Post #2430.Noblesse oblige Madonna went to Romania, where she observed (to 60,000 people at her Sticky and Sweet concert,)
"It has been brought to my attention ... that there is a lot of discrimination against Romanies and Gypsies in general in Eastern Europe. It made me feel very sad."
Brought to my attention? Her audience generally did not care for the comment and booed her. I can understand this. Romanians would likely be ambivalent about Madonna: sure, she's filthy; but on the other hand she doesn't steal. Also, given Romania's awkward history with rulers, one might expect some annoyance with a fake aristocrat.
Time magazine quotes Shiv Shivakumar, managing director of Nokia in India, "In the West people have gone from the PC to the converged device. In India, people will skip the PC and go straight for the converged device." Now, right off the top, I've never heard of a "converged device," but it's pretty easy to figure out what it is. I bought one of those Big Shoe cellphones early, way back when, and I've had about ten of them since. But after awhile all these technological advances start to wear you out. Really. That, and the providers and contracts. And customer service. One of the manufacturers, I forget which, has announced a Converged Device which has a tiny, motorized roll of Charmin on board. Now, that's just too converged for me. Rick Macherat
Post #2429.Is this the beginning of the end? Let me explain. I don't know anyone now who remembers the Great Depression, so there's no one to ask. You'd have to be over eighty. So, tonight when I mused to the sister-in-law about the state of grocery produce during that era, she wanted to know why. I explained that my produce has been crap for two weeks now: no decent oranges, apples mushy (and this is in Washington State!) and worst of all the bagged salads are gawdawful. Almost no lettuce, and what there is looks like it came out of the dumpster. Incidentally, this was from
Fresh Express Incorporated P.O. Box 80599 Salinas, California 93912
about which the following news report came out on Jul. 15
-- Chiquita Brands International has brought in its own fresh-cut fruit expert to lead Fresh Express, the Salinas-based bagged-salad maker it acquired last month for $855 million.
Tanios Viviani, Chiquita's vice president of fresh-cut fruit, is the new president. He replaces CEO and President Mark Drever, who will stay with the company as part of a management committee that will help with the transition.
Wonderful. At least we know what happened. I bet Tanios doesn't have to eat garbage lettuce.
Back to the sister-in-law. When I told her of my produce concerns, she explained that it was the same all over and was because of the recession. Seems enough people are scaling down that the retailers are as well. Get used to it. See, when the sister-in-law says something like that, I pay close attention and believe, because she is an Olympic Athlete of Shoppers. If there is only one ripe tomato in the greater Seattle metro area, she will find it and buy it, but not before she haggles the price down. That's silly. You can't haggle at Safeway. Pay attention; I said she was Olympian and I meant it. Safeway would be a slow sprint for her. I even saw a produce manager tremble at Whole Foods, and that's saying something. Those people don't kow-tow to No Body. They've all got bags of wet weeds for salad and mushy fruit.
She'll be among the last ones left, you know, after it hits. After what hits? It. What does it hit? The fan. She can eat anything, and she'll roust up a campsite in no time with little or no supplies and make it comfortable enough for a week's stay. She would have made a great wife, I sometimes say, if only she wasn't completely insane. Rick Macherat
Post #2428.What I'm Reading. A lot of bloggers do that, to show off mainly, so I will too. It's
Michael Rowan-Robinson, COSMOLOGY (Oxford University Press, 1977.)
I wanted something which came before 13 dimensions, "Branes," and the other current theories explained so casually on the Discovery Channel. I plan pretty much to ignore the
stuff. So far, so good, but I'm only on page 5. Rick Macherat
Post #2427.Back to school. So, it was a Saturday night and the football game was going poorly for us, so I surfed, ending up way up there in the channels. It was educational, looked like a symposium from the University. Oh good, IT. I listened for a bit
and so the task of the manager living in that environment is more, and more, trying to put .. "Here is a situation that I have or a conversation that I have about a particular issue. Here is, here's some really important facts and kind of here is my theory right now on that," and you're continuously doing that, and what you're also, you know, what we do with another classic case is, and we try to communicate to students to work on. One is undergraduate MBA's, you know, the Executive Education. The other is General Management. There are general managers out there today that literally do not, you know, they're still playing IT as a spectator sport and not as a participatory sport. They're leaving it to their "tech guy."
Well, if I had been taking notes, that would have probably gone down as "we're important too." Frankly, after about 17 years now with a personal computer, preceded by many more with the messy infancy of computers in the workplace, I'm still not sold, not even close. Had to laugh, thinking back .. a few years after our hotels went computer, first reservations then a property management system of the whole shebang, headquarters got the idea of putting a PC on the desk of every General Manager. They even went so far as to fly them back to the mothership for a little class on how to turn it on, etc. My boss, and 99% of the bosses, never touched the dang things. Which was good since they had no choice but to believe us when we now blamed most of our frequent regular catastrophes on "the computers went down."
In other news, " .. had to be identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants .. " might represent the ultimate thin edge, as Sir Humphrey might put it, the thin edge of the inevitable obliteration of civilization as we know it. Knew it. They were winners on Megan Wants a Millionaire. Television tonight is identifying him as an on-the-run STAR of that program, and murderer, and her the apparently disassembled murder victim. Here they are:
I rest my case. Incidentally, the murderer/dismemberer has now made his way into Canada, thus assuring the "death penalty is off the table." In fact, you might not know it, but there is a special lane up at the border near here marked DEATH PENALTY EVASION LANE - EXPRESS. Though to be honest, the only problem I have with that is our local prosecutors try way too hard to get the worst killers back.Rick Macherat
Post #2426.A squib for the times. It was reported: Investors jittery about consumer confidence. Think about it. Business-channel writers usually cite something coincidental, but I have to assess that one as a poor toss indeed. Back of the line for you, squibber.
Every afternoon at the same time, "Turkey in the Straw," signals the approach of our neighborhood ice cream truck. This is not my childhood ice cream truck. It's a Toyota pickup with a freezer on the back, with a rather America's-Most-Wanted-looking Hispanic man driving at about 20 m.p.h., so I can't imagine how he would get any business. Not that mothers in this neighborhood, or in these times, would let their children out of the house to chase a truck down the street anyway. Poor guy, somebody really saw him coming. Wonder how much of his probably quite small remaining resources he had to sink into that loser.
On the positive side of the Bad Times, good prices and excellent service have finally arrived. Even though my own income is down quite a bit, I've taken advantage of it and am buying as much stuff that I will never need as I can. I knew this recession had reached its depths when the (polite!) cable customer service agent offered to credit me for 24-hours without service for a minor outage not nearly that long. Maybe it was because I was nice. I've been working on that.
My head is still spinning a bit from earlier tonight when I watched the NOVA episode on Fractals. Especially since I missed the first part where presumably they told you what fractals are and how to do them. Kidding .. I know what they are, or what it is, but no clue beyond that. Okay, I'm back .. went to a page on Mendelbrot and Julian Sets and, it's true, this stuff was all invented long after I took any math. And, as soon as I saw the word "sets" I pretty much quit reading. Suffice to say that if nature uses it to make stuff work, I'm good with that. Just hope to Whatever the dad-gummed computers never get hold if it. Rick Macherat
Post #2425.The Facebook. Yeah, I'm on it now, but I haven't typed anything yet. How about this: Rick went to the mall and bought some rubber bands. Then he came home and took a nap.
I've come up with possible ideas on two of our most pressing, and LOUD, current problems. First the Looming Health Crisis, easily solved. We simply encourage all the people without health insurance to hook up with and become a "dependent" of someone who has coverage. Was that so hard? Okay, maybe the government would resist an official condoning of sham marriage/hookups. So if the experts are aghast at that idea, why can't we simply do it virtually? Think about it.
As for the other one, the Looming Spectre of Inflation, I have no solution for that since it's going to be pretty much like a tsunami, but I can give some advice to folks who want to get through it with as little damage as possible: SPEND NOW. Spend til you drop. Run your credit cards up to the max, then get more cards. They will be easy to pay off in a year or so. This is all because the crap you buy now for, say, $1.99, $50.00 or $1,500.00 will be worth $2 million, $100 million and $1.5 billion once the Mega-inflato really gets rolling. I first became a believer on this subject back when I was about 10 and briefly collected stamps. In Germany by November of 1923 a stamp for a first class letter cost 800,000,000,000 marks. Think how you'll clean up at your yard sale! Rick Macherat
Post #2424.Doing my part. For the past several weeks, my grocery delivery has included a complimentary package of three-gallon kitchen composting bags, 5-each, green (of course.) Inside the city of Seattle, composting food scraps is mandatory, but it is still optional out here in the suburbs, at least for now. I debated saving them, but instead I got in my car and drove all over the south part of Seattle, throwing them out of the car.
Wasn't that a callously unenvironmental thing to do?!
Not at all. Indignant people will literally fight one another for the chance to pick them up and then go home and rant about it, either in person to a significant other or in a well-written online exposition. It will make them happy. Rick Macherat posted by Rick at 12:34 AM
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Post #2423.Best to call first.
Me: Hello? Her: We came by last night and rang the bell, but you didn't answer. I know you were home. Me: I wasn't presentable. Her: Oh heavens! It was just us. We wouldn't care. Me: I was naked and drunk. Is that not presentable enough?
