February 2008 Archives

So, there's this web site called YouTube and they have all these cool videos, OMG!

Holy crap. I just called the cops on a neighbor's barking dog. What's next? Where are some kids I can yell at to get off my lawn? What the hell is happening to me?

OK, seriously, this is (and has been) an annoying fucking dog. I should rephrase that: it is a dog being a dog; it's the owners who are annoying asshats for not properly training the dog and who don't deserve the privilege of owning one.

It was surprisingly hard to find the procedures for reporting a barking dog -- or even if doing so was possible -- so I thought I'd post them here for future Googlers who end up encountering dozens of pages about Seattle's "Barking Dog Alehouse" as I did.

First of all, don't call the cops. They didn't seem to mind, but they referred me to Seattle Animal Control. Call them at 206-386-7387 and press "7" because "you have a complaint."

The incredibly kind person who answers the phone (at least, she was kind to me) will take down the information (you have to know the dog's address) and will send the dog owners a friendly reminder about Seattle Municipal Code 25.08.500, otherwise known as the "Public Disturbance Noises" ordinance. After a few days, if there's no improvement to the canine decibel levels, a Law Abiding Citizen may call back and register a second complaint after which the "friendly reminder" becomes an "expensive ticket."

I wonder if there's an ordinance I can cite to people who let their dogs get up in the face of my 34"-tall 4-year-old son and then say "Oh, don't worry, he's so friendly" as said youngster recoils in terror from the giant salivating befanged beast and yells "No, no!"

News flash to dog owners: not everyone likes your dog.

A couple years ago, I heard Barack Obama on NPR's amusing news quiz/comedy show, "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me" and I recall at the time thinking "Man, this guy is so funny, it'd be awesome if he were President!"

So, if that ends up happening, you have me to thank.

The show is archived here (warning: RealPlayer required). Obama appears as part of the "Not My Job" segment in which he talks about the graffiti on his U. S. Senate desk and how he was thinking of adding to it with spray paint, you know, "as the only African American in the Senate."

He's seriously the funniest person in the segment -- he holds his own against comedian Paula Poundstone and host Peter Sagal, has the audience rolling, and displays a respectable amount of knowledge about Wade Boggs.

Make sure you listen to the end when he avoids declaring his candidacy for 2008.

Consistent with the overall downward trajectory of my Oscar-picking abilities, the accuracy of my predictions was pretty pathetic this year.

On the "Correct" side, we have:

Best Picture
Best Actor
Best Director(s)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Original Screenplay
Best Animated Film
Best Score
Best Short Animated Film
Best Short Live Action Film
Best Cinematography
Best Original Song

On the "Wrong" side, there's:

Everything else, for an overall score of 11/24, or 46%.

My first sub-median performance.

I blame the French.

A random sampling of interesting web sites I found this week.

Most every morning I wake up with a song in my head. It's rarely something that I've heard recently, and I don't always remember it after I get going, but lately I've been making an effort to pay attention. Here are the last five songs my brain has inexplicably greeted me with at 7 am.

• "With a Little Bit of Luck", My Fair Lady
• "Somebody Got Murdered", The Clash
• "Daft Punk is Playing at My House", LCD Soundsystem
• "New Amsterdam", Elvis Costello
• "Clint Eastwood", Gorillaz

As the kids these day say: WTF?

I'm happy, I'm feelin' glad; I got sunshine ... in a bag! Arrrrgh!

Ray and I drove around Seattle tonight looking for the best vantage point from which to view the lunar eclipse. Only after we got home did we discover that the best view was from our driveway, which is from where this photo was taken.

Of course, I explained to Ray that what was happening was that the god Seth was stealing the Moon Eye of Horus during one of their great battles. I figured this was just as believable of a story as a talking bush or an old man saving two of every species of animal during a worldwide flood.

There's a new catchphrase of sorts circulating throughout the hallowed halls of my workplace. In the context of organizational planning and its related activities (development of mission statements, guiding principles, etc.) the popular axiom goes something like:

Properly applied, this homey little rule-of-thumb is perfectly capable of detecting bullshit and pointless utterances. For example, if your mission is "Maximize profits for our stakeholders," and you take the opposite of that -- "Minimize profits for our stakeholders" -- and that's silly (I think we can agree it is) then you need to revise your statement.

For all I know, this is a common and time-honored technique, but it's only come up recently where I work and it's showing all the hallmarks of a new trend -- overuse and misapplication.

In my observations, there are two main errors people make in applying it:

First, they miss the point that sometimes stating something, even if it's obvious, makes a strong impact in that you're not stating something else. To cite a recent real example of this: a mission statement about providing an excellent undergraduate educational experience was determined to be "silly" on the grounds that one would never do the opposite ("provide a bad undergraduate educational experience.") But the very fact that a statement about undergraduate education was included in the mission in the first place is the significant factor. Too often, major research institutions neglect (or are accused of neglecting) undergraduates. The document could have failed to mention them at all, or could have focused on graduate education and research. But it didn't, and that's the important thing.

Second, I have seen it clumsily applied to complex statements for which there is no simple "opposite." Another example: the statement "We will provide meaningful information for decision-making that is accessible anytime and anywhere" was contorted into something like "We will provide meaningless information for decision-making that is not accessible anytime or everywhere." Granted, the original is not the world's best statement, but its so-called "negation" misses the point. The problem that the statement was intended to address was suboptimization -- information provided in some contexts was meaningless and was inaccessible from some locations. The statement was intended to raise the standard on the quality and availability of information and, as such, was important to state even if its so-called "opposite" is, indeed, silly.

Again, the axiom is useful in many contexts as a tool to detect meaning-free utterances -- the sort that really do tend to crop up in organizational planning, especially after a committee or two have a go at things. But as with any tool, it's important that one doesn't view it as the only one necessary to have in the toolbox. Another oft- (and over-) used axiom -- "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" -- applies here.

A random sampling of interesting web sites I found this week.

NOTE: 2008-02-15 15:21 -- I'm having trouble connecting to del.icio.us so the Friday Bookmarks aren't showing up for me. Maybe it's just me. But if there's nothing listed above, try again later. The problem seems to have resolved itself.

This is a hilarious clip of my 10-month-old nephew, Kevin, whom I have not met yet. Thanks to my sister for sharing it. There's nothing more hilarious than a baby laughing.

Yesterday, I discovered a kindred spirit on Craigslist. No, it wasn't in the "Dating" or "Casual Encounters" section. It was under "Best of Craigslist" (who knew Craigslist has a "Best of" section?!). The author of this post describes his/her method of eating M&M's:

This is exactly how I eat M&M's! Now, I've never gone as far as this person has ("When I ... am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd ... I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars ... along with a 3x5 card reading, 'Please use this M&M for breeding purposes.'") but I do enjoy the candy-shell testing process.

When I shared this story with Amy, she revealed that her method of M&M-eating involves carefully removing the candy shell with her back teeth and then eating the remaining chocolate core separately.

We also learned that we have different techniques for consuming Twix bars. Amy removes the ends and edges and then carefully eats away the cookie part so she's left with just chocolate and caramel "for dessert." I approach the Twix in the opposite way and eat off the chocolate and caramel on top, leaving the plain cookie (with a thin residue of chocolate) as a palate cleanser.

Amy dissects the "100 Grand" bar in a similar manner, carefully removing the chocolate and crisp-rice sheathe before savoring the gooey caramel inside.

All of this is fine, and I am tolerant of alternative candy-eating lifestyles. Amy, however, has declared my method of downing a Kit Kat bar to be "wrong." I don't break the 4 individual "Kit Kat-lets" apart from each other; I approach the Kit Kat as any other candy bar and chomp right into it, pre-defined breakaway perforations be damned. To me, the skinny bars of chocolate and wafer are too insubstantial on their own; I prefer more girth (or at least more width) to my candy bar. And if that's so wrong, well then, I don't want to be right.

Even after seven years together, we still learn new stuff about each other every day!

How about you, loyal readers? Care to admit to any deviant candy-eating practices?

One story in the bible that I always wondered about is the one in which Jesus saves a woman from being stoned by telling the crowd: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:3-11). I always wondered (somewhat snarkily) why Jesus himself doesn't start the melee given that he is (supposedly) "without sin."

Christopher Hitchens writes about this incident in God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and, though he doesn't suggest that Jesus should have personally started meting out the justice in this situation, he does raise (or relate via theologian Barton Ehrman's scholarship) additional questions about this parable that hadn't occurred to me.

First, he points out that the New Testament is supposed to vindicate the "gruesome laws of the Pentateuch," of which stoning adulterers is one. How, then, does Jesus (who is not yet, at this point in the story, "proven" to be divine) get off undermining that code and "forgiving" a criminal? What authority does he have, and what does this incident say about Mosaic law?

Second, regardless of the cruelty of the punishment, how is a justice system supposed to work if only non-sinners can prosecute individuals?

Third, the woman in question was caught in the act of committing adultery, but there's no mention of her partner-in-crime who, by the same law (Leviticus 20:10), should be stoned to death as well. And not only does he escape punishment entirely, but the woman apparently gets off scot free as well after Jesus intervenes. Does this imply that Christianity should take a more liberal attitude toward sexual transgressions? That adultery is OK and forgivable?

Given that this parable seems to demonstrate that Jesus advocates ignoring the laws laid out in Leviticus in favor of something approaching reason and tolerance, and that he seems to think that deviant sexual practices are OK, maybe today's Christians can follow that example with regards to lying with mankind, as he lieth with a woman. They don't seem to have a problem cutting their hair and shaving (Leviticus 19:27), or with the blind, lame, or flat-nosed (Leviticus 21:17-18).

Friday night, we were driving back from dinner and there was a brief lull in the conversation. After a moment, Ray announced from the backseat:

"Daddy, when you retire, you can do the work of reporting broken street lights to the city."

The background on this is that we have (or had) a broken street light in front of our house. Before Christmas, I took Ray out and showed him where the utility pole number was, then went back inside and reported it via Seattle City Light's online problem reporting form. The light now (after 2 months) appears to be fixed, but Ray insists he saw it flickering the other night so I'm not positive.

Ray's comment drove Amy to hilarious laughter, and greatly amused me for a number of reasons.

First, how incredible is it for a 4-year-old to have a concept of retirement? To understand that in, for him, an astronomical number of years from now, I will no longer go to work and will likely need something to do. Now, he knows that his grandparents are, with one exception, retired, but I don't think I ever talked with him about the concept or the fact that I (hopefully, at age 55) will join their ranks. Yet, he gets it.

Second, of all the things my son looks up to me for -- out of everything that (I hope) he recognizes my adeptness and competence in -- the one feat that impressed him enough for him to suggest that I am well-qualified to continue doing it into my autumn years and beyond ... was reporting broken street lights.

Later, when I expressed to Amy my concern that Ray might not think I'm good at anything except reporting broken street lights, she pointed out that I'm also very good at building things with Lego. Thanks.

Back in the car, I kept the discussion going for awhile as Amy giggled uncontrollably next to me.

"So, when I'm retired," I began, "I'll just wander around the streets and make notes about broken street lights and go home and report them?"

"No," Ray replied. "You can go around with your pocket computer!"

Of course! That's far more convenient.

As usual, he has every detail figured out.

An estimated 700 people turned out to our local caucus at Whittier Elementary School this afternoon. From the reports of folks I talked to who have caucused here in the past, the turnout was amazingly high. I have no idea how many they expected, but they clearly were not prepared for as many as they got. Sign-in sheets were filled up, the Obama supporters ran out of "Obama '08" stickers (plenty of Hillary ones left over, though), and they had to open up several overflow rooms.

The national news is already calling the state for Obama with a nearly 2/3 margin over Hillary. In our little 79-person segment of the caucus, we were about 85-15 in favor of Barack. I overheard similar results floating around from the other tables, too.

It's a little hard to gauge turnout as numbers that are being reported are for delegates and not actual pledges of support. For example, out of our 79 individuals, we had 5 delegates (4 ended up for Obama; 1 for Hillary). The delegate count is based on both number of registered democrats in the neighborhood and the turnout at the last election, so it can't be assumed that there's a steady 1:16 delegate/caucuser ratio throughout the state.

Everyone was really psyched and fired up. The caucus format may have its issues, but there's something to be said for getting out and actively engaging in the process.

Here are some photos from the day.

Every year, I take my birthday off from work. Since it falls on a Saturday this year (today!), I took yesterday off, and planned a series of excursions with Amy.

Then Obama announced he was coming to Seattle.

Amy's a big fan of Obama, and has been for a while now. And since this was a rare opportunity, we canceled my birthday plans to attend the rally, and I decided to not pout too much (just a little). You can some of my photos of the day on Flickr. And here's The Stranger's recording of the speech with (better) photos. Damn those people with press passes!

I'll say this: the man can deliver a rousing speech. And he seems to have a lot of momentum here in Washington -- a poll I saw yesterday gives him a 55-40 lead over Hillary (who I've never been able to muster more than lukewarm interest in). And his appearance here outdrew hers about 20,000 to 5,000. But I'm reluctant to get too fired up about a presidential candidate as my track record in that area has been pretty poor.

Back in 4th grade, my teacher, Mrs. Alessandrini, built a whole faux campaign activity around the 1980 primaries and election. I was an ardent backer of Independent candidate John Anderson, and pushed hard to deliver for him the critical 10-year-old vote from room 241 of Lowrey Elementary School . I really got into it. That turned out well.

I hit 18 in time to participate in the 1988 election season. I wasn't really that politically minded at the time and sort of went with the flow, which unfortunately went with Michael Dukakis.

By the time 1992 rolled around, I was a bit more engaged and attended a Democratic Party rally at Cobo Hall in Detroit and actually, you know, discussed issues with friends and stuff. I briefly became a supporter of Paul Tsongas -- "briefly" only because, again, the flow started going in another direction pretty quickly.

In 2000, I originally supported Bill Bradley, but not very enthusiastically. I'd already had my heart broken twice, so I was a bit gun shy. And we all know how the eventual election turned out.

By 2004, I decided to stay on the fence until a front-runner emerged lest face more disappointment. I was never too excited about John Kerry; but I (and the majority of voters) cast ballots for him on the "Anyone But Bush" platform. It's just that not all those votes were actually counted (Ohio!)

So, today is caucus day in Washington, and I am heading out to pledge my support for a candidate. It appears that Obama aligns more closely with my opinions and beliefs than does Hillary, and I think he could do a lot better than her to repair our international reputation and make people feel good about being Americans again.

And, of course, Hillary voted for the war. One highlight in yesterday's speech for me was when Obama reminded the crowd that he never voted for the war, and that down the trail when candidates are pressed about it, he's the only one who can demonstrate that he didn't support it. To me, that's the tipping point, and an area where Hillary obviously has to be weaselly and evasive.

Once I cast my vote today for [delegates for] Obama (or go stand in the right corner, or however they do caucuses), I will become emotionally invested in it and will set myself up for crushing disappointment if "my guy" doesn't win -- either today, or altogether. Conversely, of course, if Obama does win, I can go dancing in the streets and rightfully claim that I supported him all along.

The answer to the FridayQuiz is:

They were all born on February 9.

February 9 has to be one of the most inauspicious days of the 365.25 we enjoy each year. In addition to Ms. Miranda, Mr. Veeck, and President Harrison, I could have listed newscaster Roger Mudd, singer Ernest Tubb, and Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, the inventor of stenography.

Had I been born but a day earlier, I would have shared my day with such august and celebrated personalities as Jules Verne, Jack Lemmon, Jimmy Dean, and Lana Turner.

A day later, and Bertolt Brecht, Lon Chaney, Jr., and the great Jimmy Durante would have shared my birthday.

But, alas, today is the day.

All hail me, and today's saint, Saint Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists and dental technicians.

A random sampling of interesting web sites I found this week.

What do the following people have in common?

Carmen Miranda

Brazilian samba singer and motion picture star from the 1940's.


Bill Veeck

Flamboyant owner of the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns, and Chicago White Sox.


William Henry Harrison

Ninth president of the United States. Died after 31 days in office.


Jim L.

Author of this blog and cosmopolitan man-about-town.


Comment it up! Answer tomorrow.

In many ways, Washington state is unique in the Republic, and the way we handle our presidential primaries is no exception.

We have both a caucus (coming up this Saturday, February 9) and a ballot-based primary election (February 19).

The Republicans (boo! hiss!) will count the results from both. The democrats, however, will only count the caucus.

This is not particularly well-known. I talked to a guy I know from the bus the other day and he was all proud of having already mailed in his primary ballot. He's planning to be out of town on Saturday, so his vote (for Obama) won't count.

So, if you live in Washington, get out and caucus on Saturday. Cancel your Jim's Birthday Day Parties (I'll understand) and go stand around a school gymnasium arguing about Hillary and Barack and participate in the democratic process.

You can find more information, including your caucus location, at the Washington State Democrats website.

During my first year as a graduate student, I encountered the book Against Theory, which includes the eponymous 1982 essay by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels as well as an array of responses to their pragmatist screed.

For those of you lucky enough to have escaped the intellectual vortex of literary theory in its many guises, Knapp and Michaels offer a succinct definition in the opening sentence of their article.

The contemporary practice of literary theory, they continue, either seeks "to ground the reading of literary texts in methods designed to guarantee the objectivity and validity of interpretations," or "denies the possibility of correct interpretation."

They conclude that all acts of interpretation (or "reading") are attempts to derive the author's (or speaker's or painter's) intention. The text in question, and any surrounding historical or social or personal context, merely provides evidence as to that intention, and we as readers make truth claims about meaning that cannot be proven to be correct but, by that same token, cannot be proven false. All we can ever hope for is to make a compelling case for our "reading," and there's no need to hold out for some regulative ideal or impossible "perfect" interpretation of the "real" meaning of anything.

If this seems obvious to you (and it should), keep in mind that attempts to complicate and obfuscate that process have kept literature (and film studies) professors employed for many decades.

It occurred to me then that Knapp and Michaels' whole beef with theory could pretty easily be applied to theism. Putting aside the creationist notion of a cosmological "author," one could argue that religions, like theory, seek to "ground" interpretations of the universe in some method that guarantees their veracity. In doing so, the introduction of further evidence that might undermine or undo (or correct) a previous interpretation is viewed with hostility because it no longer calls just the particular interpretation into question, but the method (or theory) itself. This is obvious in how believers react when some element of their belief system is claimed to be false. If one posits that the Bible is the 100% perfect inspired word of god, for example, and then are confronted with one of the hundreds of errors or contradictions in the book, one cannot easily shrug that off without admitting that the entire "theory" it's wrapped up in is flawed. So denial or hand-waving ensues. Or torture and beheadings.

But beside shaking up the ontological and epistemological bases for "theory," Knapp and Michaels also make the audacious claim that their revelation has no consequences for the practice of literary criticism or interpretation. We will continue to interpret texts like we always have; indeed, we cannot do it any other way. All the various theories do are explain the interpretation process incorrectly. If we drop them, we lose nothing (except a bunch of poorly-written books about theory) and we gain nothing (except maybe more time to read).

The reason that I'm rehashing this idea from fifteen years ago now is that I was reminded of it whilst reading Christopher Hitchens' truly excellent book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

In it, Hitchens relates the story of Pierre-Simon Laplace, a French scientist from the late 18th century who constructed an "orrery," or a working model of the solar system. When confronted by Bonaparte as to why the model did not include the figure of god, Laplace responded "Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse." ("I did not need that hypothesis.")

Just as we don't need a "theory" of interpretation to explain how to read, we don't need some mystical construct to explain how the planets revolve around the sun. In regarding the universe, there are no consequences to dropping the notion of god out of the equation.

A random sampling of interesting web sites I found this week.