Category Archives: Death Of Common Sense

November 27, 2013 · 14:14

Odds & Sods For Wednesday, November 27th

Item The First: Should it be “The Long Suffering Wife” or “The Long-Suffering Wife”? I’ve been going with the former, but someone suggested that could be construed as her being “nine feet tall and suffering” as opposed to “suffering for a long time”. Now, I would think that “The Long, Suffering Wife” would be “nine feet tall and suffering” and that no hyphen is necessary. Punctuation is important, you know. (Ask Grandma tomorrow when the kid either yells “It’s time to eat Grandma!” or “It’s time to eat, Grandma!”)

Item The Second: I have been known at times to rant about the “freakin’ idiots” of the world, and this often targets politicians and our legal system. (Sorry, I’m not the one who invented the system. If politicians and lawyers would like to stop being highlighted as freakin’ idiots, they’re free to stop doing freakin’ stupid things any time they want. But I digress.)

Having gone off at the mouth about some of the bad things I see, it’s time to highlight a good thing that caught my eye. NPR has an article (and I went hunting and found a more detailed article at the Chicago Tribute) about a couple in Illinois that’s being allowed to get married immediately, rather than being forced to wait until June, 2014 when the new Illinois law allowing same-sex marriages goes into effect. Their circumstances are extreme, and tragic, and I think we should all congratulate the judge, US District Judge Thomas Durkin, for making a ruling that demonstrates compassion and common sense.

Item The Third: I understand why are there television shows that start with a voice-over and a card that says, “This show is a work of fiction and is not in any way based on any actual person or event”. (Hint, it rhymes with “too many lawyers”.) What I don’t understand is why they do that after the previous two hours of sitcoms have had teaser commercials for the show at least once every half hour and every single one of them screams “AN EPISODE RIPPED FROM TODAY’S HEADLINES!” Doesn’t that by definition mean that either the marketing department or the legal department is lying? (Yes, you get extra credit if you immediately pointed out the excellent odds that both of them are lying.)

Item The Fourth: The last two days NASA-TV has been running live interviews where NASA folks (astronauts, scientists, researchers, etc) have been going through these long series of one broadcast interview after another being done and recorded. On Tuesday it was scientists from Goddard being interviewed about Comet ISON, on Wednesday it was interviews about what the astronauts eat on ISS for Thanksgiving.

I understand that TV news anchors and personalities are no longer hired for having the same journalistic chops as Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley. They’re hired because they look good in front of a camera and can be pleasant on command. This leads to a fair number of them who appear to be unable to recite the alphabet without a teleprompter. It’s never more clear than when they’re doing these interviews. Leading off with statements like, “There are three people in space right now, one American and two Russians” is not only blatantly incorrect, it’s hideously lazy journalism. How hard is it to go the the NASA website, or simply type “Who is on ISS right now?” into Google to get a dozen correct answers. (Like, here, and it’s currently six people, which breaks down as three Russians, two Americans, and one Japanese.)  You can do that on your phone, for crying out loud! I commend the various NASA personnel being interviewed for not spending their entire interview correcting the stupid things said.

That having been said, is there an astronaut training course called “1,001 Ways To Say ‘That’s A Great Question'”? You hear it when they’re doing interviews in the studio, on orbit, from Houston, or at a public event like a Google + Hangout. They say it whether they’re talking to the president, a reporter, or a fifth-grader. They say it on every, single, freakin’ question asked! Is there a Department Of That’s A Great Question at NASA? (I rant, but I still love NASA and the astronauts and the scientists, would kill to work with them.)

Item The Fifth: Tomorrow is do-or-die day for Comet ISON as it slingshots around the sun, only 730,000 miles above the solar surface. (For reference, that’s only about three times the distance between the Earth and the moon.) That qualifies it as a “sun grazer” and it will be the point where it’s most likely to shatter into pieces or simply evaporate. The astronomers who have been tracking Comet ISON think it’s big enough to survive and come around the other side toward Earth (it can’t hit us, even if it falls apart, closest approach will be over forty million miles away), which will at least give it a chance to be spectacular in December.

The reports it might be “as bright as the full moon!” are total nonsense and always have been. There have been comets that have been bright enough to be seen in daylight and some early estimates thought Comet ISON had the potential to do it, but now it doesn’t seem that will happen. But for the last week or ten days it has been visible to the naked eye as it approached the sun, and there are some truly spectacular photographs out there on the Internet. Assuming it survives, once it comes around the other side of the sun it will start to be visible before dawn and by mid-December it will have gone far enough north that it will “circumpolar”, which means it will be visible all night long for northern hemisphere viewers. (Sorry, southern hemisphere folks!)

Tomorrow, despite it being Thanksgiving in the US, there will be a lot of astronomers skipping the turkey and monitoring Comet ISON’s progress. You can do it as well online (you can’t see it yourself, it’s right next to the sun, you’ll go blind, use common sense) since NASA will be having a Google + Hangout from 13:00 to 15:30 EST, 10:00 to 12:30 PST. (Perihelion is at 13:25 EST, 10:25 PST.) You can send in questions via Twitter, or you can just watch as the satellite images come down (here‘s the latest one, with Comet ISON approaching the sun from about the 4:00 position) and see what happens.

If you want to know more, there are hundreds of articles and news stories online — I recommend you start here, with Emily Lakdawalla’s excellent live blog on The Planetary Society’s website.

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Filed under Astronomy, Death Of Common Sense, Entertainment, Freakin' Idiots!, Odds & Sods, Ronnie

November 26, 2013 · 21:14

The US Post Office’s Business Model

A week or so ago The Long Suffering Wife had to send back a couple of things she had gotten from two mail order places. The first one had a postage-paid sticker available for any needed returns. The merchandise to be returned got stuffed into a big envelope, the sticker attached, the package sent. No muss, no fuss.

The second package turned into a bit of a nightmare. They also had a sticker, but it wasn’t postage-paid. An identical big envelope got stuffed, I went to the post office to mail it. When I found a line of 20+ people with only two windows open, I chose to use the self-serve kiosk, four of which have been installed for the specific purpose of keeping people out of that line if all they have is something simple. Like buying stamps. Or weighing and sending a package.

I put the package on the scale, went through the straightforward touchscreen menu. What are you mailing it in? (They have pictures, this box, that box, your own box, this envelope, your own envelope, etc.) Is it hard or flexible? What zip code is it going to? Do you want extra insurance? Do you want the package to be signed for? Is there anything breakable? Is there anything dangerous (list given)? Do you want the $35 deliver tomorrow option, the $13 deliver in two days option, or the $6 deliver in three or four days option? (I’m rounding, but that’s the gist of it.) I picked the $6 option, got a sticker with postage and a bar code on it, attached it to the envelope, paid by credit card, and viola, it’s done.

Right? It seemed to be a straightforward menu system, simple, direct, no worries.

Until the package came back to us the next day with a handwritten yellow Post-It note saying that the postage should be $35, not $6. (Before you think that I picked the wrong option, consider that if I had, the machine would have charged me at that rate, not at the $6 rate, right?)

So today I’m off to see what can be done. Again there’s a line of 18 to 20 people, only two clerks, and I’m standing in line for over a half hour. At one point a third clerk comes out, but within seconds one of the two original clerks slaps up her “CLOSED” sign with a vengeance. I finally get to the front of the line and ask how I can cheaply send this merchandise, showing him the bar code and postage sticker I had bought last week.

Ah, I’m told that the blue envelopes are for the $35 Express Mail (one day) option, the red envelopes are for the $10 Priority Mail (two day) option. Or I could have used a Priority Mail Flat Rate box at $13 for a two day option. What about the $6 option that the machine in the lobby gave me? It doesn’t exist, I’m told. If that’s true, why are the machines in the lobby programmed to sell it? And if everything’s going by the computer scanning the bar codes to see what you paid, where it’s going, and what class of service, why does it matter at all what color the envelope is?

Whatever. Don’t engage, don’t argue. I just want to get out of here. The 25 to 30 people now standing in line want me to get out of here. (It was now lunch hour and the line had been growing behind me. And don’t say, “Well, don’t go at lunch hour!” I didn’t. I had been in the freakin’ line so long that it had BECOME the lunch hour.) The postal clerk gives me a red envelope to address and stuff, then he peels the old postage sticker off of the blue envelope and puts it on the red envelope. At least I won’t lose the $6 I paid last week. I pay the balance, he says everything’s great, and I FLEE the building.

Let’s compare and contrast that with, say, FedEx. Fed Ex has multiple envelopes and boxes that you can use, or you can use your own, they don’t care. With no line, from the comfort of your home, you fill out a form on the computer, pick your options, your service level (next day, two day, three day, etc), the weight, the address, etc. Anyone can get an account, so if you send things often the system will autofill your data and you can build an address book on the FedEx site for anyplace you send things to repeatedly. Then you can have them come to you to pick it up, or if it’s late in the day, you can drop it off at any one of about a zillion drop boxes. Granted, it’s a bit more expensive. The one day, two day, and three day options would cost $71, $37, and $13 respectively.

The important thing to note here is the bottom line. Fedex makes it simple and easy, if a bit pricier. The Post Office makes it confusing and time consuming, but you might save money if you must have next day or second day delivery. For three day delivery, the prices are pretty much identical, $12.95 for the Post Office and $12.86 for FedEx.

More importantly…

Fedex in 2010, 2011, and 2012 had net income (not gross revenue, net income) of $1.184 billion, $1.452 billion, and $2.032 billion respectively.

The US Post Office in 2010, 2011, and 2012 had losses of $8.5 billion, $5.1 billion, and $15.1 billion.

I’m sure you can google and find hundreds if not thousands of articles and analyses on how the Post Office got itself into this position. As a consumer who has to stand in the stinkin’ line and then get frustrated and confused by the system, I DON’T CARE. I just know that next time, for a three-day delivery, I’ll go straight to FedEx. For a two-day delivery, I’ll seriously think about spending $37 instead of $13 just so I don’t have to deal with the line and the frustration.

So here’s some free, common sense, business advice for the US Post Office:

  1. Shorten the damn lines. Open more windows, have more people on during high traffic hours, something.
  2. Make the automated kiosks actually have accurate information. When I pick this service to this address in this packaging and the machine says $6, don’t make me come back next week for it to be $10 after I stood in the damn line. (See #1.)
  3. Why does it matter what color the envelope is? The computers are doing 99% of the work anyway, so I’m not really believing that it’s because some human along the way is going to get stuff mixed up. I understand that you can (and should) charge extra if it’s lumpy, it’s not flat, it’s in a box, it weighs a ton, and so on. No problem. But the blue envelope versus the red envelope thing? Give me a break.
  4. Give your employees some flexibility and get some employees who care. Nothing’s more fun than thinking, “Thank God, there’s finally a third clerk!” only to have someone shut down at the crack of 12:00:00.01 because it’s lunch time, totally ignoring the line of pissed off customers that’s stretching out the door.

And then there’s trying to ship anything overseas and dealing with the customs forms. But that’s a rant for another day.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Freakin' Idiots!

October 19, 2013 · 22:49

Eyes On The Prize

This year, this month, this week — they have all seen more than enough examples of how bad things can get when we refuse to work together, when we focus on our differences and our hatreds.

The government shutdown. Syria. Sexism, harassment, and discrimination in science, business, writing, fandom, and just about every facet of our lives. Maryville & Steubenville.

Let’s pause for a minute and remember what we can do as a people, as a country, as a planet, when we stop being petty, bickering, assholes long enough to communicate and work together.

iss2_sts114_small©-NASA

We built this! For over eleven years, there have been multiple human beings living in space every single day, sometimes as many as thirteen of them at once! They’re doing unprecedented science in microgravity in medicine, materials science, biology, human physiology, and dozens of other fields. And they’re learning how to do the closed-system environmental engineering that can take us further out, to Mars and beyond.

curiosity-177-sol©-NASA/JPL

We built this! We landed a nuclear-powered, laser-shooting, mobile laboratory the size of a freakin’ car on Mars by using a combination heat shield, parachute, and rocket-powered sky crane, and it’s been there driving around and working for over a year with more years ahead of it. (And Opportunity, which landed on Mars on January 24, 2004, is still working there almost ten years later!)

Saturn (Phil Plait)©-Phil Plait

We built this! We have had a robot spacecraft orbiting Saturn since July 1, 2004, taking thousand and thousand of pictures like this one. It’s going strong after over nine years, with another three or four years still ahead of it. It has discovered amazing things on Saturn and on many of Saturn’s moons. Lakes of methane on Titan! Incredible complexity in Saturn’s ring system! Massive thermal vents and plumes flying off into space from the south pole of Encelidus! (You can get the full-sized, high-resolution version of this picture here.)

hubble©-NASA

We built this! There are those who will point to how the Hubble Space Telescope was built with a major flaw – I will point to how that flaw was corrected using a plan developed by thousands of experts on the ground and executed to perfection by spacewalking astronauts under circumstances that were never dreamed of when Hubble was designed. And then we went and upgraded it on orbit again twice and extended its capabilities and vision and lifetime by decades!

space shuttle launch©-NASA

We built this! The Space Shuttle was the most complex flying machine ever conceived. That fact that we took three perfectly functional and capable spacecraft and put them in museums without a replacement ready to go is nothing short of criminal. But the accomplishments of the Space Shuttle fleet (launching satellites, capturing & repairing satellites, a platform for experiments and laboratory missions, a platform for radar mapping of the Earth, docking with Mir, building the ISS, launching and repairing Hubble, and so much more) will not be surpassed soon.

voyager jupiter©-NASA/JPL

We built this! Voyagers I and II, the first human vessels sent beyond the solar system and into interstellar space, but only after giving us our first close-up looks at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

apollo-15©-NASA

We built this! Forty-four years ago, humans walked on the moon. If that doesn’t just really & truly rock your world, you’re not paying attention.

My point is that we have the proven ability to walk like giants when we choose to.

Compare our everyday world to the everyday world of our grandparents. I’m not sure any of my grandparents ever in their life traveled more than fifty miles from where they were born. Today we go to Asia or Europe or Africa for a vacation, or take coast-to-coast road trips without a second thought. Our grandparents were born in a time when most homes didn’t have phones, electricity, or even indoor plumbing. Today we have grade school kids who carry around phones and computers that would be considered black magic by those same grandparents. (Of course, we use them for cat videos and Angry Birds, but that’s a different rant.) The comparisons go on and on and on.

We get to make a choice every day on how we want to spend the limited hours and limited breaths we have in this life. Fundamentally, it all boils down to a binary choice.

Do we want to destroy, hinder, obstruct, and hate?

Or do we want to build, enable, cooperate, and communicate?

C’mon folk, let’s start making better choices!

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Space

October 14, 2013 · 22:13

Quick Updates re: Scientific American Kerfuffle

Just in case anyone is following this blog in order to keep up to date:

From earlier today, Isis the Scientist has a third article on the situation. (She posted the first article that brought Dr Lee’s article deletion to light, as well as a follow up article on Saturday.) Some of the points she brings up have been addressed by events later today (see next) and her tone is angry and caustic, but I think she still has some valid points to make regarding how women and POC are marginalized.

Biology-Online.org has terminated their relationship with their employee who initiated this whole chain of events with his inappropriate comments. Science, politics, banking, plumbing, babysitting – it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, that kind of language and treatment of a customer-client-associate is unprofessional and unforgivable.

Scientific American this afternoon re-posted the original article by DNLee which had been deleted on Friday afternoon. This is a very good thing.

Finally, another Scientific American blogger, Scott Huler, has a well written and insightful article about why certain things were done the way they were by Scientific American, as well as how these things turn into a mess quickly with today’s need for instant answers. (Lawyers! Bloggers!)

It’s progress, and I’m glad to see it.

 

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Moral Outrage

August 25, 2013 · 17:32

Pawns

In a great many things, I’m pretty much a “middle-of-the-road” guy. I believe in moderation, common sense, and personal responsibility. I’m a pragmatist.

Take television, for example. It’s often fashionable in certain circles that I frequent to pooh-pooh television as garbage, the lowest common denominator, something for the common folk to watch, something that’s beneath anyone with advanced sensibilities. I think that’s bullshit.

Television, without a doubt, has a tremendous amount of absolute garbage on it. “Honey Boo-Boo” is my vision of hell, just about anything on MTV is stupid enough to make you weep for humanity, and I don’t even want to start on soap operas or the tabloid shows that obsess over the Kardashians and the teeny bopper celebrity de jour.

I think the vast, overwhelming majority of “reality TV” falls into the category of “utter tripe” – but then there are “Mythbusters” and “Dirty Jobs” and “NOVA”.

The classic sitcom is terrible, with fake laugh tracks, stale jokes, and stereotypical characters – but then there’s “M*A*S*H” and “Big Bang Theory” and “Modern Family”.

The cookie-cutter cop shows are a dime a dozen, most of them “ripped from today’s headlines” or “mismatched buddy cop” variants – but then there’s “NYPD Blue”.

These days there are also horribly crappy shows made for the cable networks, like “Sharknado” and “Jackass” – but you also get “Breaking Bad”, “Game Of Thrones”, “Homeland”, “The Big C”, and so on.

Television and Twitter have a lot in common. It’s probably accurate for both to say that they are 98% or more total slime, stupidity, and infantile drivel. But that other couple of percent can be pretty amazing at times.

What the “TV is beneath me, I never watch it” argument misses is that YOU GET TO CHOOSE. You get to make intelligent and informed decisions if you so choose. No one’s holding a gun to your head to make you watch “Maury” or “TMZ Live”. There isn’t going to be a quiz tomorrow at a police checkpoint where you have to prove that you watched “The Bachelorette” finale. You’re not going to be a social pariah if you’re not up to date on the latest plot twist on “Days Of Our Lives”.

By being elitist, you’re denying yourself the potential to enjoy some truly marvelous storytelling and entertainment. By being elitist, you’re telling me that you’re not capable of making intelligent decisions on your own, so you’re going to cower behind a facade of fake intellectual superiority. By being elitist, you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and then being stupid enough to be proud of it.

If you’re one of those elitists, what do you do for entertainment besides watch TV? Read books? Watch movies? Listen to music? Is every book, movie, and composition out there a gem, or do you get to pick the ones you want and ignore the ones that you don’t like? Or are you so busy in your life that you don’t have time for entertainment? If so, you have my sympathies, but you’re not living, you’re just existing. (And what are you doing reading this?)

So, in summary, I like to watch certain television shows that I really like and enjoy. Only now, I can’t watch some shows and events that I like due to circumstances that are completely beyond my control. And it’s really starting to get on my nerves.

In our part of Los Angeles, the cable TV monopoly has been granted to Time Warner Cable. As you may have heard, TWC and the CBS network are at war over how much TWC pays to CBS to re-transmit CBS shows to customers like me. As this has escalated, TWC has taken CBS (and all of its affiliated networks such as Showtime and the Smithsonian Channel) off of its cable systems in New York City, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

TWC, of course, is blaming CBS. “CBS is making outrageous demands for the right to continue carrying their channels.” We just got our TWC bill this month. With our full package of programming and internet access our bill is over $200 a month. TWC gave us a $3.67 credit for having Showtime pulled. WOWSERS! (And by “wowsers” what I mean is “What A Crock!!”)

CBS, of course, is blaming TWC. “Time Warner Cable has dropped CBS, you’re at risk of missing the NFL, US Open, and the new TV season on CBS.” I can’t even watch the shows online since my internet access is through TWC and CBS has “retaliated” by cutting off access to customers who access the internet through TWC. “Time Warner Cable Customers: Content Not Available”

The FCC and other regulatory agencies, of course, are doing absolutely nothing. Anyone who expected our “leaders” to “lead” should put on their dunce caps, go sit in the corner, and think about that for a while.

As someone who simply wants to watch football or the morning news or a favorite TV show, I DON’T CARE. I’m blaming EVERYONE. I don’t believe that CBS is trying to save me, the customer, from the big, bad, monopolistic cable oligarchy. I don’t believe that TWC is trying to protect my interest and keep my bill down.

(For one thing, if either CBS or TWC gave even the slightest sliver of a rat’s ass about me as a consumer, they would offer a la carte options so that I don’t have to pay for fifty-seven different shopping channels that I’ve never watched for a single second, or eighty-three Spanish channels when I don’t speak a word of Spanish. Does anyone see that happening any time in the next thousand years? Yeah, me neither.)

I’m really getting fed up with being a pawn, caught in the middle of a pissing contest between two multi-billion dollar multi-national conglomerates. I’m even more fed up with the constant smarmy, self-serving, “we’re doing it for you” bullshit from both sides. I don’t believe it, they don’t believe it, and no one else believes it. It’s worse than the propaganda spit out by political campaigns these days.

It would be such a relief if one of the CEO’s would get up to the podium and just say, “Yeah, we’re screwing you over. Tough shit, we don’t care. We know that you’ll come back and throw money at us when it’s over. This whole thing is nothing but an infantile contest to see who has the biggest dick and make a lot of lawyers rich. Please drop your pants, grab your ankles, and smile.”

Freakin’ idiots!

I just wish that we weren’t the bigger freakin’ idiots when we do exactly what the expect us to do. I wish there were another option other than using the “off” switch.

I wish there was a way to stop being a pawn.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Entertainment, Freakin' Idiots!

July 15, 2013 · 22:39

Jenny, Jenny, Who Can We Turn To?

The producers of ABC’s “The View” have decided that their latest hostess on their afternoon talk show will be Jenny McCarthy.

Ms. McCarthy has a couple of notable highlights to her career. She was a Playboy centerfold in 1993 and later Playmate of the Year. She has done some modeling. She has had some roles in some truly forgettable films and won a couple of Razzie Awards for them. She played a recurring character, a ditzy, buxom, blonde, on “Two & A Half Men”. (What a stretch of her acting chops!)

And she has become quite the spokesperson campaigning against childhood vaccinations, loudly and proudly pushing the completely false and discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.

Why is she now a hostess on a daily, mid-afternoon talk show aimed at the stay-at-home mom demographic? Her track record shows that she meets the definition of “pretty” used by Hugh Hefner and the mythical Charlie Harper. And…

That’s it. There is no second qualification that I can see.

But she is passionate, if ignorant and terribly misguided, about telling other parents to NOT let their pediatricians give their kids immunizations for measles, polio, chickenpox, diphtheria, hepatitis, flu, mumps, pertussis, rubella, tetanus, and so on.

Others have been making a fuss over this far more eloquently than I can. For example:

  • The James Randi Educational Foundation in 2008 gave Ms. McCarthy a Pigasus Award for contributions to pseudoscience.
  • Phil Plait (“The Bad Astronomer”) has a great article on his Slate blog here.
  • Time magazine’s television critic James Poniewozik has an excellent article here.
  • The Anti-Vaccine Body Count is keeping score.
  • Google “Jenny McCarthy Vaccine” and just watch all of the news articles pop up.

Parents get to make choices every day on how their kids are going to be raised, and with a very few exceptions that’s the way it’s supposed to be and has to be. (Sorry, those exceptions – if you’re raising your toddlers with rattlesnakes as babysitters, for example, that’s probably over the line in my book.) Parents should always be trying to do their best to make informed decisions on behalf of their children, not just following anyone blindly.

But too many people can’t or won’t make a distinction between a medical expert that they see in the flesh every few months and a “celebrity” they see sitting next to Barbara Walters on an “entertainment” show every day. They take that celebrity’s word as fact, when it’s really 100% opinion, and an opinion that’s been repeatedly proven to be horribly, dangerously wrong.

In this case it’s even worse, because it’s not just the anti-vaxxers’ children who are going to get sick. When they get sick they spread the disease to others. Google for articles about the upswing in measles and whooping cough caused by the failure of parents to immunize in the past couple of decades, even though these diseases are almost entirely preventable. Judge for yourself the damage that has already been done throughout society by these misguided, inaccurate, discredited campaigns of fear and ignorance.

Do you think that having tens of thousands of kids with preventable diseases every year is helping to drive down the cost of health care for you and me and everyone else?

Who do you want to listen to when making life and death decisions for your children. Your doctor, who went to eight or ten years of medical school and is backed by tens of thousands of researchers and decades of data and clinical trials?

Or Miss October 1993?

What’s that old song by Tommy Tutone? “Jenny, I got your number… 8-6-7-5-3-0-9”

We always thought it was a phone number. Maybe it’s the number of children who are going to suffer and possibly die from completely preventable diseases now that ABC has given Jenny a pulpit.

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Entertainment, Freakin' Idiots!, Health

June 23, 2013 · 20:20

Morons Behind The Wheel

I’ve heard it said that in other countries, particularly in Europe, specifically in Germany, it’s not anywhere near as easy to get a driver’s license as it is in the United States. Does anyone have any experience with that data to either refute or confirm? Regardless, any time spent on the roads is likely to leave me wondering, “Why is it so easy for complete morons to get a driver’s license in this country?!”

Almost any trip on our nations streets and highways, no matter how brief, can expose you & your loved ones to folks driving while on the phone (illegal in many states including here in CA), driving while texting (ditto), running red lights and stop signs, speeding way in excess of what’s safe (let alone the posted speed limit), pulling out into traffic and blocking lanes to make illegal left-hand turns, failing to pull over for emergency vehicles, turning right across railroad or bus tracks when there’s a clearly marked “No Right On Red” sign and a red right-turn arrow showing, driving without wipers in the rain, driving without lights at night…

As a card-carrying father, I’m especially fond of parents whom I see driving like freakin’ idiots with their kids in the car. They’re a special breed of stupid, and I hope for two things when they die causing a multi-vehicle, multi-fatality Sigalert while being freakin’ idiots. First, I hope that the kids are at home that day and don’t have to pay for their parents’ arrogance and ignorance. (“Are you ignorant or arrogant?” “I don’t know and I don’t care!”) Secondly, I hope that there’s a special level of Hell reserved just for them and their ilk.

Last week I saw a woman stopped at a light (Victory Boulevard, eastbound, near Pierce College), texting, and completely ignoring what was going on around her. The light turned green, she didn’t notice, and sat blocking traffic until folks behind her started honking. (Not me, I was happy to be in the lane next to her.) She then sped off like a demon, until she had to stop at the next red light, this time stopping in the left turn lane. Again she started texting, again ignoring her surroundings, again not noticing that the (short) left-turn light had turned green. Again folks behind her started honking and she finally noticed – but by this time when she floored it, the left-turn light was turning red. She sailed off right through the red light, now dodging oncoming cars (who now had a green light), leaving them honking at her and wondering what kind of freakin’ idiot she was.

For the record, she did all of this with two kids in car seats in the back seat.

I’m sure that there are a lot of folks who believe that having a driver’s license is a basic right, along with the freedom and independence that go along with it. But it’s not a right, any more than anyone has a “right” to own a house or a “right” to go to MIT or CalTech. It’s a privilege, one that has to be earned and maintained.

I have no hope at all that we will ever make people more responsible or make it more difficult for the incompetent or ignorant to get licenses. We can’t even get convicted drunk drivers off the road, repeat offenders!

So let’s hope that high tech finally gets to the point where it overtakes human stupidity and irresponsibility, especially behind the wheel. Let’s hear it for Google’s self-driving cars and all of their competitors.

I can’t wait for the day when the only way to get a driver’s license is to prove that you can do a better job than the built-in autopilot, and only about one in a hundred folks even bother to try. Let the masses get carted around by the robots, and they can tweet, talk, and text to their little heart’s desire.

Meanwhile, when driving, stay safe!! Assume that 99% of those around you are not paying attention to what they’re doing and may do something unexpected, irrational, and dangerous at any second. Your fellow drivers (at least in the US) won’t disappoint you often by driving safely.

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May 30, 2013 · 16:53

Can’t Make This Stuff Up!

JC Penney Tea PotJCP Media Inc

What does this look like to you?

It’s a teapot. Specifically it’s a picture of a teapot on a JC Penney billboard next to the 405 Freeway here in the Los Angeles area, down around the LAX airport, somewhere in Studio City.

Anything odd or unusual about it?

I wouldn’t have thought twice about it if I had seen it (which I haven’t). It’s a teapot. Chrome. Shiny. Bronze bell of some sort on the spout. Black handle.

Apparently other folks don’t think so. There were a few complaints about it, apparently starting with Twitter and Reddit. Now the media’s caught on to it and the story’s made the newspapers and TV news. Apparently there are no other more newsworthy stories to report. (I’m thrilled to hear that the damage in Oklahoma has been all fixed, there are no murders or terrorists acts to speak of, the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are all over, poverty and hunger have been solved…)

The “offensive” item has been removed from JC Penney’s website. The billboard has been taken down. The “offense” a handful of folks are complaining about?

They say the teapot looks like Adolf Hitler.

Yep. Couldn’t make this up. If I could, I would be writing for Saturday Night Live or David Letterman. I’ll give you a second to scroll back up to look at the picture, squint a little, maybe have a couple of stiff drinks to help your eyes unfocus.

See it? Yeah, just like the “Jesus in the burnt toast” or “Mother Theresa in the broken Dorito” images you see on the Interwebs. It’s called “pareidolia“. Google it for hundreds of examples, images, and explanations.

The folks with the overactive and malfunctioning pattern-recognition lobes in their brains are offended that JC Penney would sell a teapot that they say looks like Adolf Hitler and they raised a ruckus. Now they’re getting news coverage and action. They even got the mayor of Culver City to say that he was “outraged” and “offended”, in part because he’s Jewish. Even the Anti-Defamation League got into the act, although their response was less inflammatory than the mayor’s. There were initial reports that advertising executive(s) at JC Penney were getting fired over this, although following up on it this afternoon I can’t find confirmation of that story.

There’s the part that pushes this beyond farce and into mind-numbing stupidity. If politicians and corporations like JC Penney are so cowed by the societal pressure to be politically correct and 100% non-offensive with every breath, even when they’re dealing with something that’s totally imaginary & straight out of La-La Land, how can they be considered leaders?

Where is the leader in our society (corporate or political) who, when faced with this sort of low-grade psychotic nonsense, will stand up and politely but firmly say, “It’s just a teapot. We’re not sorry – we haven’t done anything to be sorry for. As for the news media, we’re happy to let you know that you can go back to covering Lindsey Lohan and the Kardashian de jour. This is not a news story. It’s just a picture of a teapot. Move along. Get a life.”

At least someone at JC Penney’s Twitter account had the common sense to put out this:

JC Penney Response To HuffPost

Let’s hope no one got fired for this tweet.

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May 16, 2013 · 17:56

Hot Buttons & Two Tiny Bits Of Common Sense

Looking out at our big, beautiful, and exciting world and the multicultural, multifaceted, and multidimensional society that we’ve built on it, one occasionally sees that there are spots of ugliness.

Some of these spots of ugliness are “natural” in the sense that we have little or no control over them. For example, tornadoes ripped through north-central Texas last night with little warning and at last count at least six people were dead, hundreds are hurt, thousands are homeless, damage is in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Here in Los Angeles we’re no strangers to earthquakes. Other parts of the world have blizzards, tsunami, hurricanes, floods, and so on. As a society we do what we can to give warnings to those in danger when we can and to be ready to aid when disaster strikes, but generally there’s not a lot of “evil” associated with natural disasters.

Some spots of ugliness in the world are the result of what the majority of us can all mutually agree on as “evil”. World War II comes to mind, as do countless other wars and conflicts, terrorist acts, genocides, atrocities, murders, rapes, and so on. Lots of nastiness, evil should be fought at every turn — but that’s not what today’s rant is about.

For me, a couple of real “hot button” items are the spots of ugliness caused not by “evil” people but by stupid, misguided, ignorant, irresponsible, and sanctimonious people. The sort of ugliness that Phillip K. Howard referred to as “The Death Of Common Sense” (an excellent book, highly recommended).  In the last couple of weeks, two of these incidents in particular have hit the news and the best thing I’ve heard today is that both of them appear to have been resolved with common sense carrying the day.

In the first incident, it was reported May 7th that a Northville, Michigan parent was calling for the banning of Anne Frank’s “The Diary Of A Young Girl” from schools in Michigan due to “pornographic” content.

I’ll just wait here for you to pick your jaw up off the floor. (*whistles for a bit*) OK?

I’ve read “The Diary Of A Young Girl” of course and knew what the mother in question was talking about. Anne Frank was a young teenager, writing a diary in hellish conditions, while also going through puberty. There is a passage of a couple of paragraphs in which she describes her self-exploration of her own body and the changes happening to it. The mother in question told the local press, “It’s pretty graphic, and it’s pretty pornographic for seventh-grade boys and girls to be reading.”

Interestingly, she also said, “It doesn’t mean my child is sheltered, it doesn’t mean I live in a bubble, and it doesn’t mean I’m trying to ban books.” I’ll repeat, she said this as she’s trying to ban a book. A book which is considered by almost everyone else on this planet to be a classic piece of literature, especially for teenagers. I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree on her claims about what her complaint means and doesn’t mean.

Perhaps we could review what “pornography” means. Mirriam-Webster defines it as “the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement”. Assuming that the parent in question had actually read the book that she was complaining about, can she explain to us what part of the passage in question was “erotic” or “intended to cause sexual excitement”? I would use words like “clinical” or “descriptive” but never “erotic”.

Anyway, I tried to get over this last week and move on. This morning word comes that common sense has reared its ugly head in Michigan and the school committee in question has voted unanimously to keep the book in the school curriculum. I, for one, would like to commend Robert D.G. Behnke and the Northville, Michigan school committee for their actions, particularly for the unanimous vote and for the thoughtful letter they sent to the local parents. Their letter is just awash with other common sense suggestions, such as getting the parents to be more involved in understanding what their kids are reading and learning and giving them choices if they have objections.

You rock, Northville, Michigan!!

Meanwhile, down in Florida, Kiera Wilmot was suspended from high school and arrested on two felony counts of discharging a destructive device and possessing a weapon on campus. What was her crime? She tried a simple science experiment on campus (admittedly without authorization or a teacher’s guidance), mixing a common household cleaning product and aluminum foil, which generated gas and caused the top of a plastic soda bottle to pop off.

How many people were hurt? None.

How much damage was done? None.

What was the total effect of her curiosity? A sound like a firecracker and a plastic top from a plastic soda bottle flew a few feet through the air and hit the ground. (That demon gravity will get you every time!)

By all accounts Kiera is an excellent student, never been in trouble. So what should be the common sense response to this event by the authorities?

I might suggest a stern warning to not do it again without having a science teacher supervising, and enrollment in an advanced chemistry class so she can exercise her curiosity. Maybe an honors class so she can stretch herself academically. Maybe a science fair project under the help and supervision of the high school science teachers. Maybe mentoring her in case she needs help getting a freakin’ scholarship, acceptance to a good college, and a career as a scientist?!

Nope.

The Florida authorities, including the school administration (which I always thought was supposed to be helping her to LEARN) suspended her from school, started expulsion proceedings, and called the police. The police arrested her, led her off campus in handcuffs, and charged with two felonies.

Again, go retrieve that jaw of yours, you look silly with it hanging down like that. I’ll wait.

Fortunately, in today’s electronic and instantly connected world, this story hit the tech / nerd / science / geek community pretty hard and pretty fast, so there was plenty of righteous indignation expressed by those far more well spoken and influential then I am.

One of my first thoughts when I heard about it was Homer Hickham‘s story, told in his book “Rocket Boys” and turned into the movie “October Sky” (a truly fantastic film, highly recommended). In the late 50’s Dr. Hickham and his high school friends were growing up in a small town in West Virginia where the only career path open to them was work in the coal mines, just like their fathers and grandfathers had worked in the coal mines. The Rocket Boys wanted more and did self-taught experiments in rocketry that led them to winning local and national science fairs, getting scholarships, going to college, and in Dr. Hickham’s case,  to working for NASA training space shuttle crews.

It turns out that Dr. Hickham heard about the story of Kiera Wilmot also – he’s providing her with a scholarship. [18:15 Update – For clarification, Dr. Hickham has offered to pay Kiera’s fees to go to Space Camp, not a college scholarship. A fantastic and generous offer!]

But as good as that news is, word comes today that, again, common sense has reared its ugly head and the charges against Kiera have been dropped.

It may be that the school administration and local district attorney are doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Or perhaps they’re simply bowing to the weight of the scrutiny, criticism, and embarrassment that has been brought down on them by the news coverage. Considering that their first reaction (prior to public scrutiny) was to suspend Kiera and press for felony charges, I’m kind of leaning toward that second explanation, but that might just be me.

Two tiny triumphs by common sense in one day? Maybe it’s a sign — but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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