What Your Global Neighbors Are Buying

The New York Times has an interesting interactive cartogram titled, "What Your Global Neighbors Are Buying," that shows how citizens of the countries of the world spend their discretionary income. Greece? Thirteen times as much on clothing as electronics. Japan? More on recreation than clothing electronics and household goods combined. Americans? Well, we spend a lot on everything.

Raging Caging

The topic on everyone lips last night? Voter disenfranchisement through fraud and voter caging possible in the upcoming November elections. What is voter caging? The slate can clear it up for you in their 2007 article on "Raging Caging".

Other news stories I heard included one from Michigan, where the Chairman of the GOP in Macomb County has declared he will challenge people's right to vote if they have been evicted from their foreclosed on homes. Macomb County is 1 of the top 3 hardest hit by foreclosures and even if he can't turn voters away from the polls, Macomb County, populated mostly by African Americans, can expect some long lines on election day. The Michigan messenger picks up that story in, "Lose your house, Lose your vote".

Lastly, you can listen to the September 11, 2008 broadcast of the Thom Hartmann Nationwide show, where sub-in Lee Rayburn describes how registered Democrats in "purple states" across the nation are receiving misleading absentee ballots with incorrect addresses or return addresses to GOP headquarters. The bit posted here is 10 minutes and well worth listening to or you can download the complete third hour of the show at the itunes store under Thom Hartmann Nationwide - 9/11/08 - Hour 3.

The Large Hadron Collider Drinking Game

I am personally excited about the Large Hadron Collider and it's not just the flood of messages from our apocalyptic future, inspired new music, the rush scientists get from playing God, or the possible annihilation of the earth as we know it, (but hey, those things are sexy too) but mostly because I like large physics-y things being smashed together causing world wide panic and a return of middle ages type hysteria that hasn't been seen since the clock rolled over to 12:00, 2000. Woo. That was a mouthful. I feel a little dizzy.

Work off the LHC Blues by checking out The Large Hadron Collider Drinking Game at io9. What's io9? That's another post.

Web(non)sense

Websense has dropped public access to their website lookup tool.

Yes, I correct Wikipedia articles. I also submit corrections to internet censorship companies like Websense and the now defunct SurfControl (who recently bought by Websense in 2007). Some of my favorites corrections have been the censorship of official Adobe Product Help Forums and various sites which provided educational materials (like blank sheet music) or reference materials (say information about coin collecting and starting your own coin collection).

Last week I received this dandy notification from Websense in my In-box (shortened version follows):

During a recent upgrade to MyWebsense, we have implemented steps which increase the accuracy of our customer information. This allows us to better meet our customers' support needs.

Unfortunately, your MyWebsense account is missing some key information and is no longer active.

To re-initiate your account, please visit http://www.websense.com/supportportal/ .
By providing this information, we will be able to provide you with more focused support offerings, improved ability to create support cases via our online portal, and online forums, to be released in the near future, which will enable you to interact with other customers to resolve issues.

We apologize for any inconvenience.
(Blow yourself),
Websense Technical Support

Okay, I added the "Blow yourself" at the end. But the long and short is the new required information is the Activation Key for their product, which will only be available to the Information Technology (IT) professionals which installed the software and not to the millions of users effected by the technology in public school systems and libraries, on high traffic machines in hospitals and private universities or government workers across the globe. Not to mention independent website providers and bloggers who can no longer look-up how their own websites are categorized by Websense and request changes to (their often inaccurate) categorizations.

Cheerio.

Bafflegab

Had an interesting bout with payroll the other day, which leads me to toady's word. A dictionary definition of bafflegab clarifies the word as, "incomprehensible jargon" and compares it to "gobbledegook". This definition is vastly insufficient.

Let's begin our discussion with an excerpt for an actual notification from a government contractor "suggesting" its workers take annual leave during building maintenance:

[Maintenance] has announced that electrical power to [our building] will be shut down beginning Friday. We understand that routine functions will cease at that time and non-emergency personnel will not be permitted in [our building] during the power outage.

Employees who are not able to work during the power outage may, with supervisory concurrence, adjust their work schedule for the [pay period before the outage] to complete 40 work hours prior to [Friday]. Alternatively, employees may elect to take Annual Leave for the work hours missed due to the power outage.

Not one worker in my office fully understood the message. Vaguely some realized that a choice was being given, but none understood what the choices were. The notification gamely suggested it was addressed to employees not able to work during the power outage, but since all employees were not be permitted in the building, it wasn't clear that the message was addressed to EVERYONE.

That's because it was written ambiguously, using jargon and conflicting modifiers with the explicit intent to cover [management's ass] by deliberately clouding the message's real intent (we are forcing you to work overtime or take annual leave). This message was written in bafflegab.

Milton A. Smith, the assistant general counsel for the US Chamber of Commerce, coined the word in 1952 after a maddening day trying to explain a written order to a colleague. He decided a special word was needed to describe his office's special blend of “incomprehensibility, ambiguity, verbosity and complexity” in its bureaucratic language.

At the presentation of an award from the Washington Report, Milton Smith was asked to briefly define his word. He described it as:

“multiloquence characterized by consummate interfusion of circumlocution or periphrasis, inscrutability, and other familiar manifestations of abstruse expatiation commonly utilized for promulgations implementing Procrustean determinations by governmental bodies.”

Expect to see that on your next annual review.

John Derian for Target

I've fallen in love with John Derian's morbidly anatomical prints and whimsical sense of humor too many times to count. I even made a special pilgrimage to his store/studio in New York last week in the hopes of spending (no more than $50) on one of his gorgeous and subtly twisted objects of useful art. But drat the hated price tags! Sixty dollars for a paperweight the size of my thumb? In this economy? Really Mr. Derian? I was so furious, I wandered around the shop vaguely imagining running into the artist himself furiously covering hand-blown glasses with layers of antique script. (Of course he wasn't there. I'm sure he was of enjoying martinis on his yacht made of gold bricks. Or perhaps relaxing with a scotch in soda in his shadowy, well-appointed mansion sitting on top of a dark, lonely hill) May I remind you that, decoupage is a Victorian pastime disguised as pseudo art originally meant to occupy women? Curse you and your lovely antique star-maps pasted to the inside of pencil trays!!

Of course, I took it all back as soon as I opened the first page of the Domino magazine that came in my mail yesterday. I squeezed the first page with all the shock of reunited lover. John Derian's designs are to enter Target stores on September 7th with a lower priced line of stationary and home decor. Do you see these tears? They're tears of overbrimming happiness.

Conspicious Presence

The Italian issue of Vogue is reacting to the reluctance of the fashion industry to hire black models, by using only models of color in their July issue. The New York Times has applauded their slap in fashion's face by calling the industry lazy, paranoid and pedantic in their article, "Conspicious by Their Presence".

After scouring newstands and bookstores that carry foreign issues and being dissapointed (this issue sold out almost immediately and finding a copy in DC proved impossible), I turned to Jezebel.com for a reliable round up. You can catch other smoking hot photo shoots with the likes of Naomi Campbell, Sessilee Lopez, Tyra Banks, and Toccarra Jones (woo, plus size!) like the one above in their article, "Italian Vogue's "All Black Issue": A Guided Tour".

Time for Some Campaignin'

The folks that brought you, "This Land" have finally changed their tune. Check out "Time for Some Campaignin'" .

My favorite part? The Unicorn, baby.

The Sleazy, the Noir, and the Science Fiction

My current obsession with American Pin-ups has run amuck to encompass pulp fiction novel covers from the 40's through the 70's. Not surprisingly, many of these lurid and fantastically seedy covers were penned by the same great illustrators that made pin-up and glamour calendars a national religion in the 50's. Because of my natural inclination, I find my favorites are the sleazy, the noir and the science fiction (not necessarily in that order). On sharing my secret shame with my Sister, the Older, she remembered a few covers that we owned in our childhood.

"Remember, Casca the Eternal Mercenary?" she asked (a delightfully trashy set of tales of military daring-do discovered on my Brother's bedroom floor). It's true, I not only picked up these pulp-tastic tidbits but I read them from cover to cover, as if I could find something within the words that matched the rapacious illustrations on front.

"Did you ever read any Gor novels?" I screeched in approval. Under my direction, she directly read the short story, "Houseplants of Gor" which succinctly captures all three of the above qualities, ardently displayed by the stilted, laughable, and all together entertaining works of dubious literary merit scribed by John Norman.

Now, so should you.

xkcd

I must be the last person in the world to discover xkcd (the acronym doesn't mean anything, it's just hard to say). Defined as a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language (really what else could you want?) it produces such winners as this panel quoted from Neil Gaimon's Sandman Graphic Novels.

And this panel about Orson Scott Card's Ender's Series.

It's been awhile, but xkcd (I'm serious, it doesn't mean anything, I've done my research) has a permanent place in my Sweetshop.

Cooking for Engineers

At a young age, I read the Joy of Cooking. Back to Front. I've always had a love-love relationship with food and when I was of an age to be entranced by Mr. Rogers, it was mostly because he came on before Yan Can Cook, the Frugal Gourmet (I don't care, his recipes are awesome) and Julia Child. I read cookbook after cookbook, comparing recipes, writing my own notes and then writing my own recipes, trying to understand the science of it all. Why were my fried eggs soggy? Why didn't my pop-overs pop? I was good at math and science and cooking was like chemistry, there were things going on, food things, amalgams to compound, liquids to emulsify, energy to be released. I bought as many of the Time-Life "The Good Cook" series as I could, because they taught the basics: marinades needed an acid, an immersive, and a flavoring agent; chicken sautés must be seared then tempered with vegetables then finished in a simmer.

Modern cooking shows like Alton Brown's "Good Eats" were such a godsend, because he put the math and science right next to the cooking. Finally, someone else got that teaching one to prepare food should not be about teaching how to follow a recipe, but how to understand food and how to experiment with it.

You don't have to have cable (or a TV for that matter) to learn the same thing. Enter, "Cooking for Engineers", a site built for analytical minds that like to cook aimed at demystifying the science of food preparation. In addition to their ingredients dictionary, catalogue of cooking tests, and notes on equipment and gear, at the end of each recipe is a Nassi-Shneiderman diagram (shown above for New England Style Chowder) which is simply the recipe at one glance. Now why hasn't Alton Brown thought of that?

Embrace the Shoelace

Once upon a time, I was a middle-schooler of the eighties, fond of watching ThunderCats, buying dresses printed with faux paint splatters, and wearing my black Reebox sneakers with wild shoelaces, meticulous threaded during timeless evenings of Gimme-A-Break, Growing Pains, or Family Ties.

Now that the eighties are unofficially back, I find myself pressing my nose against the glass at Lady Footlocker, wondering if I can get away with practicing my basket-weaving skills on the tops of my shoes. You could do it too, you know. And you don't need to scour the pages of Seventeen magazine like I did back in the day. You can just take a look at Ian's Shoelace Site. Which, among other things, has colorful step-by-step instructions on not only how to tie designer laces the envy of any respectable Reebox wearer, but also carries shoelace news stories, tips for teaching children, ways to repair agelets (those shoelace ends) and methods for calculating your own appropriate shoelace length.

Stay Cool

I was supposed to see U2 3D last weekend with some friends down at the Samuel C. Johnson IMAX Theater in the National Museum of Natural History Smithsonian, but the very idea of leaving the apartment and foraging into that horrible hotness that can only be known as DC "weather" caused a swoon that could only be cured by cold beer, soccer games and Xbox.

I also spent some time surfing the web and pretending to be productive, when came upon list after list of interesting websites that I never got around to visiting. Seems like everyone has a listing of what they think are the "coolest" website on the web. But these Ploomy, what men need to know and Time Magazine actual have some street cred. Take a look at Ploomy's "10 Cool Websites" and Times' "10 Cool Websites" when you are cranking up the AC and hiding from the DC heat wave.

Hot Dog, Haute Dog

When summer approaches, hot dog consumption goes up exponentially as the temperature increases. (Not to mention, I'm heading off for my sister's wedding this weekend in Chicago). In honor of such simple pleasures, I would like to bring attention to the Chicago Tribune's article, "Hot dog, haute dog!". You don't have to go to Chicago to experience these creative twists on the old-fashioned dog. Included in the article are fabulous recipes from the Chicago Chefs for making such delicious innovations like the Asian Tuna Dog, or the Hoisin-and-Hot-Mustard-Glazed Tofu Dog in your own kitchen. And don't worry, when asking the five interviewed chefs to put their own spin on the wondrous wienie, they made sure to stipulate it had to be something the home cook could feasibly replicate.

Garfield minus Garfiled

Dan Walsh of Dublin did all Garfield critics a favor when he took the orange lay-about and all of his furry friends out of Jim Davis's cartoons. The result is a neurotic, manic-depressive and frankly hysterical offshoot called "Garfield minus Garfield" showcasing the neuroses of Jon Arbuckle (Garfield's Owner) in all their delirious glory.

Surreal and a touch dark (they way I like 'em) Jon's antics are still touchingly human and laughably ridiculous. In Amy Orndorff's article, "When the Cat's Away, Neurosis Is on Display" in the Washington Post, she noted "the futility in making everything turn out right every day". I for one, love the Walsh's refreshing pandering to the lonely, absurd and desperate conditions of office workers and stalled dreamers everywhere.