"The Supreme Court, returning from its summer recess, on Tuesday granted review of 8 new cases..."

SCOTUSblog reports. One case is a copyright dispute over the screenplay for Raging Bull (which came out in 1980).

For a moment there, I thought I'd failed to notice that the first Monday in October had come up again. (Why were there not a bunch of Supreme Court preview stories?) But it's not Monday. It's Tuesday, and the first day in October, so the first Monday is next Monday. The court is just back, amusingly enough on the first day of the federal government shutdown, which is all very abstruse.

"New York City Used To Be A Terrifying Place."

A photo essay, from last August about NYC in they pre-Giuliani years, which I ran across this afternoon as I was thinking about the electoral prospects of the left-Democrat mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio in the aftermath of Alexian Lien's motorpsycho nightmare.

Scroll down at the first link to find: "Bernhard Goetz, who shot four youths in a subway train in 1984, became a symbol for the paranoia New Yorkers felt about getting robbed or attacked."

Lien got me thinking about Goetz. Similarities and differences. Goetz had a gun and overreacted out of fear; Lien had a car and underreacted (at first). Arguably. Those are the differences.

The similarity is: A man embodies the plight of an ordinary citizen in a city gone wild. And mayors are held accountable.

Where are the calls for scissors, bottle, and bicycle-pump control?

"An emotionally disturbed man wielding scissors stabbed or slashed at least five people, including a father and his toddler, in a park along the Hudson River on Manhattan’s Upper West Side early Tuesday, according to the police."

Meanwhile, last Friday, in another Upper West Side park, "a man approached [a] woman as she was pushing her 8-month-old baby in a stroller. The attacker had a broken bottle and grabbed the woman but she fought back and hit him several times with a bicycle air pump, the police said. The mother and her child escaped unharmed. There has been no arrest in the case."

If you are a gun-control advocate, I know your response to my snark: No one died in either of these incidents. If the emotionally disturbed man had had a gun, the 5 victims might be dead, and if the mother with the stroller had had a gun the broken-bottle man might have died or if broken-bottle man had had a gun then she and the baby might have died.

Isn't this the city of your dreams — a kinder, gentler place where everyone is armed only with household objects, objects with manifold peaceful uses, and not those terrible guns, objects designed only to kill?

"One Video Encapsulates Everything Wrong With NYC Street Culture."

"Two banes of New York City streets — aggressive dirt bikers using the road as a personal racetrack, and SUV drivers using their vehicles as weapons — collide in this horrific video making the rounds today."

Yesterday at about 1:30 p.m., Alexian Lien, 33, was driving a Range Rover north on the West Side Highway near 125th Street with his wife and 5-month old daughter as passengers, according to reports in the Post and Daily News. About 20 seconds into the video, group of motorcycle and dirt bike riders surround the SUV in the center lane, and a motorbike rider appears to hit the brakes and get into a fender-bender with Lien’s vehicle.

You've seen the video. (Or if not, check it out.) We watched it here at Meadhouse this morning — my son Chris along with Meade and me — and we had some different interpretations of what we saw. I'm linking to StreetsBlog, above, but there are obviously more mainstream articles (like this in the NYT). My choice of link is based on my desire to get some perspective on what these bikers are doing. (I thought they had an intent to rob the guy in the expensive car, and they deliberately cut him off, and Meade saw it as bikers out for a big group ride who felt righteous and lost their minds to road rage after what was an accident.)

There are 77 comments at StreetsBlog, which seems to be a bicycle-oriented site where people are concerned about sharing the road. I'll cherry-pick some comments. Each paragraph break is a new commenter:

I don't know what happened before the video, but based only on what I see here, the driver is acting in self defense. He is surrounded, and the initial crash was obviously deliberately caused by the guy on the motorcycle. Additionally, the guys family is in the car. At that point, its either himself and his family or them, and the only weapon he has is that car. Also, as a side note: This has nothing to do with "street culture." Its an absolutely extreme situation that's way past the point where traffic laws or driving behavior are the issue.

This has everything to do with NYC's street culture. It's a culture that's enabled by the NYPD, which focuses on tinted windows and nuisance tickets against cyclists, but sees hundreds of motorcycles on the HH parkway as the equivalent of a storm cloud - something that could be dangerous but that hopefully will pass. EVents like this are extreme, but they are the inevitable outcome of NYC's "anything goes" attitude toward street safety.

It's more like the outcome of the "if you chase them and any body gets hit in the process all fingers will be pointed at you" mentality. Most of these guys are simply going to run from the cops, and any attempt to chase them will involve risk to all the parties involved as well as innocent bystanders. It's a lose/lose situation for the NYPD.

There is plenty wrong with NYC street culture, but this video does not "encapsulate" it. There is nothing typical about this scene. The motorcyclists represent thug culture more than street culture, and this guy just happened to get caught in the middle of it and was probably scared shitless, and rightfully so. I saw an incarnation of this group riding through Brooklyn yesterday, and you wouldn't want to get into a situation with any two of these riders let alone two hundred.

First, there seems to be at least 50 motorcyclists in some of these shots. So, I ask, have they gotten a parade permit that is required of cyclists and pedestrians? Secondly. I saw a comment in another string on a website that reports that the NYPD has a do not engage policy when it comes to these throngs of motorcyclists. Not sure what that is supposed to mean, but if it is true, then why is there such a double standard when it comes to bikes? Finally, while riding I have been surrounded by around a dozen or so of these hot shots from time to time. It can be pretty scary when they are doing wheelies near you and gunning their bikes.

This video encapsulates everything wrong with NYPD's traffic enforcement culture. I've been there more than once as these illegal parades of thugs on unregistered and unlicensed dirt bikes swarm the streets, both on foot and in a car, and it is scary as hell either way. Other commenters are right. Given NYPD's lack of enforcement, best thing to do is to come to a complete stop and let them pass. Even so, many of them intentionally come dangerously close to cars, bicycles, and pedestrians in their path, running red lights and failing to yield all along the way.

I was on the Hudson River Greenway when these guys passed Canal Street. There had to be at least 200 of them. I've never seen so many motorbikes (and Quads too?) in my life. I was on the phone with my fiance and I was like wow . . . that's got to be so intimidating to be on the road with those guys. And then I sit back and laugh and think about the police presence we have at Critical Mass rides.

It certainly looked like they crowded him out of his lane and the the brake-checking started when he beeped. If theres anything before the video, obviously this interpretation would change.

Fool (driver) should have slowed down. Not saying the bikers were right, but come on, how dumb can you be. Situation could have been avoided.

Why was this driver targeted? These bikers don't target random people. The most important part is missing. The vehicle was surrounded in the very beginning of the video. Something must have occurred prior.

HE WAS A WEALTHY ASIAN MAN... 1%er! Hopefully Asians realize that no matter how much money they have and how insulated they believe themselves due to their wealth, they can be pulled from their cars and nearly murdered while the NYPD issues parking tickets. Just a taste of the de Blasio first term!

There's a lot to talk about here, but one thing is damage to the mayoral candidacy of the left-wing Democrat Bill de Blasio.

"While women from his own, white middle-class background, often saw him as an overawing presence, he was just another guy to African-American women and this was refreshing to him."

From a 2001 article about Bob Dylan's 6-month marriage to Carolyn Dennis, who bore him a child, his 6th child, named Desiree Gabrielle Dennis-Dylan. I got to that article after seeing this very unfairly titled Daily News article "Like a complete unknown — Unlikely that Bob Dylan will attend his daughter's wedding."

It's one of those same-sex marriages you've heard so much about. Desiree's partner is named Kayla Sampson.

Sampson’s mother, Jolene Sampson, said she expects the legendary singer-songwriter will not be there to walk his 27-year-old daughter down the aisle in Mira Loma, Calif. “Of course he’s invited, but he’s just not going to go. He didn’t say that, but that’s what we are assuming,” Jolene Sampson said.

“It would be sad (if Dylan skips the nuptials), but he is really supportive and happy for her,” the bride-to-be’s mom added.

By "bride-to-be’s mom," does the Daily News means Carolyn Dennis, Dylan's ex-wife? Both Jolene Sampson and Carolyn Dennis are "bride-to-be’s moms." It might be that in some weddings of 2 women, only one chooses to be called the "bride," but there's no evidence that in this case, these 2 are saying that.

Conclusion: 1. The Daily News is an idiot. (It's a wonder it can even feed itself.) 2. The fiancées and their mothers all look very happy. 3. It's sad that a family broke up long ago, but there's nothing new in this story that shows Bob Dylan mistreating anyone.

How's that healthcare.gov website working out for you?

I heard it was hinky, but it looks great from here, not that I need to use it. I've had excellent health-care insurance for decades. (The relevant promise for me is: If you like what you have, you get to keep it.) But I went over to healthcare.gov to see if it's up and running, to click on various headings, and run a bunch of searches, and it looked great. The front page came up instantly, and every link I clicked and every search I ran went through instantly. There was nothing slow or unfinished-looking about it.

But Drudge's top headline right now is "OBAMACRASH":



That links to a Twitchy article with the headline "Surprise! Obamacare health insurance exchange websites don’t work; HealthCare.gov a total mess." At that top of that Twitchy page is this blackly comical banner:



The real nightmare for the anti-Obamacare crowd will be if Obamacare works well enough and people are reasonably satisfied. Myself, I'm tired of the drama.

ADDED: "In Debut, Affordable Care Web Site Baffles Many Users," according to the NYT.

While the site’s search feature seemed very intuitive, often returning detailed results for queries, including “sign up for account” or “sign up for coverage,” some questions returned a blank page that simply said “No Results.” In a bit of unintentional irony, the page then asked if an answer was helpful.

Those who did make it onto the Web site seemed to appreciate the design and aesthetics. The site looks like one for a typical start-up, with clean typography and large identifiable buttons that provide direction. Unlike most government sites, Healthcare.gov feels like it was built for today’s Web users, rather than something that still belongs in a 1990s-era Web browser.

But not everyone was happy with the look and feel of the overall experience. Some complained that the site was too busy and complex, and that navigation was baffling....

"I have awakened to a shut-down government. Will I notice?"

A question from Big Mike this morning in last night's "café" post, which is still the top post on the blog as I drag myself in here muttering "Am I supposed to talk about the government shutdown?"

MadisonMan says he notices...

... because I work with noaa.gov people, and even have a noaa.gov email account. I'd check it to see if I have email, but that's apparently against the law today, or something.

I think the training I have scheduled for Thursday will likely be cancelled. I'm kinda curious how my big meeting next week will go if the shutdown is persistent.

I sense a shutdown vibe. They shutdown. We shutdown.