Category Archives: Society

Lie to Me

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Choosy mothers may not choose Jif any more 1 .

The price Jif is going up by more than FORTY percent today, according to published reports.

Social Security checks are going up by less than FOUR percent, according to published reports.

Decades before she collected Social Security, my (very choosy) mom branded us a Skippy Peanut Butter household. After all Jif is just creamed peanuts in a jar but Skippy is peanutbutter.com.

Monthly Social Security for more than 60 million Americans will increase by 3.6 percent starting with checks issued January 1, 2012 (the Supplemental Security Income increase starts with checks issued December 31 of this year).

The San Antonio Express News reported that “the Cost of Living Adjustment ensures that the purchasing power of Social Security and SSI benefits is not eroded by inflation. It is based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of the last year a COLA was determined to the third quarter of the current year. If there is no increase, there can be no COLA. There was no COLA in 2010 and 2011 because the CPI-W, as determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Department of Labor, for those years did not increase above the level of the third quarter of 2008, the last year a COLA was determined.”

Some recipients, may see their Social Security partially or completely eaten by the rising Medicare premiums.

Is Lie to Me Real?

Lie to Me was a Fox television series that spanned three seasons from 2009 into 2011. The show centered on human lie detection based on applied psychology including interpreting microexpressions, a Facial Action Coding System, and body language. Lie to Me was cancelled by Fox in May but probably not because people can’t detect liars.

Nearly 80% of Americans said they do not trust the government to do what is right, according to a Pew Research Center public opinion survey released in 2010. It was the highest level of distrust of Washington in half a century.

That was 2010.

A New York Times and CBS poll released last week shows now, just 18 months later, 89% of Americans do not trust government to do the right thing and 74% of us say that we believe the nation is on the wrong track. That’s higher than the highest level of distrust of Washington in more than 60 years.

There are plenty of partisan political reasons for discontent but I figure it is simpler than ideology.

Uncle Sam lies.

From Vietnam body counts to “I am not a crook” to “I did not have sex with that woman,” we have become lost in a misery of misstatements, mistruths, misdirections. Lies.

I don’t believe the statistics that show my cost of living has risen only 3.6% since 2008. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe Harry Reid who said “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers,” last week while pimping a $35 billion bailout for public employee unions. Somebody monkeyed with the numbers poorly. Somebody lied.

I don’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming. Lots of somebodies monkeyed with the numbers to make that case. Somebody lied.

Of course it may be entirely because that well-known inventor of the Internet, Al Gore, lied to us in order to feather his own very noble but lightbulb-intense mansion.

Unfortunately, the result of the lies is that choosy mothers can’t afford Jif and really really choosy mothers will have to give up on Skippy for the peanut butter cookies in my Halloween basket.

Jack of All Trades

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The lizard is affronted, annoyed, slightly choleric, exasperated, fierce, vexed, and more than a little disappointed.

On her Monday Peeve over there, she wrote, “I’m not even gonna get into dual-language packaging and how the employees at stores always put the Spanish side out when stocking the shelves.”

So I will.

Packaging is part of the issue. After all, having the same descriptions in two or seven languages on the box is more irritating to those of us who don’t wear our readers all the time but including a user manual in those same two or seven languages means either even smaller print or a lot more paper in each and every box.

Most manufacturers shrink the print and quadruple the paper. More for the waste stream.

This is an issue that not only could help Congress take its mind off important actions like renaming post offices and their vacation; it can also increase liberal schizophrenia.

We need a law, see, that bans multiple language packaging and user manuals. And forms. We do, after all, place the environmental impact of the waste stream above all else.


In our effort to become Jacks and Jills of all trades
We have become the Masters of Baiters.
We can do more.We can save money and go green if we just reduce, recycle, and reuse the lingua franca of the United States.With 14 million Hispanic residents, California has the largest population of people who self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. That’s about one-third of the state population. (Florida is number three, behind Texas, with 4.2 million or not quite one-quarter of the population.)On the other hand, there is no accurate count of the number of Muslims in the United States, because the U.S. Census Bureau does not collect data on religious identification. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported 7 million people nationwide self-identified in 2011.

“Press 3 for Arabic?”

[Image]California’s Muslims make up some 3.4% of that state’s population or 20% of the national total. Michigan’s Muslims appear to be 1.8% of the Michigan population, less than half that state’s Hispanic population. Recognizing the extreme need to cut down the vast northwestern forests, the California Medi-Cal Eligibility forms may be available in more than Arabic, including Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. And English. The State of Michigan Public Assistance also offers help English, Spanish, and Arabic.

“Now on top of all the paper, the state offices have to have 17 different writing systems?” Rufus said. “Bleeping morons.”

Here’s the bait: all you environmentalists reading this? Isn’t it time to cut this kind of waste from our government, our shelves, our stream?

Orphan’s Club

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School starts this week for many and very soon for most.

The parents of our kids’ friends become some of our friends. A gang of us got together here in North Puffin after all of our kids abandoned us for the bright lights of school and work to the loneliness of old age. We had the usual potluck suppers and camaraderie as well as canoe trips and concert nights and bank robberies.

So how did you feel when your youngest left the nest for college or wherever, especially if this was hundreds of miles away? another friend wondered on Facebook.

The answers varied from, “My youngest may never leave” to pride in “his readiness and enthusiasm to go” to a coast-to-coast flight “with him to help him get stuff to his dorm” to “I’ve already got TWO of my kids this > < close to being able to support me when I suddenly appear at their front doors with a suitcase.”

And, of course, boomerang kids have long made headlines as the once thundering and now sour economy had no room for them at the Inn.

My aunt moved six times to follow her elder daughter, my cousin, around the country including two sojourns when they all owned houses in South Puffin. That cousin now lives with her father.

My own parents moved in with my dad’s in-laws. My son moved in with his in-laws. Pragmatism drove both moves.

My mother’s mother died in 1953 leaving my maternal grandfather alone in the ancestral farmhouse. It was an easy fit to absorb a couple more generations, good for my grandfather who couldn’t have kept the place up alone and for my parents who also didn’t have the resources or time to manage the house and barns and lawn and gardens and fields.

As an only child, I almost never had a “baby sitter” and was almost never alone.

My son’s story is more modern. He married and moved in with his in-laws on the same day. It was meant to be temporary because the in-laws had a small house and the kids really wanted to be on their own. They were married, though, and needed to live somewhere. Inertia set in. Nearly two decades and a couple of grandkids later, when that house went on the market, the kids bought their own first house.

I wonder if all involved would have done better on their own?

My dad didn’t need to “make the mortgage” or even be terribly responsible for maintaining a household. Sure, he contributed to the costs and he mowed the lawn and did the normal homey chores but he fretted more over whether wood rot was chewing up the cabin on the boat than whether asphalt rot was chewing up the shingles on the homestead. Likewise, my son didn’t need to make the mortgage or even be terribly responsible for maintaining his household. Sure, he contributed to the costs and he mowed the lawn and did the normal homey chores but he fretted more over whether Vermont road fertilizer was chewing up the floors of his van than whether Vermont rust was chewing up the tin roof on the homestead.

Kids leaving the nest. Taking responsibility. Do the choices we make now to insulate our kids from life make it harder for them to live?

Chester Gould Would Be Proud

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Dick Tracy, eat your heart out!

Chester Gould created the hard-hitting, fast-shooting police detective who used forensic science, high tech gimmicks, and his wits to track down the bad guys Sunday after Sunday. There have been many (not terribly successful) incarnations of Tracy’s famous two-way wrist radio and his later two-way wrist TV.

Cell phones, particularly the push-to-talk varieties, may have outshone that clunky cartoon version but Skype is the real Amen, boys, hitch up two-way wrist TV.

Amsterdam has about 20 times
the average Internet speed of North Puffin.
Hold that thought.

I really didn’t want to Skype. See, I didn’t much want to put on clothes just to answer the phone. I never understood why women in my mother’s generation checked their hair in the hall mirror before picking up the receiver.

The patio stone deliberately has no built in web cam, so I bought a video cam when I needed to pack up the seven tons of astro gear Rufus left in my little house in South Puffin. I got a deal, see, on a pair of [famous brand] clip on bugs that sit atop my monitor. The two of them, in OEM packaging cost a little less than one good one from anyone else. And the quality wasn’t too too bad once I figured out how to turn the darned things on.

No, I don’t use them both at once for 3-D. I have one each in North and South Puffin.

The more we Skype, the more I’m liking this Skyping thing. I’ve been hanging out a bit.

Skype is addictive. On Saturday, I watched Liza Arden eat a Bagel-Shaped-Object as we puttered and hung out and Skyped the morning away.

Skype is addictive. The mobile app works on both Android and iPhones. Unfortunately, the fine print shows it restricts U.S. users to Wi-Fi only calls. Naturally, a developer hacked the app within days of its release to work over 3G. Still pretty clunky there.

Skype is addictive. Seventh graders in Calgary, Alberta, participated in the year-long “Cigar Box Project.” The kids learned Canadian history by using technology to blend historical images and artifacts into their own creations. And they Skyped with National Museum curator Sheldon Posen.

Skype is addictive. Berkshire Healthcare Foundation Trust in Reading, England, is working on giving the people the option of using Skype to speak to their relatives in hospital rather than visiting them each day. The next best thing to being there and, so far, bacteria haven’t figured out how to travel over fiber-optic cables.

We’re sorry. Your Internet Connection Speed
is too slow to support decent video.

Ms. Arden and I have experienced that pop-up recently as her cable provider switched her from her previously rocketing reach to dial-up speeds. She put in a trouble ticket but our North American infrastructure lags the European fiber-optic networks with their gigabit speeds. The company Level 3 now has ultra-low-latency routes with circuit speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second on some city-to-city cables.

Facebook has announced the launch of
video calling in partnership with Skype.
Can Google Plus be far behind?

Skype is addictive but does Skype — now the face of Facebook — toll the end of social networking? Whether we FOOF or FOOG, the “normal” use of those pages is slightly delayed conversations between a potentially big number of peeps (how many FB friends do you have?). The social part works because we can time slice a little piece out of our other activities to stay in touch.

Video conferencing is real time in a way a traditional phone call never has been.

I’ve written before that time is a finite resource. Balancing expectations remains the hardest part of our juggling lives.

“I do enjoy seeing what we’re doing, but find it tethers me too too much,” Rufus said. “It (can be) a good, clear connection, but I prefer being able to move around and do other stuff while we yatter, so hanging out doesn’t eat into my ability to get other things done.”

The next great addition to our communications arsenal may be a (wait for it) cordless phone. Actually it will be a cordless remote for the computer-with-the-Skype-connection that makes at least the talking and listening from afar easier. Or Skype on the tablet. Or on a two-way wrist TV.

And a faster Internet connection.

Glossary:
FOOF /v intransitive/: Faffing Off On Facebook
FOOG (formerly “GOOF”) /v intransitive/: Doing the same on Google Plus
Gigabit /n/ Really really fast. For now.

Sports Are Gay

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I’ve been visiting Phoenix for a bit. Phoenix is the hottest major city in North America. Period. This past week has been unnaturally hot. Naturally, when a friend offered a couple of tickets to a Diamondbacks game, I jumped at the chance.

Chase Field Warning They opened the roof on Chase Field. 101° Outside. They opened the roof.

The Arizona Diamondbacks are a Major League Baseball team in the National League Western Division. Since their arrival as an expansion team in 1998, the D-Backs have won one World Series and four National League Western Division Championshops.

Nancy is now five for five in game lore. She picked Jimmy Johnson to win the Sprint Cup race she attended with Anne. She picked the Giants to win the spring training game she attended with Don. She picked the Giants to win the game we attended this week. She picked the Suns over the champion Celtics in a basketball game she attended with her dad. And she helped the Arizona Rattlers arena foo’ball team score when she caught their game with TUFKAS.

Chase FieldI, on the hand, maintained my own record; no team I root for has ever won a game I have attended. I think that even counts for games I’ve watched on television. My high school buddy Jon Matlack would have become a 20 game winner had I stopped watching sooner.

See, that’s two reasons I think sports are gay.

Huh? you say.

Bear with me. Sports are the big macho guy stuff but Nancy is most assuredly a girl. When a girl can outdo all the guys around her, that must make the games, well, girly.

Everyone knows a girly man is gay. Nancy’s great scores bring statistics to this story. Statisticians are gay, too.

Softlan UltraThere’s more.

Ever been to a soccer game? Bunch of guys running around playing group grab ass whenever anyone scores a goal. Even the advertisers think wrestling is that way. And don’t even start on figure skating.

There’s a reason the Greeks ran naked Olympics.

Then there are the fans. Fans are like teenage girls memorizing the shoe size (RBIs) and eye color (AB) and innings pitched (IP) of their heart throbs. Gay men are the most dedicated of fans.

Chase Field SeatsMost of the Giants and D-Backs players gave the signs but the Giants’ powerful left fielder Cody Ross simply has to be gay.-1- I watched him do the usual dance in the batters box. Stroking his bat. Tapping his dancing shoes. Wiggling. Adjusting his cup just so. All that is pretty normal. It was the dip that convinced me. See after the gyrations, after the adjustments, he squatted down and popped back up at home plate. A dip.

And here you thought I meant the can o’ dip.

Gay sports is a bit of ADHD from the important topic of the day: how dipping gas prices are a conspiracy to hold down the Social Security Cost of Living Allowance. We got on riff about it at the ballpark. The Giants fan in the orange t-shirt in front of us was not amused.

Editor’s note: one part of this story was satire. Mr. Ross and his wife live most of the year in Scottsdale, Arizona, with their two young children. I do not really think he is gay. The rest is true.