The passing of Billy Mays does nothing to change my last post. In fact, it bolsters it.
Depending where you start and stop the counting, just about anything can be made to connect.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
It's true! Isn't it?
Every time someone famous dies the inevitable response is for people to look for two more. Despite evidence to the contrary the “Celebrities Die in Threes” myth goes on. In part, I believe because it is so easy to make it work. It all depends on where you start counting.
This week we had Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. But people were already saying it before Jackson, and linking in David Carradine.
What is the time restriction on the counting? Hendrix and Joplin were within three weeks, but Morrison was nine months later. Why not include Brian Jones (14 months earlier) and make it “They always die in fours”? Ooo, spooky.
So, I tried to limit my research to celebrities who died on the same day. That might be something. Here’s what I found:
July 4, 1826: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
February 3, 1959: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper
November 23, 1963: CS Lewis, Aldous Huxley, JFK
May 16, 1990: Sammy Davis, Jr., Jim Henson
As you can see hitting the “three” threshold with out stretching the length of time to get there is tough.
Undoubtedly, these are notable people, but what is the definition of “Celebrity?” I think that if you want to make the rule of three stick, you can call just about anyone a celebrity. This is a case of making the facts fit the evidence.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the Wikipedia recent deaths list. Are these people celebrities? Sure, or else they wouldn’t be listed, but the “three” business is hard to support when you see how many people die everyday.
All that said, it’s been 26 years and I still can’t Moonwalk.
This week we had Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. But people were already saying it before Jackson, and linking in David Carradine.
What is the time restriction on the counting? Hendrix and Joplin were within three weeks, but Morrison was nine months later. Why not include Brian Jones (14 months earlier) and make it “They always die in fours”? Ooo, spooky.
So, I tried to limit my research to celebrities who died on the same day. That might be something. Here’s what I found:
July 4, 1826: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
February 3, 1959: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper
November 23, 1963: CS Lewis, Aldous Huxley, JFK
May 16, 1990: Sammy Davis, Jr., Jim Henson
As you can see hitting the “three” threshold with out stretching the length of time to get there is tough.
Undoubtedly, these are notable people, but what is the definition of “Celebrity?” I think that if you want to make the rule of three stick, you can call just about anyone a celebrity. This is a case of making the facts fit the evidence.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the Wikipedia recent deaths list. Are these people celebrities? Sure, or else they wouldn’t be listed, but the “three” business is hard to support when you see how many people die everyday.
All that said, it’s been 26 years and I still can’t Moonwalk.
Monday, June 15, 2009
The Ugly American
Last week the city I’m staying in had a large convention for an international group of insurance agents or stock brokers or something. Apparently this event is annual and held in different cities around the world. Normally they have 10,000 attendees, but due to the economy only about 4,000 attended this year. This is a large event.
So, as you can imagine my hotel was full. I have been in this hotel for a while now and have outlasted several of the housekeeping staff. I have also become friendly with the staff and can get them to give me some “behind the curtain” type of information.
For example they tell me about why the fire alarm keeps going off. (It seems some one was deep-frying burgers in their room. Once a day for eight straight days.)
They tell me about the guest who they had to evict, or the lady who caused $3,000 worth of damage to her room.
They told me about one of the guests having to be arrested. I actually saw this event start. The hotel provides breakfast every morning. They also provide a “reception” on three evenings a week. The menu rotates such that every Tuesday is the same thing. Same with Wednesday and Thursday.
On Wednesday the hotel provides hotdogs and burgers. It seems this group, I will call them Gastonians (since they hail from a foreign nation I will call Gaston.), had an issue with the menu. It seems they were reluctant to eat burgers and hotdogs because they didn’t know what they were. Ok that I can understand. I’ve been in some places where I really wanted to know what I was going to eat. The problem arose when the lead Gastononian, after leaning what the burgers and hotdogs were made of flipped out. “You have no food for Gastonians?” The young Russian kitchen lady said “We have food for everyone.” “We have no food.” “Sir, there is food right here.” Etc.
The problem was not that there was no food; it was that the food provided was unacceptable. It took about 20 minutes to get it figured out that these were non beef eating Gastonians.
This group had about 20 rooms rented. As such they sent over a five page dissertation about how the hotel staff was to treat the visiting Gastonian contingent. You know standard stuff like: bowing your head when addressing the men, removing yourself from their path when they walk down the hall. You know standard visiting businessman stuff. But, it never addressed dietary restrictions. It seems logical to me that if a group sends a list of expectations, dietary regulations should be described. I mean they will know their own needs better than strangers on the other side of the world. I know the people at this hotel and they would have made the effort to provide different meal options had they been told ahead of time. They have provided veggie pizzas for me rather than the greasy meat stuff.
The lead Gastonian apparently did not accept the explanation from the hotel staff, and was rude and loud for a long time. He apparently decided to drown his anger in a bottle for about six hours, and then made his way downstairs to the front desk. Long story short, the man was arrested and an international incident may have started.
This brings me to the point of the post; we hear how terrible Americans are when we travel. We hear that we are rude and demanding and about how we don’t respect other cultures. Alright, I am willing to stipulate that some of us are boorish, I have never met anyone who has admitted to acting this way and most of us are so concerned to be labeled as such that we go out of our way to not act American (whatever that means), but ok.
Ask me sometime about the convulsions at the elevator or the lack of changes of clothing. Just don’t tell me anymore stories about the “Rude Americans” overseas. I hardly think we have a lock on pathetic behavior.
So, as you can imagine my hotel was full. I have been in this hotel for a while now and have outlasted several of the housekeeping staff. I have also become friendly with the staff and can get them to give me some “behind the curtain” type of information.
For example they tell me about why the fire alarm keeps going off. (It seems some one was deep-frying burgers in their room. Once a day for eight straight days.)
They tell me about the guest who they had to evict, or the lady who caused $3,000 worth of damage to her room.
They told me about one of the guests having to be arrested. I actually saw this event start. The hotel provides breakfast every morning. They also provide a “reception” on three evenings a week. The menu rotates such that every Tuesday is the same thing. Same with Wednesday and Thursday.
On Wednesday the hotel provides hotdogs and burgers. It seems this group, I will call them Gastonians (since they hail from a foreign nation I will call Gaston.), had an issue with the menu. It seems they were reluctant to eat burgers and hotdogs because they didn’t know what they were. Ok that I can understand. I’ve been in some places where I really wanted to know what I was going to eat. The problem arose when the lead Gastononian, after leaning what the burgers and hotdogs were made of flipped out. “You have no food for Gastonians?” The young Russian kitchen lady said “We have food for everyone.” “We have no food.” “Sir, there is food right here.” Etc.
The problem was not that there was no food; it was that the food provided was unacceptable. It took about 20 minutes to get it figured out that these were non beef eating Gastonians.
This group had about 20 rooms rented. As such they sent over a five page dissertation about how the hotel staff was to treat the visiting Gastonian contingent. You know standard stuff like: bowing your head when addressing the men, removing yourself from their path when they walk down the hall. You know standard visiting businessman stuff. But, it never addressed dietary restrictions. It seems logical to me that if a group sends a list of expectations, dietary regulations should be described. I mean they will know their own needs better than strangers on the other side of the world. I know the people at this hotel and they would have made the effort to provide different meal options had they been told ahead of time. They have provided veggie pizzas for me rather than the greasy meat stuff.
The lead Gastonian apparently did not accept the explanation from the hotel staff, and was rude and loud for a long time. He apparently decided to drown his anger in a bottle for about six hours, and then made his way downstairs to the front desk. Long story short, the man was arrested and an international incident may have started.
This brings me to the point of the post; we hear how terrible Americans are when we travel. We hear that we are rude and demanding and about how we don’t respect other cultures. Alright, I am willing to stipulate that some of us are boorish, I have never met anyone who has admitted to acting this way and most of us are so concerned to be labeled as such that we go out of our way to not act American (whatever that means), but ok.
Ask me sometime about the convulsions at the elevator or the lack of changes of clothing. Just don’t tell me anymore stories about the “Rude Americans” overseas. I hardly think we have a lock on pathetic behavior.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The adults are talking
Can we pretend to be adults for a second? On a blog site, I frequent http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/; we have had several discussions about the recent torture memos. Sufficient time has passed that passions might have had time to quell themselves. So I would like to ask the question: Who is more of a child, the person who thinks that what the CIA does at Gitmo is torture or the person who believes that Al Queda actually tortures?
It seems the CIA interrogators have used certain practices they refer to as "enhanced techniques." These include: walling, dietary manipulation, open-handed slaps, flicking, sleep deprivation, etc. You can read the memos for yourself here for example. Suffice to say that doctors were required to be present to ensure “frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing” the procedures.
The Al Qaeda organization however, uses different methods. I will not elaborate much but I do not think they were medically supervised in quite the same manner. You can read here for more.
I was called childish for pointing out the threat of placing a caterpillar in close proximity to a man who was afraid of insects. I was told it was torture.
I will say that waterboarding looks pretty unpleasant. I don’t really want it done to me. In fact, I don’t want any of the techniques described in either handbook to be used on me. I don’t think most of them are torture. In fact, I encountered most of the CIA techniques while on the average camping trip in the Boy Scouts.
Waterboarding seems to be the harshest procedure utilized. It was used on three people. It is interesting to note that in the videos I have seen, the recovery time is quick and there are no lasting scars or wounds.
I am willing to entertain that waterboarding, the harshest method utilized, might cross the line, if those on the other side can acknowledge that the other procedures are not torture. I think it is time for the grown-ups to have an adult discussion of whether these procedures should be used. I just think that it is important to distinguish what is torture and what is not. Some things are easy. Some not so much. Staying up too late: not torture. Electric drill through the hand: torture. Agreed?
If we cannot agree on that, how will we ever have an adult discussion of anything?
It seems the CIA interrogators have used certain practices they refer to as "enhanced techniques." These include: walling, dietary manipulation, open-handed slaps, flicking, sleep deprivation, etc. You can read the memos for yourself here for example. Suffice to say that doctors were required to be present to ensure “frequent medial monitoring takes place while any detainee is undergoing” the procedures.
The Al Qaeda organization however, uses different methods. I will not elaborate much but I do not think they were medically supervised in quite the same manner. You can read here for more.
I was called childish for pointing out the threat of placing a caterpillar in close proximity to a man who was afraid of insects. I was told it was torture.
I will say that waterboarding looks pretty unpleasant. I don’t really want it done to me. In fact, I don’t want any of the techniques described in either handbook to be used on me. I don’t think most of them are torture. In fact, I encountered most of the CIA techniques while on the average camping trip in the Boy Scouts.
Waterboarding seems to be the harshest procedure utilized. It was used on three people. It is interesting to note that in the videos I have seen, the recovery time is quick and there are no lasting scars or wounds.
I am willing to entertain that waterboarding, the harshest method utilized, might cross the line, if those on the other side can acknowledge that the other procedures are not torture. I think it is time for the grown-ups to have an adult discussion of whether these procedures should be used. I just think that it is important to distinguish what is torture and what is not. Some things are easy. Some not so much. Staying up too late: not torture. Electric drill through the hand: torture. Agreed?
If we cannot agree on that, how will we ever have an adult discussion of anything?
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Swine Flu Update
So last I heard, there were 17,410 cases of Swine flu in 62 countries. Of those, 10,053 cases with 17 deaths in the US. What was the last you heard?
I ask because in my line of work I have access to information to swine flu updates but, I’d bet you don’t. The interesting thing to me is that as soon as a new name (H1N1 Swine) was given to this new super disease, the media stopped paying attention.
It seems that once we named it, it was no longer important.
While it has the potential for a world wide catastrophe, apparently it is not as exciting as we wanted it to be. So, this super killer illness has become boring. I for one was wary of the hype from the beginning.
We came up with funny names for it: Hamthrax, The World-wide Hamdemic, and Aporkalypse.
I suppose things may flare up in the fall but, is it really gone? Did naming it cure it? Has it served it’s purpose and is no longer noteworthy? I don’t know. But, never waste a good crisis.
UPDATE: The WHO (not the Band) officially declared the flu a World-wide Pandemic, just days after my post. Coincidence? Actually, yes, only like three people read this site.
I ask because in my line of work I have access to information to swine flu updates but, I’d bet you don’t. The interesting thing to me is that as soon as a new name (H1N1 Swine) was given to this new super disease, the media stopped paying attention.
It seems that once we named it, it was no longer important.
While it has the potential for a world wide catastrophe, apparently it is not as exciting as we wanted it to be. So, this super killer illness has become boring. I for one was wary of the hype from the beginning.
We came up with funny names for it: Hamthrax, The World-wide Hamdemic, and Aporkalypse.
I suppose things may flare up in the fall but, is it really gone? Did naming it cure it? Has it served it’s purpose and is no longer noteworthy? I don’t know. But, never waste a good crisis.
UPDATE: The WHO (not the Band) officially declared the flu a World-wide Pandemic, just days after my post. Coincidence? Actually, yes, only like three people read this site.
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