Random Bits

The TSA – those wonderful people who only seem to produce narrow-visioned responses to terrorist threats – bring us yet another set of rules to fly by. This time their sole focus is on preventing bombings during approach and/or landing. Don’t you just love how they only seek to prevent the exact thing that’s been most recently attempted? Remember, these are the same folks who now force us to take off our shoes because some bozo attempted a shoe bomb. Thank god it wasn’t in his underwear.

In their infinite (*cough* knee-jerk) wisdom they’ve decided to “let pilots and airlines determine whether in-flight entertainment systems that show a plane’s location should be turned off to avoid a security risk” because as we all know, terrorists are too stupid to look out the window. Next they’ll stop announcing that they’re starting their initial descent and offering estimates of how soon the plane will be landing. And if that doesn’t work, they can always glue the window shades down, you know, in an attempt to avoid a security risk.

Since there’s no way to stop someone from hearing the landing gear going down or looking out the window, or using their watch for that matter to estimate location, perhaps the TSA should implement mandatory anesthesia.

I didn’t think the bearded lady existed outside the old time circus/carny shows, and then only for the shock- errrrr… “entertainment” value they provided. Maybe that’s what this person was going for. Yesterday, riding home on BART, I saw my very first, real-life bearded lady. Mind you it wasn’t a full-on beard or anything, but she definitely had a thin mustache and a very hairy chin… goatee-style. Oh yeah, and the sideburns were a little out of control too.

I couldn’t help wondering if this were actually just a very effeminate man, I mean, this person was wearing a blouse, horn-rimmed glasses, hair up in twin “buns” at the back of her head, and fingernail polish, but that still wasn’t proof enough. The clincher, however, was when they off-boarded in Oakland and the breasts made it obvious this was a woman.

And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think…

An AP article posted today entitled Trains, bloggers are threats in drill, AP writer Ted Bridis reports that the U.S. government engaged in its “biggest-ever ‘Cyber Storm’ war game, according to hundreds of pages of heavily censored files obtained by The Associated Press”. It’s a “laundry list of fictional catastrophes” the players must attempt to defend against or overcome, including such events as “Washington’s Metro trains shut down. Seaport computers in New York go dark. Bloggers reveal locations of railcars with hazardous materials. Airport control towers are disrupted in Philadelphia and Chicago. Overseas, a mysterious liquid is found on London’s subway”.

Apparently however there was a bit of a mystery. It seems that during the games, some of the participants, which included “government officials from the United States, England, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and executives from leading technology and transportation companies”, quietly attacked the very computers being used for the game.

Now get this…
“Perplexed organizers traced the incident to overzealous players and sent everyone an urgent e-mail marked “IMPORTANT!” reminding them not to probe or attack the game computers.”

Excuse me, but isn’t that exactly what we’d want these people to be doing? Isn’t hunting down an attacking computer’s origin and shutting it down or counter-attacking it a valid tactic?? To me that’s thinking outside the box and they should be applauded for an original approach. Instead of reacting and running around trying to coordinate emergency services and other responses, they took it upon themselves to stop the very attack itself. Or at least let the game planners know they were “there” and could have shut down the attack. Of course, someone launching such an attack probably wouldn’t be as vulnerable as these people allowed themselves to be.

George Foresman, a former senior Homeland Security official who oversaw Cyber Storm is quoted as saying “Whether its intent was embarrassment or a prank, we had to temper the enthusiasm of the players.” Why? Because someone showed you up? Here you have an infrastructure set up to serve up these scenarios and you can’t even protect yourself from one of the very threats you’re emulating? A little too ironic.. and yeah I really do think.

Shame on you. I hope you’re suitably embarrassed.

About 2 weeks ago I was reading an article in the paper about how a study showed that marketing was shaping toddlers’ taste buds.

The article states that Stanford University did a study of preschoolers and discovered that food wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper “tasted better”. And then it goes south. Ready?

It quotes a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to children – a role which I applaud heartily. However, such an individual should have a better grasp of the English language than to say “You see a McDonald’s label and kids start salivating”. Is that to say whenever I see a McDonald’s wrapper, somewhere in the world I’ve made a kid salivate? Try this on for size Ms. Specialist: “When kids see a McDonald’s wrapper, they start salivating”. This same specialist goes on to say that it’s “the first study [she knows] of that has shown so simply and clearly what’s going on…”. Seriously? 63 kids and you’re ready to decide it’s simple and clear? It’s simple, I’ll give you that much. Has the paper left out pertinent information, or did the study? Because between you and me…

The parameters of the study are sketchy. We’re told they studied 63 low-income children. So right off the bat not exactly big numbers to establish a trend, now is it? Nor are 63 low-income kids exactly representative of toddlers in general, sorry. Sadly the author feels his tiny sampling would reflect the same results for children from wealthier families. Somehow I doubt that, as I also doubt that income matters as much as parenting style. And speaking of parenting style, what the newspaper fails to mention, and what cannot possibly be accounted for in such a small sampling of toddlers is…

…whether eating habits were taken into account. Two of the 63 stated they’d never eaten at McDonald’s but we’re not informed as to how often the remaining 61 ate there. If they ate at McDonald’s on a frequent basis, can you honestly say marketing is to blame for the childrens’ response? Bullshit. This is something I noted when I subscribed to U.S. News and World Report. I used to take their stories and studies at face value before I realized that by carefully omitting details the gee whiz factor can be intensified. If you actually think about what pertinent information is missing and how it affects the presentation of said facts you’d realize you weren’t getting all the information necessary to shape an informed opinion.

It’s not until the second to last paragraph that they quote a marketing professor as saying that parents play a strong role in controlling food choices for children so young. Bully for him. It’s wake up and smell the coffee time for pete’s sake. If these kids are salivating over a McDonald’s wrapper… c’mon parents! Be more selective in what you allow your child to eat. Be more selective in what you allow your child to see/be exposed to. My child hardly watches the television, and when he does, it’s movies, not television interrupted every 5 minutes by advertising aimed at him. My child eats home-cooked meals 99% of the time. He’s eaten a hot dog on rare occasion, enjoys pizza a few times a month, PB&J when mommy and daddy are at their absolute worst at parenting, and at 5 years old has eaten at McDonald’s maybe TWICE that I know of. I’m not going to say he doesn’t know what McDonald’s is, but he sure as heck wouldn’t salivate over a wrapper and sure as heck wouldn’t think something tasted better because it was wrapped in a fast food wrapping.

It’s been suggested that it takes a village to raise a child – most notably of course by Ms. Hillary Clinton, however please take note Ms. Clinton – as long as the village is targeting and bombarding my child with inappropriate material, the village can kiss my ass – I’LL raise my own child, thank you very much.

Ok… yet ANOTHER earthquake I’ve felt (at work). What’s really got me worried is that I’ve felt more earthquakes within the last 6 months than I’ve felt in the last 6 YEARS!! The big one’s coming. Mark my words, it’s coming soon.

Now THAT was the biggest one I’ve felt to date. Scary that we’ve had a few good shakes within the last week or so. I was just standing around when the house started shaking, glass shelves starting rattling, and some knick-knacks fell off their shelves. All in all, that one probably lasted at least 5 seconds.

It was a 4.2 with an epicenter 2 km (1 mile) NE of Lafayette.

I was sitting at my desk at work around 3:45 on Friday. With my hands on the keyboard and arm resting on the desk I felt a slight shaking. I had just opened my mouth to tell my coworker it felt like we were having an earthquake when

*bang!*

One good, hard jolt that shook the building. The biggest one I’ve felt yet.

It was a 3.4 with an epicenter 3 km (2 miles) ESE of Berkeley.

Have you ever noticed how often people um? Maybe it’s just me or maybe I just deal with some people predisposed to using the filler. I remember from a speaker I’d heard once, that people use it as filler while they collect their thoughts. It’s a crutch really and the sign of a weak speaker.

I’m usually ok if I just listen to the person speaking, but once I notice the ums, I can’t stop noticing them. And then I start counting them… and then I get frustrated and antsy. That many ums and I can just feel my time being wasted.

An average um + pause can use, let’s say, 2 seconds. In a 30 minute meeting/conversation with ummage occuring every 10 seconds on average, that’s 180 ums. You have literally wasted 6 full minutes just saying “ummm“. Think about that the next time you reach for an um.

Every day to and from work I pass Victoria’s Secret. Nothing really to see but the display windows and they hardly ever put anything risque in the windows. Actually, on a whole, on a risque scale of 1 to 10, V.S. is really only about a 3. Except for today…

Today I passed by as 2 employees were swapping outfits (not theirs, the ones on the mannequins – if it had been the employees I’d have given V.S. a 7). The mannequins were ummmm… nekkid. Now it’s just a mannequin, I know, but still, I felt like such a voyeur seeing these anatomically correct exhibitionists.

I felt even worse that they had to clean the smudge prints off the windows though.

edit: [6:45pm] Fortunately by my return trip home they’d been returned to their usual, scantily-clad selves.

… but I could swear one of them winked at me.

I was going to write about the horrible weather we’ve been having this winter – it’s been said that we’ve broken the record for most rainfall in recorded history. What with the rain, sleet, hail, and snow (x2) it’s made for a very interesting and very wet winter.

However, something else has disturbed me far worse. There’s just no way to sugarcoat this, so I’m just going to blurt it out. On my way into work this morning I saw a grandmotherly-type entering a Victoria’s Secret. Brrrrrr! I just had the shivers again.

On rainy yet sunny days like today I always keep my eyes open for the elusive rainbow. I like pointing them out to Josh since I think they’re pretty cool myself. You can almost tell when conditions are right, and this morning was perfect.

As we pulled out of the driveway, right in front of us I spied part of an arch and excitedly showed Josh. As we drove towards it and then meandered through the back streets to some more major ones, it grew into a full-fledged rainbow and darkened (brightened?) so the colors really popped.

Over the course of the drive to school it faded and reappeared a few times but as we neared the last turn we were treated to a double rainbow!

Now if that weren’t enough, while we were on the highway I actually SAW THE END OF THE RAINBOW!!. You heard me. The end of the rainbow! No, there was no pot o’ gold, but I had an unobstructed view (almost) to the ground and up ahead less than 1/4 of a mile away I could see a shrub that was clearly behind the rainbow. As in, the rainbow made the shrub look mult-colored because the shrub was behind the rainbow, not in front of it, obstructing it.

The light sure was funny this morning… as I drove up the hill towards the entrance “ramp” to the parking lot it had that “eldritch” kind of glow that, combined with the dark sky, made the moss on the trees a rich, emerald green. Almost made me feel like we’d been transported somewhere.

As I left the school I noticed a cloud that was completely and utterly black. Now I don’t mean your ordinary run-of-the-mill dark cloud… or gray, or what one typically thinks of when they think of black storm clouds. This one was perfect black. Another rare site indeed.

I can’t claim credit for this one… someone in one of my meetings said this today. Now I don’t drink coffee – I despise the stuff – but the quote sums up the Monday blues perfectly.

“No matter how much coffee I drink, it’s still Monday”

Ok, back to that precognition thing.

When I was a kid, one day my sister told me the next day she had to go to the local community college and invited me along. I’d never been there nor on the road that one took to get there. That night I dreamt I was in a car and we went down a very steep hill, back up another, and then down another very steep hill. The next day dawns and we head to the college where, lo and behold, the road leading to it has – you guessed it – a steep hill down and back up followed by another down and up. Not like I dreamt of an airline disaster or anything like that but still, that little incident has stuck with me ever since.

So a few weekends back the wife, son, and I are heading to the pumpkin patch. We’re driving merrily down the road chatting, singing, laughing when our son states “I smell something”. “What do you smell” asks dear old dad? “Raccoon in the road” comes the cheery reply and the wife and I laugh it off, thinking nothing of it other than it’s a little odd he chose a raccoon. Not generic roadkill, dead animal, squirrel… raccoon. Mind you we don’t travel this road often – hardly at all as a matter of fact. And certainly not with Josh within the last several weeks or more. Within 5 minutes the wife’s swerving to avoid a raccoon (squished) in the road.

Coincidence? Happenstance? Call it what you will. I think there’s more to the human mind than we’ve discovered.

People are such lemmings. No scratch that, lemmings is too nice a word. Cattle. Yeah cattle. Docile, dumb, herd mentality. That’s it….

The forecast calls for a little rain and every slack-jawed bovine decides they’ll leave early to beat the rain and traffic. Well guess what Einstein, you and 5,000 of your fellow cattle have decided the same thing.

I get to BART and every station – every train – is full. I ride home and when I get to my stop I’m joined by literally the equivalent of 2 trains’ worth of people. Usually I disembark with maybe two dozen people, but not today. Today there’s supposed to be rain. Today I jockey my way out of the train onto the platform and down the stairs to the turnstiles with about 40-50 other people. And of course now I have to follow them through the chutes to get to wide open spaces where I can pass these slow grazers.

Traffic, which they all decided they needed to avoid, is at a standstill. Why? Because 5,000 people decided to leave work early.

This morning on my way into work I witnessed a sad sight indeed: a funeral procession made up of only 3 cars… including the hearse. I hope for some poor soul’s sake the funeral was over and these were the remnants of the grieving, happenstance forcing them to follow one another through town as they headed to different destinations. Or perhaps the funeral hadn’t started yet and these individuals were on their way to the funeral home? The question remains though, why then were the cars tagged with “Funeral” placards and following the hearse? Whomever you were, I hope you received a proper sendoff.