28 Shorties Later

Yes, I know there have been more than 28 of them.

If you lined up a thousand economists they couldn’t come to a conclusion. You know it’s bad when somebody like Paul Krugman — who has never been shy about his opinions — has to say something that amounts to “Well, it’s not that simple” in regards to current trade policies.

Funny how we only care about fuel economy when gas is expensive. A Senate committee proposes raising fuel efficiency standards 10 miles per gallon in 10 years from 2011 to 2020. Meanwhile there is speculation by the British — not the American economists — that this will surely impact the economy, and even now there are Congressional hearings on gas prices. The Houston Chronicle condemns these hearings as “Gasoline prices are rising — quick, find a scapegoat!”

You have got to listen to this. When I last talked about new music and up-and-coming musicians, I somehow neglected Jonathan Coulton. Well, the New York Times thought he was worth a 6 page spread. Not only does he do pointedly funny original songs like “Shop Vac”, his covers of songs like “Baby’s Got Back” and “You Oughta Know” are marvelous.

Would you believe I’ve met that guy? No, really, he helped me get into grad school in a strange way…. Wait, everything about John Cage was strange. Anyway, BoingBoing linked to this video of him.

Backtrack from Iraq. The good news is Harry Reid is allowing a motion to cut off funds to Iraq to the Senate floor. The bad news is it would give complete funding for another year. This is exactly the sort of nonsense I feared would happen when the House was talking about “We’ll fund you but only for another few months”: a few months here, a few months there, a year gets funded; suddenly Hillary saying her first act as President (in January of 2009, she hopes) will be to bring the troops home looks optimistic.

A month can bring perspective. The nice folks over at The Moderate Voice also wonder if school culture contributes to school violence. Don’t forget to read this rebuttal from The Seeker Blog that basically says we should blame the grown-ups, most importantly the parents. As for myself, I find there are valid points in both, but we cannot leave out some share of blame for teachers and administrators: the grown-ups who theoretically control the school environment. There are times I wonder about schools that more closely resemble Lord of the Flies than Ramona Quimby’s school.

Speaking of schools and violence, a follow up. Two of the teachers involved in the mock-gunman incident have been suspended. I can only hope this is a formality pending their dismissal, rather than a slap on the wrist. Furthermore, I hope other schools do a simple web search on potential teachers and notice that Quentin Mastin and Don Bartch were both suspended for incredibly poor judgement. Oh, and the Gun Guys have some things to say about the incident too.

The problem is… well, that there’s more than one problem. Ezra Klein brings us a chart and commentary on Social Security.

Speaking of Social Security, here’s a bad idea. Wired tells us there is a proposal to put biometric “proof” of our identity on Social Security cards, and require employers to exclusively use them for verification of employment eligibility. This would of course mean that every employer would have to buy expensive biometric readers and computer equipment to make it run. The proponent of this measure says don’t be silly, you could use the one at the post office (yeah right). I’ll tell you how employers will get around this: suddenly everybody will be a contractor, with all the problems that go with being a contractor. And of course there is the problem that this isn’t just a de-facto national ID card, it is absolutely a national ID card with all the attendant civil liberties and identity theft issues that entails. There is one more thing in this article that bears further scrutiny: “Currently, U.S. employers can accept a range of documents, including expired U.S. passports, tribal documents, refugee documents, birth certificates, driver’s licenses and even school report cards, to establish an employee’s eligibility for work.” Compare that to the official instructions on the I-9 form. You’ll find the official list of documents on the last page; it is not legal for an employer to specify which documents must be used, only that it be “one item from column A or one item each from columns B and C”. Column A verifies both citizenship status and right to legally work in this country; it includes things like passports and green cards. This proposal implies that these documents can be forged. Column B is documents that verify identity, and it is also where Wired gets their scare statement that just having a report card is enough to prove you can work in this country…. except that’s not true. If someone is under 18 they can use a report card as an ID document, but they still have to present an item from column C, proof you can actualy work in this country. Way to fear-monger there, Wired.

And finally, Don’t you people have something important to worry about?? Seriously, I am not understanding the problem with the Mary Jane figure. Oh no! She’s fully clothed! And she’s doing laundry! His laundry! Oh the horror!! Because heaven knows she’s only doing laundry because it’s a stereotypically slavishly woman thing to do. Did these people get this upset over the various Catwoman costumes over the years and I just missed it? Did they not come to the conclusion of every teenaged boy that Superman has x-ray vision and can therefore see Lois Lane’s underwear any time he pleases? You know, if Mary Jane were, say, handcuffed to the bucket or wearing fetish gear of some sort, I’d say these people had a point. But lacking that? It’s a figurine; it’s for sale; if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. If you need some real issues of actual importance to most women to get worked up about? NOW has a nice list, you might also look at Finally Feminism 101’s FAQ or Feminist.com I mean really people: aren’t spousal abuse, equal pay, legal discrimination against mothers, Darfur, sexual assault against female members of our armed forces, school shooters who specifically target girls, and access to contraceptives more important than some cheezy little statue? Sheesh!

Who thought this one up?

No, seriously! Who thought this was a good idea? And how did the kind of person who thought this was a good idea get a job teaching children?

“Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience….” The report goes on to say “Some parents said they were upset by the staff’s poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech….” Truth be told, it was poor judgement in any event at any time!

What were the staff members trying to teach in this “learning experience”? How to whimper in fear? How to hide? Or maybe that one man with a gun can terrify over 60 students, who will offer no resistance to attack but will instead hide. Yeah, there’s a lesson we want them taking away from this incident, sure. They have shattered the trust of these students, and given the one kid who is maybe a little prone to violence anyway a very scary data point.

Even the Principal said this “involved poor judgment.” But she wouldn’t even say whether there would be disciplinary action taken against them. More importantly, she didn’t go the extra logical step, that people with “poor judgement” should not be teachers. Maybe she’s just planning to not renew their contracts — and seeing as it’s mid-May I can understand — but keeping people with “poor judgement” in a situation where they are in charge of students that they have personally terrified seems like a liability nightmare to me.

Follow up: from The Moderate Voice.

To wrap things up: myths about divorce include that very popular “half of all marriages end in divorce anyways” line; another item on the Fort Dix Six and media coverage thereof; a nice graph of worldwide obesity by nation courtesy of the Korea Times; and the Padilla trial (finally) begins.

A Random Solution

This morning, I am inspired by this item on random drug testing of students. The original printing is here, and an article with source material is here. Additionally, there’s some scary propaganda here about how marijuana is (supposedly) getting more potent each year, with recent THC levels of 8.5%, “double” what it was in the 1980s. The funny thing about that is that when I was in school in the 80s, they used the same line to discourage us from using pot, telling us things like “This isn’t the relatively harmless pot your parents smoked in the 60s! It’s twice 5 times as potent, with THC levels sometimes as high as 15%!” I recall thinking at the time “Well, if it were legal, the FDA or ATF could regulate that and put a THC percentage right on the label, just like a proof label on alcohol.”

But I digress.

Dr. Rosenbaum’s commentary is remarkably comprehensive, and worth reading. She feels it is not sound policy because there is no evidence that it reduces drug use, it is expensive, and it is an “invasive medical procedure” which should be strictly a matter between the student/patient, his/her parents, and their physician. She says “physician” too, not Physicians Assistant and not Nurse Practitioner. She does not address issues of privacy or civil liberties or Constitutional rights, and interestingly enough the ACLU’s drug testing fact sheet barely touches upon these issues. It is worth looking at some of their links, such as Drug Testing Fails. It is also worth reading an earlier version of Dr. Rosenbaum’s logic.

Please allow me to list some of the reasons that I feel drug testing of high school students is a bad idea. I think you will find my list focuses on pragmatic issues:

Just say no still doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Prohibition. It didn’t work when Nancy Reagan told us. It doesn’t work with abstinence education. It. Still. Doesn’t. Work. If the laundry list of bad things that can happen to you if you do illegal drugs isn’t enough to make you decide not to do them, the threat of a test is not going to do it either.

Where is the money to run drug tests coming from? In an environment where many schools are strapped for cash, putting off essential maintenance, forgoing soap in the bathrooms (isn’t that a great message about the importance of personal hygiene?), having students share textbooks, crowding too many kids into too few classrooms, whining about the expense of testing and other requirements of No Child Left Behind, how dare school administrators waste money on this nonsense!

It’s a logistical nightmare. Where are you going to run these tests? How will you randomly choose the students? How will you get the students to the test area, make an announcement over the loudspeaker that the following 20 kids need to report — and interrupting the lesson and train of thought of every other student and teacher in the whole building? Who will be supervising these tests, and how do we know he/she is not a closet pervert who enjoys watching young people pee, and shouldn’t that person be teaching a class somewhere anyway? Shouldn’t the kids be off learning something?

It’s dehumanizing. The “old version” of Dr. Rosenbaum’s commentary sums it up nicely. You want an adolescent (who has probably been told scare stories about pedophiles) to pee in a cup in front of a teacher? Assuming the young person does not “die of embarassment” on the spot, how is that young person ever going to have the guts to adequately participate in a class and advocate for his/her own education in front of that teacher? And that assumes there is not some additional embarassing factor, such as being on one’s period or having unusual genitals, or trying to hide bruises from abuse, or simply being on some sort of medication that is none of the school’s damn business. Shut up and pee in the cup. This sends two messages: don’t trust authority figures; you are a number, so submit to authority and do whatever you are told. Neither message is good for society as a whole.

It violates those pesky Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Read them here. Every citizen — even kids — have the right to be “secure in their persons.” Furthermore, they cannot be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which is exactly what these tests do. This isn’t anything like a locker search, because the locker is school property and the student is not. Although the courts found that people in extracurricular activities had a lower expectation of privacy, the fact remains that the purpose of drug testing is to find evidence of the crime of using illegal drugs. They say these tests are to discourage crime, but the actual usage is to find kids to punish: you’re off the team, you’re out of the club, you’re suspended, you’re expelled, the police are on their way, you are being sent to a rehab program (“for your own good” of course).

They’re innacurate. Ok, they may be slightly more accurate than the tests used to “prove” someone was a witch in the Olde Days. They can still be thrown off by legitimate medications (including Ibuprophen), accidental exposure, human error, or just plain being wrong. Ate a poppy seed bagel at breakfast? Live in an apartment next door to people who smoke pot? Took something for that headache you woke up with this morning? Congratulations, you might test positive through no fault of your own. It amazes me that somehow people can sell a test this bad. If a kid turned in a paper with this many errors, he would earn a failing grade.

Finally, it doesn’t address the problem. People who abuse illegal drugs need help, not anxiety and punishment. But as the old saying goes, they have to want help. If we were talking about getting a warrant to for a licensed doctor to administer a drug test to a student suspected of having a drug problem, I could support that. But we aren’t. We’re talking about throwing a blanket on the problem and hoping the actual kids with problems will be a visible lump.

Follow up on the Fort Dix plot: NYT roundup; actual FBI documents; IHT calls it “Dangerous and Clumsy”; as always, an insightful item from the Christian Science Monitor notable for this quote,

“But for many security experts, the men’s motivation is what serves as the starkest warning. “The animosity felt toward the United States isn’t something just outside our borders,” says Bruce Hoffman, a professor of securities studies at Georgetown University in Washington. “There are obviously people inside this country who have the same hostility and are prepared to use violence.”

And in closing, Mr. Dobbs is a little late to Blog Against Theocracy Weekend; Harry Reid comes dangerously close to accusing oil companies of collusion, and Harry knows a racket when he sees one; and differing opinions on the proposal to only fund Iraq for a few months at a time. I am concerned that this will start a trend of a new special finance bill every couple of months. And as for this quote from Mr. Blunt: “If we enact this bill today, you put the insurgents and extremists on an 83 day time clock … see how many young Americans you can kill in 83 days.” Fine. Let’s pass a bill to start bringing them home today. I know most Governors would support that.

A Plot Maxwell Smart Would Love

An army of radical Islamic militants was planning an attack on an American Army base, and the startling part is that this base wasn’t in Iraq, or anywhere else in the Middle East, but in New Jersey! New Jersey, USA! Would you believe it??

“I find that very difficult to believe, Mr. Smart.”

Would you believe… 6 guys with paintball guns were “in training” to attack Fort Dix, and were found because “the men took a videotape of their practice sessions to a store to have it burned to a DVD, and that a store employee contacted the FBI because of the video’s contents” so the cops set up a fake weapons purchase with the guys?

Now, there are a lot of things I could point out. I could say that the least the FBI could do is make up a more convincing story, but I realize that truth is often stranger than fiction. I could point out the futility of 6 guys taking on a military training facility and suggest that they needed to play more video games to disabuse themselves of the notion. I could point out that these fellows did not attempt to get weapons through legal means, such as a legit dealer or a gun show, and thus the case represents the futility of many gun control laws. I could point out that referring to them as “Islamic militants” is causing concern in the larger Muslim-American community, because it whips up ill sentiment against a people who by and large are trying to follow the law and be good citizens. I could even point out that this plot didn’t warrant a rise in the Terror Threat Level — funny how we haven’t heard much about that since the 2004 elections.

Instead I would like to point out that some of these men are — that’s right, are, not were — Naturalized Citizens of the United States of America. That means that Real ID would not have stopped them; they had every reason and right to have completely legit identification. This is the LAST DAY to complain to the Feds directly about this stinker, but you can still do things at the state level.

The rest of the men were illegal aliens. So, if the United States had actually started checking the Interpol database of stolen passports earlier than “later this year”, they might never have gotten here in the first place.

In closing: did anybody else notice that the glycerin that was really anti-freeze came from the same country as the wheat gluten that was really melamine?; maybe the American economy is ok, but it’s anemic compared to some other places; risky mortgages are such a huge problem that one in every 21 houses in Detroit is in foreclosure, a statistic made more alarming by the number of abandoned homes in that city; “Won’t somebody please think of the children??” “Among military personnel with at least one dependent, the rate of child maltreatment in military families increased by approximately 30% for each 1% increase in the percentage of active-duty personnel departing to or returning from operation-related deployment” according to a new study, so lets help the kids and bring home the troops; and finally, this wouldn’t have happened in the States because we have the Third Amendment. I guess rights are only for certain special people.

Follow-up Friday is running a little late….

This New York Times commentary points out that Gonzales can (and should) be impeached. In fact, just lying to Congress is an impeachable offense, which makes me wonder about the Sixteen Words.

A Senate committee wants to pass a law imposing penalties for data breaches. How ironic, since the TSA just had a data breach. I wonder if this law will apply to them?

It turns out that the talks Ms. Rice was supposed to have with the Iranians wasn’t actually planned after all: “There was no time, no appointment and no plans.” That’s ok, she has problems to deal with at home.

Clearly it’s all about women? The Other Clinton wants to revoke the President’s authority to bomb the heck out of the Middle East. Pelosi says he just doesn’t listen. Laura is making him wear a white tie, but that’s something else altogether. And would you believe that someone went to the trouble of building a girls’ school as a giant bomb without anybody noticing? “Hey Abdul, what’s with the funny looking rebar?” “Shut up and mix the concrete, Mohammed!”

And in closing, The shoe’s on the other foot now: actual Clinton-era quotes from Republicans.

We must be missing something

On Iraq:

This should be really simple. Most Iraqis want our troops to go home. Most Americans want American troops to come home. Even members of the President’s party want to stop writing blank checks and figure out how to make things end. So why does the President think we ought to stay for the forseeable future?

And as thinly stretched as the military is right now, why are we still trying to pick a fight with Iran, doing things like saying it is the Number One Sponsor of Terror just days before our top diplomat (Condi) and theirs were supposed to meet?

On Real ID:

For that matter, I don’t know anybody who just loves to spend the day in a line at the Department of Motor Vehicles with every important document needed to steal his/her identity. And yet that’s what the DHS wants to force upon us, despite the fact that the law creating the DHS specifically says No National ID Cards. Interesting points that I hadn’t even considered before are the mess Real ID makes for people fleeing domestic abuse and people who are transgendered. I must assume that if someone is in the witness protection program, the Feds will help them get legit fake IDs.

Don’t forget that Real ID is also the law that allows the government to build a huge wall along the border with no regard for pretty much anything. Like the environment. Or the fact that nobody wants it. On a related note the Christian Science Monitor points out that illegal immigration is already down, but not because of walls or better patrols. It’s down because the economy sucks for the poor.

On the price of gas:

According to the AAA, we might see record gas prices this summer, despite the fact that crude oil is not at record prices. “Problems” at refineries are blamed. The money quote:

AAA said it was “alarming” that gasoline prices were rising so high without the backdrop of a major geopolitical or natural event to disrupt supply, like a hurricane or a new military flare-up in the Middle East.

Alarming indeed. You don’t suppose the big gas companies are anticipating an event like a “military flare-up in the Middle East”, do you? And here we have news of a refinery cutting its capacity in half. Here we have a CNN story about the refinery problem. It seems to me that the government could make a bit of money and save a lot of consumers’ money by opening a refinery or two of their own.

As confusing as these issues are, maybe it’s time for a nap.

In closing:

“Oh no! You mean Fried Chicken might contain fat??“; lots of money to be made buying public assets, and then fleecing the public to use them; “Um yeah, we’ve decided not to follow the wiretap law anymore, we don’t need no steenking FISA court”; the typical Mom does 10 jobs for free that would cost $138K to have done, and I’m sure that doesn’t include that special job she does just for Dad; for the Japanophiles, LA Times article on journalism in the Internment Camps and links to this collection; and finally, “I can make purr?” — a classic episode of Star Trek in a dialect called “Lolcat”.

Shorty’s Labyrinth

You can’t save energy! What will the neighbors think?? How homeowner’s associations are bad for the environment. The good news is that states and the feds can pass laws pre-empting neighborhood rules. In fact the feds did just that in 1996 over an issue of clearly overiding national interest, satellite dishes.

Um yeah, maybe we ought to refinance those before they all default and leave us holding the bag. That’s what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and WaMu (funny seeing them here) and the Mortgage Bankers Association are saying. I guess there’s somebody around old enough to remember the 1980s and the fallout from the Savings and Loan problems. It was years before they got all the property sold.

The Little Government Agency That Could. Be on the lookout for news in the coming weeks from the Office of Special Counsel investigations. It sounds like they are making a go at connecting the dots between Rove, Gonzales, the RNC, and just about every other rotten thing on the Potomac.

Waaah! The Lawyers are getting in the way! The government wants to limit attorney access to “unlawful combatants.” If they can actually make a judge see things their way, what exactly is stopping them from limiting Joe Average from seeing his lawyer if he is accused of a serious crime? All they have to do is say his lawyer is disruptive and poses a “security risk” the way I see it. Talk about a situation where I would be delighted to be proven wrong!

Boy, I wish I was average. Because apparently the average American has 25 electronic gadgets (guilty) and spends $1200 per year on more electronic gadgets.

All or Nothing. President Bush is really going to town on this illegal immigration thing. Yesterday’s radio address included bits like “We need a system where our laws are respected. We need a system that meets the legitimate needs of our economy. And we need a system that treats people with dignity and helps newcomers assimilate into our society… We must address all elements of this problem together, or none of them will be solved at all.” Today he told a graduation assembly that “the immigration system is deeply broken: Employers are not held accountable enough; borders are not secure enough; businesses need workers willing to do low-paying jobs; and the 12 million people estimated to be in the U.S. illegally cannot all be deported and so must be dealt with ‘without amnesty and without animosity.'” He then added “We must address all elements of this problem together — or none of them will be solved at all.” He really does have a black-or-white good-or-evil this-or-that way of looking at the world, doesn’t he? Hey, when you have a perfectly good meme going, stick with it. Good luck coming up with a bill that does all that without eroding the American workforce. Last I heard, the way to find workers willing to do low-paying jobs was to pay them more.

It turns out there’s some disagreement about the “timetable” for getting out of Iraq. Oh, I wasn’t talking about in Congress! I was talking about among the Iraqis! Now, interesting quote in this story from Presidential hopeful The Other Clinton,

“The first thing I will do upon taking office is to end the war in Iraq,” Clinton said.

So, for those of you playing at home, Mrs. Clinton thinks we will still have substantial troops in Iraq in January of 2009. And — follow me on this — that means she thinks both current efforts and any future effort before 2009 to end the war are Doomed. Now that’s what I call setting a timetable to surrender.

More American Terrorists. Except we aren’t calling them Terrorists, we are calling them Militia. Jill over at Brilliant At Breakfast sums it up nicely when she says “I guess you have to be dark-skinned, Muslim, and Really Really Scary-Looking to qualify as a terrorist in the eyes of this bunch.”

Food for Thought. The Baltimore Sun tells us that we import a lot more food than we used to and do proportionately less testing of it than we used to. The Indy Star outlines some of the reasons why.

And Finally…

Fist Full of Dollars. Now Katrina victims are being asked to buy (or at least pay rent on) their FEMA trailers. Let’s overlook for a few minutes that these people’s homes were destroyed over a year and a half ago and they are still living in trailers, despite the fact that it underlines how absolutely abysmal progress has been in rebuilding the area. Instead let me point out this section:

The hurricanes destroyed more than 200,000 homes, according to government estimates, including many apartments that have yet to be rebuilt. Louisiana recently announced that it had awarded $202 million in federal funds to help small landlords restore more than 5,200 rental units. With many fewer apartments available, rents along the Gulf Coast have soared, leaving many former residents of New Orleans unable to afford to return home.

Funny thing, when you try to replace 200,000 homes with 5200 apartments, scarcity results.

Why WAMU will no longer be my bank

The events I will describe are true. If WAMU would like to comment on this entry, their representative should contact me. Once I have verified the origin of such comments and the authority of the representative to send such comments to my satisfaction, I will gladly post their reply in an update to this post.

I have been a customer of Washington Mutual Bank for about 5 years now. I have had business and personal accounts; I have had accounts in two states. The nice people at the Harbour Pointe Banking Center have been very helpful, in particular a young man named Kyle.

However, since I have moved back to Nevada, it is a good idea to change my banking accounts to Nevada accounts. We have been through this before, and do not want to hear things like “I’m sorry, there’s a 5 day hold on your paycheck because it’s from out of state” or “I’m sorry, I can’t process a cashier’s check in that amount because you have an out of state account.” Problems like this are why we changed from
Bank of America 5 years ago. Well, that and charging me $0.25 to talk to customer service “too many” times and clear up a problem caused by their error.

So this morning I assembled all the various documents I would need to open a new checking account at the WAMU branch just 5 minutes away. To my delight, they were actually open a few minutes before their stated opening time of 9 AM. Within moments we were talking to a customer service representative, one of those folks we used to call a “bank teller”.

This representative told us that no, there was no need to open a new account. Not only would there be no problem continuing to bank using our old account, there would be no problems with checks and so forth (not even with the pizza guy? I think not!), but opening a new account would in essence be starting “a new banking relationship” and they would have to treat us as a brand new (implying “untrustworthy”) customer. We were furthermore told that the only services she could not do for us right there on the spot was address changes and ordering checks.

Ok, now remember that after a cross country move, two things I desperately need are to change my address with the bank, and get checks that reflect that address.

To do those things, all I need is to make a “quick call to customer service.”

I’ve had the occasion to talk to customer service over the years, and “quick” is never a word I would use to describe the experience.

But nevertheless, I went home and poured a cup of coffee and grabbed the telephone. It was now about 9:15 AM. After navigating an arcane voice-routing system, punching in my account number, giving it a phone password I didn’t even know I had, it insisted on giving me my balances before offering me any opportunity to speak with a human. Hint: just because a particular kind of information is commonly needed doesn’t mean everybody needs it every call before dealing with every problem.

I finally got to talk to a human. As nearly as I can tell, this human was Charlie Brown’s teacher. If calls really are recorded, some supervisor will hear me say multiple times “I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you are saying.” All I could hear was a woman’s voice and lots of background noise. It was as if she’d called in from one of those trendy restaurants that are way too loud so patrons will eat and leave right away. I finally told her that something was clearly wrong and I would call again.

I hung up and called again. Again the punch this number and that and listening to my balance which has not changed in the last 5 minutes and don’t I want my 5 most recent transactions…. At least these calls are toll free. For me anyway; who knows what this costs them every phone call.

Human Two was at least understandable. I explained that I needed two things today, and the first thing was to change my address. She told me that was fine, but it would take 30 days for the address change to go into effect, and in the meantime I would not be able to do things like order checks.

Um, that’s the second thing I needed to do.

She replied: Oh, If I need this done right away I could do it at my branch bank (where they just told me I need to call customer service).

She continues: Or I could do it instantly online, and then call her back to order checks.

So let me get this straight, if I change my address with customer service it takes 30 days, but if I do it instantly online then I have to order checks from customer service?

She replies: No, you can order checks online too.

Ok fine thanks for your [lack of] help I’ll go do that now. Click.

But wait! There’s a punchline!

By now it was past 9:30, not quite 9:45. I calmly walked over to my computer and logged into my online account. After a minute or so, I found the “change address” option buried in the “change personal information” section. I punched in my information and clicked the box marked “NEXT”.

A moment later, my computer screen informed me that this service was not available at this time, and that I should call customer service.

That’s when I screamed in frustration.

I spent the rest of my morning shopping for a new bank. I’m going with one that has competitve products/rates, and posts the phone numbers of individual branches on their website. When I called, the phone was picked up on the second ring by a human. No voicemail tree, no requests for my account number (which I don’t have yet), no press-this-to-get-that. Within 30 seconds I was talking to a New Accounts Specialist who told me all about the features of the various accounts they offered, asking helpful questions to eliminate products that would not suit my needs. She told me about branch locations, and pointed out that as a full service bank they had additional offerings such as investments and mortgages. WAMU could learn a lot from Colonial Bank.

In closing: It’s ok for a General to say Iraq must live with “sensational” attacks, but it wasn’t ok for John Kerry to talk about reducing terrorism to “nuisance” levels, go figure; The FDA knew about food that could kill us and did nothing; eventually I will get around to my own thoughts on the 9th Amendment; welcome back to the ’50s, a radio station is ditching traditional commercial spots in favor of sponsored hours of programming; fossil filter, fossilized rain forest and mystery fossil turns out to be a giant fungus; bad legislation on the horizon, “Let’s sum up. If the Spy Act become law, hardware, software, and network vendors will be granted carte blanche to use spyware themselves to police their customers’ use of their products and services. Incredibly broad exceptions will probably allow even the worst of the adware outfits to operate with legal cover. State attempts to deal with the spyware problem will be pre-empted and enforcement left up almost entirely to the FTC”; here’s a list of 50 places where you will probably never eat; must read item, 10 steps to fascism; clever wording, Muslims show only partial support for Al Queda rather than no support at all; I hate to agree with rightwingnews.com, but he’s right…. er, correct; someone who may have figured out why free trade isn’t a panacea; turnabout, a religious group says that if they want God in their personal reproductive issues, they will ask Him!; if you ever thought that what you got at the end of the fast food line didn’t look like what you wanted, you need fast food ads vs reality; a must bookmark item, how to reach a human in a voicemail maze and finally, How to Prepare for an Alien Invasion.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

I hope I’m not late to comment on the terrible events that transpired at Virginia Tech this week. I first learned of the situation in a La Quinta over breakfast, and have been digesting ever since.

Let me begin by saying that I have not lost my faith in the Second Amendment. While it is true that it would have been more difficult for this clearly troubled young man to kill that many people without guns, it is also true that the law already should have prevented him from having guns. Funny how gun control laws work on the faulty premise that people with criminal intent will surely follow the law. It is also true that in the absence of guns, he could easily have killed many, many people with a homemade bomb. Blaming guns for one man’s insanity is itself insanity.

It is also worth pointing out that a few dozen innocent people killed in a day is not unusual in Iraq. Today, for example, “Men in the northern city of Mosul shot and killed 23 people from a minority sect Sunday after pulling them off a bus in an apparent revenge attack, the police said. The attack came on a violent day in Baghdad, with at least 20 people killed in car bombings, most in a double suicide strike against a police station in a religiously mixed neighborhood.” Look how much safer the Americans have made things, eh? Ted Rall points out how good we have it: “Only 32? Living in such safety must be sweet!”

Nor is it reasonable to blame liberals, violent video games, violent popular music, or overprescribed psychiatric drugs. Those 32 people might be alive today if the shooter had actually taken psychiatric drugs! Gavin DeBecker’s insight that sane people do not resort to violence except under certain circumstances does not apply, because this man was not sane.

I would also like to dispute the idea that this sort of thing is new. Maybe we have better news coverage, but school shootings are nothing new. And the same thing causes them now as caused them over 20 years ago.

By sheer coincidence, we have this item on the trial of one of last year’s crop of school shooters. Glossing over the fact that the young man says he “freaked out” when the Principal “tackled” him (surely he was already out of control, or why would anybody feel “tackling” him was an appropriate response), I would like to bring your attention to this:

Hainstock told detectives he was upset with school officials because they didn’t stop other students in this southwestern Wisconsin town from picking on him and calling him names. Going to school with guns occurred to him just that morning, he said, and he just wanted officials to listen to him.

He wanted to be left alone, and he wanted the authority figures to listen to him. Isn’t that what most of us want? Really?

We can tie all these threads together with this rather lengthy item called “Virginia Tech: Is the Scene of the Crime the Cause of the Crime?” The Reader’s Digest condensed version is “Schoolyard massacres are rebellions against oppressive and bullying environments by students who can’t take it anymore.” Truer words were never written, and they apply even to students who are insane. The author goes on to observe that school shooters don’t fit a profile, but strangely enough the schools where such things take place do (from page 5):

  • complaints about bullying go unpunished by an administration that supports the cruel social structure;
  • antiseptic corridors and overhead fluorescent lights reminiscent of mid-sized city airport;
  • rampant moral hypocrisy that promotes the most two-faced, mean, and shallow students to the top of the pecking order; and
  • maximally stressed parents who push their kids to achieve higher and higher scores.

To put things in another context, we cannot control other human beings, but we can control the environment in which they interact. When the same thing happens in the same sort of place over and over again, we must seriously begin to examine the environment in which the problem exists.

In closing: Go, Speed Racer, Go!; a couple items on terror watchlists; climate change may make the world less politically stable, and storms are already adversely effecting the American economy; another state decides they don’t want to pay to implement Real ID, it’s a shame it comes down to nothing more than a money issue, but it’s better than rolling over; I guess the Sears Tower just isn’t tall enough any more; an interesting if somewhat rant-prone commentary called “For Millions of Americans, Being Insured is a Cruel Hoax; Alternet brings us Conservative Policies Are Ruining Your Health; someone helpfully opines that the SEC is unlikely to indict Steve Jobs, so all you Macheads can continue to enjoy your Kool-Aid; profound quote of the week, “It’s strange to us, so we don’t like it.”; and last but not least, the latest on Gonzales. I am proud to say I was one of the first to call for the Senate to demand Gonzales’s resignation, and I stand by that not because of these firings, but because he has no respect for the Constitution and the Law.

If anyone cares, we have arrived in Las Vegas and are getting unpacked. I will change my “about” page to reflect reality soon. Closing on this house was more of a grand adventure than I would have liked, and I am exploring my legal options.

Musings from the Road

Greetings from Nephi, UT, where I am connected via my cellular phone despite the fact that the Super 8 advertises “wireless high-speed internet.”

The cat says hello too.

First, a few observations: the Element holds an amazing amount of stuff but it is still finite; Washington roads kind of suck; and “conditioning shampoo” is an oxymoron as shampoo is designed to get stuff off of hair and the conditioner is designed to leave something on hair; last night we were in a town with a clearly growing local economy, yet there was still room next door to the K-Mart that was across the street from a Wal-Mart for a “$1 only” shop.

Tomorrow we should arrive in Fabulous Las Vegas.

There are two issues I would like to bring to your attention today. First, on the very same day that a White House spokesperson admited that as many as 5 million emails were “accidentally” lost — some of the very same emails that were not in the White House system to avoid scrutiny (and subpoena) — President Bush asked Congress to greatly expand domestic eavesdropping rules that have been in place since the Carter Administration. Because we can totally trust him, right?

Right?

Meanwhile, on the other coast, Google is buying internet advertiser DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion (that’s $3.1 Thousand Million). CNN says the “great irony” of this deal is that “Google is the 800-pound gorilla in online advertising.” No, the great irony of this deal is that Google’s official corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” and DoubleClick’s invasive web advertising is about as evil as you can get without actually writing a virus. This deal is fundamentally incompatible with Google’s professed worldview.

Unless of course their motto is a command to others rather than a guideline for themselves.