1. The Final Chapter - Well today is June 12, which means I now have less than one month left in Cambodia. The end is near.
2. Elizabeth Warren – There are a lot of really frustrating stories in the news right now, but without a doubt the story that makes me the angriest is the Republican opposition to Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How anyone who cares about anything besides big business can be opposed to something that helps prevent consumers from being taken advantage of is beyond me…
You would think that Republicans would like this sort of thing. Instead, they portray Warren as a polarizing ideologue bent on creating an agency that, as Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, put it recently, “could be a serious threat to our financial system.” How, precisely, an agency that tries to keep financial consumers from being gouged threatens the system is something no one ever explains. (Unless, of course, gouging consumers is central to bank profitability. Hmmm…) (Joe Nocera: Blocking Elizabeth Warren)
I really hope Obama doesn’t fold on this one. It would be great to see him really fight for Warren.
3. Where’s Earl? – In the May 23rd edition of the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh wrote an awesome article about the rap group Odd Future and the search for their missing member Earl Sweatshirt: Where’s Earl?. It’s articles like this that make the New Yorker such a great magazine. Nowhere else do I consistently find myself so engaged in completely unexpected stories. Unfortunately you can’t read the article online unless you’re a subscriber. It’s worth trying to track down though.
4. Tweets of the Week - While I’m still trying to figure out the art of the tweet, here are a few of my favorites from some of the best…
- I’m so afraid to tweet. What if ankle X-ray gets in hands of unintended recipient like dermatologist? Do I resign? And if so, from what? – Steve Martin
- Leonard Stern, one of the creators of Mad Libs, has died. He will be verb (past tense). – Stephen Colbert
- My thanks to Congressman Anthony Weiner for making my job so easy this week. Now it’s your turn, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. – Conan O’Brien
- Can’t Trinidad & Tobago just merge and become Trinibago? It’s like they’ve been dating forever but don’t want to marry. – Bill Simmons
5. 3:59:72 – And finally, today in the world of running, Lukas Verzbicas (arguably the best American high school runner of all time) became the fifth high schooler ever to break four minutes in the mile. Not since Alan Webb ran 3:53 ten years ago has anyone even come close. Pretty damn impressive.
In related news I ran eight very slow miles this morning (my longest run of 2011) and am still feeling terrible almost six hours later. No chance I make it 13.1 next week.
Wish you were running in Aspen with us! Mountain air does make it easier somehow.
Counting the days Cooper. Enjoy the last ones there, though. Time does more than fly.
Go Mavs!
XO
Back from those breathtakingly beautiful mountains. Blueblue sky all weekend and the most perfect hiking/running weather. There are reasons indeed that people pack it in and leave their big city lives.
My favorite graduation speech excerpt, from Samantha Power.
“You’ve got to be all in. This means leaving your technology behind occasionally and listening to a friend without half your brain being preoccupied by its inner longing for the red light on the Black Berry.
In many college classes, laptops depict split screens–notes from a class, and then a range of parallel stimulants: NBA playoff statistics on ESPN.com, a flight home on Expedia, a new flirtation on Facebook. I know how good you all are at multitasking. And I know of what I speak, because I, too, am a culprit.
You have never seen a U.S. government official and new mother so dexterous in her ability simultaneously to BlackBerry and breastfeed.
But I promise you that over time this doesn’t cut it. Something or someone loses out. No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do. We should all become, as Henry James prescribed, a person on whom nothing is lost.”
xo
ps/Hope you’ve recovered from your run. You need a good dose of mountain air!
Hey dude -
I saw that Verzbicas race. He looked GREAT – struggling just the last 100.
er – that was me.