A Petty Blog

This guy is an editing genius.
Obama sings the Beatles’ “Tax Man”

Via I Hate The Media.

I’m reading A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, by John Allen Paulos.

I’ll write something more on the actual book later.  Right now I have to comment on one of his quotations.  Paulos quotes Thomas Jefferson as saying

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should  have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.”

This statement is made in a chapter in favor on newspapers in general.  However, I believe Jefferson’s quote is more about government than it is about newspapers, as he also said:

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

Quotations add some spice to writing, but you have to take them with a grain of salt, as they are generally used without context.

 I found a blog on Architecture.  It’s a really interesting colossal time-sink.  I bookmarked the site years ago because of an article about park benches designed primarily to keep vagrants from sleeping on them.  This is even creepier.

Design with Intent | Deliberately creating worry
One of the cafés in an international European airport was often full. The problem was that people sat nursing their coffees for a long time as they waited for their planes to depart. The café asked itself: How can we encourage our customers to vacate the tables more quickly?

Their first ideas were probably along the lines of uncomfortable chairs, a seat charge, clear the tables immediately and so forth. However, the idea they finally decided upon was this: to turn off the flight monitors in the café! This made people worry about missing their flights, which led to them looking for monitors that worked, thus leaving empty tables. When the café had enough empty tables, the flight monitors suddenly started working again to attract new customers.

I think turning the monitors back on is the icing on the creepy-cake.

Someone just passed me this article at WebMD.  It starts like this:

Want a drug that could lower your risk of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and colon cancer? That could lift your mood and treat headaches? That could lower your risk of cavities?

If it sounds too good to be true, think again.

Coffee, the much maligned but undoubtedly beloved beverage, just made headlines for possibly cutting the risk of the latest disease epidemic, type 2 diabetes. And the real news seems to be that the more you drink, the better.

Various studies show that coffee helps prevent Parkinson’s Disease, liver cirrhosis, gallstones, and colon cancer,  can help manage asthma, can stop a headache (Anacin and Excedrin contain the caffeine of a hefty mug ‘o Joe), can boost your mood and even prevent cavities.  Coffee is also known to enhance athletic endurance and performance and boost memory and mental acuity.  It can even slow the mental decline in old men.

The article goes on to say “Overall, the research shows that coffee is far more healthful than it is harmful,” “For most people, very little bad comes from drinking it, but a lot of good,” and “coffee may be something of a health food — especially in higher amounts.”  I like coffee, especially in higher amounts (and really dark and stinky).  But how much is too much?

On the flip side, it’s clear that coffee isn’t for everyone. Its legendary jolt in excess doses — that is, more than whatever your individual body can tolerate — can increase nervousness, hand trembling, and cause rapid heartbeat. Coffee may also raise cholesterol levels in some people and may contribute to artery clogging. But most recent large studies show no significant adverse effects on most healthy people, although pregnant women, heart patients, and those at risk for osteoporosis may still be advised to limit or avoid coffee.

So, to find the proper dosage, you should drink coffee until you start to get nervous about your shaking hands, then back off a bit.  I’ll let you know if I ever manage to hit that benchmark.

We all like it when “Science” says we should do what we want.  It’s been oft-reported that red wine may be good for you.  But beer may be even better (this is the BBC - I’m sure they are talking about real beer and not the stuff they advertise here during football games.) Dark brews are even better at preventing heart disease and cancer (more xanthohumol.)

If beer is “yucky” then try dark chocolate.

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 I have Great News!

Our furnace went out last week.  As always with these things, the timing is incovenient.  We’re in a cold snap right now in the Colorado Mountains, we expect some guests over Christmas.
We can’t afford to pay the $3410 bill right now, so we decided to borrow the money and go another $3410 into debt.  Our repair guy is wonderful, and he found a reconditioned unit he can use — and that will save us about $2000.
That’s great news, because we can really use the money.  I’m writing a family proposal now about how we can spend the extra $2000 we now have at our disposal - and just before Christmas!  I’m thinking about buying bicycles for my kids (to ride this spring) and maybe promising to pay them for sealing the asphalt (in the spring), so they will be able to spend more on Christmas presents. I think I will hire three neighborhood kids to feed our lizard, to preserve neighborhood jobs.

My friend has even better news!

His son is unemployed and can’t pay his bills, and he can’t get any more credit.  My friend racked up $34,100 on his credit cards in order to keep his son from losing his house, his car, his ski-doo, and his vacation condo.  Well, his son’s employment situation recovered more quickly than expected, and he was able to pay back some of the money. The whole credit thing is going to cost my friend $20,000 less than he originally projected.  What an opportunity!  There is so much he could do with the $20,000.  He might have his driveway repaved with European cobblestones, or maybe hire a cook and a maid.

In an unrelated story,

the U.S. Government recently added 341 billion ($341,000,000,000) to its deficit to bail out our troubled financial sector.  It appears that the losses will be about $200 billion less than they projected.  President Obama and his staff are preparing proposals for spending the windfall.  In order to stimulate the job market right away, some of the money will probably be spent on transportation and infrastructure projects (to be started next spring, at the earliest).  To stimulate the economy (production of useful goods and services), some money will be given to States to preserve public sector jobs.
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I stumbled across this at Calamities of Nature today.  How true it is.

How sad.

I got this little piece of wry humor today from GCFL:

Important Notice:

Due to recent budget cuts, the stock market crash, and the
rising cost of electricity, gas, and oil, the light at the
end of the tunnel has been turned off.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,
The Government

It’s an old joke.  This version shows the underlying cause of many of the problems we have in America today - people think the Government is responsible for the light at the end of the tunnel.

The NY Times has put together a really cool interactive chart that shows The Jobless Rate for People Like You.
Select your personal demographic at the top or hover over the lines to see who they represent.

It’s the best argument for education I’ve seen in a long while.

In another case of Everything Being Connected, I was irritated in the same way by several things I read today.  I think the authors just didn’t think enough about what they were writing.

The first is a blog post called 20 Tips for More Efficient Google Searches.  This is actually an informative article.  However, in his quest to get 20 items in the list, and (I presume) to elevate them to some kind of parity, he makes this statement about number 8 (italics mine):

Calculator
One of the handiest uses of Google, type in a quick calculation in the search box and get an answer. It’s faster than calling up your computer’s calculator in most cases. Use the , -, *, / symbols and parentheses to do a simple equation.

One of the handiest uses? Really? Would Google be compelling with this feature, but without the others?

It’s faster than calling up your computer’s calculator?  Not likely.  I use “Start+R calc<enter>” - that’s 6 keys.  All right - I’ll back off on that one.  Not everyone knows how to do that.

The second is a sidebar in Fitness magazine.  I happened to see this in an open copy:

 Snack Smarter

Next time the munchies hit, try this simple strategy to avoid pigging out: Calculate how long it’s been since you last ate, and consider every hour to be worth about 100 calories.  “If you had breakfast at 8 a.m. and it’s now 10:30, you should have about a 250-calorie snack to tide you over until lunch,” says Connie Diekman, R.D., director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis.  “This will keep your stomach from grumbling between meals without going overboard.”  …

So, if I eat breakfast at 6:00 and eat a snack at 11:30, I should get 550 calories to “tide me over” until lunch (perhaps in 30 minutes, perhaps longer - that’s not included in the article).  If I eat my snack at 7:00, I get only 100 calories to tide me over the next 5 hours.  Nope.  Doesn’t work for me.

I get a funny joke or story every day from Micky’s Funnies.

today’sFUNNY===========================

Young Johnny finished summer vacation and went back to school.

Two days later his teacher phoned his mother to tell her that Johnny was misbehaving.

“Wait a minute!” said Johnny’s mom.  ”I had him here for two months and I never once called YOU when he misbehaved!”

today’sTHOT============================

PASS IT ON!
Yeah, you can send this Funny to anybody you want. And, if you’re REAL nice, you’ll tell them where you got it! www.mikeysFunnies.com

Yes, it’s amusing.  Unfortunately, it also has more than a grain of truth behind it.  IMHO, our education system and our children are in the mess they are in largely because parents have abdicated their primary responsibility to educate their children - in manners and morals as much as knowledge.

How are you doing?