Pasta Shapes

You can get pasta in any shape you want. When you come to think of it, this is one of the only benefits of living in a modern society. Disease and poverty are still with us, for all we claim to have fixed them, and while cell phones allow you to get in touch with anyone instantly, they also make you look like a jerk. But pasta shaped like bow ties? Pasta colored with squid ink (fake)? Alphabet pasta? You would need a black heart to find a downside to those. I may be a little cynical, but I'm not going to say something's bad if it's not.

And there are always more of them. Just today I had a kind of pasta shaped like little Mexican hats. That was pretty sweet. I would say the opportunity to eat Mexican hat pasta, just by itself, is worth at least the eradication of mumps. Did you ever hear of anyone dying of that anyhow? It would be embarrassing, but if you're prone to dying in stupid ways, it's probably better that you got finished off in childhood.

I think the pasta was originally from Apulia. I am pretty sure that if you make it the traditional way you will get bored long before you get carpal tunnel syndrome, but that both will happen eventually. The reason I bring this whole topic up is that I was wondering: How many shapes of pasta do most Italians eat? You always hear about how such and such a pasta is popular in this or that little village in Italy. I wonder if it's like a territorial thing. People in one little mountain town only eat the Mexican hat pasta, breakfast dinner lunch and tea, while people in the next town won't touch it. But the urge for new shapes is pretty strong. Don't these people ever want to have those tube shaped ones? Or the rotinis. Those are lighthearted. So how many shapes of pasta does the average Italian eat?

Come to think of it, how many shapes of pasta do you eat? I've eaten a lot of different kinds in my day. I'm not sure I could count them all. If I had to guess, I would say 30, counting orzo but not counting couscous. Life is good, in the modern age.

I Challenge You...

...to the Stuttering Awareness Game. Actually, I'm just going to give away some of the questions because, come on. That's more fun.

"If you stutter, that means you are a dumb and nervous person." ANSWER: False. Also you are worse than Hitler.

"If you stutter, you cannot be president." ANSWER: False. Like all the other answers, this one is presented without any hint of why it's false. Is it because the 14th amendment overrules the 1834 law against imperfect speakers? Or is it just because, well, why not be president? As a matter of actual fact, if you stutter, you can't be president. Who's going to vote for you? Not me, Porky.

Moving on, there's a gallery of pictures drawn by children, from a prompt: Stuttering. If somebody asked me to draw a picture of my speech impediment, I would probably put my head down and cry, but these brave souls went for it. Please don't laugh.



If that's not for you, there are pages and pages of links to other pages that link to numbingly boring speech impediment stuff. Some of it is supposed to be entertaining, but they can't fool me. On the plus side, all of it is formatted to be accessable to anyone with a 300-baud internet connection. Get a load of the California Raisin clip art.

I Like Saunas, Myself

It's all over the news that Congressman Mark A. Foley is a big pervert because he likes to have Instant Messenger conversations with 16-year old boys, and use the expression "spank it". Seriously, go read this transcript of one of his conversations, but only if you are ready to enter a new dimension of awkwardness.

I like his screenname: Maf54. No false pretenses. Now if I were going to seduce people who may or may not legally be children on the internet, I would probably choose a more exciting nickname. But not Mark Foley. His initials followed by his birthdate were splashy enough for him. He preferred to charm them with his wit and innuendo.

On the other hand, I am having real trouble with this passage:

Xxxxxxxxx (8:00:20 PM): hey
Xxxxxxxxx (8:00:32 PM): so you have a fetich
Maf54 (8:00:32 PM): hey what
Xxxxxxxxx (8:00:40 PM): fetish**
Maf54 (8:00:43 PM): like
Maf54 (8:00:53 PM): i like steamroom
Maf54 (8:01:04 PM): whats yours

Steamrooms? I guess everyone likes steamrooms, especially if they have a cold (or ulcer) but, it's, well, kind of strange. Who likes steamrooms in "that way"? I guess Xxxxxxxxx understands well enough, 'cause he lets it drop, so maybe it's just a Republican thing. In which case I sure don't want to know about it.

Anyway, a lot of people who care about sexual exploitation of Republicans got Foley in trouble, and he resigned. He's probably feeling pretty low right now, so if you ever see Maf54 on Instant Messenger, why not say hi? Maybe you can talk about steamrooms, if that's your thing.

Canker Sores

I'm pretty sure more productivity in America gets lost to little unsympathetic diseases than all the scarlet fever and and smallpox that we aren't having. Guess we got that medical revolution backwards, huh? That's why instead of writing Romantic piano compositions like Chopin, and having a wonderful time (apart from the coughing) I have been positively felled for the last few days by a canker sore.

I know you think I'm just a big baby, but that only goes to show how little sympathy people have for these kinds of problems. Ulcers really, really hurt. So much that I am not able to focus on fun things. Only on my lip. Really, you're lucky I'm not the kind of person who has a camera, or you'd be seeing pictures of my ulcer. Just remember that when other people try to make you look at their photographs on the internet, they might as well be showing you their open sores. I'm not sure how they find the restraint, but I bet it could break down at any minute, so watch out for people with cameras.

So, back to my ulcer. There are two ways to treat them. One is to put benzocaine solution on them. This is fun the first time you try it. I remember being a small child and putting anaesthetic in my mouth just on a whim. This hasn't led to a cocaine addiction yet, but there's still time. Now that I have to do it all the time, and the camphor flavor has been replaced with menthol, it's no fun at all. It runs all over my mouth and makes my lower lip swell up like Mammy. Which is not racially sensitive. ON the other hand, for a simple practical joke, get someone to drink an entire half-ounce bottle. There are a dozen ways to get someone to put a half ouce of liquid into his mouth, so I don't have to go over them. You can probably supply the details to the joke yourself (e.g. is it a deadly poison).

The other treatment is one that I pioneered and I am very proud of it. It might also be illegal. Apparently steroids are used to treat very severe ulcers, since they suppress the immune system or something. Therefore the obvious solution was to smear (prescription only) betamethasone psoriasis cream all over the inside of my mouth. When you try this you will learn two things: A) The stuff that makes foot cream stick to feet makes it slide right off mouths, like trying to ice a waxed floor. B) The stuff that makes foot cream stick to feet tastes just like Subway bread smells, for better or worse.

Honestly? This was an obvious solution. That cream solves any problem. You should probably get a tube for yourself. It doesn't work on pimples, but that's the only time it's let me down. I don't have allergies but if you do, you might seriously consider putting it up your nose. Auto-immune problems are the worst ones in the world, after all. How could it get any worse?

Pokey the Penguin

Oh boy oh boy! After a wait of 6 months, there is a new Pokey the Penguin strip. This is no way to run a comic strip, but in the meantime; boy howdy. I can bring you this exclusive report because I have been checking the Pokey the Penguin website every day for the last year. Because I am a tribune of the people. You heard it here first. Read all the archives if you haven't yet. Of course you have. Pokey the Penguin.

Monopoly: Here & Now

Hey okay so they just released yet another Monopoly product. This is a game with less strategy depth than roulette, whose only appeal is that you can imagine that you are living a poorly-realized fantasy. You already know what is wrong with the Monopoly concept, so let's not get into that.

But maybe you hadn't heard of Monopoly: Here & Now. I guess the idea was that partisans of various cities could call in to Parker Brothers headquarters and suggest their cities' landmarks. And then those landmarks would become properties in a new Monopoly version. And you could buy houses on them or hotels or something. I guess the kind of person who would call Parker Brothers is already a true believer, and doesn't need that explained to him, so whatever.

I keep up with these things as a public service, so I knew about the Great Monopoly Call-in while it was still happening. I honestly thought that Parker Brothers was going to choose the 22 most popular cities, and rank their monuments in some real order. I hoped, maybe the bridges and stadiums would be ranked by their actual land value, or the relative incomes of their cities*, or something to make this game relevant. Nope, they ranked the monuments by the number of votes they got. As it turns out, this game is actually just about how much Monopoly fans love Monopoly. Which is always a safe marketing technique for a big famous brand, but come on.



But! Not only is this game about sycophantic Monopoly fans, it's also about fun product placement. The tokens in the game are shaped like McDonalds and Starbucks, which as Parker Brothers charmingly puts it are "iconic to life here & now." Which, when you come to think of it, is an all-purpose lame excuse for product placement. It's not like they needed one. When everyone gets so caught up in new-Monopoly-board excitement, these things just happen. Frankly, it would look weird if they kept the Scottie dog. I'm not sure I've ever seen one of those things in the flesh. How here & now is that?

*Update: Cleveland came in last anyway. Awesome.

Nerds

You see nerds in 80's movies, and you start to forget that they really existed. There's a temptation to think of nerds with their aviator glasses and overbites as just another movie shorthand, but no, nerds were very real.

Why don't we have nerds any more? We have socially awkward technology people, but it's not the same. Now that computers are, for the most part, cool. Nerds are gone and unmourned. As far as I know, there's no nerd Burning Man where people go to engage in nerd culture. Does everybody think nerds were a waste of time?

It's not like nerds were people who were only nerds 'cause they couldn't be jocks. Presumably they really liked those glasses, and all the other stuff. But now nobody has the time of day for nerds. It's sad, and it's about time for a nerd revival.

Concentrate On the Smarter [Heads of State]

Advice on how to succeed at geopolitics, paraphrased from Break a Million at Pac-Man. (Copy http://tinyurl.com/r6bu5 into your browser; it's a PDF)

• "Many [world leaders] like to take risks in an attempt to maximize their score and add to the excitement."
• "Don't worry about [Switzerland]. [Switzerland] moves essentially independently of your position. [It] will rarely intentionally corner you, even if you are in a potentially vulnerable position."
• "Most of the time the [insurgents] can trap you more easily in the [third world]. Therefore, in the absence of any other goals, always try to consume the [oil] in the [third world] first. You don't necessarily have to clear the [third world] entirely, but get as [much oil] as you safely can before proceeding.
• "Since there is so much treachery around each bend in the [post-September 11 era], a conservative approach is recommended. Play it just a little on the safe side. Take some risks, but not large ones. Traditional [Cold War] types of risks won't necessarily yield the same payoffs."
• "Each [superpower] has one quadrant of the [Earth] which is his 'primary area'. The primary area is the part to which a [superpower] usually retreats at certain points [in history], giving up his pursuit of [hegemony].
• "As you consume [civil liberties], your speed slows down slightly. Therefore, when a [terrorist cell] is close on your tail, it may be to your advantage to forget the [civil liberties] and choose a path without any."
• "Immediately after you [construct] a [nuclear weapon], the [superpowers] go exactly opposite to the direction in which they were going... Thus, you may want to [construct] the [nuclear weapons] at a time when one or more [superpowers] are in close pursuit."
• "Be mentally prepared. Be ready for anything, especially frustration and rough times. But if you do apply the tips presented, you should get some positive results. Use what works, but don't be afraid to experiment!"

Exercise

Why have we hit on exercise as one of the most inalienable rights that a prisoner can have? Sure, it would be cruel to deprive prisoners of food or water, or even a soft bed and toilet facilities. But is exercise really next highest on the list?

Even prisoners in the "supermax" very high security prisons get exercise periods now and then. They don't get to see other people, except on special occasions. I don't know about you, but I would rather be able to see other people than be let into a pathetic exercise yard for a few hours a week.

What do they even do in these exercise yards? Wind sprints from one end to the other and back? Do they make like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape? It seems like you could get a reasonable imitation of exercise without leaving your cell. Just do Charles Atlas-like dynamic tension exercises. Or practice standing on your head, until you get really good at it. Or spin around in circles until you fall down.

I'm not even in prison, and I don't get much more exercise than these people who are supposedly being punished. I could probably go years and years without an equivalent exercise yard. Are there really people who consider it a form of torture if they aren't let out to play?

Just-- Just Stop.

This thing has been everywhere lately. Get it? Bush is responsible for the deaths of allll these men. If you choke up looking at this picture, you are the bad kind of liberal, in my book.

Even the design's not very good. You can tell they just tinted each soldier's photo to get the appropriate shade for one pixel of Bush's face. They probably had a computer do it. You wouldn't get a very good result if you just looked for photos that were naturally the right shade, but the extra effort would have made it elegant anyway.

When you come to think of it though, the concept works. The lazy design fits the cheap sentiment like a glove.

Uh Oh

According to this, I have all but two of the symptoms for mild Alzheimer's disease, and all but one of the symptoms for moderate Alzheimer's. Luckily I don't have any of the symptoms for severe Alzheimer's, so Aricept(tm) can still help me, but my faculties are apparently fading. Test yourself, before it's too late.

Which reminds me. The local newspaper had a "is your son using heroin" series a year ago, and I tested positive for all the warning signs but blue lips and unexplained phone calls. I guess I'm just a troubled youth.

Also, Aricept thoughtfully provided you with this section, Enjoying Time With Your Loved One. I know they mean your senile loved one, but it's still thoughtful. If you ever feel bored, well why not "play simple card games"? I know nothing cheers me up like a round of UNO.

Alcohol Poisoning

Writing three times about alcohol in a 24-hour period? The topical jokes are yours to make.

Alcohol poisoning is something we are all very worried about. I am pretty sure that any sufficiently prissy website about alcohol (especially if it is targeted towards teenagers or their parents, but aren't they all) has to mention the grotesque danger that is alcohol poisoning. Don't leave your friends passed out on the ground, they say. Take them to an emergency room. Whatever the cost. If you think you've drunk too much vodka, plan your funeral now! Alcohol poisoning.

Alcohol poisoning is a really tiny problem. First, let me say that I am talking about, as below, respiratory depression. Not aspirated vomit -- which is also not funny -- and not alcohol in combination with other drugs. Those are both kind of dangerous, but they are also very different things. The first one is easily preventable with first aid, and the second one is what you deserve for being so stupid.

First of all, this article can only point to 317 deaths per year from alcohol poisoning. And only 40 percent of those are from drinking ethanol. The rest are weirdos who drank rubbing alcohol. And of the 126 remaining, probably most choked on their own vomit, since I don't think this report distinguishes between that and alcohol poisoning. Please note that 52 people per year die of aspirin poisoning.

Wikipedia, the repository of all the world's knowledge, can only come up with 5 putative deaths from alcohol poisoning. Of those, 3 don't meet our criteria, and the other two are losers you never heard of. So out of all the famous people who have ever lived, 2 died from alcohol poisoning. It is not a grave threat.

Nothing At All?

"Some people laugh at the behavior of others who are drunk. Some think it's even funnier when they pass out. But there is nothing funny about the aspiration of vomit leading to asphyxiation or the poisoning of the respiratory center in the brain, both of which can result in death." - NIH

Also, from the same source:

"If your graduates drink, they may temporarily feel elated and happy, but they should not be fooled.

This is crying out for a satirical parenthesis, but I will leave that to you.

Alcohol

People will always tell you to eat along with your alcohol. This is because information that everybody already knows is the best to put on your website. No reason not to, after all. Except that it clogs up the internet, and there isn't any room left for new information, like the Icelandic Muslim question.

So, food and alcohol. When these people and websites tell you to eat at your party, they always say that food "soaks up" the alcohol. Sometimes they go the extra mile, and tell you to eat a lot of starch to soak up the alcohol. Sometimes even very official sources talk about it this way. I don't know why. They never elaborate. Is the popcorn in question really supposed to soak up alcohol? It gets pretty saturated as soon as you stick it in your mouth. Most food is saturated even before that. Even if it did absorb alcohol, the whole complex gets broken up in your intestines.

I suspect, although they are covering their tracks well, that everyone is really thinking of the activated charcoal they give people who have alcohol poisoning (or other drugs). Charcoal really does absorb the alcohol, resist digestion, and just pass it out of the body. But it's nothing like food.

Second, why the cataclysmic warnings about drinking on an empty stomach? Yes, if you drink without eating, you will have a higher BAC than if, all things equal, you had eaten. So? That is not unalloyed bad. People drink to elevate their blood alcohol concentration. If it gets too high, that is bad, but it would be bad whether you had eaten or not. Medical websites should just tell you to drink more slowly if you're not eating, and leave the rest up to your discretion. One thing they never do mention, but which is a large problem, is that if you drink on a very empty stomach you will get a stomachache. Maybe stomachaches aren't earthshaking enough for the doctors to worry about, but man do they hurt.

"The only thing that can sober you up is time" is another old chestnut. I wouldn't mind this one so much -- it's mostly true -- except they repeat it so religiously. Sometimes they italicize only. If they think they didn't make themselves clear, they go on to tell you that black coffee cannot make you more sober. But coffee can make you more sober, can't it? Intoxication/sobriety is a measure of how well you can function. If you are intoxicated, you can't do things well. One symptom of alcohol intoxication is sleepiness. If you drink lots of coffee, you become less sleepy. Hence, more sober. Right?

I don't want to say that coffee can make you completely sober, because of course it can't. But when alcohol foes start acting like the king of the universals, and throwing around words like only, then it becomes my business.

URLs That Redirect to www.google.com

http://www.gooogle.com
http://www.ggoogle.com
http://www.google.net
http://www.googlee.com (my favorite)
http://www.googel.com
http://www.gogel.com
http://www.googele.com
http://www.googil.com

And some URLs that, intriguingly, are still more or less available

http://www.gogl.com
http://www.goooogle.com
http://www.qoogle.com
http://www.gugal.com
http://www.goocle.com
http://www.gewgewl.com

Your Wikipedia Sentence For Today

Vandalism edition:

"The Tar Baby was a doll made of tar, sugar phosophate units, and turpentine, used to entrap Bre'r Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories."

If that sentence gets fixed, I am going to burn Wikipedia to the ground.

Modern War Is a Cyborg Orgy

Cyborg Feminism.

Dense?
Silly?
Snotty?
Unhelpful?

Yesssss.

"Perhaps that is why I want to see if cyborgs can subvert the apocalypse of returning to nuclear dust in the manic compulsion to name the Enemy. Cyborgs are not reverent; they do not remember the cosmos. They are wary of holism, but needy for connection- they seem to have a natural feel for united front politics, but without the vanguard party. The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism."

P.S. Why is so much feminist art similar? Do women have their own visual style? Is it wrong of me to say ugly? Do men have their own art movement? Or are they insufficiently wary of holism.

Torture

Everyone is missing a big point in this torture debate. Republicans tend to say, what we are doing to these men falls short of torture. Waterboarding is not torture for such and such a reason. And then Democrats say well how would you like to be waterboarded? And Republicans say well I wouldn't like it at all, but we have evidence these people are depraved criminals and waterboarding might help prevent crimes. This is no different, they say, than zealous policemen interrogating a subject until he breaks down. We don't get many charges of torture against that. This is no different.

Nobody seems to notice that these terrorists -- the ones who are terrorists -- are presumably very dedicated people. They have a huge incentive to keep their plans secret. They think God will be mad at them otherwise. To a very religious person, there's not much scarier than holy disapproval.

If we do get any useful information out of them, it's because we pressured them really hard. In other words, interrogators made it clear that they would suffer more if they didn't tell, than if they did. Considering the depths of their feelings, it would have to be a lot of suffering. Therefore? We don't even have to know anything about the techniques involved. If a very dedicated man cracks, he has been tortured.

I think pundits get confused because suspects being investigated by the local police for a local murder are seldom this committed to their cause. A man who has just killed his wife probably wants to confess, on some level. His conscience bothers him. So the police often don't have to apply much pressure to get him to break down. Unless I have mistaken ideas about terrorist masterminds, they are not on the same level. To get any information out of them, it just has to be torture. You can have a debate about the merits of torture after you acknowledge this, but I'm surprised nobody has yet.

Some Punctuation Marks, And the Disesases They Would Treat If They Were Drugs

Solidus -- Tranquilizer
Macron -- Glaucoma
Eroteme -- **Natural Male 3nhancement**
Trema -- Anti-inflammatory
Permille -- Headaches (homeopathic)
Apothrope -- High blood pressure
Virgule -- Mood stabilizer
Diesis -- Edema

Hey...

Hey- hey everyone? I knew about Manuel II Palaeologos? Way before it was cool. Back when it was just me, and the Pope. Man. Byzantine emperors used to be cool back then.

Now? I just don't know any more.

I've Created a New Scale That Shows Diseases I'd Rather Have Than Watch This Movie

You will be happy to know that someone finally asked Man to rank his diseases. Which diseases are Hot and which are Not? Let's find out. (I can't find a copy of this study, which seems more complete, but I'll work in what I know. So basically this list is my own compilation.)

18. Common cold

17. Mild vision problems

16. Breast cancer

15. Lower back pain

14. Diabetes

13. Severe asthma

12. Mild dementia

11. Colon cancer

10. HIV

9. Heart attack

8. Severe heart disease

7. Moderate stroke

6. Severe depression

5. Blindness

4. Paraplegia

3. Psychosis

2. Severe dementia, and the number one worst disease to have is ---

1. Quadriplegia

I think breast cancer scored surprisingly low on this list, and blindness surprisingly high. But I guess breast cancer is a "don't" these days, what with all the pink ribbons everywhere. It's practically a self-parody now. But not as bad as asthma? Not as bad as diabetes? You know what the problem here is, right? Misogyny. Disgusting. And among medical professionals too. Women's diseases are just as fashionable as men's.

What Not to Say On the Admissions Papers At a Psychiatric Ward

"I am not mentally ill. I am having a spiritual experience."

I Have a Sports Question

Hey there all you sports fans. I don't like to watch sports. I keep trying to tell myself, "sports are just like politics. You like to watch politics. People who like sports are just like that, only with big men instead of old men."

I'm not sure that's a good comparison though. People care about the outcome of football games. They genuinely want their teams to win, and feel bad if they don't, right? I know other people care about the outcome of political matches. Most people do, even, but I don't. So I really don't have a frame of reference for what it feels like to watch a game. That feeling of investment in strangers' performance, especially when it can't possibly affect you? Nope.

My question is, what do you look for when you sit down to watch (say) a football game? Are you just hoping that your team wins? I doubt that's all people hope for. That's why they replay exciting moments of the game later on, after it's over. But then, some of it is hoping that your team wins. In one way, this is more complicated than politics. If you're a Republican, you tend to hope that Republicans win, and not much else. If it's not close, or tense or exciting -- so much the better. So much the better if Republicans win by 40 points. It gives them a mandate, or something.

But what is the balance of sports' fans' priorities? When you watch soccer, would you rather see a boring game in which the score is 1-0 (your team), or a 9-8 (enemy team) loss? Assuming the high-scoring game has lots of interesting moments? As far as I can tell, all sucessful defensive plays are equally boring, but I could be wrong. I certainly know which one I'd rather watch, but what does that count for.

This Question Will Be On the Test

Q: Why do cell phones all play music when they go off, but normal phones all ring or make electronic tones?

Sample answer: Because we have been locked into certain cultural patterns. Cell phones "ought" to play music, and therefore new cell phones sell better if they do play music. Originally, cell phones played music because they resembled other portable electronics, which mostly also did. Normal phones, on the other hand, have been ringing for hundreds of years, so cultural biases favor new phones that also ring.

Lottery Winners

You know how it is a cliche that people who win the lottery end up A) as poor as they started and B) miserably unhappy in C) a humorously short amout of time? Of course. This is a sadly underexplored phenomenon, though. How is it even possible to blow through twenty million dollars in five years? I know someone will say, "People are stupid, Alex. They do stupid things, and that is what makes them unhappy."

I know that must be true on some level, but it can't be the whole story. I'd like to know, for one thing, what they spend the money on. Do they buy hundreds of new cars? Dozens of houses? Do they entrust all their money to a charitable foundation in a moment of stupid goodwill, or do they distribute it among their many friends and relatives? How could that make them unhappier than before? Charity is supposed to make you feel good and virtuous.

Do they invest it in pyramid schemes and lose it? Do they invest it in the stock market and lose it? It would be hard to lose money that rapidly, even in the stock market. I am really curious how you could burn through millions and millions of dollars in a few years. Someone should write a memoir. The problem is, people who have it together enough to write an account of what went wrong probably weren't stupid enough to waste 20 million dollars in the first place.

So maybe we need to do a more in-depth sociological survey. Has one already been undertaken? I doubt it. Once again, the studies that would be the most beneficial to humanity are the ones that are not being done. Give me the twenty million dollars, and I'll perform research to be proud of. And I won't waste it, either.

Spoilers!

I haven't ragged on Wikipedia.org for a while so perhaps now is a good time. Wikipedia has the worst book reviews in the galaxy. I think this stems from their one-size-fits-all policy, so that Oliver Twist looks like it's being reviewed by a nine-year old, while children's books get this weird "But what if they were real books"? treatment.

The exhaustive review of The Very Hungry Caterpillar is livened up by the big bold blue official spoiler warning. "But tomorrow we were going to find out who the dish ran away with." The Monster at the End of This Book is even more clinical. After the desperate spoiler warning: "The monster turns out to be Grover himself, making the story self-referential." I hope I didn't ruin anyone's plans for this evening. Jesus Wikipedia, you get a good idea like spoiler warnings, and then you just embarass yourself. Wikipedia doesn't deserve to have the finer things, like book reviews, if it's going to cheapen them.

What Is the Name of This Blog?

Perhaps you noticed that I changed the name of this website. Now it's three punctuation marks, instead of one. If you are reading this from a mental institution or prison, and you want to remain in my fan club, just add the pointy braces in four quick slashes of a razor, then pour in ink (optional).

This was really the name I wanted all along. But of course, HTML being what it is, pointy braces were right out. Computers are just postmodernist about context. It is very difficult to get "<" to come up on the screen in such a way that the computer doesn't raise its hands to its cheeks and call its supervisor. To actually get the pointy braces to show up, you have to type a series of symbols that I cannot communicate to you here. A garbled mass of symbols that Mr. HTML thought nobody would ever want to use in context, and so it was safe to use as a paraphrase for ">" -- but what about people who want to talk about that mass of symbols... in HTML? Oh man.

Goedel definitely has something to say about this, but in the meantime I have a new title. Thanks to Kaylen but no thanks to Goedel. You know what? I'm glad he starved himself to death.

YouTube

I remember when I saw my first YouTube thing. I call it a thing because I don't really know what it was.I guess one of those frames of a video that people put on their websites. I thought, "what the hell is that? It takes way longer to load than a normal picture and it's proportionately ugly." Or maybe I didn't think that. But if I had, I would have been prescient, because that is sure what I'm thinking now.

I don't mind people who want to watch videos on the internet. If computers appeal to only two of our senses, it's as immersive as you can get without the 3-D glasses. I have a hard time watching them myself, because I have the volume on everything turned up all the time (my records skew quiet) so video == din. Still, you know, do whatever you want. But when everyone plasters these frames all over their websites, it becomes my problem again. This is bad behavior in two ways.

First, as I said, YouTube frames take a very long time to load. I can only assume that some of that load time involves subjecting them to a welding torch, because the quality of the frames is terrible. It doesn't add anything to your website to have an ugly picture up front. If you want people to watch videos, send them to the YouTube homepage. I want to be able to scroll up and down a webpage and have an unimpeded and lovely view.

Second, if the point you are making cannot be encapsulated as "Here, look at this," don't think that it will help to offer me a YouTube frame. Since this company exploded in popularity (Was that May or April or something?) so many web page compositions have just been: YouTube frame & Clever title. Don't do it. You know who you are. At least tell me what the video is about. Give me something to go on. Because unless you are my best friend in the world, I'm not going to watch a video with zero context just because you told me to.

YouTube videos are a medium that requires some investment to watch. You can't just watch them and giggle at them and toss them back into the internet like a picture or prose and hope for the best. People (me?) have to recalibrate their computers and wait several minutes and everything. YouTube? Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right now.

Soviet Communism Is Dead

But its spirit lives on in these Norilsk Nickel company posters. I don't know what they say. I don't know if they are pro-Communist or what. At least one seems to be from World War Two. All I know is how badly I want one.



I highly recommend reading Norilsk Nickel Magazine. It offers a glimpse into life in the world's most excruciating place, the northernmost city its size in the world. All in translated English that is charming and goofy. There are the usual pathetic photos of Russians trying to cope (studies show that Russians spend up to 80 percent of their time making the best of a bad situation). An unfortunately small amount of it is in English, but come on. You are getting parts of a magazine for Norilsk, Russia in English, for free. Count your blessings. It could be worse. You could *live* there.

Nicotine In Cigarettes

I meant to comment on this when it came out, but with one thing and another it slipped my mind. So. Apparently all the major cigarette manufacturers have been slyly raising the nicotine levels in their cigarettes. And we only just found this out, because our nicotine-testing apparatuses have a hard time approximating humans. But Massachussets developed a robot that mimics human smoking habits (that could be so much more fun than it is), and now the jig is up.

Everyone says this is a bad thing. I don't see it. Sure, the average nicotine per dose is up 10%, and someone who has smoked say ten cigarettes a day, religiously, for the last ten years might as well be smoking 11. But all this means is that people are going to have to smoke fewer cigarettes to get their nicotine fix. I know that nicotine is itself bad for you, but the free radicals in smoke are bad for you too. A smoker from the nineties, transported to the present day, would actually be healthier now that the tobacco companies have taken this step.

Some people say, no, this isn't about that. This is about luring new smokers. An innocent child smoking one cigarette will get more nicotine than before, and be ten percent more addicted at the end of the cigarette. After his first hundred cigarettes, he will be a hardened 110-cigarette smoker in 1998 terms. Am I the only one who thinks this description of addiction is a little facile? Has anyone noticed that this is an exact repeat (politically inverted) of the government's "marijuana is far stronger than in the 70's" line that gives now-authoritarian hippy parents a rhetorical way out?

Marlboro may have high levels of nicotine per cigarette, but what about nicotine patches? They have infinite levels of nicotine per cigarette. Hasn't exactly sparked an addiction crisis, as far as I can tell. There is more to the addictiveness (I said I wanted to retire that word, right? "Habit-forming-ness") of cigarettes than the crude nicotine levels. E.g:

• People like to put something in their mouths.
• People like to look cool
• People like the way cigarettes smell
• People like to be transgressive

There are probably others. Higher nicotine levels just might get more youngsters hooked (although I bet you could count them in the hundreds), but it will be a boon to public health on balance.

On another note, this kind of highlights how silly our tobacco laws are. Where is Philip Morris getting the nicotine to add to their cigarettes? Why, they're extracting it from tobacco. Why don't they just make weaker cigarettes and sell more of them, cheaper? That's what we would seem to prefer that they did, after all. Well they can't. We have reverse price controls in place. They have to sell them at a minimum price per cigarette, so the only way to keep up with the market is to make stronger cigarettes, and sort of bypass the laws. I don't want to sound like a libertarian here, but come on.

It Would Be Called "Up the Wall"

• Patient had delusions that he was being spied on at work and at home. Became increasingly anxious and withdrawn. Talked about carrying weapons to protect himself.
• Began living on the street; became verbally abusive and started ranting about being spied on by neighborhood residents.
• Started on SEROQUEL at 100 mg/day, dosed up to 400 mg/day by Day 5, with further increase to 800 mg/day.
• Is now the star of own sit-com; plays single father of four pre-teen children. Symptoms have not improved.

Mild Interest

Just when I thought I knew all the theory behind Scientology, and that it was not possible to cram any more your-personality-as-a-number scales into one religion, they come out with this "Tone scale." I'm not sure why they needed a new one. Aren't awareness characteristics good enough? I guess not, because now they have even more inappropriate parts of speech. Conservatism, Games, and Can't Hide, all as personality traits? Ha ha, whatever! If you say so.

It looks like the artist here either didn't know what they meant by the various descriptions, or is being figurative in that coy way Scientologists have. Illustrating "Sacrifice" with a picture of -- a human sacrifice -- doesn't clear anything up. It is probably more helpful if you just think of them as fun sketches. And man, they don't fail to deliver. You can see the whole thing here.

Jewish Commandments

Offered with all the context I am aware of.

• Break the neck of a calf by the river valley following an unsolved murder.
• Not to pity the pursuer.
• Make a guard rail around flat roofs
• The court must not let the sorcerer live.
• Prepare a shovel for each soldier to dig with.
• The Levites must transport the ark on their shoulders (obsolete).
• Not to put oil on the meal offerings of wrongdoers.
• Not to kidnap.
• Not to be afraid of killing the false prophet (historically significant).

If I ever teach a Hebrew class, like at a college level, the students will have to translate these on tests. They have just the right, simple sentence structure and uninteresting vocabulary. "The Gauls are attacking the ditches with arrows and spears."

These rules are also invaluable in telling us what the day-to-day religious life of a very religious Jew must be like. It's not something you hear about a lot. You hear what the precepts of Buddhism are, and maybe the important religious holidays, but you seldom get to hear how the average Joe Buddah spends his day, at least as it pertains to Buddhism. We know that Scientology is evil, and that you have to pay thousands of dollars to learn the theory behind it, but what do Scientologists do every day? Do they say their Scientological grace before meals? Do they have e-meter readings every afternoon? Every week? Do they say Scientology prayers at bedtime? To whom? Do they talk in that amusing jargon all the time?

I don't even know what very devout Christians usually do. They go to church on Sundays and sometimes on other days, where they hear a sermon and sometimes take a sacrament. They pray on some occasions but not others. I guess they often think about God? And I was watching some of them on a TV program and they kept saying they were thankful for everything. I guess they were referring to God, but I'm not sure if they meant it. It sounded kind of like a verbal tic, like saying "OK".

At least with Judaism, if Jews have to "serve the Almighty with prayer daily", at least that's right out there in print. Just memorize these 613 simple rules (a lot of them are redundant; it's probably less) and hey presto.

Ann Richards

She said,

"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying 'She opened clean government to everyone,'"

but she's not going to get her wish. Everyone is going to remember her for that foot line. She said George Bush Sr. was born with a silver foot in his mouth. They can't stop repeating that. NPR ran her obituary at least every fifteen minutes today, and every time, it was the silver foot. It's a pretty good line, I guess. But if that's all they can think of to say, I'd rather have the clean house one on my tombstone.

Injuring Younger Brothers Since 1992

If you go to http://www.wickedlasers.com/, all your worst fears about humanity will come bubbling up.

They sell lasers that can cauterize your wounds, slice electrical tape (was that a problem?), and light your cigarettes. Is that a good idea? Imagine yourself trying to light a cigarette with a laser. Ha ha, ouch.

I like how they classify their lasers: Red, blue and green. Nothing could be simpler. I kind of wish car companies did that. When I had to get a new keyboard last month, the first question the clerk asked was what color I wanted. And who's to say the world shouldn't work that way? Sub-classifications include Classic, Advanced, Extreme and Spyder, showing that someone lost the thread along the way.



They sell these lasers with a military theme, but I am not sure why. I wouldn't be afraid of a laser, but apparently they intimidate Iraqi insurgents. As long as they can catch ants on fire, sign me up.

Sleep Schedules

I seem to recall reading (could it have been the New York Times??) that in pre-Industrial Europe, bedtime was just after dusk, and people got up at dawn. But they also got up in the middle of the night for a few hours, mostly because nobody can sleep for 12 - 18 hours straight. I forget what the Times said they did in this fun interlude, but it can't have been much. Probably picked fleas off themselves and went out to make sure the cow was still there (can't be too sure).

In these days of electric lights and cement trucks roaring outside your window at 4 AM, we are free to choose our own bedtimes. Let's compare some sample sleep periods. I'm going to assume everyone sleeps 8 hours a night. I have a hard time getting by with fewer than 10, and Andrew Card apparently only sleeps 4. But these are only estimates. Moreover, you can shift these a few hours in either directions. They're just sketches.

Usual. This is when you sleep from about 11 PM to 7 AM. This is what about 85 percent of the world does. It has its advantages, certainly. Since most jobs happen from 9 AM to 5 PM, it means you're always up for work, even if you have to hurry a little in the morning. Most parties happen, and TV shows are on, from 5 to 11 PM -- if only because most people keep this schedule in the first place -- so you have your pick of fun things to do. And if you're a farmer, or sundial inspector, this sleep schedule lets you be up all day.

It has powerful drawbacks though. For one thing, you need to get up in the morning. Of course you are always going to have to get up, but under this system you have to get up in the morning. I cannot put my finger on it, but there is something hateful about getting up in the morning. Possibly how cold and wet it is. Even worse, you have to get up just before your job. That means if you feel sick, or hungover, or just unusually drowsy, you have no choice about getting up.

Clubgoer. Clubgoers sleep from 7 AM to 3 PM. At least, I think that's what they like to do, right? When you sleep those hours, you can't hold a real job. That is why most people don't do it and why parents worry that their children might. But you can always work the night shift. Or be a bohemian artist who keeps his own hours. Or be unemployed. The fact that most unemployed people gravitate towards this suggests that it wil be the sleep schedule of the future. Unemployed people have always been at the vanguard of important trends, like Communism or obesity.

I guess this scheme appeals to teenagers and other young people because it allows you to go to the really cool parties. I guess those are either the ones where everyone drinks too much and vomits into concave things (the more you drink, the more marginally concave), or where everyone takes ecstasy and gets featured on Touched by an Angel. Then you can go to Denny's. (Have you noticed that they actually target ads to all-night partiers now? It bothers me, but I can't describe how.)

Bizarro. The bizarro schedule is the least popular way to divide up the day. I can't imagine why. It involves sleeping from about 3 PM to 11 PM. It has a definite advantage over the teenager system -- if you push it back a few hours (or get a slightly flexible job), you can lead a very normal professional life. To be sure, you can't participate in many after-hours social activities, but whose fault is that? Society's as much as yours. If you can get some friends to join you on the bizarro sleep cycle, you can form a misanthropic society and curse the sun.

And unlike the usual schedule, you don't have to get up just before work. If you feel like lolling in bed for another 6 hours, feel free. What else were you going to do with your time? You were just going to waste it playing FreeCell. If you are going to come face to face with the futility of your life, it's a lot less depressing to do it at sunrise, rather than sunset. Still, one unavoidable problem is that the stores close so early. You will have to do all of your errands either just before work or just before you go to bed, in which case you will be sleepy and forget to wait for your change.

There are probably other ways of sleeping. You can look at variants like 7 PM - 3 AM (baby), 3AM - 11 AM (teenager) and 11 AM - 7PM, (vampire) but there probably isn't much else to say. I think all sleep patterns basically fall into the three listed above. There are, of course, those people who don't sleep all at once. Wasn't Leonardo DaVinci one of them? Or was that just a Seinfeld episode. In any case, I'm not sure that works in the long run. You just aren't tired enough to go to sleep at the beginning of each "nap", and not well rested enough to wake up at the end. Eventually you will collapse into one of the above-mentioned patterns, unless you can't avoid it (e.g. you are working several jobs and have no choice, in which case no advice will do you any good).

Speaking Of Elements

The government is trying their very hardest to make copper and zinc attractive. Trace minerals never looked so good.




I wish I had been the photographer here.

You Are More Indebted Than You Know

You probably have stereotyped ideas about which countries are important, and which countries we could do without. Nobody would miss Bolivia, you think. We'd all get by okay if a bottomless pit opened up there tomorrow. Well think again. Those countries are important sources for important elements:

Bolivia -- tungsten
Turkey -- osmium
Mozambique -- tantalum
Kazakhstan -- bismuth
Burkina Faso -- manganese
Madagascar -- scandium
Afghanistan -- yttrium

Not sneering now, are you?

Roosevelt

I would like to declare a moratorium on quoting Roosevelt when he said, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." People treat that like it is some Eastern-style aphorism, like "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." Like you can apply it on any occasion when people are talking about fear, and they will think you are a real smart guy.

Roosevelt was saying something very particular. He was saying that the only problem with the American economy was a lack of consumer confidence. And that if we all believed in the markets, really hard, that the banks would become solvent again. Something like that, certainly. From now on, thank you for not using the fear quote unless you are talking about the stock market.

Schmidt, You've Done It Again

I was wondering some time back about compiling an index of painful things. Apparently they have already done that for bees and wasps and ants. Venomous stings are the most inscrutable kind of pain, because unless you are an organic chemist and also God you can't know how much a given chemical will hurt you.

So now there's a Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Good to know. Of course, it is completely useless, because we have no idea what the scale is. Is it logarithmic? It's surely not linear. Being stung by a bullet ant is probably not four times as painful as being stung by a sweat bee. Also you will notice that there are zero honeybees on that list. No bumblebees either. Why would you even bother if you are not going to include the two most popular stinging insects? Jeez.

P. S. Have you noticed that every single article on Answers.com is a word-for-word copy of a Wikipedia article? Wikipedia is open-source and all, so I'm sure it's not a crime but still. What's their angle? Maybe every tenth fact is false. It's like Evil Wikipedia whose purpose is to fool you. I wish.

P. P. S! About the sting of the Tarantula Hawk, Schmidt says, "If you get stung by one, you might as well lie down and scream." I love the way that is phrased. Like if you're teasing a wasp, and it stings you, you inwardly sigh, "well, I guess I should probably scream now. Better make the most of it." And then you just lie down and kick up a fuss, because hey; why not?

Marketing Potential -->Here<--

Along with fancy gum (Would you prefer anise, or tarragon flavor?) something conspicuously absent from the food scene is daredevil mustard. Think about it. We already have hot sauces that are way too hot for actual people to eat, but I think they're all based on red pepper. The only use for these is practical jokes. Also, they come in bottles that are USMC-type masculine, because enduring pain is a male thing. Even better are the ones that come in naked lady bottles. I guess because liking naked ladies is also male. (What else is male? Being good at spatial reasoning but not so much at verbal comprehension? I'd like to see that.)

You don't see any mustard jars that are like that. Are they capable of making mustard that is hot enough to be painful even to the experts? They do a lot of chemical engineering; if nothing else, they could probably extract the active hot chemical in mustard, and reintroduce it into the bottled product. I like mustard way better than red pepper, so this is a product that would appeal to me. Especially if it came in a mathematics bottle.

You could carry that concept even further. Super-hot black pepper? Why is some Malaysian person not working on breeding very hot pepper? Maybe very hot onions. Raw garlic is pretty hot. Why aren't men who want to look like big men putting garlic on their hamburgers, instead of onions. Maybe when they've demonstrated that they can stand garlic, we'll let them have the super-hot onions that, I am sure, are in development somewhere.

September 11

Hey today is the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 business. I know this, because NPR has been ramping up to it all week, asking people, "now how did it feel to learn that your father was buried in a collapsed building? ... Do you miss him? ... Do you still think about him every day?"

There are two things that have bothered me ever since 2001, and I would like them to stop before the tenth anniversary (is the tenth anniversary more or less significant than the fifth?). First, when you are beginning your story about how your wife died, do not tell me what nice weather there was that day. It is not significant. It's not like this was a novel, and we need to analyze the author's choice of clear skies rather than heavy fog to get an insight into his intent. The weather just happens.

Second, don't talk about the 3,000 people who were "murdered" that day. Maybe they were murdered. I guess international terrorism is a crime in New York. But that's not how we talk. We don't talk about the people who were murdered in Dresden or London, even though there was probably legislation outlawing the Blitz. If we want to treat this like a war, let's be serious. Even better (worse) is when we say they were "slaughtered". I like how slaughter is worse than murder when it comes to people, but the "meat is murder" people have it the other way around. Let's just say they were killed, okay? Save the clever language for descriptions of how blue the sky was on that peaceful autumn morning. (Answer: cerulean)

I Am So Not the First Person to Think Of This

They're making a new Die Hard movie. Before I even found that out, I thought, "if they make another Die Hard movie, they should call it, "Die Hard 4: Old Habits." That goes to show what an unoriginal thinker I am. It's still a funny joke though.

Ian Shoales

Did you know that Ian Shoales has a blog? --> HERE.

It is probably the least-trafficked or commented-on or formatted website that anyone has, out of all the people who had a big influence on me as a child. Ian Shoales and Bloom County were my source for 80's history. I still have a pretty warped view of the whole decade. Way more wrong, I think, than how I am about the 90's or 70's. But what can you do. Probably everyone has a decade like that. People whose decade is the 60's are conservatives!

Vinni Pukh

I'm probably never going to have anything to say about Winnie-the-Pooh that will allow me to put this picture in a larger context. So here it is. I just like it.

No wait! I also have this book review that I like and mentions Winnie-the-Pooh. So there you go. My mental space, now has two references to Winnie-the-Pooh that I think are worth commenting on. Maybe if I live to 30, it will go up to 3. I'll be sure to let you know when that happens. With an update to this post. This post, will be my log of Winnie-the-Pooh thoughts.

How Classy Is Jack Daniel's?

I grew up all this time thinking that Jack Daniel's was what you drank if you were an alcoholic, and not the good kind of alcoholic like the Prince Regent but more like it was Jack Daniel's or nail polish. It's not very expensive, right? I never tried to buy it. I cannot think of a less expensive kind of whiskey off hand.

Sure, they have "Gentleman Jack" super-premium whiskey. I'm not sure anyone drinks it. Did you know that Budweiser has a super-premium variety? It's actually also not good. I'm going to have to take someone's word that Jack Daniel's (either regular or hi-test) is worth drinking. Whiskey really does taste like nail polish to me. Did you know it has large amounts of methanol in it, for flavor?

So if Jack Daniel's is so classless, why does every restaurant in the world advertise that it has a chocolate cake with Jack Daniel's? Or some other kind of Jack Daniel's thing. You can see some of them here. It can't just be that Jack Daniel's is the cheapest liquor and you can't tell one kind of Tennessee whiskey from another in cake. These are the same recipes that always tell you to use Extra Virgin Olive Oil for Everything. Even mayonnaise.

Maybe the idea is that Jack Daniel's is a name people recognize. Of course so is Coors and you don't see many Coors recipes. (Although you do see some now that I come to look and no I am not going to point them out because I don't want to encouarge that sort of thing.) Conclusion? People in restaurants don't know what they're doing.

An Electronic God Blindly Punishes And Pardons

Investigative reporter (the people are my editor) that I am, I followed up the reference to "Zombies of Russia" in the last entry. Little did I know, it would lead to the greatest sentence of all time:

"The brain jailers climb [untranslateable] intimately and secretly, with electronic-ray whips, punishing him for disobedience."

If you could only translate those words, you'd have some magazine-grade erotic fiction.

The Injustice of Horse Slaughter

Some comments from the online petition:

• this is not fair to the animals. They have feelings too and can you imagine a little baby horse looking for its mom but cant find her because shes been slaughtered?? The slaughter house people can rot in hell...thats why im a vegetarian.

• I Beleive Horse's Shuld Not Be Killed, the way they are killed today

• Stop this horror! We are supposed to be good beings.

• see this site: http://www.petitiononline.com/cofs1/petition.html . It is all related. Scientology mafia/Nazi Party has taken over our planet. They hijacked Canada and are holiding millions of Canadians hostage. Their pharmaceutical cartels control our planet. Their doctors are vampires in white coats who turn those who oppose them into zombies or worse. See documentary "Zombies of Russia". For years, they have been implanting electronic tracking devices in patients, without their knowledge or permission. One such doctor is Dr. Gunter Born, plastic surgeon practising in Hamilton, Ontario Canada. They use electronic weapons to harass people while they attempt to sleep. These devices are illegal in Canada. Why is our legal system, or law inforcement not doing anything about it? The answer is that they are also a part of this take over plan. They control all communication and prevent internet access to their own customers. There is an urgent need for a WORLD CLASS ACTION LAW SUIT .

• Horse are the most loved and gifted animals

I've Been Wondering

When conservatives say that liberals always "blame America first," or that liberals are in the "blame America first crowd," are they trying to draw parallels to the America First Committee that opposed entry into World War Two?

Nobody seems to want to admit it. And if it's not, it's pretty awkward phrasing. Maybe it's just one of those things where a slogan becomes popular despite its stupidity because hey, everyone else is using it.

Incompatible Food Triad

This is pretty good. Are there any three foods such that any two of them taste good together, but all three of them at once are disgusting? I can't think of any. The salted cucumbers / yogurt / sugar example almost works, but I think it equivocates on the definition of "salted cucumber". Pickles are not just salted cucumbers.

Most of the other triplets of foods he gives sound pretty good together. Except for the tonic water one, which is disgusting because tonic water is disgusting. Of course, as I argued here, any three foods will go together, if you adopt the right (wrong) attitude. So maybe the puzzle is unsolveable.

P. S.

Days begin at dawn. (ALTERNATIVELY: Days end at dusk.) Days don't begin at midnight. Hence "-night". This was not a problem until scientists came along with their 24-hour synchrotrons or whatever. Decent people were asleep until dawn, and everyone else just had to deal with it. Saying days begin at midnight is as arbitrary as saying days begin at noon. It doesn't take the human condition into account.

Fall

Is it fall now? You say of course it's fall. It's getting cold at night, and leaves are falling off some of the more feckless trees. Also students have started school, and the new season of TV has begun. It doesn't get much more autumnal than this.

Scientists would not agree with you. According to science, fall begins September 21/22. Apparently this is when dawn is the same time at every latitude. Someone decided that *this* is when fall begins, and it is accordingly printed on every calendar. If you say, now it is fall, some busybody will correct you and say no it is still summer.

Using an astronomical definition of "fall" is just stupid. Admittedly, it is astronomical changes that cause coldness (and indirectly, school and new TV shows), but it's not like a specific change causes them. Just the general getting-colder trend that begins in early August and ends in mid-January. There's certainly no reason to select September 21/22 as the time that this change becomes significant. Sure, it's neat, the Earth is untilted, but what does that have to do with fall?

Scientists are obessesd with pushing the definitions of our commonly used words into the most esoteric environment possible. Raspberries are too berries, and from now on: In reasonably temperate zones, fall begins on Labor Day, winter begins on Thanksgiving, spring begins on Easter, and summer begins on Memorial Day. Holidays have so much more to do with cultural shifts in season-perception than astronomical coincidences, don't you think?

How To Invite a Sarcastic Response

Courtesy of, http://www.theantidrug.com/ei/trends_raves.asp:

"So, if you have noticed that your son or daughter has a vast collection of glow sticks in his or her room, ask them where they got them and what they’re using them for."

I Can See My House From Up Here

I want this on a postcard, bad.

Anti-Semitism

Most liberal people would agree that everyone throws around claims of anti-Semitism much too loosely these days. The basic causes of all this anti-anti-Semitic talk are pretty easy to see. The US is at "war" with traditional enemies of Israel, and the ideological component of the war is naturally going to evolve into a pro- or anti-Israel conflict. Of course, this has evolved in a ridiculous way, so even suggesting that Israel overreacted to Hezbollah provocation gets people shouting that you are against the Jews, want Israel to be pushed into the sea (what is it with that metaphor?) etc.

The people who react to these essentially harmless remarks with such horror have nobody to blame but themselves. When anti-Semitic remarks are effectively censored from polite society, this kind of thing is bound to happen. Consider: Person A says "kill all Jews." The opinion makers react with justified horror, and Person A will never work in this town again. Person B, taking the lesson of Person A, says something more mild, e.g. "imprison all Jews". This is also not a decent opinion, and Person B is also shut out of public discourse. But moreover, people assume that Person B means "Kill all Jews" but is afraid to say it because of what happened to Person A.

This continues with Person C who, taking the lesson of Person B, says "register all Jews". Likewise, people assume he means "kill all Jews" or "imprison all Jews" but is just afraid to say it. We can continue inductively to Person Y who says "Israel should not bomb civilian targets in Lebanon." Now it may be the case, and it probably is, that Y merely means, "Israel should not bomb civilian targets in Lebanon." However, since this is currently on the fringes of acceptable discussion about Israel, it may be the case that Y means "kill all Jews" but can't get away with saying anything stronger in public. You can't tell, and that makes people nervous. So next time the debate on Israel starts up, the edges of the debate will be pushed back to Person Z, who says "Israel should not deliberately kill Lebanese civilians," or something like that. And so on forever.

This is kind of ridiculous. More importantly though, I don't see what you can do about it. We definitely do want to exclude A, B, and C from public debate. They aren't helping. But it doesn't seem like we can ostracize them without inexorably ostracizing Z. This is a pattern that happens in all kinds of controversial topics: race, sex, homosexuality; anti-Semitism is just the most important and obvious right now. I'm not sure how you break the cycle.

Your Wikipedia Sentence For Today

is actually a paragraph:

"There will be 3 ways in which to travel in SkyCity. One being a local elevator that can go either horizontally or vertically depending on which one it is. There will also be trains traveling from top to bottom. Last there will be 'Air Wagons.'"



You can click on the link if you want, but it cannot help you comprehend. All hail, SkyCity 1000!

Stingrays

I hate to get stuck on the subject of Steve Irwin. When he was alive I didn't like him. But people are saying the strangest things about him after his death. My favorite is, how odd it was that Mr. Irwin was killed by the stingray, which never harmed a fly except for 17 people, when he spent his life tangling with spiders and crocodiles and snakes and other super-harmful creatures. It is like, they say, a famous Nascar driver getting rear-ended at a traffic light and breaking his neck.

These people just aren't thinking. Admittedly, it wasn't likely that Mr. Irwin would get killed by a stingray. But what did these people think would happen to him? What wild animal is really that dangerous? Steve Irwin made his name by wrestling crocodiles, and there was always the possibility that one of them would bite his hand off. But kill him? His cameraman obviously carried a sidearm. Practically any large animal takes a little time to savage you, and there are things you can do about it in the meantime.

On the other hand, all the most dangerous snakes and spiders have antivenoms associated with them. Fatality rates are pretty low if you have the appropriate drugs and a knowledge of first aid, which of course he would. I certainly can't think of any venomous animal that kills a lot of the people it bites, let alone well-prepared ones.

Really the only animal that could kill the careful self-promoter is something that stabs at his vital organs, very suddenly. Stingrays do this (apparently). Does anything else? Traditional animals with traditional jaws would have a hard time biting somebody in the chest. Except for some snakes, I can't think of any small animals that have long enough teeth, and Steve Irwin was hardly going to go out like Cleopatra. So it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Mr. Irwin was going to die either of a stingray sting, or of a self-inflicted gunshot wound when he realized how empty his life was. For his legacy's sake, I'm glad it was the former.

Another Barely Useful List

Here are some political organizations with "family" in the title, and no other clue to what they do.

National Family and Parenting Institute
National Partnership for Women and Families
Friends of the Family
American Family Association
National Family Partnership
National Council on Family Relations
Family Voices
Focus on the Family

Thank you.

Oh Shoot

I was meaning to take a little break for Labor Day but no. Steve Irwin died.

This was a man who made his living pushing small animals to the limits of their patience, and he did it in The Home Of Small Animals That Can Kill People, Australia. I'm quite sad that he died, because he was the best person in the world at avoiding being stung and even he couldn't do it consistently. The nasty slimy little animals did him in the end. On Labor Day, if you see an ant, step on it -- for Steve Irwin.

P.S. Wikipedia altered their article as soon as the news came over the wire. All the ises were wased and they added a paragraph headed Death. Requiescat in pace.

A Bayonet Is a Weapon With a Worker At Both Ends

Happy Labor Day.

Listen Up, Internet!

What is with the dearth of internet content on the weekends? Now you know me. I'm a little recluse who gets all his fun on the internet and would probably hang himself if society jumped back fifteen years. (What would be left for me? Flowers and Mario Cuomo I guess.)

The way I see it, there are two kinds of internet people. There are the people who provide internet content for a living, and there are people who provide internet content for fun. If you are putting things on the internet in your leisure time, what time is more leisurely than the weekends? Surely you aren't spending all of it with your friends watching baseball games or whatever it is you people do in your spare time. Why not fit some prose into the gaps between the social events I imagine you are jetting off to? You can find time to interest me during your day-job; why can't you find the time during the vast expanse of weekend?

If you make internet content for a living, on the other hand, well, it's even simpler. Our weekend is arbitrary. You can take any two days off that you want, if all you do is type letters into a computer terminal for a living. There is a strong economic advantage to be gained by working through Sat. and Sun. and taking Tue. and Wed. off. So do it. Jesus. I'm bored.

Unsettling Brand Names For Antipsychotic Drugs

Trancin
Modecate
Serenase
Dogmatil (?)
Psychoson
Sediten
Prolixin

State Soil Challenge!

Match the state with its official soil!

• Virginia ----------------------- Orovada
• South Carolina -------------- Kalkaska
• Idaho ------------------------- Threebear
• Maine ------------------------- Honeoye
• Nevada ------------------------ Bohicket
• Montana ---------------------- Pamunkey
• New York --------------------- Chesuncook
• Michigan --------------------- Scobey

P. S.

I saw The DaVinci Code the other day. What do you think?

Thomas Nast

I realize that some forms of art just die. Poetry isn't looking too good these days, and tapestry seems to have been gone for 500 years. There are probably good reasons for these, but what ever happened to the involved political cartoon? The kind that Nast used to draw? There are still lots of people who can draw elaborate scenes in pen-and-ink. There are important issues to comment on, right?

And there is definitely a market for this kind of thing; if Harper's swallowed Reconstruction comics 135 years ago, I see no reason they shouldn't today. I can just imagine, opening a new issue of Harper's and there, between the sarcastic exerpts from pop culture and the lean hungry articles, would be a cartoon based on a neoclassical painting. George Bush would be a despot from an important era of history, presiding over some kind of artfully rendered injustice. Probably a mass execution. They did a lot of those.

This is such a good idea. I am sure you could get Harper's to bite. Most of the time, I bet they don't even know what they're doing. If I could only draw, I would make these cartoons myself.

A Tyrrany of Botanists

Scientists are well known for liking you to do things their way. This doesn't just extend to reasonable things like believing in evolutionism, or recognizing that dolphins are mammals. Scientists want you to classify everything according to their criteria, and their criteria are always the most obscurantist possible. This was brought to most people's attention with the Pluto crisis, which I have still not calmed down over (QUESTION: What happens to Plutonium? They named it with the understanding that Pluto was and would remain a planet), but the biggest fraud is in botany.

Here are some classifications, perfectly useful for the everyday man, that scientists say you Must not use:

Nuts include:

• Peanuts
• Cashews
• Almonds
• Brazil nuts
• Pistachios
• Macadamia nuts
  
• Pine nuts
  

No! say the scientists. None of these tasty things are nuts. Nuts, they say, are instead a collection of barely edible fibrous hulks. According to science, nuts include:

• Hazelnuts
• Pecans
• Walnuts
• Chestnuts
• Acorns
• Birch, beech, alder and hornbeam seeds

Now you will notice that only the first four items on this list are at all edible -- and they all taste worse than any item on the first list. If we were thinking clearly, as a society, we would say science has gotten the definition of nut exactly backwards. Here's another example

Berries include:

• Strawberry
• Blackberry
• Raspberry
• Mulberry
• Salmonberry

Whereas science tells us that berries actually include:

• Cranberries, currants, gooseberries
• Grapes
• Tomatoes
• Eggplants
• Chili peppers (!)
• Avocadoes
• Lots more dumb stuff

This is even worse. Botanists can't just push us around like that. If they want to classify fruit like this that's fine, but I don't want them to use the word "berry". That's our word. We use it to refer to specific kinds of fruits. Tomorrow scientists will probably classify goldfish as furniture (because they live in your house and don't move) and computers as not (because they think).