening to the answer. Then once you say what you have to say, the other person might inconvenience you even further by having something to say in response. They might disagree with you, or offer an insight you hadn't thought of that will immediately alter your own thinking. The exchange might go in an entirely different direction as the result of the unanticipated dynamics of your exchange. These are all incredibly inefficient wastes of your valuable time. Don't stand for it any longer!

Grace Songs: "High Flying Bird" (1966) and "Today" (1967)

Jefferson Airplane

We Still Have Money In This Century

Star Trek makes $31 million in a little over 24 hours.

Nancy Can't Pull The Football Away This Time

Congressional leaders got 40 interrogation briefings over seven years.

Holy Dangerous Digging

Israel is probing around and under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for evidence of the rich history that preceded construction of Muslim worship sites, a legitimate and indeed tantalizing effort that is nonetheless fraught with politics.

No Fun With Dick And Nancy

Andrew Sullivan called for the prosecution of former Vice President Cheney because, he says, Cheney broke the laws against torture. Sullivan now says that if congressional leaders, including Speaker Pelosi, knew about the alleged felonies but did nothing, they too should be held accountable. But he hasn't yet written that Pelosi should be indicted and prosecuted as an accessory to a felony.

I'm not accusing Sullivan of hypocrisy, because I don't think he has partisan motives for dogging the Bush administration so relentlessly over torture. But eventually he'll have to confront the preposterousness of prosecuting government officials. We now know that in the wake of Sept. 11, all three branches of government, including leaders from both parties, acted as though the U.S. was facing an existential threat. We're talking not about a lawless administration but a government-wide state of mind, reflecting the mentality and wishes of voters, in the face of a danger that felt and appeared virtually unprecedented in our national experience.

A truth commission to understand what happened and why in order to guide future Presidents, yes. Locking up a former VP and the woman who is second in line to the Presidency, no.

Sneering From Kemp's Grave

A simplistic attack on Sen. Specter in the form of a eulogy for Jack Kemp:

The spirit of Kemp stands for principle over power. The specter of Specter glorifies solely the principle of power.

"Solely?" I don't think Kemp would have agreed.

All Let Down

This New York Times assessment of the inter-generational dynamics of Star Trek is a complete muddle:

[A] scene in which an aged version of Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy) converses with his younger self (played by Zachary Quinto) becomes a platform for the regret that the grown-up children of the 1960s feel for letting down the youth of today, just as they might have felt they were let down by their leaders. “It’s kind of a baby boomer apology for where we are,” [movie co-writer Roberto] Orci said. “Not that I’m asking for the baby boomers to apologize.”

Why in the world not?

Two Lives Lived Live

In his 14th year as TV play-by-play announcer for the Anaheim Angels, Steve Physioc, shown speaking to the St. John's men's group this morning, says that when they fail on the field or court, the professional athletes he covers rarely if ever blame other people. How much better our lives and world would be, the New Jersey native and St. John's member said, if we were all equally disinclined to blame our troubles on scapegoats and circumstances. Instead, he counseled us to let our faith guide us to a sense of peace and purpose even in the midst of sadness. Steve's favorite movie line is from "The Natural," spoken to a brilliant ballplayer who's obsessed with his regrets: "I believe we have two lives: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that."

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