Sherry Chandler

Note: Here’s an item I meant to post back on the weekend, but it got lost in the queue:

If you are interested in the courts, and I am, Adam Liptak has an interesting analysis of the implications of the Padilla verdict.

I bring it out now because I think you should also read Garrison Keillor’s new column at Salon

Aug. 22, 2007 | They put Jose Padilla away for having filled out an application form to attend an al-Qaida training camp, a milestone in criminal-conspiracy law that makes me wonder about you readers and what you might do that some ambitious prosecutor could trace back to something I wrote 16 months ago.

I’m serious. Here we are, consorting on the page, in the old conspiracy between Author and Unnamed Others, my hand on your shoulder, whispering stuff, speaking freely — including things I may not have thought through a-l-l-o-f-t-h-e-l-e-g-a-l-i-m-p-l-i-c-a-t-i-o-n-s-o-f — so let me just say this: I accept no liability for whatever you may or may not do after reading my column. It has nothing to do with me. Zero. Zilch.

You readers know me and I don’t know you. This now makes me nervous. We are invisibly linked through words I have written, and yet the meaning of those words, as determined by a jury of 12 men and women good and true, could be far, far from what I intended, and as I sit there at the defense table in the Miami courtroom, smelling the musky cologne of your idiot attorney, looking past him at you, you wretched cretin, as the linguistics expert for the State, a tall bun-headed woman with a Ph.D. in literary deconstruction, testifies that the subtext of my column in question was a command that you plant an explosive device in the heel of your cowboy boot and try to run through airport security hollering, “I’m a-comin’, Mama!” I am going to think back on my life and wish I had become a gardener. Nobody was ever indicted for watering plants.

You must read this entire article and you must read the last two paragraphs! It wouldn’t be fair for me to give them to you here. All I can say is “Amen, Brother Keillor,amen!”

From Tree Hugger:

Shigeru Ban is familiar to TreeHuggers … has built a bridge out of cardboard tubes. It’s in France, half a mile from the Pont du Gard, an ancient Roman bridge; Ban says “It is a very interesting contrast, the Roman stone bridge and the paper bridge. Paper too can be permanent, can be strong and lasting. We need to get rid of these prejudices.”

The bridge can hold up to twenty people at a time; it was load tested with balloons filled with 1.5 tonnes of water. There are 281 four inch diameter tubes, plus steps of recycled paper and foundations made from wooden boxes filled with sand.

Link courtesy of Donna Marder who finds the neatest stuff on the web!