Penn President Trick is no Treat
By Brian | November 5, 2006
Dr. Amy Guttman, President of the University of Pennsylvania, who is Jewish and the child of holacaust-era parents, hosted her annual Halloween party last week for roughly 700 students. At the party, one of the students, Saad Saadi, dressed up as a suicide bomber, had his picture taken with Dr. Guttman, and then posted it on his personal website. He also posted other pictures of himself conducting mock hostage executions, etc. with other students.
Stupid? Maybe. Funny? Not really (although I’ll give him props for using uncooked hot dogs as the dynamite sticks). Bad Taste? Most definitely. International news? Ugh…here we go again.
The Jerusalem Post found the picture and ran a story about it. The Drudge Report linked to the story. Dr. Guttman posted a response on Penn’s website, as did Saadi on his personal page. Both of the principle actors seem to be keeping level heads about it:
Dr. Guttman:
The costume is clearly offensive and I was offended by it. . . . The student had the right to wear the costume just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it.
Saadi:
We wish to make it clear that we do not support terrorism, violence, or anything that is against society. . . . The costumes are meant to portray scary characters much like many other costumes on Halloween. We are deeply sorry for anyone who has been hurt or upset.
He might have gone on to say, “and I didn’t realize anyone outside my circle of friends would find out about it.” So, since college is all about learning, I think we can safely say that Saadi learned a few things this past Halloween:
Lesson #1: There is no “just between us” in a public place. If a picture is taken these days, you almost need to assume that it’s going to be seen by everyone in the world. Casual, stupid humor has consequences that it didn’t have, say, when I was in college. That’s not to say you should refrain, but you’ve got to be aware of the consequences of your actions.
Lesson #2: People are wound very tightly about certain subjects. One would think the concept of a “costume” would be well understood by most rational adults in the world. The guy dressed as a flasher isn’t condoing sexual harrassment, the woman dressed as a stripper/prostitute isn’t really willing to take her clothes off for money, and the folks with sheets over their heads aren’t dead, nor are they advocating certain religious beliefs about the afterworld. In fact, if you wanted to make a political statement by altering your clothing, Halloween is the worst possible day to do it, since your message would be obscured amongst all the revellers. That said, there are people in the world, particularly people who strive to sell advertising on TV and in newspapers, who seek out opportunities to point out offensive activities to others. By doing so, they draw more attention to the supposedly offensive thing than it would otherwise have received, and weaken their own (stated) goals.
So, to sum up: Saad Saadi – quite a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into. Rest of the world – lighten up, it was just a costume…
Categories: Political Rantings, University of Pennsylvania | Comments Off on Penn President Trick is no Treat
Local Economic Indicators
By Brian | November 3, 2006
I so rarely have a camera with me when I drive around my neighborhood. On Tuesday, though, while shuttling the kids between various Halloween-related events, I did. And so you all get to see what I see on my way to the train station every morning:
(click on the image for a larger view)
The station on the right closed down during the summer, but they never took the sign down. The station on the left is still open. And so I have a constant reminder about the “Fall fall” of 2006 for gas prices.
80 cents and counting for a gallon of regular gas…
Categories: Money Talk | Comments Off on Local Economic Indicators
Oops, He Did it Again (and again and again…)
By Brian | November 2, 2006
Much has been made of this already, but let me just add one small point: I don’t believe for a second that John Kerry thinks our troops are dumb. Nor do I believe that he has anything but the deepest respect for those in uniform, especially given his own military history. It seems clear to me that he meant to say one thing and said another, and it earned him some justifiable embarrassment in a “Gotcha!” sort of way.
If he ever laughed at a George W. Bush clip (“Fool me once, um…er….you can’t fool me again”), then we can chalk it up to karmic balance and move on.
But there’s still something that bugs me about the whole thing, and it’s this:
Here’s what Kerry actually said:
You know, education, if you make the most of it, and you study hard, and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.
Ouch. Now, here’s what he intended to say, as per his prepared remarks:
Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.
So rather than implying that our troops are dumb, what he meant to do was to jokingly imply that our President is dumb (not to mention irresponsible and lazy). I can just imagine him reviewing his prepared remarks for the California speech and telling the speech writer, “it’s a little dry – how about we start with this, move that to the end, and insert a one-liner calling Bush a moron right there? Great, perfect. Thanks.”
This kind of thing bugs me every time I see it. Bush, like all prominent politicians, has what I like to call a “Late Night TV Caricature,” that of a simpleton and/or bad public speaker. Al Gore had “stiff,” Bill Clinton has “slick,” Dan Quayle had “stupid,” Ronald Reagan had “forgetful,” and the list goes on. These memes made for some funny talk show monologues and Saturday Night Live skits, all of which were generally in good fun, even if they seemed a little bit mean at the time. Either way, they were delivered by comedians on television shows that were intended to be funny.
More recently, the line has begun to blur. We’ve got shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Real Time with Bill Maher, which toe the line between news and entertainment. There’s enough real content in them that when they refer to Bush as stupid, some folks start believing it, rather than writing it off as a joke, or at least the opinion of a single talk show host. We also have actual candidates/politicians who appear on these shows, and attempt to fit in by trading quips with the host (if I see one more presidential candidate appear on Letterman with their own Top Ten list…) In the end, though, these shows are still just entertainment vehicles and on their own, probably don’t do too much damage. For example, had Kerry made the above statement while appearing on The Tonight Show, it probably would have passed without comment. “Time and place” and all that…
But that’s not what happened. This was a sitting senator, a former (perhaps future?) presidential candidate, and arguably the most prominent member of a major political party, telling jokes at a campaign appearance on behalf of a congressional candidate.
What makes him think this is a time for jokes (botched or otherwise)? The best case scenario for this kind of thing is a cheap laugh from the crowd. The worst case is a national political incident, a distraction from his message (or, in this case, the message of the candidate he’s stumping for), and another small bite out of whatever’s left of the respect people have for the office of the President. It also reinforces the theory that John Kerry has absolutely nothing to say about himself or his party, and can only ask for our vote by telling us how terrible the other side is.
And don’t get me started on the whole, “I was against an apology before I was for it” bit…
Stick to governing, Senator, and leave the jokes to the professionals, OK?
Categories: Political Rantings | Comments Off on Oops, He Did it Again (and again and again…)
Give the kid a break…
By Brian | October 26, 2006
There are some things in life I’ll never understand. Like this, for instance.
I understand why a three-year old would play the “Crane” carnival game to try and get a stuffed Spongebob Squarepants toy.
I understand why he’d crawl into the machine through a small opening after failing to get the toy with the crane.
I understand why the boy’s grandmother would be a nervous wreck when the arcade owner told her he couldn’t find the key and had to call the local fire department.
I understand how the boy would find all of this very amusing, rolling around inside the machine and hugging all the stuffed animals.
I understand how relieved everyone would be when the firefighters passed the three-year old a screwdriver, and talked him through opening the interior latches on the machine to free himself.
What I don’t understand is why, after having a 3-year old crawl into your machine, losing the key, calling the fire department, and watching as the firemen talk the 3-year old through freeing himself, why – after this entire, gut-wrenching ordeal – you would make the decision to send him home WITHOUT THE STUFFED SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS TOY!!!!
I mean, come on already, hasn’t the kid been through enough?
Categories: The World Wide Weird | 1 Comment »
If you don’t do as you’re told, I’ll turn this chamber around RIGHT NOW…
By Brian | October 25, 2006
A quote from our potential next Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi:
The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America’s children.
Heh…well, she certainly acts like it sometimes, that’s for sure…
Does this mean we can give Congress a “time out” if we don’t like how they handle things?
Categories: Political Rantings | Comments Off on If you don’t do as you’re told, I’ll turn this chamber around RIGHT NOW…
Pink Flamingos threatened with extinction, but life finds a way…
By Brian | October 23, 2006
Jason Bennion reports on this article, which heralds the extinction of the famed Pink Flamingo lawn ornament. It seems Union Products of Leominster, MA is going out of business due to increased costs, loss of financing, and because seriously – who buys pink flamingos anymore?
Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, provides the money quote:
Let’s face it – as iconic emblems of kitsch, there are two pillars of cheesy, campiness in the American pantheon. One is the velvet Elvis. The other is the pink flamingo.
But then, the principle of scarcity sets in. We all desire what we cannot have. Take Mike Smollon, firefighter from Boynton Beach, FL (had to be from Florida, eh?):
“I never owned a pink flamingo before,” Smollon said. “To be honest, I used to think this was the kind of a thing only a girl would put in her yard. But when I found out the factory was closing, I thought, ‘This is something historical happening.’ “
Smollon went to the factory and bought 11 sets of pink flamingos and one set of the commemorative gold flamingos that were made for 2007, which would have been the bird’s 50th birthday. He plans to keep a few and give the rest to flamingo-loving friends.
It gets better. He looked up the former president of Union Products, got him to autograph a couple of the birds, as well as a copy of his book, “The Original Pink Flamingos: Splendor on the Grass.” Here’s a man who will be sad to see the demise of our faux-feathered friends.
But wait! A small sliver of hope exists! The article is contains this picture, which is accompanied by the following caption:
FOR THE RECORD:
The article in Thursday’s Section A about Union Products ending production of its patented pink flamingo lawn ornament after 49 years included a photo of flamingos in a frontyard in Ventura. The ornaments shown were not made by Union Products.
If there were ever a case for evolution, this is it. A new strain of pink flamingo has been discovered in the wild. Hopefully, this species will find ways to propogate more successfully than the genetically inferior Flamingus Unionus Productus, who lost out to its most common natural predator – red ink.
Categories: The World Wide Weird | 3 Comments »
More Amazing Technology On the Way, Part 2
By Brian | October 20, 2006
Back in August, researchers posited a theoretical device that could make something invisible.
Today, they built one.
Categories: The Future is Now | 3 Comments »
Stock Market Trivia
By Brian | October 18, 2006
The Dow Jones Industrial Average broke 12,000 today (although it ended the day just shy of that mark, but still at a record high of 11,992.68). In honor of the event, here is some interesting trivia:
Time it took the DJIA to go from 10,000 to 11,000: 24 days Time it took the DJIA to go from 11,000 to 12,000: 7.5 years Increase in the DJIA thus far in October, 2006: 312 points Number of record highs set by the DJIA in the past two weeks: 7
Categories: Money Talk | 1 Comment »
Apple Files iPhone Patents – Kills Biggest Internet Rumor
By Brian | October 18, 2006
Finally, the only thing that can stop the persistent iPhone rumors: An iPhone.
Categories: Tech Talk | Comments Off on Apple Files iPhone Patents – Kills Biggest Internet Rumor
Another Lancet Report – Let the Misinterpretations Begin…
By Brian | October 16, 2006
The new Lancet Report is out, and the media headlines are saying “Study estimates 655,000 deaths due to Iraq war.”
The last time Lancet issued a report (November, 2004), the headlines said “Study estimates 100,000 deaths due to war.” At the time, though, very few articles were talking about confidence factors. What the 2004 report actually said, was that with a 95% confidence factor, the number of excess deaths (deaths over and above the amount expected to die in the same time period prior to the war) was somewhere between 8,000 and 194,000. Quite a range, huh? At the time, this reflected the poor conditions in Iraq, the difficulty in collecting the data, the lack of a random sample, etc. In order to narrow the range of the estimate, researchers would have had to lower the confidence factor. Logic dictates that pinning the number of dead to a single number (100,000) makes the confidence factor approach zero. In other words, it was just as likely that 8,000 people had been killed as it was that 194,000 were killed, and we had absolutely zero confidence in a single number like 100,000.
This time around, the confidence ranges are better, but still large: Total excess deaths is estimated at somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636 (95% confidence factor again). Violent deaths are estimated at somewhere between 426,369 and 793,663. The report also re-examines the first 18 months of the war (the span used for the 2004 report), and has narrowed the estimate to somewhere between 69,000 and 155,000. Better, but still a ~50% swing in both directions from the publicized 100,000 number.
No matter, though. Years from now, the only thing we’ll remember is “655,000 killed due to Iraq war.” File this one away with the NIE that said the war was creating more terrorists, even though that’s not what it said at all.
The report itself is only 8 pages long, but as is typical, most people will gladly read dozens of pages of commentary, rather than read the actual 8 pages in question. If we take the time, though, we notice Page 3, which provides the raw data from which the estimates were drawn. And when we look at the raw data, the numbers don’t seem to add up:
Researchers interviewed 12,801 people in 1,849 households and recorded 629 deaths in the past 54 months. Of these, 82 (13%) occurred prior to the invasion, and 547 (87%) occurred after the invasion. Of the post-invasion deaths, the raw data says that 247 (46%) were non-violent (e.g., heart disease, cancer) and 300 (55%) were violent (e.g., gunfire, explosive device, car bomb).
Now, if the 629 deaths, extrapolated across all of Iraq, comes to an estimated 654,965, then the number of post invasion, violent deaths should be 654,965 x 87% x 55%, which is 313,400 (as opposed to the 601,027 that is mentioned in the oft-quoted report summary). Either I’m missing something big here, or something is drastically wrong. Either way, I’m amazed that no one in the blogosphere has noted and/or explained this discrepancy…
Categories: News and/or Media, Political Rantings | Comments Off on Another Lancet Report – Let the Misinterpretations Begin…