Goodbye to Lonely Street

Jane Galt offers us the ethics question of the day:

You are a worker in a hospital. An unidentified patient dies on your ward. In his pocket are two tickets for a sold-out concert for two hours hence. You are pretty sure he isn't going to be identified in time to use the tickets. Would you take them? And if not, why not?

Speaking for me personally, 99.9% of the time, I wouldn't take them. If, however, the tickets were to the Steely Dan Heavy Rollers Tour 2007, well, since the dude had such good taste, it would be a shame to let them go to waste.

Right?

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

Lileks on bad luck:

Gnat explained to me today that if she did poorly on the spelling test, it might be the fault of Friday the Thirteenth. All the kids are abuzz about it, because it’s Bad Luck.

There’s no such thing as bad luck, I said.

Uh huh there is.

No. There’s no such thing. If something doesn’t work out, or something bad happens, it’s not because of bad luck. It’s because of something real. Luck is an excuse.

Well Faith said –

I don’t care. Do you really think tomorrow is bad luck?

Maybe.

Then we’d better not go to the pizza store, because the ceiling could fall! Or they could put snail feet in the sauce!

Dad.

And we’d better not get on the bus, because it could be attacked by buzzards. That would be bad luck.

Dad.

And we’d better not study for the spelling test, because we might poke our eye out with a pencil. Bad luck!

DAD.

Well, you see what I mean.

Yeah.

So what do I mean?

There’s no such thing as luck, she said, disappointed.

That’s right. Because it’s up to you. You make your own luck. I know it’s hard to give up thinking about good luck, but that means you don’t have to worry about bad luck.

She brightened. This was good news.

So let’s study the spelling words!
And that was the bad news, I guess.

Hot Licks and Rhetoric

So let me get this straight: If I assault you because of your race, creed, gender or sexual orientation, it's somehow worse than if I assault you just for kicks?

Noun Good; Adjective Bad

Apparently, certain nouns are okay to use, as long as you don't precede them with certain adjectives.

I'm not sure I understand that logic.

Update: I'm not sure I want to buy one of these, either.

Everyone's Gone to the Movies

Watched Near Dark this afternoon for the first time. It's not bad. Pretty stylish but not what I would call scary. Most of it follows traditional vampire lore - except for the part about blood transfusions making you human again. And Adrian Pasdar's becoming a vampire about thirty seconds after being bitten. I guess they wanted to make sure the movie didn't run too long.

It was also fun to see this guy get kicked around in a bar, something he sort of built a career on.

Best bit of dialog:

Caleb: How old are you?
Jess: (with a wry smile) I fought for the south.
Caleb: The south?
Jess: We lost.

Who is that Gaucho Amigo?

This is too funny. (h/t Instapundit) I'd never heard of Subarus referred to as "Lesbarus". I guess I move in the wrong circles.

Actually, the part that got me was at the bottom:

On Gaywheels.com, one indicator of actual gay buying trends is the list of vehicles most frequently researched. As of last October, the Toyota Yaris, a $12,000 economy car, led that list, followed by the Toyota Camry, which was the No. 3-selling car in America last year.

It would be hard to find a more conventional automobile.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit I've owned two Camry's. Does that make me gay or just conventional? Maybe conventionally gay? Or is that what we call "bi" nowadays?

I'm so confused.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Based on the findings, the researchers said reporters should be aware that their own views of religion could influence how they write their stories and readers should take note of their reporters' biases.

I'll bet.

Everyone's Wild About Harry

Okay, so there's nothing really new in the EW article about the 5th movie. Still, it's interesting to note that with Spidey, Shrek and Pirates all doing their third thing (take that for alliteration, Kate!) next month, it's HP that gets the early ink.

I know, I know. Those other movies will be all over the magazine (and everywhere else) the next few weeks.

But with the 5th movie and the 7th book coming out within 8 days of one another in July, it looks like - this year, at least - HP's biggest competition will be...HP.

Notebook

Duane blinked and adjusted his glasses as he entered, feeling the grief and sense of loss strike him anew. He realized that it was the scent of Uncle art's pipe tobacco in the still, trapped air. In that second Duane realized how temporary life was, how fleeting any person's presence was: a few books, the scent of tobacco that a person would never enjoy again, a few clothes that would be used by others, the inevitable snapshots, legal papers, and correspondence that would mean so much less to someone else. A human being on this world, Duane realized with a shock of recognition approaching vertigo, made no more permanent impression than does a hand thrust in water. Remove the hand, and water rushes in to fill the void as if nothing had ever been there.

Dan Simmons - Summer of Night

Family Feud

Tori Spelling says her feud with her mom is over. Translation:

"I'm in the money!"

The Collective Ignorance of Individual Wisdom

Kathy Sierra has posted for the first time since receiving death threats. She says that she probably won't post again for quite awhile, until she figures out just how - and if - she wants to continue.

She also leaves us with some of the illustrations she used to advance her arguments in favor of teaching users to kick ass with the products we sell them. As I've mentioned, reading her blog was always a great pleasure and I got a kick out of her visual aids. I particulary like this one:



To me, it perfectly sums up the current consensus on global climate change.

Spring? What Spring?

Tom Maguire nails it:

...personally, I am loving the switch to Daylight Saving Time, since it means an extra hour to shovel snow in the evening.

Good Friday

So it's Good Friday night and, by rare chance, I have the house to myself. That is if you don't count the two female cats and the former male bunny that are already jostling for attention. I don't mind, really.

In a little while, the bunny and I will start on the jello shots and watch a replay of the Masters second round (the bunny is a big Tiger Woods fan). The girls bide their time - they're not into golf - and soon Mr. Bun starts to get maudlin, waxing nostalgic for his lost bunnyhood. "They didn't leave anything! Not even two little tufts of fur." The girls don't help, of course, dancing around going "You can't hump me! You can't hump me!" He tries to chase them but his heart's not in it.

Then it's movie time. I thought seriously about trying to smuggle them all into a late showing of "Grindhouse" but I decided it would be better to stay home and watch "Slither" instead. While the bunny snores on the couch, the girls each do their best kitty lap dance to see who gets the prime seat.

Which, actually, is more action than I usually get so maybe it really is Good Friday.

Happy Easter.

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Lileks invents the McCoy Freakout Scale. Just keep scrolling.

He Wants to Show You the Way

Fred Thompson for President? As an actor, he has an impressive resume.

Here at the Western World

*Sigh* It's Holy Week so naturally someone has to rabble rouse. This time around it's the Chocolate Jesus. You know, I've seen so many of these pathetic attempts to shock in my life that by now it's all I can do not to yawn. It should be clear by now that going after the Catholic Church - or Christians in general - in an effort to provoke shock and outrage is like reaching for low-hanging fruit; anyone can do it. It does not require talent and it's certainly not daring.

A chocolate Mohammed, preferably shown strapping a bomb vest on a young boy, now that might gin up some controversy. Of course, it also might get the artist killed - unlike Catholics, Islamic radicals tend to express their outrage in a more, um, concrete fashion, sort of like Wookies do when you beat them at chess. But think of the posterity!

Over at Protein Wisdom, Dan Collins correctly gauges the feminist reaction.

Life is Unreal

Over at the Belmont Club, Wretchard illustrates the insanity of government regulations:

Everyone who owns a television set, set top box or a tuner card for a computer in Britain has to pay the BBC for the privilege. "A colour TV Licence costs £135.50 and a black and white licence costs £45.50." Per year.

Never let it be said that the British regulators aren't fair, however. There is a generous discount for the blind:

If you or someone you live with is blind, you qualify to receive a 50% concession on the cost of your TV Licence. If the person who is blind isn't the current licence holder for your address, you first need to transfer the licence into their name. To do this, call us on 0870 241 6468 and we'll talk you through what you need to do.

Now, when I was young and dumb and full of, er, dumbness, I fractured a few laws, as Axle Foley might say. One of those was to alter my cable box so that I could watch HBO without paying for it. No doubt this is just one more item on my resume which will ensure me a room in the Ninth Circle of Hell. Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because it occurs to me that a tax on owning a TV set might tempt some otherwise law-abiding Brits to cheat the system - I mean, how is anyone going to know whether or how many TV sets you have? And this is where the story gets completely bizarro. Apparently, the BBC uses "detector vans" to ensure compliance:

Our TV detector vans and enforcement officers are equipped with state-of-the-art detection equipment which can tell in as little as 20 seconds whether you are using a TV. We have a range of detection tools at our disposal in our vans. Some aspects of the equipment have been developed in such secrecy that engineers working on specific detection methods work in isolation - so not even they know how the other detection methods work. This gives us the best chance of catching licence evaders. We can use a hand-held scanning device. These measure both the direction and strength of a signal, making it easy for us to locate TVs - even in the hardest to reach places.

As Wretchard points out, there is some debate over whether the detector vans actually exist - but the idea is just mind-boggling, isn't it?

Someone please tell me this is just an April Fool's Joke.

Book of Liars

In a talk at Duke University this week, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's former national security advisor, showed just how easy it is to revise history:

Brzezinski said there's no reason to think a bloodbath would necessarily follow a U.S. withdrawal.

"We expected that the U.S. leaving Vietnam would result in massive killings and genocide and so forth, and collapse of the dominoes in Southeast Asia," he said. "It didn't happen. How certain are we of the horror scenarios that have been mentioned in what will take place in Iraq?"

It.Didn't.Happen.

How is it possible that anyone, let alone the president's national security advisor, can make that statement? Even the Herald-Sun acknowledges the facts:

History does record that a bloodbath that claimed millions of lives occurred in neighboring Cambodia, the so-called "killing fields," and that millions more people left Vietnam as refugees after the two countries fell in 1975.

How did Brzezinski miss this little tidbit when it was reported on the news and in the front page of every newspaper in the world? Or do "massive killings" and genocide not count when they happen to people of different races thousands of miles away?

So how do we explain this? Is it a failing memory? A deliberate omission? Or is it a rewriting of history to fit the current liberal narrative in Iraq?

Robin Williams once said that anyone who remembered the sixties wasn't there. It appears Zbiggy took two sixties and went straight to the 90's.

Seven Answers

An interview with Michael Crichton (h/t Instapundit)

West of Hollywood

Maybe I'm just getting in touch with my feminine side, but this has become one of my favorite sites lately.

Can I Get Fries With That?

You know, I've always wanted a job that gave me one of these. Maybe I've just been working with the wrong people.

Too Low For Zero

I'm not sure which disgusts me more, reading about the death threats against Kathy Sierra or this post about the news of Tony Snow's cancer over at the Huffington Post. Let's take them one at a time, shall we?

For those of you who don't know, Kathy Sierra's Creating Passionate Users site is hand's down one of the best on the web. Her entire focus is on how we - and by extension the companies we work for - can make ourselves and our products better. Her own area of expertise is programming (she used to work for Sun) but her ideas can be applied to just about any area of marketing and her enthusiasm is infectious. I can't tell you how many times I've gone looking for a bit of inspiration and found just the ticket at her site. For her to be targeted in this manner is appalling.

As for Charles Karel Bouley, it's hard to know where to start. How in the world can anyone say that working for President Bush or Fox News is a reason for getting cancer and in the next breath say that Eizabeth Edward's cancer is just "bad things happen to good people"? It would make just as much sense if I said that her cancer came about because of her belief in husband's vision of "Two America's". Which is to say, it makes no sense at all.

Granted, the web makes it easy to do such things. I doubt seriously if Mr. Bouley would say anything like that in Tony Snow's presence, just as I don't think the anonymous hate-mongers would go after Kathy Sierra if they felt there was any possibility they would be held accountable.

People who anonymously threaten others deserve their own special roasting corner in Hell. And Charles Bouley deserves some brutal honesty of his own.

She's Alive!

...on the comics pages, at least. Needless to say, my copy is on its way to my sweaty little paws even as we speak.

This, however, is going a little far, even for me.

Only the Lonely

Scott Adams gives a whole new meaning to Passing the Buck.

Snowbound

A few weeks ago and now. Maybe Spring is coming after all.

Some Impromptu Saturday Morning Poetry

Easter is coming
The bunny's acting odd
Please to add a penny to
The old man's wad
If you haven't got a penny
A ha'penny will do
And if you know what a ha'penny is
Then you're old, too.

Time Out of Mind

Am I the only one still a little weirded out by the early time change? Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I love the extra sunlight - although I'm not a huge fan of getting up in the dark - and it definitely feels a little more springlike. Maybe it's because winter here in the Northeast has been so strange.

It didn't really get cold til mid-January (I vividly remember the second Saturday of the month being sunny and in the 60's) and since then it's felt like living in a meatlocker with someone occasionally opening the door and dumping in bags of ice-cold rocksalt. Right now outside my window I can see mounds of snow at least 3 feet high with small patches of lawn starting to peek through - a sure sign of spring. Still, I'm having a hard time remembering what month it is.

It's light enough to be March, cold enough to be January (yesterday morning the low was -5) and the snow is a sure sign of February. Is it any wonder I'm tempted to crawl back under the covers and hibernate for another couple of months?

Workin' Again

Okay, so...what'd I miss? Anything?

That's what I thought.

Which Way Did It Go?

September, I mean. It seems like just yesterday I was posting about the Dog Team Tavern burning and suddenly - poof! - it's October 1st.

Seriously, I started a new job on September 7th and that, combined with the start of school and some family obligations, has made it almost impossible for me to keep up with blogging. I've barely had time to keep up with my blog reading, let alone doing any posting. Anyway, it's a new month and a little saner schedule so, hopefully, blogging will resume.

Up in Smoke

The Dog Team Tavern is gone:

NEW HAVEN -- Police suspect Dog Team Tavern owner Christopher Hesslink, 42, was killed when the landmark restaurant burned early Friday morning in a fire police are calling suspicious.

The fire destroyed the 60-year-old restaurant located on quiet Dog Team Road and known for its sticky buns, ample portions and spinning relish wheel.

The Correct Answer

Okay, so I'm doing my usual Sunday Search for inspiration and/or enlightenment and I come across this post. About halfway down the page, there's this paragraph:

"...ask yourself this question: When I’m on my deathbed, what will I regret most about my life? I doubt anyone on their deathbed ever said, “I wish I would have worked more hours. I wish I would have gotten that last sale. I wish I had even more money in my bank account.” Elizabeth Kubler Ross, author of the book On Death and Dying, asked people on their deathbeds this very question. What was their response? The number one response was: I wish I would have taken more chances. I feel like I lived my life playing it too safe. The number two response was: I wish I would have taken more time to reflect. I never stopped and smelled the roses in life. How would you answer this question?"

To me, deathbed questions are always kind of skeezy because, well, look at where you are - you're on your deathbed, for crying out loud. Who wants to deal with a bunch of people asking them questions when they're dying? What's more, look at the kind of questions they ask. What will I regret most about my life?

Geez, how much time do I have?

And the answers listed above are just wrong, wrong, wrong. What does it mean when someone who can't take chances anymore says they wished they'd taken more chances in their life? Nothing, that's what it means. If you had a magic wand and waved it in front of them and said "Okay, you're healed. Now go out and take some chances", do you know what they'd say?

"Are you kidding? Take chances? That's how people get killed!"

It reminds me of my Catholic upbringing and being taught about the sacrament of Extreme Unction, or Last Rites. Basically, what happens is the priest gives you absolution for your earthly sins. The catch is you have to be contrite or truly and honestly sorry that you committed them. I remember asking one of the nuns "Sister, now really. What's the catch?" Because, if you're on your deathbed and this means getting into heaven, who isn't going to be truly and honestly sorry for any sins they committed? If it will help, I'll confess to a few I didn't commit. And believe me, I won't be kidding when I do because, after all, He'll know.

The number two answer is only marginally better than the first because, when you think about it, reflection is really just a way of looking at what's wrong with your life and how many of us want to spend time doing that? For me, true reflection comes when I drain the last of my scotch and realize I forgot to buy more. And what is the thing with roses, anyway? Give me the aroma of a nice, juicy steak anytime.

No, if someone asks me on my deathbed what I regret most about my life, there is only one correct answer:

I regret that I'm on my deathbed. Idiot.

After the Love has Gone

Perhaps you’ve heard this story:

A man pursues a woman, wooing her with flowers and trinkets, taking her on dates for romantic dinners and dancing. He tells her he loves her. The woman, knowing a little something about men, accepts his words and gifts cautiously, enjoying the attention, wanting to believe but having been burned before, she holds back on relinquishing the ultimate prize: sex.

This goes on for some time with no lessening of the man’s ardor. Finally, she accepts his affections as genuine and agrees to sleep with him. The two of them have an evening/weekend of glorious sex.

Or bad sex, it really doesn’t matter, because afterwards she never hears from him again. The man goes on his merry way, having gotten at last what he wanted, and the woman, dispirited and tearful, vows to never again let anyone take advantage of her.

Now, it may seem like this is some apocryphal story about relationships but it really isn’t. Because what I’ve just described is the prototypical manner in which most businesses deal with their customers. They woo you. They fuck you. And then they never want to hear from you again. Many of them don’t even have the good manners to kiss you when they’re done. Until, of course, they come up with some other little doodad they want to sell you and the wooing starts all over again.

And we fall for it darn near every time.

Some of you reading this – especially small business owners – may object. We’re very serious about customer service, you say. We love our customers. Where would we be without our customers? And that may very well be true, as far as it goes. There are, no doubt, some companies out there that put a great deal of time and effort into customer service (and not, as George Carlin would say, servicing their customers). Just because I haven’t worked for or dealt with any of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

But all companies, good or bad, suffer from the same mindset: once the transaction is done, they don’t treat the customer the same way. Or, in relationship speak, they stop treating the customer like a lover and start treating them like a spouse.

An excellent example of this is provided by Kathy Sierra:

Why do so many companies treat potential users so much better than existing users? Think about it. The brochure is a thing of beauty, while the user manual is a thing of boredom. The brochure gets the big budget while the manual gets the big index. What if we stopped making the docs we give away for free SO much nicer than the ones the user paid for? What if instead of seducing potential users to buy, we seduced existing users to learn?

Have you looked at a user manual lately? Of course you haven’t. Why would you? User manuals, as Kathy points out, are drab, colorless, lifeless tomes printed on (if you’re lucky) recycled paper. Most of them are written in the gobbledy language of technical engineers with an extra helping of coveryourass talk thrown in for good measure. There is a good reason why people hate to read user manuals – and it’s not just stupid men who think they don’t need them. It’s because they aren’t helpful.

Granted, brochures aren’t exactly helpful either, but that’s not the point. Brochures aren’t meant to be helpful. They’re meant to be sexy and alluring, to entice you to give up your money in exchange for the product they depict. The user manual is the booby prize you win for believing the brochure was anything more than a pleasant fiction. Wouldn’t it be nice if the user manual followed through on the promise of the brochure?

Or, to combine Kathy Sierra and George Carlin for a moment, wouldn’t it be nice if the user manual made you feel like you could kick ass instead of feeling like you’d just taken it up the ass?

The user manual, as I mentioned above, is just one example but it’s a telling one. The relationship between consumers and businesses is a lot like a courtship that leads to marriage. Once the romance is gone, the business moves on and all the consumer can do is vow it won’t happen again. And take out the garbage.

Because, you know, somebody has to.

Now This is Cool

The Official Seal Generator. (h/t 43 Folders)

Slow News Day

Jennifer Loven of the AP breathlessly points out that:

Taxpayers pay for Bush's campaign travel

Bankrolled almost entirely by taxpayers, President Bush is roaming far and wide on Air Force One to help Republicans retain control of Congress and capture statehouse contests in high-stakes midterm elections.

In 15 months, including back-to-back fundraisers Wednesday in Little Rock, Ark., and Nashville, Tenn., Bush has collected $166 million for the campaign accounts of 27 Republican candidates, the national GOP and its state counterparts across the country, according to the
Republican National Committee.

High-dollar Washington galas headlined by the fundraiser-in-chief brought in a big share of the total. The president also has scooped up campaign cash in 36 cities, travels that have taken him as near as McLean, Va., in the Washington suburbs and as far as Medina, Wash., 2,800 miles to the west. On Thursday, Bush adds yet another locale to the list: Salt Lake City.

Sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it? We, the taxpayers, are once again getting shafted by the evil, rich-loving, McHitlerChimpyBurton administration. And it's going to get worse:

All this to-and-fro presidential politicking is only expected to increase as November draws closer. And it is the taxpayers, not the campaigns or political parties, who foot most of the travel bill.

Oh, no! What can we do? Can't someone pass a law? Aren't there some federal regulations regarding Presidential fundraising and who pays for it? Actually, as it turns out, there are, but you have to wait four more paragraphs for it:

Bush is not the first president to operate this way. The federal regulations governing reimbursement for political travel have been on the books at least since the Reagan administration, and the White House said Bush adheres to all rules.

Oh, well. So what Bush is doing has been common practice (and, apparently, the letter of the law) for at least twenty years?

And the point of this story was what, exactly?

Head Trip

Imagine this scene: Tiger Woods, standing on the 18th tee at a major championship. He has a one-shot lead and all he has to do is make par to win. Instead of taking a fairway wood or long-iron and playing it safe, he takes out his driver and unleashes a mighty blow. Unfortunately, it veers left off the clubface and ends up behind a tree in the heavy rough.

Undaunted and again eschewing the safe and sane option of chipping to the fairway, he takes his 3-iron and attempts to slice the ball around the tree and hit the green. Instead, the ball flies straight into the tree and advances about 25 yards. Now, faced with the difficult task of getting up and down to win the championship, he yanks his third shot left and into a bunker. His 4th shot, the shot he needs to hole in order to win, flies long and ends up in the short rough surrounding the green. He now has to hole his chip shot from the thick grass just to tie for the lead and force a playoff.

The chip slides by the hole and he loses the championship.

Does any of this sound familiar? If you follow golf, it should. Two short months ago, Phil Mickelson lost the US Open in just this fashion. And Tiger Woods? Well, Tiger wasn’t there that day, having missed the cut at the Open for the first time as a professional. It was, in fact, the first time he had missed the cut at any major tournament as a professional.

As punishment for his failure, Tiger forced himself to watch every moment of the tournament on television that weekend. What must he have felt, I wonder, as he watched Mickelson’s meltdown on the last hole? It’s not the first time something like this has happened. In the 1999 British Open, Jean Van de Velde blew a 3-stroke lead on the final hole and lost in a playoff. Even great players like Tom Watson and Arnold Palmer have double-bogeyed the last hole to lose the Masters.

It is, however, one of the few things that Tiger hasn’t done. And, as much as anything, it illustrates the yawning divide between Woods and the rest of golfing world. It’s not his physical skills, though they are considerable. Mickelson, currently ranked # 2 in the world, hits the ball almost as far as Tiger does and his short game is considered by some to be even better than Tiger’s. But there is one place where Tiger is, pardon the pun, head and shoulders above the rest. It reminds me of a line from the 1981 horror film Wolfen:

“It’s all in the head, Dewey”.

From the neck up, Tiger Woods has no peers. It begins with his affirmation “Second place sucks” and it continues with his constant efforts to improve his game, to get better. For most golfers at the professional level, tampering with the golf swing is as appealing as bungee-jumping off the Eifel Tower. The ranks of insurance salesmen are overflowing with golfers who’ve “lost” their swing. A minor change here or there, sure, but major changes? No way. They’d just as soon play the game with a rake and shovel. Since turning pro, Tiger has rebuilt his swing from the ground up twice. To get better.

No one has ever consciously combined the physical and the mental game in golf the way Tiger has. Only his idol, Jack Nicklaus, comes close. Obviously, all athletic endeavors require both the mind and the body working in sync but usually this happens on an unconscious level. Ask any player – even a great player – why they’re paying well or poorly and, as a general rule, they can’t tell you. Their best answer is usually a stock cliché: “I’m seeing the ball well” or “I’m in the groove” or “I’m really feeling it” is the best they can do.

Some of this comes from the superstitious nature of most athletes. They don’t really understand how they’re able to do what they do or where it goes when they suddenly can’t do it anymore. It’s a though there is a switch inside them somewhere and sometimes it’s flipped on and sometimes it’s not. There have been very few players who understood themselves and their abilities well enough to be able to perform at a peak level when the switch was turned off and none of them have done it like Tiger Woods.

Take last week’s World Golf Championship at Firestone, for example. In the final two rounds of that tournament, he played more like Tony the Tiger than Tiger Woods. At one point in the third round, he made four bogies in a row, something he’d done only once before as a professional. The temptation must have overwhelming to say “this isn’t my week” and just phone it in for the rest of the tournament. After all, he’d won the last three times he’d teed it up, two of them majors. Anyone can have an off day, or an off week.

Not Tiger. Somehow, he managed to keep himself in contention and finally win his fourth in a row in a playoff. Now, it’s easy enough to say that Tiger was lucky to win. Certainly, the tournament was there for the taking and several players had their shot at it. That they couldn’t close the deal at a time when Tiger was clearly off his feed says more about them than it does about him. No one ever said Tiger couldn’t be beat. But he doesn’t beat himself.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to Phil Mickelson. Since the US Open, Tiger has entered five tournaments. He finished second in one and then won the next four. Mickelson, on the other hand, hasn’t contended in a single tournament since his disastrous finish. He says he’s put it behind him but his play says otherwise. Time will tell if he can clear his head and once again play at the level he’s shown himself capable of the last few years.

Tiger’s level.

For Tiger, however, it’s business as usual. Day by day, hole by hole, swing by swing, thought by thought, the quest for improvement never ends. He’s the greatest player in the game today and his becoming the greatest of all time is almost a fait acompli. And when it happens, he will be remembered for his physical talents: his prodigious drives, his silky putting stroke and his uncanny knack for getting the ball in the hole from impossible lies. But his greatest weapon has never been in his golf bag.

It's in his head.

Out of the Blue

I know you're not reading this, but...

Once upon a time
Once when you were mine
I remember skies
Reflected in your eyes
I wonder where you are
I wonder if youThink about me
Once upon a time
In your wildest dreams...

Manifest Arrogance

Scott Adams thinks the Middle East is one big dysfunctional family:

So the bottom line is that America is the father, the Islamic countries in the Middle East are the mother, and Israel is the offspring conceived by rape

He's kidding, naturally. I think.

Stuck on Crazy

In today’s Burlington Free Press, there’s this story:

Derek Kimball, 34, of Hinesburg this morning pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one count of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child in Vermont District Court in Burlington.

Now, in case the name doesn’t ring a bell, let’s read on:

Court papers say Kimball engaged in two incidents of forced rape and forced oral sex with the girl. The girl, whom The Burlington Free Press is not naming because she is a sexual-assault victim, is the same child Mark Hulett sexually assaulted for several years beginning in 2003.

Still nothing? Okay, try this:

Hulett’s case sparked a public outcry after Judge Edward Cashman initially sentenced Hulett, 35, of Williston in January to a 60-day minimum prison term after he pleaded guilty. The judge said his sentence was the only way for Hulett to receive sex-offender treatment. Three weeks later, after the Corrections Department changed its policy and agreed to treat Hulett while he was imprisoned, Cashman increased Hulett’s term to a three-year minimum.

Now you remember, don’t you? Of course you do. Not exactly a high-water mark in Vermont Jurisprudence, is it? Well, brace yourself because it’s about to happen again.

Judge Michael Kupersmith presided over Kimball’s hearing. Under the plea agreement, Kimball faces a minimum sentence of 3 to 10 years in prison, and a maximum of 12 to 50 years. That means he will spend at least 3 years in prison and remain under state supervision for at least 10 years.

Yes, I know it says that he could conceivably get up to 50 years in prison, but let me ask you a question: When Mark Hulett, who admitted sexually assaulting this young girl for over three years – beginning when she was six years old – is given a three-year minimum sentence, why should Derek Kimball expect worse when he’s only admitting to doing it a couple of times? Granted, Vermont lawmakers have tried to address this, but it’s unclear at this time whether the new law will affect this case or not.

Both men can expect to receive sex-offender treatment (Hulett is already guaranteed it) while incarcerated and both will likely be released while still young enough to do more harm. In the case of Hulett, he cannot be held longer than the three-year minimum unless he “misbehaves in prison or is unable to find suitable housing away from children following his release”. Is there any reason to suppose it will be different with Kimball?

All I can say is don’t sell crazy here, we’re all stocked up.

Oh, and read this and ask yourself why the girl’s parents aren’t up on charges as well. It will make your blood boil.

Soon

How soon?

Very soon.

Carnival of the Insanities

Many thanks to Dr. Sanity for including my post "Of Hens and Primates" in this weeks carnival.

If this is your first visit to the Teahouse, please feel free to check out some of my other posts, especially the recent posts concerning the school shooting in Essex, Vermont.

And in case you're wondering, the title of this blog comes from a song of the same name off of Donald Fagen's solo CD, Kamakiriad. That also should help explain why I post under the name Gaucho.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks again to Dr. Sanity for including me in this week's Carnival of the Insanities. She's truly an oasis of sanity in an insane world.

Hear, Hear

It's about time someone did it. (h/t Instapundit)

Essex Shooting Update

The latest updates on the Essex shooting are here and here. The Free Press article, in particular, has a lot of details, including a timeline of the shooting spree and Christopher Williams complete criminal record.

A couple of things that jump out at me: first, the usual nonsense from the mental health counselor about his unhappy childhood and how he appears to be suffering from the one-size-fits-all post traumatic stress disorder. I don’t mean to be flippant or seem uncaring about Mr. Williams…well, on second thought, maybe I do. When something like this happens, the first thing people want to know is why and the notion that he had a troubled childhood becomes a catch-all of a reason.

No doubt the people he shot are all broken up about his childhood.

“Domestic abuse” is another catch-all phrase. If I had to guess, and in the absence of any facts that’s all I can do, I would say that as a young child, he witnessed his father beating his mother. Or perhaps his father wasn’t around. Maybe he doesn’t know who his father is. There could have been a succession of “fathers” and all of them could have been abusive to his mother. I’d also guess that drugs and alcohol were prevalent in the home.

While the reports suggest that Williams himself was not the object of abuse (there’s no reference to child abuse), he was, according to CNN, “exposed” to it. And yes, these things matter. In trying to understand what makes him tick, of course they matter. It’s also interesting to note that this is the second time that he has reacted violently (or threatened to) when breaking up with a girlfriend and that both instances involved the girlfriend and her mother (or stepmother, in the MA case).

I’d be willing to bet, when all is said and done, that men have not played a dominant role in his life and what role they have played has been almost entirely negative.

The other thing that intrigues me about this case is the realization that Williams has been a fugitive for the past three years and during that time he has managed – by accident or design – to live and work in a neighboring state without calling any attention to himself.

Until now, of course.

Alphecca posts his picture and wonders why was he NOT in jail?

Of Hens and Primates

It’s interesting – to me, at least – to compare and contrast two examples of animal rights activism that have been in the news this week. First up is the case of Ben & Jerry’s and their use of eggs purchased from a company that is not entirely on the up and up in their treatment of hens. The original complaint surfaced in Tuesday’s edition of the Burlington Free Press. The Humane Society of the United States claimed that:

…the ice cream maker buys eggs produced by hens cooped in tight cages, a practice that belies Ben & Jerry's reputation as a socially and environmentally conscious company.

…the Humane Society's issue with Ben & Jerry's stems from a campaign against Michael Foods, a Minnesota-based foodservice company that provides eggs and potatoes to grocery stores and companies such as Ben & Jerry's. In a report released late last week on its Web site, Humane Society of United States said it found in an undercover investigation that Michael Foods hens died of dehydration and starvation, and the dead birds were kept in cages with live ones. The hens' cages were too small for the birds to spread their wings, according to the report.

On Wednesday, Michael Foods responded:

In that one-page document, Michael Foods outlined how its practices meet standards set by United Egg Producers, a national alliance of five organizations that provide services to the egg industry. Company procedure meets standards in use of feed, beak trimming, hen handling and transportation, and ammonia standard, Michael Foods said.

"The one area Michael Foods doesn't consistently meet UEP standards is hen cage space," the company said in the statement. Industry standards by 2008 will provide 67 square inches per cage. "Michael Foods has committed to transitioning all our cages to meet or exceed" the UEP standards, the company said.

Yesterday, Ben & Jerry’s made this announcement:

The chief executive officer of Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. said Wednesday the Vermont-based ice cream company will sever ties with Michael Foods Inc., a Minnesota egg producer accused of mistreating hens.

End of story, right? Well, not exactly, but before we go any further with this, let’s look at the second example, courtesy of the Good Professor:

The constant calls, the people frightening his children, and the demonstrations in front of his home apparently became a little too much.

Dario Ringach, an associate neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, decided this month to give up his research on primates because of pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which seeks to stop research that harms animals.

…colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks’s elderly neighbor’s house, and did not detonate.

Now, I will grant you that the two stories are not completely analogous, but in the main they are very similar: two animal rights groups protest against cruelty to animals – the way in which hens are cooped and the killing of primates for scientific research – and both are successful, at least to a degree. The methods they used, however, are light-years apart.

In the case of Ben & Jerry’s, the Humane Society of the United States used a time-honored concept – public pressure – to put the onus on B&J to publicly answer their charge and it’s interesting to note that the two organizations had been in private discussions about the issue for nearly a year. There is a financial component to this issue; the eggs from cage-free hens are more expensive than those collected from caged hens – except, apparently, in the UK – and it’s clear that, despite their rep as a socially responsible company, the ice-cream maker isn’t going to rush into a decision that might make it more expensive to sell their product.

Even today’s announcement doesn’t mean that Ben & Jerry’s won’t possibly buy eggs from caged hens in the future. It just means that, from now on, they’re going to deal only with companies that are completely UEP certified. Still, the Humane Society of the United States has to feel pretty good about the situation. They got, if not what they wanted, at least a large step in the right direction.

On the other hand, it’s pretty obvious that organizations such as the UCLA Primate Freedom Project and the Animal Liberation Front won’t be satisfied until all animal testing is a thing of the past, and they’re willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve their goal.

I have to be honest and admit that the whole idea of animal testing makes me a bit queasy and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Just as I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the process behind the nicely wrapped cuts of meat at the supermarket, or, for that matter, the conditions under which the eggs I buy are produced, I don’t think a whole lot about animal testing. This is probably because when I do think about it, I usually end up conflicted.

On the one hand, the thought of animals being experimented on and then killed in the name of science is a dicey one, especially if said science is in the name of a cosmetic company. On the other, the idea that such testing might lead to a cure for AIDS or cancer is definitely a point in the plus column. It also makes a difference as to just what animal is being used as a subject. Blinding bunnies, for example, is definitely a no-no, but slicing up mice gonads is fair game.

I’m also aware of some of the half-truths we tell ourselves in order to rationalize actions that we’re not comfortable with. I’ve worked in the furniture industry for a number of years and I’ve heard over and over, “Animals are not killed for their hides; it’s merely a byproduct of the meat industry” or words to that effect. And it may very well be true. But in my mind it always conjures up an image of someone standing around a slaughterhouse going “Oh, look at all this leather! Let’s make a sofa!”

But it’s clear that outfits like the Animal Liberation Front and the UCLA Primate Freedom Project have no such ambivalence. For them, the ends (no more animal testing) justify the means and the means can get pretty scary. Harassing emails, phone calls, posting names, phone numbers and addresses on their websites, damaging property, intimidating children and even planting bombs are not beyond the pale. To them, there is little or no difference between an animal life and a human life.

And, unlike organizations like the Humane Society of the United States, the individuals involved in these groups maintain their anonymity, refusing to be held accountable for any of their actions. They even go so far as to offer instructions in the art of anonymously harassing their targets:

For your privacy and protection (since it is well known that these scum may call or e-mail you back with threats - or even lie and say that YOU were making threatening phone calls and sending threatening e-mails to THEM), you may want to use a phone booth and send your e-mails from an anonymous computer.

Let's "phone bank" the vivvys and others who make their livings off of torturing and murdering animals in the experimentation and allied-services businesses.

Their attitude is perhaps best summed up by Doctor Jerry Vlasak, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Press Office and former animal researcher. When queried about the Molotov cocktail, he responded “force is a poor second choice, but if that’s the only thing that will work…there’s certainly moral justification for that”.

So here you have groups that are uncompromising in their ideals, unscrupulous and unapologetic for their methods, unwavering in their moral rectitude and unaccountable for their actions. Do these people sound like anyone else we know?

Okay, anyone who answered “the Bush Administration,” thanks for playing. Your consolation prize is a one-way ticket here. No, the correct answer is…terrorists.

Shooting in Essex

If you read the reports here, here, here and especially here, there's not a whole lot to add at this point, except...

It's interesting to note that only the CBS/WCAX article describes the man:

WCAX initially said police were looking for two cars and for a suspect described as a black man in his early 30s, about 6-foot-3, with shoulder-length cornrows. He was reported to be armed with a large-caliber handgun and police were calling him "armed and dangerous."

All schools in the area went into a lockdown procedure when the shootings occurred. My daughter was at soccer practice at her high school in South Burlington (about ten miles from Essex) and when I went to pick her up, I was met at the entrance to the driveway by the Vice-Principal, who was directing traffic in and out of the school. All of the kids had been directed into the gym and were only being released to parents. I don't have a cell phone, so I don't know if they were trying to contact me or not.

My wife, who works at another local high school, tells me the lockdown procedure is something that's been in effect at most (if not all) schools since the Columbine tragedy. At her school, the lockdown drill is practiced twice a year, unlike fire drills, which are practiced monthly.

I imagine this incident will prompt the schools to take a closer look at their lockdown drills, especially in light of the one teacher being shot through the locked door to her classroom. Was she following the procedure correctly or should she have been elsewhere in her room, somewhere out of line of sight from the door? Did it happen so quickly that she didn’t have time to get away from the door? She was, by all accounts, not the intended victim so, why was she shot?

Lots of questions and very few answers at the moment.

One thing, however, I can predict with utmost certainty: a lot of people are going to be calling for tighter gun laws here in Vermont. No doubt Alphecca will be watching this closely.

Dumpster-Diving for the Homeless

According to this report from the Seattle Times, the old saw about an "ill wind" apparently still holds true:

Toiletries discarded at the airport because of new security rules have turned into a boon for the homeless in Eugene.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County has started picking up some of the items people have jettisoned for security reasons before they board flights at the Eugene airport.

Charley Harvey, assistant executive director of the charity, dug through trash bags Tuesday and took every bottle of shampoo and shaving cream he could find. The items will be distributed at the organization's First Place Family Center.

If you discover that you have banned items in your carry-on luggage (and according to Seth Godin, there's no shortage of you out there) just make sure you dispose of them in a public trash can. If they're confiscated by the TSA, the items will be disposed of by the government and we all know how well that goes.

Who knows, if this keeps up, maybe the Salvation Army will set up a stand at the airport.

Anticipating a Denial

It’s Sunday and I’m in need of some inspiration. I scan through my usual list of suspects and, luckily for me, Dr. Sanity has just what I need. She uses her experience as a NASA flight surgeon to introduce the subject of anticipation and how a bit of honest thought about the future can help keep you in the pink, psychologically speaking.

Anticipation is defined as the realistic planning for future discomfort, and it involves something more than simply making long to-do lists, or even obsessive and careful planning for some event in the future. In particular, it necessitates both thinking and feeling about the affective components of potentially stressful or threatening future events.

Since I’ve been doing a whole lot of anticipating – okay, in my case, worrying – about things lately, this subject is right in my wheelhouse. Granted, the excavation of my bowels is um, behind me now, but there are plenty of other future events for me to dwell on: my teeth are in pretty awful shape and my dentist has informed me that the work to fix them will be a “challenge”; my daughter is starting high school this week and, oh yeah, I’m still jobless and the savings account is about to go on life support.

Maybe I should hold a blogathon for my favorite charity: me.

Anyway, since, as the good doctor points out, anticipation is the realistic planning for future discomfort and not just a song by Carly Simon, it turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong. As she puts it:

…anticipation is a psychological strategy that spreads out anxiety or other distressing emotions (e.g., fear, anger) over time. The advantage of this approach is that, like a psychological immunization, the process slowly allows the individual to accommodate to what otherwise might be an emotionally or physically overwhelming, or impossible-to-handle situation.

In my case, “over time” means every night around four AM but I understand what she means. Thinking about, and planning a strategy for dealing with, unpleasant situations is something that can only be done in fairly small doses over a period of time. Otherwise, the anger or fear aroused by the situation will paralyze the thought process, leaving a person about as rational as a democrat discussing the war on terror.

Of course, there are problems with this strategy, the first one being that few of us want to employ it:

In the world outside of space, or aviation, or other stressful or risky professions, anticipation is not used nearly often enough to learn to cope. The truth is that most people don't much like to think about situations that might cause or result in emotional distress at all, let alone plan in any way for it. And that is the major reason why anticipation is a psychological defense that frequently requires a social structure or network that supports it and encourages it.

In this case, “most people” and I are a lot alike. I don’t so much think about situations involving emotional distress as let them wash over me like the last reel of a horror movie. And the only “social structure” I have for dealing with the aftermath consists of Jim Beam or Johnny Walker. I’m joking, of course. Sometimes, I prefer Cutty Sark.

But the point is still valid: most people would rather actually go through unpleasant situations resulting in emotional distress than spend any time thinking about or preparing for them ahead of time. Once is more than enough, thank you very much. What’s more, not planning for the future can give you a certain level of deniability, as most of the elected officials in Louisiana can attest.

So where does that leave me? Well, I’d love to deny that I have a dental appointment on Wednesday, but I can’t. So I guess I’ll have to anticipate a strategy for not screaming during my root canal.

Ahead of the Curve

Ed Driscoll points us to an article that suggests I was being too critical of NorthWest Airlines for giving their about to be laid-off employees some advice in the art of trash-picking. According to the Washington Post, NorthWest just may be on to something:

Washington Post staff writer Megan Greenwell devoted her article on the front page of the August 16 Metro section to the new trend for young liberal dumpster divers.

Prince Frederick, Md teen Bryan Meadows “considers himself a ‘freegan,’” Greenwell wrote, describing the term as “a melding of the words ‘free’ and ‘vegan’” because Meadows “tries not to contribute to what he sees as the exploitation of land, resources and animals wrought by commercial production.”

Greenwell, a Berkeley, Calif. native, later dumped the quotation marks around “freegan” as she continued her story.

“The number of freegans in the D.C. region is anybody’s guess, but the ranks appear to be growing,” Greenwell insisted, citing anecdotal evidence. The Post writer also blamed “disillusionment with the Bush administration’s environmental policies” that have “pushed some young people to everyday forms of protest.”

But Greenwell didn’t just cite everyday bored left-leaning suburban teens. She also turned to an editor from a liberal Christian magazine, Ryan Beiler of Washington, D.C. who defended his dumpster-diving as a protest of “corporate farming practices” and in reaction to “the absurdity of how the American economy works.”

No word yet on whether "freegetarians" will join the protest.

Stay Out of my Parlor

Sorry, but when a spider shows up in my house, the only message they're giving me is that they want to die. Charlotte can stay in the barn with Wilbur. (h/t Rebecca Blood)

The Royal Spam

Scott Adams notes the poor quality of the spam he's been receiving:

Are these guys even TRYING? I have some respect for the spam with subject lines such as “From Bob” or “quick question.” Those are good attempts. If I’m not paying attention, I might even open one of those. But who opens a message titled “Re: NEW age of good old PENPILs.Scientists says YES!”?

I would agree that most spam is ridiculously easy to spot - except for Yahoo Spamguard, apparently, which never seems to get any better no matter how many bogus emails I forward to it. I would also agree with the notion that some idiot somewhere will open them, no matter how stupid they are, but what bothers me is not the quality of spam but the quantity of it.

Yesterday, I downloaded this app to my desktop. This morning I had no fewer than forty spam emails at the address I'd given them. When I went to uninstall the program, the first thing that showed up was a survey, asking me why I wanted to get rid of it. The very first listed reason for me to check was "I'm receiving too many unwanted (spam) emails".

Gee, you think?

Sever Me Timbers!

Can this be for real?

Northwest is laying off its customer service workers and baggage handlers at many smaller airports as it reorganizes under bankruptcy protection.

Earlier this month, it sent workers in Bismarck, N.D.; Bozeman, Mont.; and Austin, Texas, a handbook with tips for handling their layoffs. It included 101 money-saving ideas such as, "Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash."

Other tips included using old newspapers for cat litter, asking friends and family for hand-me-down clothes and asking a doctor for free prescription drug samples.

Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash? Whose trash are we talking about? Are they suggesting that their ex-employees go dumpster-diving for scraps of food? Are these people insane?

It sounds like management at Northwest has been sampling a few too many drugs, free or otherwise. Or maybe they're just using old cat litter for brains. (h/t Jane Galt)

Take the Blue Pill

Well, it’s done. And, all things considered, I’m feeling pretty good. Not exactly Walking on Sunshine but not bad, either. There’s some truth to the statement that the preparation is the worst part of the exam. As I noted yesterday, it wasn’t fun. But I do have some words of advice for anyone getting ready for one of these.

When the doctor asks if you want them to make you feel sleepy, say yes.

Now, I like my doctor. He’s a pretty nice guy, considering his line of work, and I believed him when he said they weren’t going to ‘hurt’ me. Even when he had me sign the form relieving him of liability just in case he poked a hole in my colon, which, as he pointed out, almost never happens. So when he gave me the option of undergoing the procedure without using medication, I listened to him.

If they didn’t use drugs, he told me, I’d be able to go home sooner, I’d be able to eat something sooner and I’d be able to watch the whole thing on television. While I was thinking about it, he also mentioned that if I became uncomfortable at any point they could stop and give me something and it would work in about 30 seconds.

I weighed the options. Going home sooner was a definite plus. I’ve never been a big fan of hospitals and my blood pressure was spiking to begin with. On the other hand, watching myself get shtupped by a ten-foot hose on TV was not so big an attraction. But telling a person who has just fasted for a day and a half that they can eat something, well, that’s almost unfair, isn’t it? I said yes.

There were a few, fumbling preliminaries – a brief finger-wave from an intern (the doctor confided that he got the job because he had the biggest fingers) – and then the procedure started. The first part was so smooth, almost seductive, I half expected the nurse to lean down and kiss me. Pictures of my nether regions flashed by on the screen and the doctor was talking quietly – everything was fine. Then they came to the first bend in the road.

Even with the nurse pressing against my stomach I almost jumped off the gurney. Holy shit, I screamed. When did you put that gerbil inside me and how did it get loose? Well, I thought I screamed it. What actually came out of my mouth was “UHHHHHHHH!” And then the pain disappeared. “Okay,” the doctor said, “that’s the first one.”

First one? Give me the meds, you fucking asshole! All right, I didn’t say that, either. For the next fifteen minutes or so, the doctor played Mario Kart in my bowels while the nurse told me to take deep breaths and let them out slowly. And I survived.

The good news is that my colon is looking pretty spiffy. The bad news is that, since I don’t have to have another of these for ten years, I will completely forget what it felt like. But I know this much; when the doctor asks if I want to feel sleepy, I’m gonna say “Give me the blue pill”.

Fun, Fun, Fun

I’m fasting.

Well, not exactly. I’m scheduled tomorrow for one of those exams that require you to, um, cleanse your innards, is probably the best way to put it. You know, it begins with ‘c’ and it ends with ‘py’ and it semi-sorta-kinda rhymes with colostomy. That’s right. One of those exams. The kind you never even had nightmares about until you were old enough to learn the meaning of the word “prostate”.

When I was young and read that word somewhere – in the newspaper, maybe – I always read it as “prostrate”, just as, for years, whenever I came across the word “pubic”, I read it as “public”. Okay, so you’re probably right to question my choice of reading material but, frankly, I think my relative innocence as to the subject matter is somewhat charming. Just as a fear of the boogeyman or the Thing under the bed is charming compared with a fear of the Hallucinating Madman with Nuclear Ambitions and his Incredibly Senile Interviewer, but I digress.

So, I’m fasting. And by fasting, I mean that I’m not partaking of anything solid, seedy, nutty, fatty or red. All that leaves me is water, ginger ale, some juices and broth. Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I also have to take two bottles of something that’s designed – according to the instructions – to turn my stool the “consistency and color of urine”.

So yeah, this is fun.

Food for Thought

An even better analogy would be music. As a matter of fact, I employ many musical analogies in the book. As an aside, it’s just amazing how many mysteries of the cosmos are unlocked by the existence of music. I have always been a great music lover, and now I see that, even in my atheistic days, it was one of the things that kept me connected to Spirit, for music is a spiritual transmission, pure and simple. Great music casts a luster of noetic light from one world into this one, somehow riding piggyback on vibrations of air. No one knows how or why this should be so in a species that was simply selected by evolution to hunt for food and sexual partners. Why on earth should vibrating air molecules be beautiful, even to the point of moving one to tears or to ecstasy?

...but the point, of course, is not to study the score but to hear the music. The score is pointless unless it achieves the purpose of making music present. It must be read, performed, and understood experientially, not theoretically. Where was music before humans made it present? Roughly speaking, it was in the same place God is before you make him present. I don’t mean to sound flip, but this is why it is so easy to find God, because the finding is in the seeking. Don’t worry. If you seek earnestly and sincerely, you will soon enough find, just as, if you pick up a guitar and learn a few chords, you will soon be able to play Smoke on the Water. You will be able to start making music present, in however a limited degree. And as you practice, you will be able to make more and more music present–music that would not have existed had you not gone to the trouble of practicing and bringing it into being.

(h/t Dr. Sanity)

Heh

The Devil Eats Nada. (h/t Megan Mcardle - posting at Instapundit)

Notes and Quotes

When the money’s on the line, golf becomes like poker; you can play to win or you can play to not lose. Or, if you don’t have any real idea what the difference is, you can do what most golfers and poker players do: play to lose. The don’t know that’s what they’re doing, but the loss is just as inevitable as if they had drawn four cards to a deuce kicker or used a putter off the tee.

from Fast Greens by Turk Pipkin (love that name!)

Oh, Those Terrible Bloggers!

Via Clive Davis, we get this example of how the legacy media looks at bloggers:

Mr Sifry reckons that about 75,000 new blogs are created every day, ie about one new blog a second. And just to address the gibe that blogs are like Christmas toys - to be played with once and then discarded - he estimates that 13.7 million blogs are still being updated three months after their creation and about 2.7 million people update their blogs at least once a week.

Professional media folk are predictably incredulous about this. Why would anyone write without being paid for doing so? And, besides, who do these people think they are, gaily airing their so-called ‘opinions’? Jean-Remy von Matt, the CEO of a German advertising agency, spoke for many in the media industry when he fired off an enraged email after bloggers had effectively sabotaged one of his advertising campaigns. In the email he called blogs ‘the toilet walls of the internet’. ‘What on earth’, he asked, ‘gives every computer-owner the right to express his opinion, unasked for?’ (emphasis mine)

Now, I have no idea just what the advertising campaign in question is, nor do I know how bloggers could effectively "sabotage" it (although I suspect there's a good story there, if anyone wants to tell it), but the arrogance implicit in von Matt's question reminds me an old Wizard of Id poster I used to have. When the King is informed that the peasants are revolting, he drily comments "They certainly are".

Clearly, von Matt needs a copy of this book.

Of course, at the risk of sounding just like a peasant, I should mention that I've always been a fan of toilet-wall graffiti.

I Call "Bullshit"!

A group of designers, recent recipients of a National Design Award, have written an open letter describing why it is they can't bring themselves to meet with the First Lady:

"Dear Mrs. Bush:

As American designers, we strongly believe our government should support the design profession and applaud the White House sponsorship of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. And as finalists and recipients of the National Design Award in Communication Design we are deeply honored to be selected for this recognition. However, we find ourselves compelled to respectfully decline your invitation to visit the White House on July 10th.

Graphic designers are intimately engaged in the construction of language, both visual and verbal. And while our work often dissects, rearranges, rethinks, questions and plays with language, it is our fundamental belief, and a central tenet of "good" design, that words and images must be used responsibly, especially when the matters articulated are of vital importance to the life of our nation.

We understand that politics often involves high rhetoric and the shading of language for political ends. However it is our belief that the current administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communication of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America. We therefore feel it would be inconsistent with those values previously stated to accept an award celebrating language and communication, from a representative of an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning.

While we have diverse political beliefs, we are united in our rejection of these policies. Through the wide-scale distortion of words (from "Healthy Forests" to "Mission Accomplished") and both the manipulation of media (the photo op) and its suppression (the hidden war casualties), the Bush administration has demonstrated disdain for the responsible use of mass media, language and the intelligence of the American people. (Emphasis mine)

While it may be an insignificant gesture, we stand against these distortions and for the restoration of a civil political dialogue.

The letter was signed by Michael Rock, Susan Sellers, Georgie Stout, Paula Scher and Stefan Sagmeister. "

It's hard to get more disingenuous than this. Instead of just coming out and saying something to the effect of: "We're not coming because we don't like the way your husband is running the coountry", these people have to cloak their protest under the guise of the administration's "demonstrated disdain for the responsible use of mass media, language and the intelligence of the American people".

This is elitist thinking at its finest and when it comes to disdain for the intelligence of the American people, it's clear the President has nothing on the folks at 2X4. We are, of course, nothing but "sheeple", incapable of seeing through the wily disinformation scheme promulgated by the President and his handlers. Even the media is being "manipulated" (all but Fox News, naturally, which is in on the scheme), with information being "suppressed" in the Administration's "prolonged assault on meaning". And here I thought I knew the meaning of the words "sex" and "is".

Oops. Wrong administration, sorry.

My bet is the "diversity" of political belief at 2X4 runs the gamut of Left to Progressive, with a possible pitstop at Hard Left in between. Ironically, when it comes to showing disdain for the use of language, the postscript says it best:

"Another winner, Chip Kidd was also asked to sign the letter, but decided that the gesture may prove inappropriate."

While I applaud Mr. Kidd's decision not to sign the letter, I have to point out that the gesture itself may not prove to be inappropriate. It either is or it isn't. And when it comes to being honest and responsible in the use of language and in communicating exactly what you mean, it clearly isn't.

Help Me Out Here

Do all these books make me look fat? (h/t Rebecca Blood)

Linky-Linky

The Best of the Web is back and they have the best line on the current situation in the Middle East:

Some have criticized Israel for not responding proportionately to the attacks, but we'd counsel patience. After all, the Israelis aren't done yet.

Meanwhile, Scott Adams prepares for marriage by comparing Phone Whores and Phone Assholes at the airport, LAGuy is lamenting the death of the Monkees, Rebecca Blood thinks that Al Jazeera is just misunderstood and Instapunk compares Hillary Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

On the home front, Dr. Sanity offers a new State Slogan for Vermont:

Vermont: Too liberal for the Kennedys

All of which ties in very nicely with this report from the Boston Globe (h/t Best of the Web) regarding the shenanigans of the state Democrats and their attempt to claim Independent (and avowed Socialist) Bernie Sanders for their own.

Apparently, Vermont is not only too liberal for the Kennedys, it's too liberal for the Democratic Party. How far left of Left can you get?

Nobody Knows Anything

In just one more example of William Goldman's famous dictum about Hollywood, actress Kiera Knightley acknowledges that she and co-star Orlando Bloom didn't have a clue about the first "Pirates" movie:

Knightley says it wasn't until she was at the premiere of the first "Pirates" movie with co-star Orlando Bloom that she knew the premise would work.

"Orlando and I were sitting next to each other at the premiere, which was the first time I'd seen it, and we'd had a big talk and decided that if it was awful, we'd still leave the theater all smiles," she said.

Heckuva way to make a living, isn't it?

The first of two sequels opens tomorrow and so far, the reviews have been pretty tepid. Like all sequels, this one suffers from the standpoint of being a known commodity and the usual response from the filmmakers is to up the ante in terms of special effects. Judging from the trailer, that's just what they've done.

For now, I'm sticking with my prediction: Like the Matrix before it, Pirates 2 will open huge but ultimately offer diminishing returns and when Pirates 3 rolls around next Spring, people will be wondering why they ever bothered. I'm seeing it tomorrow - I'll let you know if I change my mind.

Update: Saw it yesterday and liked it a lot - it may, in fact, be the most "fun" movie of the summer. It does have much in common with The Matrix sequels (and the Back to the Future trilogy before that) and that represents both the good and the bad news. The good news is that the writers get to expand the characters (yes, there is character development, even in a movie like this) and tell their story on a much larger canvas, as it were. The bad news is that, with so much screen time (and money) to work with, you run the risk of ending up with a bloated mess.

As usually happens with these things, there's a bit of both in Pirates 2.

The real problem with filming two sequels like this is that you're really telling one story - just stretching it to fit two movies. As such, the first hour of this two and a half-hour sequel drags a bit and probably could have been cut by a third, if not half. However, the payoff it builds to more than makes up for it and the movie leaves you with a powerful hook - I defy anyone to not want to see how this comes out in Part 3.

Yes, the CGI is over the top (especially Davy Jones' crew) and some of it works and some of it doesn't. But it's still Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow who makes the whole thing work. He has created what I would call a new breed of superhero: a heroic buffoon. His Captain Jack is the combining of alter-egos: Superman with horned-rim glasses and a stumbling gait, Batman with a martini in his hand and a blonde on his arm. Believable both in his derring-do and his pratfalls, his lechery and his nobility, his is a character for the ages and worth the price of admission alone.

Go see it. And then mark your calendar for next May.

Confuezing Simpl and Eezy

The AP's Darlene Superville takes a look at a movement to simplify spelling:

"When "say," "they" and "weigh" rhyme, but "bomb," "comb" and "tomb" don't, wuudn't it maek mor sens to spel wurdz the wae thae sound?"

If you found the second half of that sentence more difficult to understand than the first, welcome to the club. For a second example, try this one on for size:

"Americans doen't aulwaez go for whut's eezy — witnes th faeluer of th metric sistem to cach on. But propoenents of simpler speling noet that a smatering of aulterd spelingz hav maed th leep into evrydae ues."

The notion of simplifying the English language is not new - a list of proponents for the idea stretches back to Benjamin Franklin and includes such notables as Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw. Still, the idea has refused to take root, or, as Darlene puts it:

"But for aul th hi-proefiel and skolarly eforts, the iedeea of funy-luuking but simpler spelingz didn't captivaet the masez then — or now."

The reason is that simpler is not always eezyur, er, easier. And while email and text messaging might seem like an ally in this process, the emphasis in communicating on the Internet has always been about speed and space rather than just simplicity. In simplified spelling, some words - like "through" and "enough" - do shrink, but some do not. Hope, for example, becomes "hoep". Some words become even larger: also becomes "aulso".

The real problem with simplified spelling is that, no matter how you slice it, you're still trading one sistem, er, system of language for another. And those of us who have learned - if not mastered - one system won't be easily persuaded to learn another. Unless, of course, all books and newspapers and magazines start to look like this:

"(Andrew) Carnegie, hoo embraest teknolojy, died in in 1919, wel befor sel foenz went maenstreem. Had he livd, he probably wuud hav bin pleezd to no that milyonz of peepl send text and instant mesejez evry dae uezing thair oen formz of simplified speling: "Hav a gr8 day!"

In which case, well, u red it heer furst.

Watch Out for the Fifth on the Fourth

Went into Burlington last night and joined the throngs to watch the fireworks. B-town always has theirs on the 3rd, and just in case you're not sure what I mean by "throngs", the event was supposed to bring an additional 30K bodies to the waterfront. That may not sound like much but when the population of the city (sans students) is only around 35K to start with, it has a locust-like effect. To put it another way, it doesn't matter whether you're surrounded by a thousand cars on the freeway or a tractor and two cows on the back road, it's still a traffic jam.

We normally watch the fireworks from North Beach - a few miles north of downtown - but this year all the rain has raised the water (and pollution) level in the lake and the ferocity level of the mosquitos to a point where body armor and a snorkel are required for even a quick dip so we chose to view them from the waterfront where, hopefully, all the localized body heat would confuse the little buggers. It worked - to a point. It was such an all-you-can-eat buffet that we ended up as snacks rather than entrees.

The best thing about watching the fireworks up close and personal (maybe a half-mile away) was the way the explosions of sound reverberated between the water and the buildings. It made me think of the cannon-fire from the 1812 Overture. Very cool.

Anyway, for those of you who don't have fireworks nearby, here's a wonderful link, courtesy of LAGuy. Enjoy and Happy 4th!

Everyone's Wild About Harry

There is a lot of Harry Potter talk going round the Internet these days, thanks mostly to an interview that J.K. Rowling did on British Television recently. In the interview, Rowling says that she’s “well on the way” to finishing the seventh – and last – HP book and that the ending, which she first wrote back in 1990, has changed “very slightly”.

Apparently, one character that was slated to die has gotten a reprieve while two others have unexpectedly gotten the ax: “…two die that I didn’t intend to die,” she said, and added, “A price has to be paid. We are dealing with pure evil here. They don’t target extras, do they?” Clearly, this woman has never watched much Star Trek.

Of greater import, she dodged the question of whether one of the victims would be Harry himself. While admitting that she understood the mentality behind killing off the main character in a series, she refused to speculate, saying “I don’t want the hate mail, apart from everything else”.

Well, as Tom Maguire would say. And speaking of Tom, his opinions on the subject are here. I’m not sure that I agree with all of his predictions but I will lay money that he’s right about the release date of the seventh book, especially since the release date of the fifth movie is now scheduled six days later. Meanwhile, Dr. Sanity pleads for Harry’s survival while The Anchoress argues that surviving Voldemort might not be Harry’s biggest challenge:

“And Harry…I can see him surviving the series - everyone wants to see Harry, Hermione and Ron live happily ever after - but what would the rest of Harry’s life be like? Perhaps he’d teach Defense Against the Dark Arts…but Voldemort vanquished it would all seem pretty pedestrian to him wouldn’t it? And rather purposeless? His parents would still be dead. Dumbledore, dead. Possibly Hagrid, dead. One or several Weasleys dead. Ron and Hermione probably wed.”

She compares HP with Hamlet and continues:

“Here is the interesting question…when a life has been lived with a sense of deep mission - as in either Hamlet’s or Harry’s case - and that mission has been fulfilled, what is the purpose of the life, thereafter? If the 18 year old Harry (or a 20-something year old Hamlet) have accomplished their goal, the thing that has driven them and given their whole life meaning and purpose, are we supposed to believe they can ever rest easy in a sort of “busywork” retirement? Perhaps this is why monarchs, old generals, popes, entrepreneurs, mother-hung rock stars and CBS newsmen can never willingly retire and live out their days. Without their sense of mission, life has no thrust and parry, no vivacity, no purpose.”

I don’t think anyone would want to read about Harry in his declining years – just as I don’t think anyone other than perhaps George Lucas would really care to read about Harry’s early years with the Dursleys. Rowling, or whomever, would have to come up with a new mission for him, something equal to the vanquishing of pure evil, and The Revenge of the White Ferret just won’t do.

Still, it is fun to speculate. But perhaps, as the Anchoress suggests, the best thing is simply to go back and re-read books 1-6 or, if you prefer, watch movies 1-4. You can never have too much Harry and 7/7/07 is still a year away.

I Had No Idea

It seems you really can get anything at Costco.

Required Reading

I added a new blog to my blogroll this morning. It's called Creating Passionate Users and though it lists several people as contributors, it seems to be primarily the brainchild of Kathy Sierra. I discovered it initially by linking to this post, which encouraged me to poke around and check out some of her previous posts. Since then, I've been a regular visitor. If I hadn't been waylaid by the move from hell, I would have added it to my blogroll before now.

Her recent post about her near-death experience a year ago and her subsequent link to this post at another site made a huge impresion on me. I find the site consistently interesting and definitely worth my time and I hope you will, too.

On a related note, it must seem strange for a small blog like this one to be recommending people to a larger blog that has far more viewers than I do. Sort of like the tail wagging the dog, so to speak. Well, I look at it this way: the Internet - and the blogging portion of it - is huge; so huge that, no matter how much of it you see, there's always much more that you can't see. And if you should somehow stumble across my little portion of it, the least I can do - other than hopefully making your time here worthwhile - is direct you to other places you might find of interest.

Think of it as a karmic exercise.

Speaking of Perspective

This kind of takes the cake, doesn't it?

Meanwhile

Scott Adams definitely has the right idea for dealing with household ants. Our new place was infested with them and I've lost count of the number I've sent to ant heaven.

Although I do have to say I think he's going a bit too far when he compares cat poop to finding nuggets of gold.

While I Was Away

Okay, so I know a lot of interesting and potentially life-altering things happened while I was otherwise engaged but surely none of them were more important than this. Or this. Or maybe this. Or perhaps this.

I mean, there are so many things going on in the world these days, it helps to have a sense of perspective, right?

Right?

In Case You Were Wondering

No, I haven't disappeared. We've been moving the last few weeks - always a wonderful chore - Internet access has been spotty and the blogging inclination slight. This is our first move in ten years and it's been a monster.

Tomorrow, it's off to Virginia for a Father's Day Memorial Service for my dad, who passed away last October. I'll be back in about a week, hopefully, and later this month I expect blogging to resume.

Just in case anyone was wondering...