New (and Occasional) Feature: What I Learned from the New York Times Today

Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, is full of himself. (OK, this is just a reaffirmation, not something I just learned.) In a front page article (“Calls Grow for Bloomberg to Make Up His Mind”), Bloomberg comes off like a child playing with a toy that few other people can afford, taking delight at his “dalliance with the idea of running for president.”

The following quote confirms that the speculation is nothing more than a tempest in a teapot. “Editorial pages from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Post, The Village Voice, and The New Yorker have taken him to task. Granted, the voice of these publications carries beyond the New York City limits, but the message itself is Gotham based. Now maybe if the Star-Ledger (“the voice of New Jersey”) had weighed in, I’d feel different

Those of us who live in Wisconsin know about the hubris of a native son who feels his popularity will translate well elsewhere. Think “Tommy Thompson for President”. Folks in neighboring Iowa basically said, “Huh? Wha? Who the hell is this guy?” Only cheeseheads can appreciate, even if some of us still can’t fully understand, 14 years of Teflon Tommy in the Governor’s office.

New York State actually has two such delusional office-seekers: the aforementioned Michael Bloomberg and former Governor George Pataki. In both cases, their presidential ambitions are laughable, in a snorting sort of way, to anyone outside of the Empire State.

Mutualism. Plants and animals living in a mutually beneficial relationship. At a research site in Kenya, an ecologist from the University of Florida noticed that a stand of acacia trees withering and dying, even though they had been fenced off to protect them from leaf-eating elephants and giraffes. With no animals to bother them, the trees decided to produce smaller thorns in which ants nested and less nectar on which they sipped. As a result, the ants’ decreased level of activity allowed wood-boring beetles to invade the trees. Alan Weisman is probably taking notes on this phenomenon.

Charles A. Rosenthal is a hypocrite. The current district attorney of Harris County in Texas believes that “the death penalty is God’s law as well as the state’s and that he follows both”. (By a large margin, his office has sent the most people to death row.

And just how closely does Mr. Rosenthal follow God’s law?

Here’s the second paragraph from “Texas to Review E-Mail Messages Sent by Prosecutor”. Republican officeholders and party leaders are calling for Mr. Rosenthal, a Republican, to resign after the release of hundreds of his email messages, including love notes to his secretary, racist jokes, and videos of men sneaking up to women and tearing off their clothes in public.

It would be interesting to learn which of the Ten Commandments he hasn’t broken.