Drugstore closures are leaving millions without easy access to a pharmacy — washingtonpost.com The nation’s largest drugstore chains — Rite Aid (which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week), CVS and Walgreens plan to collectively close more than 1,500 stores. Public health experts have already seen the fallout, noting that the first neighborhoods to lose their pharmacies are often predominantly Black, Latinx and low-income. That sentence is written in a way that makes the world sound worse to the casual reader than it probably is. How have public health experts “already seen the fallout” of something that hasn’t happened yet? Predominantly Black, Latinx and low-income neighborhoods are “often” the first to lose pharmacies. Not always, but often. Ok, that makes sense. But it’s phrased in a way that sounds like the pharmacies are being closed because of the demographics. If pharmacies didn’t want to be in predominantly Black, Latinx… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Clothing
Let’s See the Minnesota Twins
I saw these on sale at the Minneapolis airport. It’s maybe not obvious from the photo but they’re women’s cut V-neck T-shirts. Feel free to supply your own punch line because I’m not saying anything. Read more →
White Lives Matter?
New Kanye West tee: I like it. To me it makes more sense to say that either all lives matter or no lives matter. I wouldn’t break it down by group, but I still like it. Read more →
Fat Bike Riders
There are a lot of cyclists in Irvine . . . if you visit the local coffee shops on the weekend, you’ll see a bunch of them after their ride, usually in groups, all togged out like Tour de France participants. While actual bike racers are very lean, these folks ironically are always among the fattest people in the establishment, a fact emphasized by their skin-tight attire. I’m tempted to ask, “Why don’t you ride in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, given that 1) your racing togs just emphasize what a physical mess you are, and 2) no amount of aerodynamic material is going to make you a bike racer because you’re too fat.” Read more →
Today Would Have Been a Good Day
I’ve always been tempted to short Abercrombie & Fitch stock based on the abysmal quality of people I see wearing their merchandise. Today would have been a good day to actually do it, as a deal to sell the company fell through (If you’re not familiar with stock charts, today’s activity is reflected in the vertical purple bar plummeting toward the bottom right of the chart.) Read more →
Act Now to Take Advantage of the New Low Price
Hawaiian Shirts
My Hawaiian shirts are like my children . . . I love them all equally. Read more →
Pink Shirt
As you get older and the color fades out of your hair and your face and your life, you need to compensate with more colorful attire. In case you’re wondering about the pink shirt . . . Read more →
The Surprising Benefits of Nonconformity
New research finds that under certain circumstances, people wearing unconventional attire are perceived as having higher status and greater competence. — The Surprising Benefits of Nonconformity | MIT Sloan Management Review Read more →
Japan, Day 2: Kinkakuji Temple, Nishijin Textile Center, Tea Ceremony, Bullet Train, Atami
Kinkakuji Temple Kinkaku-ji (lit. “Temple of the Golden Pavilion”), officially named Rokuon-ji (lit. “Deer Garden Temple”), is a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. The site of Kinkaku-ji was originally a villa called Kitayama-dai, belonging to a powerful statesman, Saionji Kintsune. Kinkaku-ji’s history dates to 1397, when the villa was purchased from the Saionji family by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and transformed into the Kinkaku-ji complex. When Yoshimitsu died, the building was converted into a Zen temple by his son, according to his wishes. During the Onin war, all of the buildings in the complex aside from the pavilion were burned down. On July 2, 1950, at 2:30 am, the pavilion was burned down by a 22-year-old novice monk, Hayashi Yoken, who then attempted suicide on the Daimon-ji hill behind the building. He survived, and was subsequently taken into custody. The monk was sentenced to seven years in prison, but was… Read more →
The Aliens Have Landed in Irvine
It’s about one in the afternoon at the Irvine In-N-Out Burger. A guy who looks to be in his early 20s comes in wearing a backward baseball cap, dark sunglasses (which he never removes) and — despite a temperature in the high 80s — a pullover sweater. To simplify the storytelling, let’s call this guy Alf. Alf waits in line, places his order, then immediately walks over and stands in front of the pickup counter. The place is packed, and I can tell from looking at the number on my own ticket that there are about 10 more orders ahead of me, and since I ordered before him, there are about 15 more orders ahead of Alf, so there’s no reason for him to be standing at — in fact, leaning on — the pickup counter. After a few moments, the kid at the pickup counter asks Alf what his… Read more →
Seamless Integration
There’s an unwritten rule in the software business that any integration between two systems must be described as “seamless,” the result being that the word no longer has any meaning. My favorite seamless integration storyline took place years ago when IBM had a joint marketing pact with Vignette, and offered “seamless integration” between the WebSphere application server and the Vignette content management system. In fact, the two systems weren’t integrated at all by any definition of the word “integrated” that I know about. We had to write our own interfaces to move data between them. The funny thing is, that is seamless integration if you think about it, in that there’s no seam between two things that are not connected at all. For example, my shirt neatly integrates sleeves, cuffs, pocket, collar . . . but not seamlessly. There are seams all over the place. Whereas the shirt is seamlessly… Read more →
Mr. Blackwell Lives
My kid calls me out for wearing white socks with black sneakers . . . “Thanks, Mr. Blackwell,” I say to him. Then it occurs to me that a 19-year-old is not going to get the Mr. Blackwell reference. “FYI, Mr. Blackwell was a flamboyantly gay fashion critic.” Read more →
The Game Blame Game
My boy is playing NBA 2K12 and points out that my Where’s Waldo shirt looks like the Washington Wizards (nee Bullets) throwback uniforms. “Where’s John Wall-do?” he says. Ha ha. I get my comeback opportunity a few minutes later when his game player passes to a teammate, who scores, but his player doesn’t get credit for an ssist. “HOW CAN THAT BE ANYTHING BUT AN ASSIST FOR ME?!” he shouts in disbelief. “That’s bad programming.” “Oh I doubt that,” I say. “The people who program video games are a lot smarter than the people who play them.” Read more →
It’s Not Nice to Make Fun of People’s Clothes
I picked up a red striped T-shirt on sale at Old Navy. My son saw it and it seemed to me that he chuckled a little bit. “What’s funny?” I asked. “Where’s Waldo?” he said. Read more →
Bored to Death
The shirt wouldn’t look good on me but I know the feeling . . . Read more →
The Car Business
Twitter: 2010-04-18
Why does every fat-ass with a bike have to dress himself out like Lance Armstrong? # Read more →
Technology Enhances Chivalry
My son’s a junior in high school now . . . tonight he went to a school homecoming dance instead of watching the USC-Cal game with his dad. Sing it with me: The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon . . . This morning he went with his mom to buy a dress shirt and a tie. When they’d narrowed the choice down to two ties, he took a photo of them with his phone and sent them to the girl to see which one would go better with her dress . . . Read more →
Another Reason Why All the Great Scientists (Except Marie Curie) Are Men
Two women are talking in the lunch room. One is wearing a black pullover sweater. The other woman says, “I like your sweater.” “Thanks. It’s long, so it covers my ass.” “That’s what I like about it. Not that it covers your ass, but that it would cover my ass.” I’m speechless . . . The sweater isn’t covering her ass, her pants are covering her ass, and the sweater is covering the pants! It’s a total misread of the geometry of the situation! Read more →