After looking through some financial disclosure forms it obtained from the Conflict of Interest Board, the Times reports how much city money politicians spent last year on international travel. Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz took two trips, whose prices both fell somewhere in the tantalizing gulf between $5,000 and $39,999.
It took him four Read More
The Consulate General of the Netherlands has renewed its lease in Tishman Speyer’s One Rockefeller Plaza, taking 17,156 square feet on the 11th floor for 10 years, according to CB Richard Ellis, which represented the consulate.
Apparently, in these uncertain economic times, consulates and other foreign missions are sought-after office tenants, according to CBRE senior Read More
I’m no soccer nut, but this morning I frantically searched Yahoo news without satisfaction to learn what Marco Materazzi said to Zidane to generate the most important moment in the ’06 World Cup. Then two friends emailed me with the same thing on their minds. Here’s Greg McNair from the Netherlands:
Everybody (meaning me) Read MoreDid I really pick the Netherlands for the World Cup semifinals? Boy, was I wrong. I emailed my high school pal, Greg McNair, who is a jazz guitarist living in the Netherlands. Here is Greg’s explanation:
As far as our Dutch team goes; well they had it coming and I’ll tell you why. The new Read MoreMaybe you saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali on 60 Minutes. She is articulate and appealling, the Somali-born member of the Dutch Parliament who came close to losing her citizenship over errors on her asylum application of 1992. Hirsi Ali is world-famous because she has renounced her Muslim faith over radical Islam, and because she wrote the Read More
A reader, John, has nailed me on a recent soccer post, where I echoed Kissinger’s statement that U.S. soccer needs “minorities.”
Not sure if you’re agreeing fully with Kissinger here — I hope not, because his comment is effectively racist. K’s saying “minorities,” i.e., the dark people, are better at sports, regardless of Read MoreIf they watched the overnight vigil in Saint Peter’s Square as the Pope lay dying, the good doctors of the Netherlands must have shaken their heads in bewilderment. “Watson, the needle,” Sherlock Holmes implored to another medicine man of dubious ethics. The Dutch doctors, pioneers in the coming age of euthanasia, surely were thinking the Read More
“Get comfortable talking about your faith,” Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, the only Democrat in the South to be re-elected, recently told a party meeting called “The Road Back.” The gathering, sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, brought together a number of mournful party members looking for a way to break into the red states Read More
Almost all the obituaries of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn called him “far-right.” Fortuyn was a professor turned columnist who won visibility and a power base when his made-to-order political party won more than a third of the seats in the municipal elections of Rotterdam, Holland’s second-largest city. Fortuyn was going national when he was murdered Read More
The modern mind has tended to balk at art on an epic scale. We simply are not used to it; it is alien to our entire outlook on art and life. Generally speaking, we have preferred the small to the large-the easel picture rather than the mural, the short lyric rather than the lengthy narrative Read More
