Random Human Neural Firings

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Everything Has Cilantro On It Edition

2012-01-31T21:39:00.002-06:00

I have returned from Los Angeles. It was very, very nice out there all week, the people were nice or at least indifferent (save for the occasional crazy-aggressive driver who'd be going about 20 mph faster than everyone else so he could dart into a lane of traffic with about two inches of clearance on either side), got some beautiful pictures- the Pacific Coast Highway in particular was just breathtaking, both from visual appeal and the fact that I was not exhaling or inhaling very much because I was driving on it during a red-flag warning and that was not a little bit harrowing when you've got high cliffs on one side, a big drop to the ocean on the other and no place to pull over and let people pass you so you can cower behind the wheel in peace.

There were really only three bad things about the trip:

A) You cannot find a Mountain Dew in that town for love or money. It's like every place I went was a Coke place.

B) There is waaaaaaay too much driving to be done. The dread of Los Angeles traffic, I think, is a little overblown- I didn't find it quite as awful as it's made out to be. It's bad. Certainly. But it's not unmanageably bad. You just have to be a little patient and a little calm and you'll be fine. (Having a Taylor Swift CD going during this process helps. About half the radio stations on my dial seemed to be up-tempo Latin stations, and really, what is going to be more helpful for your mood during a traffic jam, 'Back To December' or remixed salsa music?) The real sticking point is the act of driving itself. Getting from anywhere to anywhere is a good half-hour at least. I really wish LA was more compact than it is, and not spread out, blob-like, across the Southern California landscape.

C) Back in September, I noted the presence of LA's Skid Row district and its notoriety for being essentially a dumping ground for the homeless. The thing is, it doesn't matter where in Los Angeles you go. You will see the homeless. Often. Do not travel to Los Angeles thinking you're going to get some sanitized, totally touristy experience with no unpleasant sights whatsoever. They're there. They are wherever you are. They are in the tourist areas, they are in the parks, they are walking alongside major streets at red lights- and sometimes IN those streets during red lights- hoping someone will roll down the window and help somehow. Homelessness in Los Angeles is a problem you cannot run from, Skid Row or no Skid Row.

But from that bad thing comes at least one good thing. At one major tourist area in Santa Monica, the Third Street Promenade, if you look, you'll see a big bronze dolphin with a coin slot where its spout would be. It's one of several set up in Santa Monica (including another dolphin on Santa Monica Pier), as part of something called the Dolphin Change Program. The idea is, instead of giving to panhandlers directly, you're supposed to put money in a dolphin instead, and the money collected from the dolphins will go to various local homelessness nonprofits that can put the money to a little more effective use.

Yes, of course I put money in the dolphin.

I also brought home a whole lot of books. One was bought for the plane ride in; the others were bought in Los Angeles itself.

Bathroom Readers' Institute- Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Vroom! A World Of Motorized Marvels (the one bought for the plane)
Foer, Franklin- How Soccer Explains The World: An Unlikely Theory Of Globalization
Huang, Yunte- Charlie Chan: The Untold Story Of The Honorable Detective And His Rendezvous With American History
Muller, Eric L.- Free To Die For Their Country: The Story Of The Japanese American Draft Resisters In World War II
Myers, B.R.- The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves- And Why It Matters
Napoli, James- The Official Dictionary Of Sarcasm: A Lexicon For Those Of Us Who Are Better And Smarter Than The Rest Of You (think Devil's Dictionary, 2010 Edition)
Richardson, Peter- A Bomb In Every Issue: How The Short, Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America

Dear Occupy Oakland Protestors

2012-01-29T21:18:00.000-06:00

Trashing City Hall and burning an American flag? Is not helping your cause or anyone else's. Just about all the other protestors, the Wisconsin ones of course among them, are going out of their way to be peaceful and respectful and did I mention peaceful which is the opposite of whatever it is you're doing. Stop it. You're undercutting everyone else.

I should not have had to get up out of my nice hotel room and come down to the lobby just to have to tell you this.

Programming Note

2012-01-24T01:59:00.000-06:00

This is going to be the last post made before I head out to Los Angeles. Should my computer situation pan out, maybe I'll be able to fire something off while out there, but if it's similar to the situation in Hawaii, you might not see me again for the next week.

Now, while I'm gone, I need you to do a couple things for me...

*Do not spend all your money getting celebrities to tweet about you.
*Do not kill the cat of a campaign manager, spraypaint the word 'liberal' on its carcass, and leave it on the doorstep for his four kids to find. I never thought I'd have to actually tell you not to do that, but apparently we have some sick, sick excuses for people around here.
*By the same note, please do not use sports as an excuse to mob a hospital and/or raise general mayhem in search of a fan of your own team who does not root for your team the way you want them to root for them.
*Remember to set the clocks back one second. I left a note for you on the microwave. Should only take you a couple seconds.
*Please don't drop little Billy on his head. You'll make him stupid.
*You don't have to seize cities on behalf of Moammar Gadhafi anymore. He's dead. Stop it. You're embarrassing yourself.
*And don't bet food on the Super Bowl. Making food bets on playoff games is really, really stupid. Take the Packers/Giants game back in the divisional round. What Packers fan could be so stupidly overconfident in victory that he made a bet where if the Packers lost, he had to haul cheese all the way down to Los Angeles to deliver to the Giants fan he made the bet with? Who DOES that?

...oh. Me. That's right. I'm an idiot.

The Abbey Road Cup

2012-01-23T14:06:00.001-06:00

I went and did it again. I went and drew up a factoid in search of a purpose. At the end of 2011, Pollstar released its annual ranking of the musical acts that have earned the most money touring North America over the course of the calendar year. You may have seen it yourself, but in case you haven't, I won't mention who that is now because it'll come up later on. Just about all of the articles put the top two acts in the headline, though only the top two; everyone below was saved for the main body of the articles.

Coming as it did around the end of the NFL regular season, for some reason I started wondering what would happen if you took the top two in that ranking every year, and matched them in some kind of championship-game battle of the bands. I mean, we have awards shows to say who did best over the year, but this would be a way to 'settle it on the field', as it were. And then I went and fleshed out a whole entire format, tossing in football-like elements because it is football season and I am totally insane. I even named the darned thing: the Abbey Road Cup. (Or, for sponsorship purposes, the Pollstar Cup.)

Here's what I came up with for a format:

*The two competing acts would be placed on dual stages, one right next to the other. They spend all night long staring each other right in the face. Obviously you would need a stadium for this; we could have cities bid to host it.

*Each act will complete a 12-song set. The two will alternate. Band A will do Song 1, then Band B will do their Song 1, then Band A will do their Song 2, and so on until Band B closes with their Song 12. Because we're theming things after football, the battle will be split into quarters, three songs each per quarter. There will be short breaks between quarters, with a longer break at halftime. Maybe we'll tack on a halftime show featuring the #3 band according to Pollstar, which will be high in hilarious awkward bitterness at not being part of the match itself.

*Who goes first- or, more alternatively, who gets to go last- will be decided by seeding. The #1 seed- the band that earned the most touring- will get to decide whether to go first or second.

*For each song they perform, a band can earn up to 7 points- the value of a touchdown and PAT, of course- depending on the decibel volume of the crowd after each song. (Which won't automatically max out every time; we'll calibrate the thresholds to make it very possible for a band to come in under 7. Remember, both sets of fans are in the stadium at the same time, and some will have a clear favorite. A big fan of Band A is not going to do anything to help Band B if they can help it.)

*Prior to any three of their songs, a band can announce their intention to "go for two"- that is, make their next song worth a potential eight points, the value of a touchdown and two-point conversion.

*Each band is also given three 'interceptions' to use during the concert. Both bands will have a big red button at the front of their stage. After any verse of any song their opponent is singing, a band can hit the button and 'intercept' the song. The intercepted band must stop playing immediately; if possible, maybe we can just shut off their sound equipment. The intercepting band must then take over that song and cover it, from that exact point, or until the opponent decides to take their song back with an interception of their own. As soon as an interception is triggered, it's automatically worth maximum points, awarded to whoever registers higher on the decibel scale when the audience is asked to vote for who did the song better.

*Whoever has the most points at the end of the night wins. In case of a tie, each band will do a 13th 'overtime' song, without interceptions. Higher decibel level from the crowd wins.

This is something I'd want to see. This is something I'd want televised, with a pregame show and colliding CGI helmets and a championship trophy and everything. In fact, tell me this isn't something you'd want to see on TV every year. The only thing left to determine was who would have actually competed in the Abbey Road Cup had it existed in previous years. This seemed a simple, simple search, but actually turned out to be quite difficult, especially when looking for second place. Pollstar didn't go back very far on this on their website, so I had to cobble together names piece by piece, year by year, random site by random nowhere-backwater-that-managed-to-pull-exactly-one-statistical-bit fansite. Eventually, though, I managed to get the matchups running back to 1984, save for 1986, where I only found half the matchup. After 1984, it gets really, really choppy.

Now all any of this needed was a excuse to actually use it for something. Anything.

Then I remembered: I have a blog, and this is something people are clearly having a lot of trouble finding.

So here goes. The Abbey Road Cup matchups from 1984 on, save the #2 seed from 1986 which I couldn't dig up- again, this is the top two touring acts in North America in each given year, as rated by Pollstar. (At least, Pollstar is the measure dating back to 1985. It appears as if Billboard was the stat-keeper prior to that.) The top earner, the #1 seed, is listed first, followed by the second-highest earner, the #2 seed:

2011: U2 vs. Taylor Swift
2010: Bon Jovi vs. Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd)
2009: U2 vs. Bruce Springsteen
2008: Madonna vs. Celine Dion
2007: The Police vs. Kenny Chesney
2006: Rolling Stones vs. Barbra Streisand
2005: Rolling Stones vs. U2
2004: Prince vs. Celine Dion
2003: Bruce Springsteen vs. 50 Cent
2002: Paul McCartney vs. Rolling Stones
2001: U2 vs. 'NSync
2000: Tina Turner vs. 'NSync
1999: Rolling Stones vs. Bruce Springsteen
1998: Elton John vs. Dave Matthews Band
1997: Rolling Stones vs. U2
1996: Kiss vs. Garth Brooks
1995: The Eagles vs. Boyz II Men
1994: Rolling Stones vs. Pink Floyd
1993: The Grateful Dead vs. Rod Stewart
1992: U2 vs. The Grateful Dead
1991: The Grateful Dead vs. ZZ Top
1990: New Kids on the Block vs. Billy Joel
1989: Rolling Stones vs. The Who
1988: Pink Floyd vs. Michael Jackson
1987: U2 vs. Bon Jovi
1986: The Monkees vs. ? (if I had to guess, without confirmation, I'd go with Van Halen, Kiss or Metallica, in that order of confidence, but don't take that for gospel)
1985: Bruce Springsteen vs. Prince
1984: The Jacksons vs. Bruce Springsteen

Go on. Tell me you wouldn't want to see some of these matchups. Tell me a Rolling Stones vs. U2 match in 1997- and a rematch eight years later- wouldn't be the greatest thing ever. Heck, the two look like the Lakers and Celtics for all the times they'd make appearances. Tell me the fans of the Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand wouldn't look weird at each other all night. Tell me Kiss wouldn't be thinking long and hard about whether they really wanted to intercept a song from Garth Brooks.

Now tell me Pollstar and the bands want to see it. Please?

Corn Is Always Interesting

2012-01-22T16:52:00.000-06:00

One good thing about SOPA and PIPA being put on the defensive: it means I can play Wikipedia Roulette without fear. And in doing so, we are brought the following story of a man who thought he was above the law, and tried to become the law. Strangely topical in a post-Citizens United world.

We go back to the Roman Empire to find a man named Spurius Maelius. (The link is an epic wall of text, and it's pretty dense, so be aware of that. Skip to 4.12 in the text for where we pick up.)

In 439 BCE, Rome was undergoing a famine. Why there was a famine, the text isn't sure; it was either the weather, people getting too wrapped up in city life to tend to crops, or both. But there was a famine. Corn was the chief crop, so the Senate put one Lucius Minucius in charge of the corn market to see what he could do. What he did was, he made everyone who had any corn declare how much they had. They got to keep one month's supply, but they were made to sell the rest to the government.

This, clearly, was intended to cut down on hoarding. What it actually did, though, was tell everyone exactly how bad things were, and it was worse than people thought. Several citizens flung themselves into the Tiber and drowned.

So that didn't work.

Enter a very rich, very opportunistic, and very ambitious Spurius Maelius. Through his connections, he not only managed to buy up corn during this period, he more or less cornered the market. Except he made sure there wasn't much of a market, as he then distributed the corn for free. Why did he do this? Originally, he was going for a consulship. The idea was that by handing out so much corn to so many people in what has to be the weirdest variation on the Robin Hood principle ever, he could get popular enough to win election to consul. But then he kept handing it out, and he kept getting more popular, and his head got bigger... and Maelius eventually got it into his head that he ought to be not merely a consul, but emperor.

So people started meeting in his house, and an arsenal began to pile up. Soon, consul elections were rapidly approaching, and though any plans to go for the throne weren't ready yet, they were getting close as well; everyone that needed to be bribed had been bribed. Before Maelius could make his move, though, someone noticed all the goings-on at Maelius' house and all the weapons going in but not coming out. Minicius called Maelius out on the carpet, as well as the consuls for not catching it and handling it themselves and allowing things to get to the point they did. One of the consuls, Quinctius Capitolinus, blamed bureaucracy for the delay and called for a dictator that could cut through all the red tape and do something.

'Dictator' here being used in its original context, and without the modern connotations, though they were aware of them.

His nomination was Cincinnatus. Yes, that one. He had already cemented his legacy by resigning the post in 458 BCE the second he was no longer needed, and hoped not to have to do this again. After all, he was 80 years old at the time, and if that sounds old now, remember how much longer we live these days compared to ancient Rome. The Senate more or less begged him to take over, though, and eventually, Cincinnatus agreed to do it.

Cincinnatus' first decree: name a Master of the Horse (read: right-hand man, the first thing any dictator was required to do), Caius Servilius Ahala.

Second decree: post some guards. This is the point where Maelius started to get wise to the fact that they're on to him.

Third decree: send Servilius to go fetch Maelius and haul him in for trial. When Servilius read Maelius the summons, Maelius, with a crowd gathered, feigned outrage, then stalled for time, then kind of just looked around and began to back away.

Retreat was not a good idea in ancient Rome.

One of Servilius' officers grabbed Maelius, but couldn't hang onto him, as the crowd, who was as you will recall on Maelius' side, grabbed him back. Maelius ran off, crying for help and that it was all a big conspiracy and save me I don't wanna die. He didn't get far. Servilius ran Maelius down himself and stabbed him to death, after which he reported back to Cincinnatus, who then had to go explain to the jittery populace that even if Maelius was innocent of trying to start a coup, he was guilty of failing to respond to a dictatorial summons and of resisting arrest, and besides, he would have been declared guilty and executed anyway had the trial gone forward as planned.

He made it up to them, though. After ordering Maelius' house torn down to prevent it from becoming a symbol, Cincinnatus confiscated Maelius' remaining corn- that which had caused the whole incident- and sold it off at rock-bottom prices. Corn being all the people really wanted in the first place, that settled them down enough to where any threat of a coup died with Maelius.

Then he stepped down. Again. The first time he was dictator, it was for 16 days. This second time, he was in charge for roughly a week.

Something Maelius, had he taken over, clearly had no intention of doing.

That Does Very Complicated, That Does Sophisticated, That Does Whoa, Amazing, And That Does Whizz Bang Far Too Technical To Explain

2012-01-21T11:23:00.000-06:00

Trip prep is ramping up, so nothing big. Well, nothing that takes a lot of time to get prepped, anyway. It's time for another X In Y Minutes quiz.

Here is a list of 200 historical events, all of which happened in a CE year (remember, that's what we call AD now). For each event, you are to supply the year in which it happened. You have 20 minutes to get as many as you can.

Kaj: Money

2012-01-20T12:52:00.003-06:00

Today we welcome a new name to the Journalism All-Star Team.

First, let's recap the 18 current members, in no particular order: Soledad O'Brien, Gwen Ifill, Christiane Amanpour, Louis Theroux, Matt Taibbi, Jeremy Schaap, Fareed Zakaria, Lisa and Laura Ling, Jon Stewart, Nate Silver, Mariana van Zeller, Sanjay Gupta, Bob Ley, Stephen Colbert, Andrew Sullivan, Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow.

Two of the All-Stars, Laura Ling and Mariana van Zeller, have logged time as members of Current's Vanguard team. van Zeller won a Peabody for a report she did for Vanguard, and when Laura was abducted by North Korea, it too was during filming of a Vanguard episode. Needless to say, the Vanguard team was not playing around.

Then came Keith Olbermann.

After leaving MSNBC, Olbermann arrived at Current last February. Not only was he to import his old show, Countdown, he was also named Chief News Officer of Current and given an equity stake in the network. Current quickly underwent a makeover to put Olbermann on the air as much as possible, and to bring in people friendly to Olbermann, chief among them Cenk Uygur (who also left MSNBC acrimoniously). By September, when the AV Club checked in to write an overview of the network, they found a lot of Olbermann and not a lot of much else, to the point where Current had nearly become the Keith Olbermann Network.

The Vanguard team was not among Olbermann's people. Last month, citing budget cuts, most of the team was laid off, G4TechTV-style, with the announcement that further episodes would be done by freelancers. van Zeller was among the cuts, though she's quickly been snapped up as a correspondent for National Geographic Explorer. Which tells you right there the caliber of reporting Current was kicking to the curb. Her first report, 'Guerilla Gold Rush', is unavailable online but will next air at 8 AM Central on Sunday morning on National Geographic.

Another of the cuts has been taken in by CNN, and his first report, 'Narco Wars', will air 11 hours later, at 7 PM Central Sunday night. This is our inductee, the third member of Team Vanguard to make the squad.

Welcome to the team, Kaj Larsen.

Reporting on the drug war from various fronts in the United States, Mexico and Central America is getting to be almost a rite of passage for the All-Stars. van Zeller got her Peabody from a report on Oxycontin trafficking, and she's also reported from a trafficking route along the Amazon and a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Both Laura and Lisa Ling have been to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, an epicenter of drug-related violence. Anderson Cooper reported on drug tunnels burrowed underneath the US/Mexico border. Sanjay Gupta attended a drug bust in Peru. Christiane Amanpour, Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow have said their piece as well, albeit from the desk, and Fareed Zakaria particpated in this debate over it.

On Sunday, it becomes Larsen's turn. Truthfully, Larsen probably should have been named to the team earlier. That's my fault for not doing so. I think what it was, was that I didn't want to go hog-wild and name the entire Vanguard crew to the team, for fear of devaluing the All-Star designation. The 1927 Yankees are widely considered the greatest baseball team of all time, but you wouldn't name starting catcher Pat Collins to the Hall of Fame. So I only took one or two from the group, and Laura and Mariana made the cut. In any case, I'm past that hang-up, and now Kaj joins them.

As usual when we name someone to the team, we post a clip of them at their best. For Kaj, it's a pair of Vanguard episodes done alongside Christof Putzel (Putzel and Adam Yamaguchi, the other two members of Vanguard's core group, have been retained by Current after the layoffs), in which they reported on Somalia. Somalia is notable for being the nation on Earth where journalists are seemingly more afraid to visit, due to the danger involved, than anywhere else on the planet. There may be countries that attract fewer journalists, but that's due to apathy. Somalia actively scares them away. There are some very courageous journalists out there who will look at Somalia and conclude that it's just not worth it.

Kaj- and Christof- went.

Twice. Kind of.

This is the original report, called 'Mogadishu Madness'. Christof is narrator in both; Kaj is helping with camerawork.

This is the second report, called 'Beach of Death', in which they reported from Yemen about refugees from Somalia.

As you can see, while Kaj is the one named today, Christof may well be joining him very, very soon; the reason he and Adam currently remain on the outside looking in is that, in the wake of Olbermann's effective takeover, the Vanguard team had to shift to more Olbermann-friendly topics. Kaj, now with CNN, no longer operates under that restriction. Christof and Adam, though, are still both very, very good, and who knows? Maybe the entire team will eventually make it in after all.

Smooth move, Olbermann.

UPDATE: Kaj has written back, accepting his induction. In doing so, he passed along three of his other pieces: a third piece from Somalia- his favorite- where he and Christof purchase an AK-47, a solo report on gun culture in America, "and of course, the waterboarding video."

Random News Blitz

2012-01-19T13:08:00.000-06:00

There is now less than a week before I start my vacation to Los Angeles. There may or may not be any updates during the trip, which lasts from the 25th to the 31st, but don't count on them.

That said, today we'll run through five quick spins of the Random News Generator. A speed round, if you will.

ROUND 1: Oman

In the wake of American sanctions on Iran over their nuclear program, South Korea's prime minister, Kim Hwang-Sik, will be traveled to Oman and the UAE to try and figure out how they're going to cope without Iranian oil. South Korea gets 10% of their oil from Iran. Their first choice, if they can get it, is to get a waiver from having to join in. Their second choice is to make up the difference from other nations, such as the UAE, which contributes another 10% of South Korea's oil supply, and Oman, which contributes 2%. Both nations have assured South Korea of a stable oil supply.

ROUND 2: Botswana

Botswana is dealing with a rise in laptop thefts. 2,114 laptops were reported stolen over the past year, which to Western ears may not sound like too much, but remember this is a sub-Saharan nation of only two million people. Some of the laptops are being ferried to Zimbabwe.

Those people in Botswana who still have them, well, at least one of them is not worrying about whether they could make you sterile.

ROUND 3: England

The staff of Nottingham Prison has walked out in protest, as a response to a rise in inmate attacks. Ten officers have been assaulted by inmates over the past month. The BBC article notes one of the incidents left an officer needing 12 stitches after he was beaten in the back of the head with a chair leg; another unnamed incident left an officer unconscious. The prison contains some 1,000 inmates; some 100 staffers walked out.

ROUND 4: Ghana

Well, if South Korea needs oil, here you go. A deep-water well off Ghana's coast has discovered a "significant" amount of oil. This comes with a caveat, though: Ghana has no idea what they're doing. They don't know how to deal with oil reserves, and the money gained from oil doesn't tend to go back to the Ghanaian people, and like much of western Africa, the presence of oil is generally agreed to just make life worse, as this report from last May details...

This has recently led to a decision to cut oil subsidies...

ROUND 5: South Sudan

...just...

...you know what? Just... read this and then go hug your kids. Just do it. Now.

Just A Heads-Up

2012-01-17T02:25:00.000-06:00

On Wednesday, Wikipedia, Reddit, BoingBoing, Scribd, and the Cheezburger network of sites, among others, will be going dark for the day as a measure of protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act, currently pending in the House of Representatives, and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act.

I'd go dark here too, except I'm not too good at coding and I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to get this place up and running again afterwards. What I can do, though, is this.

A) There will be no article posted here tomorrow.
B) I'm tacking on a little widget that's going to appear in the top-right corner of your screen when you come here until SOPA and PIPA are declared dead. If you have a Blogger account and want the widget as well, go here; I saw no widget that will allow for a blackout. If you're on WordPress and want to join the blackout, well, you DO have some temporary-shutdown widgets available to you, so go here for instructions.

If you're annoyed by all this blacking out... well, yeah. Of course you're annoyed. That's the point.

How To Steal Rare Coins

2012-01-16T13:27:00.000-06:00

Step 1: Do not steal rare coins.
Step 2: If you must steal rare coins, try to make sure that they are in fact rare coins.
Step 3: Do not put the rare coins into a counting machine. The counting machine does not know your coins are rare and will only give you face value.
Step 4: Do not steal rare coins from your own dad.
Step 5: Make sure you weren't going to get the coins anyway as an inheritance.
Step 6: Never do anything that would make your own dad say about you, "Just really a stupid person. Makes me feel good he was a stupid person and didn't realize what he had."

Luckily for the dad, most of the coins are able to be recovered; Coinstar, who owns the machine, allowed the dad to go looking through the machine for as many of the coins as he can retrieve. Some of the coins were never taken in the first place; they were placed in a bank, which held and returned them.

Disgusting Things You'll Be Eating Less Of

2012-01-15T12:51:00.000-06:00

Over the past decade or so, more and more attention has been given to ammoniated beef. If you're not yet aware, ammoniated beef is beef trimmings which are treated with ammonia hydroxide in an effort to kill bacteria, and then sold to consumers as hamburger filler when it would otherwise be placed into pet food. The USDA termed it as "pink slime" in 2002, and since then, word has slowly trickled out to the general public in various forms, who in turn became increasingly disgusted (although no less fat) as they were informed by such chefs as Jamie Oliver and Anthony Bourdain, and the 2008 documentary Food Inc., exactly what was going into that fast-food burger.

We should single out Oliver and his short-lived ABC show Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. This is how he taught this particular lesson:

Well, not anymore, at least if you eat at McDonald's, Burger King or Taco Bell. Those three restaurants have announced that they will no longer be using ammoniated beef. Yes, you were eating this stuff at those places. You won't be anymore.

That still, however, leaves the National School Lunch Program, which you'd have thought, hoped, would be ahead of the fast-food places on this. In fact, at least one former USDA employee blames Oliver for the fact that this is even an issue. While the fast-food chains didn't mention Oliver in their statements explaining their decision, Dr. Richard Raymond, the USDA's former Under Secretary for Food Safety, rebuts:

"This move, although not exactly described as such by the three fast food chains, was because of the 'ick factor' as revealed by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver... I guess after the two prior attacks, the Oliver video must have been over the top, and it is scary that an activist can potentially take away one of our interventions that makes our food safer. That is not how food safety policy should be determined... If consumers and restaurants are up in arms about the use of ammonia and can potentially drive a company out of business by their actions, I can only wonder what they are going to do when they look at the other chemicals in use to try and protect us from foodborne illnesses, chemicals like liquid chlorine and lactic acid just to name a couple... There are just certain unpleasant realities of how meat is processed in this country. Those of us with farm backgrounds maybe can accept them a little more readily than someone who has led a life sheltered from these realities."

Yeah, Raymond. What ARE we going to do when you tell us about the liquid chlorine that goes into the beef alongside the ammonia. I eat steak- beef that presumably hasn't been through that process- and I'm fine. For God's sake, I eat sushi- raw, uncooked fish- and I'm still here. I've got an immune system. What do I keep it around for?

Also, I may live in what amounts to suburbia, but it's still Wisconsin, America's Dairyland, and you've got farms ringing this town on all sides. I've taken my fair share of field trips to farms. I've watched my share of videos of slaughterings and the aftermath thereof, the entire process from which the animal goes from living being to corpse to separated animal parts to food product. I'm a big boy. I can take it.

I'm not sure I could take watching ammonia and chlorine go into my food, though.

Words You'll Never Use Even Once

2012-01-14T13:02:00.000-06:00

At some point in your life, you probably were told that some words had no rhymes. This isn't really in dispute. For example, orange and purple. You were probably also told that only a few words end in 'gry'- angry and hungry. They don't rhyme, so they can't have rhymes, right?

Well, first off, there are more than a few words that end in gry. They're just not commonly used. Several of the words counted in the link cheat by being two words that end with a hyphenated -angry or -hungry, but a lot more count legitimately, including 'gry' itself, which means either a small measurement, or anything of little value. Other words, such as scavengry, meagry, and managry, take the same approach angry and hungry do: use 'gry' as a suffix to say that someone or something is acting like the base word: anger, hunger, scavenger, meager, manager. Angry and hungry are just the only words that avoided falling into the realm of the archaic.

One of those words, 'rungry', rhymes with hungry, although that list appears to be the only place 'rungry' even counts as a word and not a part of someone's Scooby Doo imitation. Angry still has no rhyme, though.

As for orange and purple, they both have rhymes too. Orange has 'sporange', a form of sporangium, which is where spores get formed. Purple has two. There's curple (which is, to put it bluntly, a horse's ass), as well as hirple (walking with a limp).

A lot of other common words with obscure rhymes can be found at this Wikipedia page. Silver, for instance, rhymes with chilver, a female lamb. Circle rhymes with hurkle, a word meaning to pull in all your limbs, as if to cower. Pint rhymes with rynt, a word milkmaids use to order a cow to move after they're done milking them. Month goes into the realm of the mathematical to find its rhyme with 'oneth', as in something like 'hundred-and-oneth', which is obscure because you'd just say 'hundred-and-first' instead. Music has, among a couple others, ageusic, which means someone who doesn't have a sense of taste. Plankton rhymes with Yankton, a branch of the Sioux tribe.

I'd go on, but even to me this is starting to become very gry.

Wisconsin Recall Update

2012-01-13T11:01:00.001-06:00

While there's no official word on the signature-gathering effort against Scott Walker (keyword: official), a concurrent effort against state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has, according to organizers, gathered the necessary signatures. This comes on the heels of Fitzgerald claiming that the organizers were given a few too many days, and that the true deadline for signatures against him was today at 5 PM. The organizers have announced their initial victory in relation to his deadline.

Walker's effort, of course, ends in the next few days. The verification process, meanwhile, is scheduled to last 60 days, but is expected to last beyond that. Any final recall elections are currently expected to take place around June, and the Government Accountability Board is hoping to ensure that all recall elections happen on the same day.

Who The Hell Is Robert Sobukwe?

2012-01-12T11:53:00.000-06:00

Tiny entry's all we're going to really be able to guarantee will get posted today. My dad fell off a ladder yesterday, broke two ribs and an ankle, and so the rest of the family's going to have to play nurse for a little while.

That established, I was going to link you to a Journeyman Pictures video which notes the 100th anniversary this year of the Pan-Africanist Congress in 1912. The video, 23 minutes long, commemorates Robert Sobukwe of South Africa, who in 1960 kicked off a nonviolent movement against the apartheid system's "pass laws", a key feature of apartheid that you'd probably better know as a "papers, please" law. Nonwhites had restricted movement, and had to carry around pass books when not in their designated home areas; failure to have the pass book on hand could mean arrest.

However, YouTube doesn't want to let me embed the video. So we'll link it from the original source instead, which isn't an embed either but it's the original source: the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. The director is Kevin Harris.

Rapid-Fire Book Club: Ready, Aim Edition

2012-01-11T18:28:00.000-06:00

I seem to have forgotten a book that I need to include in the Rapid-Fire Book Club, gained from, as so many others were, Downtown Books in Milwaukee.

Although Downtown Books is no longer the massive two-story spend-hours-browsing place I loved going into. They've recently moved into a much more modestly-sized location around the corner, which when I went in they were still in the process of stocking. They said it was because the old location was so big they were losing track of their customers and couldn't help them out as efficiently as a smaller store would let them do, and I respect that. It was still a hell of a shock to see, though, and given that the size was my favorite part, a bit of a disappointment.

It's still better than Milwaukee's other major used bookstore has made out, though. That's Renaissance Books, which when I mention Downtown Books is the place that keeps getting brought up by locals. I was in there once a year or two ago and I did not stay long. It is hands-down the messiest bookstore I've ever seen and ever hope to see. Maybe half the books were actually on shelves. The other half were either in stacks on the floor or, more commonly, giant piles on the floor. Piles up to my shoulders. I couldn't find a damn thing in there, and yet I almost wanted to buy something anyway if only to save the poor defenseless books from the bad, bad man that did this to them.

After my stop at Downtown Books, I swung by Renaissance Books a second time. I did not go in. I was not permitted to go in. Why? Because the police had declared the building unfit for human habitation. A look inside the front window revealed the piles of books, if anything, in even higher piles than the first time. It was almost painful to see. I know nothing about the physical state of the building itself, but I could only agree with the cops as I walked away.

But as it stands, I have one book to log, and in an unusual development for the Rapid-Fire Book Club, I've actually read this one before logging it. (Standard procedure is to log it as soon as it's in my possession. The point is mainly to just log the books I buy.)

The book is Some Girls: My Life In A Harem by Jillian Lauren. In the early 1990's, Lauren, who was at the time, for lack of a better term working as a high-class call girl, was invited to Brunei for two weeks to be eye candy at parties thrown by Prince Jefri Bolkiah, part of the Sultanate of Brunei. It turned out she'd stay on for a lot longer than that; as the book's title implies, she'd be part of the prince's harem-- though she, like the vast majority of the girls in the harem, would have to figure out on their own that they were in fact in one. She would, it turns out, have a couple fleeting encounters with the sultan himself.

Are you at all familiar with the phrase 'Sultan of Brunei'? Then you know how much money is going to be thrown around over the course of the book.

The events of the book took place prior to 1997, when former Miss USA Shannon Marketic unsuccessfully attempted to sue the Sultan for being held against her will in the process (it was unsuccessful due to the fact that the Sultan had diplomatic immunity), and it was a tad more relaxed when Lauren was there. Not by much, though, and this was by design.

In 2004, there was a show on FOX that shot 25 episodes but was cancelled in seven, called Forever Eden. The way they billed the show was that a number of single people would stay at the show's luxury resort, hook up, and engage in whatever dramas are presented by the show. Participants would be regularly kicked out, to be replaced by new faces. The longer you managed to remain on the show, the more you would earn, and theoretically, you could stay, well, forever, or at least as long as the show aired.

The harem, at least at the time of Lauren's presence, worked much the same way. The underlying thread behind everything was that Prince Jefri could keep four wives according to local law, but had only three at the time. Which meant he had room for one more. Fresh-faced, beautiful young women from all around the globe would be brought to Brunei, eventually realize what was going on, and hopefully, they'd be attracted enough to him- or, failing that, the money- to want to make a play for him, and compete against each other for his affections. Failing that, the longer you stay, the more money and gifts you rack up, and the more you endear yourself to Jefri, the faster you rack them up. Manage to get him to ask for your hand in marriage- or get impregnated by him- and you win. You get to spend forever in Eden as a royal princess, or at least as close as Brunei comes to that. In the process, you have to stay ahead of the other women who are vying for the same thing, and may be trying to get Jefri to send you home. Of course, someone going home doesn't necessarily get the others any closer to the grand prize. It just means someone new will be showing up, someone who may be a bigger threat than the someone that's gone home.

To operate such a thing these days, to say the least, requires a delicate hand, even if you're royalty. A properly-functioning harem requires that all the women a man keeps, however many that is (and Lauren notes somewhere in the range of 40 at a time), are kept, if not joyously happy, at least content enough to be willing to continue to participate at his pleasure. The whole point of a harem is that all the women want, ultimately, to please the man running the harem. If the women aren't happy, they're not going to want to make the man happy either. And with a harem full of women from countries that are not your own, the stakes increase higher, especially in modern times and women from more socially progressive nations. It only takes one woman from some other nation to be unhappy enough, to want to make an international incident out of things- say, Shannon Marketic- for the whole operation to fall apart, which over the following few years is exactly what happened. We're not endorsing harems here by any stretch of the imagination. That's just the operative logic behind them.

Obviously, Lauren didn't get Jefri's hand. She did get something else, though. In the 2010 Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders, Brunei ranks 142nd out of 178 nations. And that's what Lauren got.

She got her book banned in Brunei.

Random News Generator- Haiti

2012-01-10T11:42:00.001-06:00

We were updating Haiti about a month ago, noting that maybe half the rubble from the earthquake of two years ago has been cleared, basic living conditions remain difficult to obtain, aid has about dried up with recovery efforts slowing accordingly, and that many Haitians are opting not to wait around and to try and rebuild their lives anywhere else that will have them.

As Haiti comes up on the RNG, two days prior to the second anniversary of the quake, that's all still true.

In the meantime, another group in the country, Partners in Health, believes they've located the origin of the cholera epidemic that struck the country a few months later and is only now showing signs of subsiding; their report in the American Journal of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine is here (though it's a pay-per-view). They've traced the origin to the Meye River, where the water was contaminated by raw sewage from a group of Nepali peacekeepers from the UN. The researchers think an unnamed 28-year-old man known in the village as the "moun fou"- crazy person- was the first victim; he had mental problems that had gone untreated. Those mental problems led him to eschew the clean water his family had access to in order to drink from the Latem River, which is fed into by the Meye. After he died, the people who handled his body became sick themselves, and the epidemic took off from there.

Despite this, the researchers note that the river is still used by many families, and that if it wasn't him, it would have been someone else.

Meanwhile, any promises of actually rebuilding anything, for now, ring hollow in the ears of the locals, half a million of whom still live in camps and many more of whom can't even say that. The various plans to move people into real housing have been haphazard, half-assed, leaderless, uncoordinated, bogged down in political bickering, overambitious, underfunded, or a combination of several of those things. What meager arrangements and shantytowns that have resulted are increasingly regarded by the locals as the homes that they're just going to be ending up with.

The presidential palace sits pretty much like it did when it fell in during the quake. It's rather fitting that political bickering be part of the problem. The bickering started after a contentious election brought in Michel Martelly as president; after he won election in April 2011, the musician formerly known as "Sweet Micky" overstepped authority to a degree that turned the legislature against him. They've been acting to obstruct his progress since then, and questions have been raised about Martelly's citizenship. Haiti doesn't recognize dual citizenship, and opponents charge Martelly with being an American, which would disqualify him from office.

UNICEF is still in Haiti; here's a donation link if you're inclined to keep things moving, though be advised that you may not even be able to help that way; about half the donation money hasn't even been distributed yet, much of the governmental money was never given in the first place, and the locals are beginning to question whether the rest of us are actually serious or if the donations were just to make us feel better about ourselves.

Occupy The Spin Room

2012-01-08T16:17:00.000-06:00

Last night, there was a Republican debate in Concord, New Hampshire. It went a lot like all the others: Mitt Romney remained the frontrunner while the others tore each other apart. What specifically happened is not our focus, although highlights included Rick Perry expressing a desire to send troops back into Iraq, and Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul getting into it over service in Vietnam. (Both Gingrich and Paul are correct in their stories, though Paul left out one little bit of info- Gingrich had a paternal exemption, and Paul did not have it available to him, plus Gingrich already had his father serving at the time- but Paul absolutely came out the better of the exchange.)

No, our focus is on what happened afterwards. As you probably know, after every debate the media proceeds to a 'spin room', where staffers of the candidates and perhaps the candidates themselves tell the media why they won the debate. (Because nobody's ever going to claim that they lost.) The media goes there, listens to the spin, and then files their stories in the most blatant, brazen example of bad journalism there is.

So the media, so used to the trappings of the spin room, was miffed when their passage into the room was blocked and delayed by a "security issue", which turned out to be the Occupiers, who delayed the media enough to cause them to miss being able to talk to Rick Santorum before he had to be off to South Carolina.

This isn't really about the Occupiers (although rock on, Occupiers). This is about the spin room. Jon Stewart, on the night in 2004 he essentially got Crossfire cancelled, made note of this. Here's the transcript of that:

JON STEWART: But let me ask you guys, again, a question, because we talked a little bit about, you're actually doing honest debate and all that. But, after the debates, where do you guys head to right afterwards?
TUCKER CARLSON: The men's room.
STEWART: Right after that?
PAUL BEGALA: Home.
STEWART: Spin alley.
BEGALA: Home.
STEWART: No, spin alley.
BEGALA: What are you talking about? You mean at these debates?
STEWART: Yes. You go to spin alley, the place called spin alley. Now, don't you think that, for people watching at home, that's kind of a drag, that you're literally walking to a place called deception lane? (LAUGHTER) Like, it's spin alley. It's -- don't you see, that's the issue I'm trying to talk to you guys...
BEGALA: No, I actually believe -- I have a lot of friends who work for President Bush. I went to college with some of them.
CARLSON: Neither of us was ever in the spin room, actually.
BEGALA: No, I did -- I went to do the Larry King show. They actually believe what they're saying. They want to persuade you. That's what they're trying to do by spinning. But I don't doubt for a minute these people who work for President Bush, who I disagree with on everything, they believe that stuff, Jon. This is not a lie or a deception at all. They believe in him, just like I believe in my guy.
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: I think they believe President Bush would do a better job. And I believe the Kerry guys believe President Kerry would do a better job. But what I believe is, they're not making honest arguments. So what they're doing is, in their mind, the ends justify the means.

And this is why I cheer the Occupiers here. Whether or not it was their goal to do so, they blocked off the spin room, if only for a little while. The mere existence of the spin room is bad journalism. Here you've just sat through a whole Presidential debate, the thing you're here to cover. You at that moment have all you need to start filing your report. Why in the world would you want this report colored by going into a room that announces, up front, 'This room is full of people who are at best biased and at worst attempting to deceive you', and then incorporating what those people say into the report, very possibly without even fact-checking or disputing what they say? What good comes of that?

And why does it take a protest movement to even delay them from going there again?

You've Got Your Smog On The Lens

2012-01-07T14:54:00.001-06:00

Quick one today, because apparently I've decided to spend the morning napping. In the 1970's, the just-born EPA hired freelance photographers to catalog the state of the country at that point, during the period spanning from 1971-1977, though mostly towards the start of that timeline. Some 15,000 pictures were taken in a project dubbed "Documerica", many highlighting environmental issues of the day.

Those pictures then more or less sat dormant, until now. You can view them here, picturing every state save North Dakota. The difference between then and now is stark:

*These are the San Gabriel Mountains, just north of Los Angeles, in 1972.
*Lest you think I'm just picking on Los Angeles and going after the low-hanging fruit, here's Tacoma, Washington, also in 1972.
*And Boston, Massachusetts in 1973.
*And Salt Lake City, Utah in 1972.
*Or Louisville, Kentucky in 1972. I promise you there's a city in there somewhere.
*The Maid of the Mist boat at Niagara Falls in 1973 is seen here amidst built-up foam. The foam is not from the falls. It's sewage waste.
*Or to take waterfalls completely out of the equation, here's the Colorado River in 1972.
*Here's an illegal dumping area just off the New Jersey Turnpike, taken in 1973.
*This looks to be an area outside Ogden, Utah, in 1974.
*The Moab, Utah city dump when it closed in 1972. It sits 15 miles from one national park and three miles from another one.
*And, of course, the Cuyahoga River. This picture was taken near Jaite, Ohio, south of Cleveland, in 1975. What are those in the background dipping into the river? Cars.

Documerica has no pictures of the Cuyahoga being actively on fire. That was because it caught fire in 1969, before the project, though that fire was a major factor in the EPA's creation.

EDIT: Apparently, none of those later links actually work, as they came from live search results that worked for me at the time I looked at them but no longer do. The first link, the one leading to the entire archive, does work. You'll have to go to that. Sorry.

They Paid A Bribe

2012-01-06T17:53:00.000-06:00

The United States is not exactly famous these days among its countrymen for honesty concerning money, or allowing others to get or keep it. You've got your questionable fees, you've got your much-maligned tax plans, you've got your lobbying, you've got embezzlement and insider trading and every manner of gaming of the legal system. Sing along, you know the words.

It could, however, be much worse. There could be bribes.

In countries further down than the United States on the Corruption Perception Index (and the US ranks 24th out of 183), bribes are a part of day-to-day life. In order to get essential services, get a driving license, avoid arrest for minor offenses or have pretty much any part of your day go right, odds are sooner or later you'll be asked to pay a bribe. (Although it's never outright called a bribe. More like a 'fee' or a 'donation' or a 'fine'.)

One tactic being recently explored as of late is to catalog instances of bribes in an effort to stem the tide through shaming. In India, a site popped up in 2010 called I Paid A Bribe. Anyone who has had to do so for any reason can anonymously tell about it. (You don't get to say who you had to bribe, though, on worries that being able to do that would be easily abused.) The amount paid and where it happened is noted, and statistics kept. People can also, if they've managed to get out of paying a bribe, tell about that too, as well as if they ran into someone honest who didn't make them pay one. The idea has already been franchised out to Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines, with several other countries clamoring for their own. Bangladesh, Nepal, Russia and Sri Lanka are mentioned in the link. Further searching shows Greece, Jamaica, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago as also wanting such a site. China also has a spate of sites popping up, though amongst worries of being shut down.

No, there has been nobody, at least nobody that I can find, clamoring for an American equivalent. If someone tried, every last one of these countries- and many others that didn't even get named here- would put the States to shame. Or relief. Or whatever word it is we want in this context.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree, Get The Hell Out Of My House

2012-01-05T18:18:00.000-06:00

I've spent most of the day doing some redecorating. My main bookshelf was on its last legs- as it turned out, it collapsed into all its component boards as it was being hauled out to the curb- and so I had to go get a new one. That's taken up most of my day.

Perhaps you have a similar problem now. Perhaps your Christmas tree is still up; it's entirely possible. What to do with it? If you have an artificial tree, you just take it down and pack it up for next year. But if you have a live tree- one which is likely dumping needles by now and you really ought to be getting rid of if you haven't already- you have a more complicated dilemma.

First off, do not set the tree on fire. I know there's a log in there, but it is not a Yule log.

So now that I've taken away all your fun, what do you do? Probably, it's going to go to a yard-waste site and get converted into mulch or wood chips. But it doesn't necessarily have to be.

*It could get converted into a fishie house. This dropoff, for example, involves the Army Corps of Engineers collecting trees at Riverside Middle School in Evans, Georgia (you can still drop them off through tomorrow), and taking the collected trees to nearby Thurmond Lake. The trees will be bundled and submerged near fishing piers, which will attract fish, which will attract fishing. So more a fishie roach motel than anything. But hey.

Nearby, other trees will be used as brush piles. You just stack them up, leave them on the ground, and let animals use them as shelter and cover from predators.

*It could be used as flood control. Some felled trees in England and Wales are being placed along river banks, and then Christmas trees are used alongside them to filter out silt; this is supposed to help cut down on erosion and, in the meantime, keep fish eggs downstream from getting smothered and killed by dirt that would have eroded and landed on top of them.

*It can be replanted. It's possible if you still have the roots, and if you do, there are some places that could use an extra tree or two. For example, the Linton Zoo in Haverhill, England.

*They can be eaten. Another zoo, the Oakland Zoo, has elephants that consider Christmas trees to be really tasty. Oakland, however, generally only wants the trees that the tree farms were unable to sell over the course of the holidays. In Ottawa, elk and goats will eat the trees.

*They can help build beaches. Brazoria County, Texas, is using some of their Christmas trees to line the beaches. The trees attract and hold sand, and as the sand builds up, so do sand dunes. The dunes need restoration and upkeep, as they and the beaches are prone to erosion during hurricanes.

*You can trade it. Sevierville, Tennessee's Department of Parks and Recreation gave the first 100 people to drop off a tree a seedling for a new tree. It didn't have to be a pine, either.

*Okay, fine, burn the damn thing. Tomorrow is January 6, also known as Twelfth Night- as in, the twelfth night after Christmas, when the Three Kings are supposed to have made it to the birthplace of Christ. Although some observe it tonight. Some people believe that it's actually bad luck to leave your tree up after Twelfth Night, so... you know. Hurry up. As part of the observance, some people do in fact set fire to the tree.

*In East Village, Christmas tree set fire to you! Eh? Eh? Vhat a cahntry!

*Finally, you can suck it. If you've "flocked" your tree- if you sprayed it with that fake-snow stuff- most places don't want it for anything. It serves you right for using that garbage. Get a plastic tree next year if you're going to bust out the spray.

Just Browsing

2012-01-04T10:50:00.000-06:00

Back in June, we provided an update on the slow, lingering death of Internet Explorer 6, as tracked by IE6 Countdown, which seeks to get global usage of IE6 below 1%, so that developers can feel more free to stop supporting it. I bring it up again because the United States has just dropped below that 1% target number.

As of June, the numbers we reported were 10.9% global usage, with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland under 1%. Globally, the number is now at 7.7%, with Austria, the Czech Republic, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Ukraine, and again, the United States. In June, the US was at 2.3%; they're now at 0.9%. Canada sat at 2.7%; they're now at 1.4%. The United Kingdom was at 2.7%; they've also dropped to 1.4%. The bottom five in June were China at 33.9% (still bottom, but now at 25.2%), South Korea at 22.3% (still 2nd, now at 7.2%), Vietnam at 11.6% (now 4th at 5.5%), India at 11.5% (now 5th at 5.4%), and Taiwan at 8.6% (now 6th at 4.9%). Japan is now in 3rd, at 5.9%.

Also, the guy who showed up here using Netscape? Apparently still using Netscape. Or whoever it is that showed up here during the last month. Also, who browses the Web on a PSP? Or a Wii? Really, you guys?

Meanwhile in Browser Land, there's Google Chrome, which Google is voluntarily demoting on its search results for the next two months after violating their own policy. They had been promoting Chrome through sponsoring blog posts which would praise and link to Chrome. You could note the ones they sponsored through the disclaimer "This post is sponsored by Google".

Though if you are using Chrome, while we're bringing it up, there is an app now available called No SOPA. When you use the app, as you're browsing, the app will alert you as to when you're visiting a site run by someone that supports the Stop Online Piracy Act. The app itself is available through that last link. Once you know, it's up to you to determine what to do with that information, though you could probably at least fire off a letter in opposition. To the site, to your legislators, to all of the above if you want.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Post-Christmas Gift Certificate Edition

2012-01-03T12:41:00.000-06:00

Among the other books I got for Christmas, I also got a gift certificate to Watertown Booksellers. That certificate has now been used on two more books.

First is Onion Sports: The Ecstasy of Defeat from the Onion. We shouldn't have to get too much into that; it's a reprint book.

Second is Have Glove, Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond by Bill "Spaceman" Lee and Richard Lally. From 1969-1982, Lee pitched for the Boston Red Sox and Montreal Expos, and drove the management of both teams crazy with a counterculture, down-with-the-man attitude. Eventually, The Man opted to no longer deal with him; after being released by the Expos, no other team wanted him. As a result, Lee went barnstorming. On four continents. And although the book was published in 2005, he's still barnstorming today.

A Roof Over My Head

2012-01-02T14:19:00.000-06:00

Last night it finally happened. We got a night of bitter winter cold. It was a long time in coming this winter, not arriving until January, and it's predicted to be at least temporarily fleeting as temperatures creep upwards again, but there it was.

Weather Underground will say that the conditions in Watertown last night showed a low temperature of 28 degrees, wind gusts up to 37 miles, and no precipitation. I have two things to say to that. First, don't tell me there was no precipitation. Snow was absolutely coming down, blowing sideways at that. It may not have been the heaviest snowfall, only barely enough to cover the ground and even then leaving the occasional blade of grass to poke out its head as a reminder of our unusually mild winter, but it was snow nonetheless. Second, the numbers, on a night like that, don't adequately describe the conditions. There is no weather statistic for 'bitter'. There is no statistic for "howling". You can only rely on feel to obtain those descriptions, like it was in the days when people were forced to predict weather through animal behavior and popping joints.

Whenever I observe a night like that- when you can hear the wind, when the cold seeps weakly through the walls of your house as the snow makes its futile attempt to batter them down, when the windows are frigid to the touch- there's one thing I find myself saying every time, almost to the word. 'This is one of those nights where you're glad you've got a roof over your head.' In fact, I said it right here last winter.

Of course, you ought to be glad every day that's the case, but typically, in milder weather, you don't really think about it much. Unless you've actually spent time homeless, you're probably not spending a May night where it's 68 degrees outside and it was sunny all day long being glad for a roof. In fact, in those conditions, there are some people who will deliberately spend the night outside. But on nights where the light fades early, when the dull roar of the wind aches to make itself heard, when you're chilled almost to the bone the second you step outside, and nobody really wants to go outside for anything because of that, I for one become a whole lot more grateful to be able to not be outside.

Imagine spending the night out in that. Just one night, let alone for now every night. The closest I can come is the November night I spent waiting in line for a Wii, and even then, there was no snow, it wasn't below freezing, there were plenty of people around to share supplies with and family and store employees to check up on me, I was out of the cold by 6 AM, and besides, at the end of it, there was a brand-new Nintendo Wii waiting for me. Those are not normal circumstances. Under normal circumstances, if you're homeless and can't find a shelter- which is entirely possible- you're out in it all night, and then all day, and then, potentially, the next night as well, and the next, and the next, until you find a place to stay or until you die of exposure.

How long do you think you'd last? It wouldn't be long. Think to all the times you hear- and you probably hear it about once or twice per winter- about someone, usually elderly, that died because the heating in their house failed. All that's needed to kill them is the cold. No wind, no snow, just the drop in temperature. Add in the wind and snow, and it's not hard to figure out what can happen to someone who has to spend their nights out in it, very possibly alone and at the mercy of whoever passes by. Maybe they're offered shelter. Maybe they're shooed away to go be cold somewhere else. Or maybe they're simply left to endure the continual dropping of their body temperature and, in turn, life expectancy.

Every night you have a roof over your head is a good one. In fact, as I note the wind continuing to make its presence known and felt outside in the early afternoon, so is every day. But there are some days and nights when you're happier to have it than others.

I'll close out by putting up a link for the National Coalition for the Homeless. Do with it what you will.

Los Angeles Is Burning

2012-01-01T13:49:00.000-06:00

Reminder, I am going to be in Los Angeles later this month, from the 25th to the 31st. Things are a tad eventful there at the moment. In Pasadena, there are Recall Walker petitions being circulated by visiting Wisconsin Badger fans. In Hollywood, everything's on fire; an arsonist or perhaps a group of arsonists have now set more of the city ablaze than at any time since the Rodney King riots. And in South LA, some guy fired a gun into the air to celebrate New Year's and the bullet crashed through someone's roof and hit another guy in the leg.

Meanwhile, a lot of laws take effect on January 1st; it's a convenient default date when something isn't supposed to take effect immediately, so when they don't, that's generally going to be the go-to date. Because clearly we're focusing on California today, here is a rundown of what takes effect today in California. Among the highlights (the full list is here in a PDF file):

*Californians can't carry handguns openly in public anymore.
*They can't buy alcohol at the self-checkout.
*You can't sell beer to which caffeine has been added as a separate ingredient, on the basis that that stuff will mess you up good.
*You can, however, inject fruits and veggies into the drink now.
*Health insurers have to cover autism.
*You can't sell shark fins for food (except for the ones you bought prior to January 1).
*You have to put your kid in a booster seat until age 8 or until the child hits a height of 4'11".
*If a state park's about to be closed for budgetary problems, nonprofits can step in and save it.
*$4 million is made available to start work on high-speed rail from Los Angeles to San Diego.
*Employers can't look at credit ratings anymore when making employment decisions.
*Food stamp recipients no longer have to be fingerprinted.
*Farmers get a tax credit for donating crops to food banks.
*You can't sell expired baby food or baby formula.
*Schools can suspend students for cyber-bullying.
*A third DUI in a ten-year period can now result in your license being revoked for up to a decade.
*You can't sell live animals on the side of the road.
*Doctors can't prescribe anything to workers-comp patients where they have a financial interest.
*Missing-persons reports have to be filed for people 21 or under now, as opposed to the previous 16 or under.
*If you're an elected official and you get caught claiming military decorations you don't have, you're fired. Technically it's a forced resignation, but in essence, you're fired.

Which totally crimps my vacation plans to sell arson-smoked de-finned pet sharks to a food bank on Hollywood and Highland, complete with self-serve double-caff minibar.

The Most Quotable Man In The World

2011-12-31T11:43:00.002-06:00

The 'man on the street' interview is one of the biggest crapshoots in the news industry. It's also pretty easy to do. Instead of finding someone who's done something newsworthy, or someone who's an expert on whatever's newsworthy, you find some random guy, or several some random guys, and see if maybe they say anything smart. And if they can't, well, gasp, the ignorance of the American people on important issues of the day!

Or perhaps you want to know which of two celebrities looks better in a given piece of clothing and judgment must be passed on these two Earthlings who dared to wear similar things, dammit.

But typically, you take for granted that, if nothing else, even if they just filter out anyone that doesn't agree with a predetermined storyline, you can at least assume that these are a bunch of different people, that it's any random guy off the street.

Right?

Not quite.

Meet Greg Packer, a highway construction worker from Huntington, New York. In fact, meet him a lot. Meet him way too much. Packer is a random man on the street. However, he's far less random than anyone else. Packer is a man on the street who has a really sad hobby: be first in line for big events, things likely to get covered by New York media. While in line, he tries to get the reporter's attention. Once attention has been given, Packer then says whatever he thinks the reporter wants to hear in nice, media-friendly soundbite form. Is he contradicting his earlier soundbites? All the time, but who cares? He's just some random guy on the street, after all.

Packer has used this hobby of his to be first in line for such things as greeting Bush 43 upon his inauguration, purchasing an iPhone, purchasing an iPad, purchasing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the opening of the viewing platform at Ground Zero, as well as all manner of parades and sporting events and Brandy concerts.

Who exposed Packer? You're never going to believe this, I certainly didn't, but Ann Coulter of all people. Seriously. Ann Coulter. Credit where it's due. In the course of slamming a Hillary Clinton memoir, Living History, Coulter busted Packer.

Another average individual eager to get Hillary's book was Greg Packer, who was the centerpiece of The New York Times' "man on the street" interview about Hillary-mania. After being first in line for an autographed book at the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble, Packer gushed to the Times: "I'm a big fan of Hillary and Bill's. I want to change her mind about running for president. I want to be part of her campaign."

It was easy for the Times to spell Packer's name right because he is apparently the entire media's designated "man on the street" for all articles ever written. He has appeared in news stories more than 100 times as a random member of the public. Packer was quoted on his reaction to military strikes against Iraq; he was quoted at the St. Patrick's Day Parade, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Veterans Day Parade. He was quoted at not one -- but two -- New Year's Eve celebrations at Times Square. He was quoted at the opening of a new "Star Wars" movie, at the opening of an H&M clothing store on Fifth Avenue and at the opening of the viewing stand at Ground Zero. He has been quoted at Yankees games, Mets games, Jets games -- even getting tickets for the Brooklyn Cyclones. He was quoted at a Clinton fund-raiser at Alec Baldwin's house in the Hamptons and the pope's visit to Giants stadium.

Coulter clearly figured the New York Times knew full well about Packer- after all, why in blazes would someone do this kind of thing if they weren't working in concert with the media somehow? As it turns out, they didn't know about Packer. But they did now, to the point of the Times quickly running a piece specifically about Packer. As he told the Times, "Sometimes I need to stick my face in a camera. I just need to show people I'm alive."

Okay, so now I'm quoting him too.

Meanwhile, after Coulter's column ran, the AP quickly sent out a memo to its staff, noting, "The world is full of all kinds of interesting people. One of them is Greg Packer of Huntington, N.Y., who apparently lives to get his name on the AP wire and in other media. It works: A Nexis search turned up 100 mentions in various publications... Mr. Packer is clearly eager to be quoted. Let's be eager, too — to find other people to quote."

At this, Packer gained the kind of reputation the media gives to the naked guy running across the field at a sporting event: turn the camera away and stop encouraging him. For the most part, he stopped getting quoted, at least by the major outlets. Not that it's entirely stopped Packer from slipping through, as was the case at a Dave Matthews tribute concert in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. He is still quoted on occasion, though now articles featuring him are at least as likely as not to make specific note of his hobby.

Take this Gizmodo writeup when he was found in the iPad line, with the headline "Oh For God's Sake, Not Him Again" and an article that reads simply "Seriously, Greg Packer, you are the worst. Get a job, you walking embarrassment." Business Insider opted for the headline, "The Same Stupid Guy Who's First In Line For Everything Is The First Guy In Line For The iPad".

And then there was the case where he slipped through without slipping through, at a Columbus Day parade. Nicholas Confessore was suspicious, not quite placing his face, but got the soundbites... and then made a routine ask of name and age. Packer didn't even get his full name out before Confessore was able to finish the name for him. Then he slammed his notebook shut, went to find someone else to quote... and then recounted the entire exchange with Packer for the article.

For more on Packer, well, he should be easy to find tonight. I'd bet cash money he's going to be at Times Square for another New Year's celebration, hoping to get on camera. And the throngs of media there will be doing everything possible to make sure he doesn't.

Border Wars

2011-12-30T12:37:00.000-06:00

Quiz day today. I really want to dig into the soccer book.

Today's subject is national borders. We're going to be working on two levels: not-so-tough, and holy-shit-why-are-you-doing-this-to-me.

For a 'not-so-tough' test, you have 10 minutes to name the 30 longest borders on Earth. (I scored 21.)

For a 'holy shit' test, name the 30 shortest. (For sanity's sake, I'll allow you to do what I did here and reach for the atlas straightaway before you even begin. I still only got 22. Small borders mean hard to find in an atlas.)

Are You Visiting From Samoa?

2011-12-29T12:48:00.000-06:00

No. No, you're not. We haven't had any visitors here from Samoa.

But if you were, at the end of the day today, you'll be crossing the International Date Line alongside Tokelau, moving from the east side of it to the west, and thereby jumping ahead a day. For you, December 30 will simply not exist.

Why? Samoa and Tokelau mainly deal with Australia and New Zealand, who are on the western side of the line, and being a day behind them wreaks havoc with trade relations. It's just easier to rend the fabric of time itself than to deal with Samoan and Australian weekend hours not matching up.

So, heads up on that. Everyone else... Tokelau is the name of an island in the Pacific Ocean. They live under New Zealand jurisdiction.

How to Run A PR Company Into The Ground

2011-12-28T11:45:00.000-06:00

As demonstrated by one Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing, which employs, essentially, Paul Christoforo.

1. Provide poor customer service.
2. Mock customer.
3. When customer goes to media- in this case, Mike Krahulik, one of the guys who runs Penny Arcade- mock him too. (That link goes to the complete e-mail exchange up to that point.) When Mike threatens/promises to make you the subject of the next comic, relish the publicity.
4. Clumsily change name of PR company while still in spotlight.
5. Misspell new name of PR company in Twitter account ("OceanStratagy"). After you have already misspelled the old name ("OceanMarketting").

According to Kotaku, whatever its name is, Paul's out of business (or at least fired by his client), on a third Twitter account as of this writing (OceanDeepSea). Not only that, but when you get the Internet coming down on you like it's coming down on Christoforo, the Internet digs up absolutely everything on you. Kotaku spotted him on a steroid forum. Someone else dug up a domestic violence case on record from 2008. There may be more out there; this is still a fresh scandal and the Internet hasn't gotten bored with it yet.

Now, Paul has made an apology- which nobody is accepting at this point, including Krahulik- and has noted this on his Facebook page. Of course, he has noted this in the form of saying "PLEASE STOP CALLING ME PEOPLE!!! I HAVE APOLOGIZED PLEASE I AM TRYIN TO RUN A BUSINESS!!!"

Not anymore you're not, Paul.

Mail Call!

2011-12-27T12:30:00.000-06:00

Time to dip into the old Random Human Neural Firings Mailbag!

...wait. What do you mean we don't have a mailbag?

...we don't get mail?

...you say to stop repeating everything you say for the sake of exposition?

OW!

Okay okay, fine. I still want to do a mailbag. But we'll need to find people asking questions that we can answer. Where can I... ooh! I know. We're going to fire up Google, and type in single words that commonly begin questions: who, what, where, when, why, how, are, is, can, which, did.

What will then happen is Google AutoComplete will come into play and show some trending searches. Naturally, they'll predominantly be questions. We'll answer some of those questions.

"who framed roger rabbit"

Judge Doom. It wasn't obvious from his name? He's named JUDGE DOOM for Pete's sake.

"what does smh mean"

It means "shaking my head", not that I have ever once seen anyone use this acronym. I never get tired of this. You see these big lists of Acronyms You Must Get Familiar With Immediately Before Your Kids Have Sex With Online Strangers Right Through The Computer Monitor, and then at least two-thirds of them are these acronyms you've never, ever seen before and will never see again because everyone you know actually types those things out if they say them which they often don't anyway.

Take this list of "50 More Internet Acronyms Every Parent Need To Know". Of the 50, I myself see the following in actual regular usage:

brb= be right back
diaf= die in a fire
lbgt= lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender, which isn't even an online-only expression so much as the mainstream, offline, semi-official term used by those fighting for increased rights for those groups
lol= laughing out loud
rotfl= rolling on the floor laughing, though these days everyone lops off the T
so= significant other

That's it. Six out of the 50. (Maybe a seventh, ttfn= ta-ta for now, but that one's usage is rare where I go.) The others, if I see them at all, only get used if you are mocking someone's stupidity, want to be roundly mocked by the group for being stupid yourself, or if you want to possibly even be formally punished for not using proper English. You don't substitute 'you are' with UR or 'later' with 'l8r' unless you have a damn good reason or are actually text-messaging or tweeting someone, in which case you have the excuse of needing to be economical with your character count.

Seriously, if someone is using 'banana' as a slang term for penis, that is mild. You're infinitely more likely to actually hear the word penis. Or any of a gazillion other, much more colorful terms.

"why are manhole covers round"

Ah yes, the infamous (alleged) Microsoft job-interview question, actually recently answered offhandedly on-air by Adam Savage of Mythbusters, in the middle of testing the myth that a methane explosion in a sewer could launch manhole covers into the air. (Confirmed, by the way.) The answer Microsoft is looking for (allegedly) is that it's the only shape that won't fall into a like-shaped hole. The Straight Dope, back in 1984, went into a lot more detail, noting further that you don't have to spend any time trying to line up a circle with its hole- like you would have to do with, say, a square or triangle- and that there's a certain type of triangle that also fits the won't-fall-in-the-hole criteria, a Reuleaux triangle. The way you make a Reuleaux triangle is, you take three circles, make a three-way Venn diagram out of them, and if you've lined them up perfectly, the shape in the middle is a Reuleaux triangle.

The key here is that both shapes have what's called a curve of constant width. What that means is that you can take the shape, put it into a square of the relevant width, and no matter how you rotate that shape, it will always be able to touch all four sides of the square at a single point without intersecting the boundary of the square. The Wikipedia page on the concept demonstrates with a Reuleaux triangle.

"when is halloween"

October 31. Honestly now.

"when is thanksgiving"

Fourth Thursday in November. You kidding me?

"when is cyber monday 2011"

The Monday following Thanksgiving, after all the shoppers have been given societal permission to flip the hell out on Black Friday and people have been pepper-sprayed over a discount hair dryer in four different states.

"how to delete facebook"

Quite the ambitious person we have writing in! Unfortunately, or perhaps very fortunately, the average person does not have the ability to wipe Facebook from the face of the virtual Earth, but there are three ways to go about it. First, be Mark Zuckerberg and shut the site down. Second, wait until some other social networking site comes along and steals so many of Facebook's users that the site gets closed down for lack of interest a decade down the road. Third, steal into the building or buildings containing the site's server and engage in the most violent orgy of destruction until such time as the archives have become completely irretrievable. (NOTE: This third method is illegal in at least 16 states. Check with local authorities first.)

"are vampires real"

Unless you are referring to vampire bats: no. No, they are not.

"are shingles contagious"

Not in the sense that someone with shingles can give shingles to someone else. They can, however, give someone chicken pox.

"are the packers undefeated"

No, but we have the 1 seed. That's all that matters. Suck it, Bears!

"why is a raven like a writing desk"

The question has no answer. When Lewis Carroll wrote it into Alice in Wonderland, he intended for there to be no answer. Not that even an outright statement from Carroll to this effect- because people wouldn't stop bugging him for the answer- itself stopped anyone from just going ahead and coming up with their own answers.

It was supposed to be a joke. You people ruined it. Nice work.

"is selena gomez pregnant"

No.

"is jessica simpson pregnant"

Yes.

"is justin bieber a father"

No. Technically we're waiting on that DNA test, but seriously, no.

"is aaron rodgers married"

No. He's taken, though.

"is anderson cooper gay"
"is daniel tosh gay"

The hell does it matter if they are?

"can dogs eat apples"

Yes. You might want to cut them up first, though. The link mentions that the apple seeds contain a tiny bit of cyanide that could end up harming the dog, but in reality, it's such a tiny amount that you'd have to go way out of your way to eat enough for them to have any actual effect (think thousands of them), and besides, apple seeds are really pretty tough, so you won't have much to worry about anyway. How many people do you know that died from improperly eating an apple anyway?

"which pokemon are you"

I'm Spoink. I have to bounce on my springy tail constantly because every bounce restarts my heart and if I ever stop bouncing, even while sleeping, I shall die. I also balance a pearl on my head while doing so and if I drop the pearl I shall quickly weaken and may also die. My every moment is spent in constant mind-shattering mortal fear and also I have a stupid name.

"which disney princess are you"

(checks pants) Next question.

"did lil wayne die"

No.

"did he make the putt"

No. Lil Wayne is a terrible golfer. We have time for one more...

"why is my poop green"

Seriously? ...okay, apparently seriously. Well, in that case, it actually has several different valid answers. It could be your diet (most foods turn brown, but not all), it could be the use of antibiotics, it could be food coloring. You can turn your stool all sorts of different colors with food coloring, including pink. Pink stool is most closely associated with the original Franken Berry cereal, which debuted alongside Count Chocula in the 1971. It was a reddish-pink that wound up scaring the parents enough to take them to the doctor, thinking there was some sort of internal bleeding, and pink poop ended up gaining the medical slang term "Franken Berry stool". It was, specifically, the dyes Red #2 and Red #3.) Franken Berry has since been reintroduced, with a more digestible dye. Count Chocula probably had the same problem, but it's not like anyone's going to notice brown food coloring in that context.

This concludes this mailbag. Stay tuned for next week, when I kidnap random people off the street and force them to ask me about the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Christmas Edition

2011-12-26T12:53:00.000-06:00

In which I list off the books that showed up under my Christmas tree this year. It's not strictly meeting the criteria for inclusion- the criteria normally being 'bought the book with my own money'- but given that I put books on my list every year, an exception can be made.

Anyway. Santa-slash-family put the following under the tree:

*Boese, Alex- Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide To Hoaxes And Other B.S.
*Bongiorni, Sara- A Year Without "Made In China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy
*Ripley Publishing- Ripley's Believe It Or Not!: Utterly Crazy

Christmas Break

2011-12-24T12:31:00.000-06:00

We'll be taking Christmas break here, but not before handing you off to NORAD, which is tracking Santa. They look to have upped the production values this year; we now have a camera following Santa around on Google Earth, so if there's a kid in the family wondering where Santa is, well, there he is in the flesh.

Where is he right now? As I type this, Santa's en route to the Taj Mahal.

Or, if you're desperate to find some sort of non-Christmas material on the Internet today, here's a TED talk. David Damberger of Employers Without Borders talks here in Calgary about what happens when an NGO admits they've failed.

Happy Quaid-e-Azam Day! ...I Think! Maybe! Perhaps!

2011-12-23T13:16:00.000-06:00

It's December 23rd, and that of course means only two days remain until the big day I know you've all been waiting for.

That's right: it's almost Quaid-e-Azam Day!

Christmas, as I'm sure you know, is a Christian holiday. Pakistan is explicitly not a Christian nation. It was created that way. Pakistan was originally, prior to its creation in 1947, part of British India.

Quaid-e-Azam, which translates to "Great Leader" (real name: Muhammad Ali Jinnah), is celebrated in Pakistan on December 25th for being the catalyst in gaining independence.

In 1906, the All-India Muslim League was founded in Dhaka. If you recognize Dhaka as actually being in Bangladesh, well, it was. After 1971. In 1906, it was part of India too. The AIML was the place to be if you were a Muslim in India looking for political clout, and Jinnah was no exception. Though his goal was originally home rule for India, his politics took a more Muslim tack upon the rise of Mahatma Gandhi. Jinnah sought to achieve his aims through the hals of power, and dressed in a Western style. Gandhi, dressing explicitly Indian, went the nonviolent-activism route. Jinnah was worried that such an approach was just going to drive a wedge between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Whether or not it was Gandhi's influence that did it, a wedge was, of course, driven. Jinnah, then part of India's legislature, resigned in 1920, convinced the Muslim community was getting shafted.

Fast forward to 1940. Jinnah now heads the AIML, espousing the "Two Nation Theory", which had been proposed to the AIML in 1930 by a guy named Muhummad Iqbal. The Two Nation Theory was that Hindu and Muslim differences had by now become so irreconcilible that the only sane thing to do would be to give each side a country and let everyone get on with their lives. in 1940, the "Pakistan resolution" became the AIML's number one goal. Over the next several years, Gandhi would meet with Jinnah several times in 1944 to try and get Jinnah back on board, but if there's anything Gandhi could have told him, it came too late, and in fact, the fact that the talks were held at all was held up as proof that Gandhi didn't speak for a unified India.

In 1946, things came to a head. Britain was on their way out, and India had to figure out how self-rule was going to work. It wasn't. The Muslim community was too worried about being marginalized by the Hindu community, and demanded the two-state solution. The Indian legislature rejected that proposal, which is probably the moment when you can pinpoint the crystalization of the India/Pakistan rivalry that continues to this day, particuarly Jinnah's. What happened next, on August 16, 1946, was officially called "Direct Action Day", but in practice was widespread Muslim rioting and looting in Calcutta, spurred on by Jinnah's proclamation: "We shall have India divided or India destroyed." Some 5,000-10,000 Hindus ended up dead as a result, and copycat riots were triggered across India, including one in Noakhali (in modern-day Bangladesh) that has subsequently been referred to as genocide.

That was pretty much that. There was no way India could remain united like this. There was no choice but to split off Pakistan into its own Muslim nation. It was made official on August 17, 1947, with the provinces of Punjab and Bengal being split in half in a very haphazard split drawn up by British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe, who didn't have good maps and didn't know what in blazes he was doing. To say the least, this was a messy transition. As there were millions of people of one religion living on the side given to the other religion, most of those millions (not all; some Muslims in India stayed behind) had to get the hell out of their respective Dodge, and not all of them made it over the border alive, especially as the border made for a very handy collision point as the two sides passed each other on the way. The best estimate is that the transfer killed half a million people, though some claims range up to a million dead. And at the end of it, the region of Kashmir was mutually claimed. They still haven't worked out that one.

One way or another, Jinnah is credited with essentially founding Pakistan. He didn't stick around to see how things turned out for it, though; he died in 1948, only about a year after independence. So why does Pakistan celebrate Quaid-e-Azam Day on December 25th? By now you're very possibly guessing that it's some sort of stick-it-to-the-West thing, but no, it just happens to be Jinnah's birthday.

A birthday that only Pakistan really notices, but then, by now they're probably fine with that.

Random News Generator- Costa Rica

2011-12-22T12:13:00.000-06:00

Some days the RNG just gets moody. Today, it landed on St. Helena. Back in May, St. Helena was covered as part of RNG Week, and shown to be a tiny little island in the South Atlantic that continually bleeds residents to basically anywhere that isn't St. Helena.

They're getting a baggage carousel. Aren't you just so excited? Soon they hope to have an airport where they can put it to use.

So we spin again and land on Costa Rica. Beautiful country, lots of rainforest, very ecologically progressive, surrounded by a lot of Central
American strife...

...and what comes up first on Google News is that Miley Cyrus dropped an F-bomb while visiting when someone called her an asshole. Seriously. The local Costa Rican news has video and everything. Well, just stop the F-ing presses, huh?

That, right now, is showing 104 articles on the topic on Google News. What is only giving a handful of articles, maybe five or six, is how Costa Rica has recently been coming increasingly under threat from Mexican drug cartels and Colombian suppliers, which is of particular threat to the country because it has no military with which to defend itself and their police force has never had to step in for military-like purposes. For every person that cares about Costa Rica coming under fire like this, there are, at least in the media, 10 that care that Miley Cyrus used a curse word. That is appalling.

You don't even want to know how many hits there are on Google News for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wanting to move down there, even though "news" on that broke a week and a half ago.

And then they go and wonder why people keep making blogs on the assumption that they could do a better job.

The Spurious French Connection

2011-12-21T16:04:00.001-06:00

Nostradamus has become, over the centuries, nearly synonymous with the word 'prophecy'. His book, Les Propheties (The Prophecies), was written in 1555, yet to this day, whenever some major world event happens, from World War 2 to the Kennedy assassinations (John and Robert) to 9/11, almost inevitably someone will haul out a Nostradamus quatrain and give him credit for predicting it. Occasionally, some prankster will just make up a quatrain and give it to Nostradamus.

Oh, yes, we are going to be poking a couple holes in this one today. I'm not the first, certainly, but taking to task interpretations of a 16th-century French mystic? Hey, it's something to do on a Wednesday.

The most common criticism of following Nostradamus isn't really going to be our focus, but we do need to touch on it- namely, confirmation bias. In The Prophecies, Nostradamus made 942 quatrains worth of long-term predictions. 942 of them. (He actually made several thousand more, in regularly-published 'Almanacs', but nobody really counts those.) And they are all famously vague, explained as Nostradamus wanting to avoid being hit with charges of being a heretic. When something major happens, if you're looking through 942 vague four-line predictions looking for something that sounds like what just happened, odds are you're going to find it whether it's actually there or not. It's like looking for shapes in the clouds. Sure, the cloud looks like a ducky. The cloud probably did not go out to intentionally make a ducky, but it's not about to correct you. This isn't helped by the standards of typesetting at the time; you can't really find any two original copies of The Prophecies that are exactly alike, which means the words may change from copy to copy.)

Which leads into the more substantial of our points: people almost always look at the wrong clouds.

You see, they're called 'quatrains' for a reason: they're four-line poems. Nostradamus was making, on one level, poetry. Poetry requires one to take some significant liberties with the language. A skilled writer, especially one doing poetry, needs to know and use every trick of allusion in the book. Similes. Metaphors. Idioms. Entendres. Nostradamus has been credited with anagrams; specifically, a type of anagram that allows you to change one letter. This is how the name 'Hister' tends to pop up in interpretations, as an anagram of Adolf Hitler.

(Which, again, just to note: Nostradamus is trying to avoid being labeled a heretic in the 1500's... so he anagrams the name of a guy who won't even be born until hundreds of years after everyone in his world is dead. Logic!)

He's not the first historical source of prophecies to rely heavily on vagueness. The Oracle at Delphi traded on much the same thing; the Oracle has a fairly lengthy profile on TV Tropes in 'Prophecy Twist', (scroll down to 'Real Life') which shows off the danger of trying to actually use such vague predictions: the high likelihood of reading the vagueness incorrectly. More than one army, more than one king, went to Delphi, got a vague riddle about some event, and then watched as something completely different happened that the Oracle could possibly also have been talking about, if the Oracle was in fact talking about anything at all and not simply wording things very carefully, in a way that could be regarded as correct no matter what happened. If the interpreter was wrong, well, that's not the Oracle's fault.

Anagrams and idioms in particular rely heavily on the specific language used by the writer. They simply do not translate. And neither, for that matter, do rhymes. You, the person reading this blog, have been reading them in English. Nostradamus was French, and wrote as such, though he also tossed in Greek, Italian, Latin and Provencal. None of which, you'll note, are English. (And one of which, it should be noted, actually uses the word 'Hister' in its language- Latin, as the term for the Danube River, which happens to border Germany, and the people living in the region. Which doesn't entirely stop Nostradamus fans- after all, Hitler came from Austria and grew up along the river- but doesn't it seem a lot more reasonable that Nostradamus was talking about the river?)

This is important when it comes to poetry. Take the Canadian national anthem, O Canada. There is an English version and a French version, but when you translate the French version into English, you'll find two different sets of lyrics. Poetry, translated literally, doesn't look like poetry anymore.

Here is one collection of the quatrains that supplies both the English version and the original. Let's take one of the quatrains, doesn't matter much which one in particular... oh, say, X 46, which is on this page:

In life, fate and death a sordid, unworthy man of gold,
He will not be a new Elector of Saxony:
From Brunswick he will send for a sign of love,
The false seducer delivering it to the people.

First off: go on, figure out what that one's supposed to be predicting if you're so smart.

Secondly, we should use this as a typical example of why Nostradamus likely wasn't going to get anything in North America properly predicted. He frequently states locations, but when he's not naming planets, he's naming places in Europe, North Africa or the Middle East. He is, after all, from France, and it's entirely possible, that he was simply focusing on the future of the region and not the entire world. Even if he was trying for the whole world, he wouldn't know about all of it yet. Which makes it a bit silly for Americans to try and figure out how it affects them. Here you see Saxony and Brunswick, but elsewhere in The Prophecies, he gives- and this is a partial list- Aix, Algiers, Ancona, Angers, Aquitaine, Arles, Avignon, Austria, Barcelona, Bayonne, Blois, Bordeaux, Brussels, Burgundy, Carcassonne, Crete, Egypt, France, Genoa, Ghent, Greece, Italy, Leon, Libya, London, Lyon, Malta, Marseilles, Monaco, Montferrand, Nantes, Naples, Narbonne, Orleans, Persia, Pisa, Poitiers, Ravenna, Reims, Rhodes, Seville, Sicily, Siena, Spain, Switzerland, Syracuse, Thessaly, Toulouse, Tours, Tunis, Turin, Tuscany, Vercelli, Verona, and Vienna. The furthest distant from France I noticed a specific location go is the Ganges, in II 60. Clearly, Nostradamus wasn't much interested in Japan or China or Australia or sub-Saharan Africa or a United States which didn't exist yet and which was barely even known to Europe at the time. Or, for that matter, any place in the Americas whatsoever.

The main point on this quatrain, though, is clearly, the words gold, Saxony, love and people do not rhyme. But let's look at the same quatrain in the original language:

Vie sort mort de L'or vilaine indigne,
Sera de Saxe non nouueau electeur:
De Brunsuic mandra d'amour signe,
Faux le rendant au peuple seducteur.

Even if you can't read French- and certainly I can't- you can tell straightaway, if nothing else, where the rhymes are: indigne and signe, and electeur and seducteur. Again. Poems don't translate. Had Nostradamus taken the time to do English translations on his own, there's every chance he'd have effectively made entirely new quatrains so as to get them to rhyme.

Which means, of course, a whole new slate of words, a whole new slate of literary allusions to interpret in almost whatever way the reader wants, and a whole bunch of new things to give Nostradamus credit for. Whether he deserves it or not.

Breaking News: People Not Dead

2011-12-20T10:55:00.000-06:00

I know several people that got fooled by this yesterday, so really quick, let's try and put this particular fire out.

Jon Bon Jovi is not dead. Repeat: not dead. The link goes to him posting a picture of himself holding a sign saying "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey," which is not the afterlife people think of when they think of New Jersey, but point made. Some guy wrote up a hoax and a whole bunch of people fell for it. Hopefully not you, but if you did, don't worry, he's fine.

Lil' Kim is also not dead; though I didn't see any of that floating around, rest assured that some people were dumb enough to see Kim Jong-Il's death announcement and get confused, including former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher-- two people who really ought to know better.

Kim Jong Il Dead

2011-12-19T02:58:00.003-06:00

As you've most likely heard from a thousand different places before you came here, and will almost certainly hear a lot more about in the days and weeks to come, Kim Jong-Il has died at age 69. North Korea is certainly the place to be looking at to right now; it's an unstable place under normal circumstances, and with a leadership change underway and a massive artillery pointed right at Seoul from a totalitarian state that has nukes (very poor-quality nukes, but nukes nonetheless), for the moment, the world has little choice but to stop dead in its tracks and pay attention. Nobody has any real idea what the new man in charge, 27-year-old Kim Jong-Un, is capable of, and nobody wants to find out the hard way.

I can't profess to tell you either. It is quite possibly the most important piece of information in the world right now and nobody really knows the answer. All anyone can do is speculate, keep their guard up, and wait to see what he does. It's fairly safe to assume, though, that what WON'T happen is that Jong-Un throws open the borders and pledges reconciliation with South Korea.

We do know that North Korea's neighbors are interested mainly in making sure there isn't a total breakdown. South Korea is all but certain that if North Korea goes critical, the fallout will come down squarely on them. China is thinking similarly. Their main worry is preventing a mass exodus of refugees from stampeding across the border, where they would then have to deal with them as they began a long end-run journey to South Korea or whatever country will have them. Whatever you think of China's stance on keeping them from crossing, that's their mindset. And given that the North Korean border guards can themselves defect, as happened in November, they can't count on very much help from them should such an exodus occur.

Japan isn't really sure what to think, but for the moment they're primarily watching their stock market, which responded to Jong-Il's death by immediately tanking due to the uncertainty. They do, however, have the issue of North Korea having abducted several Japanese citizens over the years; the families of the abductees are using the death to try to get the issue to the forefront.

We also know that, even though the preferred end-state all around is a peacefully unified Korean peninsula, nobody knows how to get there, nobody knows if such a thing is even possible, and above all, nobody knows how to prod a North Korean endgame into place without it backfiring into North Korea deciding to go out in a blaze of glory, leveling Seoul and taking it with them, forcing a bloodbath with possibly millions dead, and getting to the point where North Korean loyalists hide in the hills for decades afterward like the Japanese soldiers of World War 2 who were deployed to the Pacific islands and were never told the war was over. Maybe a nuclear warhead gets launched as well. Lacking a way to avoid the blaze-of-glory endgame, all anyone can do is maintain the status quo until and unless some sort of semi-safe solution presents itself. That, of course, has not happened.

We don't know much, though, and we won't know much until Kim Jong-Un starts saying and doing things. We never do when North Korea is concerned.

EDIT: Adrian Hong of Foreign Policy is willing to try to put together a roadmap to that semi-safe solution. It's a long, complicated road with a lot of blind alleys, and there's no way to make things go as quickly as one might like to make them go, and there are a thousand different failure points- which in itself underscores just how difficult a task it is- but it's a roadmap nonetheless.

Cliffs Notes: Utah Campaign Finance Edition

2011-12-18T11:09:00.000-06:00

This is one of those cases where excess words obscure the point. Once in a while that happens in a story. Most of the time you're best making an in-depth explanation of what's going on, but every so often, you just have to get to the point. So we'll condense this to the bare minimum.

THE PEOPLE: Utah state legislators Dave Clark and Carl Wimmer.
THE "PROBLEM": State campaign laws prevent them from fundraising while the legislature is in session.
THE "SOLUTION": Resign from state legislature and concentrate on their bids for seats in Congress.
CLARK'S EXCUSES: "Any candidate who is looking at federal office will find it becomes extremely difficult to do both jobs." "The amount of money that would be needed for a federal race is a multiple many times of what is needed for a state race."
WIMMER'S EXCUSES: "I can't put my own money into this race." "I am a middle-class, blue-collar American worker."
THEY WOULD CHALLENGE THE LAW, BUT: They don't want to taint their image with voters.

From The 'Sure, Why Not' Department

2011-12-17T12:04:00.001-06:00

Hopefully, you're not one of those people that have bought into the notion that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012 because of the Mayan calendar. Hopefully, you have taken into account all the other end-of-the-world predictions that pop up on at least an annual basis that all end, inevitably, in the world stubbornly refusing to end.

Honestly, you don't think the Mayans wouldn't have just recycled the calendar once 2012 came around if they were still here? 2012 was so far in the distance relative to them that they probably just didn't care.

However, if you just can't resist worrying about it, the city of Tapachula, Mexico, down in Mayan territory near the Guatemalan border, is willing to shrug their shoulders and give you what you want. They don't have very much going for them as it is, being a crossing point for Central American migrants who then proceed to board a train that goes by the names "The Train of Death" and "The Beast" (which is a story all by itself, a much more substantive one, as reported here by Mariana van Zeller), so they figure they might as well set up a countdown clock and play along with statements like "It is hard to say what you will be able to see that day." It'll haul in some tourism dollars, and it's certainly more fun than dealing with the train, the people who get on it, and the people who fell off. (Did I mention that you have to ride on the outside of the train?)

Again. This really isn't a tourist town. At least not in the traditional sense of the word.

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Kyrgyzstan, And Also Things Other Than How To Spell It

2011-12-16T11:26:00.000-06:00

Last week, we noted the practice of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan. I kind of thought that'd be the last I'd be saying about that country for a little while.

Apparently not, as Journeyman Pictures has just provided a 27-minute primer on the country's post-Soviet life, narrated by Eugene Huskey of Stetson University. Granted, a little of that time could very well have been sliced out with some better editing, but content is what counts. So, back to the 'stans for us.

Dollar Coin Dies Unloved, Again, Some More

2011-12-15T11:42:00.000-06:00

First, let's note the official end of the war in Iraq today. Thanks to everyone who served over there.

That established, back during my trip to Hawaii last year, I... well, let's be honest about it, I spouted off something in a hurry about the dollar coin because it was either that or go a week and a half without an update.

Back at that point, the program of Presidential dollar coins- like the state quarters, but for Presidents- had gotten up to Abraham Lincoln.

The program has now been scrapped, as every dollar-coin program has before it, due to lack of interest. (And Wikipedia is showing this as at least the 11th attempt.) How often have you actually seen one of them in circulation? Exactly. 1.4 billion unused and unwanted dollar coins are currently taking up space in the mint. Coins for remaining Presidents will be made only on request, for collectors.

Aside from general lack of interest, though, and the dollar coin's history of failure, you could see this coming from a mile away anyway. Look at where the series stands now. It's not Abe Lincoln. It's the point between James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. As Vice President Joe Biden sums it up, "And as it will shock you all, the call for Chester A. Arthur coins is not there."

Presidential coinage sounds fine when you're talking about the Washingtons and the Lincolns and the Roosevelts and the Jeffersons. The thing is, though, most of those top-tier Presidents already have coins of their own, coins that actually get used. You want a Washington coin? Break a dollar and you'll get four of them, while in the process giving up a bill that also has Washington on it. You want a Lincoln coin? Check the take-a-penny-leave-a-penny jar.

Nobody asked for commemorations of James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. A fair amount of Americans can't even name them.

The state-quarter program, aside from the fact that it used quarters, worked because states are easy. Everyone wants their own state, and while you're waiting, you might as well go get all the others too. Or wait for them to come to you in your change. Plus the extra bit of speculation about what each state put on their quarter didn't hurt either. You don't have any of that with Presidents. You have to actively go out and look for the coin, there's no speculation about what's going to be on the coin, and there's no local pride driving you. There's no single President that's, for the purposes of collection, "yours", unless maybe one came from your hometown or your home state has only sent one person to the White House.

And then there's the matter of the Presidents themselves. The program died in the middle of a rough patch of obscure, unloved Presidents that came after Lincoln. If you're going chronologically- and they were- you don't get to pick the order of release to keep the interest up. Between Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, you have, in order, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, Cleveland again, and William McKinley. As the cancellation showed, nobody cared.

And not only that. Not only do you have obscure Presidents, you have infamous ones as well. Between Teddy Roosevelt and the next really good name, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, there's a five-President stretch that goes William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Harbert Hoover. Warren Harding was possibly the most corrupt President in history, Coolidge is blamed by some historians for causing the Great Depression, Hoover is blamed by everyone else. Do any of them really seem like someone you'd want to reward with a coin? I hope not.

And not only that. As you get into more recent Presidents- say, everyone after FDR- you get into the problem of partisanship and personal memory. Coin collecting's supposed to be this fun, benign thing. Do we really need the reaction that is inevitably going to pop up when it gets to be John F. Kennedy's turn (even though he was on a half-dollar coin himself), or Richard Nixon's turn, or Jimmy Carter's turn, or Ronald Reagan's turn, or Bill Clinton's turn, or Bush 43's turn, or Obama's turn? Do we really need that? Half the country would collect any given coin, the other half would throw it at the first half.

Well, okay. 'Half' is wildly overstating things. This is a dollar coin we're talking about, after all.

Haiti: Still Totally Screwed, In Case You Forgot

2011-12-14T12:57:00.001-06:00

As you can see, there wasn't anything yesterday. My time was poured into the soccer book.

The earthquake that devastated Haiti happened nearly two years ago. So it's probably been put out of your mind by now. Considering that the scale of the destruction was such that I can still remember one estimate from the actual time of the quake saying it would take 20 years for Haiti to recover. Looking around, that estimate hasn't changed.

We're less than two years in.

And very few outsiders have the heart to keep at post-disaster recovery for two years, let alone 20. As it stands in Haiti, actual reconstruction has barely even started. Aid organizations are still working on cleanup and basic survival needs; only about half of the rubble has been cleared, at most. Still. They're also dealing with containing an ongoing cholera epidemic. The reasons for the long recovery are many- lack of government, prohibitive delays at customs, destroyed records, the cost, the various agencies all running around doing their own thing, the sheer amount of damage, among other things. And the aid money is drying up, which in turn is threatening to bring what relief efforts are in place to a standstill.

Many of the Haitians themselves, naturally, are in turn not willing to wait around for two years, let alone 20. That is proving problematic as well. The simplest solution, you'd think, would be to head east to the Dominican Republic, but in the minds of the Dominicans, Haitians crossing their border are to them what Mexicans crossing our border are to a lot of us: nothing more than illegal immigrants that ought to be sent back where they came from. There was a grace period in the aftermath of the earthquake, but that grace period is over. This sentiment is taken to the point of there being talk of stripping citizenship from people born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, people that under normal circumstances would have birthright citizenship in the Dominican Republic. Because Haiti doesn't do dual citizenship, that would leave those people stateless.

Any alternative destination requires leaving the island of Hispaniola, and to that end, refugees have scattered across the Western Hemisphere- in addition to the United States, Canada, Chile and Brazil have also taken in Haitians, albeit with varying degrees of tolerance. In all cases, integration is extremely difficult, as after all, the refugees are going from one of the poorest countries in the world to some of the most prosperous, with most of what little they had in the first place taken by the quake. In Brazil, refugees never even get close to the population centers along the eastern coastline. They arrive through the western borders and end up trying to find jobs with Amazon infrastructure projects. Many end up getting no further than the tri-national area along the borders with Bolivia and Peru, where they tend to make the crossing.

Technically, the refugees headed the Brazilian route aren't recognized as immigrants, and that section of the Brazilian frontier has been fortified with additional border guards. However, given the sheer isolation of their eventual ending point, the distance traveled, and where they came from to get there, the locals that aren't border guards generally don't have the heart to do all that much about it when someone gets through. They know that nobody who has made it that far along that route is about to turn back and return to Haiti anytime soon.

After all, the refugees have 18 years to kill.

Free Publicity For All-American Muslim; That's All-American Muslim, Sundays At 10 PM Eastern On TLC

2011-12-12T18:20:00.000-06:00

TLC, in the days since they got rid of shows like Junkyard Wars and Robotica and Full Metal Challenge in favor of shows like Jon and Kate Plus Eight and A Baby Story and, really, anything you could think of relating to pregnancy, giving birth or the product thereof, utterly and completely lost me as a viewer.

Which means I completely missed the part where they introduced something requiring actual thought to the airwaves for the first time in who-knows-when, All-American Muslim, which follows the lives of five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, a Muslim population center in the United States. The idea is to show these completely normal, benign families and their struggles with lingering post-9/11 anti-Muslim bigotry from people that just automatically think that every Muslim in the world is by definition a terrorist.

A noble concept. But it still really didn't register much on my radar... until Lowe's pulled their advertising from the show in response to protests from anti-Muslim bigots that just automatically think that every Muslim in the world is by definition a terrorist.

Oh, wait. I meant the Florida Family Association. Sorry I got their name wrong. The FFA called the show "propaganda" and demanded that it contrast the lives of the normal Muslim families with reminders of Muslim terrorism. They have claimed some 60 companies that have pulled ads alongside Lowe's; however, one of those companies, Home Depot, noted that you can't really pull ads from a show that you never bought ad time on in the first place.

Now, snide jokes about Detroit aside, correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen Michigan get blown up lately. But I can't make the comprehensive beatdown of the FFA that I would normally be inclined to do, because again, haven't seen the show.

James Poniewozik, however, has seen the show, and so I'm going to toss you to his comprehensive beatdown of the FFA, and while he's at it, Lowe's as well, which has found itself under more fire for pulling the ads than they could possibly have been getting for running them.

Random News Generator- Guatemala

2011-12-11T11:02:00.000-06:00

One defining characteristic of America's foreign policy, historically, has been that nonpowers- countries that stood no real threat to the United States and had little diplomatic heft- were little more than playthings; chess pieces to be moved around at leisure in response to actions by other powers (who often took the same view, particularly the Soviet Union).

If you're fairly on the ball, you may know about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Between 1930 and 1972, poor black men, former sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama, who were under the impression that the government was providing them with free healthcare were in reality being studied by the Public Health Service for the effects of syphilis on the human body, when left untreated. Despite doctors knowing that 399 of the 600 men had it, they were deliberately left untreated, even after the discovery of penicillin as a treatment for the disease, and were actively kept away from penicillin treatments available to the general population. The study would have gone longer than 1972 (by which only 74 of the 399 were still alive) had someone not finally leaked to the media.

The RNG today takes us one step further, as in Guatemala, from 1946-48, the Public Health Service didn't wait around for locals to contract syphilis. They instead actively infected people with it, and then gave them antibiotics, in order to test penicillin as a treatment. Or at least, about half of them got it. There wasn't enough penicillin to treat all the subjects while still keeping the U.S. Army supplied with it. In a PDF file detailing the study we'll be linking to shortly, one Public Health Service man on the ground was shown to say "We shall use our supply sparingly so as to have it available at all times for use in demonstration programs and to build good will."

This pops up here because it was previously thought that about 1,300 people were infected as part of the study, though even this wasn't known until Susan M. Reverby of Wellesley College stumbled across old records detailing it while studying the Tuskegee experiments. (The Obama administration issued a formal apology to Guatemala last year.) Reverby's report on her findings can be found in this PDF file. However, going through those records further, the number has shot up to 2,082... and six of them are known to still be alive. Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom, who called the experiments a "crime against humanity" when receiving the apology from the United States, is currently looking into ways the survivors can be compensated.

Aside from giving them those 65 years back.

Do You Have a 2010 Or 2011 Mercury Milan Or Ford Fusion?

2011-12-10T10:10:00.000-06:00

If so, Ford would like it back. And you may want to hand it back.

You know, unless you like having the wheels fall off your car in the middle of the freeway.

Never Gonna Pick You Up, Never Gonna Put You Down

2011-12-09T11:35:00.000-06:00

For pretty much all of literary history, if you as an author have opted to self-publish, that's been a huge stigma. It said you weren't good enough to get a publisher, it said you very likely haven't had a professional editing it, it said you basically don't know what you're doing. You don't get into bookstores, you don't get in front of book reviewers, you don't have an advertising budget, your book gets doomed to obscurity as a result, and pretty much you suck to the point where you would have trouble finding a publisher in the future just for the fact that they knew you had to resort to self-publishing.

Then came e-books.

Now, I'm not an e-book person myself. Prefer the hard copy. Personal preference. It seems like the kind of thing I'd use maybe three times and leave in a drawer. But there are a lot of people that do use them. E-books, by definition, are available online. And the funny thing about things online is that every so often something goes viral. Little advertising is needed, as word of mouth spreads about whatever's just become wildly popular.

Which means, if you have to self-publish, you now have a semi-viable route to actual success: make your book an e-book, spread the word online, and hope you catch a tailwind. And should you manage to make it work, there's one big upside: no publisher taking a cut of the profits. You get all the money. Or if you want, the publishers might come calling later on, after they see the book's already a success.

The best route is still by far to get a publisher. But it's not totally hopeless anymore if you can't get one.

Alexandra Alter of the Wall Street Journal here profiles one such self-publisher, Darcie Chan, and her book, The Mill River Recluse.

Fire Burn, And Frozen Bubble

2011-12-08T10:30:00.001-06:00

It is now well into December, and as such, temperatures are dropping below freezing. At least, in places where they drop below freezing.

...hang on a second.

Dear Los Angeles metropolitan area: If it is below freezing down there when I come to visit in January, I will take your ass home as a souvenir.

Anyway. One of the places where it does drop below freezing is the observatory at Mount Washington, New Hampshire. That is putting things mildly to the point of absurdity, but never mind. Today they're going to demonstrate how to make frozen bubbles.

Of course, first you'll need the proper mixture. Just a thing of soap bubble solution's not going to do it. The Mount Washington crew went with this:

3 Teaspoons Dawn dish soap
1/2-1 Teaspoon Sugar
1-2 Teaspoons of hot water
Mix gently so as not to make bubbles in the solution

Then, it's just a matter of blowing a bubble in calm winds and below-freezing temperatures and letting the bubble sit on the wand. The lower the temperature, the less time you'll have to wait; because of Mount Washington's notoriously cold weather, though, they didn't even have to wait for the bubble to make it back to the wand...

Stupidity + Time = "Tradition"

2011-12-07T11:53:00.000-06:00

Tradition can be a weird thing. It causes us to do some fairly stupid things for no other reason than we've been doing them for years.

Sometimes, this is relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things, such as in the case of the current setup of the BCS. Here, you have a system where one predetermined postseason game decides the national championship, and 34 other bowls (it's 34 this year, at least) do not feed into this championship and cannot determine the championship. Several of these games used to help determine the championship, as the pre-BCS system allowed for any bowl to potentially be the deciding factor, but the current system has removed that. In any other sport, these games would be recognized as the structurally irrelevant games that they have been rendered (as college basketball's NIT tournament demonstrates), or simply not played at all. However, when confronted, many people- maybe you're one of them- will still step in to defend the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the like, insisting that they still mean something.

What defense is typically used? Tradition. The fact that they USED to mean something is, apparently, proof that they still do, even when they have been stripped of all that made them mean something.

But again, that's relatively harmless. It's ultimately just a football game. Tradition is also used to defend more serious practices, such as bullfighting- which has recently been banned in Barcelona, Spain, much to the chagrin of some Spaniards. That, along with the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, really don't need too much explaining to those of us in non-bullfighting countries to know why Barcelona banned it: suffice to say that in The Onion's book Our Dumb World, Spain's national sport was listed as "Cornering a dazed bull and stabbing it to death in front of 50,000 people". It has become increasingly common, when seeing footage of the Running of the Bulls, to openly root for the bull.

So why are some Spaniards getting teary-eyed? Tradition. They've fought bulls for hundreds of years! Ernest Hemingway gushed over it! It's our national soul!

And then there's Kyrgyzstan.

Have you ever heard of bride kidnapping? It's how nearly half of all marriages in Kyrgyzstan are formed, and it's exactly what the name implies: a man seeks out- or lures- a prospective mate, and then just up and grabs them and drags them off, kicking and screaming, to be married. An estimated 15,000 women a year are married off this way.

For some couples, this is actually mutually agreed to beforehand, and the act- played out in front of the bride's parents- is just that, an act. But for many, it's not, and to the naked eye, both look the same. Often, the man doesn't even know the woman beforehand, and just grabs her off the street. Once kidnapped, the woman's parents, lacking leverage, are forced to consent to allow their daughter to be married to her kidnapper. The marriages more frequently end in divorce than in non-kidnapping marriages, spousal abuse is more common, and suicide rates among the women are higher. It's estimated that a quarter of the women are raped prior to marriage, which in Kyrgyzstan causes the woman to lose honor and standing within her family and become less able to marry by normal means, because as we again establish, Kyrgyzstan is a place where you can kidnap your desired wife in broad daylight and get away with it.

Technically, this practice is illegal in the country, and Kyrgyzstan's outgoing president, Roza Otunbayeva, has called on the country to step up enforcement, but in order to step up enforcement, the law must first be enforced, period. The men almost never face prosecution, and everybody involved knows it. And even if it is enforced, it only carries a three-year prison sentence compared to ten years for other types of abduction.

Why not? Tradition. Those defending it cite a folktale from a national epic poem, the Manas, in which a mutually-consenting couple staged a kidnapping in order to avoid paying a very expensive dowry. However, according to Russell Kleinbach of the Kyz Korgon Institute, this story actually doesn't appear anywhere in the Manas. He figures the practice started in the 19th century and gained popularity during the Soviet era.

Otunbayeva only made her call to end the practice as she left office. The new president, Almazbek Atambayev, took over on December 1st. There is no word on his stance, but it may not matter, as a mere one day after he took office, his parliamentary coalition fell apart. Hopefully, once someone settles into office, they'll run with the torch Otunbayeva has lit.

But tradition can be a hard thing to overcome.

For more on the practice, VICE has put together a three-part report; Part 1 is here.

Tuesdays With TED

2011-12-06T01:04:00.003-06:00

Looking like it's two straight days of Lisa Ling. Why? Because she hosted a session of TED talks this past Thursday (specifically, part of a spinoff called TEDxWomen), and I just found the video of that session, and we never say no to TED talks around here. She didn't give a talk herself, at least not officially, but hey. No matter. Have some TED talks.

Just note, though: you're about to be sitting here for two hours. That's why these things have pause buttons.

Watch live streaming video from tedxwomen at livestream.com

Nice Doggie, Good Boy

2011-12-05T15:01:00.001-06:00

If you've got OWN, and only watch one show on the network (which, granted, is one more OWN show than a lot of people watch), the ratings are saying it's most likely Our America with Lisa Ling. Despite the fact that it's Oprah's name in the title of the network, Lisa appears to have what's turning out to be the network's flagship show.

Lisa being a friend, I have absolutely no problem with that.

In the season just wrapped up- well, kinda sorta; the season, originally slated for six episodes and an update show, has had eight episodes added to it- Lisa has said that the most important of the batch- and "one of the most important things I've ever done"- is the episode on post-traumatic stress disorder, titled "Invisible Wounds of War". I- or rather, Lisa- touched on that episode in this article, which after seeing it I really rather regret writing at this point because the cases of PTSD she profiled were just so far beyond what it was that I was imagining that my article really comes off as callous to me now.

I'd post a video of the episode, but it's not available online, so you'll pretty much just have to keep an eye on OWN's broadcast schedule for the next airing. Or maybe see if Our America gets onto DVD at some point. Haven't asked Lisa about it. It should, though.

In any case, the reason I bring this all up is this article from James Dao of the New York Times, showing that PTSD affects not only humans, but dogs as well, to the tune of about 1 out of every 20 dogs currently deployed by American forces to find enemy soldiers, clear buildings and sniff out mines.

And the dogs are a lot harder to treat. They can't tell you what's wrong, and if they're shell-shocked out in the field, and can't say anything about it while on a mission, that not only puts the dogs at further risk, but the humans relying on the dog as well. Even after you've made the diagnosis, you can't really tell when, or if, the dog has been healed. About half the dogs with PTSD have to be retired. PTSD can, outside of the military, also affect normal household pets given certain triggers. Trauma doesn't just mean war. It can also mean a car crash, or certain levels of abuse by the owner, or natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Cats can get it too.

Which may on some level explain the behavior of our new cat, Mooch. After we got her in late August, it turned out that she had been languishing in a shelter since January. Not only that, but one day my mom noticed a pair of little scars on the back of Mooch's ears, which may indicate some abuse by the previous owner. It's December now, and Mooch has only slowly, very very slowly, been learning to venture out of little corners of rooms, particularly during the day, and if I make anything beyond the slightest, gentlest of moves towards her, she will still instantly take off running and hide somewhere.

I don't know what exactly went on, I can't know, and Mooch can't tell me, but whatever happened, it's still eating at her pretty strongly. But if nothing else, there's a pet waiting for her any time she wants it.

Soccer Book Update

2011-12-04T10:29:00.001-06:00

Previously here, I've mentioned that I am also, outside this blog, working on creating a book on club soccer. To remind you, the idea of the book is to be a primer on selecting a club for adoption, assuming that the reader has no team to start out with. And there are still plenty of those people in the States. To that end, I'm trying to give little starter profiles on as many clubs as possible, to try and show what kind of culture and environment a fan can expect with each club.

That's the key there. I'm focusing less on how much a team has won than on who the team actually is. 'The New York Yankees have 27 World Series titles, won in these years' isn't what I'm looking for. 'The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox hate each other with a passion, were the longtime home of Babe Ruth (which is a large factor in said hatred as then-Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees to finance a Broadway play), and once had Monument Park- featuring plaques of all the players whose numbers the Yankees have retired- in the field of play; they're the biggest love-them-or-hate-them club in the league and you need to know that before you adopt them' is what I'm looking for.

And because there's more to soccer than just the U.S., England, Spain, Italy and Germany, I've made an effort to include- or in cases where info is sorely lacking, at least mention- at least one club from every FIFA entity, as well as some selected other locations. Recently, I managed to hit that little milestone. As of this writing, the book's draft contains 767 featured clubs from 218 different national entities, along with national profiles for each entity. (Most recent team added: Celta Vigo of Spain. On deck: FC Basel of Switzerland, who really should have made it in a lot sooner, but seeing as I'm picking teams from an on-deck circle mostly via RNG, their number just didn't come up for a long time.)

Now, I don't consider the thing done- I'll consider it done when I stop finding teams with good stories to tell, and so far there's no sign of that happening- but I am at the point where I'm getting told it'd be a good idea to start putting out feelers. So while I'm certainly not going to be neglecting you guys or anything, what may happen is I might be relying a little more on shorter posts for a little while to get me through the day so I can devote more time to the book and, fingers crossed, finding it a good home.

And, of course, should anyone out there actually have a contact I could borrow, or better yet be one, that'd be awesome.

Nuclear 116-Legged Sack Race

2011-12-03T02:40:00.000-06:00

Remember how we just got done introducing three new elements to the periodic table?

Well, say hello to two more. 114 and 116 have been given their official names, respectively livermorium (Lv) and flerovium (Fl). Spots 113 and 115 remain empty for now, though the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia have claimed them along with 117 and 118.

The two have also discovered livermorium and flerovium. Each lab took one element to name. No prizes for guessing livermorium's namesake. Flerovium, the one the Russians named, is named for Georgy Flerov, who founded and whose name also adorns one of their labs. Flerov's other legacy is alerting Joseph Stalin to the fact that the United States had gotten strangely quiet while talking about nuclear fission, a suspicion that was on-target, seeing as the Manhattan Project was going on and all. That kickstarted the Soviet nuclear program.

The Joint Institute, assuming joint custody, now has seven elements on the table, alongside rutherfordium, nobelium, dubnium, seaborgium and bohrium. For Livermore, this is their first time on the scoreboard.

In Case You Needed A Spiteful, Vengeful Pick-Me-Up

2011-12-02T12:11:00.000-06:00

The founder of the hedge fund Galleon, Raj Rajaratnam, convicted on 14 counts of insider trading, has lost his final appeal that could have spared or delayed his having to go to prison. He will begin an 11-year prison sentence on Monday, the longest prison term ever given for insider trading. Rajaratnam will seek further appeals, mainly relating to government use of wiretaps, but he will have to do so from the inside of his cell. Bail was denied; though the ruling from the court did not say why, Rajaratnam was considered an unreasonable flight risk by the prosecution due to his background in Sri Lanka and the fact that, when someone flees to Sri Lanka, the United States has yet to get anyone back through extradition.

The SEC is also assessing a $92.8 million penalty against Rajaratnam, another record for insider-trading cases.

So yes, someone is getting punished for it. And more might be; key witness Roomy Khan, who has been cooperating in a probe that has resulted in the convictions of 29 people, Rajaratnam included, evidently is not done cooperating yet.

Galleon was responsible for $7 billion.

Getting Tough On 'Tough'

2011-12-01T12:29:00.001-06:00

Recently, I had a little bit of fun with the media's usage of a certain term, 'surviving Thanksgiving'. At least, I hope to God you recognized that for what it was.

However, that isn't the only media term that's gotten on my nerves. There's a certain word that is used in far more serious circumstances, and through its very use colors the coverage of those circumstances.

That word is 'tough'.

When you see the word 'tough' take a prominent position in a news story, at least one outside the sports world, most of the time it's going to be in the context of someone proposing, or enforcing, a notably stringent policy. This is a typical example. The headline, from AFP, is "US Senate advances tough new detainee rules". The rules, as the article notes, require military detention of people suspected of terrorism, and confirm through law that American citizens, though not included in that, can be detained indefinitely without trial if they join such a group. (Obama has threatened to veto it, by the way.)

Outside the headline, the word 'tough' is used three different times in the article itself, all performing the same basic function, though for different proposals. Domestically, the word finds very common usage when referring to Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has titled himself "America's Toughest Sheriff". He picks up the word here from the New York Times when endorsing Rick Perry for the Republican nomination for President. The headline: "Perry Gains Endorsement From an Arizona Sheriff Tough on Immigration".

The endorsement, by the way, did not go well, as Perry mispronounced "Arpaio" and then incorrectly referred to the voting age as 21. (It's 18, for those non-Americans in the audience.)

Here's the thing, though. There are a lot of other words you can use. I used one just three paragraphs up, 'stringent'. You write for a living. I assume you know how to find a thesaurus. You can find one, for example, by just typing "thesaurus" into your address bar and tacking ".com" onto the end. Though here we'll use the Merriam-Webster page. There's harsh, strict, stern, firm, rigid, stiff, severe. All will serve the purpose fine.

'Austere' is another, but 'austerity' has been earmarked for economic stories and is out of play for purposes such as this.

Some of the other synonyms, though, begin to illustrate the point. The words I just used are really rather neutral; they get the point across as to the nature of the policy, but don't really take much of a side. Some of the other synonyms can't say the same. Were you inclined to paint these policies in a negative light, you might choose words such as oppressive, heavy-handed, hostile, authoritarian. If you really wanted to go on the attack, there's brutal, cruel, inhuman, murderous, crushing, merciless. All of these words paint the proposer as a power-mad dictator. There's also 'crackdown', a frequently-used word, though this is a very mild negative, if it can be considered a negative at all as opposed to a neutral word, and only tends to get used when authorities have turned violent.

If you wanted to paint things in a positive light, though, you might use words invoking images of strength in the face of terrible foes: strong, formidable, unflinching, unyielding, tenacious. But 'tough' is by far your best choice.

Why? Think of where, within the last generation, it's found the most political usage: the phrase "tough on crime", or "tough on" whatever else. "Tough on crime" has been drummed into the national psyche as being a good thing, something that, if pressed, you almost have to promise you'll be if you want to win public office. This is further illustrated by the word's chief antonym in this context, "soft", as in "soft on crime". Someone who is referred to as- or, more to the point, accused of being- "soft on crime" is normally done so amongst imagery of the most dangerous criminals one can imagine being released from their prison cells and placed back on the street, where, presumably, they will make a beeline directly for your house, and, it is often added, your children. Then the released criminals will have their way with you and your family while, presumably, the person "soft on crime" is caught up in a particularly enthralling round of Minesweeper, because this all came into vogue in the 80's and Angry Birds hadn't been created yet.

And of course, golly gee, that's a bad thing! Whether or not that scenario has anything to do with reality! And that's the guy who's "soft" on crime? I don't want that! Better to take the guy who will keep my children safe from these criminals! Better to vote for the one who's "tough" on crime!

In short, a fear-based reaction.

There's a little more to it than fear, though. 'Tough' is also a very masculine word. It's used in ad slogans to invoke blue-collar masculinity. Built Ford Tough. Tonka Tough. It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken. It goes, in the process, right alongside all the other blue-collar ads, most notably the Miller Lite 'man up' campaign. In that campaign, and the Miller High Life campaign with the beer truck guy bestowing and removing licenses to sell that brand, Miller goes into varied detail, ad by ad, about what exactly constitutes manhood, and pressures men to not only conform, but to- naturally- drink Miller products while they do so. Fail to conform, and you're not really a man, or at least not sufficiently so.

This, of course, extends beyond the ads. As a personal example, you'll recall here how I've crossed into the realm of Taylor Swift fandom. When first mentioning this elsewhere, I was told by one person to "turn in my man card" and to purchase a Volvo (considered an unmanly car). That's just for being a fan of a certain musician. (The man-card concept in and of itself gets way too much play. As if you need to have your gender meet official, licensed approval.)

And men are supposed to be tough. Remember back at the beginning of this article when I had to qualify the word's usage in news articles by first removing all the sports stories. Athletes, after all, need to be tough, physically and mentally. Sports are, in society, still considered a very masculine thing; while women's sports are gaining support by the year, it is still in many cases a very fits-and-starts proposition. The most prominent sports typically have the men's product galaxies ahead in development from any women's equivalent (see also: Lingerie Football League), and even the sports in which women are the primary athletes (such as gymnastics), or in which the two are seen as roughly equals (such as skiing), tend to be those you only think about every four years at Olympic time, if even that. Only tennis really bucks the trend to any appreciable degree. The two genders are still a long, long way from sports equality. And until that changes- and here's to hoping it does- sports, and the toughness inherent in them, are going to remain, subconsciously, a masculine thing.

And while women are making increasing amounts of headway, positions of power in media and politics remain largely a men's world as well, and the headway made isn't nearly as much or as quickly made as women would like to see. This particular topic has been the subject of the recent documentary Miss Representation, which made it into Sundance this year and which gets play once in a while on OWN. Add all that up- media in the hands of men, politics in the hands of men, sports in the hands of men, and advertising pressuring men to value their sports and a certain ideal of manliness- and the word 'tough', among other things, is able to maintain a very positive reputation, especially in comparison to its antonym 'soft'. Being soft means being a wimp, and you're not a wimp, are you?

This all leads back to our original point: the use of the word 'tough' to describe a policy. To do so is to give the policy a form of tacit approval, and to subconsciously tell those listening to approve it as well. It's really a low-key form of campaigning more than anything else. And that's likely the aim in some cases. In which case, the listener should consider this an advisory warning. But if it's not, if you're a writer not trying to take sides, and you're trying to figure out a way to describe a policy that makes things significantly more difficult on those who run afoul of it than they were beforehand, honestly, it's time to stop leaning on one word and put some new ones into your toolbox.

And if you can't handle that, tough.

Graphic Scenes Of Disembowled Machinery

2011-11-30T15:22:00.000-06:00

We go from brand new machinery to something a little older, found via Neatorama, one of my new bookmarks. (Switching monitors left some spaces open. You'd be amazed how many bookmarks you can have if you're economical titling them; I have 18 just on my main screen and, with Neatorama, 28 more on my side menu without it having to scroll.)

A guy named Todd McLellan, for the sake of art, has taken apart a number of older-style gadgets- a clock radio with the flippy numbers, a rotary phone, a typewriter, a push lawnmower, etc.- and displayed all the component parts in a series of pictures he calls "Everyone has a piece of the puzzle". You can check it out here at his website; click 'New work' and it'll be right there.

No, Stop, I Am Your Creator

2011-11-29T12:19:00.000-06:00

Every so often, a video of some robot or other will make its way around the Internet. You're going to get one now. But this robot is different from those other robots for one very notable reason: none of those robots were inspired by invertebrates.

This little bundle of creepiness comes from Harvard, out of the lab of one George Whiteside. The basic idea is that the robot is powered by compressed air (note the trail of wires). The outer layer is made of something they call "elastomers", which I suppose is as good a word as any, and inside are some compartments, acting as balloons. Inflating, deflating and compressing certain compartments at certain times makes the robot move and walk.

And yes, before you ask, it can walk on Jell-O.

As IEEE Spectrum notes, "You could probably smash this thing with a hammer a whole bunch of times and it would still keep coming for you. And that's part of the idea." So, have fun with that line.

'Soft' robots like this are becoming more and more common; this is just the first one you're likely to have seen. Researchers are working on how to give robots more fluid movements that a more rigid traditional-looking robot can't do. There are two main problems to work out: the potential for puncturing, and the external power source (again, note the wires).

Of course, those external power sources may be the only thing giving humanity hope to stop them. After all, hammers won't work.

For A Hint, Watch The NIT Sometime

2011-11-28T17:39:00.001-06:00

Keeping with the 'random' part of this site, it's quiz day. Your task: name all the schools in NCAA Division 1 basketball.

Just to make things interesting, the BCS conferences- in their current incarnations- have been taken out of play. No driving up your score on the backs of Duke and Kansas and Kentucky and the, well, BCS polls. You want all those random cupcakes they play at the start of the year, and that they play in the first round of March Madness.

You have 20 minutes.

The Verdingkinder

2011-11-27T12:35:00.001-06:00

Not sure how the writing for this one is going to come out, because I'm still in rather a bit of shock over it, but we have today an article from the Associated Press written on Thursday.

The article concerns a period in the history of Switzerland from the early 1800's up until the 1960's, during which time the country built itself partially on the backs of verdingkinder. The AP translates that as "contract children", but I would use "verdingkinder" to do your searching because "contract children" is only going to get you reprintings of the AP article itself.

Verdingkinder were, at least legally, foster children taken from parents deemed too poor to care for them. In practice, single mothers and parents who had become 'morally destitute' were targeted as well, which amounted to whoever wasn't meeting society's expectations. Once sold, children became little more than farm slaves. Authorities auctioned the children off to whichever set of parents submitted the lowest bid- who would agree to be paid the least for helping to raise the child- and then the child was expected to work in the fields so as to earn their keep. They would be at that farm for a few years, and then resold to some other family, repeatedly, until reaching adulthood. Any education the child might have been receiving came to a screeching halt the second they became a verdingkinder.

The child was completely at the mercy of whatever family got them. Some children got lucky and were given to families that treated them well, but often they were barely fed, barely clothed, and physically and sexually abused. Some children attempted escape, but they usually could not find a sympathetic ear. Where could they go? The entire country was in on it.

Not only that, but after reaching adulthood, the verdingkinder that hadn't committed suicide (and many did) had to live with a heavy stigma. Not only did they now lack an education, not only were their career options largely limited to whatever it is they did in the field, but once someone found out they were a verdingkinder, they were looked down upon, as if they had committed a crime and their time as a verdingkinder was their punishment. As a result, most verdingkinder just tried not to talk about it. In fact, when journalist and former verdingkinder Turi Honegger was writing a book about the practice in 1991, he was advised by his publisher to tone the book down, because the publisher didn't think anyone would believe this was a thing that had happened in Switzerland.

This episode in Swiss history is not very well-documented, though as the AP article notes, efforts are now underway to change that using those verdingkinder who are still alive, which is estimated to be as many as 30,000 people. There is also a campaign underway for an official apology- the government is reluctant to talk about it as well- as well as reparations in the form of back pay for all that unpaid labor.

As a first step, though, historian Marco Leuenberger, whose father was a verdingkinder and who has been heading up the effort to document what went on, would be happy with just getting the story out and seeing former verdingkinder step forward. (If you read German, Leuenberger has written a book, Versorgt und vergessen - Ehemalige Verdingkinder erzählen.)

Hope this helps, Marco.

American Idiot

2011-11-26T00:22:00.001-06:00

Something you may or may not know about Time Magazine is that they make covers for each of four regions every time they put out an issue: U.S., Europe, Asia, and South Pacific. Often, these will all be the same cover. However, sometimes they won't. For any of a variety of reasons- importance to the region, what they think will sell copies, whatever- the cover will often be changed to suit the needs of the region.

The December 5th, 2011 issue of Time, though, is an illustration of what some suspect is a much more distressing reason to change the cover: dumbing it down for the Americans. For Europe, Asia and South Pacific, as you can see here, the cover story picked was 'Revolution Redux', concerning the Egyptian military taking such control of the country that it's spurred a possible second revolution there. The U.S. cover, meanwhile: "Why Anxiety Is Good For You (as long as you know how to use it)".

Knowing this, I went through the archive of cover comparisons, as far back as I could, and while there have been some occasions where the U.S. actually came out ahead on the headline, or where it's been something of a wash, after a while the trend does show that, for whatever reason, Time doesn't think Americans can handle the hard stuff. Other regions also will run some of the subpar American covers separately; however, they will do it a few weeks later, after running covers of more pressing matters. The U.S. will get them first.

Frequently, one region's cover story won't even be included in another region's issue at all. You can do the math.

I have thus compiled a list of the 20 most egregious dumbing-downs Time has inflicted on their American readers in the last five years, including that of the December 5th issue. Prior to that, the U.S. cover was usually copied for the South Pacific, which for our purposes disqualified it. To qualify for inclusion, the U.S. version could not be the same as any of the other three regions, so cases where two regions ran one cover and the other two regions ran a second cover are out, even if the U.S. came out with the worse of the two.

At the start, it's bad, but not quite as bad as it could have been. Towards the end, it is.

#20- 6/22/2009
Europe: "Why Britain Wants To See The Back of Gordon Brown".
Asia/South Pacific: "Containing Kim Jong Il".
U.S.: "How Not To End Up Here", "here" being a hospital bed.

#19- 5/25/2009
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "How Pakistan Let Itself Down".
U.S.: "The Future Of Work".

#18- 1/12/2009
Europe/South Pacific: "Again", concerning fighting on the Gaza Strip.
Asia: "Democracy: Why it's failing in Asia and how it can be helped".
U.S.: "Why We Need To See The Light About Energy Efficiency".

#17- 7/16/2007
Europe/Asia: "Keeping An Eye On Terror", concerning an increase in security measures in Britain.
South Pacific: "Culture of Violence", concerning ethnic gang violence in New Zealand.
U.S.: "How We Get Addicted".

#16- 3/7/2011
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Last Stand", concerning Moammar Gahdafi.
U.S.: "Understanding Pain".

#15- 9/28/2009
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "China's Moment", concerning the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic.
U.S.: "Mad Man", concerning Glenn Beck, who on the cover is sticking out his tongue.

#14- 4/6/2009
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "All Together Now (Please?)", concerning the then-upcoming G-20 summit and the issues facing the countries therein.
U.S.: "The End Of Excess: Why This Crisis Is Good For America".

#13- 11/29/2010
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "The Lady Returns", concerning the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.
U.S.: "Who Needs Marriage?"

#12- 10/3/2011
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Why Germany Can't Save The World", concerning the Eurozone.
U.S. "Why Mom Liked you Best: The Science of Favoritism".

#11- 4/19/2010
Europe/South Pacific: "Why Britain's Election Should Be About Her", "her" referring to a representative female soldier on the cover.
Asia: "Obama's China Challenge".
U.S.: "Should Schools Bribe Kids?"

#10- 9/20/2010
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Pakistan's Despair", concerning the aftermath of massive flooding in that country.
U.S.: "What Makes A School Great?"

#9- 8/18/08
Europe/South Pacific: "Ethiopia's Harvest of Hunger".
Asia: "Beijing: 8/8/08", concerning the Beijing Olympics.
U.S.: "Rick Warren: The Purpose Driven Pastor".

#8- 2/8/2010
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Haiti: The Aftermath".
U.S.: "The Most Dangerous Game", referring to football.

#7- 2/2/2007
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Talibanistan".
U.S.: "Why We Should Teach The Bible In Public School (but very, very carefully)".

#6- 7/5/2010
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Seeking Refuge", concerning the growing difficulties of people seeking asylum around the world.
U.S.: "The History Issue: Thomas Edison".

#5- 1/28/2008
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Ny-lon-kong", concerning how New York, London and Hong Kong drive the global economy.
U.S.: "The Science of Romance".

#4- 10/24/2011
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Why The U.S. Will Never Save Afghanistan".
U.S.: "The Return of the Silent Majority".

#3- 8/8/2011
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "Travels Through Islam".
U.S.: "Chore Wars".

#2- 12/5/2011
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: 'Revolution Redux', concerning the Egyptian military.
U.S.: "Why Anxiety Is Good For You (as long as you know how to use it)"

#1- 9/14/2009
Europe/Asia/South Pacific: "The Global Economy: One Year Later".
U.S.: "Jay Leno Is The Future Of Television. Seriously!"

They're Probably Sicker Than Me

2011-11-25T12:16:00.000-06:00

So it turns out I have this really nasty bug that my mom had a week ago. I'm consistently nauseous, I'm sleeping a lot, I'm short of breath, I'm fatigued to the point where it actually exhausts me to type too much. But I already took one day off from here for Thanksgiving and I've got to give you something to do.

So, here's Matt Peacock of ABC Australia talking about asbestos in India. Embedding was disabled on the clip; it runs 27 minutes.

Occupy Speedbumps

2011-11-23T13:39:00.000-06:00

According to USA Today, the Occupy movement has opted to make themselves noticed on Black Friday, using a variety of tactics- perhaps shambling around the stores as 'zombies', perhaps trying to direct people to small businesses, perhaps creating a 'really, really free market' where people donate items for shoppers to just come and take so they don't have to spend any money anywhere, perhaps just straight-up protesting.

For their sake, they'd better not be standing anywhere near the front doors when the stores open. Outside this blog, I'm a retail worker, and that is a damn good way to get yourself trampled.

Black Friday, experienced at the opening stampede, is basically Christmas minus all the nice parts. There's no frolicking in the snow, no family togetherness, no gathering around a tree, not even really a 'oh, little Billy would love this!' that you'd think would happen here, seeing as it's shopping and all. Oh, no. You, on the retail end, are spending your Thanksgiving- the day prior- manning stations, setting up the set pieces (and the markers for them). We set up waiting lines at our store. We have bathroom passes. We give a manager- a predetermined, designated manager we know can handle things- a bullhorn. The cashiers are told to get out of the way when the doors open. Nobody unauthorized is to get anywhere near the doors, because when they open, it is a wave of humanity streaming at you, that at some point must keep moving simply because too many others behind them are moving as well. Keep pushing forward, or get run over by people that are.

On the shoppers' end, it's a straight-up military operation. All the disparate times the stores kick off their Black Friday sales are mapped out and combined into a daylong battle plan. You'll hit Store A at midnight. Then you'll hit Store B at 3 AM, Store C at 6 AM, Store D at 10 AM. Add in drastically reduced prices to the equation- plus, mind you, a lengthy economic downturn- and the result really rather sucks the Christmas spirit out of you in a hell of a hurry. Christmas is a lot of places, but it's not in those stores. All that's there is semi-panicked chaotic entitlement.

Those clips they run on the news about the opening stampede may look fun- maybe even funny- when you're a shopper or not participating, but when you're in retail, it dawns on you very quickly that there's someone whose job is to stand on the other end of that madness and maintain some sort of order, and that someone is you. The price for failure can be high. Everyone in the industry remembers the Walmart people greeter that died in a Black Friday stampede three years ago on Long Island. It's only the one death, but none of us in retail want to be the second and take every measure we deem necessary to keep it from happening.

Behave yourself out there Friday morning, and it won't.

Be in the thick of it protesting and adding bodies to the equation that don't have any other business being there, and you put yourself and everyone around you at risk.

Your Thanksgiving Survival Guide

2011-11-22T12:27:00.001-06:00

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, as happens with the major holidays, there are a number of articles popping up about 'how to survive whatever holiday this is'. Like this one, for example, about Thanksgiving travel.

But when you look through the article, there is not a single survival tip in there. It's just stuff about busy airports and gas prices. This more general 'survival' guide talks about things like how to compliment the cook afterwards.

Now, I'm all for helping people make Thanksgiving easier on themselves. Butterball has a helpline open every year for people who are having problems preparing dinner. But let's talk about that term, 'survival'.

'Survival' means to preserve one's life. We are not talking about anything close to that here. We are talking about making things less awkward and yelly. This is making a headline sing for the sake of a couple extra clicks.

So if we're going to have a Thanksgiving survival guide, let's be literal about it. I present some tips now on how to literally survive Thanksgiving.

RULE #1: Do not substitute yourself for the turkey.

I cannot stress this enough. Any role normally performed by the turkey is to be performed by the turkey. Do not feel sorry for the turkey. The turkey is dead. Do not have yourself basted (not fatal, but unpleasant and creepy). Do not have yourself basted in your own juices (more unpleasant and perhaps more harmful, depending on the juices, and perhaps even illegal). Do not jump into the oven. Do not dive into the deep-fryer, if you have one. Do not encourage people to 'stuff' you in the way one would stuff a turkey. Do not request that someone pull out your giblets. The police may regard these things as suicide attempts, or even homicide if someone else is involved.

And under no circumstances are you to be carved and eaten during a football game. That's just right out.

RULE #2: Only eat the food.

Preferably, only eat the prepared food, as someone worked to make that dinner, but that's just etiquette. In order to SURVIVE Thanksgiving, you must at least limit yourself to edible foodstuffs and potable beverages. Make sure all food to be eaten has not turned a strange and unusual color. (What is 'strange and unusual' depends on the food eaten. A color that is normal for cranberry sauce is not normal for the turkey.) Make sure you only eat food that has been intended to be food. Do not eat the plates. They are hard, may harm your teeth, and hard plastic shards can cut up your insides. Do not reach below the sink and eat all the rat poison. Do not head out to the driveway and drink out of your car's gas tank. Do not eat the carving knife. Do not make a valiant effort to eat the carving knife. If you are using plastic cutlery, eating a spork is generally not going to be fatal, unless you choke on a piece of plastic, but it will possibly result in a hospital stay.

RULE #3: Have common sense regarding extra activities.

Some people manage to burn down their house when deep-frying a turkey, so do be careful there. You definitely don't want to add any extra flair to the process; it is quite interesting to see on its own. Do not go out into space, find a turkey or turkey-like object 60% of the size of the Earth, and attempt to drop it into your deep fryer at escape velocity (e.g. the speed at which a large object would drop if placed barely within Earth's gravitational pull and left alone). The impact would potentially destroy the Earth, not to mention the difficulty of getting the turkey to fit inside of your deep fryer.

One other thing you must do is remember, if you play any football outside, not to take fantasies too far. Jerome Bettis may have been known as the 'Bus', but refrain from driving one when playing. When throwing a 'bomb', do not actually throw one. When 'blitzing' the quarterback, do not drop bombs on London while you do so.

RULE #4: Adhere to basic societal norms, except when it can no longer be helped.

These are family and friends you're having over for dinner. Please remember that. It is preferable that you be nice and personable, but that's merely etiquette. To SURVIVE Thanksgiving, you must refrain from permitting your family members to stab you with their knife, pouring gasoline all over the place, burning the house along with any survivors, and then going on a five-state killing spree where they make puppet shows from the intestines of their victims before finally succumbing to police in a violent shootout that leaves the nation shocked and horrified right in the middle of Christmas season.

This may require vigilance on your part. You never know what those people are thinking. Maybe they remember that time you swiped the last of the potato chips and it's just been festering and stewing within them for years. You may need to incapacitate them first. Chloroform and a rag works well, though only for the first target. After this, your remaining family will be appalled. They may move to restrain you. It's a trick. You must overpower them. If you know you cannot do so, your only hope is to trick them back. Ply them with sweet potatoes, throw them into the middle of the room, and escape while they are distracted.

Then run! Run for your life! Run for the hills! Run to SURVIVE THANKSGIVING!

Random News Generator- United Arab Emirates

2011-11-21T14:07:00.000-06:00

Third appearance of the UAE here; that ties them for first on the RNG leaderboard with Trinidad and Tobago. You know, for those scoring at home in your Random News Generator fantasy leagues. (At this point in the year, Senegal would be an awesome waiver wire pickup.)

Those of you who keep up on oil-related news might already know the significance of the Strait of Hormuz. For those who don't, the Strait- that little notch separating the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf; the northern tip of the UAE points to it- is the most crucial oil shipping lane in the world. Oil has to come through there if it's going to get from oil wells inland from the Gulf out to open sea. Close off the Strait, and you close off 17% of the world's oil supply, and a third of the world's seaborne oil. It handles about 15.5 million barrels a day.

The Strait of Hormuz is, for all intents and purposes, controlled by Iran; the Strait juts into their land. Considering Iran's reputation and demeanor, that fact leaves much of the rest of the world ill at ease; were someone ever to go to war with Iran, the Strait would be one of the places most at risk. The UAE, sitting across the Strait, would be severely impacted.

That's why they've recently completed- and have almost made operational- a bypass pipeline, running south of the Strait from Abu Dhabi and emerging outside of the chokepoint at the port of Fujairah, with a capacity of 2.5 million barrels a day. They hope to have it up and running by mid-December. They don't know how likely it is that anyone will actually bomb Iran or anything, but it's a better-safe-than-sorry proposition. They're also working on a refinery in Fujairah, which they hope to have running by 2016.

The pipeline will be operated, initially, by the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations, which in turn is 60% owned by Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Mind-Blowing Scientific Discovery Of The Day

2011-11-20T12:27:00.000-06:00

The invention of the world's lightest material, described as light enough to sit on a dandelion without crushing the seeds.

No, wait... it's this creation of a new class of molecules, with immediate usefulness in the search for new drugs.

No, wait... it's light from a vacuum.

No, wait, hang on... maybe it's an earlier experiment at the CERN labs in Switzerland showing particles going faster than the speed of light being successfully repeated. We'll need other groups to independently confirm the result, but excitement here growing.

Seriously, if science were NBA Jam, there would be a charred, flaming net and backboard fragments in the next state right now.

So There I Was, As Far As You Know

2011-11-19T14:41:00.001-06:00

From a favorable round of Wikipedia Roulette, we tell the story today of a guy going by the name of Oskar Daubmann.

Right off the bat, let's repeat that: going by the name of Oskar Daubmann. The real Daubmann had been killed in World War 1; if the Polish translation from here is to be trusted, he died in 1916 in Grandcourt, France; it is, however, possible that this isn't totally correct and Daubmann had simply been rendered one more unknown body among the hundreds of thousands killed. His soldier's passport, however, had found its way into a second-hand jacket, where in a shop in Offenbach, a petty thief named Ignaz Karl Hummel noticed it in 1932. An alias was always good to have, so he grabbed it.

To match the ID, Hummel concocted a story where he was captured at the Somme and spent the next 16 years in POW camps in France and Algeria while being tortured, starved, and kept in solitary. On his second escape attempt, according to his claims, he walked for 3,000 miles before coming across an Italian steamer headed to Naples. Once in Italy, to add the small bit of credibility to the backstory, he sent a letter from Italy to Daubmann's parents asking if they could get someone to help pick him up.

Now, had he just grabbed the ID of some random guy, that'd be the end of the story. But Hummel had grabbed the ID of a World War 1 soldier whose whereabouts weren't definitively known. In addition, France had told Germany that the last of their POW's had been released back to Germany in 1930. Daubmann's sudden appearance in 1932 would contradict this story, and with the Nazis building their power at the time, this could only help them build German anxiety towards their neighbors. So they ran with it.

There was a little hitch, though. Daubmann and Hummel didn't have matching eye colors. In addition, Daubmann had a facial scar whereas Hummel, even after supposedly spending 16 years as a POW and having been tortured, did not. So when Daubmann's parents got a good look at Hummel, they of course...

...wait, this can't be right. It says here they accepted him as their son. Really? They did? Wow. Well then.

Well, if they didn't have a problem, that was the green light to really make hay of Daubmann. There were lectures, awards, talk of a movie, one soldier who had served with the actual Daubmann either accepting him as well or just shrugging his shoulders and cashing in on his association, other soldiers who served with Daubmann somehow accepting him as well, and the Nazis using the appearance as part of their platform to take minority control of parliament in the July 1932 elections.

France, meanwhile, was insistent that this person was not Daubmann, and while they were dismissed by many Germans, others more sympathetic decided to at least look into it. From here, two versions of the story diverge, differing on how Hummel was ultimately caught. One version is rather mundane, with the local police running checks, fingerprinting Hummel, identifying him as Hummel- a career criminal known to German authorities, remember- and taking him into custody. The other version is rather more dramatic, with Hummel's actual father showing up at one Daubmann event and calling Hummel out right then and there.

Either way, he was caught in October 1932-- very close to the next elections in November, as the Nazis were unable to form a government after the July elections. It was a literal October Surprise. They kept control, but lost ground. (The results are almost irrelevant to the larger scope of history, as between then and the next election, the Reichstag burned and everybody knows the story from there. But for sake of reference.)

Hummel was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but his real punishment came later on. After taking full control of Germany, the Nazis remembered the guy who embarrassed them on a national scale back when they were rising to power. In 1938, Hummel was shipped to Schwabisch Hall, where he would stay in preventive detention until liberated by American forces in 1945. He would remain in town after his release, living there until his death in 1954.

He got a job as a tailor. No word on if that fateful jacket had anything to do with that choice.

Global Warming, or: None Like It Hot!

2011-11-18T09:55:00.000-06:00

(Suzie walks outside with an ice cream cone. The ice cream melts. Suzie cries.)

You're probably wondering why your ice cream went away. Well, Suzie, the culprit isn't foreigners, it's global warming!

"Gwobal wappa?"

Uh, yeah. Meet Mr. Sunbeam. He comes all the way from the sun to visit Earth.

"Hello, Earth! Just poppin' in to brighten your day! [He hums.] And now I'll be on my way!"

"Not so fast, Sunbeam! We're greenhouse gases. You ain't goin' nowhere! [Mr. Sunbeam is beaten up.]

"Ooh! Ah! Oh, God, it hurts!"

Pretty soon, Earth is chock-full of sunbeams, their rotting corpses heating our atmosphere.

"How do we get wid of the gweenhouse grasses?"

Fortunately, our handsomest Mongolian politicians came up with a cheap, last-minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2011, they put some giant ice cubes around Ulanbataar now and then.

"Just like Daddy puts in his drink every morning. And then he gets mad."

Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all.

"But--"

ONCE AND FOR ALL!

THE END

Bad Parents Of The Day Are Also Stupid

2011-11-17T11:43:00.000-06:00

Last week, we talked here about the stupidity of parents sending lollipops through the mail infected with chicken pox in order to get their kids infected and, in the process, immunized.

We're revisiting it- briefly- today because it turns out that, in addition to the sheer irresponsibility and illegality of the act, according to Mental Floss today, it wouldn't even work. The chicken pox virus doesn't last very long outside of the body, and it would take a huge viral load and a very fast mail delivery to even give the virus a shot at surviving long enough to get into the second kid's mouth. If you're going to get infected, you need to be sneezed or coughed or breathed on. Chicken pox is spread through airborne particles, not saliva.

You could, however, succeed in giving your kid something else that can be transmitted through saliva. Like hepatitis C.

Now I've spent two separate posts talking about how stupid it is to give a kid chicken-pox-laden lollipops. I hope you're happy.

Back At Square One

2011-11-16T13:20:00.000-06:00

LGBT rights are the major civil-rights push of the times, and at least stateside, the results are starting to show, most notably through the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell and gay marriage being slowly- very slowly- legalized state by state.

But that's in the United States. Compared to other places, the fight here is easy. You'll see at Wikipedia a chart of countries by the LGBT rights they do or do not have, and in over 80 countries, homosexual activity is illegal, sometimes punishable by death. A map is also there for reference. In those countries, the tide of LGBT rights is often going in the other direction entirely, most notably in Uganda.

These places are the ones now on the radar of the Human Dignity Trust, based in the United Kingdom, which tomorrow in the House of Lords is kicking off an effort to challenge anti-gay legislation in every country where it's illegal, starting in Belize. They intend to do this through pointing to international law- the 1994 UN Human Rights Committee case Toonen v. Australia figures to see prominent play- and by using local talent wherever they can. Caleb Orozco will head the case in Belize, which is intended as a test case, along with Jamaica (headed by Maurice Tomlinson) and Northern Cyprus (head there not found), intended to be brought by the end of the year. Essentially, the easier cases are getting priority; the hope is that wins in those places will intimidate some of the more entrenched nations, such as Cameroon, into decriminalizing it on their own rather than have their hands forced in court. If need be, the HDT is prepared to bring cases themselves.

The United Kingdom being the home of the lead actors here is a coincidence,
but not very much of one. About half the countries targeted are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, an organization of countries holding a historical connection to the British Empire (the United States is not part of it), and in the Empire's heyday, homosexuality was illegal, a policy exported to its subjects and only decriminalized in Britain in 1967. The HDT, among its other aims, feels a sense of obligation to undo the damage the British exported.

The HDT stresses that they don't intend to go any further than that; they won't be doing any gay-marriage cases. There isn't enough international case law to fight that fight. They just are aiming for decriminalization.

And let's hope they get it.

Walker Recall Underway

2011-11-15T13:52:00.000-06:00

The clock has started on the signature-gathering campaign to oust Scott Walker, beginning at midnight last night. The campaign has 60 days to gather 540,208 valid signatures statewide, and they didn't waste a second getting started, hosting approximately 70 kickoff signature drives across the state beginning at midnight. More such events are planned throughout the drive, and especially early on, so as to mop up all the easy signatures and save the recall effort as much time and energy as possible for later on. A calendar of planned events can be found here.

All day today, one such staging area is set up on the State Street corner of Capitol Square in Madison, probably the most target-rich spot in the entire state, given that State Street is pedestrian-only and leads directly to the UW-Madison campus.

However, someone else knew today was Day 1 as well, as the website where volunteers could download petitions was taken down by a particularly strong DDoS attack that knocked it out for most of the day (it's since gone back up). There is no word yet on who launched the attack, though organizers have their suspicions.

Strap in; this is going to be an ugly one.

It Can Be Christmas Season Now, On One Condition

2011-11-14T12:10:00.000-06:00

I tend to try to resist the annual forward creep of Christmas season as much as possible. It's supposed to be the most special day of the year. Granted. I get that. But... it's one day, two if you roll Christmas Eve in there as well. Not 90 of them. Unless you are a total Christmas-every-day devotee to the atmosphere, there eventually gets to be a point where you just get sick of it. You don't want to have people hitting the wall and getting sick of Christmas so that by the time Christmas actually gets here, people just want it to be over with. That defeats the purpose. (I personally have long held to the principle that Christmas season starts when Santa's float appears in the Macy's Parade, and not one second sooner.)

If nothing else... there are other holidays too, you know. We've almost succeeded in stampeding Thanksgiving into near-irrelevance because we just need that much more Christmas, and apparently now we want to start trampling Halloween too.

But.

If we absolutely must... MUST... have Christmas season now, let's at least make ourselves useful while we do it. If we can do that, I'll meet you halfway.

There's this woman in West Chester, Ohio, roughly midway between Cincinnati and Dayton, named Reola Hunt. She's 84 years old. She runs a charity called the Jamaica Children's Fund. Every year, she- and some other people that are a tad younger than 84, of course- they take a whole bunch of toys and fly down to Jamaica to distribute them to kids who otherwise wouldn't be getting anything for Christmas, visiting schools with dirt floors and communities where people showing visible signs of having money or needed supplies get pounced upon by groups with that kind of single-minded intensity that only severe desperation can invoke. This is going to be their 12th year doing this.

There isn't a direct donation page on their website, but if you're in Christmas Mode right now and are inclined to lend a hand, you can contact them here and work something out with them. If you're in the Cincinnati or Dayton areas, you could probably drop by personally.

F**king Buzkashi, How Does It Work?

2011-11-13T12:21:00.000-06:00

If you hang around trivia sites as much as I do- and trust me, running this blog you hang around them a lot- sooner or later each and every one of them is going to get around to telling you about a sport in Afghanistan played on horseback called buzkashi. Why? Because they use a goat for a ball.

There's a problem, though.

When they go into detail, all the trivia sites will tell you all about how chaotic and violent and straight-up nuts a buzkashi game gets. Usually, they'll use the 'traditional' version, which can take place on any semi-open stretch of land someone has on hand and, according to the Bathroom Reader version of events, can easily result in horses and riders careening into the spectators and even traffic- and plowing right on through, because the horses are trained to go through obstacles where normally a horse might pull up. The reputation is not unwarranted. But none of them ever actually say how the game actually freaking works. Maybe it's because there are different versions of the game, but honestly, that should be brought up.

The portrayal from Cracked- #7 on their list of 'The 10 Most Insane "Sports" In The World'- is pretty typical of how buzkashi usually gets covered by trivia sites. (The news sites do a far better job, though they don't tend to cover it as often. They were primarily interested when the Taliban banned it, and again when it was un-banned.)

So we'll largely forego the 'look how crazy those guys are' tack everyone else takes- if you want that, it isn't hard to find- and at least try to stick to the actual structure of the game.

Of course, buzkashi's nature doesn't make it easy. Like a game of Monopoly, everyone's got their own house rules.

The goat- decapitated, de-hooved, cleaned of its organs, soaked in cold water for 24 hours, and stuffed with sand- is placed in the center of the field. Recently, calves have become more popular; the carcass lasts longer.

There are two main game modes that determine what you do with that head: Tudabarai and Qarajai.

*In Qarajai, you take the head, round a marker at one end of the field, and toss it into a scoring circle- the "Circle of Justice"- at the other end.
*In Tudabarai, the aim is simply to take the head and get clear of the other players; what is considered "clear" is, as is becoming quickly common here, ill-defined, though it seems to involve a goal line. When the Bathroom Reader people were talking about plowing through traffic, that was probably a Tudabarai game.

Standing in your way are teams- it doesn't just have to be two teams on the field; it's however many they can form on a given day and that could easily get up into six or eight at a time, and on occasion it can even be every man for himself- of riders brandishing whips, trying to get you to drop the carcass however they have to do it, while your team (if applicable) tries to run blocking for you. And if 'however they have to do it' means 'knocking you off your horse and allowing you to potentially be trampled to death', well, them's the breaks. The only thing they can't do is whip you directly. They can whip your horse, but not you.

You will have a tough time defending yourself. Goat carcasses stuffed with sand can get rather heavy, especially when you're holding on to them off the side of a stampeding horse.

How long a game goes depends on who's running it. In more traditional versions, there is no time limit. Depending on the dimensions of the field, the size of the teams, and everyone's mood, a game could last for hours, or days.

There is a more regulated version governed by the Afghan Olympic Federation, mandating a time structure identical to soccer: two 45-minute halves with a 15-minute halftime. They also mandate field size- a 400-meter square- and team sizes: 10 riders to a team, only five of which can be on the field.

There's only one place that I found that even gave an indication of the scoring rate, a 2009 account from the New York Times. There, they covered a three-team contest that lasted three hours. The winning team (which, by the way, gets to eat the goat afterwards) scored 30 goals, second place had 20 goals, and last place had 16, which works out to a goal every 2.7 minutes or so. Is this high-scoring? Low-scoring? No idea.

Here's a video of what appears to be a game using the Qarajai format:

There isn't any league structure; every game's a one-off thing, though there does tend to be a buzkashi 'season'- November to February, with Friday designated as Buzkashi Night In Afghanistan. Sponsors dole out the horses and hope their horse ends up in the hands of the eventual MVP. Rider and owner stand to make a lot of money if that happens; the Wall Street Journal article notes that the player who scores can make "thousands of dollars" in a country where most get by on less than a dollar a day.

As ESPN noted in September in what is far and away the best profile of the sport I've come across, the scale of the money on offer has in recent years led to a small wave of players going pro, playing buzkashi full-time. That, in turn, has led to complaints from some that buzkashi players, rather than playing for love of the game or community pride, are now all about the money and sucking the life out of the game, which they would like to see in the Olympics someday.

Which just goes to show that no matter what you're playing, how you're playing or where you're playing it, some things never change.

The Really, Really, Really Rapid-Fire Book Club

2011-11-12T11:46:00.000-06:00

I've got a TED talk for you today, conducted by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel in Boston. This talk revolves around a question: what if you were to read all the books?

All of them. Like... all of them.

Aiden and Michel didn't quite hit that point, but they did make a program that could read 5 million of them dating back to 1800, which we can pretty much agree works as a representative sample. Now, obviously, you're not going to comprehend the context of all those books. If I know my cartoons, what always happens if you do that is your head gets really large and veiny and people run around screaming 'oh my God he's going to burst'. Also you start uncontrollably spouting mathematical equations. But what you can do is write a program to scan the words in the books, and graph each word's usage by year.

Of course these guys work for Google. Why do you ask?

(NOTE: When the guy on the right, Aiden, quotes xkcd, he's kind of not. He may be thinking of this shirt, but the phrase never actually appeared in a comic.)

It's Veterans Day

2011-11-11T11:46:00.000-06:00

First off, apologies for the lack of update yesterday. My monitor- a box monitor- decided it wanted to do this thing where the picture would briefly cut out, like a TV being turned on and off real fast, and make this sound like a fuse blowing. This basically meant I needed to go buy a new monitor. That took up enough of the day to where it wasn't really worth trying.

Anyway.

Today is Veterans Day, and today you're going to be reminded, more than usual at least, of all the difficulties that veterans face after they come home from active duty, and the challenged they face re-integrating into society. You've (hopefully) had it told to you quite a bit over the past week in the runup to today, actually.

You have also heard, I'm sure, about how difficult it is for ex-convicts to re-integrate as well, as even after their release, after they have supposedly 'paid their debt to society', society decides to start collecting interest on that debt. There are often so many roadblocks to rehabilitation that many ex-cons, even those who want to rehabilitate, ultimately feel they have little choice but to go back to a life of crime as a matter of simple survival. But there's a lot less sympathy for them, to say the least.

But what about when the ex-cons are veterans?

As far as re-integration goes, this is a double whammy. Take two worlds that have been proven as very difficult to come back from without a good support structure, put someone in both of them, and the task goes from daunting to almost Herculean.

Enter the Florida Department of Corrections, where veterans comprise 6.6% of the population. The FDC has recently introduced a program where a few hundred veteran inmates- currently 300, with a capacity of 400- are placed into separate wings. In these wings, the FDC intends to reinstall military values in the inmates, who must have three or fewer years left on their sentences to qualify for placement. They also must have been honorably discharged, and have a clean record during their stay in prison.

The cell doors are painted with a giant American flag. Further murals depict fighter jets and the Iwo Jima Memorial. 'Taps' is played daily. There are daily flag-raising and flag-lowering ceremonies.

That's for aesthetic value, anyway. More structurally, those participating will be expected to uphold military standards in the dorms, refrain from swearing or using racial slurs, and attend group meetings that teach better decision making, as well as maintaining good conduct. In return for upholding those standards, standards higher than in general population, they'll be provided with a number of services such as PTSD counseling and better access to and assistance with Veterans Affairs benefits.

In addition, the setup itself places the inmates among other veterans, people that they were once trained to fight alongside, and it's hoped that this will create a sense of brotherhood in the dorms. The whole idea is to remind them of what they once were, what they represented and even behind bars continue to represent, and what they can, if they work at it, make themselves into again.

Purely pragmatically, every veteran inmate that gets rehabilitated enough to stay out of prison is one more person that doesn't walk back in the door, and every one that doesn't is that much more money saved by the state.

But in a more humanistic sense, it's a support structure, and a second chance given to those who, otherwise, might never be able to find it.

Bad Parents Of The Day

2011-11-09T12:35:00.000-06:00

Everyone that has ever safety-checked their kids' Halloween candy, and then turned around and encouraged those same kids to suck on lollipops licked by other kids with chicken pox and sent through the mail.

There are also parents out there that, more commonly, organize 'pox parties'- one kid comes down with the pox, and then a bunch of other parents get their kids near that kid so everyone comes down with it at once and then get an immunity to it. Those are also bad ideas. So are the ones for measles and mumps.

Honestly, this is what vaccines are for. They have those. They made them for a reason. You know how your kid will react to the vaccine, or at least you're reasonably sure. You don't know how your kid will react to actually getting sick. For all you know, your kid may react badly to the disease, and then you've got real problems. There is the chance, albeit a small one, that your kid might actually die from it. And let's also note: with the vaccine, your kid does not get sick. Getting your kid sick... gets your kid sick. Which is what we're trying to avoid here, right?

Imagine doing this with a car. 'The best kind of protection against collisions is ramming my car into a tree the second I buy it! Surely I will never crash again afterwards!'

And God help you if your kid actually remembers that lollipop down the road and decides to strike up a conversation with you about it years later. 'I've already had the pox, right?' 'Yes, dear.' 'When was that again?' 'Oh, I sent for this lollipop through the mail that had pox on it and--' '...wait, you did what?' 'Ummmmmmmm...'

Honestly, you baby-proof the house for years, plug the electrical sockets, put the Mr. Yuk label on everything poisonous, and then you turn around and go 'Here, have this mysteriously lightly-used and unwrapped lollipop I found in the mail' so as to deliberately get your kid sick? What is wrong with you?

Random News Generator- Denmark

2011-11-08T12:02:00.000-06:00

There's been a considerable amount of worry in the United States- and let's be honest, a lot of other countries- about a potential 'fat tax'- taxing foods that make you fat in order to bring down spiraling obesity rates. This worry has led to what has got to be one of the more pathetic and embarrassing debates in American history:

"For God's sake, stop shoveling everything that's not nailed down into the big hole in your face. This is not Skee-Ball."
"Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase? But all this food is so tasty! And so American! Eating is how I know I'm free!"
"...what."
"Have a cake. I put frosting on it so it looks like a flag!"
"RRRRRRRRRRRRGH."

Meanwhile, Denmark went ahead and did it, taxing any food with more than 2.3% saturated fat. The funny thing is, Denmark is not a fat country. In fact, they're really pretty fit by developed-nation standards.

So they didn't think of it as a 'fat' thing. They thought of it as a life-expectancy thing, as Denmark's life expectancy had dipped below the standard the rest of Western Europe had set. They were also the first country to ban trans fats, and several other European nations have either followed Denmark's lead or are looking to do so.

One of those countries considering following Denmark's lead is the United Kingdom, namely Prime Minister David Cameron. According to the Guardian:

"I think it is something that we should look at," he told 5 News during a round of broadcast interviews at the Tory conference in Manchester. "The problem in the past when people have looked at using the tax system in this way is the impact it can have on people on low incomes.

"But frankly, do we have a problem with the growing level of obesity? Yes. Do we have a kind of warning in terms of – look at America, how bad things have got there – what happens if we don't do anything? Yes, that should be a wake-up call."

Ouch, babe. It is rarely good when you've got other countries talking about you behind your back and telling each other 'Look at them, do you want to end up like that?'

Please Go On

2011-11-07T13:28:00.000-06:00

How angry can one get at one's own words? Quite angry indeed. Often, we get angry only over time, once we've had time to reflect on things we've said in the past. But we can get emotional with ourselves much more quickly than that.

We just need to have someone conversing our words back to us. Even if that someone is a computer.

In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT created a chatterbot, one of the world's first, called ELIZA. A chatterbot programmed earlier, DOCTOR, used a tiny knowledge base and Rogerian therapy to arrive at diagnoses. (Rogerian therapy, named for a founding father of psychotherapy, Carl Rogers, uses passive techniques, neither agreeing or disagreeing with any statement, and aims to let the patient arrive at their own solution.) Weizenbaum, mocking how little actual knowledge DOCTOR had, decided to create a parody in a field that required even less actual knowledge. Thus, he created ELIZA, which did little more than make DOCTOR from a doctor into a therapist. A therapist can be utterly oblivious to a patient's state and still remain able to maintain conversation.

If you'd like the full blow-by-blow of the program's innards, Weizenbaum goes into that here.

What happened? Well, I just explained to you what ELIZA is about- using various little tricks like keyword searching and canned responses to communicate your own words back to you. Give ELIZA a spin and see for yourself. Take as long as you like.

.......

My, but you're worked up. That's the funny thing here. I told you how it worked. I told you it was just a computer, a very dumb chatterbot, and yet you're still emotional. So were the subjects when Weizenbaum decided to test ELIZA out. Some got so attached that they didn't want to show Weizenbaum the chat logs because they thought it an invasion of privacy.

Weizenbaum actually became frightened of what ELIZA could invoke, so much so that in 1972, he put out a book called Computer Power and Human Reason, the purpose of which was to attack the concept of artificial intelligence, and ELIZA specifically. Much of the book is spent educating the reader as to what's going on in the computer (though as it was published in 1972, it's nowadays very primitive). The result is a book about the morality of computing that remains very well-received today.

Though it's probably fair to guess that, by the time of his death in 2008, Weizenbaum had become fairly dismayed about how extensively AI had been developed.

Tina Fey Goes Jokeless For Two Hours

2011-11-06T10:37:00.001-06:00

You know, the things you find when you're looking for something else sometimes. What I was looking for was word on when the new season of 30 Rock would get started.

What I found was what Tina Fey's evidently been doing in the meantime. Namely, she has been hosting a pair of hour-long specials for NPR called 'The Hidden World of Girls'. (Parts 1 and 2 linked respectively.) And if you didn't get told outright it was Tina, you'd never ever guess it. There is not a joke here for miles that isn't there totally by accident, which is kind of the opposite of what you would expect any time you see her, and normally what she expects of herself.

It makes more sense once you think about it a bit, given Tina's drive towards giving women a larger and more respectable platform in media and the rest of society (much of which she's had to do if for no other reason than to make opportunities for herself), but it still just looks really, really strange to see- or, as the case may be, hear- stories about nomads in Ireland and hunters in Mississippi and birth control education in Nigeria... introduced by Liz Lemon. Not to take anything away from it. I applaud it. It's just weird is all.

By the way, no date's been announced for the 30 Rock season premiere. It looks to be part of the midseason lineup.

The Death Of 'Unununium'

2011-11-05T10:45:00.001-05:00

The periodic table has three new elements. Well, really, it already had those elements, but now they have proper names instead of Latin numerical placeholders. Element 110 is now darmstadtium (Ds), 111 is now roentgenium (Rg), and 112 is now copernicium (Cn). As with pretty much any element at this high level of the table, none of them are going to be found outside of the lab, and none of them last very long even after being found. But they're found, and so they're on the table.

No, we are not going to do the song. That thing is only accurate up to element 102.

Copernicus, you probably already know. Hopefully you already know him. He's the guy who first said the earth revolved around the sun. The other two namesakes, you'll be forgiven for not knowing. Darmstadt in particular, because that's just the name of the town in Germany where the GSI Helmholtz Centre is based. GSI found both darmstadtium and roentgenium, and naming one of the elements after the discoverer's home turf is more or less the scientific version of dancing in the endzone after a touchdown. It's not the first time, not by a longshot, and it won't be the last. It's not even the first touchdown dance for GSI, who also got to name element 108, hassium, after the German state of Hesse, where Darmstadt is located. GSI actually got to name all three elements here, and this brings their total to six, alongside hassium, meitnerium and bohrium.

So, big round of applause to them.

As for that third one, roentgenium. That one's named for Wilhelm Roentgen, who won the first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901 for discovering X-rays. He did this despite being expelled from school for refusing to tell his teachers who drew a caricature of one of them, an expulsion which led to his getting professionally hamstrung for the rest of his life up to and including being accused of stealing the X-ray discovery.

No word, of course, on if the guy who actually made the drawing got punished. But it's just as well. That guy doesn't even have his name recorded. The guy who took the fall is on the periodic table now. So ha.

The Hall of Very Good, 2011 Edition

2011-11-04T10:09:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, the Veterans Committee finalized the list of candidates they will be voting on for potential induction into the Hall of Fame. The candidates come from what's being termed the 'Golden Era', that being 1947-72.

The ten are: players Ken Boyer, Gil Hodges, Jim Kaat, Minnie Minoso, Tony Oliva, Allie Reynolds, Ron Santo and Luis Tiant, general manager Buzzie Bavasi, and owner Charlie Finley.

They will join the candidates on the BBWAA ballot. Returning are, in order of votes they got last time: Barry Larkin, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez, Alan Trammell, Larry Walker, Mark McGwire, Fred McGriff, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro, and Juan Gonzalez. Also eligible- though not on the ballot yet; they have to get through a screening committee first- are first-timers Edgardo Alfonzo, Pedro Astacio, David Bell, Jeromy Burnitz, Vinny Castilla, Scott Erickson, Carl Everett, Jeff Fassero, Alex S. Gonzalez, Danny Graves, Rick Helling, Dustin Hermanson, Jose Hernandez, Brian Jordan, Matt Lawton, Javy Lopez, Bill Mueller, Terry Mulholland, Jeff Nelson, Phil Nevin, Brad Radke, Joe Randa, Tim Salmon, Ruben Sierra, Jose Vizcaino, Bernie Williams, and Eric Young.

I figure this news a good excuse to dust off something I ran here last year: the Hall of Very Good. The place all of these players are forced to reside until they get the call from Cooperstown. (Or unless they get bounced off the ballot without getting 2% of the vote, our cutoff for inclusion.) The idea behind the Hall of Very Good is that, while you can't really compare Hall of Famers by the vote totals that got them in, you can more easily (though still not perfectly) do so when the candidates have had as many as 15 tries each over as many years to get the highest total they can. So you'll note all the people that get talked up for inclusion towards the top of the list... including those on this year's Veterans Committee ballot.

So what follows is a list of the high-water marks of everyone not in the Hall of Fame who has ever achieved at least 2% of the vote. There is one revision from last year's list (in addition to updated totals and the removal of now-Hall of Famers Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven): the 1936 Veterans' Committee ballot is now included under special circumstances, namely that, in a unique case, it was treated identically to the baseball writers' ballot, the only difference being the timeframe of the candidates. The same people on that ballot would appear on the baseball writers' ballot in subsequent years, chief among them Cy Young, who was on the veterans' committee ballot in 1936 and elected in 1937 through the baseball writers.

Players currently on the BBWAA ballot are bolded; players on this year's Veterans Committee ballot are italicized. Good luck to everyone in getting out of this Hall and into the real one.

Especially Ron Santo.

62.1 Barry Larkin
60.1 Gil Hodges
53.5 Jack Morris
47.3 Lee Smith
47.3 Tony Oliva
43.1 Roger Maris
43.1 Ron Santo
42.6 Steve Garvey
41.7 Jeff Bagwell
40.6 Maury Wills
40.0 Marty Marion
39.3 Harvey Kuenn
37.5 Tim Raines
36.2 Edgar Martinez
35.9 Hank Gowdy
35.6 Phil Cavarretta
34.0 Johnny Sain
33.6 Allie Reynolds
31.7 Tommy John
30.9 Luis Tiant
29.8 Johnny Vander Meer
29.6 Jim Kaat
28.2 Don Mattingly
25.5 Ken Boyer
25.5 Mickey Lolich
25.4 Mel Harder
24.9 Mickey Vernon
24.5 Dave Parker
24.3 Alan Trammell
23.7 Bucky Walters
23.7 Mark McGwire
23.2 Dale Murphy
23.2 Lew Burdette
22.2 Joe Torre
21.5 Fred McGriff
21.1 Minnie Minoso
20.7 Elston Howard
20.7 Tommy Henrich
20.3 Larry Walker
19.9 Herman Long
18.9 Roy Face
18.5 Al Dark
18.0 Smoky Joe Wood
17.3 Pepper Martin
16.9 Dave Concepcion
16.7 Dick Allen
16.7 Lefty O'Doul
15.7 Vada Pinson
15.5 Thurman Munson
15.3 Don Newcombe
14.4 Ted Kluszewski
14.4 Walker Cooper
13.7 Babe Adams
13.5 Duffy Lewis
13.1 Sparky Lyle
12.8 Curt Flood
12.3 Don Larsen
11.7 Terry Moore
11.3 Dom DiMaggio
11.2 Orel Hershiser
11.0 Rafael Palmeiro
10.8 Keith Hernandez
10.6 Bobby Bonds
10.4 Dwight Evans
10.2 Vic Raschi
10.0 Dickey Kerr
10.0 Jimmy Dykes
9.9 Johnny Kling
9.8 Charlie Grimm
9.5 Pete Rose
9.4 Bobo Newsom
9.0 Hal Chase
8.8 Jimmie Wilson
8.8 Ron Guidry
8.7 Vida Blue
8.3 Graig Nettles
8.3 Muddy Ruel
8.0 Lou Criger
7.9 Hank Bauer
7.9 Rusty Staub
7.7 Albert Belle
7.7 Bill Lange
7.7 Bob Boone
7.7 Harry Stovey
7.7 Jerry Denny
7.5 Nick Altrock
7.5 Tommy Bridges
7.4 Dave Stewart
7.0 Wilbur Wood
6.9 George Foster
6.7 Glenn Wright
6.5 Lon Warneke
6.5 Sal Maglie
6.4 Nap Rucker
6.2 Fernando Valenzuela
6.2 Paul Derringer
6.1 Charlie Keller
6.1 Harold Baines
6.0 Doc Cramer
6.0 Freddie Fitzsimmons
5.7 Babe Herman
5.7 Cy Williams
5.6 Dolf Luque
5.6 Joe Judge
5.5 Fred Lynn
5.3 Frankie Crosetti
5.2 Juan Gonzalez
5.2 Stuffy McInnis
5.0 Bob Meusel
5.0 Fred Hutchinson
5.0 Hal Schumacher
5.0 Rudy York
5.0 Schoolboy Rowe
5.0 Willie McGee
4.9 Art Nehf
4.9 Red Rolfe
4.9 Steve O'Neill
4.8 Jeff Reardon
4.8 Stan Hack
4.7 Ewell Blackwell
4.7 Ken Griffey Sr.
4.6 Bobby Thomson
4.6 John Franco
4.5 Bill Madlock
4.5 Eddie Rommel
4.5 Howard Ehmke
4.4 Wilbur Cooper
4.4 Will Clark
4.3 Al Oliver
4.2 Manny Mota
4.1 Andres Galarraga
4.1 Mark Grace
4.1 Wally Schang
3.9 David Cone
3.9 Del Crandall
3.8 Charlie Bennett
3.8 Dan Quisenberry
3.8 Earl Whitehill
3.8 Frank White
3.8 Joe Carter
3.8 Ross Barnes
3.8 Tim McCarver
3.7 Mark Belanger
3.7 Ted Simmons
3.6 Wes Ferrell
3.4 Jack Quinn
3.3 Dwight Gooden
3.2 Carl Erskine
3.2 Dennis Martinez
3.2 Everett Scott
3.2 Fred Dunlap
3.1 Bert Campaneris
3.1 Fred Tenney
3.0 Birdie Tebbetts
3.0 Dixie Walker
3.0 Frank McCormick
3.0 Jimmy Archer
3.0 Joe Dugan
3.0 Mike Donlin
3.0 Pete Reiser
3.0 Spud Chandler
2.9 Lou Whitaker
2.8 Dave McNally
2.8 Harvey Haddix
2.6 Bill Dinneen
2.6 Bobby Grich
2.6 Don Baylor
2.6 Harry Bracheen
2.6 Jack Glasscock
2.6 John Hiller
2.6 Ned Williamson
2.6 Orval Grove
2.5 Art Fletcher
2.5 Bill Bradley
2.5 Bill Carrigan
2.5 Charlie Root
2.5 George Earnshaw
2.5 Jim Abbott
2.5 Kirk Gibson
2.5 Larry Bowa
2.4 Bob O'Farrell
2.4 Clyde Milan
2.4 Vern Law
2.3 Bobby Shantz
2.3 Carl Mays
2.3 Pinky Higgins
2.3 Roy McMillan
2.2 Bing Miller
2.2 Paul O'Neill
2.1 Bill Buckner
2.1 Kevin Brown
2.0 Bill Donovan
2.0 Bill Wambsganss
2.0 Bob Elliott
2.0 Bobby Richardson
2.0 Heinie Groh
2.0 Virgil Trucks
2.0 Willie Wilson

Noooooo! My Spread Gunnnnnn!

2011-11-03T11:19:00.000-05:00

I'm sure if you're old enough and dig deep enough into your memories, you'll remember the name Daniel Ortega. If you can't qute place the name, Ortega was part of the Sandinista faction in--- okay, now it's coming back to you. Reagan, Contras, arms-for-hostages, Oliver North. That whole business.

Well, in any case, Ortega was a Sandinista, who won the Nicaraguan presidential election in 1984 despite Reagan's administration funding the opposition Contras. The Reagan administration opted not to recognize the results (unlike pretty much everybody else in the world) and put an embargo on the country. Ortega went on to lose in 1990 to Violeta Chamorro in an election heavily influenced by American campaign dollars and American threats of continuing the embargo if she didn't win.

At that point, maybe even before that point, Nicaragua faded from America's view.

So those of you who recall the Reagan era will be dismayed to know that not only was Ortega re-installed as president in 2006, he is currently cruising to re-election, despite Nicaragua's constitution prohibiting re-election (he got a court to rule in his favor on this in 2009). His current goal is to get enough seats in the legislature to allow him to amend the constitution to codify re-election, and as he appears willing to rig elections if all else fails, odds are pretty good he'll get it. The polls, however, are showing Ortega won't have to rig much of anything.

Ortega has a good working relationship with Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and came out in support of Moammar Gadhafi. Chavez's support virtually guarantees Nicaragua will be fine in the face of any renewed embargo anyone wants to employ, but even independent of Chavez, businesses in the area are aligned to Ortega as well, who can point to a good economy as a major point in his favor. This is a powerful argument in a country second only to Haiti in Western Hemisphere poverty. (And given how deep Ortega has rooted himself, should he actually lose, he also has the ability to sabotage the economy and let his successor take the blame.)

So how'd that whole 80's thing work out again?

Americans Don't Like Soccer

2011-11-02T15:41:00.001-05:00

In fact, they don't like it so much that they attended games in 2011 to the tune of 17,870 fans a game. This surpasses the NBA, which drew 17,319 a game, and the NHL, which drew 17,126. (MLB and NFL figures are, of course, far higher than any of these.) Compared to other soccer leagues around the world, MLS now ranks 10th, coming in between Japan's J-League and England's second-tier Championship.

If you've been continuing to insist that America actually doesn't like soccer, this may come as a shock. But if you've been paying attention, you've seen the groundwork for these numbers already laid. Soccer is beginning to win cities, beginning to make cities identify as soccer towns even if they don't quite realize it.

It starts in Seattle. When the Sounders arrived on the scene- well, they already were, they were just in a lower league- Seattle's sports scene was in its darkest hour. The Sonics had left. The Mariners were terrible, and still are. The Seahawks were terrible, and are still pretty bad. Seattle had paid for two very expensive stadiums for both of them, and lost the Sonics when they wouldn't pay for a third. Their best team was their WNBA franchise, the Storm.

Then came the Sounders. They came in with a rabid fanbase migrating from the second tier, Drew Carey got on board, they got to share the Seahawks' stadium, and most importantly, the team immediately came out of the blocks like a house afire. Seattle all of a sudden had a good team that they could be proud of (sorry, WNBA). They needed it badly, and they responded in force and continue to do so. The Sounders' focus on the U.S. Open Cup, a competition that many other MLS clubs do not take seriously, has led to them racking up a lot of comparatively easy trophies, thus quickly building the image of a winner, and thus further feeding the fans. The franchise has quickly become one of the marquee teams in the league, almost unheard of for a team so young compared to its peers.

In fact, the Sounders' immediate success led to franchises being granted at the very first opportunity to Portland and Vancouver, the homes of Seattle's old rivals from the second tier, the Timbers and Whitecaps.

Vancouver, being in Canada, is always going to be a hockey town. Portland, meanwhile, has only one other pro team in the city, the Blazers of the NBA.

There's a lockout in the NBA right now. You may have heard about it.

The Timbers, now the only game in town, have free run of Portland. The fact that their fans are fairly passionate and the team not being terrible only helps matters. (The Timbers need it; right now their home is a converted baseball stadium.)

The NBA lockout helps any team from any other league that shares a city with the NBA. And aside from Portland, that also means Salt Lake City- of all the towns- is now ceded to MLS as well, which has a presence in Real Salt Lake. They will certainly welcome the help as well. Real Salt Lake won the league title in 2009, but only a year or two prior, faced the prospect of relocation to Rochester or St. Louis if they didn't get a new stadium. (They got the stadium. Rio Tinto Stadium opened in 2008.)

And then there's the case of none other than Los Angeles, California; home of the Galaxy and Chivas USA.

The Galaxy is likely to be the first club any big international signing is headed to, and one of the teams the league will market as 'marquee'. In 2011, the Galaxy's attendance is sitting at 23,335. Chivas USA, a far inferior team, draws far worse. In 2011, they had 14,830 fans a game, but for a bad team in a league that's not supposed to have any fans, that's still pretty good.

To compare, there is no NFL team (yet). The Lakers drew 18,997 and the Clippers drew 17,742- less than the Galaxy. These two are out of play for the lockout, and when they come back, there is no way they'll continue to draw those numbers. The NHL's Kings drew 18,083 last season- again less than the Galaxy- and the Anaheim Ducks drew 14,738- less than Chivas. Baseball, is, of course, still out front, but while the Angels are doing fine (39,090, fifth in MLB), the Dodgers ceded a lot of ground this year in the wake of the tribulations of Frank McCourt, who only today has agreed to sell the team. Their attendance dipped 18% this year to 36,236- still far ahead of MLS, but an 18% drop and an on-field product in turmoil leaves a lot of fans in a very what's-next city looking for something else to do. (Though they may come back to the Dodgers now that McCourt will be out of the picture.)

That's right: the third most popular pro sports team in Los Angeles... is a soccer team. And that soccer team has more goodwill going for it than one of the teams in front of it.

I Can Bring Down Your Entire Civilization With A Single Word... No, Wait... Ten. Ten Words. Just Ten

2011-11-01T12:59:00.003-05:00

As I noted in a recent edition of the Rapid-Fire Book Club, one of my recent acquisitions is Killing the White Man's Indian, a 1996 title by Fergus M. Bordewich. In the 1990's, tribes across the country were asserting themselves culturally and politically, and had a kind of clout that they had not known with the white man (as you can see from the book title, that is the term that gets used) for their entire history. Treaties that had any legal teeth whatsoever, many of them newer ones that tribes had negotiated while the white man had barely noticed, were now being turned around and enforced, with non-Indians and even governments finding to their dismay just how little power they actually had in the face of them.

This includes the very first anecdote in the book, where the Seneca tribe in 1991 had given the white man a 100-year lease on land including the city of Salamanca, a lease the locals had completely forgotten about except for the part where they were paying very low rent. Then the lease expired, with the Senecas showing zero interest in renewing it. Salamanca, New York was out of nowhere to become part of an Indian reservation, with all land owned by the tribe. They would be the only city in America with this arrangement. The locals were uproarious with anger. There were protests. There were appeals to government. There were lawsuits. But in the end, 15 households of Salamanca were evicted by the Senecas for refusing to agree to the new terms. (Or 16, depending on the source.)

You need only glance at this thread to see the acrimony that continues today.

The book captures the mood in this moment, detailing the history of various tribes, how each of them went into decline, what was taken from them, what if any bloodline current tribe members still retain (and many of them really don't; with some tribes only surviving through creative interpretations of what exactly it means to be a member of the tribe- another central theme of the book in itself), and the tribes as of the 1990's, some trying to take back what was theirs, some trying merely to survive or gain recognition, and all dealing with misconception upon misconception from people that have this idea that they all still live in tepees or that many of them lived in tepees in the first place.

Some tribes did not make it into the book. First, Bordewich wanted to avoid the book becoming a dry and dreary tome, and says as much. Second, some tribes didn't survive at all. When tribes were under siege, there sometimes was just no way to win. And in at least one case, a tribe died by nothing more than pure bad luck.

The Karankawa tribe lived in southern Texas and northern Mexico, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Most of the online resources have them as dying out in 1860, right before the Civil War. The links provided in this paragraph give a primer on how they lived, but we're here today to note how they died. And their effective death came a few decades prior to 1860.

As told by Noah Smithwick in The Evolution of a State: or, Recollections of Old Texas Days, at the time of the Texas Revolution of 1836, the Karankawa had a good relationship with Captain Philip Dimmitt. (Whose name gets spelled a lot with one T, including in the name of the county named for him, Dimmit County, Texas. No real way to figure out which one's right, so we'll just arbitrarily go with 2 T's here and apologize to Phil if we're wrong.) Dimmitt had a ranch towards the mouth of the Lavaca River; Port Lavaca is probably the closest modern-day city.

They needed the help. The tribe had frequently had to fight settlers brought in by Stephen F. Austin in 1823. Dimmitt was one of these settlers, but he was a valued and needed ally.

At one point, Dimmitt left to fight in the war. The Karankawa, however, knew nothing of this. Dimmitt had a policy of sharing beef with them any time they dropped in, so when one day they showed up at the ranch and Dimmitt wasn't there, they didn't think it would be a problem to simply help themselves. It came as a little bit of a surprise, then, when some Mexican soldiers appeared and demanded to know what the Karankawa were doing there.

But they didn't think it too much of an issue. "Oh, it's all right; we're Captain Dimmitt's friends."

Wrong answer. The passage is vague on the specifics, but it does say that the Mexicans charged, killing some of the tribe and scattering the rest. After they regrouped, they soon came across another group of people. They still had no idea what in blazes was going on, but they did know that they didn't want to be attacked by Mexicans again.

So when they met this second group, the first thing out of their mouth was "Viva Mexico!"

Wrong answer, part two. This second group was American. The Americans, now having Mexicans on their hands in a war with Mexico, attacked the Karankawa, who this time were slaughtered past the point of no return. Only a fraction survived the assault, fleeing once more, and those that did survive were unable to repopulate the tribe. Little record is available of the final decline, only noting that the last member died in 1860. 20 years later, a record of the language that died with them was published. There's skepticism about its accuracy, but it's all that was able to be recorded.

The place where the tribe most lives on now is in the 1996 book, The Karankawa Indians of Texas: An Ecological Study of Cultural Tradition and Change, by Robert Arthur Ricklis.

It'll have to do.

Meanwhile, You're Scraping Your Windshield Again

2011-10-31T11:35:00.000-05:00

Last year, Scotland had a particularly snowy winter. Some of this snow, as snow will do, fell on train tracks. What that does is, it gets under the train and, with enough snow and even ice, it messes with the undercarriage. There's also the matter of de-icing the train once it pulls into a depot. Scotland saw 70 trains damaged last year from ice falling from the train. Two trains even got stopped in snow, and you know how much it takes to stop a train. To add insult to injury, the second train was a rescue train sent out as a response to the first. (Passengers ended up having to walk, in howling wind and snow in the middle of the night, all the way back to a third train.)

Scotland is ready for that if it happens again. They've borrowed some technology from Finland- and the local farm. They'll be using 75-meter polytunnels- usually used for protecting crops- which are heated and contain powerwashers. Skirts have also been added to the trains, which project to be de-iced in a third of the normal time- a cut from six hours to two.

And, of course, workers at the depots have plows and shovels on hand. You would hope.

Am I bitter that we were going to get high-speed rail in Watertown and it got ripped right out of our hands by idiots? No. Why do you ask?

Land Ho

2011-10-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

Bit of writer's block today. No real getting around it. So I'm just going to have to settle for a quiz.

We've got here a list of historical border expansions. You're given the expansion, you need to name the country that did it. There are 20 of them; you've got 5 minutes.

NNNHGGHNGNGHHNGH, NNNGNGHGGHHGGGNH, NNNNGGHNGNGHGNGGH

2011-10-29T10:31:00.000-05:00

That is going to be one of the worst URL's ever.

Apparently, we have another date you're going to need to be aware of: November 9. I was alerted to this last night over the radio; you're going to want to know as well so you're not surprised.

You know those Emergency Broadcast System tests? The ones that break into programming every so often and beep at you for a couple minutes? While they've been done on state and local levels all the time, recently it occurred to someone that they'd never actually done a test on a national level and they don't know if the EBS works on that scale and, in fact, they've never really known.

So on the 9th, that's what they're going to do. The test will take place at 2 PM Eastern time, 1 PM Central, and they figure it'll run for about three minutes. They want to get the word out now because they figure if they don't, there are going to be people that get fooled by the screen that says 'this is only a test' and call 911 complaining of excessive stupidity. In fact, they don't know whether that 'this is only a test' screen is even going to show up. That's the thing. They don't know. They've never tested. Through the entire Cold War and aftermath, it never occurred to them to run a large-scale test.

So you're aware.

Give A Hoot, Recycle

2011-10-28T03:08:00.002-05:00

Okay, I think we've gotten Taylor Swift out of our system.

...well, actually, over the course of the past week, I've pretty much gone from 'like Taylor's music' to 'I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy', but that's beside the point. This is, amazingly enough, not yet a Taylor Swift fansite, so we need to move on to other topics.

So. Coming up on November 15 is America Recycles Day. I could recite to you all the stats about how wasteful Americans are, but I get the feeling that it sounds so much like a lecture about how bad a person you are that the numbers and the stories and everything just have this way of turning people off and causing them to chuck stuff out of spite. So in the interest of moving things in the right direction, we will dispense with the lecture here. If you'd like a lecture, the Huffington Post is happy to supply one.

Here, I'll only mention that, economy being what it is, practicing the three R's is going to become more and more of an essential skill. The more you reduce what you use, reuse the stuff you do, and recycle what can't be used anymore for its original purpose, the less stuff you will need to buy, which means the more money you will save. And when you do buy something, putting them into practice means you're a little more willing to go into places like Goodwill and St. Vincent and garage sales and reuse things other people don't have uses for anymore. That's also going to save you money. Sound good? Thought so.

So at that first link, you'll see the day's official website, where entire events are being planned around the third R, recycling. There you will also find a link to Earth911- well, you'll find it here too now, I guess- where, if you've ever wondered if something can be recycled- say, single-use batteries (you know, the ones you've got in your remote) and where you can recycle it, you can find out. (Unfortunately, not very many places. For me, if I wanted to remain in-STATE, I'd have to drive to Deerfield.)

Are we jumping the gun a bit? Sure. Is that a bad thing? No.

What Would You Doooo-o-o For A Taylor Hug?

2011-10-26T22:55:00.003-05:00

We're doing another Taylor Swift piece. There was this one story that I came across while researching Tuesday's article that I had no room for, but it is just so irresistible that I want to give it attention.

Tuesday, we established two things: first, the bulk of the Swifties out there want nothing more than to meet her; and second, they like her not just for her music, but for who she is as a person. Because one of Taylor's defining characteristics is, when she's not slamming an ex in a song, she is just overwhelmingly, unrelentingly nice, with the ability to see things in perspectives far beyond her years. A frequent theme of many of Taylor's songs is that, no matter how far off in the future a point in your life may seem, one day that future will become your past, and after that, all you're going to have are your memories because life only goes the one direction. That's a large part of why she's so constantly awestruck by all the awards and all the crowds and all the fans. It's not just her young age. She realizes that, even if it's decades down the road, she's eventually going to run into a day when she's no longer selling out open-air stadiums and having millions fawning over her, and so she's got to enjoy it while it lasts so she'll have the best possible scrapbook to show her grandkids. And she knows the same principle is true of all the people around her, many of which are a lot closer to that day than she is. Granted, many people say they realize that, but Taylor's one of the few, especially at her age, that never forgets it.

And being nice makes for a much better scrapbook, not to mention it just feels right. So she's nice. Like, really nice. Exceedingly nice. Her fans feed off it, partially just because nice is nice, but partially because nice is also something they don't see nearly often enough in the world these days. You've got a world where far more people than would ever be tolerable are poor and out of a job and desperate or angry to the point where they take to the streets in protest or violence, and they look at the people in charge and conclude that at best, nobody cares or else they are too incompetent to fix anything, and at worst, those in charge actively want these problems to happen, and it's all so ubiquitous and depressing and infuriating and hopeless and soul-shattering... and then here's this young girl, this sweet, inspirational girl, this ray of sunshine, going around hugging everyone and taking in the world with genuine wide-eyed wonder and assuring everyone that things are going to be all right, and it's such a breath of fresh air, such a relief to see these days, that people can't help but respond to it and spread the word that good people can still prosper.

(Geez. I teared up a bit just writing that.)

Which leads us to what has to be the quintessential Taylor Swift story, the one that all by itself encapsulates the nature of the culture Taylor has created around her.

In January 2010, two roommates from Auburn University, Ryan Leander and Michael Wekall, along with cameraman Matthew Mahaffey, set out to accomplish one goal: get a hug from Taylor. They had heard that Taylor's a hugger, and decided to embark on the mission to get one themselves. Very quickly, Swift's larger fanbase caught wind of it and gave it all sorts of attention. The roommates were quick to remind the onlookers that it was ultimately Taylor's call:

"One note however, if Taylor doesn't want to go through with what we are doing, I don't want you all to be like, Oh Taylor is so mean for not letting them get a simple hug. She doesn't have to do this, if she does agree to do it she is doing it out of the kindness of her heart, and if she doesn't do it we aren't going to hate her, we will still be big fans of her, and we want you to be that way too."

In March, Taylor caught wind of their mission, and decided she was game for it. But she wasn't giving away this particular hug for free. The rest of this article is going to be very video-intensive as we show the back-and-forth between Taylor and Ryan/Michael, so note that. (As usual around here, you are expected to watch the video before proceeding.)

Now, let's just reflect on this for a second before we move on. Here you've got one of the biggest music superstars on the planet, and two of this superstar's fans are on a mission to get her to give them a hug. Not concert tickets or an autograph or anything like that. A hug. And when that superstar decides to give them a challenge, instead of asking that they, perhaps, embark on some giant or potentially embarrassing project, she asks them to help a little old lady cross the street.

In what world does any of this even happen? Could you imagine a mission called 'A Hug From Lady Gaga' or 'A Hug From Nicki Minaj' or 'A Hug From Jay-Z' or anything like that? (You could imagine it of Katy Perry, perhaps, but could you imagine it in a context devoid of interest in her boobs?) How many acts in an average Billboard Top 100, aside from Taylor, could you ever realistically imagine issuing a challenge to their fans to help an old lady cross the street?

Ryan and Michael were, of course, up to the challenge, but they decided that, as long as they had everyone's attention, they might as well see who else out there was up to helping old ladies cross the street. As it happened, quite a lot of people were...

So we'll call that a "pass". But remember, that was only challenge #1. We go back to Taylor, who in the meantime has established a brief straight-hair kick...

The challenge was just to use her lucky number, 13, in some creative way... but again, note the examples she used. She doesn't say 'make a giant 13 billboard' or 'mow 13 into the grass on Auburn's football field'. She says, maybe bake 13 cookies for someone. Plant 13 tulips. More basic good deeds.

Ryan and Michael's response? Do not one task relating to 13, but 13 of them. And one of those 13 would be handed back to the crowd of Swifties they had on hand, with the top three making it into the video...

8 of the 12 tasks they did themselves are more good deeds. And many of the other Swifties, including those who didn't make the cut, did good deeds themselves. All this... so Taylor will hug them. Remember that that's why that video happened. That's why any of this is happening. They're doing this for a hug. Just reflect on that for a moment. A hug. A simple hug. (Those heart signs at the end, by the way? That's Taylor's signature hand gesture.)

Taylor, what do you think of all that?

Back to Ryan and Michael then, who find out that while Taylor isn't requiring any further good deeds, she has upped the ante for what would prove the final challenge...

That was a little more than a hug. That was several hugs (Matthew got his too). And kisses. And a surprise concert. And, as the conclusion of that video teases, Taylor also invited them to one of her regularly-scheduled concerts in Greenville, South Carolina. As VIP's.

By way of this entire chain of events, you can see just why people love Taylor so much. How many entertainers of her level of talent would do anything like this? Who else would, or could, use some little silly thing like this and use it to induce so many people to be so nice to each other, most of them by pure serendipity? How many of her talent get lost in their fame and forget why they've made it big, or fall far, far short of that kind of good nature, or both? Where else does one see such a combination of talent, perspective and heart?

And why don't they see it more often?

Random News Generator- Australia

2011-10-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

The RNG had a rare false start today. Guadeloupe was drawn as the location, but the biggest thing I could scrounge up was talk about an upcoming BBC miniseries, Death In Paradise, that was filmed on the island. For instance, here's Lenora Crichlow talking about the weather.

We're not going to do that. A second spin drew Australia, where a refugee seeking asylum from Sri Lanka committed suicide in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre last night (or early today Australian time), ultimately drinking poison. The refugee, Daya Jayasakara, had been waiting without success for a security clearance to live in the community for two years, before he ultimately gave up. It is only in the last few months that his application was accepted.

What's thought to be the thing that may have pushed Jayasakara over the edge was the denial of a request to attend a local Hindu festival so he could visit a friend. However, because there doesn't appear to have been a suicide note, and since Jayasakara can no longer be asked why, it's impossible to know for sure.

Australian law dictates mandatory detention for seekers of asylum. That policy, in the wake of Jayasakara's death, is now under attack from those who want to see easier refugee access into the community. Villawood in particular is under fire and has been for a long time; according to Dr. Michael Dudley, head of Suicide Prevention Australia, six refugee deaths have occurred since September 2010, and four of them came at Villawood. The facility was described in 2008 as "prison-like" by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunites Commission, particularly its maximum-security area, where Jayasakara had spent some time after participating in a rooftop protest in April, witnessing one of the other suicides while held there. That protest saw Villawood being lit ablaze by refugees.

If you're drawing some comparisons to Guantanamo Bay, note that there are differences. Things move a tad bit faster at Villawood, there is a rate of turnover, and they're not being blanketly accused of being enemy combatants. However, the abuse, the stark nature of the facilities, the outsider nature of the refugees, the fact that they are considered refugees and not enemy combatants- and the fact that none of the people held believe themselves able to go back home- they're refugees for a reason- combine to make Villawood just as big a lightning rod.

Ain't No Party Like A T-Party

2011-10-25T11:49:00.005-05:00

Taylor Swift is immensely, insanely popular. But you didn't need me to tell you that. Even though Taylor herself still can't quite come to grips with it sometimes. Every single concert on her currently-winding-down Speak Now Tour is filled to the rafters by legions of screaming, half-delirious fans, most of whom aren't quite sure whether to like her more for her music or for being the kind of person she is and has remained despite her fame. (Check out her rider from the Fearless tour; the list of demands an act asks of their various venues. It reads less like the outrageous demands of a huge music superstar and more like 'could you guys do my grocery shopping, please?' The most demanding thing there is that if there happens to be a Starbucks, have a couple cups and a pumpkin loaf to her bus by 11 AM.)

And I mean 'filled to the rafters' literally. Thus far, over the course of the entire Speak Now Tour and all the gigantic venues booked throughout, up to and including Cowboys Stadium, Swift has only left 300 total seats empty, all in a single show in London. The venue is irrelevant. It has sold out. Several times they've added additional shows, and an entire leg in Australia and New Zealand, so they can sell those out too. Swift could probably sell out the moon right now. (UPDATE: Okay, so apparently she left about 1,100 empty seats the previous night in Manchester, England as well.)

If you were to ask any random Swiftie- that's what they call themselves- what, out of all possible Taylor-related things that could happen, they would wish for most, at least 90% of them would probably tell you that they'd want to meet Taylor. But there's a good chance they'll put it a little differently.

Hey, conveniently-located Swiftie. What do you want more than anything in the world?

"Oh my God I wanna be in the Tea Party!"

In case you're wondering, this is why Taylor Swift is today's topic. I heard 'tea party' and wondered what the hell is going on here because I don't think I've heard Taylor ever express any political opinions at all.

As it turns out, that phrase, amazingly enough, had much more benign, friendly connotations until a few years ago and I had forgotten about them. And also I spelled it wrong in this context. It's not 'Tea Party'. It's 'T-Party'.

DFW.com got confused too. So it's not just me. If it happens to you, if you ever hear the phrase in relation to Swift and get confused, here's what it means.

Every Swift concert has this little private after-party, which Taylor dubs the T-Party. It's a fairly elaborate meet-and-greet. Throughout the show, Taylor's mom and an assortment of other people in the entourage look through the crowd for whoever they deem to be the "most spirited" fans of the night, and somewhere around 20 fans a show get invites in the form of little Livestrong-style bracelets. Sometimes a few more, sometimes a few less, but 20 is about the target. There's no real set criteria- sometimes they pick the loudest, craziest person in the building, but sometimes they look in the nosebleed section for someone really quiet and just happy to be there. A trip to the T-Party is, in Swift's fans' eyes, the Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, and probably plays at least a bit of a part in why things get so crazy.

Because unless you really, truly are that way, let's be honest, you're not going the quiet and shy route. More often, over-the-top schemes are hatched the instant people know they're going to the concert. The presence of glowsticks has been identified as somewhat increasing one's odds of getting a T-Party invite, so one common strategy is to cover oneself in as many as one can get on one's body. (Taylor does notice and appreciate all this; she spends a fair bit of time just looking around, seeing just what people are doing to stand out and wondering 'wow, how long did that take you to put together? And you did that for me?')

In fact, as she noted in a YouTube interview in September, her shows eventually start to resemble less a concert than a taping of Let's Make A Deal. (skip to 23:09)

"A lot of people have been going for the costume route. So we'll look out, and my guitar player will lean over to me and be like, 'That girl is dressed like a chicken.' And I'm trying to find the meaning, I don't know why, but you know, we'll look out and there's, like, a Santa Claus. Or people who've duct-taped their entire body in neon duct tape. Or people who have just made giant cupcakes around themselves, and they're like, they're this big. (gestures with arms) Or people who have dressed up from the Mean video, or something like that. But then there's just these ones where the girl is dressed as, like, there's a clown and a starfish. And we're like, 'I don't know why, but I love it.' And so there's been a lot of costume stuff lately on the tour, so if you look around and you see someone dressed up as a giant cow, and you don't know why, we don't know why either, but it's welcome."

And that's the thing. Taylor is of the mindset that, hey, she is performing with her friends, mom in tow, in front of tens of thousands of people chanting her name and going totally bonkers in the hope of getting to say hi to her and maybe having her write her name on something, and all she has to do is basically sing her diary to them. If the worst thing that happens on a given day is that she can't figure out why one of her fans- her fans, she has fans- dressed up like a cow beyond 'she really wants to meet me', that's a really good day.

Otherwise, she would not be closing out her pre-encore Speak Now Tour setlist with 'Long Live', which is five-plus minutes of her telling her band, aka her "band of thieves in ripped-up jeans", just how awesome their lives have gotten and how much everything that's happening to them ought to be appreciated. (No, YouTube commenters. It is not about Harry Potter. Repeat, NOT about Harry Potter.)

And why not? She gets to go to every T-Party.

Or We Can Clone The Marshmallows

2011-10-24T12:32:00.000-05:00

If you've got a kid, about 4-6 years old, go grab a treat they like, a marshmallow or cookie or something- and take them into the emptiest room in the house. Tell that kid that they will get the treat, but you have to go do something or other, and if they can go 15 minutes without eating it and it's still there when you get back- but only if it's still there- they'll get a second treat.

Now see what happens. Honor whatever result you get. Odds are about 2 out of 3 that that marshmallow won't be there anymore.

You now know a fair bit about how your child is going to do in life. What you're testing here is delayed gratification, and you're doing the same thing done in a 1972 experiment at Stanford by Walter Mischel.

I found that there is actually a TED talk about this, and TED talks are always good. Joachim de Posada, take it away.

You really do not want to see that marshmallow gone, because every time follow-up studies are done on former participants, the ones who resisted turn out worlds better than the ones who didn't. They were more successful, had better grades, and in some cases, it's been the difference between staying in school and dropping out. Seeking instant gratification as a kid means seeking it as an adult, and I'll leave it to you to fill in your favorite example of instant gratification that turns out sour later.

In fact, the difference can be seen in your brain, as shown here. Some of the ex-kids who either made it or ate the marshmallow almost immediately were re-tested as adults, with various faces substituted for the marshmallow. The instant-gratification group showed increased activity in the ventral striatum. On the crazy off-chance you've never heard of the ventral striatum, it's been correlated with things like addiction, OCD, and even schizophrenia.

If your kid ate the marshmallow, though, you don't need to start thinking doom and gloom, and even if the marshmallow is still there, don't rest on it. It's not set in stone. Recent years of follow-up studies have shown that the status of the marshmallow can change from year to year. If your kid ate the marshmallow, what you want to do is to make self-control a priority lesson. Sesame Street made it their lesson of the day back on June 3... which quickly led to Stephen Colbert taking the test.

Try not to be like Stephen.

Captain Planet Is Not The Father

2011-10-22T02:06:00.000-05:00

A team of scientists from Australia and the United States have found a new, bouncing baby planet, using the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. (NOTE: Do not try to bounce a planet at home.) The planet is estimated as being no older than 50,000-100,000 years old, the youngest planet yet observed. The planet, dubbed LkCa 15b, is about six times the size of Jupiter and a little closer to its sun- itself only about 2 million years old- than Uranus is to ours. You obviously are not going to see it from your lawn, but if you did, you'd see it as a deep red, almost infrared, due to the heat from the planet's ongoing formation.

Why is this important?

Again, it's the youngest planet yet seen, a planet still in formation. There is a lot science doesn't yet know about planet formation; a lot of what we go on concerning planets is still just educated guessing. (Another example of planetary educated guessing: what exactly the center of the Earth looks like. You've heard mantle, outer core, inner core, but do you really think anyone's been down there to have a look?)

What led the astronomers to this particular find was the fact that a debris cloud surrounding a star, had a big gap in it. When a planet forms, what's thought to happen is that the debris cloud starts exerting enough gravity on itself to pull itself together and form a big mass. The mass, creating an orbit, collects more debris as it goes. You can actually form multiple planets from the same cloud, but whether that's happening here is going to require further observation, alongside the determination of orbit path. Astronomers have seen the big debris cloud, they've seen the final result, but this is the first time they've seen the process from A to B.

Since the actual photo leaves a bit to the non-scientist's imagination, pretty much every story on the subject includes an artist's rendering, shown here on its own.

Now to go look for any other gaps in debris clouds.

Rapid-Fire Book Club, Yay For Bathroom Readers Edition

2011-10-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

I guess there's more soccer book work in my future because there's only one book to report on here, and it's this year's main edition of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader; the 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader.

I go through these a lot looking for topic ideas. Heck, my name even shows up in a couple after having submitted stuff to them (though they seem to prefer spelling Allermann with one N, which to be fair, a lot of people do). Generally what I'll do is go after their shorter stories, things where they don't go into very much detail- often this will end up being the 'running feet', the little factoids at the bottom of each page- and I'll go expand on that.

So hey, one more, one merrier.

Do You Like 50 Cent?

2011-10-20T12:48:00.000-05:00

Well, maybe you ought to. Or at least his energy drink, Street King. Or at least, you ought to 'like' it on Facebook. Every time you do, 50 Cent is going to donate a meal to the UN World Food Programme, with a million-meal bonus if Street King tops a million likes in a week. As I check it, it's at 197,298.

And if you're actually willing to drink the stuff, that's worth a donation too, one meal per can sold over the next five years.

Or if you want absolutely nothing to do with 50 Cent or his stupid-head energy drink, you could always just go to the World Food Programme site and donate directly.

Bit of a quickie today; want to get some book work in.