Why do Unions like Pensions?

I understand why people like pensions.  You work for a while, then you get to retire, and you don't have to worry.

But there's also lock-in.  You only get the pension if you stay with a company.  Through good times, and bad.  maybe it's not a fun place to work anymore.  Maybe it's downright horrid.  But if you stay for another four years, you get your pension, so you stay.

Why is that good for employees?  Wouldn't it be better to have fluidity (on the part of the workers) so that they can apply not just short-term pressure (strikes) but long-term pressure (retention)?

Or is this a situation where the structure of a union has incentives not aligned with the rank-and-file workers?  (Because if you leave the company, you might fall under a different union representative, or a different union)

Vista and Silverlight: two tastes that really ought to not be forced together

I'm kind of interested in the Mojave Experiment.  Microsoft went out and showed people "Mojave" and how much better it was than Vista, their never-got-off-the-ground-acceptance-wise OS.  And then, "surprise", Mojave is Vista, Soylent Green is People, and Bob is Your Uncle.

A friend was looking for a computer and asking about Vista and with how much vigor she ought avoid it.  My understanding is that much of the backlash is because it's hard to get things working with Vista if you upgrade, but if you get it on a computer you'll be fine.  I was hoping to give her some ciation towards this, and so went to http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/ .

And it requires Silverlight.  Microsoft's other latest technology.  If you're trying to convince slow adopters, why would you use a different early adopter technology?

It's such a great idea, with such a head-in-the-sand implementation.

[These views are my own and not my employer's; though I hope they become yours.  Because I'm right.]

Words' Resurgence

I'm reading George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.  It's a (slightly fictionalized, it turns out) telling of his time being poor in... Paris and London.  Good book, and even though I sometimes disagree with Orwell I never regret the time I spent reading him.

Two big thoughts have struck me:

1) I could make a lot of money compiling a guide to English funny currency.  What the hell is a bob?  And a crown?  What's five and sixpence mean?  And a quid?  (In fact, I know the answers to most of these).  But a Creative Commons-licensed (non-commercial) essay describing the universe and lexicon, along with a per-decade commentary on economics (so you can know how much 4 pounds is in each time period, say) would be awesome.  I imagine that, written well enough, and licensed cheaply enough, you could allow editors to include it in editions of... basically any English Literature book ever.

2) I got to this passage:  "And instantly [] the tramps began to misbehave[]. All round the gallery men lolled in their pews, laughed, chattered..."  Loll is a verb, meaning to lounge around, but in that context it seemed so much to presage "lol" as in "omfg lol" that I wondered if I hadn't gotten a copy of the book remixed a la Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.  It just all worked so well:  a book about tramps that was in the context of laughing by a writer who thought so much about language (yes, 1984, but also its underappreciated precursor "Politics and the English Language".

So, George (nee Eric), tell me, is newspeak really a foreshadowing of teenage girl speak?  My hat, as ever, is off to you.

Q&A with Chris Onstad

Recently, Chris Onstad, author of Achewood (the best webcomic ever) stopped by the New York office.  I was fortunate enough to be given the chance to ask him dumb questions, and watch him turn them into amazingly intelligent and literate answers.  Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZOSZZTIiE

Why I Support Universal Healthcare

It's basically a three-step logical process.

1. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
2. When people get really sick, we (as a society) will have to pay for the cure.
3. So we might as well pay for the prevention.

So, if you disagree with Universal Health Care, and I know there are a lot of you out there who do, which of these three do you disagree with?

Evil Audubon Society

You should check out The Evil Audubon Society, sometimes misspelled as The Evil Autobahn Society.

Top Gun Analogies, taken too far

The Kentucky Derby is rife with potential for comparison to the 1987 cinematic coup de grace "Top Gun".

"I feel the need. The need for speed." Straightforward resemblance to the sport of ponies.

So perhaps it is no surprise that jockey Kent Desormeaux, riding the back of Big Brown (the favorite who went on to win it), chose to commentate a replay of the race by comparing his run to Tom Cruise in that fateful film. Quoth the short, fast man: "I'm locked on now. [] And all I've got to do is pull the trigger."

Eight Belles, the filly who took second place, broke both of her front ankles was immediately put down after two equine ambulances pulled out onto Churchill Downs's track.

It's with a deep understanding of how bad a person I am that I imagine all of the ways I could recast Iceman (played memorably by Val Kilmer)'s line of:

"The plaque for second place is in the women's bathroom."

Going Conventional: A March Madness Case Study

I was talking with friends the other day about sports. All of my friends like sports either significantly more than I do, or significantly less. Thus I was basically talking to myself and wondering how likely conventional wisdom was to be wise.

I know there are all sorts of bookies who know exactly what seeds mean what, but I was more interested in the exception cases. Specifically, what is the largest sub-tree of an NCAA bracket that has had no upsets.

I was positive that 2 team subtrees had this property: that's simply the higher-seeded team winning a game. I would have bet a lot of money at long odds that 4 teams had done it (that is, 1 beats 4 and 2 beats 3 and then 1 beats 2. Of course, in a 16-team seeding, that really means 1 beats 16 and 8 beats 9 and 1 beats 8). But 8 games... I thought happened. And 16 I thought maybe hadn't.

Turns out, 8 teams has happened. As recently as 2007. #2 Georgetown is triumphant over 7 other, lower-seeded teams.

16 teams has happened too. If my scan is correct (though it's late, so I'm open to other examples), in the 1985 tournament. The East region was won by #1 seed Georgetown, who beat seed 16, seed 8 (who beat seed 9), seed 4 (who beat seed 13 and seed 5 (who beat seed 12)), and seed 2 (who beat seed 15, seed 7 (who beat seed 10), and seed 3 (who beat seed 14 and seed 6 (who beat seed 11))).

But before that, I had found that it has also happened to 12 teams. Back in 1982, with a 48-team field, the West region was won by... Georgetown.

I guess the moral of the story is: if you find yourself seeded in a sub-bracket with Georgetown seeded higher than you, you're in for a not-very-upsetting time.

P.S. As a side note, I checked out Georgetown. In 10 out of 17 tournaments I looked at, they won exactly when they were the higher-seeded team. In 4 they lost as a higher seed, and in 3 they won as a lower seed. Thus, in the future, you should expect Georgetown to win exactly those games as they are expected to. They're rather dependable.

Why can't Juries ask questions?

I'm watching 12 Angry Men.

The Jurors bring up among themselves all these questions. Arguments then ensue.

Why should Jurors not be allowed to address their questions/concerns to people who could answer them? In what ways would this harm the process?

I think we're really hesitant to do Jury Reform, and for good reason. But how many hundreds of years, with how much progress in understanding how it is that 1) people come to decisions (cognitive) and 2) how groups of people come to decisions (social psych)? And how much more complex are the methods that Jurors have to understand? And the laws?

So much has changed since last we changed. Maybe it's time to start asking these questions.

I sincerely hope someone responds, in comments or email, "we don't allow Jurors to do this because *VALID REASON HERE*."

Can you tell I watched Lost in Translation recently?

For relaxing dirt, make it... Suntory Dirt.

So, which NBC exec went to Stanford?

I just watched the Knight Rider made-for-tv movie. In it, the comely daughter of the dead scientist teaches at Stanford. And the fly-over shots are accurate, but that's stock videography. The exterior shots of when she leads the library are not Stanford, which makes sense: if you're filming in LA, you aren't going to pack up to film Stanford.

But they got some stuff weirdly right. The sign in the library said, "Go Cardinal, the AXE is ours!" Which correctly gets the pluralization of our mascot correct (it's singular), and refers to the object of our rivalry. Touches like these are the hallmark of alma mater affinity.

But another show debuting on NBC this fall, Chuck, features a protagonist that failed out of Stanford. In the few flashbacks, again, large details are out of whack: the frat house doesn't look like any Stanford frat house. But again, no tv dorm room ever looks like a dorm room. But the little touches. They show Chuck's college ID card, and it's a well formatted SUID card, instantly recognizable to any Stanford student.

So, why? I'm thinking there's an NBC exec that went to Stanford, and so toady little show runners are telling their staffs (staves?) that they need to set things at Stanford, and get the details right!

I imagine tens of fact checkers scouring through Wikipedia articles and Facebook Wall Postings and USNews College Board Discussions for the hints of veracity that'll make this mythic benefactor smile with remembrance of his heady college days.

Christ's Vicar in the Air

This article from the Times talks about the Pope and abortion. Big surprise: he's anti-. And he'll excommunicate politicians who backed a measure legalizing them in Mexico. Question 1: will he excommunicate those who voted for such politicians? Those who vote for such politicians in the future? Those who provide aid and comfort to such politicians?

But these geopolitically religious questions get in the way of a larger question. The Times says the comments were made "during an airborne news conference aboard the plane carrying him". Now, we all know about the Popemobile. But what do we call this fantastic vehicle of Papal Transport? The airplance that can return the Prelate of St. Peter's Basilica to his Rome dome home? That can speed to court a Pontiff plaintiff? (perhaps there to deliver his sartorial wisdom with a vestment testament) That can, with altitude, make the mitre mightier?

Pope Force One.






(Though we also would have accepted VHoly See-25)

Pronunciation Realization

Where do you place the accent in the word "Caribbean"? Per se, I normally accent it as ca-RIB-be-an. But, I realized, in reference to the Johnny Depp vehicle, I pronounce "the Pirates of the CA-ri-BE-an". And when I think about it, I realize that doing so makes the phrase iambic (yes, with a femine rhyme, which is why there's an extra syllable on the end). Why?

Robert Frost said writers in English have a choice between two meters: strong iambic and weak iambic.

I guess readers in English only have those two choices, as well.

Opt-what now?

I just signed up for Consumer Reports. Spending $26 so I can save money. That's why I spent 5 years in college.

But as I'm signing up, they have this form item:

We occasionally send e-mail notification of special ConsumerReports.org events and updates or news about other Consumer Reports activities or products. If you do not want to receive such notices let us know by checking "Opt out."

Opt In
Opt Out

Now, I appreciate the ability to marginally reduce my spam load by telling them "I'd rather not, really." But they are using standard terms of nerdery and cred and nerd cred to make it appear that they get it.

When they don't.

And what's worse, the UI is unclear. Presumably, if you don't want to be bugged, you'd prefer an opt-in system, in which case, then you want to opt-out--

Look Consumer Reports. Let's get past the pleasantries. I'm giving you 26 dollars and a spam email address. You're going to give me some information on camcorders I want to buy, you're going to sell said email address to anyone who will pay for it, then you're going to give it away to anyone who can't. This isn't an affair of the heart; it's a shoddy electronic information passing encounter of prostitution.

Foster in Stereo (R)

Since so pitifully little of my work at The Onion - A.V. Club has made it into the web edition, I took the liberty of constructing a rudimentary page to host my articles to date. (I read and write HTML at a third-grade level). See it here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze2788s/

At least it's not a members-dot-aol-dot-com page (quasi-sequitur: Stephen Glass used an AOL domain when constructing a bogus page for Jukt Micronics as part of the tapestry of fabulism he called a journalistic career.)

Hopefully, you'll read some of the stuff there and think: "Ah, of course he hasn't had time to post at The Enfranchised lately. The man is working toward a Pulitzer."

You Can Do Better: Rolling Stones

In this article, we find out that 300 horses are to be sedated as a Rolling Stones concert happens next to them.

In this edition of You Can Do Better, we invite you to to Do Better in comments.

Punchlines:

• Normally the 300 doses of horse tranquilizer at a Stones concert are for Keith Richards.
  
• So this is why Serbian Gangsters threaten you with sleeping with the horses.
  
• Some pun on the song title "Wild Horses".
  

Snakes in a Plain... old office building.

My, who's that handsome blogger over at the official Google Blog?

Oh, it's me!

I mean, it's I.

Fucking predicate nominative.

Discovered Clerihew

Reading Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter & Poetic Form (an excellent book for those who wanted to know more than they wanted to know about... poetic meter and poetic form), I read this example of graffito (absurd singular not added, but in the original):

"Soldiers who wish to be a hero
Are practically zero.
But those who wish to be civilians,
Jesus, they run into the millions."

Fussell introduces the poem to point out the value of Trochaic substitution. Jesus, in the fourth line, is a trochee (its first syllable is stressed, as opposed to an iamb in which the last syllable is stressed). This draws our attention (as does the fact that it's a the-tiniest-bit-naughty interjection). (Fussell doesn't mention that soldiers, parallel at the beginning of the first line, is also a trochee; the omission makes me wonder if he doesn't pronounce it as an iamb.)

But what he doesn't mention is that this is a Clerihew. And an excellent one at that. Because there is no prescription for meter, poets in the form cannot fall back on anything and have to find utility in the arbitrary; this anonymous has.

AKA the Testicle Tax

This image (which, if it's broken down, described a $1645 rebate for people willing to buy a Ford Mustang with an Automatic Transmission) is supply and demand at its barest.

What is the problem here? Simple, it's:

1. A Ford Mustang with
   
2. an automatic transmission.
   
   

If you're driving a sports car, don't be piloting a shuttlecraft where you occasionally give it some guidance to increase thrust or to fiddle with the cruise control or maybe a bit more to the left there, eh horseless carriage? If you're not too busy handling my hands-free bluetooth call to my manicurist?

Ford should just come out and call this incentive program what it is: a pussy rebate, for those who want to the veneer of a macho set of wheels that needn't hold up to fine inspection because they do not, in fact, have any friends who will be riding shotgun.

At least, not any that don't have to be inflated.

Pour Moi?

This story has everything going for it. The chair-throwing hard-work attitude of Bobbby Knight pushing for the nonsensical, Dan Rather-esque shouting of pizza-seller Dick Vitale, to get the latter into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. It follows up on Bobby Knight's redemption (at least in my eyes): the NBA recently decided that pros have to be out of high school for one year, which has pushed the LeBron Jameses of the world to college for one year of a degree they *know* they won't finish, and Knight has been the only college coach to talk about the harm this is doing to student-athletes. Before, anyone who came to college only *thought* they might not finish college, y'know, if they had a few good seasons. And this really is a good tale: Dickie V belongs in the College Basketball Hall. He is the voice of March for many people.

But he's that voice on ESPN, the same outlet that's running this story. Without disclaimer. And I realize this is an AP story, but ESPN, can't you please say "full disclosure: Dick Vitale is an employee of ESPN". Because when you don't, you endorse a story, a pity, a sympathy that, if it were followed up on, would benefit you. You'd get to do a special on DV, maybe a retrospective, best of commentary on ESPN Classic, and a reality TV show where DVitty goes back to school to finish up his degree and find his lost love on ESPNU (look, Rodney Dangerfield's dead, you can steal his part and Terry Farrell is still hotter than Perry Farrell).

So, ESPN, shill away: you're a Disney company, it's kind of your job. But also make it clear that you're Dick's Vital employer when you do.