Darkness at noon, Part 2

You should not be surprised to hear that Netizens in droves turned out to step into Wednesday’s Great Wikipedia Blackout void—and churned out masses of fake facts on Twitter.

Some of my favorites:

“Ferrets are a legume.”

“Pluto is no longer a planet due to copyright claims from the Disney Corporation.”

The exceedingly hopeful and time-bending “Arsenal has won the Champions League 8 times in the last 6 years.”

“The Keystone XL Pipeline is the 2^nd-largest size for this project. The others were Keystone S. M, L and XXL.”

“Time travel was invented next Thursday.”

“PIPA is SOPA’s prettier younger sister and gets all the attention on her big day.”

“In 1983 Sweden changed the colours of their flag to blue and yellow after the phenomenal success of the IKEA brand.”

This one is just plain wrong, though: “Lego is a Dutch word meaning ‘lost in a vacuum cleaner’” It’s actually a Danish word meaning “lost in a vacuum cleaner”. Or else “lost in your dog’s digestive tract.” Maybe both.

Tyger, tyger, getting high

I know, Epiphany was a week & a half ago, so I shouldn't be bringing up any Christmas-related subject..

But I think this video of big cats reacting to cast-off Christmas trees like some really potent catnip rather transcends any particular holiday season:

& given that we're heading round third base to the South Carolina primary, I thought we could all use something without any discernible political message.

Darkness at noon (& the rest of the day)

I hope you don’t need to look up anything on Wikipedia today; at least not in English.

The online crowd-sourced encyclopedia has shut down its English-language pages for the day to protest proposed legislation in the US Congress.

Ditto Reddit, BoingBoing and the Cheezburger Network, all of which are social media sites, without the presence of Wikipedia. (Although I know a lot of people who are going to be pissed off about not being able to access LOLCats for a day.)

(And sorry about giving you links to “we’re shut down” banners. Try them after today.)

I don’t think there’s a day goes by that I’m not directed to Wikipedia, because I’m always looking up acronyms I find in my job search. It’s not anything I’d bet the ranch on, but it is a useful quick-&-dirty research resource, and they do a good job of weeding out whack-jobs.

As for LOLCats—well, sometimes you’ve just got to get away from it all. So that's going to be a loss, too

I don’t credit any of our Congressmorons with the ability to find or use any of these sites, but I expect their staffers are going to be bereft for the day. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the Stop Online Pirace Act (SOPA) & Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) bills.

(Look—it’s really hard for me to give you a quick explanation of them because of Wikipedia being down…)

But let me just close with this thought: I'm guessing a lot of homework will be turned in late on Thursday in classrooms all over America.

Silvered Seattle

Brr—the Emerald City is under snow, with heaps more predicted for tomorrow.

Given my own experience with how the area copes with the white stuff, all I can say is: Thank God I’m long gone from there. Chaos will not be the word.

Not Maru, Part 3

You may have missed this in the run-up to the holidays, but apparently:

1.      No. 10 Downing Street (official residence of the Prime Minister of Great Britain) has a rodent problem.

2.      Instead of calling in exterminators (even humane ones) David Cameron adopted a rescue cat, which was expected to mouse for its keep. But Larry the Cat apparently was more interested in feline things like napping than catching rats.

3.      Subsequently Larry has been banned from the Camerons’ flat, which was recently redecorated to the tune of £64K.

4.      There’s a brouhaha over the whole thing in the British press.

As for #4—of course there is.

As for #3—no one seems to have inquired if Larry likes to scratch the Aubusson carpets or has been marking his territory in the high-tech second kitchen. There are limits to the give-and-take of cat servitude. Also, no one has thought to ask whether Larry even notices he’s been kept out of the flat. He’s a cat—if he wanted in, he’d be in.

As for #2—just because he’s a cat doesn’t mean he’s a mouser. If his mama didn’t teach him what to do with rodents, he’s not going to know he’s supposed to kill them.

As for #1—why is no one upset that the iconic seat of British leadership is infested with rats?

I’m just sayin’…

Retailing history

Weird times in retail.

As you no doubt know, Sears has hit the skids, announcing just a couple of weeks ago that they’re closing 120 stores (both Sears & Kmart). Now, in the past few days I’ve seen TV commercials for the “Sears MLK Event”.

That event would be a big sale on appliances.

Yep—the erstwhile giant is marking the achievements of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning adherent of Ghandi by flogging refrigerators & dishwashers. Marked down, of course.

Well, yeah.

I don’t know whether such a crass sale is an outcome of the morass the company is in, or if they’re in trouble because of the sort of strategic thought that comes up with a Martin Luther King “event”.

(I couldn’t find a video of the actual commercial. Closest I could get online was this. Evidently MLK’s life is worth more than just appliances. Mattresses, too.)

Look out for many more “events” next year. You know Macy’s is not going to be far behind on this.

Twinkie defense 2

As follow-up to yesterday’s story on the possibility of iconic snack cakes (if there be such a thing) disappearing from the shelves due to the bankruptcy filing by Hostess, NPR has helpfully suggested ten uses for Twinkies.

I think you could also use them in place of clay pigeons for skeet shooting. I bet they’d make a very satisfying splat when hit.

What are your ideas?

Twinkies defense

This has already been a tough month for childhood icons: first Kodak filed for bankruptcy, & yesterday Hostess has filed. The snack cake giant blamed having to pay out on contractual obligations to current & retired employees as the primary reason for its financial woes.

Of course. Because it can’t possibly be producing a product line of food-like items without recognizable taste or ingredients that practically define the term “empty calories” in an age where they’re being banned from schools & family kitchens alike couldn’t possibly be a contributing factor.

I mean—take a look at the 37 ingredients in a Twinkie. There are only 14 I recognize as food-like products I could purchase & consume (including two kinds of corn syrup & baking soda; & I counted the glucose just to be generous.

(For those not acquainted with the Hostess line, here’s the premise: some sort of cake or sponge lump surrounding a wodge of rubberized cream-like substance, frequently with a hard shell that purports to be icing, but definitely doesn’t melt in your hand.)

As a kid I lusted after Sno Balls®. Coconut is my downfall, & I thought they were the absolute bomb. (Look, I had no point of reference. My mother was not what you might call a baker. A huge thing for us was to get day-old glazed doughnuts from the Helms Olympic Bakery outlet store.) Mom never let me have them, so it was a big deal for me to use baby-sitting money to buy a packet on the sly.

A few years ago I bought a package as a special treat. I couldn’t even finish one of them; the coconut tasted like the spongy frosting tasted like the “chocolate” cake tasted like the crème filling. I didn't try it, but they probably all tasted like the plastic packaging. 

Evidently I’m not the only person to have reached that conclusion; hence yesterday’s filing

Regarding the stated reason for bankruptcy, let me just make one observation. It’s very interesting that corporations don’t seem to have any difficulty finding the money to meet their contractual obligations to senior management, but never have enough to do the same for the people who actually make the products or deliver the service.

Snack on that.

Connecting or not

I was talking with James, the guy who cuts my hair, the other day. He’s a Bay Area native—grew up around Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, now lives in Milpitas and the salon is in Los Altos.

So he’s got a broad perspective on the area. And, while he’s not a technocrat himself, he’s certainly adopted all the tech that has engulfed Gen-XY.

I often ask him about local spots for exploration—where’s a good area to live, where do I find a good park, etc. I do the same with my physical therapist, who grew up in Burlingame and now lives in Redwood Shores.

It was the latter’s recommendation that found me at the Copenhagen Bakery and Café for breakfast just before New Year’s Day. The eggs and bacon were fine, I perused a free local newspaper from a stand right outside and there was good people-watching also for free. (The folks behind the counters were somewhat less than personable, but there you go.)

However—the café did not have Wi-Fi. Which I though passing strange. I mean—a place where you sit down over coffee, in the Silicon Valley (okay—on the northern edge of it), And no Wi-Fi? Really?

As it happened, I hooked into free Wi-Fi from the Sephora store across the street (also a little strange—retail with an open network? Don’t they want you buying eyeliner and D&G perfume instead of checking your emails?). So I wasn’t reduced to reading the sports section of that free newspaper.

When I commented on the experience to James he agreed that it was odd. Then he said something that stopped me in my tracks: “Yeah, because we can’t possibly sit down anywhere without being entertained.”

Oh. Um. Right.

This ties into one of my ongoing TLP resolutions: Pay attention. You can’t be fully mindful of your beautifully poached egg if you’re checking Facebook, or plugged into “Morning Edition”, or emailing some idiot at work. Especially if you’re doing all three at once. Nor can you thoroughly attend to framing that work email if you suddenly notice that you’ve got crumbs in your keyboard.

Thinking about it, having that laptop or tablet out is really kind of a defensive positioning—don’t talk to me, I’m busy; I’m focused on something that’s more important than what’s going on around me. More important than where I am.

But really—what is more important than where you are, where you are at this moment?

What is more important than biting into one of the seven types of toast you can have at Copenhagen Bakery, topped with a splodge of some sort of homemade-looking deeply blue berry preserves, and experiencing the crunch of the toast and the explosion of deeply blue slithery taste in your mouth? What is more important than noticing the people around you—what they’re eating, how they’re conversing with one another, whether they seem to be regulars? What is more important than filling your lungs with the aroma of just-baked bread that permeates the room?

So—what to do?

Font of ignorance

Last month, after I posted the doorway exchange on Comic Sans, I did a little research.

It seems there’s quite the passionate campaign to ban Comic Sans.

The movement (if you will) is going on for 13 years, now, dedicated to the proposition that a typeface should be in accord with & support the message it is communicating.

I certainly agree with the principle, but I doubt it will succeed in turning the tide of people unacquainted with spelling, grammar, punctuation or other fundamentals of language who think that because Microsoft gave them a couple dozen fonts they’re free to slap anything up on the page they feel like.