Flying wonders down under

As though commercial flight wasn’t harrowing enough, two antipodean airlines are pushing the envelope: Qantas features John Travolta dressed as a pilot to bookend their safety announcement video.

And Air New Zealand has tarted up their video with Richard Simmons in sequins.

Travolta seems superfluous; Simmons is just plain OTT. (And, BTW—watch the ANZ video all the way to the end.)

So no change there.

Still—I’m wondering why the Aussies and Kiwis felt the need to import talent for these announcements. Haven’t they got enough home-grown loop-the-loops of their own?

Home disimprovement

Ordinarily I wouldn’t promote (or even much notice) a TV commercial. But this one from Allstate really resonated with me.

Dean “Mayhem” Winters, spokes-disaster for the insurance company, absolutely captured the destruction of raccoons in your attic.

The reason I know this is that my house in Virginia seemed to have some secret symbols marked on it that translated to “Procyonidae Lying-in Hospital—All Are Welcome”. There was a small gap right at the junction of the rear and side of the roof, just pregnant-raccoon sized, apparently.

And, having the entire attic to birth her litter, where did Mama R choose to create her nest? Smack above my bed. Not a word of lie.

And you’ll recall that raccoons are nocturnal. Night after night, rustling noises as Mama popped out to the procyonid 7-Eleven and came back to her brood, who peep-peep-peeped a lot more than you’d have expected.

I didn’t know what it was right away, so one evening I climbed up to the attic and picked my way along the rafters until I got to the approximate spot of all the rustling and peeping. Mama had hidden them well, though—it wasn’t until I picked up a piece of insulation that I found the little clutch of teeny-tiny raccoons.

And along the way I also encountered a lot of ripped-up padding. Exactly as in the Allstate commercial.

I left the babies untouched and went downstairs to have a think. And a couple of hours later I went back up with my camera—thought I should have proof when telling my raccoon tale. Only just at I got my head and shoulders through the hatch there was a furious hissing/chittering from the front of the attic. The babies were in the back and I was between Mama and them.

I apologized profusely, crept back down the ladder and replaced the hatch.

That night Mama moved her family out, probably pretty pissed off at me.

Well, I wasn’t that happy with her, either. Seriously—take another look at that commercial. It’s amazing the destruction one little critter can cause before you close up its egress.

And, BTW—you can get squirrels out of your attic by tossing mothballs around. Sometimes a lot of mothballs, so that you don’t have to worry about moths in the rooms closest to the attic. And I know this because…well, never mind.

Proclamation 86 redux...not

Yesterday marked the 150^th anniversary of Proclamation 86, by which Abraham Lincoln prohibited any trade between states remaining in the Union and those in rebellion. I.e., since the Confederate States were at war with the United States, residents of the latter were forbidden to buy or sell goods from/to residents of the former.

Now, you’d think that this would be decreeing something as obvious as “residents will obey the laws of gravity and not go floating up into the atmosphere.” I mean, when you’re engaged in a shooting war with a country, it seems counterproductive to enrich its treasury by purchasing materials from it and to support its combat capabilities by selling it technologies, food & supplies.

However, you would be wrong. Throughout the Napoleonic wars, it was the business of British businessmen to sell to France. And, of course, our servicemen and women are even now coming up against unfriendlies who are equipped & armed by goods manufactured and sold by Corporate USA.

Now, whether or not the business of America is, in fact, business—ah, no; the hell with it.

We really need another Proclamation 86, because it’s criminal that either directly (via straight sales) or indirectly (through US governmental aid programs), American companies are profiting literally through the pain and suffering of American soldiers. (And you'll notice that trade with the Confederacy was prohibited by executive order, not act of Congress. Even 150 years ago Congress wasn't going to interfere with a Godly profit.)

Of course, two things stand in the way of such a proclamation these days:

We’d need a President with the moral stature to tell businessmen to stuff it.

And we’d need to be able to define who, exactly, are our friends and who are not.

Not going to happen, is it?

Cocoa hacking

Lest you think there’s any place on the Internet that is not an attractive target for hackers, here’s news that last week the Hershey’s consumer website was breached.

Hershey’s advises that consumers’ names, addresses, emails and birthdates were accessed. (At least whoever hacked the chocolate didn’t publish that information, the way Anonymous, the self-styled “hactivist” group did when they crashed the BART website on Sunday, allegedly in “retaliation” for BART blocking cell phone service to foil groups threatening to stop the trains on Thursday to protest several things. Look—it’s SF, and therefore a very long story.)

Also, the hackers messed with one or more of the site’s recipes.

Hershey’s assured us that they “have reviewed the recipes on this site to ensure their quality”, so, whew!

Still, just in the space of a few days we’ve seen that it doesn’t matter how serious or silly the motivation, determined hackers will try it on with just about any site. And consumer websites do not seem to prove all that big a challenge. So think about that when you slap up your personal details somewhere to get a $.50-off coupon or an email notification of Lindsay Lohan’s latest court appearance.

Turkish coffee

I went out to dinner the other night, walking the 50 yards from my place to the closer of two Persian restaurants at the corner of Wolfe & El Camino Real.

The meal itself was not what I would call really special—for the prices they’re charging I’d have expected more than paper placemats and napkins; the “rack of lamb in the Persian style” was such that apparently “the Persian style” means “grilled without any herbs or marinades”; and the bread had all the flavor and much of the consistency of Saltine crackers.

I finished off with a Turkish coffee, which tasted surprisingly weak (considering that this style of java is a couple ounces of water to a couple of heaping teaspoons of fresh beans pounded to a powder, with sugar pre-added) and wasn’t nearly as hot as it ought to have been. But it got me thinking about Turkish coffee in my life.

My introduction to it was at age 19, when my friend Gretchen and I took the Illinois Central up to Chicago from her home in Champaign. We spent the night at some hotel before I had to fly back to LA and head off to UCLA. I didn’t know from any foreign food other than Chinese or Mexican, but Gretchen was dead set on Middle Eastern, and; we somehow found a place where she could get lahmajoun.

The thing I recall about that meal was the Turkish coffee—thick, hot and sweet. I probably drank all the sludge, since my upbringing was such that you don’t leave any food or drink on the table when you leave.

My next recollection of this beverage came from the Armenian family that lived behind our house on the north side of Pasadena during my last year at college (not UCLA).

(The city has long had a sizeable Armenian community—my pediatrician was Dr. Hovsepian, & there’s been an Armenian Orthodox church on Colorado boulevard for decades. In addition to healers and holy folk, Pasadena was also a hotbed of anti-Turkish activism by Armenians. Every few years there’d be some incident involving the Turkish consulate in LA that was traceable back to Pasadena, & one night in the early 80s some minor consular official’s VW bug was firebombed with him in it a couple of blocks from the house where I was living. I have no idea what he was doing in that part of town, which at the time was described as a “neighborhood in transition”; but it was definitely not salubrious for him.)

Anyhow, our neighbors were refugees from the civil war in Lebanon. There was a mother, a grandfather and a daughter somewhere in her 20s. We had two distinct backyard areas, a kind of not-quite-landscaped garden next to the house and then a wilderness that also had a couple of rows of grape vines. I was working back there one day trying to get a vegetable garden going when the daughter popped her head over the fence and asked if they could collect some of our grape leaves. I said sure and we started up an acquaintance. (My dad ended up running several vines across the fence so they wouldn’t have to walk around the block to get them in the future.)

They invited me over for coffee, which was the Turkish kind. And the daughter read my fortune by having me swirl the sludge detritus around the cup and upturn it onto the saucer. I don’t recall what the fortune was. I was just kind of surprised that you could read it in coffee grounds as well as tea leaves.

And then when I was living in Virginia Beach, one of our friends knew of a Mediterranean restaurant in a strip mall in Princess Anne—basically a hole-in-the-wall, run by a Greek emigrant then in his 50s or 60s. Jay had struck up a friendship with this guy, so we got personal attention when we went in.

There was both Greek coffee and Turkish coffee on the menu, exactly the same price. I asked what the difference was and the owner grinned. None, it seems. Exactly the same product: powdered beans, sugar, hot water, no filtering. Having them both just gave the menu variety.

And maybe it allowed Turks and Greeks both to finish off their meal with a coffee without aiding and comforting the enemy.

The last time I had Turkish coffee was in Istanbul, in 2000, so it seems I was overdue for it. I’ll have to see if there are other places in the area where I can find it.

Wrong-way Street

You know, there seems to be a lot of news recently that just strikes me gobsmacked. And here’s another item: there’s a Facebook petition urging that the folks at Sesame Street let Bert & Ernie get married.

Hello? People? They’re Muppets! MUH-PETS. And on Sesame Street only the actual humans are over the age of about five (well, except for maybe Count von Count) with attendant over-five characteristics, because the show is all about childhood.

You remember childhood, right? That great place where you don't have to worry about sexual orientation, designer drugs or cosmetic surgery? (Unless your parents are planning on getting on a reality show.)

All I can say is that, as per usual, people on Facebook have way, waaaayy too much time on their hands.

Arbeit macht...arbeit

I had an epiphany of a sort yesterday about life in the company where I’m currently working. This place is like swimming upstream in molasses.

For the past couple of months I’ve had a core list of seven tasks. I’ve been unable to cross a single one off the list because there’s no point in the company processes where you can say, “there it is, done and dusted.” Every time you think you’re rounding the corner on closing in on the final bits you find that you’ve got at least three more corners to go.

The only thing that’s happened to my list is that more crap gets added to it.

The whole point to having a list is the sense of accomplishment you feel when you scratch something off. What I get from this place is the feeling that nothing will ever get well and truly done. But you can wear yourself out in the attempt.

The squash of summer

Monday was Sneak Some Zucchini onto your Neighbor’s Porch Day. I’m a few days late in marking the celebration, but trust me: if you have spare squash, you have it by the shedload. They should make all of August Sneak Some Zucchini (or Courgettes, if you’re a Brit) onto your Neighbor’s Porch Month

Zucchini have the amazing property of exploding from fingerlike to lethal-club-sized overnight. Anyone who’s ever grown them will attest to that. So after your initial pleasure at picking your own veg, you start getting desperate for ways to use it. You go from sautés to zucchini bread to heaving it into your compost pile.

A friend of mine who used to live in Huntsville assured me that during summer, it was more than your porch that was in danger of being squashified. If you left your car unlocked, you most likely came back to find a bagful on the passenger seat.

Ah, summer!

London's burning

The news from London is, well, shocking. Rioters have looted and burned quite disparate areas of the city since Saturday night, two days after a fatal police shooting incident. A peaceful protest by the family of Mark Duggan on Saturday somehow morphed into violence, and it’s been continuing ever since, dying down in one area for a few hours and then popping up somewhere else.

Gangs of apparently mostly young men have cleaned out cash registers in grocery stores, ransacked jewelry shops, and set fire to police cars, city buses and buildings. The images are appalling, reminiscent of photos of London during WWII, only this time in color.

As of this writing, Tottenham, Hackney, Brixton and other areas have been affected. That would be North London, the East End and south of the Thames. These neighborhoods have not much in common—except that they’re poor. More than 200 have been arrested and I don’t know how many are in hospital. And the cops are getting massive amounts of overtime pay.

I have a few thoughts (probably as disconnected as the neighborhoods) on this:

It seems as though all elected officials, from London Mayor Boris Johnson to PM David Cameron, were out of the country on holiday. Only the Home Secretary, Theresa May, could be wrenched away from her Chiantishire villa by Monday. I guess you have to weigh how important it is to do the job you were elected to do against those lovely Tuscan summer nights with fresh pasta and a nice glass of pinot grigio.

But once the rioters got to Hackney, which is next to one of the showcases of next year’s Olympic Games, it apparently became more of a priority than it would otherwise have been. Unless, of course, Knightsbridge or Bloomsbury started going up in flames.

There have been allegations that Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger have been used to spread the word, urging flash mobs with face masks to show up at this place or that to “beat the feds”. I presume that by “the feds”, that particular tweeter meant “the man”. Whatever. I wouldn’t be too surprised if mobile technology played a major role in directing the rioters, since it’s been my observation that no one seems to be so poor that s/he is without a cell phone and an apparently unlimited talk plan. I don’t think that makes Twitter or BlackBerry somehow culpable; if you’re going to cheer the resisters in Syria and Egypt for using social media, you can’t condemn the platform if it’s used by thugs.

Which brings me to thuggery. No matter how economically underprivileged you are or aggrieved you may be with your government, cleaning out sporting goods and electronics shops is hardly the moral equivalent of blocking a line of tanks at Tiananmen Square or even mobbing a G-8 summit. My guess is that there are going to be a lot of new “for sale” listings on London’s Craig’s List pretty soon. And that that was precisely the point of the activities ever since Tottenham caught fire.


I have no take on the law enforcement efforts except that they're using (amongst other things) mounted police; I say: keep the animals out of it. They didn't start this; don't put them in harm's way. Oh--& now would be a good time to knock over a liquor store in Bristol or Leeds, since every cop in England seems to have been sucked into the riot control.

Finally, from all reports, hardly any of the burned and looted companies have been big chain stores. They’ve mostly been local establishments, owned & run by people who live right there. Shopkeepers who haven’t yet been attacked have shuttered their stores. And since public transportation has been severely curtailed, that means that the residents of those areas better have stocked up on groceries, because it’s going to be a while before they can find a store that’s open for business. Ditto medical care and getting to work.

It's going to be a long, hot August for Londoners..

Recruiters 20

Last year, while still in Seattle, I was approached by a recruiter working for Ariba Networks; he was looking for a product manager for their headquarters in the Silicon Valley. I had a conversation with him, sent my CV, he allegedly set up a call for me with the hiring manager; then…nothing.

He didn’t reply to voice or emails and didn’t pick up on my calls (I assume he had caller ID). So, fine—another in a long list of crappy humanoids dressed up as “talent acquisition” professionals.

So when I got an email from him two weeks ago, announcing that he’s now working for another company that produces mobile clinical care apps for physicians and that he’s looking for a PM, my initial response was, “Big whoop.” His email didn’t even have a phone number for me to reach him on; how serious could he be?

So I wasn’t surprised when my reply elicited no response for several days. Then he left me a VM (with a number)…last Saturday. I connected with him on Monday for about 12 minutes—got a lot of guff about this company and the fact that, while they’re doing mobile apps, they don’t require mobile experience; in fact most of the people there didn’t have mobile experience when they came. They’re more interested in someone who’s owned a product before. He emphasized that what they’re really looking for SaaS competency and, of course, healthcare experience.

Blah, blah, blah.

He wasn’t interested in what I’ve been doing since last we spoke, just said he wanted me to speak with the HM—to whom he’d evidently already shown my CV (picked up presumably from Dice). As in, before determining whether I was interested. Well, the call was set for Wednesday afternoon.

In the intervening period my research turned up the fact that a good 70% of this company’s revenue comes from big pharma, who use the apps to push their latest drugs—usually more expensive and less effective than the older ones on which they’ve lost the patents. (Since one in four physician refuses to see pharmaceutical sales reps any more, the drug companies are looking for ways to get in prescribers’ faces; and handheld devices work just fine.)

And in the conversation with the HM I found out that he’s in fact hiring PMs to work on those precise mobile apps, not their new, SaaS-based EHR, which I actually find interesting. Also, he’s evidently interviewing scores of applicants, so I’m just one of who knows how many 30-minute calls. And there’s that whole snout-in-the-pharma-trough thing, which I find really troubling.

Ever since that call I thought about this. My current employment is…unsatisfactory; but I don’t see how I could feel like I had a scrap of integrity if I went over to that particular Dark Side. Any more than I could work for Wal-Mart.

So Thursday, when I got home from my daily snake-wrestling exercises, my thank-you email to the HM was a thanks-but-no-thanks.