January 2009
34 posts
TumblrRadio
Amazingly, there are two competing, live radio broadcasts by Tumblrs on [Update: Friday evening 6PM] . Good thing I have two ears…
Shut-up, wierdo!
NonSobriety
Do Boys With Uncommon Names Commit More Crime? →
Today’s NY Metro ran an article on the relationship between boys’ names and likelihood of criminal behavior:
juveniles with more obscure names — such as Alec, Ivan or Ernest — are more likely to engage in criminal activity.
Alec? This does sound credible. LiveScience has more on the same:
While the names are likely not the cause of crime, the researchers argue that “they...
Blagojevich Removed From Office by Unanimous Vote →
I can’t wait for the ad hoc press conferences on the unemployment line. Or does being impeached disqualify him?
The Recession's Littlest Victims
One group victimized by the recession but not given air-time: school children doing fundraisers. Those tykes dutifully hand their boxes of World’s Finest chocolate bars and Innisbrook wrapping paper catalogues to their parents, who participate sheepishly in the decades-old, reciprocal, petty-extortion ring with their colleagues.
With fewer of those colleagues around now - if Mom and Dad are...
Slanket v. Snuggie, Next Mac v. PC? Pancake v....
Myriad Snuggie/Slanket posts roused my attention. In case you don’t know, they’re separate products, started years apart. Like Peter (below), I went Slanket. In my case, gifting it to a couch-bound senior citizen who thought it was genius.
The late-arriving Snuggie took it’s cheap production runs, and commercials bound for a future VH1 pop culture retrospective, to the mass...
“I doubt there are two percent of Americans who could tell you the difference...”
– Peter Feld puts us two-per-centers back in line, while discussing the sitr over Obama appointing some lobbyists as waivered exceptions to recent ethics upgrades.
“Well one night, me and Mike drank like single fathers…”
– My College Roomate [via Mandaly:ryanpurtill] Quality, politically inappropriate similes wonderfully punctuate humorous anecdotes. Bravo!
“Whether because of aesthetic convictions, prudery or politics, the modern art...”
– NYT: The Image Is Erotic. But Is It Art?
The Night New York Avoided a Riot →
mandalay:
jingc: When Martin Luther King was assassinated, there were riots all over the country. People were worried that New York would be the same, or worse. However, the mayor at the time, John Lindsay, headed straight for Harlem:
Jimmy Breslin, the city’s leading columnist, wrote, “He looked straight at the people on the streets and he told them he was sick and he was sorry about Martin...
Non-Sobriety's Radio Debut Surprisingly... →
After a fail-filled opening five or ten minutes, NonSobriety put on a three-woman clusterfuck of a talk-radio show that I’m glad to have listened to. Click through and skip ahead a bit, to hear the replay. Don’t worry if you get a “what the hell’s going on?” feeling - that’s normal.
Keep up the good work play, guys.
WatchJohn Brissenden engaged Dan over partisan framing and democracies’ sometimes inconvenient outcomes. They traded references to Hugo Chavez. It reminded me of this video: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Documentarians from Ireland’s PBS-equivalent had the dumb luck of being present inside the attempted coup in April 2002, catching some murky details the would-be Venezuelan junta,...
Downey Jr's Improbable Black-face Oscar Nomination →
I’m kind of amazed Downey pulled this off. Just a few months ago, one NY Mag culture arbiter, Amos Barshad, answered his own rhetorical on Downey’s nomination chances with “OF COURSE NOT.”
After all, outrageous comedy isn’t the Academy’s usual fare, Downey’s mostly in black-face, and even the recent “For Your Consideration: Kirk Lazarus”...
Left-Handed Presidents Are Common →
Modern presidents have been left-handed in significant disproportion to the general population - a development previously disallowed by coerced right-handedness.
The Washington Post online ran A Vast Left-Handed Conspiracy this summer prompted by the revelation that both Obama and McCain sign southpaw; much like 1992’s all-lefty slate of Bush-Clinton-Perot.
In the race for the White...
“Even though he has not been administered the Oath of Office, he is now...”
– Wolf Blizter, noting that it’s already 12 noon - the legal time of transition.
Circuit City Bankruptcy: A Gift Card Heads-Up →
Spend ‘em if you got ‘em! Circuit City’s FAQ states “[o]nce the stores are closed and the company is out of business, the gift cards will have no value.”
The result of not using them in time is murkier than “no value.” Gift cards, though not an investment, are arguably a type of credit - with characteristics of (extremely) small, 0% interest, puttable,...
“Like eating only locally grown food or majoring in gender studies at college,...”
– Daniel Akst, “ardent Mac proselytizer,” in I Once Was Chic, But Now I’m Cheap. He reverted to PCs as “the affordability gap has lately yawned into a gulf.” Having recently umm, invested?, in my first Mac, my reflection on the purchase a year hence may hang partly on...
War and Torture
soupsoup:
I am against torture, however it occurred to me. What is the difference between dropping bombs or killing terrorists and torturing them for information?
You wouldn’t prosecute a solider for killing a terrorist, but you would for torturing them to get valuable information.
While Dan addressed factors like immediacy and defense/prevention, what came to mind was control, or custody....
Equal v. Proportionate Facilities Fail
I’ve posted before on women’s minority status in comp science/IT jobs. Leaving aside high-minded arguments for workforce diversity, purportedly woman-unfriendly environments, and so forth - I’d like to discuss a more dire sex-disparity consequence:
The men’s room is jam-packed and stankin’.
Modern facilities design, so far as I can tell, attempts even lavatory...
Can We Cancel "To Catch a Predator" Now?
doree [abridged]:
A high-profile task force created by 49 state attorneys general…The Internet Safety Technical Task Force was charged with examining the extent of the threats children face on social networks like MySpace and Facebook, amid widespread fears that older adults were using these popular sites to deceive and prey on children. But the report compared such fears to a “moral...
8.9%
“…of Californians have smoked marijuana in the past 30 days.” -Fortune 19 January ‘09. Three percent fewer than Alaska.
Army Recruiting At The Mall with Video Games →
noraleah provided this link and another on recruit fat camp before concluding:
As a nation, we are deeply confused.
For better or worse, this typifies newish military recruitment and marketing tactics. Hosting in-person gaming venues builds upon freely available teasers like America’s Army. It’s cost-prohibitive to roll out the even more exciting virtual training Humvees with...
“[O]ne of the unintended consequences of globalization is that communication and...”
– Squashed: Globalization, Empathy The globalized economy - populated by mere mortals - may not be structurally conducive to reigning in the empathy gap. We simply haven’t got the time, nor bandwidth, to become appropriately informed and contemplative of the links in our supply chains....
WatchObama reiterated his preference for playoffs over the Bowl Championship Series. The video explains how we could move to the former without entirely abandoning the latter.
Prior to coverage of his opinion, I’d never given it much thought. I’ve quickly learned it’s a heated, and seriously-considered debate, even drawing scrutiny from state and federal government.
Rick Reilly...
Wage Gap Between 'Traditional' and 'Egalitarian'... →
Two organizational psychologists at U of Florida conducted a wage gap study among men, attempting to isolate the effect of “psychological attitudes toward breadwinning,” in contrast with more typical gender differentiated studies. That is, they posed the question: “What if the real difference isn’t between men and women but between men who think women belong at home — and...
Virginity Pledges & The Press Take On Teenage Sex →
William McGurn argues recent articles correctly reported the ineffectiveness of virginity pledges on mitigating premarital sex, but omitted the effectiveness of a conservative upbringing among the same cohort in leading to generally less risky sex patterns:
“[V]irginity pledging teens were considerably more conservative in their overall sexual behaviors than teens in general — a fact...
“Business is a lot like sex. Both are better when the participants are confident.”
– Ben Stein, in Before the Fear, There Was Foolishness; nicely framing why we should be concerned about the consumer confidence index bottoming last month.
