Google’s Mountain View campus is home to a beach volleyball court, a bowling alley, a climbing wall, seven fitness centers, “more than 100 micro-kitchens” and, it seems, toxic vapors.
CBS says readings of TCE, or trichloroethylene vapors, as high as eight micrograms per cubic meter were found in Google buildings. Not to get too Erin Brokovich on you, but the normal range is five per cubic meter.
“I sing your praises, sometimes I get in trouble for doing that but I will continue to do it forever,” Democratic Assemblyman Dov Hikind told Republican State Senator Dean Skelos on his post-Shabbos radio show late last Saturday night. “I just want to personally thank you for being so amazingly responsive to all of New York State, but to the Jewish community in particular. You are really just a superstar.”
Mr. Skelos, the leader of the New York State Senate and one of the “three men in a room” that control decision-making in Albany, received this high praise for adding yeshiva tuition tax credits into the state budget and his recent work to fund bus service to those same private religious schools. Mr. Hikind is a longtime assemblyman and power broker in the Jewish neighborhoods of southern Brooklyn and, despite being a Democratic Party official, has been more than willing to endorse Republicans.
At the end of last year, Mr. Skelos traveled to the Masbia soup kitchen in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn where, after donning a velvet yarmulke, he chopped carrots, peeled potatoes and ladled kosher soup to the needy. He proceeded to tell a story about smuggling Jewish artifacts into the Soviet Union and joked that his own Greek Orthodox beliefs gave him insight into Orthodox Judaism, letting Yiddish words like tzitzis and shul roll off his tongue all the while. Cameras rolled and mobile phones snapped photos for the Jewish media to consume later, of course. Read More
Opposing Wal-Mart was already a pretty easy position to take in New York City Democratic politics, but thanks to The New York Times‘ report of an extensive bribery scheme on the part of the company in Mexico, and similarly extensive efforts to cover it all up, that position just got a whole lot easier.
At a press conference earlier today, a plethora of officials, including three top tier mayoral candidates, blasted Wal-Mart for its various sins. And each of them emphasized that they do not want the superstore within the boundaries of New York City, thank you very much.
Declaring Wal-Mart’s corporate boardroom a “crime scene,” Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer “wished them luck in their upcoming criminal investigation” and stated, “They’ve disgraced the United States of America.” Read More
When Frieze plunks down on Randall’s Island next week, it won’t be the only new art fair in town. The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), a group founded back in 2002 by a handful of intrepid young New York art dealers, is launching its own 67-exhibitor New York event, in the former Dia Art Foundation building on West 22nd Street.
You might say NADA, an organization that now boasts some 300 members and has run an annual fair in Miami since 2003, is in expansion mode. Last summer it inaugurated a modest fair in Hudson, N.Y. And earlier this month Gallerist visited, for the purposes of leading a panel discussion, the first installment of Nada Cologne, a 33-exhibitor event that took place inside the vast, 186-exhibitor Art Cologne, which, now in its 46th edition, is the world’s oldest art fair. Read More
Up until the announcement last spring that London’s Frieze Art Fair would be coming to New York for the first time, there were maybe five main reasons for a person to be on Randall’s Island: You are a high school student on an organized sports team—probably lacrosse or track or, perhaps, soccer—and you are utilizing the island’s athletic fields for practice; you have tickets to Electric Zoo or Cirque du Soleil; you like golf, but you do not want to leave the city to play it; you are a patient at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on the adjoining Wards Island; you are John McEnroe, it is 2010 and you are inaugurating the John McEnroe Tennis Academy at the Sportime Randall’s Island Tennis Center. Read More
President Barack Obama shared his experiences with student loans in a speech at the University of North Carolina today. In an attempt to make a connection with the mostly college-aged crowd, the president revealed he and his wife, Michelle, had a tough time with student debt.
“Michelle and I, we’ve been in your shoes,” President Obama said. ”Check this out, all right. I’m the president of the United States. We only finished paying off our student loans off about eight years ago. That wasn’t that long ago. And that wasn’t easy.” Read More
IAC/InterActive Corp chairman Barry Diller testified before the Senate Commerce Committee today about the future of online video. We can’t believe someone thought this was a legitimate question in the era of Netflix and Hulu, but the hearing was actually called ”The Emergence of Online Video: Is it the Future?” Then we remembered who was asking.
“Incumbents have the means and incentives to engage in economic and/or technical discrimination against online video distributors,” Mr. Diller told lawmakers, referring to our cable and broadband overlords. To level the playing field, he said, “I think you need to rewrite the [Telecommunications] Act of ’96. It’s overdue given the Internet. And it needs revision.” Congress, he added, should “prevent cable and telecommunications companies from leveraging their dominance in existing markets” to control emerging technologies. Read More
Eventually, as art fairs continue to proliferate and expand, something is going to have to give. But that day has not yet arrived. Frieze New York lands in New York for the first time next week, running May 4–7. It is going to be a busy time in New York. Tom Eccles, the director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard, has curated a sculpture park on the island. Frieze’s annual commissions will be executed this year by an impressive selection of artists, including Virginia Overton, Latifah Echakhch, Frances Stark, John Ahearn and novelist Rick Moody. There will be several talks, including a discussion on May 4 with Glenn Lowry, Adam Weinberg, and Sheena Wagstaff on the future of museums’ impact on culture. Read More
Earlier today, former Councilman Simcha Felder got a big boost to his recently announced State Senate campaign with the formal endorsement of the two most prominent elected officials in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community: Councilman David Greenfield and Assemblyman Dov Hikind. Their endorsements were expected, as Mr. Hikind and Mr. Greenfield had already been extraordinarily effusive in their praise, more of which was generously heaped onto Mr. Felder today as well.
“He is a dear friend. You might say I love the guy,” Mr. Hikind said about the candidate, for example, as a small army of Orthodox community leaders surrounding the elected officials applauded the endorsements. Read More
Earlier today, Assembly Speaker Sheldon introduced a bill that would lead to the public financing of political campaigns in New York State; Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been supportive of a public model for campaign financing but has been pushing a more modest bill that would lower contribution limits and increase enforcement.
Asked about Speaker Silver’s bill at a press avail in Battery Park City yesterday, Mr. Cuomo demurred.
“I haven’t seen his bill. I support campaign finance,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I have been pushing it very hard all throughout the session and we have a few weeks left and I am hopeful that we will get something done, but I haven’t gone through the Speaker’s bill.” Read More
