So the Navy has some new recruiting ads running, like this one:
“The call to serve has no form, yet I have clearly seen it in the eyes of men and women infinitely more courageous and more driven than most.”
WTF? I’d like to think that our Navy does a lot of technical things. They launch missiles, calculate whether ships will float, and blow crap up. Concepts like “infinity” should not be alien to them.
But there they are making an advertisement tossing around the word like it’s meaningless. It could only be true if 1. Most Americans have zero courage and zero drive, but people in the Navy have some of each or 2. People in the Navy have infinite courage and drive, while most Americans have finite courage and drive. Surely sailors’ respect for their countrymen is not so low as to let them believe the first, and let us all hope that their self-awareness is great enough to not let them believe the second.
Worse than being stupid, though, that line doesn’t even sound good. “Infinitely more…than most.” It goes way over the top in the comparative, then adds the a phrase that makes the whole thing sound confused. If you’re going to make an indefensible over-the-top statement, backing down later in the sentence only draws attention to how ridiculous your first statement was.
They need to use a new ad agency.
Apollo posted this at 7:47 PM EDT on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 as Grumblin Mumblins
The sorts of complaints that are getting aired about Obama’s speech to the children are correct in their end – Obama shouldn’t be making national speeches to schoolchildren – but, largely, wrong about why.
The correct why is thus: public education is a frickin’ joke. Students don’t take it seriously, teachers are mostly interested in protecting their tenure and benefits, and administrators and politicians view it as nothing more than a means to achieve their private ends.
Case in point: what the hell can the president say to children that will be of any use to anyone? He’s going to tell them to work hard and try to achieve? Wow, will that have any more effect than the twenty trillion other speakers students will be subjected to this year? I’ve been out of public schols for almost a decade, but back in my day I heard washed up football players telling me not to use drugs, old school marms telling me not to have sex, and prudes of various varieties warning me about the hazards of tobacco and booze. Administrators and teachers patted themselves on the back for their efforts to change our lives, but at the end of the day the kids who were going to do those things did those things, and those who weren’t going to do those things didn’t. The lectures, the assemblies, the endless Magic Johnson Don’t-Sleep-With-Thousands-Of-Women-Like-I-Did-Or-Else-Um-I-Guess-You’ll-Wind-Up-Famous-And-Wealthy-Like-Me videos – it all washed over us like water off a duck’s back.
The abstinence-only versus condoms-for-everyone fight, the evolution versus creationism fight, the liberal environmentalist indoctrination, the desire of politicians to use students as props – this is all irrelevant and stupid so long as the public education system is governed by low expectations.
Michael Barone has observed that America produces very mediocre 17 year-olds, but the world’s most competent 30 year-olds. I think he correctly chalked this up to the fact that people rise to whatever level they need to: expect very little of students, and you’ll get very little; expect a lot from adults, and you’ll get a lot.
Perhaps one day we’ll stop treating our teenagers like children and start demanding that they behave themselves well. Perhaps one day we’ll expect more from our elementary students than simply showing up somewhat consistently.
But it is not this day. And it won’t be next Wednesday either. Next Wednesday, the president will make a national speech to all school children, extorting them to greatness, or whatever he thinks he’ll be doing, and virtually every one of them will ignore him. So it’s good to complain about the president making this speech, but not for the reasons that are getting all the press. He won’t indoctrinate our children with Marxist propaganda; he won’t politicize the classroom; he won’t turn children into missionaries to convert their parents to godless left-wingery; he’ll just waste his time.
Screed. It refers to an opinion you disagree with, but the word itself actually means little more than “an opinion.” People use the word because it sounds bad, like scream, but, insofar as it means more than “an opinion,” screed actually refers to a lengthy and boring opinion. That’s not how people use it, though. Instead, it’s just a way to signal disapproval without explaining disapproval. Don’t use it – it’s lazy.
Opine. The same way that bloggers use screed, lawyers use opine. The other side’s lawyer is always opining. Courts are said to have opined, at least by the party appealing the ruling, and sometimes by dissenting judges. Again, it’s just a lazy word chosen for the way it sounds rather than what it means. It signals disapproval without actually disapproving. If it were used once in a great while, perhaps for when a lawyer made an argument that went particularly far afield, or when Anthony Kennedy goes off on a “at the heart of liberty” spiel, it might be appropriate. But it’s overused so much that a complete boycott is needed.
An article from a New York-based publication tells us to cook pasta in less water (though honestly, are there people out there using 1.5 gallons of water for a pound of pasta?). The merits of the idea aside, this sentence is, I think, a good demonstration of the level of ignorance in America regarding energy:
My rough figuring indicates an energy savings at the stove top of several trillion B.T.U.s. At the power plant, that would mean saving 250,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil, or $10 million to $20 million at current prices.
At the power plant? I know the interwebs is a complicated thing, probably too complicated for journalists and editors to use, but I pretty quickly turned up some statistics about the sources of our electricity. 1.1% comes from oil. So unless he’s claiming that Americans could have an overall savings in electricity of $1-2 billion a year by reducing the amount of water they use to cook pasta (a savings of over a dollar per pound cooked!), this writer and his editors are part of the ignorant masses who just presume that energy = oil, so saving energy = saving oil.
I’m reading a lot about wind power right now, and the number of people who are ignorant on this matter is truly remarkable. If people ever refer to “energy independence” as a reason to reduce electricity consumption or to invest in renewable energy, they don’t know what they’re talking about, and probably haven’t even thought much about it. Our electricity comes from coal (all-American mined), nuclear (we could produce enough American uranium for our needs, even if we choose to import when it’s cheaper), natural gas (domestic produced, with practically limitless reserves under Texas and a few other places), and hydro (obviously not imported). Strangely, if pure “energy independence” is your objective, you should oppose wind farms, since we import most wind turbines from Germany. No one ever complains about those imports, though.
But oil? Oil goes for lots of uses, but very little of it is used for electricity. There may be lots of reasons to reduce the amount of water you use to cook pasta. Personally, I don’t use nearly as much as you’re supposed to simply because I’m impatient and don’t like to wait on huge pots of water to boil. However, if you think you are reducing the amount of petroleum America imports by using less water for pasta, you are sorely misinformed. It’s a shame – predictable, but a shame nonetheless – that the Times chose to perpetuate the energy = oil myth.
Read this chart. At first glance, it looks complicated, but a moment’s study will reveal it to be very accessible. And after reading it, you’ll know more about energy than virtually every journalist in America.
From tonight’s cookie: “Hugs are life’s rainbows.”
1. That’s not a fortune!
2. No they’re not; rainbows are life’s rainbows, hugs are life’s hugs. Life features both.
3. Rainbows are rarely seen, even more rarely seen completely, and translucent. Is that what hugs are supposed to be like: rare, incomplete, and faint?
4. Even if that were remotely true, it’s still stupid.
Apollo posted this at 10:35 PM EST on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 as Grumblin Mumblins
Adobe Acrobat Reader, that’s what. With all its flippin’ updates, its slow loading, and its constant marketing for other Adobe programs. I hate it.
So I don’t use it any more. I use Foxit, which is just as free as Acrobat Reader, but doesn’t have the problems. It loads pdfs much faster, gives you at least as much functionality, and gives you the moral satisfaction of not being constantly subjected to icons telling you how much more you could do if only you’d spend several thousand dollars on Adobe software.
Hence, it really gets my goat when programs – and I’m looking at you, TurboTax – refuse to acknowledge any pdf reader that’s not Adobe and won’t do what they’re supposed to do until you install Acrobat Reader. Aside from the fact that I am here being punished for using an incontrovertibly superior program, I have to put up with the indignity of a program presuming that anyone who uses it is so stupid or technologically illiterate as to still use Acrobat Reader. I think the real message to use different tax software next year.
Apollo posted this at 7:15 PM EST on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 as Grumblin Mumblins
Under most circumstances, government shouldn’t be setting wages. That’s what the market is for.
But when companies go begging for government bailouts and get them, they should be accountable to the taxpayers, which means the taxpayers’ elected representatives: Obama et al. What were these executives thinking when they asked for $700 billion dollars? That government would just let them spend money unsupervised? The financial industry overextended itself, so naturally their new shareholder—the federal government—is going to crack down on their pay and perks.
Remember: when you make a deal with the devil, you deserve to be the junior partner.
Although entertainers can perform live, Minor insisted that Hudson and Faith Hill, who sang “America the Beautiful” before the national anthem, use the tracks the NFL requires them to submit a week before the game.
“That’s the right way to do it,” Minor said. “There’s too many variables to go live. I would never recommend any artist go live because the slightest glitch would devastate the performance.”
Yeah, someone should tell that to the Cardinals, whose slightest glitches devestated their performance tonight. Perhaps Minor would have advised that NBC just airing a recording of Pittsburgh v. Arizona as played on Madden 2009.
This fakery is getting ridiculous. If people wanted to listen to a cd, most homes and cars today can accommodate that. But when people watch musicians perform live, they want to see musicians perform live. Not hear somebody else play a cd.
Nobody deserves to call themselves an “artist” – whatever the hell that even means anymore – if they go out on a stage where a live performance is expected and give a fake performance. It’s a lie. Performing live is hard – that’s why performers get paid to perform. I’ve yet to meet a live music fan who expected the same sort of flawless performance from live music that you would demand from a studio track. But I’ve also yet to meet a live music fan who didn’t expect a performance.
If she had just walked out there, put a cd in a player, let it play, take the cd out, and walk away, she would have been booed till the stadium shook apart. Everyone knows that. But somehow it’s supposed to be a “performance” if she lies to us and pretends she’s singing.
I’m sorry Jennifer Hudson’s family got killed. It sounds like a real personal tragedy for her, and it would be perfectly acceptable for her to take off any amount of time she felt like to recover from that. But it is not acceptable to lie to the biggest television audience of the year just so she doesn’t have to deal with how hard it is to perform on cue.
P.S. If you think I’m overreacting, think of all the extremely talented but extremely unknown musicians in America who would be willing to commit felonies to have been in Hudson’s shoes tonight to sing live before the Super Bowl. Yet for the sake of getting some celebrity to do it, the NFL was willing to pass off that phony baloney.
Well that’s crap. Crap, crap, crappity crap.
P.P.S. And what’s Faith Hill’s excuse? I don’t remember hearing about her family getting killed. Is America so bereft of patriots and singers that we need a celebrity’s cd to know what America the Beautiful sounds like? What happened to classes of third graders, or whole stadiums singing as one? That’s patriotic singing. Or, hell, Ronan frickin’ Tynan, even though I think he over does everything, at least he does everything.
the largest deal in history for a closer who was eligible for arbitration for the first time.
What the hell kind of record is that? Real records are things like the fastest 100M Sprint or 50M Freestyle swim. This reminds me of the parody from Mr. Baseball.
LAST SEASON, I led this team in ninth-inning doubles in the month of August!
So all I did was pay my bills on time, and they referred me to a collection agency because I canceled my account. Now, so far as a future creditor reading my credit report is concerned, I’m a deadbeat who won’t pay up a measly $36 unless hounded by a collection agency.
Again, whose nads can I kick over this? I’m going to the FTC.
Apollo posted this at 9:20 PM EST on Friday, January 9th, 2009 as Grumblin Mumblins
As a suitable follow up of my last post, it’s snowing in Austin. I have a final in the morning at an unfortunate time when there’s normally bad traffic; I am not looking forward to seeing how Austinites handle driving in the snow.
Over the last week, I’ve gotten a strangely large volume of wrong number calls. At least one a day, sometimes two. On Friday, I got a misdirected text message from a number I didn’t recognize asking me to engage in some criminal activity. Note to readers: if you’re going to request drugs via text message, make sure it’s a known number in your address book.
About 2:30 this morning, the phone rang but I didn’t get to it in time. It was an Arkansas area code. On the voice mail, a guy with a thick foreign accent and little English skill, kept calling me “James” and said that I needed to come pick up my friend at some place, but I couldn’t understand the place he named. Then in the background, some drunk guy with an Arkansas accent started explaining that he was waiting on me and he was going to get arrested for public intoxication (he called it “PI,” so I think he’s familiar with the charge) if I didn’t come pick him up.
Considering the circumstances, I called back to explain that I wasn’t James and probably wouldn’t be coming to pick that drunk guy up, but the guy with the foreign accent couldn’t understand what I was saying, and the drunk guy was just muttering incoherently and didn’t seem able to use the phone properly. Eventually I got tired of shouting “Wrong number!” and just hung up. They didn’t call back, so I presume things resolved themselves. Best of luck, drunk Arkansan.
Well, the economy’s bad, so not only are people turning to Spam, they’re also turning to pot pies. Thirty-dollar pot pies, that is. We’re not talking about the cheap 3-for-a-$1 Banquet stuff, but these:
Twin Hens(TM) has experienced a record 300% growth since 2005. Their delicious Pot Pies are available in Dean & Deluca, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, QFC, Rice’s Epicurean Fairway and over 300 independent stores across the country.
In all honesty, why do Spam sales increase during economic downturns? The New York Times makes it sound like it’s the only thing poor people can afford that “resembles meat.” I’ll grant that I don’t do much grocery shopping in New York, but here in Texas Spam is $4 a pound. Flippin’ pork tenderloin is $2.88/lb at Sam’s Club, and $4/lb at a normal grocery store. Other meats that are less no more expensive than Spam: pork chops ($2/lb), ground beef (lean ground chuck should go for $3/lb; fattier varieties go for $2/lb or less), fresh fish ($1/lb for tilapia if you know where to shop, $4/lb if you don’t), sirloin steak (regularly goes on sale for $4/lb), ham (Smithfield hams are never more than $3/lb), turkey ($.49/lb this time of year; never more than $2/lb), and chicken ($3/lb should buy you boneless, skinless breasts not on sale; everything else is cheaper, and I buy my chickens whole for no more than $1/lb, normally getting a whole chicken for less than a pound of Spam costs – a whole frickin’ chicken!).
I’m not a Spam basher; I like a Spamburger every once in a while, though I don’t get adventurous in cooking with it. But it’s not the case that Spam is cheap. Ramen is cheap. That crappy ground beef in the freezer section that sells for $.79/lb, that’s cheap. Mac and cheese and instant potatoes, the other foods mentioned in the story as increasing in sales, are both cheap.
What would explain it is if people are not just poor, but poor and some combination of lazy, bad cooks, and/or bad shoppers. If you’ve got $3 and you can either salt and pepper a pork tenderloin and cook it to the correct doneness, or you can open a can of Spam, slice is, and put it in a skillet until you feel like taking it out, the latter is somewhat easier and requires no cooking skill whatsoever. Spam also has the advantage of never going bad, unlike fresh meat. Though if people are broke and jobless and moping around without hope because it’s the worst economy since the Great Depression, maybe they could make a little time to buy fresh food regularly instead of buying 100 pounds of Spam twice per annum.
And those other meats are probably healthier (Spam is loaded with calories), reducing the amount the plebs will have to gripe about being fat and not having health insurance. And they all taste better as part of a well-rounded, healthy, and inexpensive diet.
I think we need to force high school kids to take home economics. The thought that people are turning to Spam as poor food upsets me. There’s so much better and cheaper food out there, even if Spam’s not bad from time to time.
Update: I just saw a commercial for a whole, cooked chicken from Boston Market for $1.99. Can’t say I particularly like Boston Market, but that’s cheaper than a can of Spam, and it’s significantly more food. And it’s significantly healthier.
We’ve seen many “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” bumper stickers in the past several years, misquoting Thomas Jefferson to slam Bush. James Lileks (H/T) thinks along the same lines I do:
I’m off to the Mall to sell razor blades so people can scrape off their “Question Authority” bumper stickers. Just remember: Dissent is still the highest form of patriotism. Except now it will be practiced by the lowest form of people.
Seriously, though: congratulations to President-elect Obama. Right or wrong — and I hope for more of the former, obviously — he’s my President now, dammit, and I’m not going to spend four years treating him with the contempt the Kos side heaped on Chimpy McPretzelchoker. He could turn out to be a horrible President. He could turn out to be a great one. History pushes people in unexpected directions.
More to come, of course, but let’s not spoil the moment.
We’ll have lots of snark coming towards Obama, but it looks like it’s time to retire our Audacity of Hype category, while our George Bush Rules! and George Bush Sucks! categories are also on retirement track. Any thoughts on what our new ones should be?
One more thing: Why did Alaska reelect Ted Stevens? Could we give that state back to the Russians?
Hubbard posted this at 9:44 AM EST on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 as Grumblin Mumblins
