So Greenville, Illinois, home of FCI Greenville:
Has a realty company named:
Does anyone else find that a bit peculiar?
Hmmm.
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Author: Brian J. Noggle
My Kind of Legislator
Democratic Party attacks on Fred Thompson identify a feature:
Working to influence news coverage, the DNC also recently began circulating a “research document” with the headline, “MAJOR LEGISLATIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF SEN. FRED DALTON THOMPSON (1994-2002).” Then the page is blank until the line, “Paid for by the Democratic National Committee.”
That sounds about right. If only we had more legislators with fewer “major legislative accomplishments.”
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Apple Growers Fear "China," A Euphemism For Loss Of Federal Money
Apple growers fear China: Lower wages make it difficult for U.S. to compete:
Farmers have been growing apples here since before the Civil War, and as times have changed, they have changed with them, planting smaller trees to speed up harvests and growing popular new varieties to satisfy changing tastes.
But the growers who have made this mountainous region the core of apple-growing in Pennsylvania worry that they face a new challenge that may be too big to overcome and could change their way of life.
Like farmers in the bigger apple-producing states, they are becoming increasingly anxious about the prospect of China flooding the U.S. market with their fresh apples – an event many believe is inevitable, even if it could be years away.
They saw what happened in the 1990s when Chinese apple juice concentrate made it into the United States. Prices got so low, some U.S. juice companies were forced out of the U.S. market. Growers could no longer afford to grow apples just for making juice.
Meanwhile, someday, China might outpace the United States in apple production. Assuming, of course, apple buyers don’t fear that Chinese apples, like Chinese wheat gluten and toothpast, will actually kill you.
No, let’s identify what the apple growers fear today:
With the Farm Bill up for renewal this year for the first time since 2002, apple growers are pressing for an unprecedented amount of federal funding to develop technologies to make harvesting less costly, and aid to develop overseas markets.
They fear not getting their fair share of that amount withheld from your paycheck, citizen. Even if you prefer pears, the apple growers of America still want your business.
UPDATE: Jay Tea isn’t afraid of Chinese apples.
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Good Book Hunting: June 23, 2007
How far will we drive for a book fair? Well, friends and readers, that answer now stands at 65 miles one way, as Saturday we travelled to Greenville, Illinois, home of FCI Greenville and a small contingent of housing on the Illinois prairie. Heather found a book fair listing on BookSaleFinder.com, the only nearby book fair for any number of weeks, so we packed up the baby for his first long car trip and went. Heather printed out a set of directions from MapQuest and failed to actually retain names of the location of the book fair or the name of the group hosting the book fair. Still, I won’t knock her navigational abilities nor the wisdom of working from MapQuest directions too much since we did actually get there alive.
We got there about 30 minutes after the starting time, and no one was in the gymnasium of the church. Apparently, the ad said the fair would include 40,000 books, and perhaps it did; however, nothing really tempted me, and for the first time, Heather bought more books than I did:
Among my choice purchases:
- Milwaukee America Kalendar 1924, a 1924 almanac/calendar in German printed by George Brunder. It contains a number of tables, days with lines where you can write in whatever you need to remember for that day, and advertisements. It was printed in Milwaukee, so even though I cannot read it, I had to have it.
- Beggars in Spain, a novel by Nancy Kress. She writes a column on fiction for Writer’s Digest (or did when I took the magazine), so I want to see what she writes.
- How to Play Blues Harmonica, a videocassette. I already have the hat and several harmonicas.
- Solved!, a collection of true crime pieces by mystery authors.
- Dave Barry’s Guide to End All Gift Guides.
And a couple other things. Books and cassettes were only 65 cents, and I couldn’t find much to tempt me. Heather, on the other hand, raided the religious books section and carried off a number of Dr. James Dobson titles. Hmm, one of those is Love Must Be Tough: New Hope for Marriage in Crisis. I wonder if we’re going to have a talk soon.
Probably about my commentary on her navigational abilities.
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Nancy Pelosi Fails QA
Well, not Nancy Pelosi herself, but her Web site has gotten the wrong sort of attention on the blogs recently (here and here and so on). It’s a simple Macromedia Flash presentation embedded within a Web site, but it has a number of problems that a trained eye would have caught.
First and foremost, whomever created the presentation used stock imagery in the most sloppy manner; they chose, to represent a story on American military medical care, a stock image of someone with a uniform featuring an epaulet talking to a doctor. Unfortunately, that epaulet said “CANADA”:
Her political opponents (of which I am one, don’t get me left) were quick to seize upon this as something more than a failure (or lack) of quality assurance, but they’re just looking for something to make noise about anyway. Still, someone who reviewed this with any degree of exactitude would read all text and identify any extraneous logos within stock photography. And someone would have read “Canada” and said, “Uh, no…..”
This particular failure has been remedied, as the slide that offended the bloggers no longer appears. However, the site still fails QA in the following manners.
At the change of each slide, the text from the first slide (“Green the Capitol”) displays during the transition. Now, unless you’re actually trying subliminal advertising, perhaps you don’t want this to occur. Perhaps you want a smooth fade of the words and the fade in of the new slide. Still, unrelated text shouldn’t appear:
Next, the embedding of the Flash object is faulty. It gives the user too much control over the behavior of the object, including the ability to zoom so that the images appear pixellated or the text displays outsized. Since the Flash object has a certain set size, only a portion is visible, like this:
Finally, as you should know if you build Web sites for a living (or pretend to), Macromedia Flash Player is a plugin whose presence should not be taken for granted on the user’s Web browser. Any time you provide animation or other documents through plugins, you should provide a handy mechanism so that those users without the plugin can get them if needed. Does Nancy Pelosi? No:
Instead of a static graphic or a link to Macromedia Flash Player, we get empty space. That Other America that I’m always hearing about, the one without Flash, gets left behind.
I am tempted to go into metaphors about legislators whose Web sites aren’t checked before they’re put up and the implications for legislation, but I’ll save that for another blog post and will point out that a couple of hours’ worth of time of a trained Quality Assurance professional would have ferreted these issues out before releasing it to the public, sparing embarrassment and also sparing someone the “emergency” of fixing it.
But, hey, if you don’t want to spend that money or budget on quality assurance, you roll the dice. Sometimes they don’t come up snake eyes, but when they do, you’ll pay for it.
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Users, Consumers Find Web Technologies To Be Mere Tools
In a stunning turn of events, the components of the Web 2.0 phenomenon are seen by users as mere tools, and those users have very little loyalty to particular tools:
Study results show that social networkers have little loyalty for any specific social networking site. Almost half of all social networkers use more than one site and one in six uses three or more.
Interactive marketing agencies better keep this in mind that spending client budget on building/hooking up all sorts of “community” (read: users build the content for the client for free) will have wasted that budget when another company comes up with a slightly cooler set of technologies to do the same thing. You must differentiate the brand using existing Web 1.0 techniques and build that community with good promotions and content instead of hoping “users” will do your job for you.
James Joyner (past client of my company Jeracor, just so’s you know) sums it up thusly:
Not only is this unsurprising but the premise behind the question reflects a deep misunderstanding of the Web 2.0 concept. Social media aren’t about loyalty to sites but rather a means of self-expression and growing and communicating with one’s network.
That will remain true with fickle consumers, so if you’re building a consumer-facing Web site, don’t forget the fresh content when adding expensive technologies to the bill of sale.
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One Fewer Check or Balance
A legislator tells an unelected member of the executive branch to change the law:
“It is outrageous that companies can get away with revealing what prescription medications New Yorkers have taken and not even notify the customer,” Schumer said. The senator is calling on the federal Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt, to immediately change the law to require pharmacies to notify patients before selling or transferring their records and allowing patients to opt out.
No, senator, you as the legislator should change the law. As a member of the executive branch, Leavitt should implement it as written.
That was the whole point.
But if you cede responsibility, you can cede the blame. So long as you keep the fat paycheck and the “prestige” (single digit approval rating), I guess.
(Link seen on Dustbury.)
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Unfortunately, He Killed On Double Count Thursday
Either the reporting’s incorrect, or there’s some serious end-runs around double jeopardy in play here:
Vaughn was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Kimberly Vaughn, 34, and their three children — Abigayle, 12, Cassandra, 11, and Blake, 8.
Four victims, eight charges of first-degree murder? How does that happen?
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Book Report: Suspension Bridge by Rod McKuen (1984)
Spare the Rod and spoil the child, that’s my new motto. I continue reading Rod McKuen poetry at my son (at because he’s often only in the room when I’m reading poetry to him these days; he’s at an interim age where he’s too engaged in moving around and his own projects to sit quietly on one’s lap for reception of book knowledge or storytelling). I do so even though I’m really unimpressed with most of McKuen’s work past the middle 1960s, and my positive impression of the remainder of his work only moves him from bad poet to mediocre poet in my estimation, but I’m not Allan Bloom, so you don’t have to take my word for it. There’s so many Rod McKuen books floating out there you can probably pick one up for a quarter somewhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find them for free in a mass landfill buried with old Atari E.T. cartridges.
This book refers back to Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows with the additional reflection of fourteen years’ elapsing. The poet has endured a number of relationships moving on in that time, so all the poetry is extra-sepiaed. A particularly devilling tic in the book is its name-dropping; a large number of the poems are dedicated to someone and many more use names as shorthand for the passage of time. Frankly, it doesn’t work for me because I don’t know who he’s talking about.
Unfortunately, McKuen suffers additionally from my recent reading of Carl Sandburg. McKuen comes out better when I’ve just bitten off a chunk of Emily Dickinson than when I read someone who’s enjoyable and deep.
One more down, several more to go. I also have this weird sense I am going to try to get a complete set of McKuen’s works just because I can. That, friends, is the drive of a diseased book collector.
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Found Poetry
The sad, lonely life of an unrequited lover recounted using the date due flap of an obscure academic tome as the metaphor:
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A Clarification and Defense of Masculinity
When my wife came home from a recent evening event, she saw that I was watching Alex & Emma on DVD. “You’re watching a chick flick!” she said.
“I am not,” I defended, “It’s an author flick.”
Allow me to justify my behavior.
Although I concede that it has all the earmarks of chick flick feminine wish fulfillment:
- No-nonsense working woman
- With a lot of opinions, with which she is forcefully forthcoming
- And “quirks”
identify her as high-maintenance and probably controlling when they exist in a woman in real life - Meets a flawed but cute man
- Whose initial impression and silly bachelor ways she overlooks
- And they fall in love.
Friends, I agree, those are the earmarks of a chick flick. However, this particular movie plays upon those conventions and, although they sucker women into thinking the movie is directed at them, it’s not. It’s every author’s fantasy fulfilled:
- An author living in a comfortable loft downtown (Boston, not St. Louis)
- Tricks an innocent stenographer to his lair
- Where he dictates a potboiler novel,
- A follow-up to a wildly successful debut novel,
- Pausing only to nail a woman who looks like Kate Hudson
- And when he completes the draft in 30 days
- The publisher loves it without a single jot of revision required
- And immediately pays the author a six-figure advance.
- Meanwhile, the author tells the stenographer he “loves” her
- And she buys it
- So he will get to nail her again.
You tell me who gets gratified more from this movie.
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Ho Hum: Art, Curator Expect to Make Squares Uncomfortable Again
Another art exhibit exalts itself in making the hoi polloi uncomfortable. Just like the last untold number of “art” exhibits:
A risqué, homoerotic art exhibit will open this weekend on a stretch of street in St. Louis best known as a haven for antique-seekers.
Gallery owner Philip Hitchcock expects the “Body/Building” display to unnerve a few people, but he hopes to accomplish more by challenging the status quo.
“If people are uncomfortable with those images, and they ask themselves, ‘Why? What chord does that strike in me?’ If they go that far, then as an artist and a curator, I have done my job,” Hitchcock said.
I doubt I’d be uncomfortable with those images; instead, the whole concept strikes a chord of “Why bother?” in me.
I prefer art to be evocative and uplifting. That sort of thing takes insight into the human condition and talent. Shocking me only requires the artistic equivalent of a Taser. And guess which sort of thing I buy.
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The More The Merrier
On the other hand, the netroots activism of the Democratic party might be better for the Republicans than expected. I mean, look at the potential Nader ponders run, calls Clinton ‘coward’:
Ralph Nader says he is seriously considering running for president in 2008 because he foresees another Tweedledum-Tweedledee election that offers little real choice to voters.
Coupled with this news, it’s looking like a great race:
- Any Republican
- Any Democrat
- Michael Bloomberg
- Ralph Nader
Come on, you don’t think Michael Bloomberg is going to steal from the Republican votes, do you?
The only way this could be better would be if Markos Moulitas himself ran, too.
The Republicans could almost elect Mark Foley in that field.
(More on Instapundit and Outside the Beltway.)
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Litigious Culture Imperils Doctors
The litigious nature of our society is again imperiling our access to health care and doctors: Mo. doctors to sue over midwife law:
Legislation allowing midwives to deliver babies at home in Missouri will probably be challenged in court by doctors’ groups.
The measure was approved by lawmakers last month as part of larger health insurance bill signed June 1 by Gov. Matt Blunt. Most of the bill won’t take effect until January, but the section on midwifery becomes effective in August.
Opposition to the midwifery provision is led by the Missouri State Medical Association. The organization’s lobbyist, Tom Holloway, said the group expected to file suit to block the provision next week in Cole County Circuit Court.
Oh, sorry, my fault; this is actually a bill about doctors suing to prevent access to other health care providers because the doctors know that they should be the only ones legally eligible to receive tax money for delivering babies.
Doctors suing to keep health costs up so that they can continue to receive their rates for delivery and hospital stays or whatnot.
I’m not going to argue about whether it’s better to have a child in the hospital surrounded by expensive scientific instruments unneeded in most deliveries or at home, chanting in a Gaia circle with a midwife. You know, that’s where freedom comes in. People can choose the stupid or the merely less ideal.
But not if this collective of Missouri doctors has its way.
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Republican Party Improves Slightly
NYC mayor leaves GOP amid White House speculation:
After some six years as a Republican, the 65-year-old former CEO announced Tuesday that he has left the Republican Party and become unaffiliated in what many believe could be a step toward entering the 2008 race for president.
Face it, Bloomberg belongs to the Bloomberg party and puts on or takes off party designation like baseball hats. He only became a Republican so he could ride Rudy’s coattails into the New York Mayor’s office.
Frankly, that the Republican Party would have him in spite of his political views was an early indicator of its ease of sacrificing principles just to have one more official with an (R) behind its name.
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Headline Offers Cheap Psychological Evaluation
Paranoia grows over Google’s power
Reuters headline writers were unavailable to surmise how people concerned about the reach of Google’s data depth and related data mining actually went crazy, but Reuters headline writers did not have the time to work up a complete mental profiles. They had only time to diagnose that those people suffer from a delusional disorder or perhaps schizophrenia.
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Post-Dispatch Finds A Land Developer To Dislike
The front page of the Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch and an Flash-enhanced online rendition finally take a land developer to task.
Well, no, not “finally,” since this land developer is only guilty of urging lawmakers to pass a tax incentive package that he’ll take advantage of.
The Post-Dispatch wets itself in joy whenever a developer throws citizens out of their suburban homes using eminent domain or when a developer strong arms the city into co-signing a loan from which the developer can (and often does) walk away. To say nothing of tax incentives, which the Post-Dispatch thinks is a good idea to lure any private retail, condominium, or sports endeavor to the city.
I don’t know why the paper decides to unload on this developer who acquired all the properties legitimately, although not obviously. Because he’s one man who’s white buying land in poverty-stricken areas? Because he live in St. Charles and hasn’t made the proper show of buying a downtown loft?
Who knows? All I know is that it makes all other Post-Dispatch pieces that laud crony capitalism absurd and hypocritical.
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Caption Contest
Normally, I don’t do this sort of thing because the paucity of responses is bad for my ego, but here’s a photo begging for a quip:
Here’s my best shot:
Think you can do better? Leave it in the comments. Remember, if there are no comments, I will win by default! You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?
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Found Lost Mysteries
Sawyer spends Father’s Day grilling (for his daughter Clementine by Cassidy? For his son by Kate?)? Also, who is the mystery woman with the salad bowl, and how is she related to Sawyer?
Man, it’s going to be a long year.
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All Right, All Right, I’ll Post It
That’s the sound of me finally giving into myself. I saw this video on Ace of Spades and have watched it over and over:
It’s a nice tribute to Bob Ross of The Joy of Painting. I recollect catching Bob in his early years (ca. 1986-1988) and watching him on the local PBS station, broadcast over the air if you damn kids can believe it. I was twisting the knob, which was how we changed stations between the three to seven stations we could get with antennae, and I found his show early in my late middle school to early high school period, watching the grainy television from the top bunk in a bedroom in a mobile home sized to fit only a television, a bunk bed, and a dresser.
I liked how easy he made painting landscapes look, and I watched it a couple weeks running. He tempted me to try some painting on my own, using stray watercolor paint set gift packs and the only canvases I had handy–the glazed tops of doughnut boxes my mother brought as our special Sunday treats from the local U-Gas. The doughnuts were the treat, not the boxes, you dang literalists. Man, I can picture one of my self-portraits in my head even now, wherein a rudely-depicted blond young man reclines under a tree. Fortunately, that picture reclines in a landfill somewhere now. Even if I could post it, I probably wouldn’t; let’s leave it at that.
The year after I graduated, I was shipping/receiving clerk for an art supply store, and the shop carried a small set of the Bob Ross line of products. I remembered him fondly and probably caught an episode or two of his show for the then-kitsch value. He died while I was working there, a stunning blow that no doubt the sales staff, local students in art programs, brought to the back room with a combination of sadness and smugness. Based on the quality of my art work, I didn’t have youthful superiority to spare, so I was only sad.
The aforelinked video touches me with nostalgia and a hint of that sadness, but also pleasantly amuses me with the music and with the sense that maybe, yes, Bob Ross would have felt that way about the message his laid-back style conveyed.
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