- Party host is serving 7&7s. I drink two. Nothing. "Make the next one a double." Nothing. Worst drink ever. #
- @penelopetrunk oh that is not true. see http://kicklikeagirlmovie.com in reply to penelopetrunk #
Buying Dog Food
At Trader Joe’s, buying a bag of Holistic Natural Canine Formula, whatever that is. The dog seems to like it.
The checker asks me, “Do you want a bag for the cat food?”
I say, “Yes, but it’s actually dog food.”
“Oh sorry,” he says. “I saw ‘canine’ and I guess I thought ‘feline.'”
“There’s a picture of a dog right on the bag,” I say.
Profiling??? PRO-filing?!??!
It took less than a day for the arrest of Henry Louis Gates to become racial lore. When one of America’s most prominent black intellectuals winds up in handcuffs, it’s not just another episode of profiling — it’s a signpost on the nation’s bumpy road to equality.
If this man can be taken away by police officers from the porch of his own home, what does it say about the treatment that average blacks can expect in 2009?
[In Jim Mora voice]: Profiling??? You kidding me? PRO-filing?!??!
“Profiling” implies an absence of facts or evidence. It means “I’m targeting you for suspicion simply because you’re black and therefore more likely to be engaged in criminal activity.”
That’s not what happened here.
A police officer responded to a 911 call reporting two black males breaking into a house. When he arrived, he found a black man in the house. You don’t have to be Dick Tracy to identify the man as a potential suspect.
The 58-year-old professor had returned from a trip to China last Thursday afternoon and found the front door of his Cambridge, Mass., home stuck shut. Gates entered the back door, forced open the front door with help from a car service driver, and was on the phone with the Harvard leasing company when a white police sergeant arrived.
Gates and the sergeant gave differing accounts of what happened next.
No they didn’t. Gates was uncooperative and he was arrested. Everyone agrees on that.
But for many people, that doesn’t matter. All they see is pure, naked racial profiling.
“Many people”? How many? And why wouldn’t it matter? Because a white cop can’t be trusted? I’m seeing racial profiling here, but not on the part of the cops.
Here’s Gates on his porch in a photo taken by one of his neighbors. He’s yelling something at a black officer, who’s ignoring him, while two white officers trying to calm him down.
What’s your badge number? You don’t know who you’re messing with! I’ll make a documentary about this!
I know lots of people who’ve had unpleasant run-ins with cops over the years, including arrests and beatings, but not because they’re black. In fact, all of them are white. The common denominator is that, like Gates, they all have attitude problems.
Cops have to deal with the situations that nobody else wants to deal with. They’re the agency of last resort. I’ve only called in the police twice in my life — once when the guy next door was shooting off a rifle in his driveway in the middle of the night, and once when a person went berserk in my home. Everything else I felt like I could handle myself.
I’ll tell you right now, if your neighbor is shooting off a rifle or someone’s going nuts at your house, don’t call me because I’m not coming over. Call the police.
I have no problem being deferential to cops. It makes sense to me that when your job is dealing with volatile, high-risk situations, you want to establish control and you don’t want to put up with a lot of nonsense.
I wonder how Gates would handle a similar situation. Probably the exact same way. Let’s say he’s teaching a class and one of the students is a disruptive wiseass. How long is he going to put up with that — the whole semester? My guess is he’s going to shut it down pretty quickly. Nobody likes a wiseass interfering with his ability to do his job.
President Obama weighs in: “I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry.”
Really? Why? I wouldn’t be angry. I’d be glad that someone was willing to stop by and investigate a report that someone was breaking into my house.
And when they got there and found someone in the house, I’d like them to check that person out thoroughly, even if it turns out to be me.
“It’s okay, officer,” I’d say. “It’s my house.” Of course, an intruder might say the same thing. What’s the cop supposed to do? Turn around and go back to the station? It’s all right, the guy said it was his house. No — get the guy out of the house and figure out who he is, even if it’s me.
Twitter: 2009-07-23
- RT @KathySierra: Don't learn PPT/Keynote, learn how the brain works. Learn storytelling. Study filmmaking. Apply learning theory. Inspire. #
- RT @OCWeekly: A very special OC Weekly farewell to Gidget the Taco Bell chihuahua http://tinyurl.com/n6k4mq #
- Thank God it's Friday! Wait — what? #
A Different Person
Our son’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins . . .
I’m talking to people at LAX in a fake Australian accent. My Australian accent is not all that tight except on words with a long “a” sound, which I replace with a long “i” sound, e.g., “mate” becomes “mite.”
“Sorry, mite,” I say, as I roll a suitcase over a gentleman’s foot.
“Did you just say what I thought you said?” my son asks.
“When you travel,” I explain, “you can be a whole different person.”
We take the bags over to the baggage scanner. I know we don’t have to wait for them but since “wait” has a long “a” sound, I ask the woman, “Do I ‘ave to white?”
“No,” she says.
“Jus’ drope i’ oaf then?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
International Cuisine
We’re dropping our 15-year-old son off at LAX. He’s flying to Australia for a couple weeks to visit his cousins.
He’s explaining his theory of international cuisine, which is that there’s not going to be any Mexican food in Australia because there are no Mexicans in Australia. On the other hand, they probably have New Zealand food that those of us in the States have never heard about.
“That’s why it’s important to travel,” I say, “so you can learn about things like that. Or you could just stay home and watch the Travel Channel.”
California Fiscal Crisis
The median wage of a California state employee is $66,000 (source). The median wage among all Californians (including those state workers) is just over $36,000. The state employee can retire with a full pension in his or her late 40s or early 50s, which essentially means that the taxpayers have to pay for double the number of state workers that are required to provide current services. In addition to salaries that are much higher than private sector equivalents, the state employee has health care and other benefits that by themselves may exceed the total compensation of a full-time private sector employee. The reasonable question to ask is not “How did they run out of cash?” but “How was this ever supposed to work?”
Twitter: 2009-07-21
- We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. — Isaac Newton #
Roller Babies
Low-End Wealth
Flying back to California from the east coast, I sat next to one of about 60 kids coming back from a three-week tour of Europe to celebrate their graduation from an Orange County high school.
“You guys must be rich,” I said to her, “traveling around Europe for three weeks.”
“We’re on the low end of wealthy,” she said. She put her hand out in front of her, palm down — not too high — to indicate her standing on the wealth ladder.
Good Advice
Twitter: 2009-07-20
- RT @RonJeffries: I can waste time in so many ways. How can I monetize this skill? #
- You don't hear a lot of FORTRAN jokes from cats – RT @sockington: 10 MEOW 20 GOTO 10 #
- Showed this video at an IT team meeting this afternoon. Good discussion on teamwork ensued. http://bit.ly/EAA0 #kicklikeagirl #
Urgent vs. Important
From the Lean Enterprise Institute:
- Are we all clear on what is really important for our organization in order to solve customer problems and succeed in the long term? (Or, stated another way, can we get past the merely urgent?)
- Are we agreed on what big problems we need to solve as a team?
- Are we sure what obstacles are in our way and their root causes?
- Have we — or will we now — assign responsibility for determining the best countermeasures and removing the obstacles?
- Critically important, do we have a way of surfacing and resolving all of the cross-function, cross-department conflicts that stand in the way of resolving all major problems in any multi-functional organization including ours?
How Does a Mountain Lion Get Hold of a Chain Saw?
Man fights mountain lion with chain saw
Estimation
Twitter: 2009-07-19
- Something I didn't know: Leave Sydney at 10 a.m., arrive at LAX at 6 a.m. — on the same day! It's like going back in time! #
To Fly is the Opposite of Traveling
To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in any place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.
Painting the Kitchen
Three years ago, my wife had the kitchen painted a light green. I just got home from a week in Toronto to find it returned to the original color.
“Why would we pay to have the kitchen painted green,” I ask, “and then pay again to have it painted back to the original color?”
“I don’t like green anymore,” she says.
Fat Guys on Planes
Make them pay for two seats. If they’re in a middle seat, make them pay for three seats.
Then let other passengers have those seats for free if they want them, keeping in mind that the fat guy is going to spill over into your seat, invading your personal space, pinning you in awkward positions and stabbing you with his bristling arm hair.
He may even listen to music on his iPod and do a little fat man dance in his — and your — seat, wobbling around like fat hairy jello.
But you’re flying for free! You still want it?
Going Back in Time
Here’s something I didn’t know: If you fly straight from Sydney to Los Angeles, you arrive before you left!
I’m looking at an itinerary here . . . leaving Sydney at 10 a.m., arriving at LAX at 6 a.m. — on the same day! It’s like going back in time!