Posts Tagged ‘New York’

Cordoba House Parallels

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I guess I haven’t talked about the Cordoba House Islamic Center at 51 Park Place on Manhattan for some time, but the other day I ran across a fantastic article in the New York Times that mentions it.

Check out: “In Fierce Opposition to a Muslim Center, Echoes of an Old Fight.”

The opening is killer:

Many New Yorkers were suspicious of the newcomers’ plans to build a house of worship in Manhattan. Some feared the project was being underwritten by foreigners. Others said the strangers’ beliefs were incompatible with democratic principles.

Concerned residents staged demonstrations, some of which turned bitter.

But cooler heads eventually prevailed; the project proceeded to completion. And this week, St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan — the locus of all that controversy two centuries ago and now the oldest Catholic church in New York State — is celebrating the 225th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone.

Bam!

Anyone who doesn’t think history moves in cycles is a fool.

More on the Cordoba House

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

If the debate over the proposed Muslim community center in NYC were actually a discussion, we’d probably see more articles like this one from the Christian Science Monitor: “Sex shop and strip clubs near ground zero show double standard over Park51.”

Key quote:

… the Muslim community center would not be a blight on the neighborhood surrounding the World Trade Center. That neighborhood has two of New York’s most architecturally-important churches. One is Trinity Church, a classic example of 19th-century Gothic revival. The other is St. Paul’s Chapel, the city’s oldest surviving church and its finest model of Georgian architecture (it was modeled after St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in London). George Washington worshipped there and it became a refuge for rescue workers after 9/11.

But the World Trade Center neighborhood is also filled with eyesores. When I walked from Park Place on the north side of the World Trade Center to Rector Street on the south side, what I encountered were a string of bars, betting parlors, and fast-food restaurants. And within this cluster of buildings, especially noticeable were two strip clubs, the New York Dolls Gentleman’s Club and the Pussycat Lounge, plus Thunder Lingerie and More, a sex shop with a peep show.

This whole topic makes me ill.

Pentagon Mosque

Friday, August 20th, 2010

This article is from a week and a half ago, sadly it doesn’t seem to have picked up much traction in the whole Cordoba House brouhaha: “There’s a mosque inside the Pentagon!

Cordoba House

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

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.

Bloomberg on the Mosque

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

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”.

The whole story here: “Planned Sign of Tolerance Bringing Division Instead.”

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.

Good stuff.

Fringe Finale

Monday, May 17th, 2010

I’m going to let my geek flag wave here today – over the weekend I watched the first part of the Fringe season finale. Sorry it’s so closely on the heels of a similar post just last month (see Back to the Alternative Future).

So this week we’re back in the Fringe alternate universe, but it’s the present day this time. First off they started out with an alternate red tinted credit sequence:

Hey, waitaminute, “First People”? In the normal credits it’s “Parallel Universes”:

Interesting …

Alternate New York City still has the World Trade Center and airships up the yin-yang (likely they didn’t have a Hindenburg disaster) but they also have a fairly esoteric early 20th century architecture reference – Antoni Gaudí’s proposed Grand Hotel:

The hotel was designed in the early 1900s but (obviously) never built. It actually looks quite a bit like a super-sized version of London’s Swiss Re Building:

Apparently there’s an architecture geek on the writing or production staff.

This New York still has a Statue of Liberty, although somehow theirs has retained its original copper-bronze hue:

Also, as you can see from the title, it appears that Fort Wood is the home of the alternate universe Department of Defense.

I’m still taken aback by the lack of Verdigris on the Statue; we can either assume that the science behind corrosion works differently in the alternate universe (which is unlikely), that the Statue has been rebuilt (perhaps their September 11th attacks had different targets) or a third, unknown reason.

Moving on, my favorite jokes of the episode are the numismatically inclined. The defense forces in the alternate world find a dead human from our world and go through his wallet. They’re particularly confused by our money:

“Who’s ‘Jackson’?”

Wow, so either the guy doesn’t know who his seventh President was, or someone else was their seventh President. Naturally this, in conjunction with the “First People” bit above, leads me to wonder about that universe’s Creek War and Seminole Wars – with no Andrew Jackson were Native Americans treated more humanely in this universe?

Or maybe I’m overthinking this.

The next one blew me out of the water, though; in wanting to compare their $20 to ours, they asked for “a Junior”.

Boom:

Brilliant.

So either Martin Luther King, Jr was a President, or they’re keeping in line with the Hamiltons and Franklins and put influential non-Presidents on money.

Either way, bad-ass.

They also use dollar coins over there:

Shocking, I know. The front was even moreso:

So Reverend King and Richard Nixon made it onto the money in this world?!

Weird.

Honestly I took this more as a homage to Watchmen, where Nixon was still President in 1985 (after the repeal the 22nd Amendment and the suspicious murders of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein).

This next thing, it’s just weird and funny:

Yup, The West Wing season eleven. Why the The West Wing? Maybe because both it and Fringe are produced by Warner Brothers Television?

Maybe they’re just fans?

The last one was startling, check out the map in the background:

Time to turn to the internets for help. I found an article at SciFiWire: “Secrets of the alternate U.S.A. from Fox’s Fringe.” They saw the map in-person on set and say this:

California has clearly suffered a major catastrophe; half of it is gone, presumably underwater.

The state of Washington is called “Southern British Columbia.” (A wink to the crew of Fringe, which is shot in Canada’s British Columbia?)

Nevada is called “Independent Nevada.”

Texas is divided into two states: North Texas and South Texas.

Oklahoma and Kansas are combined into a large state called “Midland.”

North and South Carolina are combined into a single state called simply “Carolina.”

Louisiana is called “Louisiana Territory.”

The area around Washington, D.C., is called “District of Virginia” instead.

The upper peninsula of Michigan doesn’t exist.

The map designates red “quarantine areas” and blue “incident areas,” presumably either places that have been cleared of all life or areas of unusual “Pattern”-related activity. The biggest red quarantine areas are in Delaware, eastern New York and southern Maine.

I’d say it’s more Eastern Maine, say Hancock County?

Yep.

Sorry Bar Harbor, MDI. You lose. Better luck next alternate universe …

Lost Languages Found, in New York

Saturday, May 1st, 2010

Fascinating article in the New York Times the other day about the languages that are more commonly heard in New York than anywhere else in the world, even from where they originated: “Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages.”

Key quote is a short one but a good one: “some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages.”

Wow.

New York, 2005

Monday, April 12th, 2010

Five years ago this week I took an overnight trip to NYC for work (see New York City).

Here are a few of the photos from that trip:

Times Square at 4:35 am looks pretty much like it would at midnight, sans a few hundred people.

The highlight (or lowlight, as it may be) of the trip was my having to move a 15 foot Ryder truck in the middle of Times Square at 8:45 am due to an error on the part of one of my co-workers.

As you can imagine, parking is tough to come by at that time of day.

Parallel parking a beast like that is also not an easy task.

That was decidedly not fun.

Shortly after I almost hit a rollerblader.

Unfortunately I don’t have any more of the photos, they were on a work computer and who knows what happened to them. But that Times Square shot has always been one of my favorite pictures, it brings back so many odd memories …