Sentential Links #116

Here we go, folks!

:: I have never lived in a community that was so obsessed with its past. (Good post on the lack of retail in downtown Buffalo. My suggestion for remedying this? Forget it. Don't do anything specifically to bring retail downtown. Instead, work on getting businesses downtown, and getting people living downtown. Retail will follow; it always goes where people work and live.)

:: Too many people around here have wanted instant gratification; in reality, building new business takes both nurturing and time. We are about to reach a tipping point where everything is starting to happen at once, and where the renaissance will soon become obvious, even to the most cynical. (It's also worth remembering that many things are never predictable. Since no one in the 1980s could have predicted the 1990s tech boom, it follows that no one could have therefore predicted the rise of the Austin, TX area as a result of that boom.)

:: As far as I’m concerned, every day is bread day.

:: Why is it necessary to do another Star Trek, especially one featuring the original characters? What possibly can be left to say or do in this universe that hasn't been fully explored over five TV series and ten feature films? (I personally wouldn't mind one more Trek movie, if for no other reason than to make it so that the franchise didn't end with Nemesis, which is staggeringly bad.)

:: With all the cameras Fox had capturing the reactions of every person imaginable, I’m only sorry they didn’t have a camera in Johnny Damon’s house.

:: Choosing the best presidential candidate among the 2008 contenders is a tough job. Picking the worst is easy. Rudy Giuliani is the guy you'd get if you put George Bush and Dick Cheney into a wine press and squeezed out their pure combined essence: unbounded arrogance and self-righteousness, a chip on his shoulder the size of a redwood, a studied contempt for anybody's opinion but his own, a vindictive streak a mile wide, and a devotion to secrecy and executive power unmatched in presidential history. He is a disaster waiting to happen.

:: And on Saturday I got a note from...well, never mind. Let's just say it was a fan note from someone whose work I admire a great deal. Always nice to get those.

:: Science fiction is going to lose at least one of these magazines in the next five years.

:: The real trouble with our schools is that, basically, Americans hate school.

We don't think it's really necessary. We like schools and support them to the degree they provide cheap and easy day care and during football and basketball season give us somewhere to go on Friday nights.

All for now....