Hurricane Irene is now a tropical storm, but the surge caused by its huge vortex of winds has reinforced the incoming tide and caused flooding of the southern tip of Manhattan Island, including Battery Park, the ferry terminal, and the edge of the Financial District. At this time we do not know if Con Edison intends to cut off the area’s electrical power or if the Stuyvesant High School swim team is doing laps outside, on Chambers Street.
Potomac Playground Patter
President-elect “Barry O-Bomber” (6’1″), Hawaiian high school hotshot, is building a slammin’ basketball bench:
— National Security Adviser designate Gen. James L. Jones (6’5″) was a forward for the Georgetown Hoyas
— Obama aide Reggie Love (6’4″) was a forward for the Duke Blue Devils (2001 NCAA champs) and team captain in 2005
— Future U.N. Ambassador Dr. Susan Rice was a point guard at DC’s National Cathedral School
— White House deputy communications director Daniel H. Pfeiffer (6’2″) was on the team at Wilmington Friends School
— Treasury Secretary pick Timothy Geithner is a passionate pick-up basketball player
—DHS nominee Governor Janet Napolitano has coached the University of Arizona’s Lady Wildcats
— Obama senior advisor David Axelrod met Susan Landau while they were playing in a coed basketball league; they married in 1979
— Attorney General designate Eric H. Holder, Jr. (6’3″) was Co-Captain of Stuyvesant High School’s basketball team in New York City.
Stuyvesant? Hold on a minute.
Eric H. Holder, Jr. has been selected as the next U.S. Attorney General by President-elect Obama. You will hear about his experiences as a D.C. Superior Court judge, U.S. Attorney and Deputy U.S. Attorney General in the media and during Senate confirmation hearings.
But Mr. Holder’s primary qualification is obvious: He is a graduate of New York City’s famed Stuyvesant High School, the public institution which has produced so many of our country’s political, scientific, and cultural leaders, including three Nobel laureates, actress Lucy Liu (劉玉玲), Obama advisor David Axelrod, food writer Mark Bittman, Thelonious Monk (a drop-out), and the writer/editor of NotionsCapital.
PETA has turned up the heat on laboratory-grown meat by offering a million dollar prize to the first folks to produce in-vitro veal and bring it to market. The scientific research has been going on for some time, and a million bucks isn’t what it used to be, but PETA is better at getting press than guys in white labcoats.
Physics teacher Alfred Bender with Stuyvesant High School cyclotron.
Today’s New York Times notes that Columbia University is junking its 70-year-old cyclotron particle accelerator or “atom smasher,” a device to speed up charged sub-atomic particles and slam them into stuff to see what happens. It is now merely 30 tons of graffiti-covered junk in the basement of Pupin Hall.
I can’t recall if I actually saw the cyclotron in the basement of New York’s Stuyvesant High School but I took comfort in the fact that it was there. My classmates could tinker with it and their rubber-banded stacks of computer punchcards and somehow keep our nation safe from the Sputnik-spinning space invaders of the Soviet Union.
Washington Post reporter Alec Klein has a new book. He spent a year observing and interviewing students at his old high school, New York City’s Stuyvesant (more about the book at a later date).
Alec graduated in 1985; I’m a 1967 grad. Our experiences differed somewhat: old and new buildings; his classmates included (zowie!) girls and more Asian American kids. In some ways it was the same: an entrance exam; no leveling peer pressure to act dumb-average, a significant part of U.S. teen culture elsewhere. Sports, except for the chess club and perhaps fencing, were not that important. Today’s Stuyvesant is proud of its Robotics Team.
NotionsCapital 