http://www.thedailychannel.com/ en-us http://www.thedailychannel.com/images/eyeball-88x31.jpg http://www.thedailychannel.com/ http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/out/2004nov.htm#o44.dat The Vendee globe starts on Sunday. You might enjoy following the only American entry on this around-the-world race. It IS an ocean planet, after all. http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/activist/2004nov.htm#act19.dat Here's a link to a great election map at CSPAN, and a long message from a hardworking peace activist who has gone to Florida. There's no reason I should be the only one to read this message... http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/out/2004oct.htm#o41.dat Paging backwards through the 1 November issue of the New Yorker magazine, I came across an amazing photograph. And then another. I hadn't seen any of them before, but after another page or two found tears come to my eyes. I knew if these great landmark photos continued to appear as I paged on, that I would start to cry. It wasn't a good feeling, knowing that a great photographer must have died. http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/out/2004oct.htm#o42.dat Tomorrow I will make 40-garlic chicken for my family, but they will be out collecting chocolate treats which they will not eat. Why won't they join me for dinner? http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/out/2004oct.htm#o40.dat An incredible sculpture: a Japanese Zero (the fighter plane) photographed from a model, blown up to life-size, and inflated (?!). Then, after the exhibit, burned up. Burning Man, this is Burning Plane. The artist, interviewed, was unable to put the underlying idea into just a few words. "The meaning is too complicated to explain," he said in a video that was showing in a loop in the lobby. http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/bookish/2004oct.htm#bookish113.dat "If a woman is going to write a Book of Peace, it is given to her to know devastation." So begins The Fifth Book of Peace by Maxine Hong Kingston, a book I got on a lark, along with her first novel, Tripmaster Monkey. Maxine Hong Kingston is giving a free public lecture on October 18, 2004, at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and I thought it would be fun to take a look at a couple of her books. So I got a couple of them, used, for a pittance plus a shippance, on amazin' amazon. What happened next is a perfect example of why it is so important to read outside your field. The fifth book? When I started reading the first chapter, "Fire," I couldn't put it down. Which is not to say I could read it quickly. It wasn't written quickly, was it? http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/activist/2004oct.htm#act18.dat "Everybody here knows somebody who's stubborn and wrong all the time. Why would you elect somebody like that president?" Obama called out. "I mean, it's one thing that somebody's wrong and they know they're wrong. Or it's one thing if they're arrogant but they're right all the time. But when they're arrogant and wrong all the time, that's a problem." http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/activist/2004oct.htm#act17.dat One of my classmates directed my attention to Thomas Powers' review of The Report on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq (by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence). Why is it that we never blame our presidents for things? http://www.thedailychannel.com/journals/bookish/2004sep.htm#bookish112.dat What is the miso soup we are all swimming in? I hope it is nothing like the bits and pieces of this gentle yet repellent modern-day Japanese slasher novel. I picked this up in the library, carelessly mistaking it for a book by an entirely different Murakami. For my mental carelessness I received a shock to the system.