To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Thank goodness experts have acknowledged that global obesity is not solely the fault of the United States.
However, we should be act unilaterally and institute the world-wide famine, as previously planned, to reduce the weight of people who currently are getting too much to eat. Do it for the Children!
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Charles Schmucker, senator from a tiny little state called New York, posits more Federal tax money, contributed by people in Mississippi and Wyoming, should go to New York:
The federal government should give New Yorkers unused housing subsidies earmarked for other states, Sen. Charles Schumer said yesterday.
From the many, one, brother, as long as it’s one of the populous states whose overregulation is choking its populace. Put your fingers around my neck, too, please.
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Newt Gingrich, on OpinionJournal.com, explains a double standard at work:
The media coverage of the violations of American law against Iraqi prisoners is in peril of setting a dangerous double standard for America and the Arab world. The administration must be very careful in explaining how we feel and what we will do. Otherwise our enemies will use our own words as an excuse to exploit this double standard.
To be clear, a very small number of Americans did a terrible thing at Abu Ghraib. And because we live under the rule of law, and we take protecting the Constitution seriously, the accused will be investigated and, when guilty, punished. The incidents themselves are to be condemned.
Some have called for Donald Rumsfeld to resign. However, he has led the process of exposing the wrongdoing and investigating the charges. Moreover, he will see to it that the accused get a fair and honest trial, in which there is a presumption of innocence until guilt is proved and the guilty are punished. That due process is something we as Americans should be proud of, and unequivocal about. In view of Mr. Rumsfeld’s significant contribution to our security, this incident will be but a footnote.
Explaining our anger at these misdeeds and our determination to punish the wrongdoers is appropriate. Appearing overly contrite or overly apologetic, however, will be a big mistake.
What he said.
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On the front page of its NewsWatch section, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch offers pro and con, emphasis on the con, of whether another casino would be good for the St. Louis area:
Looking back, Connie realizes she should have seen the problem. Her family members always wanted her to take a separate car to the casinos – they knew she would want to leave long before they did.
She should have known the $50 here, $100 there that they borrowed was not a coincidence. She had lost a few bucks playing bingo before, she knew grocery bills were hard to cover sometimes. No big deal. They always paid her back.
Had she been asked three years ago to vote on a new casino in Lemay, where she lives, “heck, yes, I was all for it,” said Connie.
The loan requests grew larger and more frequent.
“They ran themselves low on one person, and they couldn’t go to them anymore, so they would start on other people, and pretty soon, I realized they were all hitting on me,” Connie said of her family members.
None of these relatives had gambling problems before casinos came to the St. Louis area. They had never visited Las Vegas. There was a history of alcoholism in the family, and Connie smoked through three pregnancies before she finally quit.
“I know about addiction,” she says.
So we start with an anecdotal lead that, I guess, will support the argument that government should pad the harsh walls of reality to make it safe for the least responsible or intelligent members of society, because if they can, stupid people will do stupid things.
Last week, Hancock High School Principal Jason Naucke bluntly told his students that if they even considering drinking, don’t bother showing up for the prom. Fifth graders got a one-hour lesson from a police officer about the consequences of joining a gang, the 15th week of a 17-week course urging them to reject drugs and violence.
Just another week in the “values” curriculum at Hancock Place School District, while the district’s superintendent was pushing for a casino to come to the neighborhood.
A casino means money, and Superintendent Ed Stewart hasn’t seen enough of that.
A new “casino” would mean “tax revenue” that “scare-quoted” “educators” could [Please punch up with use of term so-called. –Ed.] use in promoting “values” in their so-called curricula, and the unintelligent educators “educators” don’t capture the “irony” of raising money from gambling while promoting other “values” (which are obviously “scare-quoted” because anything valued by someone other than the journalist is “suspect”). Thus begins the story favoring the casino.
Criminey, I pay money to have this delivered. At least I am getting some use out of it now that hockey season’s over.
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…is now chronicled at Pop-Up Mocker.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch profiles the president of the St. Louis Zoo. The lead: How he fired up his wife to think about conservation:
Perhaps the only wild creatures Melody Noel studied in law school were F. Lee Bailey and Alan Dershowitz. But today, Noel is an expert on penguins, cheetahs and addaxes.
“Farmers in Botswana are shooting cheetahs because they eat their livestock,” Noel said. “It’s going to take some creative solutions and some time to work through the problem.”
Noel has no background in biology, but she is married to St. Louis Zoo president Jeffrey Bonner. And anyone who lives in Bonner’s world – whether for two decades, like Noel, or two years, like the Zoo’s 1,000 employees – invariably adopts his passions.
“I am a perfect example of a convert,” said Noel, who practices domestic law. “These are not things I thought about before, but he knows how to get people fired up.”
You mean, farmers shoot wild cats that attack their domesticated animals? The horror! As mountain lions return to scourge the mountainous country of our own United States, I only hope the farmers in Botswana only use one bullet per cheetah and have a nice, fashionable pelt to wear afterwards.
But what’s the point of the anecdote? The great Mesmero can convince people who would marry him to join him in an inchoate collection of beliefs about the circle of life as it exists outside of Disney cartoons. So what makes him different from any other professor?
Now Bonner wants to convert St. Louisans and one of the city’s most beloved institutions. Soon, he promises, visitors will see a new sort of St. Louis Zoo, one that confronts the destruction of the wild, the slaughter of endangered species and the hard choices the public must face if it wants to change the world. This new Zoo that Bonner envisions looks a lot like the old one: The train still runs, sea lions still flip for fish and Raja still roams the sprawling River’s Edge. But with the fun comes a sober message of conservation and responsibility.
“What we have failed to do is really show people the world around us. In Africa, the loggers are putting in the roads, and the hunters go in with their AK-47s and slaughter every animal they see.
I guess he’s saying that he would prefer Africa to continue with substinence farming, famines, and starvation, since that lack of development didn’t threaten nature.
How daft is he?
To Bonner, who studied anthropology, the human element matters most.
“The environment is never the problem. It’s the people that are the problem – always the people,” he said.
Pretty damn daft, if you ask me. People are always the problem. Except people like him.
“Conservation ultimately requires compromise,” Bonner said. “I think people struggle with that all of the time, but if you look at the big picture, there are ways of balancing your lifestyle with the good you do.”
In Bonner’s case, he drives a sport utility vehicle, eats meat and wears leather shoes.
So he proffers this compromise: cattle farmers, African loggers, everyone outside of a pampered urban setting, you’ve got to do what he and his type dictate, based on theories and “hard emotions.” He, on the other hand, will continue to make six figures, eat meat, drive a sport utility vehicle, wear leather shoes, and promises never to get attacked by a big cat while jogging or allowing his pets or livestock to tempt carnivores. Also, he’s willing to suffer through puff pieces in the newspaper and colleagues who gush:
Jerry Borin, director of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, calls Bonner “a big-picture person.”
“He is always two or three steps ahead but he brings people along,” Borin said. “That’s important in the zoo community. We are not that large of an industry, and by nature we have to cooperate.”
That big picture? It’s a large, flattering self-portrait depicting Bonner as nobility, willing to do what’s best for his serfs, whether it’s popular or not.
Update:
What does a mountain lion or cheetah think of a zookeeper who’s not afraid to admit he wears leather?
Atkins-friendly.
Sorry, I couldn’t help it. I am also toying with a global outreach program called “Bullets for Botswana,” but that takes more effort than making jokes.
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At the risk of imperiling my marriage, I shall link to this piece, entitled Second Hand Joke, wherein Dr. Sydney Smith recognizes that smoking’s bad, but also that trampling individual rights for abstractions such as “public health” or “the good of the individual” are worse. Read:
Smoking is a filthy habit. It causes bad breath. It stains the fingers and the teeth. It rots the lungs and it takes the breath away. Spend a day in any doctor’s office and you can quickly spot the long time smokers, such is its impact on the body. And death by tobacco is a truly horrible death, with the final days spent gasping for breath and drowning in ones own secretions while the doctors look on helplessly.
And yet, as loathsome as smoking is, it’s hard not to feel sorry for smokers. Every morning I pass small clusters of them in front of the hospital, just around the corner from the “No Smoking” sign, like high school hoodlums who smoke just a step away from school property. Some of them are hospital employees, puffing off job stress during their breaks. Others are patients, with nothing but flimsy hospital gowns and robes to protect them against the elements while they seek solace in tobacco. It seems cruel to make them smoke outside. The hospital has a special room for prayer. Couldn’t they have a special room for smoking?
But then, the world has become a cruel place for smokers. Not only must they huddle outside at work to indulge, they increasingly must also huddle outside when they’re enjoying a night on the town. Over a hundred cities in the U.S. have banned smoking in public places such as bars and nightclubs. Last month, Ireland banned smoking in pubs. Now Scotland is under pressure to do the same, and the EU is flirting with its own ban.
The rationale for these bans is that smoking in public is not only a nuisance for non-smokers, but a health threat. While it’s true that an asthmatic non-smoker may have problems working or relaxing in a smokey bar, anti-smoking advocates have lately drastically stepped up their claims regarding the dangers of second hand smoke. A CDC official, writing in the British Medical Journal warned people with heart disease to avoid all buildings that allowed any smoking, claiming that just thirty minutes of inhaling second hand smoke could cause heart attacks. Apparently, even miniscule amounts of tobacco smoke can turn your coronary arteries from this into this.
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Slate published a couple good articles on Friday dealing with prosecutors and their new cudgels with which to beat the citizenry into proper obsequiousness. Read:
Read them, and weep that your legislators will forever more empower prosecutors until such time as we’re all in prison, and they have to go after each other for wrongful prosecution and corruption.
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As you all know by now if you’ve been reading these book reviews and haven’t skipped over them to get to the snarky humor, I read a lot of books that are not only sociological studies, but also are artifacts of their time periods. What they say about whatever they’re talking about reflects the time in which they’re written as much as the subject they cover. So I picked this book for under a buck during one of those binges of used book-buying in which my my beautiful wife and I often indulge.
I read it over the course of a couple weeks during my lunches at work. I even pasted a number of Post-It notes into the book with snarky comments so I could do a longer, more reasoned evaluation of the book. However, since it’s been on my desk here, just to the right of the MfBJN mainframe for a couple of weeks now, this is all you get. Sorry.
You can pretty much guess how the book’s going to go from the title. Unfortunately, the book’s cover doesn’t have the proper soap opera score to illustrate the way you should read the title. Ideally, it would be Video Fever: Entertainment? [piano tinkle] Education? [tinkle] or Addiction [heavy chord DUM DUM!]
Charles Beamer, high school teacher, examines the video game craze as you would expect a high school teacher might. He goes to video arcades (remember them?), asks questions to which anyone not called “faculty” in a professional capacity would raise an eyebrow, and then extrapolates results from a limited statistical sample.
You know what he found?
Bad elements liked to hang out in arcades, smoke marijuana, and sometimes those bad kids stole a couple bucks from their parents’ purses or wallets to play. Sometimes, games were the “only friend” of the players, and other anthropomorphic mayhem ensued. Beamer “examines” the typical player archetypes, from the preteen misfits to the 20-somethings blowing off steam. He briefly examines the benefits that video games might provide–raising a generation comfortable with that fad “computer” thing.
But he’s just waiting to get into the harm video games provide. Stealing quarters from parking meters. Smoking pot (brother, have we got a surprise for you in a couple years, when people start to smoke crystallized cocaine). Antisocial superpredators–no, wait, sorry, that’s what latchkey crack babies movies or GTA would later provide. As a result, the tail end of Generation X has no hope at all.
Then he examines what can be done, which devolves from a study of good family life into a screed favoring extremely strict Christian discipline. Frankly, that particular turn in an attempted even-handed sociological study couldn’t have been more jarring if the author had written Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
So it’s an amusing tract, almost worth the thirty-three and a third cents I paid for it (if that much). I’m not sure it’s worth the hours I spent reading it, but hey, I’m jumping on that grenade for you, gentle reader, to spare you the horror.
Marginalia:
As I mentioned, I noted some sections for extra snarkage. I’d hate to have wasted all those expensive little yellow slips with adhesive on one end, so I’ve included the best for you below:
It’s dark inside arcades and video game centers, womblike, comforting, exciting. Lights flash and flicker seductively in many colors from strange and alluring sources. Sounds of battle beckon the players to death-defying heroism, courageous exploits hardly possible in the ordinary worlds of school and home, and hours and hours of fun!
Jeez, man, I’ll admit my mother smoked cigarettes while I was gestating, so I remember the womb as dark, soft, and warm (or so I remmeber through the recovered memories). What was your mother smoking to make her womb like a freaking video arcade while you were gestating?
A distributors’ [sic, and from a TEACHER no less] problem that makers assist in solving is “burn-out” among players who become tired of playing the same games in the same places. One tick the markers use is to provide distributors with decals and pop-in microchips; the decals slide under the tabletop on the front of the machine, making it look like an entirely new machine, and the exchange of microchips changes the way the machine plays in a way so the playes believe it is a new game.
You heard it here first. JAMMA is a trick! played upon poor, unsuspecting quarter-thieving, ganja-smoking teens. Except swapping the boards (not just the chips, brother) does make a new game. Of course, Beamer’s technical comprehension is limited.
Perceptions of experiences are more important than the experiences themselves. There are people who can find joy hidden in even the most tragic situation, and there are others who cannot be satisfied or made happy no matter what their experience of joy. We see ourselves and our experiences uniquely, and “real facts” are distorted and shaped and changed by any number of factors–how we feel about ourselves, our memory of past experiences, and our expectations of a situation.
Just put down the epistemology and back slowly away before you harm yourself and others. “Perceptions of experiences are more important than the experiences themselves”? Jeez, whatever your mother was smoking must have been potent.
Home-delivery systems have been heralded as the “coming thing.” Promoters say that soon (even now in some areas) it will be possible for you to shop for groceries or any other product from your home.
Well, it took a couple years, by Cosmo and Webvan took right care of that. Note to younger readers: In the later part of the last century, two Internet companies called Cosmo and Webvan got lots of venture capital to lose trying to do just that. “Even now in some areas” would take eighteen years from Beamer’s prognostication to be proven unready. Cripes, it’s 2004, and I have to explain Webvan.
Two other terms now come into play, and both refer to program commands in response to a player’s action. The first term is “poke.” Poke is a command meaning “go to” some pyxel or matrix on the screen. When a player fires the cannons or lasers of his spaceship to destroy an asteroid or a space invader, the microprocessor understands only “Poke.” On a microchip, an impulse flashes toward a number of pyxels in a direct line (a line that appears direct on the screen but actually is moving diagonally or slantwise across tiny dots) toward the edge of the screen.
The second term is “peek.” It is a command meaning “look ahead.” The microprocessor is asking a microchip to look ahead of the “poke” command to see if there is anything along the line of “poke.” If there is, then another subprogram goes into operation: a collision occurs, an invader is blown up, lights flash, sound blares.
In Beamer’s world, upright arcade games are written in mangled Commodore BASIC 2.0. I’d weep for Babylon, too, if I were projecting the future across these flawed sightlines.
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The Holy Tome of Mitnick, describes the various means through which social engineers infiltrate your company to extract sensitive information. Coupled with a bit of technical knowledge, a bit of insight into large corporate community, and two heaping tablespoons of audacity, these fellows play upon the good will of corporate insiders to get into places where they shouldn’t.
Each chapter and section analyzes different techinques used and psychological traits preyed upon, with sample scenarios (often told from real-life hearsay), but you, gentle reader, should buy this book, learn from its contents, and trust no one. Granted, I started out paranoid cautious, but this book reminds you to not trust that friendly voice on the phone and to vet people you meet in person.
Of course I recommend the book. Read it now!
And just so you know how much I value this book, I paid whole paperback book club price for it!
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Eugene Kane writes another of his screeds in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, this one entitled “Abuse of detainees nothing new in U.S.“:
The president of the United States of America assured the rest of the world Wednesday that images of prisoners in Iraq being mistreated by their American captors were just an aberration.
“People in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent,” Bush said on Arab television, referring to alleged abuse of prisoners by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
“They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know.”
Maybe he ought to tell it to Curtis Harris, a Milwaukee man in danger of never walking again after an encounter with Milwaukee police officers last December.
Kane chronicles an aberration, an abhorrent treatment of a detainee by police in Milwaukee. I guess he equates it with the Iraq story because he’s trying to indicate that it’s standard operation of The Man whether He’s a cop on the beat or a soldier on patrol. Typical Kane.
Blech. I am sorry I bothered you with it, gentle reader.
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According to the Boston Globe, those young geniuses at MIT have come up with a way to meld exercise with video games to make exercise “fun”:
The hot-air balloon was too low, much too low. A mountain loomed ahead, its granite wall reaching out to smash the fragile basket. Daniele De Francesco had only seconds to react. So De Francesco did the only thing he could do. He pedaled faster.
It worked. On the TV screen in front of him, the balloon slowly rose, clearing the peak with room to spare. De Francesco even got a couple of bonuses. He snared a floating gold coin worth 50 points, as well as a vigorous cardiovascular workout.
As a 2000 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, De Francesco still has use of the school’s Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center. That’s why he’s one of the test subjects for an MIT project that merges video gaming with physical fitness.
It’s called CycleScore, and it’s a recumbent bicycle connected to a personal computer programmed with a simple, engaging game. CycleScore transforms the bike’s pedals and handlebars into game controllers, and offers a game program that rewards steady effort and the occasional burst of speed. There’s even a touch of the shoot-’em-up, as the balloonist can fire missiles at passing targets for extra points. The idea is to create a system so interesting and enjoyable that people will forget they’re sweating.
Wow! He’s got to have a Super Genius business card to recreate Prop Cycle, a Namco video game from 1996.
Milennium Arcade had one of those in Crestwood. In 2001, I played it several times and told everyone I was going to open a chain of health clubs where all the cardio equipment had a video game component.
I am going to be a little saddened when someone with, you know, follow-through comes along and makes money off of it. Kinda like that database with a Web front end wherein you can enter little scraps of information and links and the software will serve it up as a Web page. Something else I didn’t follow up on when I had the idea in 1998.
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Count down the days with me. July 27, 2004.
Can’t wait? Listen to the opening theme and visit these sites:
Is it July yet, mommy?
(Invaluable resource: TV Shows on DVD.com.)
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Unlike this story, at least the media –the Cincinatti Enquirer anyway–caught a story of Bush’s common empathy:
Lynn Faulkner, his daughter, Ashley, and their neighbor, Linda Prince, eagerly waited to shake the president’s hand Tuesday at the Golden Lamb Inn. He worked the line at a steady campaign pace, smiling, nodding and signing autographs until Prince spoke:
“This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11.”
Bush stopped and turned back.
“He changed from being the leader of the free world to being a father, a husband and a man,” Faulkner said. “He looked right at her and said, ‘How are you doing?’ He reached out with his hand and pulled her into his chest.”
Faulkner snapped one frame with his camera.
“I could hear her say, ‘I’m OK,’ ” he said. “That’s more emotion than she has shown in 21/2 years. Then he said, ‘I can see you have a father who loves you very much.’ “
“And I said, ‘I do, Mr. President, but I miss her mother every day.’ It was a special moment.”
Do you think John Kerry would have given her an awkward pat on the stomach?
(Link seen originally on Wizbang!, but it’s everywhere by now.)
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From his column in the Star-Tribune (registration required):
I never really loved R.E.M., because I felt as if I was supposed to love it. C’mon! The guys are brainy-looking, and sometimes their lyrics make Elvis
Costello’s opaque blocks of text look as clear as an Irving Berlin chorus — heck, man, you’re in COLLEGE! You HAVE to love R.E.M.! It’s this or Ratt! Fine. I liked them, but never loved them. Example: “End of the World As We Know It” — it’s Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” for vegan guys with goatees.
Ouch, that’s got to burn the kids with van Dykes up (which were much more popular, and often were confused with, goatees). It undoubtedly bothers them as they middle age that Billy Joel has a longer, more diverse musical career than Stipes and co and is ultimately more relevant.
Of course, even when I was young (and even considered a van Dyke briefly), I preferred Billy Joel. I mean, he sang about being young when he was young, and he sang about aging as he aged. REM? One trick ponies: disaffected youth, even as they grew old. Billy Joel covered that, too, in “Angry Young Man”.
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Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times offers some hair care tips:
I’ve never stolen any hotel shampoo because of course I always wash my hair with Guinness and condition it with Harp. It’s been a family tradition since 1917.
Take it from the guy. he’s got the metrosexual thing going on. Although it does seem like a waste of Guinness to me. Perhaps he means Extra Stout, not Draught, which is more appealing.
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Clap the, well, clapboard, for the St. Louis Post Dispatch has a new reason to oppose the discontinuation of emissions testing in the St. Louis area:
In 1999, Robert Bowers, a buyer for the Office of Administration, signed a contract on behalf of the state with Environmental Systems Products, a Connecticut-based company that runs the 15 inspection stations in Missouri. The company is the largest provider of emissions tests in the world.
Its contract runs through August 2007. Ending it early could mean the state would have to refund $40 million to company.
With a general fund that already faces shortfalls, that could mean the death of legislation that narrowly won first-round approval in the Missouri House on Monday.
Pardon my simplistic understanding of contracts, but I don’t think Environmental Systems Products paid forty million dollars to the State of Missouri for the privilege of conducting business which the state will have to refund if it revokes that privilege. I would guess that the buy-out payment is less than what the government, and buy government I mean we citizens would have to pay out to keep the program going. Not to mention our own hassles of sitting in our cars for an hour waiting our turn on the rollers.
But it’s not about just payng the forty million, oh no:
The state would also lose the $2.50 fee it collects from each $24 inspection if it ends the program. That would mean about $600,000 a year in lost revenue.
Oh, there’s the loss of the ability to strip money from motorists in the St. Louis area. That hurts the state budget, which will undoubtedly be forced to cutback to roller skates from nicely-painted vans on some meals on wheels program or another.
It’s good to see persistence on the part of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. They hit us with the dreaded runny nose and lost jobs attack, now it’s contract “refunds” and lost state revenue. What will it be tomorrow, lack of emissions testing leads to increased ecstasy use and removes St. Louis from consideration for an NBA expansion team?
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Something seems awfully familiar about Anne Taintor’s new book:
Whether becoming your mother thrills you or terrifies you, it’s likely you’ll find something to laugh about in artist Anne Taintor’s new collection of collages in “I’m Becoming My Mother” (Chronicle Books, 112 pages, $12.95). Taintor takes images that promote the domestic ideals of the early 1950s and slaps one-liners – often hilarious, always unexpected – on them.
I just can’t put my finger on it.
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Dale Franks examines the beauty in the boondoggle that is the Navy/Marine Corps Internet.
Oh, yeah, an enterprise-caliber, best-in-breed solution designed to do nothing but cause money to exchange hands. Lots of money. Taxpayer money. Beautiful.
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In his current column in the Chicago Sun Times, stings Bob Greene in a simile:
My room at the David Intercontinental looked down on the beach. The first night I couldn’t sleep, so went downstairs to slog through the Mediterranean and join what looked like about 10,000 people partying on the sand. I expected young adults dancing the hora. What I found were high school students, some falling-down drunk, clutching tequila bottles. I tried assessing the mood of Israeli youth, which seems to have absorbed our core American values. “I want to be a star!” exuded Tal Zolti, 16. Their English was good, but I started feeling like Bob Greene crashing the junior prom, and after one kid called me “Grandpa” I decided it was time to head back upstairs.
Remember, Bob Greene resigned his position at the Chicago Tribune after having an affair with a seventeen-year-old girl (legal in Illinois, fellows!) whom he met on the job.
Me, I am disappointed. Not because I am a fan of Greene’s, which I am, but because I’ve been polishing my own Greene zingers since I’m reading Bob Greene’s America and will undoubtedly deploy those zingers in the online review.
Unfortunately, now they’ll seem derivative of a real writer. Thanks a lot, Mr. Steinberg.
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