Recent Blog Posts

• Carrie Kaufman's Interview with Brooke Gladstone

  During Round 2 I was thinking of who I might want to interview for Round 3. If it were my choice, I'd want to talk to Brooke Gladstone, managing editor and co-host of On the Media. Then I got cut. But that didn't mean I still couldn't interview Brooke. So, following the guidelines for Round 3, Brooke and I had a nice 15-minute chat about media in the U.S. and around the world, left wing media bias, NPR and this Quest. Alas, the stuff about the Quest didn't make it into the 5-minute excerpt, but it is in the 15-minute piece. I'll post them both below. Please be kind enough to listen and comment. more...

• Harry Potter

  OK, if you don't care, then you're missing out, but it's not my problem. I've been posting with Harry Potter fans on message boards for months, now, and for what it's worth, I wanted to put my theories of what was going to happen in this book on this board...just because. So here are my theories. Theory #1: Snape is a good guy. Remember that every time somebody makes an assumption based on partial information they overheard or saw, the assumption is almost always wrong. This is a lesson Rowling teaches over and over again in all of the books. This is important because, in book 6, when Hagrid overhears Dumbledore and Snape arguing, (“Dumbledore told him flat out he agreed ter do it and that was all there was to it”), Harry surmises it must have been over Snape not reining Malfoy in. But Dumbledore was telling Snape to go ahead and keep his unbreakable vow. He was telling Snape to kill him. And Snape was telling him he wouldn’t do it. Dumbledore was dying anyway. He started the book with a blackened, dead hand--a classic literary allusion to death--and he became progressively weaker throughout the book. Also, he willingly drank the green potion in the cave, even though he was not sure it would kill him or not. He made Harry promise not to stop him. So Dumbledore was sacrificing himself. When Snape entered the rooftop and found Dumbledore sitting there, Malfoy and the Death Eaters around him, all Dumbledore said was, “Please, Severus. Please.” And Snape killed him. We assume that Dumbledore was pleading for his life. But he was pleading for his death. more...

• [Carrie]iPhones and Drive Cams

  Sunday is my day to put my road bike on a trainer and ride. I can’t do outdoor rides without having to pay a babysitter. But my kids know that Sundays are for two things: riding on the trainer and watching golf (or football, depending on the season). Alas, yesterday we had a birthday party. All day. It was fun, but I missed my Sunday. So, this morning I take the girls to school and hop on my bike for an hour. No golf. The View is a repeat. ESPN doesn’t interest me. So I turn to CNN, which I realize I haven’t watched in months. This was the most disturbing bike ride I’ve had in a long time. more...

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg