Blogcritics Author: Jim Wynne

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Two Soldiers of Truthiness

Jim Wynne — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:10:07 EDT

There are two newspaper items at hand that serve to illustrate the scientific ignorance of the Religious Right, and the Bush administration's exploitation of it. One of them is a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Peggy Noonan that has already been noted by PZ Myers at Pharyngula and Matt Brauer at Panda's Thumb. Noonan proudly displays her moranity on the subject of science in general and global warming in particular when she laments what she perceives as the failure of scientists to have a big meetin' and settle all of this controversy once and for all:During the past week's heat wave - it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday - I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world's greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous? What exactly are the dangers? Is global warming as dangerous as, say, global cooling would be? Are we better off with an Earth that is getting hotter or, what with the modern realities of heating homes and offices, and the world energy crisis, and the need to conserve, does global heating have, in fact, some potential side benefits, and can those benefits be broadened and deepened? Also, if global warning is real, what must - must - the inhabitants of the Earth do to meet its challenges? And then what should they do to meet them?Of course, the consensus Noonan wants -- one that concludes that global warming is just a big leftist lie -- isn't going to happen, because there's already plenty of credible science that Noonan and her ilk choose to ignore or disparage. Noonan doesn't want the issue to be confused by a lot of hard-to-understand facts, and like all neocons, doesn't want to have to make any sacrifices if it's possible to avoid them by remaining ignorant or telling lies.The other item comes from my local newspaper, the Kenosha (Wisconsin) News in the form of a letter to the editor from one Kathleen Ehlen, chairman of the Kenosha chapter of Pro-life Wisconsin. Ms. Ehlen, waxing indignant over embryonic stem cell research, dissembles thusly (in part):If embryos are not human beings at their earliest stage of development, prove it. [Stem cell research proponents] are trying to justify chemical abortion by birth control drugs.Life begins when the sperm unites with the egg. Why else start with egg and sperm? They pick the "best ones" and flush the rest away. A stunning commentary on how we deal with those less perfect beings, in the sewer. These embryos have souls created by God. Not believing this does not make it untrue. Did the human eye "just happen by chance?"It's amazing that Ms. Ehlen could pack so many nested non sequiturs into just a few sentences. She wants to create an image of evil scientists flushing babies into the sewer, but of course, the facts ( whether Ms. Ehlen chooses to believe them or not) point elsewhere. Ehlen has decided for herself that life begins with the sperm-egg get-together, and that's when a soul is created. Problem is that things don't really get started until the fertilized egg attaches to the uterine wall, and that never happens for some 60% of fertilized eggs, which means that Ehlen's god is creating an awful lot of souls for no apparent reason, because the embryos that fail to attach just get flushed down the toilet. It is indeed a stunning commentary.The point of all of this is that the Bush administration has targeted the intellectually challenged (Noonan and Ehlen are perfect examples) and pumped them full of specious reasons for ignoring the best scientific information and replacing it with appeals to morality. It's pandering at its very lowest level, and it seems to be having the desired effect. Portray scientists as amoral robots who will lie (for no apparent reason) about human effects on the environment and then cast babies into the sewer, and the mouth-breathers will vote early and often. And of course, the ethically bankrupt politicians have no trouble in finding a few cranks with scientific credentials here and there to support their positions; those scientists provide the real truth, and are always eminently reliable.Well, not truth, exactly, but truthiness, which carries the same value as actual truth at the ballot boxes.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

CD Reviews: Everybody's Talkin': The Very Best of Harry Nilsson and Two Re-releases

Jim Wynne — Tue, 23 May 2006 18:15:58 EDT

Enigmatic and erratic singer/songwriter Harry Nilsson, who died in 1994, would have been 65 years old on June 15, and Sony/BMG has chosen the occasion to re-release two albums from the early seventies and a new greatest hits collection. The two re-releases -- 1972's Son of Schmilsson and 1973's A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night both include "bonus" tracks. The former includes four, including three that were previously unreleased. The latter includes six tracks withheld from the original vinyl album, but previously available on a European CD.First, the bad news. With Little Touch, the ponderous presence of Gordon Jenkins, the apparent impotence of producer Derek Taylor (in his debut as a record producer), and Nilsson's abdication of the whole thing to both of them doomed it from the start. After the first couple of tracks, it's impossible to just relax and listen because Jenkins and his huge orchestra (139 pieces) and even huger charts keep jumping out from behind the door and startling the hell out of you with pseudo-clever, cloying abandon. I know that diehard Nilsson fans will disagree, and Little Touch debuted to mostly favorably notices back in the day. Nonetheless, the nearly complete absence of anything resembling rhythm and the obvious dominance of the arranger/conductor don't bode well for an album that should have been about a great singer singing great songs.It's said that the six bonus tracks are the result of there being studio time left to kill, and everyone having such a great time they went on and recorded the additional material, knowing they wouldn't be able to fit all of it on an LP. Thank God for that, because the extra tracks, including "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" and "Over the Rainbow" are just evidence that they should have quit with the first 12.It's just an ugly mess, and a damned shame that a great vocalist, armed with a collection of great songs, gets lost in Jenkins' ego fest. Try Rod Stewart or even Linda Ronstadt if you want rock-star-sings-standards, and let this collection fade back into the obscurity it richly deserves. But it does get better. Harry was in his element in Son of Schmilsson, which includes appearances by Ringo Starr (Richie Snare), George Harrison (George Harrysong) and Peter Frampton. This preceded by two years the wretched excess of Pussycats, Nilsson's binging collaboration with John Lennon during the latter's infamous Lost Weekend period in 1974. Although not without its own uneven moments, this album charted a couple of singles in "Remember (Christmas)" and "Spaceman," the latter highlighted by a pointed Frampton solo. A few of the songs were not ready for Prime Time, however, such as "Take 54," with its "I sang my balls off for you" lyric and "You're Breakin' My Heart" "You're breakin' my heart/you're tearin' it apart/so fuck you..." It's a sign of both Harry's stream-of-consciousness lyrical style and his newfound clout after the huge success of Nilsson Schmilssonin 1971.The bonus tracks, like the original set, are a mixed bag. One is an alternate take of "Take 54" and shows why it was relegated to the can; another is the spare-but-effective "Campo De Encino," a Jimmy Webb tune recorded solo, with Nilsson on piano. There's also a single edit of "Daybreak," which turned out to be Harry's final chart single. The new collection, Everybody's Talkin': The Very Best of Harry Nilsson, contains 14 tracks, including nine of ten Hot 100 singles, together with (in addition to the obligatory title tune) "I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City," "Without You," and the unavoidable (even now) "Coconut." The disc spans a period of ten years of RCA recordings, from 1967's Pandemonium Shadow Show("Without Her") to 1977's Knnillssonn ("All I Think About is You"). It's a compact collection for fans who don't want to lug the 49-track 1995 compilation Personal Best in their cars, and a good introduction to Nilsson for younger folks who missed it all the first time around.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

I've Been Touched by His Noodly Appendage

Jim Wynne — Mon, 15 May 2006 13:11:52 EDT

Not long ago I read an Associated Press story about two Swedish geologists who have found, as the story puts it, "...fossilized feces from a worm that lived some 500 million years ago..." One of the geologists, Mats Eriksson, said that he and his partner analyzed the phosphorus level in the samples and "...realized pretty soon that it could not be anything other than coprolites, in other words fossilized dung."I bring this up for a couple of different reasons. When I first read the story and realized that the fecal matter of worms was dug up after 500 million years, I was immediately reminded that I need to go out in the yard and clean up after my dog. Although neither the dog nor his droppings are 500 million years old, I think some of the clumps, after a long winter, might be in the early stages of fossilization. The other reason I'm writing about ancient worm feces is that it occurred to me as I was getting out the scooper that there are many people who will scoff at the thought of 500-million-year-old poop, convinced as they are that the earth and all of the poop it holds are no more than 10,000 years old. Of course, that idea makes no sense at all in light of the available evidence, including the dating techniques the Swedish geologists used to ascertain the age of the worm poop. Nonetheless, young-earth creationists will tell you that the geologists are mistaken, deliberately lying about the worm feces, or just under the influence of Satan. Because of nonsensical beliefs like that, I'm considering joining a religious body after years of assiduous agnosticism. Not a Christian church, mind you, most of which are a bit too hateful for my tastes, but the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.The FSM church first became widely known when a 24-year-old Oregonian named Bobby Henderson wrote an open letter to the Kansas State Board of Education, which was considering dumbing down the state science standard to allow for Intelligent Design "Theory" (read: religious creationism) to be taught as an alternative to biological evolution. In his letter to the board, Henderson said, "Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster."Henderson goes on to explain that FSMism, like Intelligent Design, is scientific and therefore shouldn't be excluded, because it's important for all scientific theories about the origin of species to be given equal treatment. Henderson explains that FSMism addresses how scientists can be fooled by things like fossilized worm poop: "...a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with his Noodly Appendage."Henderson also informs us that the FSM wants all of us to dress like pirates, and as evidence of the efficacy of pirate costumes he (Henderson) provides a graph that shows that as the number of pirates in the world has dwindled since the 18th century, global warming has increased in inverse proportion, showing a statistically significant relationship. More pirates = less global warming -- there's your science. Henderson offers to train Kansas science teachers in the tenets of FSMism and says, "I think we can all look forward to the time when [evolution, Intelligent Design and FSMism] are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence."It all makes perfect sense to me -- at least as much as celebrating a solemn religious holiday by telling children that a rabbit or a fat old man has entered the house in the night and has left expensive gifts or colored eggs all over the place.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

Satire: How to Write Good

Jim Wynne — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:51:46 EDT

Recently, after having read one of my newspaper columns a co-worker asked me how I learned to write so good. While I'm not sure that how to write good is something that can be teached, I thought it might be a good idea to offer a few pointers for anyone who has a desire to improve his writing skills.The first thing you should do is always use the male personal pronoun. In other words, instead of saying, "This is advice for anyone who wants to improve his or her writing skills, just say "...his writing skills." Aside from avoiding the clumsy "his or her" construction, there are some women (mainly ones with hyphenated last names) who will be irritated by it, and that alone makes it worthwhile. Also, don't worry about subject-verb number agreement. It's perfectly okay to say "...anyone who wants to improve their writing skills," because such usage is evidence that the writer was not really thinking about what he was writing, and too much thinking while writing is never a good thing, as anyone who reads newspaper op-ed pages must realize.Many people seem to have trouble with punctuation. The most misused punctuation mark, by far, is the apostrophe. My advice is to use the apostrophe indiscriminately, just as everyone else seems to do. If a word ends in "s" and you're not sure whether to use an apostrophe or not, go ahead and throw one in. This is especially true of the word "its." At last count there were only about ten people on earth who know the difference between "it's" and "its." Why worry about it?The aspiring writer should never allow himself to be intimidated by big words. While at one time it was considered good form to use a dictionary and look up the meaning of a big word before using it, these days meaning is less important than the sheer mass of verbiage that you use. Thus you can refer to an ordinary abbreviation or initialization such as "YMCA" as an "acronym," even though it is not an acronym and has never been an acronym. You would have no way of knowing that, though, unless you looked it up, and who has time for that? In my local newspaper a few years ago, on the occasion of the opening of a new factory, a story was published about the grand opening festivities, which, according to the piece, included a "train that circumvents the warehouse." While it may be that the train actually did avoid or elude the warehouse by way of a loophole, I doubt it, but what does it matter? The writer knew what he meant.Contractions (like "it's") are another bit of sand in the ointment of good writing. Take my word for it, though, no one cares whether you say "your" or "you're." The sentence "Your not using you're head" makes perfect sense to ninety percent of the population, so why bother trying to figure out which is correct? Likewise, don't worry about homophones. In the past few weeks in different publications I've seen instances of reporters writing about being in dire "straights" and having one's curiosity "peaked." Take a tip from the professionals: do your best to spell the word phonetically and get on with your life.One of the main reasons that no one cares about how to write good anymore is that we now communicate a great deal via written messages on the internet, and because many people who use the internet can neither type nor spell, written communication has reverted to a language of abbreviations, hieroglyphics and the modern-day equivalent of cave painting. They use sideways pictures called "emoticons" such as {;>) which is supposed to represent a person smiling and winking. They don't say that something is funny, they say "LOL" or "ROTFLMAO" (laugh out loud; rolling on the floor laughing my ass off). They also often refuse to use upper case letters--or use upper case exclusively--and punctuation of any kind, and call each other by weird names: hey blamo ufabno (woo gitty) down by mr stankys lol--pigmeats gonna be their to The result is that you have to read a message about 12 times in order to at least partially figure out what the sender was trying to say. It's no wonder that people who spend hours every day communicating like this have trouble with formal English, imho. So don't let the fact that you know nothing about grammar, spelling and punctuation make you think that you can't write good. The only rule left is that you should start at the beginning and make your way to the end by way of the middle, and if you apply yourself, the first thing you know yule be writing more better than myself. (LOL)

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

Customer Service: A View From the Other Side of the Counter

Jim Wynne — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:45:13 EDT

There has been a movement afoot in the retail industry to improve customer service. It seems that customers are increasingly annoyed by allegedly incompetent and/or complacent workers at the point of sale. One large supermarket chain has ordered its cashiers to smile at customers and call them by name. When someone I don't know smiles at me, I always wonder if my fly is open or if I have toilet paper hanging from the back of my pants. I never take it as a sign that the person is genuinely glad to see me. The geniuses who run large retail organizations, most of whom have never had to deal with the public on a daily basis, develop these sophomoric ideas -- which serve only to demean and demoralize their own employees -- while ignoring real opportunities to improve things for good customers.Consider for a moment what your average supermarket checker has to put up with. Many customers are hopeless jackasses. They're rude, sometimes dirty and smelly, demanding, unreasonable, self-centered and stupid. They think it's perfectly okay to treat store employees like swine. They carry on unnecessary conversations on their cell phones while the cashier is waiting for payment, while five people behind them are queueing and the four-year-old in the basket seat is screaming at the top of his lungs. They try to get away with more than they have coming, holding up lines while they whine about "limit:2" restrictions or the shelf tag being incorrect, a shelf tag which in most cases the customer misread despite the fact that it was designed to be perfectly clear to the average six-year-old.They lick their fingers, touch open wounds and/or pick their noses while handling their money. They are taken by surprise by the fact that merchandise must be paid for, then take their time in determining the method of payment, or finding the checkbook at the bottom of an American Tourister-sized purse filled with cosmetics, candy wrappers and two yards of topsoil. They'll purposely avoid putting the money into the smiling cashier's outstretched hand, opting instead to put it down on the moving conveyor belt so the cashier has to chase it. If the customer decides to pay by credit or debit card, the even-a-moron-could-figure-it-out electronic card-reading device must be explained in excruciating detail, and even then the customer tries to swipe the card upside-down or backwards, and complains bitterly about how complicated it is. Frequently this complaining is heard from persons who were given the same patient explanation the day before. Customers take baskets into the "10 items or less" line loaded with enough groceries to winter the Russian army and complain that they are in a hurry and can't wait in the other line where they belong. They bring $100 worth of items to the checkout when they know they have only $9.75 with them. They complain bitterly to the adolescent clerk who refuses to sell liquor because a city ordinance prohibits its sale during certain hours of the day. Sometimes they are drunk or high and babble incoherently and make lewd comments, especially if they are smiled at by an attractive young cashier. Many of them don't speak English and are vexed by the fact that the cashier isn't fluent in Urdu or Portuguese. They study a 12-foot long register tape in infinite bloody detail and ask 50 stupid questions about it (Customer: "What is this? I didn't get any pomegranates!" Cashier: "It says 'Polident,' ma'am.") before reluctantly moving out of the way so someone else can check out.When a truly unreasonable customer goes beyond every known limit of decent human behavior and the manager must get involved, he or she invariably panders to the idiot, which makes the cashier look and feel like an indentured servant who is expected to take the 40 lashes, smile sweetly and forget about it. Just remember all of this the next time you're buying groceries and the cashier seems disinclined to act really glad to see you. After five hours or so of being abused, there aren't many people who can maintain a pleasant disposition. If you are a normally polite and considerate person, be aware that store management doesn't really care at all about you, because they are too busy appeasing the morons and making them feel welcome, which just perpetuates the whole problem. If the big retail companies really did care about their good customers -- and their own employees -- they would make it a matter of policy to tell the incorrigible bad ones to hit the road and go shop the competition. Amazingly, the management pinheads haven't realized that "customer service" is a two-way street, and does not consist in kissing the behinds of people who need to have them kicked - right out of the store.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

Rude Awakenings: Don't Expect to Sleep in a Hospital

Jim Wynne — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:51:03 EDT

I am currently recovering from surgery I had a few weeks ago. While I won't bore you with the details of the affliction that occasioned the subcutaneous intrusion, I will say that it isn't the first time I've been cut, and in fact I've been cut so many times now that I consider myself an expert in the general area of inpatient surgical procedures. As a public service for those who are facing their first experience with surgery and a hospital stay, I thought I would offer a few tips that might make the experience less stressful. Don't go into the hospital thinking that it will be a restful experience. Hospitals are full of people whose job it is to keep you awake. No one is ever allowed to sleep in a hospital except hospital employees, who must sleep in the hospital because they're never allowed to go home. Hospital employees have secret devices that tell them when any patient in the building has fallen asleep and as soon as you drift off, no matter what time of day it is, someone will come in and wake you up. They'll do this under the guise of performing some sort of necessary treatment or service, whether the treatment or service is actually necessary or not. One time I had just fallen into a sound and much-needed sleep when a nurse shook me said that it was time to take a sleeping pill, and I'm not kidding. If it's not a nurse, a phlebotomist, or some kind of technician waking you up (or making sure you don't go to sleep in the first place), it will be a housekeeping person who believes that he or she can change your bedding while you're still in the bed. You might be awakened at 2:00 a.m. by a nurse-assistant strapping a blood pressure cuff on your arm, then go back to sleep and be awakened ten minutes later by the same person, now wanting to take your temperature, having forgotten to do so when she was taking your blood pressure, and not because she's unable to remember lists of things to do that comprise more than one item, but because hospital employees must be skilled in finding reasons to awaken sick people.If the hospital staff somehow fails in its mission and allows you to get to sleep, and you're in a semi-private room, the other patient in the room will be charged with the responsibility of keeping you awake. My favorite experience with a hospital roommate occurred after I had been kept awake all night by the loud, incessant and obnoxious gurgling of a machine that was pumping a viscous brown fluid out of the roommate's stomach into a glass receptacle on the floor. Apparently he had some sort of terrible upper-gastrointestinal problem that had been aggravated, if not caused, by excessive consumption of alcohol. Early the next morning a nurse came in and mercifully turned off the gurgle machine, and she was soon followed by the roommate's physician. I heard him tell the roommate that he (the doctor) was going to let him go home that day, but with an ominous warning: "If you leave here and go out and buy a six-pack and drink it, I guarantee that you'll be back here within twenty-four hours. Do you understand?" The roommate anxiously agreed. A short time later, he was on the phone giving the good news of his impending discharge to a friend. "I'm going home today," he said, "but the doctor says I'm probably going to be back here pretty soon."If you're unfortunate enough to be confined in a teaching hospital, you'll be subjected to the morning rounds of attending and resident physicians and medical students. They roam the floors of the hospital in packs numbering upwards of sixty or seventy individuals, all of whom will try to squeeze into your room at 5:00 a.m. If a terrible mistake has been made, and you were actually allowed to go to sleep, the horde of roaming doctors and students will set things straight by suddenly pulling the covers off of you and poking you sharply wherever they think the poke will cause you to shout the loudest. The group won't leave the room until you've cried out in pain at least once.You'll never have any idea what the group is actually trying to accomplish -- other than making you yell--because they speak only in polysyllabic, Latinate medical terminology (for example, physicians are not allowed to use the word "armpit"; they must say "axilla" or risk losing their licenses). When they're finished speaking in gibberish, poking you, and making you scream, they'll abruptly leave the room. Then another group will come in 15 minutes later and start the process again because the first group was actually supposed to be poking the patient in the next room.While I don't want to make it seem that staying in a hospital isn't a good idea for people who really need to be there, my own experience has been that if you need to have a fairly routine procedure done, such as an appendectomy, amputation, or some sort of neurosurgery, you'll probably be better off if you fill yourself full of rotgut liquor and do the surgery yourself. At least you won't have to worry about post-operative sleep deprivation

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

HGTV: Make a Statement in Your Living Space

Jim Wynne — Sun, 9 Apr 2006 13:46:03 EDT

I've been watching a lot of home improvement shows lately, mostly on the cable channel HGTV. This is mainly because my wife watches these shows a lot. HGTV is primarily aimed at people like her who believe that if the house today bears any resemblance whatsoever to what it looked like yesterday, it needs to be remodeled. Actually, the most popular of these shows, Trading Spaces, is on TLC. I'm sure it galls the people at HGTV to have dedicated 24/7 programming to home improvement and then have the most popular home improvement show on a network dedicated mainly to graphic depictions of grisly surgery, childbirth, and pet euthanasia. The premise of Trading Spaces is that neighboring homeowners, abetted by diabolical professional decorators, desecrate rooms in one another's houses. They festoon walls with cheap fabric, paint linoleum floors, and drag garbage in from the curb to use as "accessories."After watching these shows for a while, it's possible to develop a short list of popular, money-saving ideas that may be used to desecrate one's own residence. One of the most popular today is the use of what the decorators call "faux" finishes. "Faux" is an Armenian word that means "unsightly," and the process involves desperate and invariably unsuccessful attempts to make the refuse that has been dragged in from the curb more presentable. Another use of faux finishing involves painting a wall or expensive piece of upholstered furniture a light color such as ecru, and then dabbing on a darker color, usually taupe, with a sponge. This has the unexpected effect of making the wall or sofa appear as though someone dabbed paint on it with a sponge.Decorators also suggest faux finishes for surfaces that should be replaced, but can't be because of a tight budget. For example, if you can't afford a new kitchen counter top, you can make a design statement by giving it a faux finish. In this case, the statement is, "Try not to notice that I painted my counter top because it looked like hell and I couldn't afford a new one."An entire decorating style has developed around the use of garbage to accessorize a living space. These days one doesn't put things in the living room; one accessorizes the living space. The technique of bringing trash into the house and proudly displaying it in the living space is called "shabby chic." A living space effectively decorated in this style immediately brings to mind the idea that there was a good reason the salvaged items were thrown out in the first place.Another popular decorating technique is called "feng shui" (pronounced "I am hopelessly gullible"), an ancient Chinese "art" that shows how money may be separated from stupid people by making them believe that arranging their furniture properly can, well, separate them from their money. There are also a lot of gardening and landscaping shows on HGTV. My own experience with decorative gardening boils down to a simple concept: When you plant something, it will probably die. Nothing I do will affect this outcome, which is somehow predetermined. You can follow the planting and feeding directions to the letter and the thing will still just die if it feels like it. Sometimes you're better off if the plant does die. If the nursery tag on it says it is a "modest grower" and will be 2 feet high at maturity, this means it will be bigger than your house by the end of the summer and its roots will go through your sewer line like a hot knife through butter.According to the HGTV shows I have seen, there are two things that every landscape design must have: a water feature and a touch of whimsy. "Water features" are similar to fountains, except that water features cost about $2000 more and are made from rusty 55-gallon drums that originally contained radioactive waste. As for "whimsy," it's important to have some "focal point" in the garden that's mildly amusing. Not hilarious, mind you, because an effective garden plan should create an outdoor living space that makes it possible to be introspective and contemplative while communing with expensive dead shrubbery.Now that I think about it, it seems most of what passes for interior (and exterior) decoration these days consists of what used to be considered garbage picking and acts of vandalism. The upside of it all is that if your living space is shabby, you can dab an ugly shade of paint all over everything, including the broken table your clueless neighbor threw out last week, and suddenly be very stylish.For myself, I must admit that I've partially succumbed to the do-it-yourself craze, having chosen a project that involves taking an old coffee table and making a cable spool out of it; and by this I mean a cable spool with a whimsical faux finish that makes a statement, adds a touch of drama to the living space, and will be just the ticket for casual entertaining. Or maybe I just need to watch more ESPN.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

Soccer for Dummies

Jim Wynne — Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:35:20 EDT

This is the year of the World Cup. The quadrennial world championship of soccer is a huge event all over the world except for the United States. Aficionados of the game, when asked to explain why it isn't more popular in this country, usually answer that Americans have not taken the time to learn its "nuances." In answer to this contention, and in the interest of educating the public, I have taken considerable time to familiarize myself with the game. In fact, I recently watched nearly 10 minutes of a game on the Spanish-language cable channel. While watching the game was an edifying experience in itself, I was delighted to hear one of the announcers use what sounded like the Spanish word albondigas, which means "meatballs." It is the only word I remember from my high school Spanish class other than the word for "washroom," which I remember only because the teacher wouldn't let you go there unless you asked in Spanish. One of the slower students had the misfortune of experiencing sudden-onset intestinal distress during Spanish class one day and caused a memorable commotion when he desperately and unsuccessfully tried to remember the word for "washroom" and wound up in tears asking in Spanish if he could go immediately to his uncle's blue car. I can't imagine what the context might have been in which the announcer referred to meatballs during a soccer game. I suppose it's possible that what the announcer said was something that just sounded like "albondigas," but I don't think so. At any rate, for the benefit of readers who lack the type of comprehensive knowledge of the game that I now have, I will explain a few of the "nuances."As far as American professional teams go, there are three positions: midfielder, Fiery Spaniard and Determined Croatian. The other 70 "players" on the field at any given time are not really players at all; they are hyperactive people who run helter-skelter up and down and back and forth across the field in order to create the illusion of purposeful action. The intended verisimilitude is not achieved, however, as it is soon apparent that these "players" are running around aimlessly. And the term "professional" is a little misleading. Due to the lack of popularity of the sport in this country, few tickets are sold. If you call the ticket office of an American professional team and ask what time the game starts, they ask you what time you can be there. So "players," instead of being paid actual salaries, are compensated with Chuck E. Cheese tokens.Goalkeepers wear unique uniforms because they are not members of either team. Their job is to protect the basic integrity of the game by making sure that there is never any scoring beyond the one-goal limit. (By rule, the final score of all soccer games is either 1-0 or a scoreless tie.) They are armed with pistols and after a goal has been scored they are empowered to shoot anyone who looks like he might be trying to score another. This explains why "players" are often seen frantically impelling the ball away from the goal with their heads.In soccer the game clock runs backwards. That is, it shows the elapsed time rather than the time remaining, which means that it is necessary for spectators, players and officials to do a small mental calculation in order to determine how much time is left in the game. Because soccer fans are generally incapable of such mental activity, no one really knows when the game is supposed to end, so they sometimes go on for several days.Other than "players" running willy-nilly up and down the field, there is no meaningful action whatsoever in soccer games, unless one team's Fiery Spaniard trips the opposing team's Determined Croatian, or vice-versa. When this happens, one of the officials on the field will pull a colored card out of his shirt pocket and show it to the crowd. In most of the world, this is a signal for spectators to begin throwing things on the field, randomly beating the snot out of one another and dismantling the stadium. It doesn't happen in this country because the spectators generally lapse into a coma-like stupor shortly after the game begins and don't wake up until halftime, which is usually two or three days later.Given a bit more time I could explain a few more of the fine points, but I think the average reader who didn't understand soccer before reading this post will now be able to watch at least five or six minutes of a game before losing consciousness. And you can be sure that upon waking up the next morning that you can start watching the game again without having missed anything.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

A Modest Proposal: Ban Hetero Marriage

Jim Wynne — Thu, 6 Apr 2006 13:14:13 EDT

All of the recent hubbub over gay marriage has gotten me to thinking that perhaps we shouldn't be so concerned about same-sex unions and maybe we need to initiate a ban on opposite-sex weddings. My wife and I have just celebrated our 25th anniversary, but it sure seems that we're in the minority these days.I think that most of the problems facing married couples have to do with the fact that women and men are very different, and the differences will never be completely reconciled. I don't believe that women are inferior to men, but to deny the basic differences and biological peculiarities is foolhardy at best. For example, here are a few things that women do that men will never understand: They enjoy making useful objects useless, such as towels that are not intended to dry anything, candles that have wicks but are not intended to be lit, and bars of soap that are not intended to be used in cleansing anything. They spend hours clipping coupons so that money can be "saved" by buying products that would not have been bought if there hadn't been a coupon. They insist bitterly that the man is an idiot when they don't check to see if the toilet seat is down before trying to sit on it. They spend $600 on a clothes dryer and then hang all of their wet clothes in the bathroom or laundry room. They go into stores and touch every piece of merchandise at least once and utter the words "cute" and "tacky" at least 200 times each, without having any money or any intention of buying anything and then call the exercise "shopping." They insist that the house isn't clean so long as there is any evidence whatsoever, including trace amounts of DNA, that anyone has ever lived there. They pour windshield washer fluid into the power steering reservoir instead of the windshield washer "thingy" despite the fact that the power steering "thingy" is clearly marked "POWER STEERING FLUID ONLY" and then complain that the people who design cars must think everyone is a rocket scientist.I realize that women could compile their own lengthy lists of things that men do (or don't do) that they consider irrational, but that's my point. Men and women are so fundamentally different that getting along for any amount of time at all requires extraordinary bilateral patience and forbearance, and without condescension. It seems that same-sex unions would have a much better chance of lasting just because the most fundamental obstacle -- the inherent difference between men and women -- isn't in the way.People of my generation were raised believing that homosexuality is perverse, and there are still many backwards individuals who believe that sexual orientation is a matter of choice. Of course, none of them can cite the occasion when they made the choice to be heterosexual. Most if not all of the objections to gay marriage are based in religious beliefs, and the idea that morality is inextricably bound to religion. Religious types are fond of quoting the Old Testament passage from Leviticus that says that for a man to lay with another man as with a woman is an abomination. But then again, the same Old Testament says that eating pork is a no-no and I don't see any conservative Christians lobbying for a constitutional amendment to ban consumption of bratwurst. The objections to gay marriage are all based on bigotry and fear, and religion is being used as a lame surrogate for rational thinking. I would feel uncomfortable in a room full of gay people, but it's the same discomfort I would feel in a room full of black people or a room full of Lithuanians. We have a tendency to steer away from those who are racially or culturally different from ourselves. The fact that I would be uncomfortable or even fearful in those situations, though, is my problem, and it's up to me as an allegedly rational adult to recognize my own prejuduces and not blame them on innocent bystanders.This is a civil rights issue; churches don't have to marry gay couples if they don't want to, but for government to deny basic rights to a very large segment of the population because of religious fears is unconscionable.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.

Berlinski on Berlinski: What Trees Does He Plant?

Jim Wynne — Wed, 5 Apr 2006 13:10:34 EDT

I was a teenager living in Chicago at the time of the Great Uprisings surrounding the Democratic convention in 1968. The late mayor Richard J. Daley, father of the present day mayor, went from the kingmaker role he played in 1960 to being a turgid, inarticulate, anachronistic old fool during the process. Daley was proud of the cosmetic makeover he had given the city in anticipation of the arrival of the Democrats and the national media. The convention was held in the old Chicago Stadium, home of the NBA Bulls and NHL Blackhawks, and situated in a heavily blighted neighborhood on Madison Street a few miles west of the Loop. Daley spent a lot of time and money applying cosmetics to the route between the downtown hotels and the Stadium; a lot of painted barriers were erected in front of vacant lots and a lot of trees were planted in the median strips and parkways. If there was one thing that could get Daley going into one of those malapropism-laden press conference tirades for which he had become justly famous, it was the idea of "people comin' here from udder places" and causing trouble in his city. In the summer of '68 there was no shortage of those foreign agitators in Chicago. It was during one of those press conferences, following the rioting resulting from the Martin Luther King assassination, that Daley made one of his most famous and fitting misstatements. In reaction to reports of looting, Daley had issued a shoot-to-kill order to his police department, to which the news media in Chicago reacted predictably. When being asked to defend the order, Daley became flustered and said, "Let's get the thing straight, gentlemen. The policeman isn't there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder. "So it was that during a press conference during the convention, Daley launched a screed about those people from udder places who were coming in to Chicago and starting trouble. He talked about his own beautification efforts and asked the pointed question -- "These people who come here from udder places and cause trouble -- where are their programs? What trees do they plant?"What does this have to do with David Berlinski? Berlinksi is a mathematician and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank with a primary mission of promoting the anti-science concept of Intelligent Design (ID). There was a recent post at ID the Future that continues a long-winded, seemingly interminable interview with Berlinski, with the interviewer being Berlinski himself. It seems as though he's struggling against what must be near-terminal ennui -- the rest of the world is such a bother, don't you know -- and is irritated that no one else is interested in talking to him, so he's enlisted the only worthy interviewer he knows. I should point out that I owe Berlinski a debt of gratitude for my own blog's title (Clever Beyond Measure). In this little piece in the Daily Californian Berlinski said, Wearing pink tasseled slippers and conical hats covered in polka dots, Darwinian biologists are persuaded that a plot is afoot to make them look silly. At Internet web sites such as The Panda's Thumb or Talk Reason, where various eminences repair to assure one another that all is well, it is considered clever beyond measure to attack critics of Darwin's theory such as William Dembski by misspelling his name as William Dumbski. (Emphasis added) Thank you, Dr. Berlinski. At the time the piece was published, about a year ago, it was pointed out that no one at Talk Reason had referred to Dembski as Dumbski, and only a few commenters (not a sinister group of bungling "Darwinian Biologists") had done so at Panda's Thumb. But never mind; it soon becomes clear that Berlinski is more interested in sniveling condescension than he is in actually making any sense, or contributing anything but fatuous fluff to the discussion about biological evolution. You see, Berlinski is a mathematician and is amused beyond measure when mere scientists wearing clown costumes presume to elevate themselves to the level of his stately Presence. I'm reminded of a James Thurber cartoon depicting a gracious host displaying a bottle of wine to his guests and saying, "It's a naive domestic burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption." So Berlinksi has his fun at the expense of people who actually get their hands dirty in their foolish attempts to augment the body of knowledge in biology. Berlinski accepts the mantle of DI Fellow, one suspects, because they're willing to pay him the sycophantic homage he believes is his due. He's on record as saying that the idea of Intelligent Design "Theory" doesn't interest him much. In the linked "interview" he describes his attitude towards it as "...pretty much what it has always been: warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public towards my ex-wives." The fact that Berlinski has had wives is somewhat more surprising than the fact that he has a collection of former ones. Berlinski's disdain -- no, contempt -- for The Panda's Thumb is enlightening, I think. In his self-interview he describes it this way: The Panda's Thumb...is entirely low-market; the men who contribute to the blog all have some vague technical background--computer sales, sound mixing, low-level programming, print-shops or copy centers; they are semi-literate; their posts convey that characteristic combination of pustules and gonorrhea that one would otherwise associate with high-school toughs, with even the names--Sir Toejam, The Reverend Lenny Flank,--suggesting nothing so much as a group of guys spending a great deal of time hanging around their basements running video games, eating pizzas and jeering at various leggy but inaccessible young women. Wow. That's some sentence. One gets the feeling that Berlinski eschews the utility of the full stop out of his utter glee in hearing himself go on and on unimpeded by bothersome punctuation. It's also interesting to note that he ascribes low-lifeism to "the men who contribute" to PT without saying that it's the commenters there and not the actual contributors that he's referring to. Otherwise he would have to admit that the intellectual assets of PT contributors are considerable; you can see for yourself here.By and large they're people who are doing something to make the world a better place other than sitting on their fat asses in Paris disparaging all who would deign to believe that mere science, and the actual work (here one sees Berlinski reacting to the sound of the word as Maynard G. Krebs would) that scientists do on a daily basis is worth nothing more than some occasional self-worshiping intellectual masturbation. So one has to wonder about Berlinski: what trees does he plant? What does he actually contribute other than arrogant derision, condescension and unbounded narcissism? It seems such a waste of a good brain that all it seems able to do is sneer at ones it feels are not as capacious and Aware. Give me the working variety any time.

James Wynne is a freelance writer and quality engineer.