Mc-Graw Hill is closing its wonderful bookstore in the basement of its building.

“The space is so subterranean that it’s more suitable as a destination like a health club than as retail space,” said Faith Consolo, vice chairman of Garrick-Aug, a real estate firm.

She misses the point. The stuff in the MGH Bookstore was so specialized and esoteric, that only a motivated buyer would want to seek it out.

The space will become a health club (sort of the opposite of the bookstore, no?); it’ll be the third health club within a three-block radius. Seems that no one wants to go out of their way to hit the gym — which makes just tons of sense, doesn’t it?

My friend Miriam Lewin went down to lower Manhattan to witness the final procession from Ground Zero, and wrote a brief report:

The crowd around me clapped but did not cheer.  We were respectful yet somehow  exuberant — I was smiling through my tears.  I didn’t clap — I had put  my hand on my heart when I saw the beam and I could not wrench it off my  chest.

It was a beautiful day.  A little hotter and muggier than September 11,  but still beautiful.  There was a nice breeze off the river, and New York felt like home, and a good place to be.

I’m in Charlottesville, VA right now and saw the ceremony on television, so I’ve got no right to comment. MSNBC’s coverage was most remarkable: there was not a word from a talking head for the entire time — more than 30 minutes.

From the AP:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Three federal judges on Friday threw out a federal law that would have forced public libraries to equip computers with software designed to block access to Internet pornography.

In a 195-page decision, the judges said the Children’s Internet Protection Act went too far because it also blocking access to sites that contained protected speech.

“Any public library that adheres to CIPA’s conditions will necessarily restrict patrons access to a substantial amount of protected speech in violation of the First Amendment,” the judges wrote.

Fascinating piece on CNN about the electronic nerve center of what may be the First Wired War.

Some combatants, however, are properly skeptical:

“A computer with a bullet in it is just a paperweight,” Hauk said. “A map with a bullet in it is still a map.”

I’m going to leave it for others to analyze and critique today’s ceremony at Ground Zero. I just wanted to post here an eyewitness piece I wrote the afternoon of  9/11 (and which ran the next day in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) to remind us how it began.

Tough business, magazines. Even after 161 years, you’ve got to make a profit.

Fortunately, the archives will remain online.

Is there really so little to satirize in contemporary England? Seems unlikely.

Record industry unveils music format that can’t be played in any computer. From urbanreflex.com

 

The Times reports on the impending opening of the for-profit Museum of Sex on 5th Avenue and 27th Street.

The guy behind the museum, Daniel Gluck, has been described in press reports as a “former software executive,” but I’ve been unable to find out his tech connection. When he started this project, he was teamed with artist Alison Maddex and her partner, the academic Camille Paglia. At the end of 2000, however, Maddex and Paglia apparently split with Gluck and the project.

There is a tech connection with the Museum of Sex: software developer, philanthropist, and art maven Peter Norton had some money in the project, back when it was still a non-profit. I don’t know if Norton is still involved.

Interesting project going on at nycbloggers.com — to collect all the webloggers in New York City and organize them by subway stop. I like the idea; I’ve registered and added a linkback logo over on the right.

 

Nice piece by Charlie LeDuff of the NYTimes about the dismantling of the last steel column at Ground Zero:

Let history show that many of these men and women were here on the afternoon of Sept. 11, having abandoned their jobs elsewhere in the metropolitan region. How they scribbled their names and phone numbers on their forearms those first few days in case they were swallowed up in a hole and killed.

Also, let it note these small memories. How the workers wept over the abandoned shoes lying in the streets left by people running for their lives. How people laughed that second evening as the ironworkers wore cashmere coats and scarves and fedoras from Brooks Brothers as they burned the steel to brace themselves against the cold.