Et tu, Johnny?

From Maureen Dowd in the NYTIMES.com, 8/24/08:

As Sam Stein notes in The Huffington Post: “[Senator McCain] has even brought his military record into discussion of his music tastes. Explaining that his favorite song was ‘Dancing Queen’ by Abba, he offered that his knowledge of music ‘stopped evolving when his plane intercepted a surface-to-air missile.’” “Dancing Queen,” however, was produced in 1975, eight years after McCain’s plane was shot down.

So how about “Y.M.C.A.” (1978)? Calisthenics, anyone?

Fish Tank

“If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it’s doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim. Americans usually see individuals; Chinese and other Asians see contexts. What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops. The opening ceremony in Beijing was a statement in that conversation. The most striking features were images of thousands of Chinese moving as one—drumming as one, dancing as one, sprinting on precise formations without stumbling or colliding. [It was] a high-tech vision of a harmonious society performed in the context of China’s miraculous growth.”

David Brooks, The New York Times