May, 2006 archive

Some people have rather unusual hobbies:

They once were a rural American staple, a necessity for daily life. Today, outhouses are mostly gone — but not if you wander into Janie Peel’s backyard. “This is my newest one,” she said, gesturing toward a vintage double-seater that was moved in its entirety to her farm.

“It took three men to lift it,” she said. “But if we hadn’t, it would have been torn down.”

Outhouses have always fascinated Peel, an east-Georgia commercial real estate broker who now collects them.

New Jersey is one of two states that prohibit self-serve gas stations. When self-service first came along, the prohibition was motivated by safety concerns.

After all, gasoline pumps are tremendously complicated devices that can be operated only by persons with advanced degrees in mechanical engineering, as anyone who has ever purchased gasoline in New Jersey can attest.

The new governor recently proposed allowing self-serve gas stations in the interest of maybe saving a nickel or so a gallon off the price. After the resulting uproar, he backed off that proposal.

After a phone call with my brother this afternoon, in which self-service and New Jersey came up, I read this article in today’s local rag and had the first real belly laugh I’ve had in days. I commend it to your attention.

Right-wing LA talk show host Doug McIntyre apologizes for supporting George W. Bush:

I watched and tried to justify the looting in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. I watched and tried to justify the dismantling of the entire Iraqi army. I tired to explain the complexities of building a functional new Iraqi army. I urged patience when no WMDs were found. Then the Vice President told us we were in the “waning days of the insurgency.” And I started wincing again. The President says we have to stay the course but what if it’s the wrong course?

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

The whole thing is worth a read.

With a tip of the hat to Phillybits.

A hapless US Air Force pilot had to be physically cut free from the cockpit of his F-22A Raptor when the canopy resolutely refused to open, Flight International reports.

Haunted Teddy Bear for sale on EBay.

Act now.

I knew this; I used to say this when I did training in making presentations. But I didn’t have any science to back it up.

Although we may not consciously realise it, in a two-person conversation, people speak by taking turns. When someone thinks it is their turn to talk, they do. Otherwise, they listen. A two-person conversation becomes like a tennis match. Inevitably there are short periods of silence as people pause to let the other person take over the speaking. But sometimes a speaker doesn’t want to give up their turn and instead wants a little extra time to think about what they’re going to say next. They use a “filler” to signal this.

The current hoo-haa over the recent release of a recording of the “Star-Spangled Banner” in Spanish has little to do with reverance for the flag of the United States of America or the nation for which it stands.

Rather, it is a manifestation of xenophobia, bigotry, and, to some extent, racism.

History is full of delightful ironies which prick the balloons of the forces of evil, and the local rag pointed out one of them today:

The government already gave its blessing when the U.S. Bureau of Education prepared a Spanish version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1919. And that translation has been available on the Library of Congress’ Web site for the last two years.

You can see the official United States translation into Spanish of the national anthem here.

You can see the lyrics of the recent Spanish language release here.

Update:

I just came across this column in today’s Washington Post:

I believe this is why “Nuestro Himno” has been received with such trepidation. By infiltrating one of the safest symbols of U.S. national identity with Spanish syllables, this version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” has crossed a line. It has inadvertently announced something many Americans have dreaded for years: that their country is on its way to becoming a bilingual nation.

If I’m right about this, and America will sometime be articulating its identity in two languages, then the question looms: How will the citizens of the United States react to this monumental challenge?

One possibility, of course, is a nativist backlash, with more vigilante Minutemen swilling beer in the Arizona sun, more calls for deporting all illegal workers, more demands that an impenetrable wall be built against the foreign hordes, more attempts to dismantle bilingual education in U.S. schools.

But others may tell themselves that the United States has been built on diversity and tolerance and that, at a time when the national soul is indeed being tested, at a time when the democratic ideals at the heart of American identity are truly in danger of being sacrificed on the altar of false security, our better angels should welcome the wonders of Spanish to the struggle and the debate.

Of course, roses bloom all through the season. That’s one of the joys of having them.

But the first bloom is special. They all burst out at once; for me, that’s about 20 rose bushes.

Last year I missed it. My whole month of May was taken up in dealing with my father’s death, the funeral arrangements, and taking care of my mother.

There are buds on the roses now. I think that this year I will get to see them bloom. I’ll post some pictures if I get the chance.

Oh, yeah, the lilacs started to bloom today. As I cut the grass, I could smell the lilacs.

Boston is one of my favorite cities.

No, I wouldn’t live there. It gets too cold. But otherwise, it’s a great town.

I remember it before the Big Dig, when the elevated Mass Pike split the city. I remember a cab ride from Somerville to Boston South Station while the Big Dig was under way. We went past the Boston Garden; the east end of the building was gone, and we could see the basketball court and the stands from the Route 1 Bridge. Remembering that always puts me in mind of the Cheers episode (#229) in which the denizens of the bar went to the garden.

Now, the Big Dig won’t go away.

Right now, the governor is returning campaign contributions, even though this governor, for all he is a Republican, really had nothing to do with the Big Dig.

I got to drive through the Big Dig year before last on the way to a training gig in Chelsea, Mass. Fortunately, it wasn’t flooded that night.

I must say, contrary to their reputation of being the worst drivers in the nation (a reputation they jealously promote), Boston drivers are actually rather courteous. Crazy, but courteous.

Even though I was fighting the evening rush hour after dark on a late fall day, someone always allowed me to make my lane changes and no one tailgated me. I’d rather drive in Boston than drive California Highway 17 again.

Now he can join Brownie.

Jeez, the current Federal Administration sure can pick ’em.

Sheesh.

I’m finally catching up with myself.

Didn’t even know I was chasing myself.

This morning, I rewired the lights in the attic. Now I have three, all controlled by one wall switch, rather than two controlled by pull-chains and one controlled by, well, it was a trouble light with its own push switch.

Plus I have an outlet. I have plans for that outlet. I’m going to get a DVR and hang cameras around the house, just because I can.

And all the wiring meets code. Which it didn’t before. The Previous Owner was a low-voltage man; he really didn’t know what he was doing with anything over five volts.

Anyhoo, for anyone who tried to connect to my server between 6 and 9 a. m. and got a 404 (“page not found”), it was because the server was turned off because it’s on the same circuit as the attic. Some of the wiring he did was really scary.

There she was. Alone in her Jeep SUV.

Swerving from lane to lane.

Holding a cell phone to her ear with one hand, and

Gesturing with the other.

I wanted to kiss my front yard when I got here.

Chris Satullo had an interesting piece in Sunday’s local rag on what he sees as problems with the college admissions process. He was not looking at how colleges process paperwork; rather he was looking at it from a societal perspective. This item, in particular, caught my eye:

2. Students feel too pressured to make the perfect choice.They’re young. They change. That should be OK. The American Council on Education estimates only 40 percent of students graduate within six years from the college they first entered. One in five transfers. Two-thirds change their major. These choices we press on petrified teenagers aren’t be-alls-and-end-alls. They’re shots in the dark that are easy to get wrong, but the mistakes aren’t fatal.

I have often questioned the wisdom of expecting students to choose a major in their freshman year. It’s certainly okay if someone knows what he or she wants to do.

I knew one person like that: His career goal was to write/edit for the Washington Post. Every move he made in college and after college was directed at that ambition, and, eventually, he succeeded.

But I suspect that most 18-year olds have only the haziest notion of what they want to do with the lives, and circumstances will change those notions.

Heck, when I went off to school, I was confident I wanted to be lawyer. Meeting some law students changed that; they were much too uptight for me.

Rather, I ended up in a profession (training and development) that I didn’t even know was a profession until after I had graduated and joined the world of work.

From another standpoint, I am struck by his citing the statistic that only “only 40 percent of students graduate within six years . . . .”

Two of my kids attended the local state university. When they entered, they were told that five years was the normal time for completing a bachelor’s degree.

The credit-hours they needed to finish were no more than I needed in the old days at a “four-year” college, and I went to a pretty good school. When I went to school, the standard was five courses a semester. They were counseled that four courses a semester was a normal course load. That two fewer courses a year. Two x four = eight courses to finish the fifth year.

I always wondered, when did four years stretch into five? And I always thought, quite cynically, when the university wanted to get an extra year’s room, board, tuition, and fees out of students pursuing a four-year degree.