Brooklyn School Bus Lost for Five Hours

4th\SW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

By ELISSA GOOTMAN\New York Times

It is any parent’s nightmare: The yellow school bus that so many parents rely on to ferry their children to and from school simply does not show up on time — not an hour late, not two hours late, but about five hours late for some.

According to the police, the driver, whom they identified as Joseph Gray, 53, said he had gotten lost. He was arrested on charges of acting in a manner that is injurious to a child under 17 years of age, the police said. But a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Wednesday that it would not prosecute the driver because the statute requires that “the suspect acted in a manner that is knowingly injurious to a child.”

But criminal or not, the ordeal had parents shaken, and mystified as to what could have possibly taken the driver so long. While school officials said the driver had arrived about an hour late to pick the children up (dismissal begins at 3:45 p.m.), many children who arrived home late live just minutes from the school.

A lawyer for Mr. Gray’s employer, Lonero Transit Inc., one of a number of companies that provides bus service to New York City public schoolchildren, said that he, too, was puzzled by the driver’s conduct, and that the driver would be fired.

Post "Cash Cow" Headline

3rd\SE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix


By Jen Chung\Gothamist

Last Sunday [08-31-08], the NY Post raised questions about income from the villa, which Rangel allegedly doesn't consider a second home but an investment, being missing from his 2006 and 2007 returns. Lawyer Lanny Davis said Rangel would file amendments to his returns and that he did not believe Rangel would need to pay federal taxes. And apparently Rangel had no idea about all of this until the Post's story!

According to Post, Davis says income from the villa (which can be rented for up to $1,100/night) "is pooled, with 47 percent of it divided among the owners. Cash from individual villas doesn't flow directly to their owners." Davis referred to the Post cover, with an unflattering photograph of Rangel sunning and the headline "CASH COW," "It's not a cash cow, by any stretch of the imagination. It walks, talks and feels like a time share... It's certainly not generating any cash."

Google Introduces Chrome Via Online Comic Book

3rd\SE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix



Google Chrome is Google's web browser project. Google's 38 page comic book was drawn by Scott McCloud.

Olbermann and Matthews Move From Co-Anchors to Commentators

3rd\SE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

MSNBC is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors of political night coverage with David Gregory, and will use [them as] commentators.

The change reflects tensions between the freewheeling, opinionated MSNBC and the more impartial news gatherers at NBC News. Throughout the primaries and summer, MSNBC argued that Olbermann and Matthews could serve as dispassionate anchors on political news nights and that viewers would accept them in that role.

That plan fell apart during the conventions.The tipping point appears to have come during the GOP convention when Olbermann criticized MSNBC for showing a Sept. 11-themed video prepared by the Republicans. Matthews also exchanged harsh on-air words with Mr. O[lbermann] during convention telecasts.

Source: Freep

Letterman Buries Hatched with Leno

2nd\NE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

By BRIAN STELTER\New York Times

David Letterman, the CBS host who has competed with Jay Leno every weeknight for 15 years, now feels empathy for his late-night challenger.

In an interview with Rolling Stone on newsstands this week, Mr. Letterman, the longtime “Late Show” host, expresses bewilderment about NBC’s decision, first announced four years ago, to replace Mr. Leno next year with Conan O’Brien, the current host of “Late Night.”

“Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I don’t know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that,” Mr. Letterman said in the interview. “I guess they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me at NBC. I don’t know.”

In what the magazine called Mr. Letterman’s first in-depth print interview since 1996, he even offers Mr. Leno a spot on his couch, saying: “I think he’d be a great guest on the show. The first night that he is out of a job, I think that would be a great situation.”

Penguin U.K. Starts Matchmaking Webstie

2nd\NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

By Paul Bignell\The Independent

PenguinDating.com was developed in conjunction with the established online dating provider Match.com after the publisher's online team came up with the initial idea as a way to extend the brand and pique the interest of readers. While sites such as GoodReads provide a virtual community for avid book readers, the Penguin site focuses primarily on lonely hearts.

The service – which went live last week – has already attracted more than 500 subscribers in its first three days, and will be promoted at the end of more than two million paperback novels.
Those who sign up to the dating system will be asked in their profile to list the book they have read most recently. They will also be able to search potential suitors' profiles for mentions of their favourite book.

Katya Shipster, a Penguin spokeswoman, said: "The idea behind the site was to get readers to be able to interact and connect on many different levels. We're trying lots of different online initiatives at the moment. We want the most amount of people to get the most enjoyment out of our books – and to possibly even find relationships at the end of it."

Holly Montag Hired by Girls Gone Wilds' Joe Francis

2nd\NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

I'm sorry, but I had to jump ahead a few quadrants to find out what this was about. I actually watch "The Hills" from a sociology perspective.

By Celebs Are People Too

Looks like the entertainment world’s Sultan of Sleaze has gotten his hands on a new girl … to help manage his busy schedule, that is.

Holly Montag, the older sister of Heidi Montag from The Hills, has been hired as the personal assistant to the Girls Gone Wild CEO.

She’s been at it since his release from jail in March.

“His last assistant quit,” said an insider to the New York Post. “And Joe aggressively sought out Holly Montag to work for him.”

Another source said of Holly and Joe, “She’s running his life.”

Francis - who is preparing to do battle on Celebrity Apprentice next season, and might also appear on The Hills this season, rumor has it - told the Post, “Holly is fantastic, probably the best assistant I have ever had.”

"The Book of Mychal"

2nd\NE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix


Product Description

The inspiring story of New York Fire Department Chaplain Father Mychal Judge. His death certificate bears the number one. As chaplain to the Fire Department of New York, Father Mychal Judge was officially the first to go. A loving priest with a gift for the gab-gregarious yet humble, a healer with the ability to wipe away a widow's tears and put a smile on a fireman's face. And on September 11th Father Mike rushed to the fires at the World Trade Center as quickly as those who fought them, losing his own life while tirelessly ministering to New York's bravest. Father Mike recounts the colorful, astonishing and at times troubled life of a priest who saw the potential for good in everybody-in the homeless person he slipped a dollar to on the street; the alcoholic he sought to coax to an AA meeting; the early victims of AIDS he embraced and comforted; the troubled young men he visited in jail; and the thousands of firefighters he blessed as they rushed to their rigs answering the call. Here was a priest who rejoiced in the life around him and understood that even the most terrible times present us with wonders-that good always arises from the bad in the most unexpected ways. Or as Father Mike would say, "My God is a God of surprises."In this touching book, author Michael Daly retraces the footsteps of Father Mike as his vocation takes us inside the firehouse, inside his friary and his Church, and inside the chaos that often befalls New York. This is the tale of a larger than life priest who, in death, became a symbol of how much we truly lost that Tuesday in September. Father Mike is the inspirational story of a hero priest who blessed so many lives and will long be remembered by it.

Source: Amazon

"Freedom's Battle"

2nd\NE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix


From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Bass, associate professor of international affairs at Princeton (Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals), makes the case with delightful wit, insight and scholarship that humanitarian military intervention arose not with genocide in Bosnia or Rwanda, but in Victorian times in parallel with democracy and the mass media. When Greeks rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, Turkish troops committed atrocities viewed by reporters and letter writers whose accounts produced a torrent of outrage. Reluctantly, British leaders began pressuring the sultan, but the failure of this effort led to Britain's great naval victory at Navarino that assured Greek independence. Bass moves on to two other half-forgotten but ghastly crises: the 1860s Syrian upheaval in which Maronite Christians and Druze slaughtered each other, and the 1870s mass murders of Bulgarians by the Ottomans. Bass ends with the Armenian genocide during WWI. Readers may squirm at the slowness with which nations acted to oppose gruesome cruelties, but they will relish Bass's gripping account of bloodthirsty characters, bitter political infighting and cynical leaders, forced by public opinion into moral actions that did not serve their own national interest. (Aug. 20) ""
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved."

Review

“An absorbing, well-researched, and frequently amusing book .... Bass provides a trove of fresh material, as well as fresh insight, concerning this exciting period .... Bass has a considerable gift of phrase .... He also has a jaunty flair for recognizing . . . cynicism in others."

–Christopher Hitchens, Foreign Affairs

Source: Amazon

Aaron Sorkin is Writing a Movie about Facebook

1st\NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

By Nicole Sperling\Hollywood Insider

The Emmy-award winning writer of such series as The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and films like The American President and Charlie Wilson's War is, in fact, writing a screenplay for Sony about the creation of Facebook. Uber-producer Scott Rudin is producing, and Sorkin has established his own presence on the popular social-networking hub in an effort to start figuring out what this crazy Facebook thing is all about.

Posted by Ron\Mediabistro

Harvard alum mag 02138 declared that "the Aaron Sorkin Facebook movie is also the Ben Mezrich Facebook movie." It turns out Sony Pictures and Scott Rudin, the producers on Sorkin's picture, may have also optioned the film rights to Face Off, the book Mezrich is writing about the origins of the ubiquitious social networking software.

This has already started a flurry of news items suggesting that Sorkin's screenplay is an adaptation of Mezrich's unpublished book—which remains to be seen. It is entirely possible, after all, that Sony and Rudin simply bought the rights to Face Off as a pre-emptive measure to avoid a lawsuit from an un-optioned Mezrich over his book being a source for Sorkin's screenplay.

Alaska's Proximity to Russia Becomes Foreign Policy Credential

1st\NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

By Steve Benen and featuring Hilzoy\Washington Monthly

Fox News' Steve Doocy, with a straight face, insisted, "[T]he other thing about her, she does know about international relations because she is right up there in Alaska right next door to Russia." (This led Jon Stewart to call Doocy a "moron." [Video Below])

This morning [August 31, 2008], Cindy McCain made the exact same argument, telling George Stephanopoulos, in response to a question about national security experience, "[R]emember, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. It's not as if she doesn't understand what's at stake here."

"Small Miracles of the Holocaust"

1st\NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

Product Description: From the authors of the bestselling Small Miracles series comes this inspirational collection of over 50 stories - each with the upbeat twist ending that has become the trademark of this remarkable series.

The authors, both second-generation Holocaust survivors, have culled stories from before, during, and after the Holocaust that demonstrate the full strength and power of the human spirit. Stories reaffirming that nothing truly happens by accident…

Even during the worst of times small miracles did happen - and the legacies of those individuals live on.
-- Amazon

“Judith Leventhal and Yitta Halberstam amaze and inspire with their incredible-but-true story collections . . . of wondrous true coincidences.”

-- People

Texas Inmate Bequeaths Body to Artist for Fish Food

1st\NW Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

[Texas death row inmate Gene] Hathorn will bequeath his corpse to [Danish-based artist Marco] Evaristti, who will deep-freeze the body and turn it into fish food that the general public can then dispense to goldfish.

-- Black Book

Gene Hathorn and James Bethard murdered Gene Hathorn, Sr., 45, Linda Sue Hathorn, 35, and their 14-year-old son, Marcus in their home. They ramsacked the home and removed two VCRs and several guns and a van to give the appearance of a robbery.Bethard's motive was the promise of remuneration from the estate ($12,500).

-- Texas Department of Criminal Justice

The Approval Matrix: Week of September 15, 2008

Double-Issue

It appears that last week's issue was actually a double-issue! It wasn't written on the cover of the magazine, but there isn't a new Approval Matrix on New York Magazine's website, and the website has the same cover from last week's magazine posted.