Manual Labor

There's an essay about working with your hands in the New York Times. It's awesome. Not only does he extol the virtues of manual work, but he also makes a strong case about how our educational system is biased towards itself. All the educators went to university, and were taught by people who went to extra bonus university, and so the entire system is built around assuming that university is the best option for everyone all the time.

The fact is, there are a lot of people who don't need what college provides. They do need job training and skills. And our nation does need people who can read and write and do math well enough to not get cheated by credit card companies and car salesmen. But you don't need 4 years studying anthropology to do that.

I think that it's great that people who find studying anthropology inspiring can do that. But I think future plumbers are best served by a high school that equips them to be great plumbers, not prepares them well for the SAT.

George Will hates Portland

Well, the New York Times may love Portland, but George Will hates us. We're too liberal by far for his taste. Just because we do stuff that encourages people to live sustainably by taking mass transit or bicycling places.

His lamentations would be more convincing if he had any facts straight. He scoffs at the idea of getting more than 0.01 percent of commutes to be made by bike, while in Portland we achieve 400 times that number. He reports a totally made-up claim that the government is going to take your light bulbs away.

I had in the past been impressed by the intelligence of George Will's writing. I'm sad to see him decline so far. (Although I gather he's made collossal factual errors in the past.)

Correction: OK, it turns out that the government is going to take your light bulbs away. At least, in 5 years, light bulbs will be required to achieve efficiency levels that will make incandescent bulbs illegal.

But I still disagree that our urban growth boundary is a bad thing. I've seen sprawl, and I don't see anything good about it. I much prefer a smaller yard and a shorter commute to living on half an acre and driving for 90 minutes to get to work.

Infomercial Tactics

Given all the many books about the psychology of selling that have hit in the last year, it's not too surprising to hear a brief story about the tactics used in infomercials. It is, however, still awesome.

It feels like it shouldn't be surprising. We know that if a price is preceded by a higher one it sounds lower than it is. We know that splitting it up into several payments makes it sound cheaper. We know that while $19.99 is almost the same as $20, it feels significantly less. And yet when I hear all the different methods catalogued at once, I feel like I'm under siege by an army with far superior weaponry and detailed intelligence about my armor's weaknesses.

I realize the 1st Amendment implications, but I do think banning advertising targeting children could be a good thing. It would destroy an entire industrial complex, but I dare anyone to show me a product sold by the Disney-Industrial complex that actually adds value to society.

Star Trek Villains

I did see Star Trek today. It was truly awesome. And not just because it's a new star trek movie. The writing is spectacular, the acting is skilled, the editing is superb. The story just FLOWS.

Except the villain is hollow. He seems really unexcited about destroying the universe or whatever. Which is a shame because if he were a fully developed character, the story would have even more points of resonance and awesome. There are limits to what you can do with horrible, wooden acting, I guess.

But that makes me realize that Star Trek has struggled (until now) to overcome its TV nature and have really dangerous villains who truly posed a danger to things around them. Great villains in stories are just as interesting as the hero. The Fugitive works very well because both hero and nemesis are strong characters, and the story is of their struggle against each other to achieve their own definition of justice. Day of the Jackal is a great struggle of two men against each other. Batman movies are good when the villain is truly imposing, and ridiculous when the villain is a joke.

So now a list of Star Trek movie villains:

1: A broken old space probe. Ugh. I watched that?
2: KHAN!!!! (Ricardo Montalban, Mr. Roarke from Fantasy Island.) Awesome.
3: Klingons (Christopher Lloyd, Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Well, not his fault the movie's stinky.)
4: Whales. Although this one's a comedy, so that kind of works.
5: God. Really? I know Shatner talked his way into directing, but you had to use THAT bad a script?
6: Klingons (Christopher Plummer, Captain Von Trapp.) God, I wish he had sung Edelweiss in Klingon.
7: Malcolm McDowell. Too bad they wasted time killing Kirk to turn the villain of Clockwork Orange into a ridiculous cartoon.
8: Borg Queen. Super awesome.
9: Super wrinkled Salieri. I'm sure I paid good money to see that, too.
10: A clone of Picard. Not played by Patrick Stewart. I don't know whose idea that was. Seems like if the whole concept is nature vs. nurture, they're biologically identical, and you write in a scifi loophole about accelerating age, why not just make him the same age? Then you could do all sorts of trading places identity theft stuff.
11: Romulan time traveler. Nice ship. Too bad you don't seem to really CARE about destroying the universe.

Neque Ego Haer Intellegere Possum

There's a column in the Times about Latin diplomas. It's slightly interesting, to me in part because my diploma's in Latin.

But the best part is the graphic at the top, which is my headline. It reads, (I'm told), "I don't understand this either."

I want that on a bumper sticker. Or T-shirt. Or something.

Edit: I'm told by an aunt that it should be Neque Ego Haec Intellegere Possum. See, I told you I didn't understand it.

Don't Eat Poop

From E. Coli to salmonella to Mad Cow, if there's one thing we've learned about food safety, it's to not eat poop. Or things that are fed their own poop.

And yet food companies persist in feeding chickens cow poop and feeding cows chicken poop. And allowing poop to get in our food. But it's ok now - because chicken pot pies have new instructions for cooking times. Too bad that when you follow the instructions it doesn't fully cook the pot pie.

Super gross. I won't be buying any more pot pies until I forget about this story. Which could be a while.

Microsoft = Jerks

Microsoft released a security update a couple days ago. No big deal. Plugged some holes in Microsoft Office that hackers could use to do bad things.

Here's the problem. They only patched the Windows edition of Office. If you're using Office on a Mac, too bad. Good luck with that.

That's ice cold. It does let them run ads claiming that Windows is more secure than Mac. But it's still cold.