Annoying Web Sites

Can someone please tell companies we don't need their shitty website music in our lives? Who among us isn't already listening to iTunes, or a Netflix instant, or a Youtube video, or Pandora, etc. etc. etc.? I would go so far as to say I'd prefer they cut out all the crap in their websites and just make them functional, useful, and informative. I didn't come to drpepper.com for entertainment, I came to enter a goddamn code to try to win a little somethin' somethin', and their fucking shitty website ends up freezing or crashing my computer, or at best makes what should be a simple 45 second process taken 12 minutes. If I have to watch a percentage load up when I go to your website, take some shit out.

I'm Trying to Fix this Adage

Wrong but used 99% of the time these days: "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

Yes, yes you can. That's how it works. You get a cake, you have it, and then you eat it. The saying is: "You can't eat your cake and have it too."

You see? If you eat it, you won't have it anymore. Except of course if you're speaking in lesbian euphemistic terms, in which case it's an all you can eat and have it too buffet.

Protests

One of my students sent me an email:

I will not be home tomorrow.

I will be with thousands of other Christians at the Federal Courthouse in Pensacola, FL to support our two local men from a local high school. They face a possible prison sentence for saying "grace" before their meal at a Booster Club meeting at a local high school. The Communists of the ACLU are trying to ban prayer at our schools. They anyone arrested for giving thanks, as most Americans do!

I can only assume he meant that most Americans would "arrest anyone" rather than "anyone arrested" - I know I would, but they don't seem to respect my citizen's arrests very much.

I sent him this email in reply, taking caution as this is a client:

That’s an interesting story, I’ll have to look it up, especially now that I’ve moved to Florida. Cases on religious freedom always tend to be pretty complicated and interesting in terms of how best to protect everyone’s constitutional rights in such a diverse country as ours. Anyway, have a good one, talk to you Friday!

Of course I did look up the story, and obviously I found it to be a tad more nuanced than policeman pouncing on a guileless, unsuspecting Christian saying a prayer at one Booster club meeting:

Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer.

There have been yard signs, T-shirts and a mass student protest during graduation ceremonies this spring on behalf of Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and school athletic director Robert Freeman, who will go on trial Sept. 17 at a federal district court in Pensacola for breaching the conditions of a lawsuit settlement reached last year with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"I have been defending religious freedom issues for 22 years, and I've never had to defend somebody who has been charged criminally for praying," said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based legal group that is defending the two school officials.

An ACLU official said the school district has allowed "flagrant" violations of the First Amendment for years.

"The defendants all admitted wrongdoing," said Daniel Mach, director of litigation for its freedom of religion program. "For example, the Pace High School teachers handbook asks teachers to 'embrace every opportunity to inculcate, by precept and example, the practice of every Christian virtue.' "

The fight involving the ACLU, the school district and several devout Christian employees began last August when the ACLU sued Santa Rosa County Schools on behalf of two students who had complained privately to the group's Florida affiliate, claiming some teachers and administrators were allowing prayers at school events such as graduations, orchestrating separate religiously themed graduation services, and "proselytizing" students during class and after school.

In January, the Santa Rosa County School District settled out of court with the ACLU, agreeing to several things, including a provision to bar all school employees from promoting or sponsoring prayers during school-sponsored events; holding school events at church venues when a secular alternative was available; or promoting their religious beliefs or attempting to convert students in class or during school-sponsored events.

Mr. Staver said the district also agreed to forbid senior class President Mary Allen from speaking at the school's May 30 graduation ceremony on the chance that the young woman, a known Christian, might say something religious.

"She was the first student body president in 33 years not allowed to speak," he said.

In response, many members of the 300-plus-member student body taped crosses to their mortarboards and stood for an impromptu recitation of the Lord's Prayer during the ceremony.

Mr. Mach responded, "We believe students have the constitutional right to pray voluntarily in public or private. Constitutional problems arise only when public school officials promote or endorse prayer or specific religious views."

The criminal charges, which carry up to a $5,000 fine and a six-month jail term, originated with a Jan. 28 incident in which Mr. Lay, a deacon at a local Baptist church, asked Mr. Freeman to offer mealtime prayers at a lunch for school employees and booster-club members who had helped with a school field-house project.

Mr. Staver said no students were present at the event, which was held on school property but after school hours.

"He wasn't thinking he was violating an order," he said. "Neither did the athletic director. He was asked to pray and so he did."

Mr. Mach said the event was during the school day and that Mr. Lay, the school's principal, has said in writing that students were present.

"Decisions about the religious upbringing of children should be left in the hands of parents, not school officials," he said. As to whether prayer constitutes "religious upbringing," he said, "If school officials were promoting non-majority faiths and religious viewpoints, I suspect there'd be an uproar."

The ACLU brought the matter to the attention of U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers, who issued a contempt order for the two men.

Meanwhile, members of the small community of Milton, Fla., where Pace High School is located, have contributed more than $10,000 toward a legal defense fund for the defendants.

Anti-ACLU T-shirts are also being sold and the proceeds donated.

Judge Rodgers' order also included Michelle Winkler, a clerical assistant who was attending a school district event in February with other school employees at a local naval base. There, she asked her husband to offer a blessing for a meal, says the ACLU, adding that students were present and led the Pledge of Allegiance.

"She didn't do the blessing; she asked somebody to do it," Mr. Staver said. "The ACLU is sending people to school to monitor things happening on campus and see if there is anything encouraging religious activity, then running to the court if they see anything."

Her trial, which could result in a fine, is scheduled for Aug. 21.

It seems to me that we have some obstinate Christians who feel their religious views are true and believe the majority of people to agree with them still haven't gotten on the train of constitutional interpretation that the rest of us and the courts have that endorsing Christianity at school violates non-Christians' religious freedom. If only these Christians could cared have as much about everyone else as they do about themselves. Guess they haven't gotten past that narrow in group loyalty, huh?

Pet Peeve of the Day: "verbage"

The word is "verbiage" not "verbage."

ver⋅bi⋅age

–noun

1.	overabundance or superfluity of words, as in writing or speech; wordiness; verbosity.

2.	manner or style of expressing something in words; wording: a manual of official verbiage.

Slang Dictionary

verbage

/ver'b*j/ n. A deliberate misspelling and mispronunciation of verbiage that assimilates it to the word `garbage'. Compare content-free. More pejorative than `verbiage'.

It's fine with me if you use "verbage" if you consciously mean this as there's nothing wrong with coining a good word, but don't let's adulterate the language unwittingly.

Ideas for New Things

I thought of a great game show for the future, when we get the necessary technology worked out. It's called "Face that Name". Contestants brains would be hooked up to electrodes and would then be supplied with names or clues. They would then have to work through their synapses to image the person with their brain. We're already reading words through people's brains, so we're getting there.

For instance, the game show host might say, "That black dude from Blood Diamond, Constantine, and at least one of the Lara Croft movies." And you'd have to think:










And then you'd move on to the $200 question.

This kind of game would be fun because, while you'd never come up with "Patricia Clarkson," upon being asked about "one of the women in Dogville, Far From Heaven, and the aunt from Six Feet Under," you might be able to conjure up:

Congratulations, you win!












My second idea of the day could be done easily enough today. People write autobiographies, make songs about their lives, and make films about their lives. How about video game autobiographies? This idea is so awesome I don't even know what to do.

Phone Companies

Verizon Wireless and, at least as I'm told by one of their CSRs, T-Mobile and all the other big boys have instituted a policy. If one changes anything in her contract*, as one must if one gets a PDA (there's a mandatory minimum $30 data plan for all PDAs, at least at Verizon, and I'm sure T-Mobe has something very similar), one goes from paying after each month to paying before each month, which means that the month of the change brings a double bill. Now one can supposedly get this money back by ending the contract. Of course the only way to do this without an exorbitant early termination fee is to wait out that two year contract that paid for one's new phone after one's old phone happened to stop working properly 1.5 years into one's old contract. Supposing, of course, that one doesn't lose or break one's phone at some point in the next two years (and the insurance one pays every month, by the way, doesn't cover one for the things that actually happen to one's phone 92% of the time). And then, of course, even if one does make it through those two years and gets one's money rebated to her, you'll have to use it, and probably more, as the start up cost for your new contract with anyone else. And yeah, one could go to Cricket, if one doesn't care about not having service 25%-75% of the time, depending on where one lives.

Why does Verizon do this to their customers despite the fact that Nextel/Sprint , Tmobile, AT&T and Verizon are all being sued for forming a virtual trust with one another and are being reviewed by government panels for other corrupt practices as well? Well, my guess is that several upper middle aged white men in nice suits got together, had some scotch and some cigars and then decided to laugh at and spit on the faces of their customers by basically making them pay the legal fees with what amounts to raping their customers into lending them $30-$80 dollars a head, a loan for which the vast majority will never be paid back.

*Why do they wait until you change your contract? Otherwise, we'd all notice, and what they're doing would be quite clear and quite clearly unacceptable. In other words, they wouldn't be able to make an "explanation of monthly access charges" section that looks like this:

Monthly Access Charges These are your fixed monthly charges that are based on your Plan and Optional Services. If you change your plans or services during the month, an adjusted charge that includes partial month charges or credits, may appear on your bill.

$106.52

America's Choice 450 Refund 08/08 - 08/25	-23.22
Nationwide Basic 450 08/08 - 08/25	23.22
Nationwide Basic 450 08/26 - 09/25	39.99
Current Data Plan 08/08 - 08/25	17.41
Current Data Plan 08/26 - 09/25	29.99
WPP Insurance - Asurion 08/26 - 09/25	4.99
Extended Warranty 08/08 - 08/25	1.16
Extended Warranty 08/26 - 09/25	1.99
Ringback Tones 08/26 - 09/25	.99
500 MSG Allowance + Unl IN MSG - Refund 07/26 - 08	-10.00
500 MSG Allowance + Unl IN MSG 07/26 - 08/25	10.00
500 MSG Allowance + Unl IN MSG 08/26 - 09/25	10.00

Let's Have A Little Chat About Overpopulation

Now that this little "Green" thing has taken off and people are starting to realize that "saving the Earth" is about self-interest and not about "loving the Earth", it's about time to go the next step. We have to start on, that's right, population REDUCTION.

As a general rule of thumb, the least you can do is to limit yourself to one or fewer biological offspring. By all means, adopt the hell out of more! Seriously, if you really want to reduce your "carbon footprint" and every other measurement of pollution and waste, you have to stop breeding. Otherwise, you're increasing the problems of the world exponentially. If we don't do this voluntarily, Nature will do this anyway, and Nature will do it in ways we won't find pleasant (i.e. starvation, natural disaster, polar ice caps melting us into an ice age, not enough water to go around, suffocation on dirty air, etc.) In fact, many people around the world are already finding this out first hand, mostly due to our (American's) over consumption. All of our over consumption literally already makes us murderers through our ignorance, greed, and disregard.

Anyway, you should strongly consider having no children at all if you are not an extremely valuable member of the human race, and I find that a surprisingly high, though certainly not nearly high enough, number of you know who you are. I mean anyone in the 90th percentile, an IQ below about 125, please, please, consider condoms. The government should really pay for sterilization and birth control for these people, but we all need to start doing our part in the meantime.

Of course the best thing you can do is to kill yourself, or if that's a bit too harsh for you, at least sign a DNR and refuse medical treatment for degenerative diseases such as cancer and diabetes. You'll be much happier for your remaining years if you can eat your Cocoa Puffs, I'm sure.

It turns out the "bad guys", the gang in the silly Mormon film from the late 1970s, Saturday's Warrior, were right on when they sang "Zero population is the answer my friends - without it the rest of us are doomed!" Except of course, at this point, zero population isn't going far enough.

Here are some videos on the topic:

First, a charming, simple explanation of some of the problems involved:

Only the first few minutes of this one are about overpopulation, though the whole of it is interesting: