Industry | 2009.06.02
Oliver Burkeman: New York diary
This Diary\'s regular occupant is on holiday, and, by a stunning coincidence – permitting a Libby Purves-esque segue into today\'s first item – so is Rudy Giuliani (pictured). The man who came to be known as "America\'s mayor" (although not, mercifully, "America\'s president"), is vacationing in Bridgehampton, Long Island, enshrined in history as the place where Madonna fell off a horse. It\'s not proving much of a vacation, though. On Saturday, Rudy was accosted by a local man, John McCluskey, who yelled "you\'re the worst person in the world, and I\'m going to punch you out!", witnesses said. "Bring it on!" Giuliani reportedly replied – a line he\'d hoped to use with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one suspects, but beggars can\'t be choosers. The two men stared at each other, then McCluskey ambled off to buy a coffee. But Giuliani had him arrested anyway, and a tabloid labelled him a "crazed attacker". McCluskey says it was Giuliani who "threatened to kick my ass", not vice versa. One pines for the Giuliani presidency we never knew: it would have been so entertaining. I mean, apart from the bit where everyone got killed in a nuclear conflagration in his first week.
If Scrabble\'s not doing it for you anymore, why not try "lighter fluid tag", a game newly popular in Washington state? Participants squirt each other with lighter fluid, then light the clothing of whoever\'s "it", who must beat out the flames. The only participant to be hospitalised for burns so far seems oddly unfazed by his experience. "It was," he told his local television station, "an epic night".
One industry not doing too badly in the recession: New York dermatologists, who report a surge in business from job applicants demanding tattoo removals. "People can\'t afford to handicap themselves because of a tattoo in a tight job market," Dr Jeffrey Rand, of Manhattan\'s Tattoo Removal Centre, tells the New York Post. It\'s a clever bit of PR by the tattoo removal industry, if nothing else. Is the long-sleeved-shirt industry asleep on the job, or what?
It\'s a low liberal slur, of course, to accuse social conservatives of opposing things like gay marriage, or contraception, because of their own weird hangups. But what else to conclude from this week\'s Weekly Standard, Washington\'s conservative mouthpiece? Writer Sam Schulman frames his complicated objections around incest ("If Tommy marries Bill, and they divorce, and Bill later marries a woman and has a daughter, no incest prohibition prevents Bill\'s daughter from marrying Tommy"). The "only true reason" for marriage, he charmingly asserts, is "controlling the sexuality of the childbearing sex" – a duty he took on "resignedly", in "the iron grip of necessity", since sex within marriage loses "a bit of its oomph". TMI, anyone? Still, let nobody claim the ladies aren\'t queueing up to have their sexuality controlled by Schulman: he has, he notes, been married three times. No word on why the earlier marriages didn\'t last. Something to do with his attitude? On second thoughts, I blame the gays.
Does Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, know something about the American economy that we don\'t? Well, in general, one would hope so. Obviously. More specifically though, there was something unsettling about Geithner\'s recent testimony before a Congressional panel, when he was asked if he\'d ever personally seen a $50bn banknote from hyperinflationary Zimbabwe. Geithner reached for his wallet and showed it around, revealing a Zimbabwean note, some euros, a New York subway card ... and no dollars whatsoever. When even the treasury secretary doesn\'t keep his money in dollars, Americans may justly fear imminent economic Armageddon. Alas, the Diary cannot confirm reports that he left the building hauling a rucksack containing three weeks\' supply of drinking water, tinned beans, some emergency flares, and a couple of old iPods he hopes to be able to barter for firewood.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]oliver-burkeman-new-york-diary
The Translation People Expands with Acquisition of Dialogue Language Services International views: 1496
Is AI Translation Quality Really Improving? views: 1487