Tyler Clementi, Musician

Goddammit, I'm angry.

This appeared in the Times today:

It started with a Twitter message on Sept. 19: “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

Mr. Clementi, a Rutgers University freshman, is thought to have jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

That night, the authorities say, the Rutgers University student who sent the message used a camera in his dormitory room to stream the roommate’s intimate encounter live on the Internet.

And three days later, the roommate who had been surreptitiously broadcast — Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old freshman and an accomplished violinist — jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River in an apparent suicide.

````````

Damn right he was a musician. A fine one. The universe is made up of three things; time, matter and energy. When they interact, you get music.

Universe without end...

There comes a point in every musician's life when you learn that music and your life are one in the same...forever.

As we read in Spoon River,

THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.

Don't worry Tyler, you're immortal.

and we VOTE, too

today in the Times..

Carrying a Flag for Mixed Martial Arts

Mr. St-Pierre has a rabid following among testosterone-fueled, under-35 head-banger types who, in another era, rallied around Hulk Hogan.

The sport has shed some of the stigma that led Senator John McCain to once dismiss it as “human cockfighting.” Years after banning some of its more overtly prison-brawl maneuvers, like groin-kicking and hair-pulling, mixed martial arts is growing in respectability and giving boxing a run for its money. Last year, the Ultimate Fighting Championship — the sport’s most visible promotion company — tallied nearly eight million pay-per-view purchases, a record by any company, including any provider of boxing or professional wrestling, said Dave Meltzer, who tracks such figures for his newsletter, Wrestling Observer, and for Yahoo! Sports.

Delaware Republicans Vote "No" on Masturbation

click here

Homo Sapiens Number 1!!! Go Team!!!

This is what happens when you mix politics and religion.

Kashmir today in the Times.

You still want public school prayer?

In honor of this past week

If you think amerika is coming to an end, well, it was already falling apart years ago.

click here, then read the text

#10. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter to the National Endowment for the Arts be printed in the RECORD.

#11. There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

U.S. Senate, Washington, DC, May 18, 1989

Mr. Hugh Southern, Acting Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC

#12. Dear Mr. Southern: We recently learned of the Endowment's support for a so-called "work of art" by Andres Serrano entitled "Piss Christ." We write to express our outrage and to suggest in the strongest terms that the procedures used by the Endowment to award and support artists be reformed.

Sincerely,

#18. Alfonse D'Amato, Bob Kerrey, Warren R. Rudman, Rudy Boschwitz, Dennis Deconcini, Pete Wilson, Bob Dole, Chuck Grassley, James A. McClure, John Heinz, Wendell Ford, Howell Heflin, Harry Reid, Richard Shelby, John W. Warner, Larry Pressler, Conrad Burns, Tom Harkins, Trend Lott, Jesse Helms, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Steve Symms.

19. Mr. HELMS. Mr. President, the Senator from New York is absolutely correct in his indignation and in his description of the blasphemy of the so-called artwork. I do not know Mr. Andres Serrano, and I hope I never meet him. Because he is not an artist, he is a jerk.

#20. Let us examine exactly what this bird did to get $15,000 of the taxpayers' money through the so-called National Endowment for the Arts. If they have no more judgment than that, it ought to be abolished and all funds returned to the taxpayer. What this Serrano fellow did, he filled a bottle with his own urine and then stuck a crucifix down there - Jesus Christ on a cross. He set it up on a table and took a picture of it.

#21. For that, the National Endowment for the Arts gave him $15,000, to honor him as an artist.

#27. Horsefeathers. If we have sunk so low in this country as to tolerate and condone this sort of thing, then we become a part of it.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

5. Serrano's work "Piss Christ" can be found on-line by Googling. (You are not required to look at the work. Please do not look if you believe it might be offensive or upsetting to you.) Which arguments that "Piss Christ" should be considered "art" are most compelling? Which arguments that "Piss Christ" should not be considered "art" are most compelling?

Wide range of concerns

The range of sentiment expressed in today's NYT editorial page is staggering. Poet T S Eliot referred to the end of the world as a bang or wimper, but I'm not sure either sound is appropriate in our age of post-cognitive thought.

Comment on Frank Rich's column:
I am a 35 year old man who had an interesting set of perspective shifts from 2001-2002. I started 2001 a Republican; I ended 2002 a vocal anti- Bush anti-war Democrat. And now I'm not sure I even want to be an American anymore. I speak for many of my friends.

Third lead editorial:
In Search of a Bedbug Solution
Government and industry need to expedite the search for better solutions to bedbugs.