I had planned to put a picture here that I’d taken from my hotel room at the Millenium Hilton in Manhattan. It’s a picture of Ground Zero and the sunlight reflecting off skyscrapers around it. It seemed appropriate, because in just a few hours, I’m flying back to New York, and I’ll be staying at the same hotel. Somehow, it’s disappeared from my phone, despite the fact that it’s still my wallpaper on that phone.
So, instead, I present this photo of Tulip, taken last month when I was packing for a trip to Orlando.
Tulip wants to go, too.
Dictionary.com says:
racism
- a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
- a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
- hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
Professor William A. Jacobsen, at his blog Legal Insurrection, reports on comments made by Professor Cornel West on the radio program Democracy Now. The program’s host played a clip of an interview with President Bush about his memoir and specifically about his response to the comments of rapper Kanye West, who, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, said that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Professor West said,
“No, I think Kanye West was actually right, but we have to make a distinction between being racist in motivation and intention versus racist in effect and consequence…. But I think what happened was that President Bush understood this in an individualistic way, which is the way most fellow Americans understand racism: ‘Do I actually hate black people individually?’ No, I don’t think President Bush individually hates black people. His policies were racist in effect and consequence and especially classist in terms of generating misery among poor and working people, disproportionately black and brown.”
Professor West is wrong on two counts. Most Americans don’t understand racism as hating black people individually; they understand it the way the dictionary describes it: hatred or intolerance of another race as a group. And there’s no such thing as racism “in effect and consequence.” Racism is solely a belief, a state of mind… an intention. If there is no racist intent, there is no racism.
The latest entry in our “How Dumb is That?” Department is 3DTV.
Did you know that you can, right now, go to Amazon.com and buy a 3DTV? This Samsung model, a 55-inch LED HDTV, sells for about $2900. However, to watch anything in 3D, you’ll need:
- Active 3D glasses. They’re expensive, starting at about $150. They aren’t compatible with other makes of 3DTVs. And if one person is watching something in 3D, everyone else has to wear them too — there’s no way to watch 2D and 3D at the same time. Oh, they’re also not available yet.
- Something to watch. There’s no 3D programming available on any of the cable or satellite systems yet. Comcast expects to have some on-demand content available later this year, but no 3D channels are expected to be available. DirecTV is planning a total of three 3DTV channels this year: an on-demand channel, a premium channel, and a free channel. Whether they’ll have enough content for them is another question. Some movies will be coming out on BluRay 3D this year; that means you’ll have to add either a 3D BluRay player, or a Sony Playstation 3 to your budget.
In short, you now have an opportunity to spend a lot of money on something you’ll barely be able to use.
<sigh>
