Noah Brimhall's Weblog
R.I.P. Mister Rogers
Today at the age of 74, Mister Fred Rogers died of stomach cancer. This is a truely sad day for me. I remember watching Mister Rogers for years and loving his show. Mister Rogers reminded children that they were special. I don't really know anything else to say about this. You might want to listen to the This American Life episode entitled
"Neighbors", in which David Rothbart recounts his childhood journey to Mr. Roger's summer house in Nantucket and his visit with Mr. Rogers as an adult to ask for advice about the conflicts in his own neighborhood.
Bad day
I generally don't use this space to complain or really talk about my life at all, but today is an exception. I feel like crap, and I am a seriously shitty mood. I am not physically sick but I still don't feel very good. What sounds really good right now is going home, crawling into bed and sleeping till the alarm goes off tomorrow morning. Alas, I have plans tonight, which luckily include my girlfriend, a couple of other good friends and a quantity of wine and food. I figure if anything can get me out of a rut it is friends, alch, and grub. It has been a while since I have done the whole things I like/don't like so much thing so here it goes:
Things I like:
-Water
-Candy (especially "
Mike and Ike" and "
Hot Tamales")
-Sleep
Things I don't like so much:
-Not getting enough sleep
-The Bush Administration
-Not feeling good
Four stories you won't hear about this weekend
Although I am very concerned with the possible war in Iraq, here are four stories that you probably won't hear about this weekend because of terror scare stories and Iraq War mongering:
Uneasy calm returns to Bolivia
Zimbabwe 'love marches' broken up
Thai drugs killings condemned
US denies 'prison torture' charges
Have a great weekend.
"So the men sit there, day after day. It has been a year now. It could well be many more."
That is the last paragraph of a BBC Interactive story called "
No fast track at Guantanamo Bay". This story has not recieved wide notice by the US media, but the US government is holding around 650 afghani, pakistani, british and australian citizens at a camp at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba. These prisoners have not recieved any legal representation, and they are being held in violation of international law. They are kept in isolation for all but 30 minutes a day. They are regularly questioned by the US government, but according to the article, there is not torture. The most important part of this story is the fact that by the admission of senior defense officials
as many as 10% of the prisoners may be innocent. In October three Afghans were sent home. They were farmers at the wrong place at the wrong time.
geoWeather
Thanks to
K10K I found this neat little weather application called
GeoTracker. Using flash, it finds where you are in the world, and tells you the tempature where you are. It then allows you to travel the world (virtually, of course) and see what the temperature is at weather stations in signifigant locations. This could be perfect for finding the tempatures for the vacation I am planning with Megan in the fall. Zihuatanejo here I come!
Alliance Watch
I have started a new blog called "
Alliance Watch". I have formed this blog to keep track of the
Portland Business Alliance. I will mostly be posting links to stories in the media, but I will also try to include some first hand and second hand accounts of the activities of the Alliance. If you don't know what the Portland Business Alliance is, then you should read this
article in the Portland Mercury. Also, if you have anything you would like to contribute to Alliance Watch feel free to
send it to me. If you are really interested and want to become a regular contributor to the Alliance Watch,
let me know.
A Sad Day
Today is a sad day for the world, and especially the U.S. and Israel. The loss of the Shuttle Columbia is a tragedy that will have repercussions for the entire space program, and for the history of mankind. Thinking of this loss I am immediately brought back to a time in Elementary School on Jan. 28, 1986. On that day while playing at recess a classmate told me that the Challenger had exploded on liftoff. I thought that it was a sick joke. I denied that it was even a possibility. To me at that time, the Space Shuttle was invincible. At that time (and for years after) I wanted to be an astronaut. For the entire day, even after seeing the footage of the shuttle breaking apart in a fireball of fuel, I denied that it could happen. For another day, I held out hope that Christie McAuliffe and her crewmates were still alive. Eventually I was able to come to terms with the facts of the dissaster. While many of my classmates dealt with the tragedy by telling off color jokes, I was unable to laugh. I can still remember many of these jokes, but to this day I can not find them even the slightest bit funny.
So now, listening to coverage on NPR of the disaster, I realize how much I have grown and how much I am the same. I now can accept that this has happened immediately, and that the crew of the shuttle is dead. For years I have given up my dream of being an astronaut and settled down to more realistic job aspirations. But I still feel the same weight on my chest. I still feel the pain when I look at the faces of the astronauts walking toward their doomed shuttle. I still am deeply connected to the space program in a totally personal way.
