Via Cute Overload: Read more →
July 2006
The Weaker Sex?
My son and I are eating lunch at Subway when a group of teenage girls comes in. I notice that in the process of pushing one another through the door, one of the girls has dropped a hat on the sidewalk. “Hey, girls,” I say. “One of you dropped a hat outside.” “Oh, that’s mine,” one of the girls says. “Thanks.” And she goes out to pick it up. “You see the way I saved those damsels in distress?” I say to the boy, who’s about the same age as the girls. “Try to learn something from that.” “Why?” he says. “Because you’ve got to take care of girls. They’re the weaker sex.” “Mom would kill you if she heard that.” He’s right about that. His mom is extremely volatile and always on high alert for slights, real or perceived. “I’m gonna tell her,” he says, nodding and taking a… Read more →
Why 12-Year-Olds Are Not Allowed to Drive
We’re at a stop sign on 6th St. in San Pedro, waiting to cross Pacific Ave., a busy street with multiple lanes of traffic in both directions. We’ve been waiting for an opening for quite a while when my son says, “You gotta go Tokyo Drift on these pansies.” Read more →
I Am 90 Percent Confident!
If by “90 percent confident” you mean “30 percent confident.” Key takeaway: We are conditioned to believe that estimates expressed as narrow ranges are more accurate than estimates expressed as wider ranges. We believe that wide ranges make us appear ignorant or incompetent. The opposite is usually the case. — Steve McConnell, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art Read more →
No Solicitators
My wife sells insurance products to businesses, which sometimes requires in-person “cold calls.” She stopped in to a business today and asked the woman at the desk if she might speak with the manager. “Didn’t you see the sign?” the woman asked. “No. What did it say?” “‘No Solicitators.’” Did I mention that at least one of the people in this conversation is not a native English speaker? “I’m not a solicitator,” my wife said. “I’m here to help your business.” Happy ending: She did get an appointment to speak with the manager, but she was still unhappy about one thing. “Oh my god, I can’t believe she called me a solicitator . . .” Read more →
A Modern Stone Age Family
We finally caved in and got my son a new cell phone. The one he had was a very old model where you had to pull the antenna up manually. He used to say things like, “This phone must have been invented by a primitive Stone Age family. ‘Hey, Barney! Come here and look at this new communication device I invented!’” “Actually, the Flintstones were a modern Stone Age family,” I reminded him. “Then it was invented by a normal Stone Age family. Fred Flintstone probably used it as a backup to his regular phone, which was a bird, or a rock with a hole in it.” On the plus side — and this was sort of an unintentional stroke of genius on my part — he didn’t rack up a lot of minutes on the old phone because he was ashamed to be seen with it. Read more →
Sweet Land of Liberty
What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. — Learned Hand Read more →
Why Asian Girls Like White Guys
These are from the same photo set on Flickr, taken at a local beach here in Orange County: Any questions? See Also: Why Asian Girls Like White Guys II Read more →
Shibboleths
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. — Judges 12:5-6 Thus the original meaning of the word “shibboleth”: a password that people from one side can pronounce but their enemies can’t. The word has since taken on a more general meaning as not necessarily a password, but a custom or practice that separates the good guys from the bad guys, the insiders from the outsiders. Read more →
Whatever Happened to Love?
In the old days, greed and covetousness were seen as sinful; now they are encouraged. Jack Welch’s Winning sets the tone. The author grins manically from the cover – despite the silver hair, manicured nails and perfect teeth, he looks like Beelzebub incarnate. But why is “winning” so great? Because, says Welch, it enables people to make lots of money which . . . erm . . . enables them to “get better healthcare, buy vacation homes, and secure a comfortable retirement”. That’s it. Those are the three goals of our mortal existence, otherwise known as more pills, more mortgages and more burglar alarms. Whatever happened to joy, pleasure, brotherhood? Whatever happened to enjoying life? Whatever happened to creativity? Whatever happened to love? — Tom Hodgkinson Read more →