I knew he was crazy; I didn’t know it was contagious.

“Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of ‘climate change delusion’.”

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/articles/2009/02/09/climate_change_takes_a_mental_toll/

Hardly the first case, doc. One preeminent sufferer won an Oscar.

This article goes on to point out many obvious things, such as “extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, cyclones, and hurricanes, can lead to emotional distress” and “Such anxiety over current events is not a new phenomenon.”

In addition to the 17-year-old, “Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters.”

See, this tickles me, because the author of the article points out that kids are having nightmares, then goes on to include such gems as “Over this century, the average global temperature is expected to rise between 1 degrees and 6 degrees Celsius. Glaciers will melt, seas will rise, extremes in precipitation will occur”, “Climate change is expected to create about 200 million environmental refugees by 2050”, and “climate change may eventually deplete natural resources, make it more difficult for people to live off the land, and disrupt the global food supply…That will mean declining socioeconomic status and quality of life across the world.”

Damn, people. You had the sympathetic vibe going on with the kids, then blasted them with even more doomsday prophecies. That’s like writing an article about coulrophobia, which is the fear of THE CLOWNS THAT ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!!!

Jesus, it pisses me off to see crap like this getting published when I can immediately name five better writers who are unemployed.

Yes…I’m one of them.

Childhood 2.0 – Random Memory Access (part 2)

There was no chinking in between the small logs that made up the walls of the cabin, so we could see it was empty. I volunteered to make a circuit around the house, looking for evidence of parental activity or a potential ambush. The garage door was down, and I peeked through the dusty windows, cupping my hands around my eyes to peer into the gloom. The family truck was gone. A new 10-speed bike was resting on its kickstand close to the door, pointing out toward the driveway so its pilot could rocket directly out from the oil-streaked garage and into a perfect day. I carried the news of the good fortune back to my squad, and we whooped and hollered as we descended on the tiny cabin, as exhilarated as if we’d actually won a victory over a hundred Indians riding dinosaurs and armed with crossbows (no mere black-hatted villains with six-shooters for us!).

Stooping down to enter the pint-sized doorway, we made a beeline for the northwest corner. Brushing aside some of the cut grass that lined the floor (it kept the dust down…fancy!), we revealed a small length of rope. Pulling on that rope raised a piece of ¾” plywood about eighteen inches square. Beneath that…

Treasure.

An old Army ammo box was pulled up, the lid hastily pried open. The box unceremoniously dumped onto a jacket spread out on the ground, we pawed through the figures and cards, momentarily reclaiming those riches which so often act as currency among small boys (Trade you that Cobra Commander for two Ghost Rider comic books!) I say momentarily because we’d only hold onto them for a week or so at most, when our fort would be raided in turn – though once we had kept possession of an original Boba Fett figure for an entire summer because I’d had the idea of burying a new cache (a coffee can) directly under our old one (a small, rusty tool box).

“Holy crap, guys. Look at this.” We clustered around our scout, who had found a creased Polaroid picture stuck between the pages of a MAD magazine. We stared, awed at the scene within that uneven white frame. The older sister of one of the other gang in the act of getting dressed. She was wrestling with a button on her skirt, and her blouse was open. It wasn’t a great picture, motion-blurred and hastily snapped, but we didn’t care. This wasn’t some artificially-posed no-name model; this was a real girl we all knew. She wasn’t the prettiest girl in the neighborhood, but she was more tolerant of us than the other girls were – had even ridden her bike with us on a few occasions.

This picture, just one of an ongoing series of acts designed to irritate an older sibling, and probably long-forgotten by the target, was the equivalent of a nuclear weapon. Like any other dangerous material, we were unsure on how to use it safely. In order to use it as blackmail material, we’d have to admit we had possession of it, which opened us up to all kinds of parental retribution. And even the idea of blackmail was never fully fleshed out. What would we blackmail her for? Money? She had an allowance, but that was it. Driving us to the mall? She had a learner’s permit. French kissing? (The height of sexual favor any of us could imagine at that point.) She was almost another member of the gang, not a girlfriend.

In the end, we cleaned out everything from the box except that picture. We saw no advantage in possessing it other than taunting her little brother with the fact that we had it, a temporary position at best. Leaving it alone in the box assured them that we had seen it.

We left the cabin and went back to our fort to deposit our easily-won goods. We jumped on our bikes and headed to the local arcade to spend our allowances on Centipede, Asteroids, packs of Bubble Yum and greasy pizza slices. As we pedaled back, we worked out a plan to get to the skating rink the next day (My mom’ll take if yours’ll pick up!). As dusk fell, we checked on our fort.

They’d been fast.

Not only had all of our booty been reclaimed, but they’d taken advantage of the fact that our fort was literally held together by old shoelaces, friction, and one bent nail we’d found. It had been taken apart and the pieces tossed into the woods. As we picked them up, we debated on how to avenge this. Arson was suggested. Okay…I suggested it, but no one took me seriously. While we put the fort back together (that being the biggest advantage to using shoelaces), we argued over who had to bring new batteries for the walkie-talkies, who had a higher score on Battle Zone, and which was better: a moped or a go-kart.

Home for supper. (“What did you do today?” “Nothin’.”) But the greatest kind of nothing. The empty schedule of a warm afternoon, where plans for your fantasy worlds have as much weight as the ones for this one, and you casually fight your friends over stupid stuff you don’t even remember an hour later. Everything you want to do falls into two categories: Now, and When I’m grown-up. Immediate gratification or a nebulous Sometime.

Next weekend, we’d do it all again.

Childhood 2.0 – Random Memory Access (part 1)

We’ve had a couple of really nice days here: 70+ degrees, clear skies, light wind. Not bad for having had an inch of snow on the ground earlier in the week.

I remember days like these when I was but a small cub. I’d be out the door with a “Be back later!” to meet up with whichever friends the ever-shifting treaties dictated I currently had alliances with. We’d tear through the neighborhood on our bikes (banana-seats for the win!), heading for the pitiful collection of broken timber and discarded boxes we called our fort. There, surrounded by splintery walls which leaned drunkenly against a rusting chain-link fence, we would plan the next raid on the other gang’s demesne – a well-designed, adult-built miniature log cabin with a “secret” underground storage room. That’s in quotes because we’d all been part of that gang at one time or another, so we all knew about it. The purpose of the mission: to reclaim certain baseball cards, choice matchbox cars, or favored G.I. Joe figures. Yes…we could have kept them inside where they’d be safe from being looted, but where’s the fun in that?

An hour of planning, mostly taken up by arguing over whether our scout got to carry the Han Solo pistol (with real movie sounds!), or if the main strike force – all three of us – should have it. Since the scout already carried the walkie-talkie with the dedicated Morse code button, it was decided he shouldn’t have the gun, too. Not to imply that there was any sort of reasoned discussion. It basically boiled down to “You’ve already got something; I’m taking this.” punch scuffle

Cadging a drink of water from the nearest garden hose (let it run until it cools down!), we set off on foot, sneaking through the woods to the other side of the pond and into the back yards of the adjoining neighborhood. The scout was sent up into a tall pine to look for activity around the cabin, as well as act as an early warning system in case we had an encounter with the local group of older kids who roamed the neighborhoods randomly, killing time before their dates with actual girlfriends. Lacking anything better to do, they would lazily pick us up and threaten to throw us into the pond, or push us off our bikes into the dirt with that apathetic cruelty that comes with puberty. Caught between true childhood and true adulthood, their first reactions were to try and tear down anything that reminded them of themselves just a few short years ago – from their Hardy Boys posters and Bionic Man lunchboxes to their little brother and his friends.

The walkie-talkie came to life with a static-filled series of beeps. Our scout was painstakingly trying to send a message by Morse. Since none of us had memorized the code, he had to keep turning his WT over to read the guide printed on a sticker on the back, then turn it back over to send the letter. To make it even more difficult, he kept forgetting whether a short beep was a dot or a dash, so we’d hear his voice break into the stream, “Uh…hang on. Nevermind that last one.”, then a (presumably) corrected series of beeps. At this point, one of us would usually chuck a pine cone at him. We’d hit him more often than not, since he was only about seven feet above us in the tree we were clustered around. “Why didn’t y’all just talk?” I hear you asking. Are you kidding? We had technology! We weren’t going to just let it go unused. There were racetrack sets, miniature video game consoles, and electric candy dispensers that were just begging for those 9-volt batteries.

Movement at the cabin. We dropped down below the slight hummock at the back of the yard. It only covered a drainage culvert, but to us it was San Juan Hill. Cautiously, we peeked over the ridge to see the small terrier that was the family pet. Instantly, it transformed into a bloodthirsty German Shepherd to some of us, and an attack droid to the rest. A hasty, whispered conversation ensued over what to do about it. We had two walkie-talkies, a Han Solo pistol, and a “lock-picking kit” that consisted of two small screwdrivers. We hadn’t thought to bring dog biscuits. Several scenarios were suggested: wait until he left; throw rocks at him to drive him away; shoot him with the pistol. None were optimal. To help out, the dog came over and participated in the discussion, and we idly scratched his ears while we tried to decide his fate. He got bored waiting for us to come to an agreement and ran off to the pond to swim.

Congratulating ourselves on successfully negating the threat, we moved towards the cabin.

Time is on my side (yes it is).

There’s a button on my microwave labeled “Stop Time.” The thing that intrigues me is there’s no corresponding “Start Time” button, which you would expect if its function was to run the cooking cycle over a particular time period.

The microwave was here in the house when we moved in, and we don’t have the manual, so I’m not sure how Kenmore engineered the oven. Does it stop subjective time or actual time? Is it just for the person that presses the button, or for everyone? Is it an instant effect, or is there a gradual slowing down while inertia is compensated for?

Now, it wouldn’t make sense to stop time for everyone, because then it could never be started again, (which would negatively impact Kenmore’s profit margin), so I’m assuming that it stops time relative to the person pressing the button. The fact that there is no “Start Time” implies some built-in limit to the event – perhaps the LED screen runs a countdown – which further implies the microwave itself is immune to the effects, or else it wouldn’t be able to measure the elapsed time. If this is the case, we must be missing some parts, because there is no obvious way to ground the static electricity and dissipate the friction heat you’d build up moving around in a stopped-time world. If such a device was never included, I’m really surprised they got the thing UL-listed, because that’s very dangerous.

Knowing that engineers look for the easiest way to achieve the desired results, I’m assuming the microwave just speeds up the person pressing the button, rather than attempting to stop every other piece of matter in the universe. If that’s the case, I would hope the effect has a generous time limit, because you’d have to walk everywhere you wanted to go. On the other hand, it runs off a plain old 120 outlet (impressive!), so I guess you could take it wherever you wanted to use it. My car has a 120 outlet built in, so I could theoretically create a time machine as long as the effect can be extended to non-living matter. If not, the chemical reactions that power the car would be too slow for me to realistically use it for travelling. I don’t want to just sit there waiting for the fuel to combust under the pistons.

I’d like to think I’d use this power responsibly, if only because it would be tough to use it for crime. Even if I wanted to clean out the local banks, I’d have to wait until every door was open – front door, the hall door that leads to the vault, and the vault door itself. What are the odds of that? And the typical loser geek fantasy of finally having your way with the head cheerleader is right out. If you build up dangerous amounts of friction just by walking around, you’d definitely combust during any sort of sexual act. Even mugging people on the street wouldn’t be worth the effort. The way the economy is these days, no one is carrying any serious cash. I suppose I could take whatever I wanted from the local stores, but again, the static buildup would destroy any expensive electronics when the time flow was restored.

Maybe I won’t push the button after all. Doesn’t seem worth it.

Maybe I’m just really overthinking this.

Conspiracy, Corporations, and catty remarks

Barack Obama Hates White People

I’m not going to echo the Right’s “outrage” over the lag time in FEMA’s response to those in Kentucky who recently lost power due to the ice storm. I think we all know that it doesn’t matter who the president is, FEMA is just another bloated government agency that takes a little while to build up any sort of inertia. Especially when they’re hampered by, you know…ice.

No, I’m referring to the fact that Obama secretly arranged for FEMA to distribute salmonella-tainted peanut butter in the emergency rations. (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/04/fema.peanut.butter/index.html )

This is understandable, actually. Kentucky voted mostly for McCain, so Obama’s not losing a lot of followers, and he’ll be wiping out a coal state, which should make his environmentalist supporters happy.

It’s every bit as realistic as the “dam-blowing” scenario spun by the tinfoil brigade regarding Katrina. The president is a powerful man, true, but not in the way most people seem to think. The New York Times apparently bugged the Oval Office, and took great delight in reporting every conversation, strategy, and confidential plan Bush had for eight years, and Obama has the watchdogs at PolitiFact eyeballing him. (http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/) The notion that a president could do anything in secret is laughable, which is why the more successful TV shows and movies always portray a shadow government organization or rogue agent intent on causing chaos, rather than the guy who lives in a fishbowl.


A/S/L?

So MySpace deleted the accounts of 90,000 registered sex offenders this week (in totally unrelated news, Facebook reported almost 100,000 new users). North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper demanded the site should do more. "Technology moves forward quickly, and it's important for these companies to stay ahead of the technology," he said. "And they're not moving fast enough for us."

How much you want to bet that the AG’s office still has Windows2000 loaded on their Acer computers?

What do you want them to do, Roy? Their technology enables people to converse online and decorate a home page, not provide real-time GPS tracking. Can you guarantee you know every e-mail address these criminals are using? Know each site they visit? Do you even know where they all are right now?

Personally, I’m not worried about the registered offenders that are stupid enough to use their real names on a social networking site; Darwin will take care of them in time.


This is a round-trip ticket, right?

IBM ups the ante for big corporations that are considering outsourcing. Not only are they outsourcing the jobs, they are offering the employees who used to do those jobs the opportunities to outsource themselves to the country that’s getting those jobs and keep doing the same job, but “under local terms and conditions.” They are graciously offering to help with relocation costs, travel arrangements, and visas. (http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/05/news/companies/ibm_jobs/index.htm)

“So…Frank. We’re relocating your department to our call center in India. You can keep your job if you’re willing to move to Bhopal and work for a few rupees a day.”


Man…accountability sucks

Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar announced today that the financial institution is looking for ways to repay the $10 billion the government gave the group. In totally unrelated news, Obama proposed capping the salaries of officers of any institution that accepted bailout money at $500,000/year. Carly Fiorina opines that Obama has no business capping salaries. In totally unrelated news, Ms. Fiorina earned $8,000,000/year as CEO of Hewlitt-Packard, and received a $21,000,000 payoff when she was fired.


But I’m not a little person

If Obama really wants to revitalize the economy, he could start by insisting that all of his cabinet appointees pay their taxes.


Let’s make a (book) deal

Elizabeth Edwards is writing a book about facing adversity. The book, Resilience, is due in stores May 12.

Yeah...like she knows anything about adversity.

Taxing Ourselves into Prosperity

President Obama reauthorized the State Children's Health Insurance Program today, expanding the program by an additional $32.8 billion. Not satisfied to take that money from the trough that is the bailout package, the feds more than tripled the existing tax on cigarettes, bringing the total tax to $1.01 per pack.

I cannot adequately express how fucking brilliant this is.

Sure…let’s take a product that has declining usage rates country-wide, thanks in large part to anti-smoking laws, and make it the cornerstone of funding for this bill. They should tack a surcharge on buggy-whips and whalebone corsets while they’re at it.

I’m not even going to get into the fallacious arguments about the long-term health costs for smokers (you know, those people that tend to die 30 years before non-smokers); I am going to point out that the largest demographic for smoking is comprised of those that qualify as “poor” by government income standards. Why do I mention this? Because Obama stated specifically: “I will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.” There was no “unless they smoke” codicil stated aloud, but I admit he could have had his toes crossed.

What’s really amusing about this plan is the fact that, according to Heritage Foundation estimates, 22,000,000 new smokers will be needed to pay for it. Who has the most in disposable income? Young people.

Forget Joe the Plumber. Meet Obama’s new spokesman for the State Children's Health Insurance Program:

One Man's Meltdown is Another's Remix

This is why Americans own the entertainment industry.

Yesterday, a recording surfaced of Christian Bale losing his temper on set:



Less than 24 hours later, RevoLucian pwned the whole thing:

Clever title to be determined later

Is there some sort of weird IT meme in development out there? This past week, I’ve had two different people suggest using a praying mantis as a logo for their networking/programming business. I’m not so sure that’s the right angle for a couple of different reasons: mantids are only associated with computers because they are insects, and bugs are not a good thing in your system; the only other thing people know about mantids is that they get their heads ripped off after mating, and do you really want the phrase “rip off” associated with your business?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on what goes into creating corporate identities lately, and it’s amazing the depths some people will get into when they are trying to pick themes/colors/icons/etc. I imagine a lot of that is influenced by programs like ISO 9000 and Six Sigma – where every single process is defined in respect to every other process. I’m not totally against that idea, as I’ve seen some really shitty corporate processes that could have benefited from at least a cursory look by an efficiency expert, but I think they go a little overboard with the belts and things.

Like any other process, it can be too easy to get caught up in the details – what exact shade of blue should be used and what quadrant of the logo should have gradients applied. These things can be important overall, sure, but I think a lot of Graphic Designers are overstating the importance of these details to satisfy their own inflated egos. The client’s desires are important, I’m not denying that, but a designer insisting that each project requires delving into their client’s every rationale for being in business strikes me as padding the account hours.

Maybe it’s because I’m first and foremost a writer, but the way I approach things is to determine overall impact first – what reaction do you want? – then break it down into its component parts. Sometimes a picture first, then a headline; sometimes the opposite. It seems easier to me to work backwards from the desired result to the components you have to build with. On the other hand, I may think that way because I learned early on how to rationalize and justify decisions in the face of critical design panels.

The map is not the territory. Except when it’s expected to be.

Remember that.

And if you can find them

Kitten is involved with the Upward program at our church. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s part of the church’s community outreach program, where they sponsor sports leagues for the kids. When we went in for orientation, the organizer explained they were not going to keep score this year, since out of all the complaints they’ve received over the years, 50% were from parents, and 100% of those were about unfavorable scoring “mistakes.” That’s probably a good decision, as I’ve seen several parents storming out of the bleachers to have a word with the coaches – angry gesturing and pouting included. They’re 3rd and 4th graders, people, not the Globetrotters. If the coach lets some traveling or double-dribbling slide, it’s because it just isn’t that important in the face of the lessons on teamwork and good sportsmanship. On the other hand, I did see one kid that had one of the few ref calls go against him. He slammed the ball down to show how pissed off he was, and his mom teleported onto the court to smack his butt and make him apologize to the ref. I bet that sticks with him longer than having Mommy bawl out the coach on his behalf.

I’m finding that the crappy economy can be a bargain-hunter’s dream if you’re willing to put in a little work and have at least a minimal income. As a for-instance, a local video store is going out of business, so we were able to pick up seven DVDs – including two newly-released titles – for a little more than the cost of one new one. I’m hoping the local office supply store will tank so I can pick up a bunch of whiteboards. I like to brainstorm on them: storyboards, plot arcs, a list of supplies to survive the coming zombie apocalypse. You know…stuff.

Speaking of minimal incomes, I was speaking with a former Marketing femme I know (formerly in Marketing, still a femme), and she clued me into the enormous earning potential of doing corporate logos. I did some research, and it’s not unusual for these things to cost $1000-$3000. Figure it takes you 10 hours total to dash out a few choices, wrangle the VPs into agreeing on one, and finishing touches. If you get the max on that, you’re making the equivalent of $624,000 a year. Guess which cat is hitting the Graphic Design section at Amazon this week (for someone that excels at visual thinking, I have the GD skills of a sea sponge).

I have several friends that are also unemployed, and we’ve all said at one point or another “We should start a company together.” The problem is that, while we are all very skilled in our chosen areas and would make a great A-Team for someone, our collective brain trust lacks a unifying corporate focus. If we could find one person with the capital and credulity to hire us all, that would be awesome.

I want to be Murdock.

Okay...I'm kinda creeped out

It's really unnerving watching it scramble for balance. I half-expected it to attack the guy that pushed it.

And because I am a geek...how long before we get to this point?

Nigger? Please.

Time to update schools' reading lists
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/394832_nword06.html

By JOHN FOLEY

GUEST COLUMNIST

John Foley of Vancouver is an English teacher at Ridgefield High School in southern Washington.

The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms. Barack Obama is president of the United States, and novels that use the "N-word" repeatedly need to go.

Oh dear god. Is there nothing more important to worry about? Try addressing the fact that your students don't know how to use their native language correctly, and possess zero comprehension skills. Are novels that use ‘myopic, self-important, censorious jackass’ still okay?

To a certain extent, this saddens me, because I love "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Of Mice and Men" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." All are American classics, and my students read them as part of approved sophomore and junior units, as do millions of students across the nation.

His students were born about 1992. Remember that.

They all must go.

I hope they go to private and public libraries and remain in high school classrooms. I would keep copies in my own classroom and encourage students to read them. But they don't belong on the curriculum. Not anymore. Those books are old, and we're ready for new.

What year would be a good cutoff date, perfesser? To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. Maybe you could teach your classes from Oprah’s reading lists. They’re current.

Even if Huck Finn didn't contain the N-word and demeaning stereotypes, it would remain a tough sell to students accustomed to fast-paced everything. The novel meanders along slower than the Mississippi River and uses a Southern dialect every bit as challenging as Shakespeare's Old English.

Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English (sometimes called Elizabethan English), which has about 300 years of language evolution on Old English. What class do you teach again?

Explaining that Twain wasn't a racist -- or at least didn't hate African-Americans (he had a well-documented prejudice against Native Americans) -- is a daunting challenge. I explain that Jim, a black man, is the hero of the book. I tell them Huck eventually sees the error of his ways, apologizes to Jim and commits himself to helping him escape slavery. Yes, I tell them, he does all this while continuing to refer to Jim by the demeaning word, but Twain was merely being realistic.

Many students just hear the N-word. This is particularly true, of course, of African-American students. I have not taught Huck Finn in a predominantly black classroom, and I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do so effectively. With few exceptions, all the black students in my classes over the years have appeared very uncomfortable when I've discussed these matters at the beginning of the unit. And I never want to rationalize Huck Finn to an angry African-American mom again as long as I breathe.

So sorry that it falls to you to explain how these books are actually anti-racist. Teaching can be tough. Suck it up or retire.

John Steinbeck's "Mice" and Harper Lee's "Mockingbird" don't belong on the curriculum, either. Atticus Finch, the heroic attorney in Lee's novel, tells his daughter not to use the N-word because it's "common." That might've been an enlightened attitude for a Southerner during the Great Depression, but is hopelessly dated now.

I cannot believe a teacher who is supposed to build on the foundations of literature going back thousands of years just used the expression “hopelessly dated.” And which part is hopelessly dated? The use of “common” to mean “lowborn or base”, or holding the attitude that we shouldn’t use the word?

What books should replace these classics? The easiest call is for "Mockingbird." David Guterson's fine "Snow Falling on Cedars" has similar themes and many parallels, and since the novel is set in the San Juan Islands, it would hold more interest for Washington students than the Alabama setting of Lee's novel.

Setting aside the stupidity of determining curriculum by geographic location, don’t you think the phrase “that fucking goddamn lap bitch” [page 251] might be at least as objectionable as “nigger” to some? Does Obama approve of lap dancing?

I think a good substitute for "Mice" would be Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel "Going After Cacciato."

“Nigger,” Oscar said. The boy lit up. “Nigger!” the boy said. [page 113]

Like George and Lennie in Steinbeck's novel, Cacciato dreams of peace and a better world. And the Vietnam War is a more recent -- and arguably more painful -- era in American history than the Depression, and one of more interest to teens.

What is it with Liberals and the fucking Vietnam War?

Technically, America got involved in the Vietnam conflict in 1950, ten years before To Kill a Mockingbird was published. Don’t you think that’s a little…old…perfessor? Your students weren’t even born until 17 years after the war ended. It has exactly as much relevance to them as the Great Depression.

"Huck Finn" is the toughest book to replace; it's so utterly original. The best choice, in my view, would be Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Like Huck, "Dove" involves an epic journey of discovery and loss and addresses an important social issue -- the terrible treatment of women in the Old West. That issue does not rank as high as slavery on our national list of shame, but it definitely makes the list.

“Niggers eat turtles”’ “have a nigger bring you buttermilk”, “I’ve went with a nigger”, “The news about the nigger”, “a bad nigger they ride with”, “I think I hit the nigger”, “Don’t you tie me, nigger boy”, Nigger boy, don’t you get near me”, “and this nigger boy, too”, “you’ve got a nigger for a scout”, “Leave me that nigger”, “They’re just red niggers, anyway”, “Soupy Jones and Bert Borum, who didn’t feel it appropriate for white men to talk much to niggers, exchanged the view that nevertheless this one had been uncommonly decent.” [Lonesome Dove]

Some might call this apostasy; I call it common sense. Obama's victory signals that Americans are ready for change. Let's follow his lead and make a change that removes the N-word from the high school curriculum.

Yeah, John. You’re off to a great start with your suggestions.

When it rains, it pours.

Mayor Bloomberg Declares War On ... Salt

Hizzoner Calls On U.S. Manufacturers To Reduce Salt Content Until It Results In A 50 Percent Cut In 10 Years

Singer Jimmy Buffett will never find his "lost shaker of salt" in New York City or any other place in the country if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way. The mayor is waging a war on salt and he wants food manufacturers and restaurants to join his army … or else…

Thomas Frieden, the city's health commissioner, said he wants manufacturers and restaurants to join the war on salt voluntarily. If they don't, the city could pass legislation making it the law.

http://wcbstv.com/politics/bloomberg.war.on.2.920343.html


Yo, man, where y’all goin’? Y’all goin’ in that restaurant over there? Huh? Y’all got a reservation…or one a them uh…‘Call Ahead’ numbers or somethin’?

Hey…lissen…y’all got any spice?

Now y’all ain’t a cop or anything, huh? Naw…y’all ain’t no cop. No cop ever wore $500 shoes like them there. Pretty lady on the arm, too. How y’all doin’, Miss? Alright. Yeah, that’s good.

Now look here, y’all…a fancy couple deserve the finer things in life, dig? ‘specially when y’all be eatin’ in one a them upper class places here on the Ave. What y’all need is somethin’ that ain’t on the menu, right? A little party flavor? So look here…I can let y’all have some reg’lar NaCl for an even ten, right? Just wait ‘til the gar-sawn turn his back, and sprinkle it on y’all’s salad. We’re talkin’ big-time taste, yeah? An’ look here…a little more’ll getcha the fancy stuff, if y’all think y’all can handle it. Check it…I got Cypress Flake if y’all havin’ seafood, Himalayan – course and fine, I even got Alaea Hawaiian if y’all gettin’ somethin’ off the grill.

What’s that? You want Fleur De Sel de Camargue? Well well well. It sure is nice to meet a man what knows his salt. Y’all know that shit’s expensive, yeah? On account a it bein’ imported? Yeah… y’all know. Well y’all just got lucky, cuz I’m the only shaker this side the park what carries that shit. Y’all got the cash, I got the crystals. Y’all know what I’m sayin’? Let’s step over here out the way and see what kind a business we can work.

Chaucer, it ain't.

Dallas City Council approves $165,674 expenditure to hire new smoking law enforcers

On the heels of passing a sweeping municipal smoking ordinance expansion last month, the Dallas City Council this morning voted to spend $165,674 in contingency reserve funds to hire new smoking law enforcers.

The expenditure is necessary, City Manager Mary Suhm said, in order to adequately address complaints about smoking occurring within buildings such as bars, billiard halls and most other indoor workplaces. Smoking in such venues becomes illegal come April 10. The expenditure funds three new "sanitarian" positions in the Environmental and Health Services Department.

http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/dallas-city-council-approves-1.html


It was all Tony’s fault.

We were at Michael’s house, like most every Friday night. His parents worked nights at the Bureau of Health, checking the menus of the area restaurants against shipping manifests to make sure they were in compliance with the various Meat-Consumption Reduction laws, so we had the place to ourselves.

We were in the basement. Michael and I were in the “lab” we’d built in one corner. Tony was keeping one eye on the security monitors and the other on the antique pinball machine he was playing. Eric was at the desk, patiently manipulating higher-order algorithms to manufacture realistic-looking “results” from our “experiment.”

Looking back, I can’t believe we got away with it for so long. A handful of bored high-school students against the all-seeing eye of the government? Yeah, you laugh now, but at the time, we thought we were oh-so clever.

Back then, every citizen enrolled in the Governmental schools had to complete a series of courses in Earth Stewardship and Cultural Sensitivity, among others. If you didn’t complete these courses, you wouldn’t be likely to get a job. When three out of every five people worked for a Governmental Agency, it was an incentive to pass the courses. Of course, if you didn’t want to work, that was your right, too, and there was a multitude of Governmental Assistance programs – each with it’s own office, staff, mission statement, and bloated budget – available to help you.

As long as you passed the courses.

It was Eric that first suggested the plan to me, and once he convinced me, I talked it up to the others. We went to our Earth Stewardship professor and told him we wanted to prove the connection between carbon dioxide and Global Warming. It didn’t matter that huge Governmental Agencies with a thousand times the manpower and infinite access to money and equipment hadn’t yet managed to do it, he admired our pluck and Yes We Can! attitudes, so helped us with the environmental permits we needed in order to purchase old-fashioned filament light bulbs, real wood, and a small gas generator. He even allowed us to clone his gas ration card so we’d have the juice to run everything, and made suggestions on which hockey-stick graphs were easiest to produce. He even got us an Educational Exception permit for ordering the seeds from the Governmental germplasm warehouse.

We’d specified balsam fir seeds when we presented the plan to our professor, but Eric ran the permit chips through his home-built (and highly illegal) off-the-network computer and converted them.

When the package came, we couldn’t believe we had gotten away with it. Inside the recycled cardboard box was a plain brown envelope. Within that, the seeds of our own destruction.

Tobacco.

We were all heavy smokers, sometimes having as many as three in a week. We had our network of suppliers, people who maintained a plant or two hidden in abandoned talk radio stations or burnt-out libraries. Not only was it a very expensive habit, it was getting more and more difficult to find a place we could smoke in peace. Especially after the city developed the Sanitarian Corp.

The Sanitarians’ mission is to patrol the city and write up Health Code infractions. Like their counterparts in other Governmental Law Enforcement Agencies, the majority of their operating budget comes from the fines they impose. Whenever they need more money, the State creates more laws. Even if the old prison system hadn’t been converted into a Governmental Counseling Group, there was no way they’d be able to hold all of the criminals these new laws create, so the punishments are always fines.

Then, smoking in public was a $10,000 first-offense, with attendant Addiction Counseling. Even smoking in your own home required a permit, the agreement of your neighbors, and annual Interior Environmental checks. The number of places you could smoke in the city had dwindled to about a dozen small lots scattered around the perimeter. The public transport didn’t even get out that far; you had to walk the last mile or so – not something smokers were likely to do if they could help it.

So our brilliant idea was not only to grow our own tobacco, but set up a place in Michael’s basement where we could smoke in peace, using the “experiment” to cloak our criminal behavior.

On that particular Friday night, I had just lit up one of my eco-specials, a cigarette made out of one small leaf rolled into a loose tube. It had no paper, which meant no trees were harmed, and had no filter, which meant no wads of cotton would blight the landscape. I didn’t expect to get one of the monthly Green Citizen Awards, however.

I was just settling back against the cushion under the exhaust vent when Tony burst in.

“Sanitarians, Davey!”

I jumped up, frantically burying the cig in the can of baking powder we kept to mask the smell of old tobacco, while Tony misted a little ammonia into the air. The Sanitarians sometimes use dogs. I joined Eric and Michael at the monitors, watching as the doors on the black vans slid open, disgorging body-armored agents.

Michael looked pale, even in the glow of the full-color HD monitors. His parents were going to kill him, once they found a new place to live, that is. Depending on the size of your garden, the Sanitarians have license to seize your home; a practice entrenched by the decades-long War on Drugs. Even though we never sold any of our yield, they could have still charged Michael with distribution since the rest of us didn’t live there.

“How did they find out? How did they find out?” Michael chanted over and over. A mantra to try and block out the reality of what was happening.

“Maybe one of your neighbors smelled it,” Eric said. “Doesn’t matter. They’re here, now.”

“Think they’ll believe it’s just a GW experiment?” I mused.

“Not if they ask for the original permit chips,” Eric said. “They’ll find where I wiped them.”

“Then we may as well go all the way,” Tony said from the corner. We looked over to see that he was now holding two pistols.

We were in shock. Up to this point, we were in deep shit, yes, but nothing we wouldn’t eventually recover from. Some counseling, some fines, some Community Service. A lawyer that was devious enough could probably even stop the seizure of the house.

The guns changed all that.

Once an illegal weapon is brought in, all bets are off. The Sanitarians, just like the other Enforcers, are authorized to use extreme prejudice under the Retroactive Abortion Act. It’s reasoned that any citizen that circumvents the multitude of laws against buying guns, owning guns, and carrying guns (not to mention all of the similar laws regulating ammunition), as well as resisting all of the psych profiles and conditioning built in to the system, is an incredibly dangerous individual who is beyond redemption, and shouldn’t have been allowed to be born to begin with.

“T-Tony?” Michael stammered. “What the fuck are you doing with those?”

I’ll always remember how tired Tony looked at that moment.

“I can’t take it anymore, guys,” he said matter-of-factly. “You can’t go anywhere without cameras following you. Every purchase is entered into a database. Every call is listened to. Every net search is snooped. All of our homework is analyzed, and all of our activities have to be approved. It drives me crazy, sometimes.”

“Tony,” I pleaded, “just put the guns down. Seriously, man, we’ll get through this as long as they don’t see those.”

He smiled. “Sorry, Davey. I’d rather not spend the rest of my life under the microscope. I want to be absolutely free for once.”

And with that, Tony ran up the basement steps and disappeared into the dark house. We jumped for the monitors, watching with growing alarm as it became evident that Tony had been spotted in a second-floor window. We didn’t have sound on the CCTV system, but we heard the faint reports of Tony’s guns. One of the Sanitarians suddenly clutched his arm and spun down to the ground. He was dragged away by those nearest him while others brought out a heavy tube. We didn’t know what was in it at first, but when it fired, the delicate circuits in our cameras died under the intensity of the glare.

Magnesium.

I don’t remember much about the rest of that night. There was only one way out of the basement, and none of us wanted to go out while the Sanitarians had their tempers up. By the time we smelled the smoke from the burning house, set alight by the magnesium flare, it was too late. It collapsed on us shortly thereafter.

Ironically, I survived because I’d cowered in the very lab that caused the whole thing. The irrigation system we’d rigged dropped enough water around me to partially put out the fire, though I still lost my legs when a joist fell across them. My three closest friends are dead, and I live with the guilt of knowing I had a part in convincing them to try and thwart the law.

I know you kids are thinking that I just give these speeches to you as part of my Community Service requirement, and that is how it started. But I fulfilled those hours long ago, and now I continue visiting groups like your Healthful Behavior Awareness class here to serve as a warning. Not just because the Sanitarians pay me a stipend, but because I’ve genuinely learned my lesson, and hope that you’ll avoid the same mistakes I made.

Thank you for listening.

Sharp Knees

Mrs. Cat and I were discussing some of the things I noted in yesterday’s post (see…I do have adult supervision), and she brought up a really interesting point. I raised the issue of women’s self-image problems, and we were discussing the role of the media in shaping what was considered “beautiful.” Her point was that whenever someone raised a stink about the unrealistic ideals as presented by the fashion industry, the media, or adult entertainment venues, everyone looks at it as being harmful to young girls’ self-image, and no one ever brings up the fact that young men are also being influenced.

What prompted her observation was the commentary on the HCwD website I linked to yesterday. As with most other sites, allowing anonymous comments tends to bring out the reptilian nature of people, and the males that were posting were either super-critical or totally misogynistic.

“Guys want big boobs,” she ranted, “but if a woman has them everyone rushes to dismiss them as fake. And if they are real, guys bitch about sagging when she gets older.”

I’ve long-held the view that men who leave their wives and families just because the woman’s gotten older are the worst kind of shallow, vapid, narcissistic assholes on the planet. These are the fuckers with the bald spot, the paunch, the sports car and the trophy wife. If you weren’t aware that your wife was going to change as she got older, what the hell are you doing claiming to be a responsible adult? My take is that the guy that dumps his wife to seek out one of these miracles of modern plastic has his own image problems. He hopes that people will focus on his woman, and overlook any glaring faults he may have in light of the fact that the gold-digger chooses to be with him.

I’m juggling stereotypes here, obviously. I’ve also seen posts that rag on comments from people that boorishly document why a certain gal or guy is not up to their standards. FARK.com is pretty good for that kind of snark, and someone usually posts a variation on ‘real women have curves’.

But where do guys get the idea that women will never change? From the same outlets that bombard the women. Ever notice there are very few actresses or models in their 40s and 50s? Most of the roles and campaigns focus on the ages of 16-36. After that, it skips to “kindly grandmother” type. There aren’t really that many older women that are held up as a standard of beauty – unless they look 10-15 years younger than they really are. These women spend hours in a makeup chair before being photographed in perfect lighting, and are digitally enhanced afterwards. The only exception that comes to mind is Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign.




Think about it, Hollywood oohed and aahed over Nicole Kidman in The Hours and Charlize Theron in Monster. Why? They didn’t wear makeup and deliberately made themselves ugly. That was considered to be brave of them. Val Kilmer and Robert DeNiro have both gotten press for changing their weight for roles, but nowhere near the amount of ink that the two glamorous women got. The unspoken question was “Weren’t you afraid you wouldn’t be able to go back?”

I would hope that guys would look at their own graying hair, spreading gut, and wrinkling skin, and realize that the female of the species will also go through similar changes. Yes, physical attractiveness is a necessary part of keeping the species going – Tom Robbins opined that “young girls are the biological equivalent of a ‘new car’ smell” – but it is not the alpha and omega. Once you get to the point where you’re echoing Wooderson from Dazed and Confused (“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”), you can probably assume you’re no longer offering a positive contribution to society on balance.

And I especially hope that in this age of Photoshop, guys would understand they can’t trust any picture to necessarily be an honest representation of a woman’s appearance.

No Tools Required

Mrs. Cat and I were surfing through Deep Cable last night, idly scanning to see if anything interesting was on (I’ll save you the suspense…no), and stumbled across two more examples of why our country is completely fucked.

First, we landed on Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, where a gentleman who majored in Speech and worked for Army Intelligence could not identify the preposition in a sentence, and did not know which organ produced insulin. Now, I would have assumed a Speech major would have been given at least a cursory breakdown of the parts of speech along with their Rhetoric courses, but apparently knowing the difference between a proper noun and a preposition was not given a high priority when he was matriculating. And while one could argue that only diabetics and the doctors that treat them need to know that the pancreas produces insulin, I would hope that if an order ever came down for the Army to storm the Isles of Langerhans, someone would say “Yeah…about that…”.

The second incident occurred on Tool Academy. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the show gathers together a number of men who apparently learned all they know about how to treat women by watching porn, and tries to reform them. Sort of a Guido/Playa version of My Fair Lady (for the visual learners) or Pygmalion (for the lit crowd). I would argue the mere existence of this show is another indicator of the coming collapse, but more specifically, the segment we subjected ourselves to had a female coach explaining to the guys about attitudes that women found desirable in a mate, and how this particular batch of testosterone junkies were lacking in these attributes. The exchange:

Coach: “You need to learn humility. Do you know what ‘humility’ means?”
Neanderthal: “Uh…humor?”

At this point, my brain ejected a goodly portion of my remaining IQ points in an effort to save enough memory to restore baseline bodily functions once the program had ended.

Hate to break it to you, Studly, but women do not want a guy that makes them laugh above all else, despite what Jessica Rabbit says. Oh, and humility does not mean humor, you ignorant troglodyte! Read a fucking book every once in a while! Your erstwhile mate might want the reassurance that you won’t be a bouncer for the rest of your life.


He makes me laugh. And he has a large…vocabulary.

I’ll admit to tapping into some residual high school nerd-rage, where the beautiful people hooked up irrespective of GPA, but I’m also decidedly Southern when it comes to how I treat women. Libbers hate it, but a sense of chivalry still exists in the South, and my mother would make a concerted effort to return from the Other Side and haunt me if I treated women the way some of these boys do.

And apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way, given the popularity of this site .

Yes, I know there are many self-esteem issues certain types of women work through (or don’t) by dating these slabs of flesh unsullied by anything resembling original thought. Mrs. Cat has a choice list of terms for those kinds of women, which I won’t repeat because of the aforementioned threat of maternal poltergeist activity.

Because I’m smarter than a fifth grader, don’cha know.

Commercially driven

The University of Chicago Press publishes the “Journal of Consumer Research,” and one of their latest articles claims that commercial interruptions actually enhance a viewer’s enjoyment of a show. It didn’t seem to matter about the length or nature of the interruption, but the interruption itself was crucial.

The central argument is that viewers adapt to the level of comedy, suspense, etc. in the program, and their enjoyment diminishes as a result. The commercials allow the viewer's adaptation to recede, so they can enjoy the program more thoroughly when it comes back on.

The précis of the study did allow that some people don’t “adapt” to the shows, and that some programs do not lead to adaptation, but that information was presented as the exception that proves the rule.

This blog will continue after a word from the Arachnid Gymnastics Team.



I’m too cheap/poor/apathetic to pay to unlock the entire article, but I would be interested in seeing some of the specifics of this study (like who paid for it, for one). The only show that was mentioned specifically was Taxi, where one group was shown an episode with commercials, and another group shown the same episode without them. I don’t know how they measured “enjoyment,” but the group that had commercial breaks showed more enjoyment by a wide margin. I’m sure the researchers controlled for the idea that these people hated Taxi, so anything that interrupted it was welcome.

See, here’s the thing: television programs are written specifically to be interrupted every so often. There are many books on writing for television, and most of them advise the writer on how to structure their episode to make sure the audience comes back after the commercials. This usually involves a mini cliffhanger in dramas, or a setup for a wacky misunderstanding in comedies. Watching these programs without the interruptions throws off the rhythm of the show. I know, because I watch most television shows online or on DVD, and that rapid fade out/fade in is jarring.

We’ll be right back.



I remember when Fringe first aired, it was presented commercial-free, and the writers structured their stories to unfold more organically, rather than in discrete chunks. I’ve stopped watching it, so I don’t know if this is still the case, but the writing for films is structured the same way, and audiences manage to stay entertained throughout the entire two hours (depending on the quality of the film, of course). I’m sure that when watching a movie on a cable channel, you’ve been irritated when a commercial cut in at a seemingly random point – in the middle of an action scene, for example, or a conversation between the two leads. That’s because the movie wasn’t written for these breaks, and they have to get shoehorned in for the sponsors. I especially hate it when they break right before the film ends, so there’s three to four minutes of commercials, then about forty-five seconds of the movie when you get back.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, right after this message from Benny Lava.



So though I’m sure they got some interesting, verifiable results, I think the structure of the script has more to do with it than anything else.

I’d like to thank the Academy

Now I have a free evening – February 22nd.

See, I won’t be tuning in to see the Oscars this year because 1) the speeches always go on way too long, 2) there are only about ten awards that the viewing public gives a rat’s ass about, so the rest of the show is annoying filler, and 3) the Academy members are all pretentious douchebags.

What’s the point of making a movie? To entertain? Nay, my innocent friend. Oh that may be the stated goal – to put a smile on the faces of all the children – but you can bet your buttered popcorn those studios are in it for the money, and only the money. They leave the happiness hokum to the PR flacks and the Marketing shills.

So Hollywood turns out huge, action-loaded special effects bonanzas in the summer to get the money they need to finance the rom-coms, period pieces, and dramas they foist on us the rest of the year, then completely ignore those popular films during Awards time.

It’s total bullshit.

Look at this year’s nominees for Best Picture:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire.

How many of you have seen The Reader? How many of you have even heard of The Reader?

Taken all together, these five movies cost $247 million to make, and as of today, have only earned a combined total of $184,598,493 – a loss of $62,401,507.

By contrast, The Dark Knight cost $185 million to make, and is the second highest-grossing film of all time, earning $531,037,655 – almost a 300% return. But of course, it wasn’t an “important” film, so no Best Picture nomination was forthcoming. Oh they might give Heath Ledger Best Supporting Actor because he died, but had he lived, you know he wouldn’t have been nominated.

I checked the earnings of the Best Picture winners for the last fifteen years, and none of them lost money. If the Academy wants to continue that trend, then it’s really between Milk and Slumdog Millionaire, since they’re the only two nominees that have made a profit. It will come down to whether the Academy members feel they should pander to the gay community or the “poor Indians” this year. Since they slobbered all over Brokeback Mountain a couple of years ago, I’m betting they’ll give the statue to Slumdog. Interestingly, if you read the reviews of Slumdog at IMDB, you’ll find that Western audiences overwhelmingly love it – it “touched” them – while audiences in India and other Asian nations generally don’t like it, complaining about the stereotypes as presented by its Western director.

But people’s reactions don’t mean anything to the studios (otherwise, why would they greenlight a Karate Kid remake?) They want you to give them your money, eat your Mike & Ikes, and shut the hell up. It doesn’t matter how much you liked Death Race, they’ll tell you which movies were really important on Oscar night. I’ll save myself the time and ignore it completely. If I wanted to watch a four-hour self-congratulatory smarmy circle jerk, I’d turn on C-Span.

What right do you have?

Like the majority of parents, we have a number of DVDs that the kids thoroughly love, but threaten to send us into spasms of twitching and drooling, followed by diabetic comas. My particular kryptonite is the Kidsongs series. The setup is that a plucky, pan-ethnic group of “adorable” kids descend on a television studio, asking to be allowed to put on their own show. Sort of a modern version of “We’ll put the play on right here in the barn!” Not happy with the amount of sap per serving, the producers added in two magical furry critters that interact with the kids and provide marketing tie-in opportunities.

I keep one of these discs with me at all times in case I accidentally ingest something poisonous.

As with every other video production, each dreadful DVD in this series is preceded by an overly-stern Copyright Protection notice. It admonishes that the disc is licensed for home use only, then advises us that the definition of home excludes clubs, churches, schools, oil rigs and prisons.

I understand why you’d maybe want to keep these discs out of prisons, but I kind of doubt the crew of Baltic rig No. 72B is shattered that they can’t watch badly-choreographed music videos of popular songs as performed by pre-teens.

At what point does the right of the consumer to control the products they’ve purchased outweigh the right of the producers to receive fair market value? That’s the question underlying the fight against the RIAA’s efforts to squeeze every last blood-soaked penny out of the people that would occasionally like to buy a piece of music that can be played on every medium they own without compatibility issues or anti-piracy safeguards locking them out.

If I want to buy a song, the RIAA would prefer that I pay for each version separately – a cda version for disc, an mp3 version for my portable, and a version that would play on my computer. Each of these versions would be engineered so I couldn’t copy them, and each would have its own license tied in to my players so they couldn’t run on someone else’s systems.

However, I don’t want to pay for each song three times. Once I’ve purchased it, I want to be able to put that song wherever I may want to listen to it. Technically, according to the RIAA, playing a disc I’ve purchased in the car when I have passengers breaches their copyright unless my passengers have also purchased their own copies of the disc. At that point, technically, the RIAA can kiss my ass.

As much as I geek on Hardware/Human interfaces, I fear that the first neural shunt will allow the RIAA to inventory the songs I carry in my head and charge me accordingly.

At a different spot on the rights spectrum is the Disclaimer. Unfortunately, our society has gotten so litigious, manufacturers and distributors have been reduced to putting obvious-to the-point-of-absurdity disclaimers on their products. That’s why we end up with warnings like “Not for internal use” on curling irons, and “Caution: Product is flammable” on matchboxes.

Then there are the folks that go so overboard, you can’t help but admire their total unwillingness to accept any responsibility whatsoever, as with the folks at Nelson Rocks Preserve (who I am sure have had to deal with many tourists complaining about these very things):

WARNING

Nature is unpredictable and unsafe. Mountains are dangerous. Many books have been written about these dangers, and there's no way we can list them all here. Read the books…

[lots of other funny stuff here]

By entering the Preserve, you are agreeing that we owe you no duty of care or any other duty. We promise you nothing. We do not and will not even try to keep the premises safe for any purpose. The premises are not safe for any purpose. This is no joke. We won't even try to warn you about any dangerous or hazardous condition, whether we know about it or not. If we do decide to warn you about something, that doesn't mean we will try to warn you about anything else. If we do make an effort to fix an unsafe condition, we may not try to correct any others, and we may make matters worse! We and our employees or agents may do things that are unwise and dangerous. Sorry, we're not responsible. We may give you bad advice. Don't listen to us. In short, ENTER AND USE THE PRESERVE AT YOUR OWN RISK. And have fun!

It is well worth going to http://www.nelsonrocks.org/disclaimer.html and reading the whole thing.

And one of my favorite e-mail disclaimers:

IMPORTANT: This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) named above and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this email, although the yorkshire terrier next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you. Those of you with an over whelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft: However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and eggwhites and place it in a warm oven for 40 minutes. Whisk briefly and let it stand for 2 hours before icing.

Something happened. Somewhere. Once.

For all you would-be Woodwards and wanna-be Bernsteins out there, here’s a quick lesson: J-schools emphasize the “5 Ws, 1 H” rule. That’s who, what, when, where, how, and why. Every story should include this information. The following story, though technically following the rule, is still a piece of crap.

Man confesses to sending strange text to UF students and staff

“Gainesville, Florida -- University of Florida officials said a man has confessed to sending a mysterious message through the school's emergency text message system.

UF spokesman Steve Orlando told The Gainesville Sun that the man, a former employee of the university's text messaging service, told investigators the message was sent by accident.

Thousands of current and former faculty, staff and students received a text message reading "The monkey got out of the cage" Tuesday night.

Orlando said it does not appear that university data was compromised.

Authorities are investigating the incident. The university said officials are working to determine which agency has jurisdiction [over] the case.”

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/watercooler/story.aspx?storyid=98673&catid=58



What a fluffy piece of non-committal journalism. Who is the man? Have authorities declined to release his name? If so, say it. Otherwise, you look lazy. Oh. He’s a former employee? Why former? Was he fired or did he quit? For what reason? Again, if no data is forthcoming from the spokespeople, at least let us know you made the damn effort.

An accidental message that apparently compromised no data. So why are authorities still investigating? Why even bother with jurisdiction if it’s as open and shut as you make it out to be? There’s a big difference between

“Whoops! Sorry, guys. I was replying to some personal messages before I left and accidentally sent that one out across the entire system.”

and

“Fire me, will you? I’ll show you. I’ll send this strange message out and make people panic, thereby costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted man-hours while you try to figure out what it means. Ha!”

Ask. The. Questions.

I remember when Dan Rather and other “professional” journalists dismissed bloggers as “amateurs in their pajamas.” How ironic that these same news outlets, in their rush to compete with the blogosphere, are now pumping out stories that are little more than grapevine gossip.

I have a Bacon Rating of 2, and other short observations

My LinkedIn profile is separated from Kevin Bacon’s by only one shared contact. I am so much cooler than I thought.

Did you know there are entire catalogs for salt? Did you know that some salt is ridiculously expensive?

More people watched American Idol yesterday than watched the Inauguration. That explains a lot.

USA Today has an article today about washing your hands. This apparently qualifies as news to the hopefully-soon-to-be-bankrupt paper.

The movie Fireproof cost about $500,000 to make, and has earned more than $33 million. A 6600% return on investment isn’t too shabby. That’s better than Exxon.

Former French president Jacques Chirac was rushed to a hospital after being mauled by his own 'clinically depressed' pet poodle. The upcoming jokes probably won’t help the dog’s disposition. Or France’s.

Canada is concerned that compact fluorescent bulbs emit harmful UV radiation. Once again, differing alarmist ideologies clash. Who will win this round: the save-Nature-at-all-costs camp or the save-people-from-themselves team?

What is it with Obama and ignorant pastors?

After a brief reading from Rabbi David N. Saperstein and a solo singing performance by Yolanda Adams, Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell – Pres. George Bush’s spiritual advisor – introduced the keynote speaker: Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Jakes read from Daniel 3:19 and used the scripture to offer PEOTUS a series of four lessons for his administration…

After his four lessons, Jakes turned from the crowd and looked directly at Obama.

“The problems are mighty and the solutions are not simple,” Jakes said, “and everywhere you turn there will be a critic waiting to attack every decision that you make. But you are all fired up, Sir, and you are ready to go. And this nation goes with you. God goes with you.

“I say to you as my son who is here today, my 14-year-old son – he probably would not quote scripture. He probably would use Star Trek instead, and so I say,

‘May the force be with you.’”

::facepalm::

Momentous, Indeed

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and, appropriately enough, we are on the eve of a historic Inaugural celebration. There are so many topics these events bring to mind – the Civil Rights movement, the paths of Politics, the fact that Inaugural planners have only allocated 5,000 “Porta-Potties” for a crowd of 2-5 million, even the process by which certain days are declared to be holidays. Considering all of that, I chose today to write about badly-designed packaging.

If you eat food, you’ve probably been to a grocery store lately. You may have noticed the packages with the built-in zip-lock closures. Hot dogs, sliced cheeses, frozen foods, a lot of bulk foods that are expected to last beyond a couple of servings – they all seem to have the handy little feature on their brightly-colored plastic wrappings.

For the most part, these closures work just as they’re supposed to, keeping the food fresher than just clipping the ends of the package together, without the added expense of decanting the food into a separate bag.

However…

We make a run to the warehouse store every so often to stock up on staples. Great big jars of peanut butter, huge boxes of cereal, slabs of meat for the freezer…stuff like that. We went just before the holidays to get all of the baking ammunition Mrs. Cat was going to need and picked up, among other things, a big ol’ bag of brown sugar.

This bag of brown sugar has one of the handy-dandy zip-lock closures on it, and I’m pretty sure no one at the factory has ever used their own product. Because if they had, they would have realized that once the zippy thing has been opened, it can never be closed again. Here’s why: the closure, rather than being at the top of the bag like you’d expect, is one-third of the way down the front of the bag. What happens is that when you grab the bag at the top – as is natural when carrying larger bags – the weight of the sugar is enough to pull the zippy thing apart. Plus, whenever you try to scoop sugar out, the stiff plastic of the zippy thing keeps drawing the bag closed again, so it scrapes across your sugar transport mechanism (spoon, cup, etc.), and the concave part of the zippy thing fills with sugar crystals, which means it can’t grip the convex part securely anymore.

I don’t want to repackage all of the sugar because it would take many large zip-lock bags, which would annoy me, so I just bitch every time Mrs. Cat needs to bake something, because I know I’ll be battling the zippy thing again (it’s on an upper shelf she can’t reach).

It’s the absolutely stupidest bag design I’ve ever seen, and I’ve complained about it enough that Mrs. Cat actually threatened me with a meat thermometer if I didn’t stop. This is the last time I’ll say anything about it, Dear. You can put that back in the gadgets drawer.

Probe your customers; it brings them back

I mentioned recently that I had cancelled the home delivery of my paper. I spoke to two people at the paper when I called, and of course they asked why I was cancelling. I told them I didn’t think I was getting my money’s worth, and they accepted that answer.

But that’s where it stopped.

If I were running the paper, I’d make sure there were some follow-up questions. Had they gone a little deeper, they would have found out:

• I didn’t care about their national and world coverage, which I get online.
• Filling the “Area” section of the paper with stories about every single high school team in the county does not constitute area news (that’s why there’s a separate “Sports” section).
• The coupons they distributed were largely useless to my family’s demographics.
• If they were going to rely on the New York Times’ wire service to provide their articles, they should have borrowed their crossword, too.
• Their editing was atrocious.

Even if they didn’t do anything about it immediately, they’d have a lot more information at their disposal when it came time to reformat. Presumably, someone could then contact all of the people who had cancelled and let them know of the changes in hopes of getting them back.

And don’t even get me started on their clunky, user-unfriendly, hey-I-took-an-online-Dreamweaver-class web site. It’s just an electronic version of the regular paper, but even more poorly edited. If they were serious about keeping readers, they should offer us tailored newsfeeds. Give us a list of the features they offer and let us select the ones we want to see. Set it up like a Google homepage. I sign in to my account, and get the real area news (no sports), the “Opinion” section, maybe some Classifieds. Set up an RSS feed for weather changes, school closings, etc. They do offer a section for people to blog, post photos, etc., so on some level, they recognize the importance of involvement from their readers. They should take it a step further and host Town Hall-style e-meetings. Get a local councilman, City Planner or business owner on to field questions; tie into the local college and have some online lectures; get with the Arts council and have an electronic gallery opening.

I’m not holding my breath.

I think the real problem may be lethargy. When you’ve been the only option for so long, you tend to coast, which leads to entrenchment, which leads to apathy. I did tech support for five years, so I know of what I speak. Plus, customers are annoying, so who cares what they want?

The accountants, that’s who.

By way of contrast, when we had our house rewired, the electrical company called to remind us of appointments, confirmed arrival times, did several walkthroughs with us during the process, and called after the job was completed for a satisfaction survey. Would I recommend them? Hell, yes. My paper? Not so much.

Oh, speaking of entrenched thinking: I ordered fish and chips for lunch today, and the waitress asked if I wanted fries with it. Huh?

This post should be censored

“TORONTO — A Toronto parent says if students repeated some of the words from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” in the school halls, they’d be suspended, so he questions why it is OK in the classroom.”

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2009/01/15/8040186.html

Another day, another parent freaking out over a book. People like this make my head hurt. You can’t keep your little snowflakes bubble-wrapped, you know; they need to be exposed to contrary ideas to learn how to handle them. Your argument can be flipped to say: "If students fought each other with swords the way the characters do in Treasure Island, they'd be suspended. So why is it OK in the classroom?" It's ridiculous. If you're that worried about a book warping your child's worldview, you haven't adequately done your job as a parent.

“Age-appropriate” is a sliding scale, differing from child to child, but the book Edwards is concerned about was assigned to the Senior class. The kid is 17. You don’t think the kid hears (and probably says) worse in the halls already? Presenting the book for study is not the same as encouraging the behavior. There are already punishments in place for students caught cursing in the halls. Suspension is the deterrent, not yanking the books out of the students' hands.

“Edwards filed a formal compliant [sic] with the Toronto District School Board last month, arguing that while the futuristic theme of the book is acceptable, its focus on ‘sex, brutal situations, murder, prostitution’ is not.”

So glad the Science Fiction community has Edwards’ approval, unfortunately, the works of Shakespeare, the Greek tragedies (and some of the comedies, like “Lysistrata”), Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Bible, Catcher in the Rye, a lot of Twain, Les Miserables, Dickens’ stuff, Catch-22, Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Don Quixote, Lord of the Flies, Vanity Fair, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, The Art of War, The Lottery, The Most Dangerous Game, The Prince, and the poem Dulce Et Decorum Est will all have to be scrapped. [And that’s just from scanning the bookshelf closest to me.]

"After Edwards complained, his son was assigned another book, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and will step out of class during any discussions on “The Handmaid’s Tale".”

Yeah, because that won't be awkward for the kid. You know how a lot of kids rebel against their parents' values when they go away to college? I bet this boy is thinking: "Man...when I get to college...I'm gonna...gonna...discuss literature! That'll show 'em!"

I wonder if Mr. Edwards will complain when the school’s reading assignments consist of nothing but the Encyclopedia Brown series and “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.

Is this what they mean by change?

AP story, January 13, 2004:

President Bush’s second inauguration will cost tens of millions of dollars — $40 million alone in private donations for the balls, parade and other invitation-only parties. With that kind of money, what could you buy?

■ 200 armored Humvees with the best armor for troops in Iraq.

■ Vaccinations and preventive health care for 22 million children in regions devastated by the tsunami.

■ A down payment on the nation’s deficit, which hit a record-breaking $412 billion last year....

The questions have come from Bush supporters and opponents: Do we need to spend this money on what seems so extravagant?



AP story, January 14, 2009:
(concerning the upcoming $45 million+ inauguration)

So you're attending an inaugural ball saluting the historic election of Barack Obama in the worst economic climate in three generations. Can you get away with glitzing it up and still be appropriate, not to mention comfortable and financially viable?

To quote the man of the hour: Yes, you can. Veteran ballgoers say you should. And fashionistas insist that you must.

"This is a time to celebrate. This is a great moment. Do not dress down. Do not wear the Washington uniform," said Tim Gunn, a native Washingtonian and Chief Creative Officer at Liz Claiborne, Inc.

"Just because the economy is in a downturn, it doesn't mean that style is going to be in a downturn," agreed Ken Downing, fashion director for Neiman Marcus.
And if anyone does raise an eyebrow at those sequins, remind them that optimism is good for times like these. "Just say you're doing it to help the economy," chuckled good manners guru Letitia Baldridge.