Category Archives: Sociology

New Look

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My web host made a change last week to bring their supplied-with-the-package blogging up to more-or-less modern standards. Along with a new database, a new look, and new themes, we lost the much loved plug-in, Can You Do Math. That means we have gained something else.

Spammers are TurkeysSpam.

I investigated the replacements for the little adding two numbers app. I closed comments on articles more than 30 days old. That’s not too much of a burden since many pieces here are topical. And I turned on moderation. That’s a burden because your startling, fascinating response gets delayed until the moderator notices it.

There were nine (9) new messages waiting this morning. That’s been about average since we made the change. Plenty of sites get hit by more. A lot more.

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Certified?

beats by dre wants us to buy some noise canceling headphones. “These have a microphone within on every earpiece that perform with an electronic circuitry that creates an opposite audio breaker to scale back breaker.”

Yeppers, I’m definitely clicking on that one.

How about the Viagra 150 mg for which I can get an advance payday loan?

<PLONK>

Do they really, really think I’m going to click there?

I read all about the Top 10 WordPress Anti Spam Plugins. That article was published in 2007 and about half the apps offered were out of date.

Akismet is by far the most popular anti-spam plugin; Some 12 million peeps have downloaded it. This Automattic program is completely free for personal use. I don’t want to use it for two reasons. One is that it has to confer with the mother ship; the other is that, as one reviewer noted, “it can get a little overzealous.” In a two week test, he found that Akismet blocked 653 spam comments of which five were not spam. I don’t want to lose any genuine comments, particularly if they come from first time readers.

The bottom line seems to be that most of the plug-ins will weed out the spambots but even the math programs can’t intercept all the human spammers.

Bear with me. We’ll be experimenting with juggling fruit and writing equations in the coming weeks.

 

Better Living through Chemistry™

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Rufus likes to remind folks that I am pugnaciously parsimonious. He’s right; in fact, I coined the term and live it daily. I even considered pitching a magazine column with that name but didn’t. See, there are simply too many other skinflints out there writing about it.

Still, cheap bahstidry is a valuable trait but there is thrift and there is cheap.

I mentioned to Liz Arden that I would have to break down and buy some real Febreze™ this morning as I was cleaning my shower. Washcloths take on a life of their own here on my subtropical island. Oh we have a lovely breeze coming through the house but [things] grow when the temperature is 81° and the dew point is 82°.

I need something to take the stink out of the washcloths. The unbranded stuff just doesn’t stand up to whatever comes in on that breeze.

“Dollar Store stuff is mostly snake oil,” Ms. Arden replied.

There’s some truth to that.

Still, Kay Ace swears by “Awesome Bowl Cleaner,” I love “Ovenbaked” brand chocolate-covered graham crackers, and we know that several name-brand manufacturers are now packaging for the dollar market.

The Super Strength Dollar Store de-stinkifier bottle lists water, odor neutralizers, quality control agents, and perfume on its label. I’m down with water as the principle ingredient. After all, gasoline is a lot more expensive and harder to transport. Perfume is another goodie and if they used gasoline instead of water they’d need a lot more perfume which would seriously annoy my nose.

The real questions are what do they think are odor neutralizers and how did they shrink the SCUBA gear down so small that the quality control agents can swim in the spray bottle?

As a corollary, do I have to feed them when the bottle is empty?

skunkOdor neutralizing is the right approach.

In 1993, Paul Krebaum published a recipe in Chemical and Engineering News for a mixture that neutralizes the sweet smell of skunk. Mr. Krebaum, a chemist at Molex, used his extensive experience with thiols (the chemicals that make eau de skunk and rotting fish smell so wonderful to dogs) to discover that an easy way to neutralize the thiols is to induce them to combine with oxygen.

Mr. Krebaum’s skunk remedy works. On skunk smells. It doesn’t work on mildew. And neither do the “odor neutralizers” in the Dollar Store goop.

“Febreze™ is [another] cauldron of chemicals,” according to the Environmental Working Group website.

“Febreze Air Effects™ is showcased as the ultimate odor eliminator, with magical fairy powers. In fact, it’s represented as the one product in all of existence that will get you to breathe happily, as if it were happy pills in aerosol form … as if it were health food in a spray … even an organic cleaning product that works like a magic wand.”

I like magical fairy powers. One of the Interweb writers I admire called himself the Good Fairy in the Gay Nineties. His words had the power to make us laugh, to make us cry. I don’t know if he could get the smell out of my washcloths, though.

The snake oil doesn’t work and Febreze™ costs more than new washcloths, so the tightfisted among us will look to Google for substitutes. The frugal sites all have variations of this FakeFebreze recipe:

1/4 cup of fabric softener
2 tablespoons of baking soda
2 cups of warm tap water

Oh, swell. I’ll have very soft, flammable, musty washcloths. See, the alkaline sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) can absorb and neutralize some acid but mildew can survive within a pH range of 4.0-9.0. Straight baking soda has a pH of 9. It just gets friendlier to mildews as it gets wetter and the fabric softener makes them smell good. Probably tastes good, too.

Back to the (real) Febreze™. The important issue I see is that the active ingredient is Hydroxypropyl beta-cyclodextrin or HPßCD. P&G claims that these molecules bind the hydrocarbons, retaining malodorous molecules like putting them in handcuffs, which “reduces” their release into the air and thus the perception of their scent. It’s better than the perfume that merely masks the odor but the odor is still there. Waiting. With the handcuff key out.

That’s still like painting a skunked dog with expensive tomato juice. I want some inexpensive chemistry that actually eliminates the odor.

Shooting Motive Puzzles Investigators

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Most of the kids in Newtown, Connecticut, were born in 2006 not long after the 21st Century began. Many of them would have seen the turn of the 22nd Century.

From the Daily Beast to the Violence Policy Center, special interest groups, editorialists, and politicians lined the Sunday talk shows to politicize the murders in order to … well, you already know, don’t you?

Mr. Obama came under increased pressure this weekend from Democrats to lead the charge to ban guns.

CBS’ Bob Schieffer wonders if this is the tipping point so we finally try to ban guns.

Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT) released a statement Saturday that “to do nothing in the face of continuous assaults on our children is to be complicit in those assaults” in his effort to ban guns.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) promised immediate action on gun control.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), the author of the Brady Bill who just three days ago worried that the fiscal cliff will hike milk prices to $6 per gallon, has joined with Michael Bloomberg to make 16 ounce drink cups illegal. And to shrink the size of handgun clips.

The killer who triggered the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history got off lucky. His quick suicide was far less than he deserved. No, I will not publish his name.

But I have two teeny little niggling questions:
(1) Isn’t there a fiscal something-or-other out there that we’re supposed to worry about? and
(2) What about the other people killed this year? Don’t they count, too?

Mother Jones reported that, “Since 1982, there have been at least 62 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii.” 43 people were slain in other mass murders in 2012 alone. And the year isn’t over yet.

Since 1982, there have also been at least 90 commercial airline crashes that killed people in this country alone. I didn’t total how many thousands died. Heck, 445 people have died so far this year in commercial aircraft accidents around the world. That includes the Allied Air flight on June 2 that overran the runway and hit a bus. All four in the crew survived but 12 people on the bus died. And the Ozark Air Lines flight that struck a snow plow at Sioux Falls Regional Airport. The driver of the snow plow was the only casualty there.

Dammit, we need to ban commercial air travel is what!

There were 32,367 motor vehicle deaths last year. Cars kill more people than bathroom accidents (341 people drowned in baths and showers in 2000).

Don’t you think we need to ban cars? And probably bathrooms?

The War on Terror has taken 4,977 American lives since 2001 in Afghanistan and Iraq alone.

How about a ban on terror?

On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day. In fact, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner in 2000. 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children.

We probably need to ban intimate partnerships.

The mad bomber of the Bath School “disaster” in 1927 killed 38 elementary school kids, most in the second to sixth grades, plus two teachers, four other adults, and the bomber himself. It remains the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history. And a truck bomb made of fertilizer and diesel fuel killed 168 people and injured over 800 in the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. No, I will not publish those murderers’ names, either.

Maybe we stick a plug up the back end of cows to eliminate fertilizer.

Newtown was one nut with a gun.

The number of crimes involving handguns in the UK has more than doubled since the ban on the weapons that passed after the Dunblane massacre, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871 last year. The United bloody Kingdom.

It is already illegal to shoot people, even if you didn’t mean to. Connecticut and New York have about the toughest gun laws in the nation. This is the second mass killing in Connecticut in two years.

Puzzled investigators. Huh.

We don’t need more laws. We need more answers.

In fact, as the earth gets hotter, I’m surprised no one has noticed the direct correlation between mass murder and Global Warming. Or between mass murder and nutcases who dream about killing people.

Tuesday Tolerance: Why I’m a Liberal (And You’re Not)

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I may be the last real liberal.

Nancy Giles, courtesy Oberlin College Alumni Assoc CBS Sunday Morning looked at the line in the sand between liberals and conservatives by asking Nancy Giles and Ben Stein to do essays on why they come down on one side or the other.

Ms. Giles quoted what she called the Oxford English Dictionary definition:

liberal adj. Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own.

“I’m a liberal,” she said. “I love the mix of voices and the larger perspective.”
I’m down with that.

In fact, I couldn’t agree more that we need a mix of voices. Mine is right, of course, but others do add color and flavor and nuance and, yes, more data to what I say.

Hey! I must be a liberal.

The bad news is two-fold. One is the simple fact that none of the other liberals I know are actually willing to listen to other voices or see the larger perspective. The most recent example is that of picketers trying to shut down the voice of Lenore Broughton the driving force behind the Vermonters First super PAC.

Oh. I must be the only liberal.

And then there is the case of Islam. Many believe Islam is a religion of terror and war and destruction of women but, according to American liberals, there are only a “few warlike Muslims so we can’t damn the whole religion.” And yet. And yet, my liberal friends damn everyone to the Right of them for a few right wing nutcases at abortion clinics.

“I could only listen until that woman read that definition of Liberal and claimed that was what she was,” Rufus said. “Libruls are the least liberal people I know.”

Rufus leads us to the second bit of bad news. See, I own an O.E.D. “Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own” ain’t in it. On the other hand, Merriam-Webster does call liberal, “not literal or strict : loose <as in a liberal translation>.”

Looks like I am indeed a liberal in the first sense but Ms. Giles and the other self-proclaimed “liberals” I know hew to the second. They are as incorrect or inaccurate with the facts as possible. Or perhaps it was just an inexact translation.

Let’s go back to Ms. Giles’ dictionary.

liberal adj. Of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.

That’s interesting but it’s not in my printed copy of the O.E.D. Here’s her next definition.

liberal adj. believing the government should be active in supporting social and political change.

Oh, boy. That’s out of Wikipedia or the Socialist’s Bible but it has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with the dictionary.

liberal adj. Tending to give freely; generous.

Ooo. I’m down with that, too. Of course most people know that the leader of the American liberal party, Barack Obama, grudgingly started giving more than a pittance to charity about the day after he decided to run for president. In other words, once people would actually notice. The leader of the other guys (that would be Mitt Romney) has given away a big percentage of his, quietly, every year he’s had income. On a more personal level, all the liberals I know want to control my income while my efforts go into an arts council and Anne’s into the Special Olympics. Our choice.

Money and politics. Ms. Giles wants control of both and that’s not very liberal.

OEDIn fact, my actual O.E.D. includes definition #5 as

liberal adj. Favourable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms; spec (in politics) favouring free trade and gradual political and social reform that tends towards individual freedom or democracy.

I may not respect but I do accept your incredible naivete, behavior, and opinions that differ from mine. I give of myself without asking you to do the same. I believe in local control, free trade and social reform that moves us toward individual freedoms and democracy.

Yup. I’m a liberal. And you’re not.

BAM

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Naps are grand but I don’t like the idea of second sleep. I prefer to slam down into unconsciousness and have absolutely no interaction with the outside world for 855 contiguous minutes. I don’t want to wake for the (imaginary) dog barking or the ringing phone or to feed the wood stove. I don’t even want to have to get up to pee.

Cartoon Cat thanks to OCALIn the far reaches of history, before the advent of the electric light orchestra or Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist TV, most people slept in two separate phases, divided by an hour or more of wakefulness. Writers have long liked the uninterrupted time to write and crooks to steal. Field workers could awaken to have sex. Priests might use the time to pray.

Hmmm. Four hours of sleep. Hot weasel sex. Four more hours of sleep.

Yeah, that has a good ring to it.

I was particularly awake at 6 this morning, enough that I considered getting up after just 5-1/2 hours sleep. Shotgun fire woke me again at ten-to-seven and kept doing so for more than an hour. The 2012 Vermont Migratory Bird Hunting season for Ducks, Coots and Mergansers restarted at 6:50 this ayem. Somewhere in there I dreamed that I was feeding the (imaginary) dog who was romping across a chopped corn field.

Did you know that coots are medium-sized water birds with mostly black feathers except for their white forehead which gives rise to the expression “bald as a …” And the common merganser is a really big duck while the brant is a really small goose.

Duck Cartoon thanks to Luis TorresAs far as I can tell, duck hunting is like fishing from a boat except colder. You go out, motor across the lake burning a lot of gas, then sit around all day in a 4×6 room. You end up spending $500 per pound for something I don’t want to eat anyway.

Now deer hunting, on the other hand, means you get to take a tramp in the woods, shoot off as many as a few $1 cartridges, and stock your freezer for pennies a pound. Mmmm. Bambi steaks. Bamburgers. Bambighetti sauce. I understand deer hunting.

Tom Ripley’s father-in-law is a deer hunter. He keeps inviting me to deer camp.

“At the end of the season he shoots our Christmas tree,” Tom said. “BAM BAM. BAM BAM BAM. Then he calls everyone out to ‘see what I got.’ Of course that means everyone (else) gets to drag the tree back to camp.”

Duck hunting just got a lot more attractive.