WWL and WNPR news are planning major coverage of the train crash.

We’re not sure what the role — if any — of our show will be.

Bearing that in mind, here is what we have planned:

MONDAY: Second-Term Blues – Is there really such a thing as a second-term curse for U.S. presidents? Nate Silver of the New York Times seems to think maybe not. But a week of scandals from Benghazi to the IRS have others questioning the viability of Obama’s second go-around in the Oval Office. Later in the show, the so-called “sophomore slump” in baseball and which modern bands suffer from DSAS (Difficult Second Album Syndrome).

TUESDAY: Animal Advocates – There are a slew of bills in the legislature that are supposed to give more rights to Connecticut animals– their owners won’t be allowed to tether them outside at night or during bad weather and they get their own lawyer if someone abuses them. As a matter of fact, animal power is in. There are new laws all over the country and New York mayoral candidates are tripping over each other to show how much they love animals. We might even hear from a group that issues amber alerts for missing kiddies, I mean kitties.

WEDNESDAY:  Star Trek – Slate writer Matt Yglesias recently watched every episode and movie in the Star Trek franchise. He writes, “Trek has a very particular take on what it means to be human. Part of what it means, the franchise teaches us, is participating in an ongoing progressive project of building a utopian society. Even though the bulk of Trek comes from the ’90s, the franchise launched in the mid-’60s, and the now-anachronistic spirit of midcentury optimism has remained at the heart of the franchise throughout. It’s a big part of what makes Trek great.” On the heels of the latest J.J. Abrams movie, we’ll talk about how Star Trek serves as a repository for humanity’s collective optimism.

THURSDAY: Psychiatry & The DSM – Each release of a new DSM brings scrutiny as to how helpful the document is to the field of psychiatry and the patients that are diagnosed and treated based on its categories. The DSM-V, which took 20 years to revise, is no different. Practicing psychologist Dr. Gary Greenberg pours his angst about the DSM into “The Book of Woe,” his new book about winnowing the complexity of our minds into what Errol Morris calls, “an arbitrary taxonomy that provides a disorder for everybody.”

FRIDAY: Take a look back at the news of the week and try to make sense of it all with The Nose!

So how do we feel about the Rampage Skater Bros?

Are they the modern equivalent of, say, some of the great wartime photographers who documented — without involving themselves — scenes of mayhem?

Or are they oddly detached, profanity-spewing punks who didn’t help anyone?

Or something else?

…famous person in photo

(h/t Bobby Sherwood)

Why is the AP Hartford office part of the (undeniably chilling) Justice Department phone records grab? 

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP. It was not clear if the records also included incoming calls or the duration of the calls.

 

One of the reporters whose records were sought is the fearless Matt “My Name Is Matt Apuzzo; You Killed My Father; Prepare To Die” Apuzzo, who did titanic work in Connecticut circa 2006 on the Galante story and wrapping up interesting loose ends of the Rowland scandal.  But he does not work in Hartford anymore. So what gives?

The governor of Connecticut in his front yard picking up Jack Russell terrier poop with plastic bags, while said JRT’s barked excitedly at him.

I mean, now can you be cooler than Chris Hadfield is right now?

Here it is.

Actually in Drogheda now.
I will be back among you Sunday.

In Dublin today, we visited Kilmainham Gaol, and I remain stirred and haunted hours later. Ten years ago, I was roaming around an part of Ireland west of here while writing this book. I discovered a whole branch of Plunkett relations and, on the slimmest of evidence, quietly bonded myself to the memory of Joseph Mary Plunkett, one of the leaders of the Easter Uprising. Plunkett probably was not one of the key strategists, but something about his story, especially his marriage to Grace Gifford at the 11th hour before his execution, jolted the complacent into new spasms of nationalism. It seems like a joke about the Irish that a doomed love might speak to them more powerfully than their own natural desire for home rule, but that does seem to have been the case.  Anyway, it was unsettling today to see his tiny cell and to walk in the rocky yard where the firing squad took him. That was hours ago, and we’ve since been to the Abbey Theatre to see “Drum Belly,”  but I’m still in a Plunkett mood. (Hat tip to our guide Anthony, who does his job with a gavity for which we were grateful.) This was not his actual cell. This one is much nicer.