Muttroxia

Some recent spam I got:

…I am a friend and attorney to the family of the oil tycoon Mr James Howard Marshall 2 before his death; he made an investment here that I was later instructed to prepare a will on the investment for his son Everett Pierce Marshall3 shortly after they settled their differences…Meanwhile this will was prepared in my chambers by me with all copies in my possession.

I was supposed to hand over the will documents to the son Mr Everett Pierce Marshall3 at the end February 2007, the maturity date of the investment. But unfortunately Mr Everett Pierce Marshall3 the son did not make it to February 2006. He died a sudden death on June 20th 2006 trying to stop Anne Nicole Smith his father last wife from claiming the $475million that was initially awarded to her that was later over turned by the federal court in California.

Now there is a need for me to prepare a new will to claim the investment funds here since nobody would ever come for it, than to loose the money to the bank. You should let me know how much percentage you would like to get to enable us work together as partners, all I need is honesty. I will eventually let you into the amount of the investment if we both agree on mutual terms. [etc, etc…]

I just love it. Con men watch the news. When life gives you Anna Nicole Smith, then make Nigerian-scam-ade.

Why is the GOP pessimistic about 2008?

And Katon Dawson, the party chairman in South Carolina, expressed confidence that the party would recover from any internal damage it suffered as its candidates took shots at each other.

“We don’t do well until we have a common enemy,” Mr. Dawson said. “Right now, our enemy is ourselves.”

This is the way the modern conservative movement defines itself. Mr. Dawson, a state party chairman, can only think about the party and strategy in terms of enemies. Enemies all around, which one should we pick!? We don’t know how to do anything except fight! I sure hope there’s some enemies around, we’re in trouble if things are going well.

Here’s a thought: Spend some time thinking about policies. Thinking about people. Thinking about the war, the deficit and the economy, the politicization of non-partisan government agencies, etc. If you come up with some good ideas that people like, maybe they’ll, you know, vote for you. Just a thought.

I have your garden variety thermostat, the basic model from Home Depot or Lowe’s — it’s pretty much the same one everyone has. It’s my third one, they all work the same way. The same wrong way.

It divides the week into days, and the days into 4 timezones. You then program any of these time-sections to a certain temperature, and voila, it takes care of it. Why they even come with suggestions, for instance you can easily select either Winter or Summer for their pre-defined programs.

And if you want to go manual? Even better, you just push the up or down button until you hit the right temperature and walk away. Sounds pretty good, no?

No.

You walk away and everything is fine, until you hit the next time-section. Then it goes back to the programmed temperature. In effect, it overrides your override. Suppose I go on vacation for 5 days. Or I’m sick and need a little more heat than usual. There’s no way to simply tell it, “stay at 72,” because a couple hours later it will decide that 68 would really be better all things considered.

This is my third thermostat as a homeowner, and all three have had this “feature”. The weird part is that it can’t take any more effort to make it work the right way. How hard it is to build a manual override that actually, you know, overrides the other programming?

It’s a small thing, I know. But when I order something from a menu, I expect to get what is described. If I order a sandwich and it unexpectedly shows up with mayonaise all over it, that’s going right back to the kitchen. If I had wanted mayonaise, I would have ordered mayonaise.

This is surprisingly common with desserts. For some odd reason, any establishment that wants to look upscale can’t resist serving anything chocolate without a criss-cross pattern of rasberry sauce all over the plate. Look, your menu said “Layers and Layers of Fudge Cake with Chocolate Truffle Cream and Chocolate Mousse”, it didn’t say anything about putting red sauce all over everything. If I had wanted red sauce, I’d have ordered it. Don’t make me feel weird for sending back dessert.

Start with a map of the world thousands of years ago. In 90 seconds of animation, watch the spread of the major religions sweep over the world. Very neat, and educational to boot.

Great video on China, Youth, MySpace, Information, Technology and other trends, all of which seem to be moving a lot faster than you would think. Some sketchy extrapolations, but well worth it.

The Worst April Fools Day pranks ever. Number one and two are just sickening. (The best ones are here.)

You may have heard about the FBI’s abuse of NSL (National Security Letters). Here’s a fascinating first hand account from a recipient. The Washington Post doesn’t usually post anonymous op-eds, but in this case, they had no choice thanks to the crazy laws.

Postmodernism Generator. Everytime you go here, you get a brand new paper on postmodernism. The catch is that it is all total gibberish, but indistinguishable from actual postmodern gibberish. (If you doubt they are indistinguishable, read more.)

“I was turned on the other day to the fact that Time Magazine’s Tony Karon has a blog about foreign affairs, Rootless Cosmopolitan. It’s really good. Good enough that a ten day old post on the subject “What’s Iraq Actually About Now?” is very much worth your time. It’s an excellent question to ponder when you hear debate about whether or not the surge is “working” — working to do what? And why?”

Was it Ally McBeal that started this awful trend? Was it CSI? I can’t remember anymore. I just know that every drama show on TV features prosperous people working at rich prosperous jobs, and none of them can afford decent lighting! Scene after scene takes place in dimly-lit ambience.

The upscale law firm in Boston Legal doesn’t choose to save money by not putting every employee in their own private office, or renting space below the penthouse, or even buying flourescent lighting. They save money by turning down the expensive lights that are there. That same pecuniary concern doesn’t seem to affect the floundering firm of Dunder Mifflin, who may be losing money but can always afford to see. Roseanne Conner had her lights turned off when she couldn’t afford the bill, but never turned them down.

The worst offender? The West Wing. I can believe a lot, but I cannot believe that the Office of the President of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world, cannot figure out a way to keep staff working in good lighting.

C’mon!!

One of Bush’s attacks on Congressional efforts to end the Iraq war is that giving any specific timeline emboldens enemy attacks, and harms the troops. He is wrong.

Let’s say the bill passes with a clear deadline. Imagine it is Iraq, two weeks before that date. Question One. You are an American commander. Do you act:
(a) more aggressively
(b) about the same as ever
(c) less aggresively?

The answer is c. There is no point in risking your mens lives to achieve any short term goal when you’re just going to be packing up in two weeks. In fact, you probably wouldn’t take any offensive action at all. The only engagements you would be involved in would be defensive. Why look for trouble when there’s nothing to gain?

Question Two. You are an Iraqi fighter. Do you act:
(a) more aggressively
(b) about the same as ever
(c) less aggresively?

The answer is c, and for the same basic reason. There is no point in risking your life to achieve any short term goal when you would achieve the same goal by just waiting two more weeks. In fact, you probably wouldn’t take any offensive action at all. You’d continue the civil war of course, but not bother with the Americans. What’s the point, they’re leaving anyhow.

The mere declaration of a specific withdrawal date ought to produce a natural ceasefire before that date. I chose two weeks, but maybe the effect is longer. Maybe it’s a month. Maybe it’s two. Maybe more. Any way you slice it, the declaration of a withdrawal date ends up saving the lives of American soldiers.

This is the cover of the “users manual” for my new mouse:

It’s a mouse! Not a pointing device, a mouse!

Those of you not fortunate enough to live in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts may have heard about our new Governor, Deval Patrick. Only the second African American Governor in American history, Patrick, a first time candidate for any office, won both the primary and the general election in a knockout. Hailed by his legions of die hard supporters as an agent of change and a true liberal, the expectations for Patrick were sky high after 12 years of failed Republican Governors. But after gliding through a virtually flawless two year campaign, Patrick has been nothing short of a disaster during his first two months in office.

Staking out a clear position in favor of gay marriage, and refusing to make a pledge against tax hikes, he quickly won over the liberal base of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. Patrick is as eloquent a speaker as you’ll find, and he criss-crossed the Commonwealth sweeping people off their feet. Without ever being too specific about what his plans were, what won people over was his intention to put an end, as he often said on the stump, to “Politics as usual.”

“I don’t have any use for politics as usual,” Patrick said at the state convention in June of last year. “I’m here to put an end to politics as usual.”

Running against Attorney General Tom Reilly, who was never a true Beacon Hill insider, but nevertheless an old White Irish guy, Patrick represented something new. His supporters counted on him to be the renegade outsider who would put an end to the patronage and special interests that have dominated Massachusetts politics for so long. He pledged to fill his cabinet with fresh faces, and flush out the backroom cigar smoking insiders who know their way around the State House better than their own living room. In his first two months in office he has done just that, and it shows.

After a weeklong series of inaugural balls and galas celebrating himself at a cost of more than one million dollars, Patrick was mostly silent during his first month. Aides said he was quietly working on where to make cuts in the state budget to help offset the tremendous deficit. While cuts were made in some areas, others saw a rather healthy increase in spending.

For example, there was a hefty increase in the area of office drapes. Patrick spent $12,000 dollars on fancy new drapes, and another $15,000 on new couches and other furniture for the Governor’s office, courtesy of the taxpayers. Another area that saw an increase was “Governor’s official state car,” which has traditionally been a reliable but modest Ford or Chrysler. For Patrick, it’s a fully loaded Cadillac Coupe Deville, for a mere $46,000. It’s truly amazing that someone whose entire campaign was based on symbolism and rhetoric would fail to see the problem with a multi-millionaire Governor spending $83,000 in taxpayer money on new furniture and a suped-up Cadillac. It was only after the Boston Globe reported on this for four days straight that Patrick partially reimbursed the state for his new office furnishings and fancy wheels.

Mistake number two came the same week, when it was revealed that the administration had made up a new position in state government titled “Chief of Staff to First Lady.” Since Patrick’s wife has no official state duties whatsoever, she does not actually have a staff, but she did have a Chief of Staff. Amy Gorin, a campaign contributor from Wellesley, the fourth wealthiest town in Massachusetts, was briefly in charge of Diane Patrick’s “Scheduling” for a mere 72,000 taxpayer dollars per year. The really pathetic thing about this is that Ms. Patrick does not need someone to handle her calls and schedule her appointments, since she already has a secretary. The reason I know that is because her secretary’s phone number is listed right here on Ms. Patrick’s bio on the website of Ropes and Gray, the major Boston law firm where Ms. Patrick is a partner. After the Boston Globe reported on this, Gorin resigned and her position was eliminated.

But public relations mistakes are merely signs of a rookie who does not understand the nature of his office. The real reason that I spent a year and a half warning everyone I spoke to not to vote for Deval Patrick was because of where his heart really lies: it’s not with the grassroots activists he energized, or the working class he claims to represent, it’s with the big businesses whose corporate boards he served on that helped get his campaign off the ground. Most disturbing to me was his service on the board of directors for Ameriquest, the predatory lending firm run by Roland Arnall, the single biggest contributor to President George W. Bush in 2004. (Click here for some further reading on the moral giants at Ameriquest.) Patrick made over $1.5 million for his service on the board, money made mostly off the backs of poor minorities, and money that he used to kick-start his campaign.

During the campaign, Patrick used poetic slogans and inspirational speeches filled with glittering generalities, masterfully selling to the public the utterly fantastic notion that his deepest sympathies lay anywhere other than with corporate America. After the décor and Cadillac fiasco, and the assistant for his wife, Patrick showed his true colors with mistake number three.

In mid-February, Patrick placed a phone call to former Clinton economic chief Robert Rubin on behalf of his former employers, Ameriquest. Rubin is now a top executive at Citigroup, a major financial services company. Patrick called to urge Rubin to lend economic support to Ameriquest, which was badly in need of financial help. Apparently aware that a Governor is not supposed to be trying to influence private business transactions, Patrick claimed he was not calling as Governor. “I made this call solely as a former board member,” Patrick said. Sorry big fella’, but you’re the Governor whether you’re swearing in a Judge, kicking your feet up in the corner office, or taking your kids to Chucky Cheese on a Saturday. When you call Robert Rubin, he’s not thinking of you as a private citizen who once worked for Ameriquest, he’s thinking of you as the Governor of Massachusetts.

Perhaps this series of pathetic moves can be explained by looking at who the Governor has surrounded himself with in key positions. Think the era of patronage jobs is over in Massachusetts? Puh-leeze!!!!!! Consider Patrick’s appointment for Deputy Chief of Staff. After a nationwide search and a review of thousands of resumes, Patrick settled on 25 year old Brendan Ryan. (Ever seen The West Wing? It’s Josh Lyman’s job for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.) For further reference, Patrick’s predecessor Mitt Romney’s Deputy Chief of Staff was Renee Fry, whose previous occupation was the Director of the Department of Business and Technology, and prior to that she was the Undersecretary of Economic Development. For all of Romney’s faults (and there are plenty) his administration hit the ground running. Brendan’s previous occupation: driver for Deval Patrick during the Deval Patrick for Governor Campaign. (Yes…driver. As in, he drove the car and parked it at the event and then drove it to the next event.) He’s 25, and the number three man in the Governor’s office, at the mere cost of 95,000 taxpayer dollars per year. If that doesn’t say “Politics as usual,” I don’t know what does.

How does this sell? You can buy chocolate, or vanilla, or strawberry, in any proportions. But instead, you choose to get exactly equal portions of each, all shoved in the same container, why? Why would you limit yourself like that? You can’t even eat your favorite flavor in isolation. You eat vanilla, some strawberry’s gonna get in. That’s just how it is.

And strawberry. Strawberry? What the heck is strawberry doing there? Who, at any time, would rather eat strawberry than chocolate or vanilla!? This was meant to be rhetorical. But informal polling has convinced me that there’s an awful lot of strawberry weirdos out there. To all of them I say, you are seriously weird. Seriously.

Growing up, my father would occasionally purchase neapolitan, just for kicks. And our family would destroy the chocolate and vanilla in about, oh, 35 seconds. The strawberry would just sit there. And sit. A few months later, my father would get a strange urge to buy another carton of neapolitan, and it would repeat. Eventually there would be three or four boxes of ice cream left, each with one carefully sculpted strawberry third remaining. Once in a while, my father would see these and begin to lecture us about waste and how much things cost.

How did strawberry even get in there? Rumor has it those were the most popular flavors when neapolitan ice cream was invented. I think there was just a really good strawberry salesman somewhere! (That’s a ripoff of Brian Regan’s cranapple bit by the way.)

It’s hard to believe they are still the most popular flavors. And indeed, they are not. Per the International Ice Cream Association, here are the top 10 flavors.

1. Vanilla, 29%
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neapolitan, 4.2%
6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%
7. French vanilla, 3.8%
8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%
9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%
10. Praline pecan, 1.7%

(Isn’t it funny that neapolitan is counted as it’s own flavor?) So it seems that the strawberry should be replaced with butter pecan. Which just sounds sickening, honestly.

That site has other gems. We all know the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” song, right? Well, they have the complete lyrics!

…Iceberg, Lindberg, Sol Berg and Ginzberg,
Ice cream Cohen.
I scream, you scream, everybody wants ice cream.
Rah, rah, raaazberry!

No, they really don’t write ’em like that anymore. They’d get picketed.

Update: This is from 2019. Neapolitan is now at number 10. This is a good trend. Cookies n’ Cream is the best flavor ever invented, and has moved all the way up to number 3.

1. Vanilla
2. Chocolate
3. Cookies N’ Cream
4. Mint Chocolate Chip
5. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
6. Buttered Pecan
7. Cookie Dough
8. Strawberry
9. Moose Tracks
10. Neapolitan

Weightlifting has many benefits. The obvious one is increase of muscle mass. Most people don’t realize the real work of the body is not during the workout, but after. In a really good workout with weights, you work the muscles to failure. That means actually killing off many off the fibers and tissue. Over the course of the next few days, the body works to repair the muscle, and make it better. This is why you alternate body sections — the idea is to give any given muscle a few days to recuperate before killing it off again. (Note that many people don’t work out this way, you still get plenty of benefit even if you don’t work all the way to muscle failure.) The re-creation of the muscle is what burns the calories, it takes a lot of work and energy.

Likewise, when you suffer any kind of injury, your body needs energy to recuperate and rebuild it’s systems. Many of us have lost those few key pounds when we have a virus. When you run a fever, your body is literally cooking itself. Fighting disease takes energy, and recuperating afterwards does also.

Blood loss is one such injury. When you give blood, your body needs time to recuperate. That’s why you’re supposed to take it easy for a few days afterwards, your body needs time to rebuild. This logically leads to an obvious weight-loss strategy.

Donating blood five times a year not only is the right thing to do (go here for more info, or just get in touch with me directly), you can lose weight while doing it! Now that’s a win-win! And if you can’t give blood, at least get sick every so often.

(P.S. No, I’m not serious about this as a real weight-loss strategy. You really should give blood though.)

This is a piece of marketing material I got recently from some stupid company. It abounds with poor reasoning.

Does your [system metric] surpass a 70% succes rate (outperforming the industry average of just 30%)? Does your [other system metric] exceed 25% (putting the industry’s 5-7% average to shame)?

Why, no it doesn’t. You have me interested. Pray, continue.

These are the results our top-performing clients are getting

You have lost my interest. I have not bothered to work out the statistics, but if the average is 30%, out of the 5,700 clients you quote later, the fact that some of them might get very high metrics, simply by chance alone, seems rather… obvious. Furthermore, all clients are different, there are always those that by the nature of what they do get higher scores at any given metric.

yes, even ones who [do a lot of this].

No, really? You think there might be a little cause and effect confusion? Maybe they do more because it works? Or maybe they do more, so they spend time making sure it works?

And [our company] is one of the reason why.

One of the reasons? Boy, you’re really going out on a limb there.

It bugs me when people say statistics is just lies. It isn’t, it’s a technique that can be used or misused. Jackholes like this companies’ “Sales Manager, Strategic Marketing” don’t help.