Puppy Pictures

And changing the topic completely from the previous two posts, here are some pictures of a really cute puppy (Reuben). Enjoy. He is a total sweetheart and about 3 months old.

Some Pictures from San Salvador

Hi there everbody

An update on Hurricane Stan and its aftermath. I received some pictures from San Salvador via an NGO that Molly used to work for.

Hurricane Stan and the Media

OK, so I have a little axe to grind about news networks. And no, this is not going to have anything to do with complaining about their coverage of politics, believe it or not. It has to do with hurricanes. Specifically, with hurricane Stan, which recently paid a visit to Mexico.

I was watching CNN on 3 October at about 1pm, when the weather came on and the weatherwoman started talking about what was then tropical storm Stan. She stated that everybody should be happy because the storm is going to continue heading west and would not threaten the US, at which point she pointed straight at two Mexican coastal towns, and commented about how lucky this is. (She did not state that she was happy that it was going to hit Mexico, but there were clear implications of “better them than us”).

So I woke up this morning and Molly sent me an article from the Financial Times, which was discussing the results of hurricane Stan in the region. I had read this article from MSNBC in the morning, which buries any mention of the hurricane until the very end. While it is nice that MSNBC even has a report on the storm, it is reported as just that. There is a mention of the fact that this was a hurricane (buried at the very end) that came through some days ago, but it is up to the reader to figure out that this storm is in fact the hurricane, which has killed all these people and was the cause of the damage they are now facing.

So what to make of this? I am not sure, but I was appalled at the statement on CNN. And I am not sure what to make of the MSNBC bit (is the fact that the Financial Times is British important?)

Anyway, just some food for thought.

Good Night and Good Luck

So I am sitting here brainstorming ideas on what to write a paper on for Managing NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and I thought that maybe posting this would help. I doubt it, but one never knows.

So what is new with me here? Well, Molly and I have now officially been together for over one year. We had a nice dinner at an Afghani restaurant in Boston. The food was really good, though there were some issues, which ended in our (ok, my) favor. We ordered our food, which was pretty random since neither of us is familiar with the food. So we wait and eventually it comes. I looked at my food and thought “hmm, this is not what I was expecting.” And Molly looked at my food and exclaimed “that looks like what I was hoping for.” Neither of us having any real idea of what we ordered, we just started to eat, trading plates half-way through the meal. It was very nice and I was very happy. Then suddenly the waiter swoops down, takes my plate literally 2 seconds after I finish and puts another in front of me, explaining that he had brought the wrong food. So I ended up getting another very nice meal out of the dinner.

Last week we also went to an early showing of “Good Night and Good Luck”. The movie is about Edward Murrow and his battles with McCarthy back in the early 1950s. It was absolutely phenomenal. I highly recommend everybody to see it. It comes out on October 7th, I believe. The Fletcher School is the archive for 95% of the documents of Edward Murrow’s life and work, and thus the fact that the movie was shown at the school. The night also included a panel with Casey Murrow, Edward Murrow’s son, and the actor who played Edward Murrow, David Strathairn.

So what else… Not too much. The weather is finally feeling like autumn, and some of the trees have begun to change, which is nice.