
A solid idea from Mayor Bloomberg.


A sentence is like a tune. A memorable sentence gives its emotion a melodic shape. You want to hear it again, say it—in a way, to hum it to yourself. You desire, if only in the sound studio of your imagination, to repeat the physical experience of that sentence. That craving, emotional and intellectual but beginning in the body with a certain gesture of sound, is near the heart of poetry.

U.S. Border Patrol agents in Laredo say they've seized nearly $8 million in drugs after searching a bus and a truck laden with frozen broccoli.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Friday the bus was packed with more than $4 million in cocaine and driven by a 30-year-old from Conroe. No arrest was immediately made after the Thursday seizure, but the agency reports the investigation is ongoing.
A separate search of a truck turned up more than a ton of marijuana and nearly 50 pounds of cocaine worth more than $3 million. Authorities say the man driving the truck was turned over to immigration authorities on federal drug charges.
In one murder after another, the "Canal Livre" crime TV show had an uncanny knack for being first on the scene, gathering graphic footage of the victim.
Too uncanny, say police, who are investigating the show's host, state legislator Wallace Souza, on suspicion of commissioning at least five of the murders to boost his ratings and prove his claim that Brazil's Amazon region is awash in violent crime. Police also have accused Souza of drug trafficking.
"The order to execute always came from the legislator and his son, who then alerted the TV crews to get to the scene before the police," state police intelligence chief Thomaz Vasconcelos charged in an interview with The Associated Press.
The killings of competing drug traffickers, he said, "appear to have been committed to get rid of his rivals and increase the audience of the TV show."
The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.
She thought for a minute and then laughed. “Oh, fine. I suppose they probably don’t attach sexuality to Julia Child, either.” (Dan Aykroyd famously parodied her lack of femininity in a “Saturday Night Live” skit, parts of which Ms. Ephron includes in her film.)Where's the skit, you tease? We've all heard of Dan Aykroyd and seen Saturday Night Live already.
--via "Julie & Julia" review, here.
...America is being led, to a striking extent, by a new elite, a cohort of the best and the brightest whose advancement was formed, at least in part, by affirmative action policies. ...And yet the consequences of that change remain unresolved.
..Even those who now occupy niches at the top of society, regard their status as complicated, ambiguous and vulnerable.
--from Helene Cooper at the Times