Category Archives: Freakin’ Idiots!

March 24, 2014 · 23:22

There’s This Nasty Little Disease

Let me start by saying that I am not a doctor or any other kind of medical professional. I’m just a voracious reader with a lot of general scientific and technical interests and background. I’m the perfect demographic to be a Scientific American reader. The point being that what I pass on to you here is what I understand, but I could well be wrong on some points, minor or major. Check your sources.

Twenty years ago I saw a review of a new non-fiction book by Richard Preston, “The Hot Zone.” The book is beautifully written and stunningly terrifying. It is a wonderful introduction to a class of diseases which are emerging from West Africa. Outbreaks of these diseases have been seen in Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

These viral hemorrhagic diseases, such as Marburg and Ebola, are rare, which is good for the human race. It is somewhat difficult for the virus to spread. “Somewhat” is the key word. They’re not spread as easily as the common cold virus, or measles, or the flu. For the most part, you need to have direct contact with blood, bodily fluids, or tissues that are infected. You can also get infected by handling or eating infected animals (monkeys are suspected to be a key vector) or being exposed to infected guano in caves (bats are another).

They are also incredibly deadly with no known cures, which has the potential to be very bad for the human race. Ebola kills nine out of ten people it infects, and it’s not a pretty death. “Hemorrhagic” diseases are so named because they cause you to hemorrhage from just about every orifice in the body. The specifics and explicit details I’ll leave to those who want to read the book. (Highly recommended, by the way! But most definitely not for the faint of heart.)

So far, the outbreaks have been largely contained in Africa, with only a few cases of travelers coming home from Africa (for example, to Germany, the US, Netherlands) while infected. The number of deaths per outbreak has been relatively small, averaging a couple dozen each, with worst cases (so far) being about 225 deaths in one outbreak for Marburg (Angola, 2004-2005), 280 for Ebola (Zaire, 1976).

For comparison, the common flu is estimated by the CDC to kill on average about 36,000 people every year just in the United States. (What, Jenny McCarthy told you not to get a flu shot? And you’re freakin’ stupid enough to listen? You – out of the gene pool!) But looked at another way, about 15% or so of the population gets the flu in the average year, which makes roughly 50,000,000 Americans sick with the flu at some point or another during the year. 36,000 deaths out of 50,000,000 infections with 200,000+ hospital visits means that out of every 100,000 people who get the flu, about 725 (ballpark figures) die from it.

For Ebola, out of that hypothetical 100,000 people, more than 90,000 would die, not 725.

If that doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will.

This is the stuff that horror movies and books are made of, and Ebola has been a key player in several. Tom Clancy used it as a major plot point in “Executive Orders.” There have been several movies using plots involving Ebola, including 1995’s “Outbreak”, which unfortunately tried to turn Dustin Hoffman into an action/adventure movie hero. (That is an evil that does not sleep!) And I can guarantee that Seanan McGuire mixed some ebola facts and figures into her hypothetical zombie apocalypse “Newsflesh” trilogy (which you should also read because it’s excellent and some of the scariest shit I’ve ever read).

Except that Ebola and Marburg are not only the stuff of “apocalypse entertainment.” Take a look at that Ebola table I referenced about six paragraphs up. See where one of the Ebola strains is called “Reston?” Would that have anything to do with Reston, Virginia, which lies just between Dulles International Airport (ten miles to the west) and downtown Washington, DC (thirty miles to the east)? You bet it does, which is one of the stories of “The Hot Zone.” We were this close…

For now, I don’t sweat it much on a daily basis because these diseases are primarily on the far side of the world where I am highly unlikely to be, and they are hard to transmit between infected victims. I don’t know if someone could really weaponize the virus and make it highly contagious as Clancy and others have wondered. It makes for pretty good reading, but I don’t know that the CDC believes that it’s likely or even possible.

But once you’ve read the books mentioned above, I guarantee that when you are flipping through the online news, something like this headline from today’s New York Times will catch your eye every freakin’ time: “Ebola, Killing Scores In Guinea, Threatens Nearby Nations”

Don’t worry. It’s probably not that big of a deal. It never has been before. What’s the worst that could happen?

Sleep tight!

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Filed under Disasters, Freakin' Idiots!, Health

February 22, 2014 · 21:53

A Few Questions re: Arizona AB-1062

As you may have heard, the Arizona Senate has passed a bill, AB 1062, which is being referred to by its supporters as a “religious freedom” bill. It would allow any individual or company in Arizona legal protections from discrimination lawsuits if they were to refuse service to someone when that person or business owner believes that providing such services would violate their religious beliefs.

Several other states have tried to pass similar bills recently (such as Kansas) but so far none have passed. It’s not clear at this time if Arizona Governor Jan Brewer will sign the bill. It’s also not clear that the law would stand up to any kind of legal challenge if it were signed into law.

On the flip side, there are twenty-one states which specifically forbid anyone denying services due to someone’s sexual orientation. This has been part of the motivation for Arizona to try to push for this law. They are concerned that some hypothetical baker in Arizona would be forced by law to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage when the baker’s religious beliefs are strongly opposed to same-sex marriage. In their opinion, this would violate the baker’s rights to freedom of religion. (This is also why these types of laws are referred to as “no cake for gays” laws.)

The measure has been strongly promoted by two conservative groups, the Center for Arizona Policy and Defending Freedom Alliance. (Please note, the online stories from the various news services have links to these organizations — I very, very deliberately do not. If you really, really want to go to their web page, google it.) It has also received strong support from the Arizona Catholic Conference. (I have never in my life been so happy to be a “recovering” Catholic.)

Of course, there are many Arizona groups opposing the bill, including business leaders who are concerned that it will send the message that Arizona is bigoted. They’re correct — it will send that message, because, well, Arizona is being bigoted.

Many have also pointed out that most businesses in Arizona (and every other state) are so in need of customers that they can’t afford to turn down anyone, regardless of what the customer does in the privacy of their own bedroom. That would be my first assumption, but I guess their God does a better job of taking care of their business for them because they’re turning down customers in His name than my God does. (Should I be urging my God to get on the ball and stop being a slacker in that regard?)

While the proponents of the bill are very good at wrapping themselves in the flag and the Bible in order to argue that this law is good for us and proposed out of their love of fundamental American freedom (otherwise known as “hypocritically lying through their teeth”), I have to wonder if their law goes far enough. After all, if you’re going to go on record, repeatedly, as a bunch of ignorant, bigoted, hate-filled, pinheads, why stop with anti-gay legislation?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is Muslim, he could refuse to make a cake for a Bar Mitzvah?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is white, he could refuse to make a cake for a Martin Luther King Day celebration? (After all, Arizona refused to recognize MLK Day for five years or so, and only relented when a significant boycott got established and it became obvious that the state wasn’t going to get the Super Bowl or NCAA Championship game if they didn’t relent? Fundamental principles are critical and the basis of our moral foundations — right up to the point where billions of dollars are involved. Then, as Winston Churchill said…)

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is an N’Sync fan, he could refuse to make a cake for a Backstreet Boys reunion rave?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a nudist, he could refuse to make a cake for customers wearing clothes?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a pacifist, he could refuse to make a cake for an NRA member?

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is member of the Flat Earth Society, he could refuse to make a cake for astronaut Mark Kelly’s birthday? (Extra points if you “get” this one!)

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is an Arizona Wildcat, he could refuse to make a cake for a Arizona State Sun Devil tailgate party? After all, if we’re going to support hatred, let’s start at home!

Why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker is a misogynist, he could refuse to make a cake for a bachelorette party?

Finally, why not a law that says if the hypothetical baker has an IQ bigger than his shoe size, he could refuse to make a cake for a member of the Arizona Senate because they’re freakin’ idiots?

Curious minds want to know.

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage, Politics

February 14, 2014 · 21:23

Not Celebrating Valentine’s Day

First, a side rant — why are there ads for the last two or three weeks that start with, “Valentine’s Day is February 14th!!!”

Valentine’s Day is not a “floating” holiday like Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, and so on. It’s fixed on the calendar, like Christmas, Groundhog Day, or New Year’s Day. So why do these advertising morons feel it is so freakin’ necessary to remind us over and over and over what day the “holiday” falls on?

Of course, they also have ads that say “Christmas Day is December 25th!!!” and “New Year’s Day is January 1st!!!” God help us, they probably have ads that say “The Fourth of July is July 4th!!!” So, in the end it boils down to:

  1. Are we really that stupid?
  2. Are we just fine and the ad agencies only think we’re that stupid?
  3. Are we just fine and the ad agencies are that stupid?
  4. Are we all freakin’ idiots? (Sorry, this last option might be a trick question.)

As for the “holiday” itself, The Long-Suffering Wife and I are not today and never have celebrated Valentine’s Day. I consider this to be a good thing, and not just because I don’t have to “perform” by buying an appropriate amount of candy or flowers or jewelry or whatever.  Our lack of fervor over this supposed holiday is actually due to The Long-Suffering Wife’s views on the day, and I happen to agree with her reasons.

Others dislike the holiday for their own (highly valid) reasons. For example, The Bloggess refers to it as “a ridiculous non-holiday made to make everyone feel insecure about their relationship” among other things. Then there are some wonderful cartoons from Ursula Vernon at her Red Wombat Studios blog, especially this one that’s been passed around the internet circles that I lurk in. There are many more “Valentine Day deniers” that are left as an exercise for the student to find.

But that’s not why The Long-Suffering Wife has always instructed me to ignore Valentine’s Day and forbidden me to get her anything for the day. (Well, when she first told me she was The Should-Have-Known-Better Fiancé instead of The Long-Suffering Wife, but that’s a different story.) Her reasoning is that because of the social pressure and marketing and sales tsunami that Valentine’s Day involves, too many couples, and guys in particular, are forced to perform and buy things and demonstrate their love on that one arbitrary day. It’s all marketing and peer pressure and fear of punishment, having little to do with actual love.

Her view is that, if you really love someone and care for them and want them to be happy, you should show that every day, not on this one day picked out by Hallmark and Madison Avenue.

This is a wise point of view. We celebrate other holidays and events, such as Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, and so on. But we also both make a point to try to make each other happy every day, as well as find reasons to give each other something special now and then. When I send her flowers at work a couple of times a year, it’s not because “IT’S VALENTINE’S DAY AND HALLMARK HAS BEATEN ME INTO SUBMISSION AND I GOT SOME $2 FLOWERS FOR $20 FROM A GUY AT THE BOTTOM OF THE FREEWAY OFFRAMP”, it’s because I want her to be happy and surprised and reminded that I lover her.

This is neither a subtle or a small difference. The Long-Suffering Wife is wise.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, LA Angels, Paul, Ronnie

February 4, 2014 · 20:52

I Leave You In Charge For One Day…

It’s been a busy thirty-six hours, fortunately with positive results. Modern medicine is truly a wonder.

I sort of checked out for a bit, leaving all of you in charge of the world. What in the hell hapened? I go back to looking at the Internet again and I find:

1. There are “patriots” out there who are seriously bent out of shape over the “It’s Beautiful” Coke ad on Sunday (at the 16:48 time stamp) because it wasn’t sung in English and one of the images that flashed by showed a gay couple with a child? I get it that most of the “outrage” comes from uber-right wingnuts lacking in two rational brain cells to rub together. Glenn Beck’s got the planet’s franchise on the paranoid, bigoted, and racist asshole stereotype. You expect that from him. And the Faux News commentator is no doubt a disciple trying to prove that he can be just as much of a hate-filled, mindless mouthpiece spewing out the ignorance and outright lies that are their stock in trade. As for the “former” Tea Party Congressman, can we assume that he found out that spouting nonsense like this is why he’s a “former” congress-critter? Maybe there weren’t enough straight, white, gun-toting, Bible-thumping voters in his district to win re-election after everyone else figured out what a mistake they had made by buying his song and dance and allowing him to be elected in the first place.

Sorry that the song wasn’t sung in English the way that Jesus would have sung it — but that might have been only the most obvious of the many points that they’re too blind to see.

2. There are people who are outraged over the bi-racial family in the Cheerios commercial (at 16:12) because their racist, bigoted, ignorant outrage over the previous commercial with the same fictional family didn’t prevent General Mills from ever thinking about doing another ad just like it? How do these people get their fingers and (presumably) opposable thumbs to type messages on the Internet spewing this bile and bullshit when their heads and souls are still living in the 1950’s — or the 1850’s?

My unqualified congratulations and thanks go to General Mills and Coke for putting these two wonderful ads on the air on such a prominent stage. Even more props to them both for not backing down an inch now that the cretins have crawled out from under their rocks, so we’ll be seeing these ads on a regular basis for a while. The haters, bigots, morons, and racists can do us all a favor by taking a long walk off of a short pier.

3. Bill Nye the Science Guy did a televised “debate” with some creationist fanatic? I love Bill Nye to death, think he’s up there with Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson in the effort to explain complex science subjects to the average person. I also applaud and salute all of their efforts to get more girls to study math, science, and engineering in school and aim high for careers in those fields.

But what in hell is he doing giving any sort of legitimacy to these clowns who are pushing creationism to be taught in the schools as science? These people are sadly and horribly deranged and misguided and they need to be opposed at every opportunity. No matter how good Bill Nye is at what he’s doing, he’s never going to convince any fanatics that they’re wrong. They can’t be wrong, God’s on their side, that 2000-year-old “word of God” (which so blatantly isn’t) says so, blah, blah, blah… All he’s doing is giving them a bigger forum to spout their nonsense, and now they can point at the “debate” and say, “See, we won!” (which they can’t), and “See, we’re legit!” (which they aren’t).

Better you than me if it had to be done, Bill — but I’m not at all sure that it had to be done. I know that they can’t simply be ignored like pesky telemarketers. I wish they could, but they’re trying to destroy the education of an entire generation of kids, and succeeding in places like Texas. Opposing them at every turn and constantly pointing out how ridiculous (not to mention unconstitutional, separation of church and state and all of that) they are? Yes! Getting involved in this kind of circus? Bad move. Didn’t someone say, “Never mud wrestle with a pig — you’ll get dirty and the pig likes it?”

==========

At least pitchers and catchers report for my beloved Angels in nine days. (The Dodgers report in just four days, getting an early start because they open the season in Sydney, Australia.) That should help restore a touch of sanity to the world. Even more so if Hamilton and Pujols can remember how to hit and our pitching can do better than “only sucks a little bit”…

Yeah, baseball will help.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, LA Angels, Moral Outrage

January 8, 2014 · 20:27

Not Enough Mad Scientists’ Inventions In Real Life

I think the title says it all! For decades we’ve had one movie, comic book, and television show after another featuring all kinds of cool crap invented by mad scientists or evil super-villains, yet none of this stuff has shown up in real life where it could really be useful on a daily basis.

If mad scientists had as many spinoff products as NASA does, we would have our flying cars today like we were supposed to!

I was thinking about this on a long drive home today. (I also had Supertramp’s “Child Of Vision” blasting at full volume, especially that great piano piece that takes up the last 3:50 of the song, but that’s neither here nor there. I just wanted to mention it.) Specifically, I was thinking about it while following yet another $100K sports car in the fast lane, going 55 MPH in a 65 MPH zone with no traffic.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could push a button on your dashboard to have giant arms pop out of both sides of the car, extending out in front of you, with big prongs like on a fork lift? Then you could sidle up behind the slow poke, slip the prongs under his car, and the system would lift his car up over you and place him gently behind you where he belongs. The mechanism collapses back into your car — problem solved!

Garbage trucks have mechanisms like this for picking up the big bins and flipping them up over the top of the truck to dump the trash. All we would need would be to work on some minor upgrades and modifications to the system. Am I right? Huh??

How about a better way to deal with telemarketers? Is there anything worse than your third call of the day from some idiot who wants to sell you home improvement services or magical credit repair consulting? So why isn’t there some useful product from “Acme” to deal properly with these calls? Would Wile E. Coyote have put up with this? No, he wouldn’t! So let’s get him to work on the project. Maybe something along the lines of a tracing & tracking system that identifies the exact location of the telemarketer, then launches an 800 ton rock onto their head using a giant rubber band. What could go wrong?

What about the people who deliberately and repeatedly enter the narrow and cramped parking lot through the clearly marked “EXIT ONLY — DO NOT ENTER” lane, tying up traffic all the way around the block? Would Ming the Merciless put up with this? Would Kim Jong-Un sit idly by with this sort of atrocity taking place? I dare say not! But I say that, instead of simply punishing these scofflaws, let’s do it while rewarding the good citizens of our community that are fighting for truth, justice, and a good $5 burrito! So let’s figure out how to get a Reduce-O-Ray built which would zap the good guys and take away five pounds of ugly fat and teleport it into the butt of the agents of anarchy coming in through the exits!

As an additional bonus, if you see someone all of a sudden getting one of those bedonk-a-donk butts in just a few days, you can avoid letting them drive to that business meeting. We all win!

I’ll expect first draft schematics on my desk by the first of February.

 

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Filed under Farce, Freakin' Idiots!

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!

November 6, 2013 · 16:23

Get A Flu Shot!

I got mine today. I probably should have gotten it a couple of weeks ago when they first started having the clinic open, but between one thing and another I’ve been putting it off. Today I was “oot & aboot” and made a point to swing by.

You want to know how horrible and trying it was? You want to know what the worst part was? It was chilly (mid 50’s) when I went out this morning so I had on my usual chilly+casual garb, a flannel shirt over a turtleneck. (Are the New York fashion designers paying attention? When that’s the next hot thing, I want credit!) When I got to the clinic, in order to get the shot I had to take off the flannel shirt and then roll the sleeve on the turtleneck up far enough to expose my upper arm.

That’s it! That’s as hard as it gets! Mind you, this comes from someone who, as a kid, would cry like I was being dragged off  to be tortured to death every time I got a shot.

As for those who think that you shouldn’t get a flu shot because you’ve been told by an actor or pop star that it’s in some way bad for you (freakin’ idiots!) or your third cousin twice removed heard something that was relayed fourth hand from a guy he knows in his bowling league — well, first of all, BULLSHIT (because, like, “science” and “facts” and all of that), but secondly, here‘s an excellent site that keeps track of all of the urban myths and fallacies that are going around and the medical and scientific facts that refute them.

The tl;dr version is that the flu kills people (far more than you think), you can get it, the flu vaccine is about 99.999999999999999% safe, the flu vaccine will not do any of the BS things that the urban myths say it will, and the more folks who get vaccinated, the fewer people we’ll have spreading it in the first place.

Since it’s cheap (maybe free) and easy (took me longer to walk in from the parking lot than it did to fill out the paper and get the shot) and pretty painless (even a wussy boy like me can handle it), you would have to be a moron to not get one.

You’re reading my blog, so you’re obviously not a moron.

QED, you either already have your flu shot or you’ll be getting one in the next couple of days. Maybe tomorrow.

Right?

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Health

October 30, 2013 · 19:55

Rush Hour In LA & My Faith In Humanity

To be blunt, the former doesn’t do much for the latter.

Driving down to Irvine this morning in rush hour traffic gives a good example. I’m sure folks see this in every city. I’m sure that there are hot spots in every metropolitan area in the world that are a living nightmare on a daily basis. I’m sure that there are places that are worse. (Shanghai comes to mind…) But this morning was startling in how typical it is, at least here in Los Angeles, to nearly die in traffic every single day.

A mere one hundred yards from my house, at a four-way stop, I came within a foot or two of almost certain death. As I stopped, checked for cross traffic, and then started through the intersection, some pin-headed mental midget doing at least fifty MPH came barreling in from my left. He never even slowed down as he blew through the stop sign. FREAKIN’ IDIOT! If I hadn’t seen him at the last second and stomped on the brakes he would have hit me square in the driver’s door and I wouldn’t be here to write this. The only consolation is that his pulped carcass would have been accompanying mine to Valhalla, like a mini honor guard.

For two seconds it was tempting to hang a hard right turn and chase his ass down, or at least get the license plate on the car, but I didn’t have the time. Next time, maybe.

Two miles later, stopped at a red light behind two other cars, it was someone else’s turn to almost die at the hand of some freakin’ idiot. At least this brain-dead cretin had the manners to be honking his horn like crazy as he ran the red light a good three or four seconds after the light had turned. I guess that’s the new international signal for, “Look out! My shoe size is bigger than my IQ and I’m in a hurry! I don’t give a rat’s ass if we both die so I have the de facto right of way!” Driving a full-sized pick-up truck doing about forty, he could have done a lot of damage to a bunch of other cars, not to mention the three or four pedestrians already in the crosswalk.

Once I get on the freeway, the fun continues. On the 405 southbound at the intersection with the 101, the two far right lanes exit onto the 101 transition. The four left lanes are packed and crawling. (Someone about ten miles ahead, at Sunset, had flipped and was blocking a couple of lanes.) So at the gore point where the lanes split, we see dozens and dozens of cars racing along in the nearly empty transition lanes, only to stop (and block the lane) at the last second and then force there way into traffic. Freakin’ idiots!

The first smiley-faced balloon-head to try this was doing it while blow drying her hair. None of this simple “texting and driving” for her, no sir! She’s obviously a very, very important person who can’t be bothered with all of those petty, stupid little traffic rules that only the peons have to obey. So she’ll pass by a mile or more of gridlocked traffic to block a lane before she forces someone to either let her in or get hit by her. Doing her hair while endangering multiple lives? That’s just the icing on the cake.

The second SFBH was a young kid who I got to know as “The Little Drummer Boy”. He also bypassed all of the gridlock, blocked a lane, and played chicken with someone’s bumper to get into the through lane. He then cut straight over another lane to pull in behind me, earning him an extensive horn sonata and a one-finger salute from the guy behind me who got cut off by him. The Little Drummer Boy then proceeded to stick behind me for another ten miles or so, without ever touching the steering wheel with either hand. How could I tell? I could clearly see in my rear-view mirror that he had a pair of drum sticks and was playing along on the dashboard, windshield, mirror, door, and steering wheel. (I’m guessing that it was the drum solo from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”.) FREAKIN’ IDIOT! At least he didn’t have the music turned up so loud that it was rattling my windows — he was wearing a full-sized pair of headphones (also illegal while driving, but who’s counting).

While traffic was crawling for us mere mortals, those in the carpool lane were zipping right along. Especially the ones who very obviously did not have two people in the car and weren’t driving a hybrid or alternate fuel vehicle. I don’t have precise data, but I would be surprised if less than 10% of those using the carpool lane were using it illegally. I guess the “$371 minimum fine” signs aren’t much of a deterrent. At least, not any more of a deterrent than those double-double yellow lane markers that would seem to indicate that it’s illegal to get into or out of the carpool lane except where allowed. I couldn’t even guess how many folks I saw crossing back and forth illegally.

Using the phone while driving? (Illegal in California for years if you’re not using a hands-free device.) Texting while driving? (Illegal, period, and incredibly dangerous and stupid to boot.) Probably close to 1 in 20, if not more.

Lest you think that I’ve become my father or some old coot fixated on every little scofflaw (“Rotten kids, get off my lawn!”), I really do understand that it’s a “Not My Float!” moment. Yeah, there’s a tiny little Catholic school voice in my head who wants to punish and get self-righteous, but forty years of LA traffic has pretty much beaten it into submission. I’m much better than I was in my younger days at just watching out for the freakin’ idiots and making sure they don’t hit me than I am wanting to go all vigilante on them. (Except for that little shit who almost killed me at the four-way stop. That’s personal.)

But three hours of driving in those conditions will not do anything to help your belief that people are good, decent, intelligent people.

More accurately, it serves to remind me that probably 98% of the people out there are good, decent, and intelligent — but it only takes that 2% to completely screw it up for everyone. And it sure looks like the 2% are getting away with murder. Watching that right before your eyes for three hours and being so inured to it that you can’t afford to care about it? That’s poison enough to kill your faith in humanity.

P.S. — As I finish writing and editing this, it becomes painfully obvious that a skunk has gotten upset somewhere very close by. As in, “eye-watering, choking, stomach-turning, WTF IS THAT SMELL” close. Perfect.

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Filed under Critters, Distracted Driving, Freakin' Idiots!, Not My Float

October 13, 2013 · 20:51

Scientific American’s Damage Control

Scientific American has issued a lengthy response to the events which I wrote about yesterday. I’m not very satisfied with it, but it does indicate pretty clearly that Scientific American understands that they have a problem. There are commitments to further reporting on “the issues that are faced by women in science and women of color in science.”  That is commendable and should be encouraged to the fullest extent possible.

On the other hand, the majority of the article seems to be devoted to what I call “CYA” verbiage. Dr. Lee’s original post was deleted because the editors were concerned about potential legal issues. Dr. Lee’s article “alleged a personal experience” and on short notice the editors were unable to “verify the facts of the blog post”. They couldn’t communicate with Dr. Lee in advance of deleting her article because it was Friday before a long weekend. (Cell phones? Email? Text messages? Skype? Land lines?) The initial Twitter response to the controversy was handled poorly because of dying batteries on someone’s cell phone. (Really? I can recommend some really great external battery products that I’ve used for years, no rocket science involved.)

They “regret”. They “recognize”. They “commit”. They “are investigating”. We, on the other hand, have “concerns, misunderstandings, and ill feelings”.

Notice what’s missing here. Nowhere does Ms. DiChristina ever even come close to admitting that she and/or the other Scientific American editors were wrong when it comes to the big picture. There were procedural problems and mistakes made that made them look bad – but they’re not admitting they were wrong.

In addition, nowhere is there anything that even comes close to being an apology to Dr. Lee. Again, there are regrets about the way that it was handled (it made them look bad), but there’s no apology. Apparently there’s nothing to apologize for — at least in their minds.

I came away from reading the article feeling like I had just been lectured by a sanctimonious Republican CongressCritter. There’s a condescending, “you just don’t understand” tone to the response that isn’t doing anything to make me feel better about Scientific American.

I “recognize” that I’m not buying it. I “regret” that I don’t have any trust or respect for Scientific American at the moment.

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Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Moral Outrage