British Prime Minister David Cameron met with US life sciences industry leaders to emphasise the UK’s ongoing and long-term commitment to life sciences and to acknowledge the value and investment that the US companies bring to the UK. The PM highlighted genomic medicine and dementia research as priority areas he would like the companies to consider for future investment.
Companies included Abbvie, Amgen, Baxter, Biogen Idec, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Covance, Eli Lilly, Gilead, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
I was the happy beneficiary of the culinary expertise of Ron Yan on New Year's Eve 2012, and I'm belatedly sharing the details!
Ron is a graduate of the International Culinary Center in The French Culinary Institute’s Classic Culinary Arts program in New York City. He maintains a blog showcasing his kitchen creativity, Cooking With Strawberry Tsunami.
Eight of us gathered at a friend's for this extravaganza a la Rob.
"Bombastic and overblow." "Sensual." What is Richard Wagner's music? It is different things to different people. Hear Leon Botstein, Music Director of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO)--and who when only 23 yearsof age became the youngest college president in US history (Bard College)--briefly discuss some of the famous Preludes from Wagner's great operas, Wagner's career, and the ASO's Wagner performances in this the 200th anniversary year of Wagner's birth...and the 50th anniversary season of the ASO.
Here are two interesting recent articles on Richard Wagner (1813-1883)
"Is Wagner Bad For Us?" by Nicolas Spice, London Review of Books (11 April 2013); from the article:
Theft; the breaking of vows, promises and contracts; seduction, adultery, incest, disobedience, defiance of the gods, daring to ask the one forbidden question, the renunciation of love for power, genital self-mutilation as the price of magic: Wagner’s work is everywhere preoccupied with boundaries set and overstepped, limits reached and exceeded. ..... Difficulties and disasters dogged [Wagner's opera] Tristan und Isolde from the start and in the Wagner circle it came to be thought of as in some way cursed. The attempt at a first production in Vienna in 1862 foundered: the demands the opera made on players and singers were too much for them and the production was abandoned after 77 rehearsals. The planned public premiere in Munich in 1865 had to be postponed for a month, when Malvina Schnorr, who was singing Isolde, lost her voice on the morning of the first performance after taking a ‘vapour bath’. Relations between the orchestra and the conductor, Hans von Bülow, grew strained: Franz Strauss, father of Richard and the brilliant first horn of the Munich orchestra, had a blazing row with von Bülow, stomped out of the pit and had to be coaxed back. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who sang Tristan to his wife’s Isolde, caught a chill on stage and subsequently died; on his deathbed he is said to have called out Wagner’s name. His wife abandoned her career after his death. ‘I drove you to the abyss,’ Wagner wrote in his diary; ‘I pushed him over.’ Four years later, during rehearsals for a revival of the first production, one of von Bülow’s young assistants had a mental breakdown, apparently brought on by the opera, and was institutionalised. In 1911, Felix Mottl collapsed and died while conducting Tristan and Joseph Keilberth met the same end in 1968.
"Wagner's Dark Shadow: Can We Separate the Man from His Works?" by Dirk Kurbjuweit, Spiegel Online (April 12, 2013); from the article:
Markus Käbisch, 45, is adept at describing what it's like to listen to this music. He studied music and is now an entrepreneur in the solar industry. He lives in Leipzig, Wagner's birthplace....
Käbisch loves Wagner's music but says he "couldn't handle it every day." He describes it as being, "extremely captivating; when you listen to it the ego and the individual disappear, and you become intoxicated, entering a state of ecstasy." Käbisch calls it "overpowering music." "That's what is so dangerous about it, and it's why this music was so well-suited to politics in the Third Reich." When the conversation turns to Wagner, politics is never far away.
Wagner himself conceived his music as political. He didn't want to be merely an artist, but to build a new society, a society of the emotionally transported, of people who seek love instead of striving for money and power. His music was also a propaganda tool for this idea.
Hear me ask my question to the panel of BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?this week. It will be broadcast online and on UK radio at 3:00 p.m. EDT (New York), 20:00 in the UK and available as a free podcast for download.* (Also available for free via iTunes.)
This week's panelists:
Sir Harold Evans of The Sunday Times, US News and World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News. In 1986 he founded Conde Nast Traveler. His book The American Century (1998) receiving particular acclaim. He is editor-at-large of The Week Magazine.
Former U.S. Rep. Nan Hayworth (NY 19th Congressional district) who may be considering a re-entry into politics. She was defeated in 2012 by Sean Patrick Maloney (who I've met several times over the course of years, as well as his partner Randy who is a fellow Hawkeye).
Former NY Attorney General and NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a contributor for Slate.com as well as a guest on cable news programs such as, recently, Up With Steve Kornacki; (a clip).
U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards (MD 4th Congressional district) who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 and sits on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
I attended a recording on the evening of April 18th, 2013, of one of my favorite radio shows, BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?, the world's longest-running radio panel discussion program, begun in 1948.** The show traveled across the pond to NYC this week to Columbia University's School of Journalism. Usually the show is broadcast live in the UK, and broadcast from a different location each week.
Attendees' questions are submitted ahead of time and selected by BBC staff. Panelists don't know ahead of time what the questions will be. For this taping, my question was one selected. I got to read my question aloud to the panel. For me this was very exciting.
The show has 3 million listeners a week, and it is part of my BBC Radio 4 triumvirate podcast I listen to each weekend--the other two programs being Friday Night Comedy (The News Quiz hosted by Sandi Toksvig and The Now Show with Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt) and In Our Time with host Melvyn Lord Bragg of Wigton.
*It's rebroadcast at 8:10 a.m. EDT on Saturday, 13:10 in the UK, too. Once archieved, it will be here.
**Technically, Gardeners' Question Time was founded a year earlier, in 1947, but it's a niche program really. ;)
PHOTOS, top to bottom: The panel (in the Pulitzer Building's lecture Hall on campus); me with Congresswoman Donna Edwards; me with Jonathan Dimbleby after the recording.
The story spread like an urban myth: You’re never going to believe what my friend’s cousin’s co-worker found in the subway. What neither of us knew, or could have predicted, was that Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.
AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENT WINDSOR in IN THE UNITED STATES, Petitioner, v. EDITH SCHLAIN WINDSOR, IN HER CAPACITY AS EXECUTOR OF THE ESTATE OF THEA CLARA SPYER, ET AL., Respondents.
I'm sorry to hear of Ed Koch's passing. Ed helped bring the City back from the brink financially and was the first mayor to apply City funds toward housing--80,000 units of affordable housing.
I met Ed on several occasions and attended some of this birthday parties in recent years--first at Metropolitan Pavilion (I even designed the invite one year) and, by riding the coattails of my friend Jim Capalino, Commissioner of General Services in Ed's Administration, at Gracie Mansion during the Bloomberg years. Ed was always gracious and also humorous. Alas, the best stories he told aren't for publication on Isebrand.com.... Let's just say that Ed was an expert at the effective comedic use of flowery language!--a trait not uncommon among native New Yorkers.
I last saw him late one evening in Fairway about a year ago. I said hi, but I didn't want to hold him up; so I just told him it was good to see him up and about. A young couple were standing by, iPhone at the ready, eager to ask for a photo. Lots of shoppers said hi--everyone called him Mister Mayor or Your Honor.
I know his record as mayor is mixed. His handling of the emerging AIDS crisis at a time of severe shortages of hospital beds will be rightly criticized. It was a profound, tragic missed opportunity with horrible consequences. It might be noted that he also signed into law the City's first sexual-orientation non-discrimination statue, and before that, as Congressman he had introduced with Rep. Bella Abzug a bill to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which would have prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And though elements of his Administration were tinged with racism, without Ed's endorsement and support, Democratic mayoral nominee David Dinkins, after unseating Ed as the Party's candidate following Ed's third term as Mayor, would have undoubtedly lost to his Republican opponent. I knew Ed only after he was mayor, and some of his political choices of the last decade infuriated me. Though, to be sure, if there was one thing Ed didn't mind, it was being infuriating.
Today, though, I'll remember Ed in his overcoat and flat cap, standing at the meat counter at Fairway, waiting for his turn, tall among the rest (Ed was a very tall guy), surrounded by a respectful, extremely subtle deference. It's a very New-York-moment image, and I think Ed would have liked it.
(Christmas Eve Solemn Mass, reading of the Gospel, Church of Saint Mary the Virgin (Episcopal), Times Square, New York, New York, photographer and year of photo unknown.)
Most of lower Manhattan and the Financial District were burned down on the freezing night of December 17th, 1835. In Gore Vidal's meticulously-researched novel, Burr, the protagonist Charlie Schuyler, the morning after the great blaze, describes the destruction during the previous night:
[After the December 17, 1835, NYC great fire] Like everyone else in the city, I was awake the whole night. Half the First Ward has burned down.
It was Dante's Hell: ice and fire together. A horrible racket of bells pealing, of fire-engines clattering, of houses collapsing. At midnight the sky was like a red dawn. Today every New Yorker who knows how to read mentions The Last Days of Pompeii.
I am thankful that I won't be required to describe what I saw. Memory too crowded with fiery images. Wall Street in flames. A freezing wind full of fire--an anomaly.
Suddenly the new Merchants' Exchange vanishes in a long wave of flame. A moment later I was able to see through the walls to the statue beneath the dome of Alexander Hamilton [in the church graveyard.]
From nowhere, a half-dozen young sailors raced into the building and tried to save the statue. They pulled the figure off its pedestal but then the police forced them out of the building just in time for with a hissing sigh the dome fell in and Hamilton was seen no more (his would-be rescuer was a young officer from the Navy Yard--a banker's son, who else?).
A group of Irish approached [Leggett and I] and said, "They'll be making no more of them five-per-cent dividends, with they now?".... Leggett grinned and gave [the speaker] a thumbs-up.
In the side streets the shopkeepers were gloomily digging among the ashes to see what the fire had spared. In Pearl Street there are miles of scorched cloth stacked on the side-walls. In Fulton Street furniture. Nearly every street like an open bazaar of ruined good. The poor steal whatever they can, particularly food...as do the pigs, who have declared themselves a national holiday and are now rampant.... The only contented sound in the city is their squeaking and snorting as they turn up delicacies where once were taverns, grocery shops, homes."
Image (click to enlarge) - View of the Great Fire in N.York, Dec. 16th & 17, 1835, as seen from Williamsburg (sic), by Nicolino Caly, circa 1835. Medium gouache on paper mounted on canvas, on stretcher, 7.7 × 11.5 in, collection of the New York Historical Society.
Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.
If you've followed the decades-long innanity of science-deniers who target the Theory of Evolution (yes, all of geology, biology, and genetics is wrong--magic, indeed), you'll not be surprised that science-deniers exploit scientific complexity, nor that they often exploit and sometimes simply misinterpretent or misunderstand the role of disagreements within the scientific community, disagreements that quite often exist within the context of overarching, fundemental scientific consensus.
Back to the cost perspective given in the graphic (click on the above) designed by Jennifer Daniel: The number of U.S. natural disasters costing more than $1bn was 46 in 1980-1995 and 90 from 1996-2012. (Inflation plays a very small role in that increase.)
Yet, an October 2012 Pew Research Center poll
found that two-thirds of Americans say there is solid evidence the earth is getting warmer. That’s down 10 points since 2006. Among Republicans, more than half say it’s either not a serious problem or not a problem at all."
The graphic by Jennifer Daniel doesn't include a cost estimate (it's yet to to determined) for this year's U.S. drought, which was the worst in a generation.
Also from the article:
On Aug. 30, [Romney] belittled his opponent’s vow to arrest climate change, made during the 2008 presidential campaign. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Romney told the Republican National Convention in storm-tossed Tampa. “My promise is to help you and your family.” Two months later, in the wake of Sandy, submerged families in New Jersey and New York urgently needed some help dealing with that rising-ocean stuff.
Yes, it's global warming, stupid, and it comes with a cost--one that in the future could grow worse than need be if science-deniers' influence continues to rise.
On October 28th, 1886, President Grover Cleveland led the dedication ceremony for the Statue of Liberty (officially named Liberty Enlightening the World; French: La Liberté éclairant le monde).
One-hundred twenty-six years later to the day, "Lady Liberty" is bracing herself for some pretty darn breezey weather! Hurricane Sandy is, to quote NY1's head meteorologist, "for real, on her way, and looks to be pretty strong." The MTA is closing the subway system at 7:00 p.m. tonight and suspending bus service at 9:00 p.m. PATH trains will suspect service at midnight. New York City schools are closed tomorrow, Monday, October 29th.
It's advised that during the storm's height if you don't have to be outside, don't be, and if you're on the lower levers of a building with street- or park-facing windows, keep your shades closed since they could help contain glass in the highly unlikely event of flying debris shattering your window.
Well, at least New Yorkers will have something to talk about around the water cooler on Tuesday morning...and on social media since a few hours ago, ad nauseum.
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