Call from the project manager on a big, glossy, high-end coffee-table book I recently proofread …
Project Manager: Oh. My. God! We can’t possibly implement all these changes! There’s just red EVERYwhere.
Me: They’re not changes, they’re corrections.
PM: But it’ll take days.
Me: Yes, and because there are so many I suggest you get someone to read it again.
PM: But we go to print on Friiiiiday *wail*
Me: Maybe the editor should look at it again then. Who’s the editor?
PM: The author. And me.
Me: No, who’s the E-D-I-T-O-R?
PM: No, seriously, the author and me.
Me: No frikkin’ kidding. (Okay, that was under my breath…)
Publish Cape Town, Facebook, 2014-06-26.
June 28, 2014
QotD: The dangers of self-publishing
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June 25, 2014
Long live the Oxford Comma
Sonny Bunch on the serial comma, single-spaces after periods and other pressing concerns:
Via 538, I’m proud to announce that those of us who support using the serial, or Oxford, comma are on The Right Side of History™:
The poll of 1,129 Americans, conducted from June 3 to 5, showed that the pro-Oxford comma crowd has a somewhat substantial lead overall: 57 percent to 43 percent. …
Readers had asked how the responses broke down by age, so here’s a chart to show who falls into each comma camp. The younger crowd overwhelmingly prefers the Oxford comma.
This makes sense, since refusing to use the Oxford comma is stupid and barbaric, a product of a bygone era. See also:
I don’t know who made this originally, but they’re a genius.
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June 22, 2014
“Draw Play” Dave on how Minnesota got the Super Bowl in 2018
I probably don’t need to say that the Super Bowl is a big ticket item … that much must be clear even to people who don’t have any conscious awareness of the NFL. Part of the push for a new football stadium in Minnesota was the hope that the new stadium would allow Minneapolis/St. Paul to bid on (and hope to win) the competition to host the Super Bowl in the newly completed stadium. The NFL being what it is, this meant a lot of “sweeteners” had to be offered to entice the league up to the deep freeze of Minnesota in the middle of winter. (Full disclosure: I’ve never been to Minnesota in winter, so maybe I’m just being swayed by pro-winter propaganda, but I believe it gets a tad cooler in the land of the ten thousand frozen lakes than it does in, say, Miami.)
“Draw Play” Dave Rappoccio admits he’s a bit late to this story, but I rather liked it anyway:
Click to see the full cartoon
Again, older news that I never got to, but deserved a joke.
Has anyone actually looked up the requirements for cities to host the Super Bowl? The NFL is shameless in how is screws cities over and I can’t believe cities sign up for it.
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June 21, 2014
Shock, horror! An “offensive game” is actually offensive!
Charles C.W. Cooke on an outbreak of offensensitivity on the part of players of Cards Against Humanity, a game that only exists to be politically incorrect and offensive:
“Offended” has become such a fluid and subjective term these days that I can’t possibly keep up — and, frankly, I don’t especially care to. Either way, that the outrage brigade would go after this game is nothing short of extraordinary. Whatever case there is for polite society, universities, or television networks attempting to keep their language within the malleable and brittle bounds that our arbiters of taste have contrived this week to establish, there is no reason whatsoever for it to be applied to a party lark. Make no mistake: The entire purpose — quite literally the only point — of Cards Against Humanity is to be shocking and objectionable. Pretty much every single card in the pack is shocking and objectionable. The game is “offensive”? Gosh, what gave it away? Was it, perhaps, the words Cards Against Humanity emblazoned on the box? Or, perhaps, the description, “A party game for horrible people”? Maybe it was that the stated aim is to be as “despicable” as possible? A card “wasn’t okay”? Well, obviously.
Perhaps I just read too much of the Left’s output, but I’m starting to wonder whether “trans” people are engaged in some sort of concerted effort to be the most vocally boring and self-indulgent members of the perpetually aggrieved. Among the other topics at which Cards Against Humanity routinely pokes fun are incest, abortion, genocide, race, homosexuality, death, the disabled, those with crippling diseases, and the religious. A typical combination: “What will always get you laid? Date rape.” Another: “In 1,000 years, when paper money is but a distant memory, black people will be our currency.” Within the pack there are ready made Holocaust jokes, jokes about the massacre of American Indians, jokes about the molestation of altar boys, jokes that make light of black people and of slavery, jokes about fatal drug addiction, and an endless supply of gross, semi-pornographic nonsense. Oh, and more Holocaust jokes. (Oh, and even more Holocaust jokes.) Nick Summers, of Bloomberg Businessweek, described the offering as being built around “punch lines that include Auschwitz, slavery, ‘Stephen Hawking talking dirty,’ white privilege, ethnic cleansing, terrorists, the Trail of Tears, assless chaps, nuclear bombs, ‘a mime having a stroke,’ and more depravity.” You get the picture.
Is this funny? That depends on your taste. I think it is, yes, and I enjoy playing the game. Not only do I have a high tolerance for these things, but, as a rule, I think that humor is by far and away the most effective way of conquering tragedy. Clearly, the guy who took such offense at the one card enjoyed the game too. He bought into the premise. He was happy enough to play. He sat there through the rest of the rounds, which inevitably contained other “offensive jokes,” likely laughing at hideous things. He just didn’t like it when the joke was on him.
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June 20, 2014
QotD: Whiskey and bourbon
Whiskey in the USA has a long, colourful history. (Note that it is indeed spelt with an “e”, along with Irish whiskey — the Scotch and Canadian varieties are both plain whisky.)
One of the most illustrious early American distillers was George Washington, who manufactured the stuff commercially at his place near Mount Vernon in Virginia, and was very proud of the high reputation of his merchandise. I’m sure it was great for its time, but then and for long afterwards the general run of whiskey must have been pretty rough. I’ve often thought that the really amazing achievement of the Western hero wasn’t his ability to shoot a pip out of a playing card at fifty paces, nor even his knack of dropping crotch first into his saddle from an upstairs window, but the way he could stride into the saloon, call for whiskey, knock it back neat and warm in one and not so much as blink, let alone burst into paroxysms of uncontrollable coughing.
All that, of course, is changed now. American whiskeys are second to none in smoothness, blandness, everything that goes to make a fine spirit. Some of them, like Washington’s product and many since, are based on rye, but nearly all the brands we see in the UK belong in the bourbon category. Bourbon (rhymes with turban) gets its name from Bourbon County, Kentucky, where the first stills of this type were set up, though it’s long been regularly made in several other states besides. Federal law requires bourbon whiskey to be derived from a cereal mash of at least 51 per cent corn, which is to say Indian corn, often called maize over here, though it’s the identical vegetable that makes you, or me, so tremendously fat eaten off the cob.
The manufacturing process is carried out by means of large stills that operate on exactly the same principle as the patent or Coffey stills used in the production of grain whisky in Scotland. The young spirit is then drawn off to mature in specially charred oak barrels. Until recently, these were required to be new, but it seems that nowadays used casks are permitted. This is bad news for some distillers in Scotland, who formerly imported the secondhand casks to age their own whisky in.
Prominent brands of bourbon available in the UK include Jim Beam, Old Grandad, Wild Turkey, and Jack Daniel’s. Wild Turkey is a newcomer, to this country at any rate, and increasingly tipped as the best. Jack Daniel’s is the established quality leader. Strictly it isn’t a bourbon at all, but a Tennessee whiskey made at Lynchburg in Moore County, no less.
Don’t go there, as I once did. Moore County turned out to be dry and all I got to drink all day was a glass of cold tea at Madame Bobo’s Boarding House. I doubt if things have changed much.
Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, 2008.
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June 19, 2014
QotD: You (probably) drive on the wrong side of the road
The heart is (or to be exact, appears to be) on the left side of the body. In the more primitive form of warfare some form of shield is therefore used to protect the left side, leaving the offensive weapon to be held in the right hand. The normal offensive weapon was the sword, worn in a scabbard or sheath. If the sword was to be wielded in the right hand, the scabbard would have to be worn on the left side. With a scabbard worn on the left, it became physically impossible to mount a horse on the off side unless intending to face the tail — which was not the normal practice. But if you mount on the near side, you will want to have your horse on the left of the road, so that you are clear of the traffic while mounting. It therefore becomes natural and proper to keep to the left, the contrary practice (as adopted in some backward countries) being totally opposed to all the deepest historical instincts. Free of arbitrary traffic rules the normal human being swings to the left.
C. Northcote Parkinson, “Personality Screen, Or The Cocktail Formula”, Parkinson’s Law (and other studies in administration), 1957.
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The NFL conspiracy theorist
“Draw Play” Dave Rappoccio is running a series of cartoons on the various sub-groups of NFL fans. This week’s subject is the Conspiracy Theorist:
He also talks about the mentality of the conspiracy theorist fan in some detail:
A part of me struggles to accept that people this deluded actually exist, but they do. I’ve heard stories, and I’ve seen the occasional online post about it. These people are few, but not fictional. There are actually people who think the NFL is scripted.
Like most conspiracy theories it sounds absolutely stupid at first, then part of you might go “well, I guess that was kinda perfect that it happened just that way”, then you think about it a little more and you realize that yup, it’s still stupid and the logic falls apart. But some people don’t get past that second stage. I can’t figure out why. The best guess I can muster is that most of the fans are somehow bitter about the way their team loses or something.
[…]
But some people legit think it’s scripted like pro wrestling. These people are…I can’t defend them. They are deluded. For everything that sounds like it might make some sense, lots of other things just make it feel so forced. The NFL has been around for a long time, and started as a small time game. It has grown into the giant it is not overnight, but over decades. There has never, ever, been any evidence that has come out to suggest it’s scripted. No retired referees, no disgruntled employees, nothing. Over decades. Come on. There are so many people covering the league now, so many media members, so many pundits, so many sources. The NFL being scripted would be a huge story, but none of them have ever investigated it? Nothing? No player, current or former, EVER, in all this time, has come out and said things weren’t right. None have even suggested it. You think in a league with players treated as poorly as they are in medical coverage that one wouldn’t want to blow the lid off the biggest sports story ever? There is no evidence of scripted play, and if you think it is, you are dumb. We are not sheeple, you are gullible & trying to find deeper issues where they don’t exist.
I forwarded the link to a friend of mine who is emphatically not a sports fan, but who has floated the occasional theory about “the fix” being in in all professional sports in one way or another. His response was entertaining:
As for the article, I’m not entirely sure of his point. Is he arguing that pro sports cannot possibly be fixed because the key games are often so boring? The author so wants to believe in his fantasy land where men wearing shiny tight pants can bum-pat and hug each other without feeling a little bit weird about it that he’s willing to overlook any possibility of there being corruption in the game. […]
Football gives the illusion of one team being better than another through its very short season. With just 16 games, you just do not have a very large sample size to gauge performance. It’s like me typing 16 words without an error: I must therefore be the world’s best typist. If the NFL season dragged on as long as the insufferable NHL season, I bet we’d see all of the teams finish much closer together in their win-loss-tie figures. With a larger sample, we’d likely see that all the teams are likely pretty much the same.
But pro sports fans really want to believe in heart and giving a-hundred-and-ten-per-cent and playing a good psychological game and putting the biscuit in the basket and all of that other crap. Even if refs and players came forward and admitted to throwing games I suspect that the fans would not want to believe them. Look how the fans keep coming back even after players’ strikes — these are people so desperate for a fix that they will put almost anything in their veins.
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June 16, 2014
The Kronies: Laughing All The Way to the Export-Import Bank
Published on 16 Jun 2014
Get Konnected at http://thekronies.com/
In this very special episode of “The Less You Know”, Johnny and Bobby learn a valuable lesson about campaign finance.
With a crucial re-authorization vote looming, the Representatives must decide whether or not to support the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Johnny and Bobby nearly make a terrible mistake, one that could endanger their political careers!
Luckily, Bankor and Ariel Stryker appear just in time to set the Reps straight…straight on the path to re-election. Including a special appearance by “the Big man” himself, this episode is sure to capture hearts, minds, and votes.
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June 13, 2014
QotD: Mathematical formula describing bureaucratic growth
Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation, all our researches so far completed point to an average increase of 5.75 per cent per year. This fact established, it now becomes possible to state Parkinson’s Law in mathematical form: In any public administrative department not actually at war, the staff increase may be expected to follow this formula —
x=(2km + l) / n
k is the number of staff seeking promotion through the appointment of subordinates; l represents the difference between the ages of appointment and retirement; m is the number of man-hours devoted to answering minutes within the department; and n is the number of effective units being administered. x will be the number of new staff required each year. Mathematicians will realize, of course, that to find the percentage increase they must multiply x by 100 and divide by the total of the previous year, thus:
100 (2km + l) / y n %
where y represents the total original staff. This figure will invariably prove to be between 5.17 per cent and 6.56 per cent, irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.
The discovery of this formula and of the general principles upon which it is based has, of course, no political value. No attempt has been made to inquire whether departments ought to grow in size. Those who hold that this growth is essential to gain full employment are fully entitled to their opinion. Those who doubt the stability of an economy based upon reading each other’s minutes are equally entitled to theirs. It would probably be premature to attempt at this stage any inquiry into the quantitative ratio that should exist between the administrators and the administered. Granted, however, that a maximum ratio exists, it should soon be possible to ascertain by formula how many years will elapse before that ratio, in any given community, will be reached. The forecasting of such a result will again have no political value. Nor can it be sufficiently emphasized that Parkinson’s Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.
C. Northcote Parkinson, “Parkinson’s Law, or the rising pyramid”, Parkinson’s Law (and other studies in administration), 1957.
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June 9, 2014
June 4, 2014
It’s clearly time for The Something Must Be Done Act 2014
A post by David Allen Green from last year that prefigures the political landscape of today:
… all this statutory output is subject to the tiresome jurisdiction of the courts — the High Court will quash delegated legislation and use “human rights” jurisprudence to interpret the word of parliament out of recognition. Something must be done.
So this Act is a modest proposal for our legislators and public officials. Once it is passed, no other legislation will ever be necessary and the meddlesome courts will be neutered. This would be a Good Thing.
Let’s start with Section 1:
“The Crown shall have the power to do anything, and nothing a Minister of the Crown does will be ultra vires.”
That should shut up the High Court for a while with their judicial review decisions.
But adding a second section to the Act will make sure that Ministers will act in the interests of all of us. So for the avoidance of doubt, Section 2 provides:
“The power given by Section 1 of this Act shall include the banning of things by any Minister of the Crown.”
But what things can be banned? Well, here’s Section 3:
“The things to be banned referred to in Section 2 of this Act shall be the things which a Minister of the Crown says are bad for us.”
Which in turn leads us to Section 4:
“What is bad for us for the purposes of Section 3 shall be determined by a Minister of the Crown with regard either to (a) headlines in the tabloid press of the day and/or (b) the headlines the Minister of the Crown would like to see in the tabloid press tomorrow.”
Section 5 will then provide:
“Any person
(a) voicing opposition to a determination made under Section 4 of this Act; or
(b) acting in breach of a ban made under Section 1 of this Act, shall be deemed to not care about the children and/or to be soft on terrorism.”
The Act should also include the following power at Section 6 so that any emerging issues can be addressed:
“In the event something must be done, a Minister may at his or her discretion choose a thing to do, and the thing chosen shall be deemed as the something that must be done.”
This discretionary power, however, is subject to Section 7:
“The thing chosen under Section 6 shall not have any rational or proportionate relationship to any intended objective.”
The way a lot of ministers carry on, you’d think this act had already been promulgated…
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Gavin McInnes gives a shout-out to the Rebel Alliance
Gave a shout out to the Rebel Alliance on Fox last night. They are a group of kids in the future who live in the sewers like Ninja Turtles and refuse to pay our bloated pensions. That’s the problem with all this talk of the debt we’re saddling our children with. It assumes they’re going to pay it.
What if they just say, “Fuck off” like they do in Costa Rica? The taxes are too high there so most people just refuse to pay. When everyone does it, the government can’t do anything about it. This next generation is tech-savvy enough to create their own currency and barter their own exchanges and the sewers they live in won’t be gross. They’ll be like a cool teen’s bedroom from 1990.
H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.
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June 3, 2014
QotD: Parkinson’s Law
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase “It is the busiest man who has time to spare.” Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half an hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the mailbox in the next street. The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.
C. Northcote Parkinson, “Parkinson’s Law, or the rising pyramid”, Parkinson’s Law (and other studies in administration), 1957.
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June 2, 2014
QotD: Realtors
I talked a few times with the realtor, and they were as helpful as realtors usually are: not helpful. They couldn’t answer any important questions for me, because realtors don’t know anything important about the properties they sell. Well, that’s not entirely true. They often know very important things about the properties they sell. Those are invariably the things they’re hiding from you, hoping to entice you into standing in the decrepit shack they’re listing while they perform their Svengali perorations about its potential. Weave a tapestry of possibilities in the air that’ll have you frisking yourself in no time, looking for your checkbook before that handyman that’s interested in the property snatches it from under your nose.
Oh, I know that handyman. That guy gets around. I never learned his name, but he seemed to be interested in every property I was interested in Maine. No matter where I went — Turner, Cornish, Peru, Livermore Falls, Norway, Rumford…
Anyway, that polymath handyman with the lead foot and the nose for diamonds in the rough was always one step ahead of us, ready to stuff our defeat into the jaws of his victory. He was very interested in Turner, I hear.
Sippican Cottage, “I’m Fixing A Hole Where The Intertunnel Gets In “, Sippican Cottage, 2013-11-13
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June 1, 2014
QotD: The fine art of whisky snobbery
These days your host might offer you a malt whisky almost any time. If he’s mad enough to offer you ice, or better still, drop it in unasked, you get bonus points for the way you manage to restrain your horror at the fellow’s barbarism. When you finally taste the stuff, say, “Ah, the old Glencluskie. Magnificent, but not what it was. It’s this damned Canadian barley. Too much starch, not enough protein and fat. Thank heaven there’s still some peat in the kilning.” All very well today, but on present trends there’ll soon be whisky snobs fit to compare with any wine snobs of yesteryear.
Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, 2008.
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