I’m getting increasingly uncomfortable with where we find ourselves going. It’s moving quickly past mere reprehensible politics, fueling itself with more vitriol, more lies, more fear and more hatred, taking us all too fast to a place that, as an American, I believed was behind us for good …
So I look around, at all the racial and ethnic hatred spewing forth from every corner, and I wonder where we can go from here. Is there a path back from all this, or have we passed some kind of tipping point from which there is no return? Will it all fade away after November, or have we lit the fuse and now stand helpless, perhaps even regretful, as we await the inevitable explosion? This all seems like such a very, very bad idea. As the rhetoric gets uglier, the hatred more explicit, it can only be a matter of time before somebody feels threatened enough to push back, and then somebody is going to die. And at that moment, when, shocked into silence, we all hesitate and draw a collective breath and wonder if we should just stop and think, talk to each other, LISTEN to each other, will we have it within ourselves as Americans to back away? Or will we, the most heavily armed nation in the world, reach for our weapons and go to war against ourselves?
I could go on-and-on about the Cordoba House Mosque and Islamic Center controversy all day. But most of my thoughts are being said elsewhere on the internet tubes, so why not link to them instead?
One of the blogs I regularly read is Spencer Ackerman’s “Attackerman”. Lately he’s had guest posts, and one gentleman (at least, I think he’s a he) “mikeyhemlok” and I agree on many topics. His post on the Cordoba House is pretty fantastic: “It’s Not About THEM, It’s About Us.”
It’s a short article, I almost pasted the whole thing here but this is the key:
No matter how you personally feel about Muslims and mosques, you have to recognize that this is a one-way trip, a simple, irreversible binary choice. As there can be no real doubt that the Imam and his congregation have every right to build their mosque where they wish, it comes down to something more nuanced, and much more pernicious. Do you want people, either by dint of their popular majority or their frantic shrieking and hand-waving to have the power to over-rule the basic rights and freedoms granted to all Americans? Do you understand that if it’s just Muslims today, it will be Jews tomorrow and atheists after that and in the end, the battle for the smouldering rubble of the American experiment will be fought between Catholics and Protestants, with the victors laying claim to just another totalitarian theocracy?
It truly makes me wonder. Can even the likes of Gingrich and Palin actually be proud of an America so willing to run away from her core values? In the name of political expediency and tribal nativism, balanced against all the history and sacrifice that has come before? If they actually got their way, and Cordoba House project was blocked, would they see it as a bright and shining moment for America? Or would it be a Pyrrhic victory, with the taste of ashes, as they wondered if it could be a Mosque in New York today, might it be a Church in Kansas or a book in Georgia or a political party in South Carolina tomorrow.
When we lived in Dubai we were fans of the Hard Rock Cafe. It was a ten minute walk from our house and they had burgers, salads and, most preciously, beer. Well, beer for awhile – right before I left they lost their liquor license (see Hard Rock Cafe Dubai Update).
Soon-ish there’ll be a new 26,500 square-foot restaurant at the Intercontinental Hotel end of Dubai Festival City. Also, because it is after all, Dubai, the new Hard Rock will build the tallest ornamental guitar in the world outside.
Sadly Festival City is about an hour’s drive from our old apartment, so our friends who are still in Dubai probably won’t make the trek often.
Also there’s no new news about the Hard Rock Hotel Dubai was supposed to be getting (see Hard Rock Hotel Dubai).
Perhaps the recent economy has derailed that train?
Briefly, Price was the MBA from Stanford who figured where to put Disneyland and Walt Disney World back in the 1950s and 1960s. He put everything into the hopper – economic analysis, population projections, land values – and came out with Anaheim and Orlando.
Clever guy.
His autobiography, Walt’s Revolution!: By the Numbers, is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating; I love how he did what he did in the days before computers, but a co-author would have helped immensely. Sometimes numbers guys should stick to the numbers.
I’m glad he wrote his story down, though, it shows how Disneyland and Walt Disney World were the product of so many clever individuals and not the sole brainchild of one man.
Today’s the first day of the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims. I spoke about the practices back on the Newlywed in Dubai blog (see Ramadan).
The basic gist is that for a month Muslims fast from dawn until sunset; using it as time for inner reflection, devotion to God, and self-control. The usual practice is to have a pre-fast meal in the early morning and a post-fast meal after dark.
I was amazed in Dubai how many consumer products used Ramadan in marketing. One example I showed on the blog was the Ramadan M&Ms bag (see Ruining Ramadan).
There was an bus stop poster ad I always meant to take a photo of but didn’t. It was always too hot to stop, and I was driving fast in my air conditioned car. After the ads came down I kicked myself.
But then I found an image online.
First a little background – the Islamic calendar is lunar, so the start of Ramadan is based on the first waxing crescent moon.
I’ve had a soft-spot in my heart for Saabs since the late 1980s when my folks first got one, and then a 1991 Saab 900S was my first car out of college. Just this weekend I saw a beautiful convertible tooling around Portland and I got a twinge of jealousy.
Anyway, the article says that Saab’s new owner, Spyker Cars, needs to sell 85,000 cars worldwide by 2012 to break-even.
At first that didn’t sound like a lot, until I saw recent production numbers – Saab produced 94,751 cars worldwide in 2008, but only 20,791 last year.
My skeptical mind noted that the first number, 85,000 is “sales” while the second set of numbers is “production”. Perhaps misdirection or perhaps just available figures, you can decide.
Either way, Saab has an uphill battle, I hope they can figure this out.
I think that it’s impossible to apologize for Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, or any other act of war, especially six and a half decades later. That’s why wars end and treaties are signed.
Closure.
Using the events as a means to discuss nuclear disarmament isn’t a bad idea. Let’s just not place any blame, okay?
That’s my final thought – well, at least until Monday’s anniversary of Nagasaki.
I’m up at an earlier hour than normal (the cat from Arabia was cold and unhappy, and wanted to share with someone) so I’m reading a little more about Hiroshima this morning.
Two other things that amaze me about the attack are the Japanese reaction immediately before and after.
An hour before the bombing Japanese radar picked up the planes approaching and set off an air raid alert, but fifteen minutes before the drop they estimated that there were only a handful of planes, so the alert was lifted. Plus it wasn’t Japanese policy to intercept such a small formation, so no planes were scrambled.
Afterwards nobody knew that anything was out of the ordinary for quite some time. The radio station in Tokyo noticed that the Hiroshima station was off the air, but couldn’t contact the station by phone. The telegraph operators realized that the main telegraph line was not working just north of Hiroshima. Railroad stations 10 miles away reported a huge explosion, but the Imperial Japanese Army couldn’t get through to their station in Hiroshima.
The army was baffled by the silence – they knew that no large enemy raid had occurred and that no sizeable store of explosives was in Hiroshima at that time – so they sent an officer by plane to survey the damage.
It wasn’t until they had flown for three hours – when the plane was still 100 miles out – that they saw the smoke from Hiroshima.
Holy cow – I didn’t realize it was August 6 until listening to NPR on the way home. Today’s the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
I love recent history because generally it’s easier to imagine what someone of my parents or grandparents generation was going through than Ancient history; Rome, Greece, or any other Empire might as well be an alien planet.
That being said, the way that the second world war ended still baffles me.
130 pounds of uranium-235 created a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT
A one mile radius of total destruction
A third of Hiroshima’s population was killed immediately
Within several months the death toll was over 150,000
While this sounds beyond barbaric you have to put this in context; it had been almost 3 months since VE Day, the allied forces had been firebombing the hell out of 67 Japanese cities over the previous six months, without effect. The Japanese Emperor rejected the Potsdam Declaration in July. The ultimatum clearly stated that without a surrender, the Allies would attack Japan, resulting in “the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland”.
Of course, it didn’t mention the atomic bomb – but that would be tipping our hand a little too much.
So in 1975 Walt Disney World revamped their Tomorrowland, adding some attraction named “Space Mountain” along with with the a people mover named, well, the “WEDWay PeopleMover”. After the fancy refurbishment of Tomorrowland in 1994 it was renamed the “Tomorrowland Transit Authority” but little changed otherwise.
Also, to be a nitpick, this article is incorrect when it says the pollution-free linear induction motors were introduced at Disneyland in California in 1967. Disneyland’s PeopleMover (which closed in 1995) used the propulsion system of rotating Goodyear tires.
So by now you’ve heard of the mosque planned for two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center in New York – you know, the one Sarah Palin wanted “peaceful Muslims” to “refudiate”.
Anyway, on Tuesday New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a pretty fantastic speech about immigration and freedom of religion, and how New York works.
Here’s a little bit of it, the complete text can be found here:
This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.
The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.
The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.
Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.
The work in question is a from Uncle Scrooge #329 by Don Rosa titled “Uncle Scrooge in the Dream of a Lifetime”:
Wikipedia (which we all know never is wrong) has this to say about “The Dream of a Lifetime”:
The Beagle Boys steal a dream making invention from Gyro Gearloose and use it to invade Scrooge’s dreams. Donald has to go into Scrooge’s dreams to get them out of there and they chase each other through different chapters of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.
I’m not sold on this, as the comic book never mentions the kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun or the chick from Juno.
Steve McCurry, the photographer who took the picture of the Afghani woman for National Geographic – you know the one – made a world tour taking photos on the final roll.
As much as I like slide film, for some reason I never really shot Kodachrome. Pretty much I think it came down to the fact that it was more difficult (and costly) to develop. But still, the stuff I shot was fantastic.
Josh finally lives in Maine again after four years at Boston University, a stint in Southern California with
Walt Disney Feature Animation,
and two years in Dubai, UAE,
where he created and wrote Newlywed in Dubai.
Why am I on a car kick this week?
