DanKohn.com

Very few subjects make me apoplectic like parents refusing to vaccinate their children because of absurd myths and fears. I’m going to Ghana next week to observe the American Red Cross’ Measles Initiative, to eliminate measles worldwide. More, much more, on this subject soon.

This reinforces my desire to live in New York: Kitchen-Sink Drama Gets a New Meaning.

This is the The Seattle Times (not The Onion) reporting that votes are still being counted in the Seattle referendum for new public transportation: “monorail still up in air”.

How crazy is it that the recent anti-war march in Washington was organized by “the Workers World Party, a small political sect that years ago split from the Socialist Workers Party to support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956″. The WWP is nuts, including supporting the North Koreans and Milosevich.

The WP reports on dirty bomb material scattered across rural areas of the former Soviet republics. This would make great fodder for a screenplay.

Depressing NYT article: “It is commonly said at cocktail parties and on the street corners of New York that Los Angeles is an insipid backwater, a lukewarm bath…. For those who do not believe that Los Angeles is a tough town, consider the life of John Peterson, the one-legged star polisher of the Walk of Fame.”

Taps and buglers are being replaced with a $50 K electronic versuion, according to an NYT op-ed: “With faux buglers playing faux taps on faux bugles, the only real thing left at military funerals will be the honor of the dead.”

How nuts is this doll from FAO Schwartz?

Dahlia Lithwick on Winona Scissorhands: “This week, a jury convicted Winona Ryder of felony theft for having … self-discounted more than $5,500 worth of clothing and accessories at Saks Fifth Avenue last December. As a rule, for every paragraph the media have devoted to the legal developments in the trial, two were devoted to what she was wearing and how she wore her hair.

This wasn’t a person on trial, it was Felony Barbie.”

The NYT amuses with a view on Jeffords in the minority:

Officially, the word from the Republican leadership is that there will be no retribution against Mr. Jeffords, the Vermont senator whose defection from the party last year cost Republicans control of the Senate. Unofficially, Republicans are amusing themselves with other possibilities as they return to power. Would Vermont’s Mount Snow be a good spot for the national depository of nuclear waste? Could that controversial bombing range in Puerto Rico be moved to Lake Champlain? Will Mr. Jeffords still have an office when he returns to Washington?

We all have to live with our decisions.