We're having a heatwave

So there's no Ace walking the city for the last couple of days.  Lots of stuff to catch up on, though.
T.V.
On Public Television:
James John Audubon, famous for his "Birds of America", was also one of the first Naturalists and Conservationists, even though he killed thousands of birds to draw them.
A couple of things of interest from the show.  The panic of 1819 has often been attributed to failings in the banking system and public financing of the war of 1812, but the show mentions the catastrophic effect the weather had on farming that year.  Crops froze 3 times, causing many bankruptcies, foreclosures, etc.  People, without their usual food sources, took to shooting and eating pigeons.  They say at that time there were 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons.  They would fly in flocks a mile long and wide.  Point your rifle straight up, fire and you had food.
Martha, the last surviving passenger pigeon, died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo.  Deforestation, hunting and loss of habitat are the cause for their extinction.
Zen on Masterpiece Mystery.  The latest import from England.  Zen is a Roman detective known for his integrity  in a corrupt world.  The boss's secretary is the romantic interest.  Rufus Sewell as Zen, and Caterina Murino as the boss's secretary work well together and I know this is totally subjective, but they are two of the most attractive people on television. 
Then it's the weather channel, the news stations, books, magazines, housework, and trying to stay cool.  NYC, yesterday was hotter than Phoenix, Az.  Baltimore, may have been the hottest.
Heat indexes were: Baltimore 118, Newark 114, La Guardia airport 108.  Those passenger pigeons could have fanned us all and blocked the sun.

The news of the world

First it was Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for the District of Rhondda, who asked Rebekah Brooks in 2003, at a parliamentary hearing, if her newspapers had paid the police for information.  She said yes.   Then there was Meredith Whitney a lawyer in Manchester.  She represented Gordon Taylor, the head of the footballers association,  in early 2007, because his phone had been hacked.  They settled for 450,000 pounds.  Then she represented Max Clifford, well known for his work in public relations, and they won a million pounds.  The British paper, The Guardian, ran a series of articles about widespread hacking of the private conversations of British citizens in 2009.  One of those citizens was Prince Harry.  The Royals knew his phone was hacked because of the type of information that was leaked about a leg injury.  In September 2010 the NY Times reported there was widespread hacking of private citizens' phone conversations.  On July 4th 2011, the lawyers for Milly Dowler, a murdered schoolgirl, alleged that her phone was hacked and messages were deleted.  That's when the people got angry, and they're proving to be more powerful than Parliament, Royalty, the national press and even footballers.
Other news?
I like "The Economist" but it has the habit of putting scheme right after the title of many government programs.  For example, in this week's issue discussing the economic and political situation in the U. S. they write: "The House has also voted to cut a separate health-and-nutrition scheme for poor pregnant women, infants and children, known as WIC by 11%." ... about Food Stamps they write ... "the department of Agriculture which administers the scheme, reckons only 2/3 of those who are eligible have signed up."  Now the British know a lot more about the English language than I do,  they created it.  So I went to the dictionary:
scheme:
1. a plan, design, or program of action; project
2. an underhand plot; intrigue
3. a visionary or impractical project
Hmm, so they mean #1 not #2.
Hmm?  Is there a political agenda using scheme instead of program?  Or is it what Shaw called a "separation by a common language"?
More news:
Three years after the economic meltdown nearly one in six Americans are out of work, 14.1 million reported.  The President proposes among other things a ten-year, hundred-billion-dollar reduction in federal contributions to Medicaid.  The President is now to the right of most Republicans that were politically active when I began to vote.  Still there is a problem.  The President wants changes in the tax code and rates while 97% of House Republicans have taken the "No Tax Pledge".
In "The New Yorker"
"Max Weber, in his 1919 essay "Politics as a Vocation," drew a distinction between 'the ethic of responsibility' and 'the ethic of ultimate ends'-between those who act from a sense of practical consequence and those who act from a higher conviction, regardless of consequences.  These ethics are tragically opposed, but the true calling of politics requires a union of the two."
Paradoxically, we need smart politics and politicians, when most Americans seem to reject politics and politicians.  As more needs to be done, the more political inertia is fueled.

House of Worship

Downtown, near ground zero is one of the oldest and most renowned of NYC's churches.  St. Paul's is the chapel to Trinity Church, which is part of the Episcopal Parish and the worldwide Anglican community.  When NYC was our nation's capitol, George Washington worshiped here.  Alexander Hamilton and John Jay were congregants.  In those days congregants rented pews from the church; so everyone had an assigned place.  The pews have been removed and replaced with chairs to make the church more of a community.
Recently, the chapel was the recovery station for those working on the clean-up after 9/11.  There are memorials to their service inside the Chapel.  As you enter on the right in the corner is one of the memorials to the 9/11 First Responders.  It has all the patches from all the groups of firefighters and others who assisted in the cleanup.