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September 25, 2005
Cocaine Chic
A little Sunday afternoon gossip: suprising no one, Kate Moss (fashion model/icon) was caught doing cocaine. Suprising the people who have endorsement contracts with her, there were pictures of her doing cocaine. Seriously, it made the front page of the British tabloid the Daily Mirror.
That had to be pretty sweet for them, considering only a little while ago Moss successfully sued them for libel on one of their many 'Kate Moss was doing a crazy amount of drugs' stories.
In a somewhat but not really related area, America's Next Top Model has started. My money's on Jayla as the girl who get accused of having an eating disorder-- not because I actually believe she has one, but they always make a big deal about it once per season so they can have an episode "addressing" the problem of eating disorders in the modeling profession.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 12:53 PM | Comments (7)
September 23, 2005
The Bicycle Crash
By now, everyone's gotten the public safety e-mail or has heard of the terrible accident in front of College hall. For some of us, it was the start of mountain day, and description of the event has been circling. What I've heard from a group of students in my house is that they were in front of college hall when they heard a scream. At first they assumed it was another person screaming about mountain day, until they saw the body. The Hampshire graduate student who's been identified had been riding her bicycle and (apparently) had turned up the steep slope running between the art museum and college hall just as an armored car was also turning up and was killed almost instantly. According to the students I spoke to who witnessed the accident, the armored car had gone so far that the bicycle wasn't even visible-- it was completely underneath the car. They only saw Margaret Sander's body, and they believe she probably died instantly since the police and paramedics who arrived soon after didn't even attempt to revive her, they just put a blanket over the body.
The section of the road was blocked off until at least 11 o'clock while police cleaned the area. They had brought in a fire engine to hose off the road, and there was at least one policeman carrying a bottle of industrial cleaner.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 09:04 AM | Comments (24)
September 21, 2005
Bad Times
Before you get too angry at The New York Times forcing you to pay or subscribe to read the news from Maureen Dowd, sports, and most of their international writers, it is worth noting that 500 people (4% of their work force) have been cut off from their employment at the paper. Now everyone must be missing Safire's Times.
Posted by Mandy Smithberger at 01:45 PM | Comments (13)
September 15, 2005
...Baby One More Time
Britney's the mother of a baby boy. She promises to be a hot mommy.
Posted by Mandy Smithberger at 08:23 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2005
Well, maybe I am a little bitter
CNN headline: "Gore airlifts victims from New Orleans". "By himself?" I asked, with a mental image of Gore flying an airplane through the blast of hurricane Katrina. It was a little too tabloid-esque to be believed. So I clicked and read. He didn't fly them out personally, but he did a little better: Al Gore put up $50,000 on September 1st to charter two American Airlines planes to fly into New Orleans to help evacuate people. There were two doctors recruited into the effort, one of whom was Gore's cousin, and Gore used his personal/political connections to get rights the planes needed to fly and land in New Orleans. CNN finishes, "About 140 people, many of them sick, landed in Knoxville on September 3. The second flight, with 130 evacuees, landed the next day in Chattanooga." Talk about working with what you've got.
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 01:48 PM | Comments (10)
September 06, 2005
No lack of small tragedies
There are stories of hospitals putting bodies in the stairwells because the morgues are flooded, there are stories of lunatics like the sniper who fired at evacuees, there is racism, classism, and the worst of our natures on display down in Louisiana, but some how it's the little injustices that hurt the most. As if the big things would wash the little things away, instead of making survivors bear them while they deal with the destruction of their entire lives. But there are still stories of helicopters that delivered food to a hospital but refused to evacuate patients, and now the situation for the pets who have survived.
PETA has set up a fund seperate from other Katrina relief funds, specifically to save the pets that owners are being forced to leave behind when they are evacuated. Though it's illegal, in some cases, "people are told that they must choose between taking vital medicine and taking their dog". It goes without saying that leaving the animal behind would be leaving it to starve, or worse.
Other funds in serious need are of course, the Red Cross, and the Bush and Clinton fund for Katrina victims. Or, check out the effort by the Liberal Blogosphere to raise $1 million for victims. Read the quote at the top of the page and repeat, "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America" (Bill Clinton).
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 11:25 AM | Comments (80)
September 01, 2005
Looting and Guns in Katrina's Aftermath
Considering the depth of suffering going on right now in New Orleans, it may seem petty to bring up gun control. However the situation demonstrates the one argument that always defends a product that kills over 5,000 teens and children in a given year: What do you do when the police aren't going to arrive in time, or at all? Down in New Orleans the police force is stretched thin, and the people who weren't prepared for the catastrophe are desperate (not to say that there aren't also plenty of people who'll just take the opportunity to loot when it comes). The outcome is stories like the one in the New York Times article, "Police and Owners Begin to Challenge Looters", where John Carolan describes how he was sitting on his porch when a small group of young men came up to his fence around midnight. Two of them were armed, one with a knife and one with a machete. They pointed to the generator Carolan had in his front yard, and according to him said "We want that generator". Carolan scared them off by firing a few rounds over their head with a .357 Magnum.
The riots in L.A. after the Rodney King ruling saw the same issue in the midst of the violence: if you didn't have a gun to defend yourself or your family, you were at the mercy of an angry mob. In a documentary about the Rodney King riots, Charles Heston recounts how all his friends who were anti-firearms were suddenly calling him, asking him to borrow a gun to protect their house. To turn that around though, what kind of good could it possibly do to inject deadly weapons into a moment when people are already terrified, murderously angry, or both? What would have happened if before they went to John Carolan's house, those young men had gotten their hands on a shotgun instead of a machete?
Posted by Elizabeth Tangora at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)