Sentential Links #75

Once more unto the links, dear friends!

:: You can now transmit high definition tv from a whole two hundred and twenty miles away, showing us exactly what it’s like to live in a small room with only an airflow fan to save you from the smell of your own farts.

:: If you aren’?t a fan of CSI: Miami, trust us, you will be after one round of Caruso playing. (An older post, linked in comments on yesterday’s Burst of Weirdness. A CSI: Miami drinking game! Hoo-boy! Thanks to Laura for the link.)

:: He was staring at me, and I decided to stare right back, a sign of aggression, and generally coming from an opponent that does not want a call. (Aaron’s trying to communicate with me, I know it….)

:: Even so, the results of the Lancet study, combined with what we know about the limitations of other attempts to count the dead, suggest that the war in Iraq has already claimed hundreds of thousands rather than tens of thousands of lives.

It is rather striking, moreover, that critics of this research have mostly avoided calling for additional, independent studies that could provide a scientific basis for either confirming or refuting its alarming findings.

:: Why on earth should a well-known art museum keep a bunch of fusty old Greek and Asian objects cluttering their galleries when they can trade the junk in on shiny new stuff by … oh, whoever seems hot his week. (Buffalo’s arts scene makes the national news, and not in an especially good way, perhaps: our major art museum is selling off a number of antiquities in order to raise money to acquire more modern art. Roger actually e-mailed me this story, but I haven’t been able to formulate a strong opinion either way on this. Buffalo has more than one museum, but nothing else with the scope of the Albright Knox. I fully understand the logic of the decision, but I’m not sure I’m happy about it. One thing that’s certain is that I haven’t been to the A-K in far too long.)

:: Well, we’re off to Egypt tomorrow, and won’t be back until late on the 19th. (Wow, a popular week for going to Egypt — someone else just got back, too.)

:: I have absolutely no idea what the people advocating for “one last push” in Iraq, with an influence of however many additional troops can be temporarily “surged” into Baghdad are thinking. One last push for what?

:: Please, please, someone explain this to me. Because otherwise it would appear that Aaron Sorkin — via one of his characters, speaking with 100% earnestness, as though she were saying something truthful and meaningful — has authored the single most idiotic statement in the history of mankind. (God, I hated that whole storyline in that episode. In fact, I suspect the show would benefit immeasurably if Harriet were to disappear completely. However, the episode airing tonight is much, much better.)

:: The only thing missing is music. In its place, Mr. Schönberg force-feeds us three hours’ worth of chattery non-melodies that sound as if they’d been written by a woodpecker on a xylophone…. (Ellipses in the original. Damn; I love those melodies!)

:: Of course the classics will never go away, just as we won’t stop going to museums to admire paintings and sculptures of old masters. However, none of us visits the museum continuously, unless we happen to work there. My belief is that the concert scene will return to what it was several decades ago. Orchestras did not work full time, and their musicians usually did something else on the side. Recitals were far more varied than today, and it was customary to hear a soloist play a concerto with piano accompaniment. Thus there wasn’t the same need to go listen to an orchestra concert in order to hear one’s favorite violin composition.

:: Cole is our first child and was due on 12/6/06, so his arrival on 11/16/06 was a bit of a surprise. (Huzzah!)

That’s all for this week. Sentential Links will probably occur next week, but more likely on Tuesday rather than Monday, since I’ll be coming off a hiatus. Or I may just not do them at all. I’ll decide then.