January, 2015 archive
Stray Thought, Clock Fatigue Dept. 0
When I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days, the typical house had few clocks. There was the kitchen clock, the living room mantle clock, and a bedroom alarm clock or two. Grown-ups usually had watches.
I counted the clocks in the kitchen last night. There is one on the wall, one on the stove, one on the coffee-maker, and one on the microwave; if we had a mixmaster, I’m sure that, these days, there would be one on the damn mixmaster. I’m mildly surprised there’s not one on the slotted spoon.
In the living room, there is one on the cable box and one on the weather gadget. This does not include the clocks on the three computers (his and hers personal laptops and my friend’s work laptop for the VPN to her office computer).
I no longer wear a watch, as there is a clock on the cellphone in my pocket (I sometimes carry the pocketwatch my mother gave me for high school graduation when I want to be pretentious formal, but that’s another thing).
Once not all that long ago, when I was on a gig to design some training materials, several of us were looking to schedule a demonstration so I could collect some information. When we went to set a time for the demo, all three of us pulled cellphones from our pockets to check the time. Not one of us wore a watch.
Time is no longer a river. It’s a flood.
We have too damn many clocks.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Encouraging.
(snip)
The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, dropped to 298,500 from 306,750 in the prior week.
The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits declined by 71,000 to 2.39 million in the week ended Jan. 17. The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits held at 1.8 percent during that period, today’s report showed. These data are reported with a one-week lag.
In related news, Bloomberg’s experts were wronger than usual. Bloomberg really needs to trade them in for new experts.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
He loves politeness so much that he sleeps with it.
Volusia Sheriff’s investigators determined the shooting was accidental and will not file charges on Richard Cooley, 53, said sheriff’s spokesman Andrew Gant.
I dispute the “accidental.” One cannot be this stupid by accident.
“Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain . . .” 0
. . . or the Man behind the Medicine Show:
The Federal Trade Commission accused Lindsey Duncan of selling phony weight-loss aids, including green coffee bean extract, that he claimed could cause consumers to lose 17 pounds and 16 percent of their body fat in 12 weeks – without diet or exercise.
Duncan told Dr. Oz Show viewers that his claims were backed by a clinical study, but the company that sponsored the study settled FTC charges in September that found it to be severely flawed.
Air Balls, Reprise 0
Adam Kilgore thinks the NFL may be using the kerfuffle over Bill Belichick’s under-inflated balls to its own advantage. A snippet:
If the Patriots cheated, they of course should be punished. But the NFL has complicated the process beyond reason, and in doing so it allowed a farcical over-reaction to stand in for discussion pertaining to the game’s alarming sins. The league has allowed the Patriots to play the role of the villain, a convenient distraction from its own scandalous year.
You can read the whole thing and decide whether you agree. I don’t; over the past year, the NFL has demonstrated a public-relations ineptness indicating an inability to come up with so sophisticated a misdirection play.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness takes practice.
Sheriff’s officials say Scott Radford, 33, of Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, and Hillsborough Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Adee, 25, were firing a rifle behind Radford’s house when some bullets unintentionally hit Bryan’s house on the 3800 block of Porter Road in Lithia, a community in east Hillsborough. The properties abut each other.
The bozos clearly need a lot more practice in how to be polite neighbors.
“Wordslaw” 0
Jim Wright marvels at Sarah Palin’s recent speech. Here’s a bit:
Edit: No in retrospect, mulch and compost are the wrong words. “Word salad” is pitifully inadequate. It’s more like Word Coleslaw. Wordslaw!
Do read the rest.
