(Good) Batteries Not Included

One of the reasons I still haven't taken the plunge and upgraded to a really smart phone instead of my slightly smart phone is that I seriously don't think I need one. Sure, there are times in which I am out of my house, need to Google something and at those moments the fact my phone is annoyingly slow about connecting to the internet and when it does the screen is usually too small to support the website is really frustrating, but those times are pretty infrequent. For some reason I still think of my cellphone as an "emergencies only" kind of thing, even though I shouldn't. I have a plan which would allowed me to spend as much time as I wanted to surfing the internet, but I pretty much just use my phone to text and send the occasional picture, two tasks which it does very well. I just don't see the need to have a new phone while my current phone can still handle all its duties. All that being said, when I look at new phones I am often impressed with all the cool things people can do with them so every now and again I find myself online looking at what I would upgrade to if I felt like it. I have yet to pull the trigger on a new phone but I am sure eventually I will be forced to upgrade (and then feel like an idiot for waiting this long to do so). Of course, this may happen sooner than later if my phone keeps acting up like it has been for the last few days.

For all the things I like about my phone, one of the most annoying aspects is that it uses one light to tell you five different things. If the red light in the top corner is on it means I have a text message... or a voicemail... or I missed a call... or my phone is charging... or my battery is dying. It is slightly crazy to think that for all the technology which is in this mini computer which fits in my pocket the one thing they skimped on was lights. Normally it is no matter because 90% of the time the red light means I have a text message. So you can imagine my surprise the other day when I picked up my phone and the red light was because my battery was nearly dead. I had just taken the phone off the charger a few hours earlier and barely used it since, so this confused me. But it didn't bother me nearly as much as it did 24 hours later, when the same thing happened again. I understand that batteries die quicker when the phone is in use, but if the phone has been sitting in the same spot for most of that time, shouldn't the batteries still have plenty of juice in them? When I first got my phone a full charge would sustain the phone for over 2 days provided I didn't go crazy with usage. I certainly haven't been using it more lately, so you can imagine my annoyance that for the last few days a full battery suddenly won't last longer than 24 hours. I can only imagine how quickly it would have died if I was feeling chatty.

Of course, this is the problem with batteries - after a while they simply refuse to hold their charge for as long as they used to, which is kind of a big problem to have. With that in mind it is kind of shocking to me that for all the technological advances we have been able to make as a culture over the last few decades we still can't figure out something better than batteries. The closest we came was rechargeable batteries, but even those weren't that great. I remember as a kid my family tried to be good and use them because they were supposed to be better for the environment and we even had one of those big recharging stations so we could do lots of batteries at once, but even if you took the battery straight out of the charger and put them into whatever toy you were using at the time it felt like the battery was always ready to die at any second. Plus, in a rather ironic twist, if you leave batteries on the charging station for too long it actually starts to harm them and eventually they can't hold a charge at all. [Sidebar: I actually think the memories of just how much a pain in the ass batteries can be is one of the main reasons the electric car hasn't caught on. Sure most of them look awful, cost more than a regular car and have no acceleration, but I feel like more people would be willing to deal with that if they at least came with a solid amount of range. Instead the batteries will only allow you to drive a few hundred miles (if you are lucky) and then take forever to recharge. For every hour of driving you have to spend three charging the batteries back up and that is if you can even find a charging station. You can't be terrible and high-maintenance. It all adds up to gas-powered cars just being easier.] So, what needs to happen is we need to come up with something better than batteries but you'd have to think if it was that easy to come up with someone would have done it by now.

Of course the cell phone companies know this, which is why buying a new battery for your current phone actually costs more than upgrading to a new phone would. They want you to get the new phone which runs all the fancy new applications because it means you have to upgrade your service plan and that is where they make their money (it's like printer companies - they will happily give you a free printer because they are then going to charge an arm and leg for ink cartridges). If you don't believe me just try to order a new phone battery. The clerk will look at you like you are crazy while trying to sell you on all the new technology they have for sale (and the same goes for iPods). Now, since I know all this going in I would be fine accepting it because it is not like am going to run out and start my own cellphone company, only I have this sinking feeling that battery life is getting worse which is not cool. It is one thing to sell me something which is going to be obsolete in a couple of years because that still leaves the decision about upgrading to me, it is entirely another to design something which is going to fail and force me to buy a newer version of your product within a couple of years. It is the epitome of shady business practices and if I had any proof I would call the Better Business Bureau to complain. Well, if I had proof and a battery which would allow me to have a phone call lasting more than 4 minutes.

Failing Never Felt So Good

A few days ago I was talking about how spring had sprung in the area and even though I do not like high temperatures I was very quick to pat myself on the back since I didn't run to turn on the air conditioning just because it had gotten slightly hot, slightly quickly. Well, my self-control apparently only applies to days in the high 70s and as today was going to be near 90 I seriously contemplated turning on the A/C. Still, I wanted to hold off for as long as I could because if my air conditioning was humming before the calendar flipped to June it was a clear signal that this was going to be a really long summer. (On top of that it can be kind of a pain to install the window units in the rooms without any A/C vents. It really is the kind of project you should do well before you need it to be done, but that only happens when you are smart enough to think it through. Ironically, getting very hot while carrying the units up the stairs is enough to sway you into turning the A/C on.) So, I had decided that I was going to see if I could hold out for the day and not crank up the air conditioning unless things got unbearable. Just using fans to move the air I was fine as the day started and as I left my house to do errands I was convinced I would make it because thanks to a breeze I hadn't even had to turn it on in my car. I had convinced myself the 91 degree my dashboard was telling me wasn't very hot at all. Everything was going really well, right up until I went into a store whose manager didn't possess my level of self-control.

I have no idea why I do these kind of silly self-challenges, but I do them all the time. The majority of them are so stupid and inconsequential I don't even want to admit to anyone else they are even taking place, but some I end up taking far more seriously and eventually I feel like it would be a huge failure to stop them (which is why I've been posting on this blog for 1,600+ days in a row). The only comfort I can take is from the knowledge that I am far from the only human who does this. I mean, history is literally filled with people who did things for no real good reason and many of the challenges which started as nothing more than a quest for personal glory have turned out great for all of us. Think about it - as far as I know no one order Christopher Columbus to sail across the ocean to find a shorter route to India, he just wanted to do it probably to test himself, which is why he had such a hard time convincing people to give him ships and money. (It should be pointed out he also failed but no one would have known that part if he hadn't been so public with his intentions. Plus, people are pretty quick to forgive you when you accidentally land on a country no one in your land knew existed.) I know my goal of sweating through this mini heatwave is not on the same level, but the principle is the same.

Anyway, because I do these all the time I have found that the key to these kinds of little tests of self-control is to not press your luck and tempt yourself because that is when resolve fails. If you are trying to diet don't tell yourself you will eat just one scoop of ice cream because we both know that as soon as it hits your lips you will be going back for a second and third scoop. The better recipe for success is to avoid it completely and not remind yourself what you are missing, so out of sight and out of mind is the better course of action. This meant that if I wanted to convince myself it wasn't hot enough for air conditioning I needed to stay out of places where it was on. In that regards a store was probably a bad idea, because those guys turn on their A/C at the drop of a hat and the store I was in had to be run by polar bears, because it was downright frosty... and it felt great. As I walked in I immediately felt refreshed by the cooler temperatures and found myself stopping to look at things for much longer than I probably needed to because I was in no hurry to walk back out. It was at that moment I realized just how stupid I was for depriving myself of perfectly good air conditioning for no reason. That first step back into the heat was like someone had turned their hair dryer on in my face and I knew that as soon as I got back home the windows were being closed and the A/C was coming on.

As my house quickly started to cool down I felt much better and actually got a lot more done in the afternoon than I had in the morning because I wasn't pausing every few seconds to think about how hot I was feeling or debate whether leaving the fan stationary or allowing it to oscillate back and forth was going to give me an extra degree of cold. Still, I felt a somewhat bad about how my little self-challenge hadn't even survived 10 hours. But then I reminded myself the wonderful thing about most self-challenges - you're the only one who knows you failed (well, in this case you guys also know, but that is because I have little-to-no self control about sharing most aspects of my life). But, it is not like by caving and turning on the A/C some charity will no longer get the money it needs to put a new roof on the orphanage or anything quite so important. In fact, the only way this is an issue is if I allow it become a precedent, which I do not want. I mean, it is one thing to fail in what is essentially an inconsequential challenge, it is another issue entirely when I start quickly allowing myself to opt out of the things which matter. I certainly wouldn't want that to happen in the future... but I have to admit that is a problem for another time and right now I am too cool to care.

Candied Currency

As near as I can tell, the only reason treasury departments exist in government is to come up with new ways to fight off counterfeiters. That is why the US rolls out new details on the $20 bill just about every year and even though it is slightly annoying to have new money every few months because 2% of your brain becomes convinced no stores will take your old money, you never hear about massive amounts of fake money being passed around, so I guess it is working. The only issue to me is that the bills are starting to look slightly silly. Perhaps it is just too many instances of looking at Monopoly, but I simply can't take brightly-colored money seriously (which is why I am not a good International traveler). I was willing to chalk it up to the fact that there is only so much you can do with paper money, but now I have learned that when it comes to money paper is so last century. Last November, Canada passed a bill introducing polymer-based currency, which has been used in Australia since the late 90s. On the surface it makes a lot of sense because by having money which is essentially laminated, the currency can last longer in circulation and it makes it harder for criminals to copy it. Canada started rolling out $100 bills last year, then introduced the $50 version at the start of 2013 and the $20 note in March. For the most part people seem to be happy with the new currency, but like all new things it has taken some getting used to.

The money has started to finally become part of common circulation, and as more people handled it more people started to notice two things about it. The first is that the money tends to become sticky when it gets really hot and has even melted in a couple of extreme situations. That is not a good problem to have, but we are talking about Canada here, so enough hot days to melt money can't be too common on a problem. The other issue is not nearly as serious but much more fun and that is belief among many citizens that the $100 bills smell like maple syrup. Now, immediately some people have begun to dismiss this notion saying the money does give off an order but it is not syrup and it is only because Canadians love their syrup that they made that sensory connection. Personally I would think the much more logical answer is if the polymer has a slightly sticky quality to it (which gets worse when the money is warm) than it stands to reason the money would start to take on the smell of whatever food it most comes into contract with. Anyone who has ever had pancakes for breakfast knows how easy it can be to get a little extra syrup on your fingers and sticky is worse when it connects with extra sticky, so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there really is some syrup residue on the bills. The only reason people have noticed this the most regarding the $100 is that it has been in circulation the longest. I bet if you waited a few more months people would be making the same claims about the Canadian $50 and $20 bills. (I guess these are the perils of a syrup-based economy.) I guess this leaves us with just one question: does this syrup-smelling money mean Canadians should adjust the phrase to remind their kids that in addition to not growing on trees money doesn't grow in them either, despite what their nose tells them?

I can't tell if I love or loathe the idea of money which smells like different things. I mean, it could be really funny if we started to tie certain denominations in with certain smells. (Obviously the higher the value the better it smells.) With all the bad smells out in the world wouldn't it be nice if every time you opened up your wallet you got a little break from all of that? I mean, we could set it up so that the $20 would smell like fresh bread and the $10 would smell like Thanksgiving dinner. As an added bonus it would make people more hungry and they would spend more money on food, strengthening the economy. Of course, I realize how flawed this plan in. First off, for every 10 people who would like the smells we picked there would be 1 person who didn't like the decision because they don't eat fried food and another person who didn't like it just because the government shouldn't decide how our money smells. More importantly it would get dangerous if we started to associate smells with how much money a person has. Right now there could be a man in Toronto getting mugged because he walked passed a group of thieves giving off a strong odor of maple syrup and they took this to mean he had a large wad of $100 bills on him when the reality is he just came from a Waffle House.

Now, we've all painted something and noticed it came with a funky smell that went away eventually, so I'm sure it will only take a couple of months of the money being passed around before the polymer thins, the odor wears off and everyone goes back to having normal money which doesn't smell like breakfast. And I think this is for the best because I don't want to be able to smell what the last person who touched my money had for lunch. Taking it another step I just know smelly money would cause me to think about what else they may have touched and while I don't consider myself to be a germaphobe, I certainly don't want to sit around and think about all the various people who have touched my money or the possible levels of their hygienic standards. This is one of those situations where out of mind is the best thing for all involved. That is the main reason why I don't see polymer money becoming too popular too quickly - the idea that if it is a hot enough day the money could have some DNA on it from the last person who touched it is a little too much for me to think about. (Then again, the fact that I am pretty much the only person I know that is my age and still prefers to pay for things with cash is probably the biggest reason it won't matter what money looks like for much longer.) With 300 million people in this country there is no telling what money comes into contact with and it is probably better if we don't know. After all, they say most American money has cocaine residue on it and that is without the polymer coating. Though if I had a vote I for one would much rather have my money tainted with syrup than drugs.

Their Wires Are Crossed

If you read this blog during the Christmas season you probably know that one of my favorite holiday decorations is when I wrap the two pine trees at the back of my yard in Christmas lights. I just really like the way the solitary lit-up trees look against the rest of the woods, especially when there is a little snow on the ground to cover the extension cord which makes it look like the lights came out of nowhere. The only thing I don't like is that the trees get a little taller ever year (as trees tend to do), which has meant leaving the lights on them all year round rather than breaking out the ladder every fall. It never fails that a couple lights fall off during the winter months and I have to spend some time finding and replacing the missing bulbs, but this year I hoped to put a stop to that by upgrading to these new, larger LED lights which are supposed to be able to take a little more abuse and keep going even if lights are missing. It certainly looked better when the lights went on, but by the end of the Christmas season half the trees' lights weren't working due to what I assumed were blown fuses. Considering the trees were in a part of the yard I never need to go to and spent most of February under a couple feet of snow I never got around to checking if it was just a fuse issue or something more serious. I just assumed I would find out when I tried to turn the lights back on this coming holiday season, though I think I may have gotten my answer a few months early.

You may be wondering why I am talking about this now and I will get to that in a second. But first you need to know this year I decided to let my lawn grow a little more to get the roots a little deeper in the hopes they would finally fill in some of the patches where grass simply refuses to grow. As such I hadn't been mowing my lawn as much this spring - only getting out there once so far this year. But with temperatures expected to be in the 90s this weekend, I thought I should get out there today and mow before the heat arrived and the lawn got out of hand. When I last mowed it a couple weeks ago I noticed a few of the LED bulbs down by the base of the tree. I assumed the snow had ripped them off the tree during the winter and thought I would just have to deal with them later. Fast forward to today and I noticed a couple more bulbs, which would be annoying in and of itself, only these new bulbs are actually nowhere near the tree. They were off in a totally different corner of the yard and a couple of them were half under the ground. I guess it is possible that I would miss one of them the first time I mowed due to the grass being so long, but the chances of missing three? That has made me think the reason all these bulbs are falling off the strand is the same thing people blame all their yard troubles on - squirrels.

If you want to know the biggest difference between people who live in the city versus people who live in the suburbs you simply have to ask their opinions on squirrels. People who live in the city don't actually have any opinions on squirrels because they rarely see them and when they do it is as the squirrels run from sidewalk to sidewalk, during which times the pedestrians are rooting for the squirrels to make it through traffic like Frogger. They think they a cute and harmless creatures. Meanwhile, people who live in the suburbs know all about squirrels and their opinions are quite different. Suburbanites hate squirrels because we know them to be what they truly are - rats with fluffy tails and better PR. It goes beyond the usual annoyances of knocking down bird feeders, going through trash cans or snacking on food from people's gardens just as the food is getting ripe. I've actually heard of squirrels which have dug their way into people's attics and then started chewing on the electrical wires. That can cause a fire, which means squirrels are actually arsonists and attempted murderers. It is because of their affinity for chewing on wires that I think these squirrels are eating away at the Christmas lights and then taking them into the yard to bury them because the idiots think they are giant brightly-colored acorns. Shouldn't they have caught on after the first couple?

I have to say this betrayal stings quite a bit because normally I am on the squirrels' side. Sure, I yell at them to get off the bird feeder and I've moved it a few times to try and get it out of their jumping range, but when they somehow find a way to still make it I've been known to allow them to hang out for a few seconds and help themselves because I am so impressed at their determination. I could have just as easily gotten one of those bird feeders which is supposed to act as a squirrel deterrent but I haven't. You would think they would recognize that I am paying them a courtesy and they could leave my lights alone in return, but no. What I think I am going to have to do is actually start collecting all these fallen bulbs in a box and start to reattach them when it is time to light the tree again. Also, I will have to step very carefully every time I mow the lawn or who knows how many the lawnmower may shred? On one hand I am interested in seeing how many bulbs the squirrels can take down over the next couple of months, but I can only hope the stupid rodents haven't eaten far enough into the wire to ruin the entire string. I would hate to have to go out and buy an entirely new set of Christmas lights for the second year in a row, especially since I think the chances I could get the squirrels to chip in are extremely low. I guess you can add cheap to their list of character flaws.

Calendar Confusion

First of all, Happy Memorial Day. I have often said Memorial Day is pretty close to the perfect holiday because for most people it means a day off from work but doesn't come with many other traditions or obligations demanding your time like several holidays do. You can pretty much do whatever you want, which in my opinion is what makes something a real holiday. Plus, unlike Labor Day which signifies the end of summer, Memorial day is the unofficial start to the season so it is full of people getting out of the house for the first time in months and full of hope for a long stretch of good weather. At least, that is what would have happened this weekend if the weather would have cooperated. Unfortunately the last few days were rainy and cold, with temperatures only getting up into the 50s after a couple of really beautiful weeks. It certainly felt a lot more like the middle of November than the last week of May. Because of the crappy weather the last few days I heard a lot of people commenting that this certainly didn't feel like Memorial Day weekend. I can't really disagree with them, but it just made me think about how often people would happily change the calendar based on how they feel on that day.

I'm pretty sure 90% of the population has said the following phrase at least once in their lives: "Well, it certainly doesn't feel like a ____" and then filled in the blank with whatever weekday it was but shouldn't have been in their minds. And I totally get that. The days of the week can start to take on a certain feel to them and when they feel even slightly off it can really throw you for a loop. (Especially when you find yourself at a point in your life where your weeks have fallen into a routine because it doesn't take much to throw that rhythm off.) The problem is that this can be hard to explain to other people because no day is going to feel the same way to two different people and there is nothing harder than trying to explain to a person how Wednesday feels to you. The only good part about this kind of confusion is that no one can make fun of you for it because they probably did it themselves recently. I include myself in that because just yesterday I was saying that it certainly didn't feel like a Sunday since the next day was a holiday. Also I am quite familiar with how it unpleasant it feels when you spend half the day thinking it is Friday only to remember that it is actually Thursday and there is still another day before the weekend about an hour before you sign off work for the day. But it is not like it is any better when you mess up weekend days, because then all your sports viewing is off. Given all the examples I can come up with, it is pretty clear this happens to me a lot.

Of course, it is pretty convenient that people only have this problem about Thursday-Sunday. You certainly don't hear people commenting that a Tuesday feels like a Wednesday very often because honestly what is the difference? The days could be reversed on the calendar and very few people would notice. Heck, they could be given totally different names and the only thing which would really change would be that TGIFs would have to come up with a new name for their restaurant. [Sidebar: If you think about it, it is actually pretty amazing how much of the planet has decided to go along with the current calendar system. Sure, there are a few cultures that won't agree on the year, but everyone has pretty much fallen into line on days of the week. If you want to get something shipped internationally and order it on Friday they will still tell you it will probably arrive on Tuesday, regardless of the country. Considering all the other things we don't agree on such as currency and units of measurement, I guess I just find it funny that 99% of us agreed to divide the calendar up in the same way.] The point is, even though there are only 7 days to keep track of, it is pretty easy to mess up the order.

I feel like the biggest reason for this is that people are getting too used to looking ahead to what is coming next rather than enjoying the day at hand. I mean, the only reason yesterday felt like Saturday rather than Sunday was that most people had today off from work, which means they are letting how they think about today be impacted by tomorrow, which is rather stupid. They should have been enjoying the day off rather than making plans for the extra day off (besides, isn't that what you do when you are at work?). I know looking forward to something which is quickly approaching (which can happen even if the coming event is something you are dreading and actually tends to happen more when that is the case) is a perfectly normal thing. Still, the old saying is that if you watch the horizon you miss the scenery in front of you, so maybe we should all stop worrying about what we are going to do with the day we think it is and focus on making the most out of the day it actually is. If nothing else, it will lead to people being a lot more accurate when they try to make plans for specific dates. Which is good because if you are going to forsake today for something which is happening tomorrow, you'd better hope you mean tomorrow and not next week.

A Summit At The Summit

If you are looking for a news story to make you feel lazy, don't look any further than the report which came out on Wednesday of the 80 year-old Japanese man who broke the world record as the oldest person to climb Mount Everest. As if that wasn't bad enough, the now-81-year-old Nepalese man who used to hold the record plans to climb to the summit in the next few weeks and take his record back. Any way you want to look at this it is an impressive feat which shows you are really only as old as you allow yourself to feel. But, that being said it feels like every day you hear of people climbing Mount Everest and I can't help but wonder if at some point climbing to the highest peak on the planet will stop being so impressive. Between advances in climbing equipment, safety gear and cold-weather clothing, the trip simply doesn't contain the danger it once did. I'm not saying it is easy but this is the third time the new record holder had reach the top, having previously done so when he was 70 and 75 years old. A few years ago I read a story which said the biggest problem with climbing Mount Everest now is that so many people are doing it and leaving their crap behind that the mountain had started to take on the look of a garbage heap more than the ultimate goal of every mountain climber. When you think about it like that ascending to the peak doesn't sounds nearly as daunting.

Look, there is no shame in a once-revered feat become fairly common - it is just part of society advancing. If humans weren't ingrained with the drive to do some once-impossible feat faster than the person before them we should still be driving Model T's with a top speed of 20 mph and flights would have to take place 100 feet at a time. Making the impossible available to everyone is kind of what we do. In fact, we should be impressed that we have come this far. But because we have gotten to this point perhaps we can scale back the praise for every person who makes it to the summit of the Everest since it is starting to feel as though we are about 10 years away from someone installing a cable car to get you to the top in an hour. The reality is that at some point climbing Everest will be like bragging that you hike any old mountain - it's good that you got some exercise but don't expect everyone to fall all over you. I used to think that climbing Everest was an impossible task for me to even dream about doing, but now that I know octogenarians are doing it once a week not only do I think it is possible I don't even know if I have to start training for my first attempt for another 20 years. Isn't progress a wonderful thing?

Weekly Sporties

-Last week I told you about the war of words between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia regarding whether or not Woods intentionally tried to break Garcia's concentration by pulling a club during his swing. Up until a few days ago everyone was enjoying the verbal spat and had no inclination to put a stop to it. However, early this week the amusing back-and-forth took an unfunny turn when Garcia invoked the memory of Fuzzy Zoeller by replying to a question of whether or not he and Tiger would sit down and hash this out by responding that he would have Woods over for dinner and the two would have fried chicken every night. Suddenly the tension between the two felt as if it switched from playful to kind of racist. To his credit Garcia appeared to realize the error of his words immediately and apologized the next day (the head of the European Tour did Garcia no favors by saying Sergio couldn't be racist because he had several "colored" friends). And for a guy who clearly has no love for Garcia, Woods actually helped him out by immediately releasing a statement saying that while he was offended by the comments he doesn't think Garcia meant to be racist and he hopes this would be the end of it. Considering he could have allowed Garcia to twist in the wind for a few days it was a classy gesture by Woods, who find himself on the high road without doing a thing. And that is the thing about tussling with a guy such as Tiger Woods because people seem to forget that there is no way to win. Yes, for everyone who loves Woods there are just as many who wish to see him fail and when you have that many people behind you it is very easy to get wrapped up in the moment and think you can get away with saying whatever you wish. But eventually you're going to cross that line and public opinion is going to turn on you. It is the same thing that happened to Steve Williams after Tiger fired him, when everyone was on Williams' side until he started talking about an Adam Scott win like he was the one swinging the clubs. Seeing it happen again, but this time to Sergio I can only assume the phrase "quit while you're ahead" doesn't translate to Spanish.

-This was actually not a great week for race relations over in Europe. After a season filled with several incidents of racism by spectators and players alike, the other day UEFA soccer passed several new rules regarding racial sensitivity. For example, any player or coach who engages in racial taunting will now be banned a minimum of 10 games. Additionally, referees have been given the power to stop any match if they feel the crowd is getting out of hand and the league will punish the fans by closing part of the stadium for the next game following a first offense with the right to force the teams to play in a totally empty stadium if there is a second incident. All of these are fine measures, but they raise a very simple question: it's 2013, so why are they are just getting to this now? You have been hearing stories of soccer hooligans in Europe throwing bananas at black players or showing up in black face for years, so you would have thought this would have been address long before now. Obviously, I don't want to paint every soccer fan as a racist because I am sure that the reality is this is just a few assholes who have found a way to get the most attention (I come from a city which does not have the best reputation for race relations and can't seem to shake it, which is why I know how frustrating getting grouped in with people like that can be). So I am not blaming the 98% of respectful fans for these rules being necessary, but I do think the fact that UEFA didn't have these items on books after the first incidents were reported shows a real lack of awareness. The majority of these rules are only going to apply to the most extreme of hooligans but they should have already been in place for the worst-case scenario. Not to mention had they been in place before now they may have prevented a few of the drunks from going along with the crowd and making things worse. But thanks to letting this behavior go on for so long I'm left wondering if UEFA is too late to be effective. I would love it if these stiffer penalties never have to be implemented, but it would be worse if they had to be used and didn't work.

-As much as I love the sport of football, the NFL is starting to get on my nerves more and more. One of the things the league does which annoys me the most is when they turn things which used to be a simple press release into a full-blown event. For example, they used to just released the schedule whenever it was done. Now they monopolize ESPN for 3 hours with a "Schedule Release Special." Another made-up event is naming the sites for future Super Bowls. It used to be a conference call with the winning city and now they feel the need to show the whole decision process on television, as if we care. Being from New England I know the Super Bowl will never be played here (barring a team getting a new stadium the game tends to float between 6 locations - Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Miami, Arizona and New Orleans), so I only ever think about where that year's Super Bowl is going to played and even then I don't start worrying about it until I know the Patriots are in the playoffs. So, when the NFL wanted to announce the site of Super Bowl L and LI (that would be 50 and 51) this week I wasn't very interested because I figured it would be one of the usual suspects. And I was right because Super Bowl 50 is going to be the 49ers new stadium in Santa Clara and then #51 will be in Houston. What I found kind of disturbing were the rumblings that the reason Miami didn't get either game was basically to flip off the lawmakers of Miami because they recently rejected a bill in which the city would pay hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the Dolphins' stadium. First off all, I am opposed to any city paying for a privately-owned team to get a new stadium, especially since all the figures seem to indicate the taxpayers never make their money back. Secondly, the citizens of Miami just got screwed by the Marlins so their reluctance to finance another round of stadium upgrades is totally understandable. But mostly I see the fact that the NFL is using the Super Bowl as a weapon to extort these cities to be an enormously dickish move. I hate the idea that they are becoming like FIFA, which sells the World Cup to the highest bidder and denies countries the right to hold qualifying matches unless they bribe the right people. The only good news is that a lot of soccer matches are held in half-empty football stadiums, so the NFL has an opportunity to see just what they run the risk of becoming. Hopefully it will scare them straight.

-As soon as the New Orleans Hornets announced that they wanted to change their name to something which better represented the area, people in Charlotte started making noise about getting their old mascot back. You see, the Hornets used to play in Charlotte before moving to New Orleans and even though the team left them years ago and were replaced with an expansion team, the NBA fans in the area still have an affection for the nickname. Since the new Bobcats moniker has never quite taken off in the community, it was no surprise this week when it was announced that the Charlotte franchise had listened to fans request and begun taking the necessary steps to claim the nickname of the Hornets. It probably won't happen this season but by the start of the 2014 season, everyone expects to see the Hornets back in Charlotte. Now, I am happy that the city of Charlotte is getting its nickname back because I always thought they were supportive of the team, just not the ownership. Plus, the Bobcats were an incredible self-serving name approved by former owner Bob Johnson, so a new nickname would be an appropriate way to totally scrub him from their past (no word on a color change, but getting rid of the bright orange would be a good idea while they are at it). However, call them whatever you wish, it doesn't change the fact that the team is really bad. If management thinks changing the name will magically cure all their attendance issues they are in for a rude awakening. They have only made the playoffs once in their existence and owner Michael Jordan isn't coming down to put on a uniform any time soon. While I have no doubt Charlotte will see an initial boom in merchandise sales, winning is the ultimate cure all. I don't care how ugly a team's uniform is or how bad the nickname may be, people will proudly associate with any team that wins. If you don't believe me just look at a few of the throwbacks the NFL rolls out every year - most of those should have stayed in the vault, but if the team wins a couple games while wearing them it quickly becomes the best-selling jersey in the league. Winning makes everyone pretty.

-Whenever the job of easiest job in sports comes up I can never understand why head coach of USA men's basketball is never on the list. Yes, I concede that it is an all-or-nothing proposition and if you lose a single game it is seen as an abomination so it can be a bit of a high-risk scenario, but whether or not the team succeeds has nothing to do with actual coaching and everything to do with how the team is constructed. As long as you have the right personalities and don't bring any players who are going to complain about minutes it feels like I could get this team to at least the medal round. That is why I was hardly surprised to hear that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is planning to return and coach in the Olympics for a third time after initially resigning from the job in February. It really is a win for everyone involved. First off, the players seem to love him, which is the only thing which matters. LeBron James has already said he will return for the 2016 games and if Kobe Bryant is still playing you could probably pencil him in as well. But it is also a great deal for Duke because it allows Coach K to scratch his itch of coaching in the pros without actually leaving. College coaches always want to know what it would be like to coach at the highest level and they walk away from good jobs to find out, often with disastrous results. The Olympic team gives Krzyzewski the chance to see what it is like, convince himself that it would be this easy even if he wasn't coaching what is essentially an all-star team and then return to campus. Duke keeps it's Hall of Fame coach and all the pro players raving about the great time they had working with him over the summer is probably the greatest recruiting tool Coach K has at his disposal. I'm sure it takes a lot of his free time, but Krzyzewski doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who has a lot of hobbies anyway. There is literally no downside for him, as long as he doesn't do anything as silly as lose a game so, just like his job at Duke, I don't see Coach K leaving until they force him out.

-Speaking of coaching, I always wonder how much actual moment-to-moment management a hockey coach does during a game. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying I could do their job and I want to make it clear I am sure they do something, but I am just not sure how much control they have during game action. I mean, every goal scored looks as though it happened completely by accident, so while I assume they are the ones controlling things such as who plays on which line and I am simply curious as to how much influence hockey coaches have once the game starts regarding things such as calling plays. I know they aren't football coaches who decide what happens at every snap, but do their job requirements swing the other way, making them more like a baseball manager who sets the lineup and then act as a spectator unless a specific situation comes up later in the game? All I know is that if hockey coaches want us to think their job is very hard they need to talk to their owners and stop them from hiring guys without much head coaching experience to take over at the highest level, as happened this week when the Colorado Avalanche hired former goalie Patrick Roy to be their new head coach. Admittedly Roy has been coaching for a while, but he has never made it above the Canadian Junior Leagues. Since it is Canada I assume those leagues are competitive and taken quite seriously, but I think even Roy would tell you that he is making quite a leap from there to the NHL. On top of that the track record for great players becoming great coaches is not particularly strong as they can never seem to understand why every player can't make the same miraculous plays they did every single time. When NHL coaches routinely get fired even though they make the playoffs every year, I just wonder how long this experiment is going to last. The only good news for a guy like Patrick Roy is that if he is getting criticized too much he can always stick his championship rings in his ears to drown out the noise.

-Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III is getting married later this summer. Like any couple about to tie the knot Griffin and his fiancee registered for their wedding gifts at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Everything was totally normal until the Washington Post wrote a story about it the other day because shortly after the story ran some intrepid Redskin fans found the registry online and started buying Griffin items from the list. Before too long they had bought the happy couple every item they had asked for. Now some people around the sports world are calling on Griffin to return the items, saying he makes enough money that he should be able to buy his own damn toaster. While I can see their point and don't think Griffin's stance of "rich people can't get gifts?" was the correct response, I actually don't have a problem with Griffin accepting this generous act. First off, he is a football player which means his first contract isn't actually for that much money. Even his endorsement deal with Adidas probably isn't worth as much as you think it would be (the people who think Griffin shouldn't be asking for gifts would probably be the first people to wonder where all his money went if Griffin declared bankruptcy later in life). But, the main reason I think it is fine is that it is not as though Griffin went out and asked people to send him these gifts. The Washington Post is the one who brought the registry to people's attention and the fans took it from there. As long as Griffin takes the time to send them thank you notes I think everyone comes out a winner. Let's be honest with each other - the chance to get something personally signed by RGIII is why these fans bought him a gift in the first place, so they are getting just as much out of this as Robert and his fiancee are. Ironically, the only real losers in this situation are the people who are actually going to attend the wedding, because now what are they supposed to get the Griffins for a gift? I hear candlesticks always make a lovely gift.

Dial 913

As much as I enjoy keeping up with what is making headlines on the national news on a daily basis, some of the most entertaining news stories are the ones I find in the small, local papers. Not only is it good to get the local perspective every once in a while, it always amuses me to read the local headlines and discover what people in my area find important. Sadly, what I usually find out is that a lot of people in the towns around me are kind of crazy. For example, last week one woman wrote a heartfelt editorial about how important it was that schools continued calling the two weeks students were given as vacation for Christmas and New Year's "Christmas vacation" rather than "Winter Break." Not only is that about the one millionth issue people should be worried about, I would also point out that it is almost June which means this doesn't need to be discussed until September at the earliest. Beyond that it appears that the main thing people want is quiet because the local police blotter is filled with noise complaints. It has been happening so frequently in Dedham that the town recently went back to look at its laws on the matter and took measures to reinforce them, especially for repeat offenders. Was this really the most pressing issue facing the town?

I guess part of the reason I don't understand why you would need to bring this matter before the town is that I have never called the police due to my neighbors being excessively loud. Don't get me wrong - I've had neighbors who have thrown parties and been loud much later than they should have been if they were the least bit considerate. However, as much as I hated them in that moment I also understood they would quiet down soon enough because it is not like they are member of the Rolling Stones - they would have to go to bed eventually, so why make it an issue? Also, it is not like they do this kind of thing all the time so why get into it with them unless it starts becoming habitual? On top of that I figure that while I am no a party animal there may come a day when I have people over and we may suddenly find ourselves being louder than we intended and by not calling the cops to complain about them they would paid me the same courtesy when the roles are reversed. (But, oh, if they ever called the cops on me for noise the amount of crap I would rain down on them in return would be incredible.) That's the thing about living in polite society - there is an unspoken social contract with the people who live around you, but if that contract is ever broken all hell breaks loose.

Another reason that I would never call the cops with a noise complaint is that I have been at parties when the cops showed up to tell us to keep the noise down and saw the look on their faces. Trust me, they didn't want to be the ones answering this call and it sure sounded like they resented the people who called in the noise violation a lot more than the people who were actually making the noise. Really, who can blame them in that moment? Every little kid who grows up dreaming of becoming a cop does so while imagining taking down bad guys and saving the town, not ruining everyone's good time over something which isn't even a major law. (Anything which can be settled by saying, "Hey, could you guys keep it down?" can't really be a crime.) I know every job has its tedious moments, but there could be real crime going on at that moment and they would much rather being off doing that. Look, I probably love sleep more than the average human and when someone is preventing me from either going to bed or staying asleep I completely understand wanting to make them shut up. But that does not mean you need to get law enforcement involved because I'm pretty sure if you went to your neighbors and asked them to be quiet they would immediately tone it down. It's only after they ignore your polite request that I feel like you should involve the authorities, but even then it feels like there should be something you could do short of calling the cops. They have much better things to be doing and asking them to tell your neighbors to be quiet because you are too afraid to do so on your own is akin to tattling.

That is why I think there should be a level of authorities slightly below the police whose only reason for existing is to deal with the minor stuff. I understand that police have all that training so they are able to deal with all kinds of situations, but at some point these calls must feel like a waste of their skills. That is why we should make the police department more specialized. I mean, we already have something like this idea in place with meter maids who have some power, but only enough to deal with parking issues and then on the other end of the scale we have the elite guys in SWAT units who are only called when things get really out of hand. A level sort of between meter maids and cops to deal with noise complaints or other crimes such as loitering and working construction details would be good for everyone, provided we don't actually give them guns because there is actually nothing with than a person with a small amount of power but a large amount of firearms. That would free up cops to work on the more important issues facing the town without having to drop what they are doing because someone thinks their neighbors are laughing just a little too loudly at 11 PM on a Saturday night. The good news for the people who call to complain about noise is that under my new system cops are more focused and should be more efficient. And since the people who call to complain about noise are likely to also write editorials to the local paper it works out for them as well because, while I don't want to promise anything, maybe once they get crime rates down we can finally circle back to that whole "what should we call our vacation" issue because I know worrying about that has been keeping some people up all night more than loud music ever would.

Do I Need To Separate You Two?

Despite thinking of myself as quite tech-savvy I admit that there are still times in which I am dumbfounded by just how awesome computers can be. I'm not even taking about those moments when they do incredible and complex actions which took a team of engineers and a platoon of programmers to even imagine and would have caused a person born in the 1800's head to explode - no, I'm continually impressed when they do relatively simple tasks, even though I shouldn't be. I think the worst simple thing I am always floored by is when computers talk to one another without being commanded to. I mean, the internet has been around since I was a teen, which means this should be old hat to me. However, I can't help but be impressed when computers on the same network run the same software without having to download it twice. I'll give you an example - a couple of months ago I got a new laptop. I was planning to upload all my old bookmarks and such to it, but I was not looking forward to the process. (Anyone who owned a phone from the late 90s knows how much a pain it can be to transfer information one contact at a time.) So you can imagine how impressed I was when I downloaded Google Chrome, signed in and all my information had transferred over to the new computer without having to tell it to do that. I know Google probably told me they were going to do that and just hid it within all the legal jargon, but it was still a pleasant surprise when it worked.

It is because I am still so impressed that machines will do this without anyone having to tell it to so that I feel slightly bad that I am about to complain about it, but here we go anyway. The problem, like all things, boils down to too much of a good thing. Now that my laptop and my desktop have linked up they have turned in to those two kids from high school who sat in the back row and just talked to each other about everything all day long, which I do not want. Suddenly I can't make an edit on one computer's settings without it showing up on the other's which is not good because I would like them to have a few differences since they are not being used for the same stuff. You see, I still use my desktop as my primary work computer because I recognize that I just don't get as much work done when I am using my laptop. Since the laptop is so much newer and faster than my desktop it can run multiple programs at the same time. I know that sounds like a good thing but after years of having my attention span beaten down by the internet, being able to have 5 windows open to check sports scores, watch that video of the woman in Oklahoma finding her dog for the 5th time while simultaneously finding out what everyone is talking about on Twitter just doesn't help my productivity. In some ways my older desktop which only allows me to run one program at a time (and even then gives me ample time to think about it while that program loads) is the best way to be productive.

On top of that I would like to keep my laptop relatively crap-free and able to open programs in less time than it takes me to go downstairs for a sandwich and unfortunately some of the files I work with on my desktop are large. The last thing I want it to start filling up valuable memory space for duplicate files. I have no doubt I will fill my laptop with pictures and music files which will slow its performance before too long because that is just what computers do, but no need to make that happen any faster than it normally would. Still, I can't deny having duplicates of files is actually preferable to the alternative, which is what I experienced today when I noticed a file on my laptop which I only need on the desktop, deleted it from my laptop and when I went back to work on it later discovered it was now missing from both locations. I had visions of having to start the entire thing over from scratch and immediately began cursing everyone who had ever worked on completing this system. Fortunately, I found the file had just moved to the recycling bin and not been permanently deleted from existence, otherwise I would have thrown both computer out the window, allowing them to share one last experience together.

This all goes back to that newest of first-world problems, which is that nothing is more frustrating than a computer which doesn't do everything you want it to do, exactly as you want it to be done the first time. Basically they have an idea of what I expect from them but they haven't quite figured out all my preferences just yet. It's a little reminiscent of the early days of TiVo when you would ask it to record "Blazing Saddles" and come home to find your library full of every western which aired that day. I essentially need these computer to learn not to blindly follow an order I gave one time. What needs to happen now is I have to figure out how I can pick which programs the two systems pass between one another. It'll be more of a pain if I no longer sync them up and have to perform some tasks twice, but maybe it is for the best. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it probably would be better if my computers at least checked with me before they both started downloading a program I only need on one of them. If I don't nip it in the bud now than there is no telling what files they will decide I "need" to have and I don't think copyright lawyers have begun accepting the, "my computer illegally downloaded all that music on its own" defense.

Watch The Birdie

Even though I don't take a lot of pictures myself, I usually enjoy looking at other people's photos. (Note that I said usually. Photo albums are a window into what people find important enough to capture for eternity and sometimes that window should have remained closed.) And while I really love some of the high-resolution pictures of natural phenomenons, considering the people I know more often the pictures are intended to make the person looking at them laugh. That is why my favorite kind of Tweets are the ones people send out with a picture and a funny caption. Now, you would think this would lead to me taking a lot of pictures on my own, but it very rarely happens. The main reason for this is quite simple - I never think to take pictures in the moment. I guess this comes from not being a Facebooker who feels the need to photograph everything, but it always seems to take me a few seconds to realize this is something I should be sharing with other people and by the time I take my phone out, hit the correct button to open the phone function (it is one of two buttons on the side and for some reason I never guess the hit the right one the first time) and gotten the settings to their correct levels the moment has passed. This sounds frustrating, but the thing is today I was reminded that even when I could take the time to set up the picture as perfectly as I could hope for I still wouldn't be in a hurry to start snapping away.

This afternoon I was walking into a store where the parking lot was very crowded. Because I couldn't get a space near the door I had to park a good ways away and had plenty of time to look at the cars lined up outside the entrance. That is why I noticed the three cars sitting out front and took it a step further by seeing that each car contained the same situation - all three cars had the windows down and a very bored-looking male sitting in the front seat, obviously waiting while the person they were with was running into the store to perform a quick task. What was funny to me is that it the first car had a young kid - probably 13 or 14. The next car had a man in his late 30s and the third car contained a man who was at least 70 years old. All I could think walking passed was that this just goes to show you that it doesn't matter how old a man gets, he is always being dragged out for errands he doesn't want to be a part of. I wanted to take a picture of the three cars and their occupants and Tweet out this very observation, but then I remembered I'm not always happy when people who I know decide to take my picture, so the last thing I would want is to have a total stranger slyly take my picture and then send it out to the internet without knowing what may be attached to it. Thus, I decided to pass.

Now, I am well aware that this uneasiness with secretly taking photographs of strangers makes me the internet exception and not the rule. If everyone shared my feelings toward this issue we wouldn't have the entertainment journalism industry, whose sole purpose in life appears to get pictures of celebrities when they don't know it and has influenced tons of people to follow in their footsteps whenever a slightly famous person is around. But, being sneaky is a skill which I simply don't possess and, really, I am fine with that. (You could make the case that even the professionals aren't that sneaky either because most people can tell when someone is trying to take their picture.) Even in this day and age of things like Instagram when people can post pictures to the internet easier than ever, being able to take pictures with a phone is still not a subtle act is actually something the cell phone makers have done which I actually like. Even if my phone is set to total silence, if I take a picture the camera will still make the tell-tale shutter click noise we all know and love, making discretely taking a picture almost impossible. Between that and the fact that camera phones are very awkward to hold when trying to be subtle, it is like the cell phone makers decided they could throw us just a couple of bones in the name of personal space. Considering how much of our personal information they already collect it does feel like the least they could do.

I know they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but every now and again just telling people what you saw would probably be the better course of action. Think about all the times you been embarrassed by pictures from your past and the unflattering story that presumably goes with them and then contemplate how a total stranger is going to feel about having one of their worst moments on the internet for all to see thanks to you. Even if they successfully contact you and make you take it down it will live forever somewhere. That is why I will leave the pictures of strangers with amusing captions for the rest of the world to create and I will stick to wordy blog posts. The only bad part about having to tell you this way is that I am doing so over the internet and because so many people have said so many absurd things while hiding behind their screen names that now the burden of proof has swung the other way and people are pretty much required to show pictures or else readers don't believe it actually happened. Frankly, you are just going to have to trust me on this one. But if you really need to see some pictures to believe a story feel free to go on the internet and do a simple Google search because there will be plenty of pictures for you to look at and, as we know, doctoring photos which appear on websites is very hard.

Slap Happy

I think one of the best things about spring is the way that no weather pattern lasts for too long. Unlike a season such as summer, when you know one 90+ degree day signals the beginning of a really long stretch of oppressive heat, one day of spring weather is almost no indication of what you should expect for tomorrow. We can go from 80 to 50 in about 6 hours, which is why I was not running for the air conditioning just because yesterday was particularly muggy and uncomfortable. The only real problem with stuffy air is that for some reason my bedroom gets almost no air flow despite having plenty of windows. I can open every window and even the doors, but I can never seem to coax the cooler air from the hallway to come in and for some reason the rest of the house is always at least 10 degrees cooler than that one room. Seeing as how I tend to run hot anyway the last thing I need is hot air making it even worse. Trying to go to bed last night I couldn't take it anymore and decided that even if I couldn't get the cooler air into my room the least I could do was try to move the hotter air around and perhaps get some relief that way. As it would turn out I should have just tried to suck and it and spend the night being uncomfortably hot.

The issue was my standing osculating fan. The first thing you should know is that it is probably older than most of my nieces and nephew and while it has served me well, it is not without it's quirks. Specifically the blades of the fan somehow slide back and forth, occasionally going far enough back that they start slapping into the safety cage which surrounds the fan and making a rather annoying "thwap, thwap, thwap" noise. It started doing this last summer, but close enough to the end of the season I could ignore it and planned to get to it later. I guess now is later enough. A machine making a noise it is not supposed to make is annoying enough, but I have found this is even worse on those occasions when the noise comes and goes, which was the case here. Few things in life are quite as frustrating as waiting for a machine to make the noise so you can start to think about how to fix it, waiting several minutes while it performs its duties exactly as the manufacturers intended it to and then as soon as you turn around it makes the noise almost out of spite. At that moment it is as though the machine is mocking you or playing a game you didn't know had started. But if you think that is bad, you should try going through this experience while trying to sleep. I would be listening intently, not hear the "thwap" for an extended period of time, be 95% asleep and then be woken up when the loud thwapping would start again. It took a long while before I gave up the other way and turned the fan off, opting for silence and humidity.

While I had no doubt some thunderstorms would roll through shortly to get rid of the excessive humidity (and I was right) I also know that this will hardly be the last time I need a fan in the next few weeks. Thus, this afternoon I set about trying to remedy this situation by acting as an amateur fan repairman. At first I was hopeful the solution was as simple as tightening all the necessary screws, but it quickly became apparent that was not the answer to my problem. It didn't matter how tight I tried to make the cage to the fan it would run quietly for a few minutes before the tell-tale "thwap" would begin again. Another solution which came to mind during a particularly frustrating stretch was to remind myself that I had a good run with this fan, cut my losses and eliminate the chance of this happening again by buying one of those Dyson fans which don't actually have an blades but still produce cold air magically. However, my house has air conditioning for the really hot days, so I only really need the fan to help with those occasional borderline days and thus the top of the line product would seem excessive. Plus, when you can run to Wal-Mart and get a brand new model of the fan which I currently use for about $20 and I know that works just fine, spending $300 for a fan seems like a rather idiotic move - I don't care how fancy it is. So, rather than doing the idiotic move in a last-ditch effort I did the redneck move and just removed the safety cage.

I know that sounds like a bad idea and at first it sounded like a bad idea to me as well. That should have been enough for me to stop because trust me, there is nothing I hate more than knowing something is stupid and doing it anyway. However, I was still able to easily talk myself into this plan by reminding myself that I have no small children, large dogs or birds which could accidentally clip this fan as they walk passed it. That means the only person I have to worry about is myself because I now have what is essentially a small boat propeller whirring away in my bedroom and it is standing right about elbow height. It is probably just a matter of time before I get up in the middle of the night, don't put on my glasses because I don't want to turn a light on (not that it would matter since the blades are dark gray), forget I took the cage off and swing my hand into the fan. In some ways the fact that I know this day is coming and I won't have anyone to blame for it but myself when it does is somehow comforting. Also, as a result of months of hitting the metal cage most of the blade edges have been sufficiently dulled so the chances it takes off a finger are pretty slim. Therefore I am pretty sure this solution will be just fine for the few weeks I need it to work until the days are so hot I decide to cave and turn the air conditioning on. That being said, if spring wanted to throw me a week of really warm days sooner rather than later, that probably wouldn't be the worst thing.

Mailing It In

So, I've again got nothing. I'd been on a good run of things worth blogging about, but I have to say I had a very uneventful weekend (not that that is a bad thing.) So, for the first time in a while, I'm punting just to keep my streak alive. I'm not proud of it, but something tells me I will get over it before too long.

Bug Out

As the world's population continues to grow, environmentalists continue to worry about the long-term impact humans have on the plant, especially when it comes to how we eat. They think we should be doing more to take advantage of the naturally occurring food around us rather than breeding an excessive amount of the animals simply because we find them tasty. That is why this week the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization released a report asking everyone to eat more bugs. Yes, the United Nations truly think people should be more open to eating things like worms, bees, beetles and ants because they are plentiful, especially in areas where there is not nearly as much meat. The report reminds us that 2 billion people on the planet eat bugs every day and they are fine because if you eat enough of them bugs contain just as much protein as your average piece of meat and also that insects are easier to breed, take up less space and unlike cows and pigs bugs do not emit methane gas. In fact, many places consider certain insects to be a delicacy. It is all a matter of getting over the 'gross' factor. Everything they say makes perfect sense, but unfortunately for them the rest of us happen to think eating insects is only something which should happen when you are drunk and on vacation in an exotic land.

This is the problem with most of the plans people like environmentalists come up with - they call for things which are too extreme and have to be enacted too quickly. I'm sure we would be able to get away from eating so much meat eventually, but you need to slowly walk us to that point, not just insist we abandon our longstanding habits immediately. No doubt UN officials would be very quick to point out that in many cultures people eat insects all the time and no one makes a big deal of it. These people have been eating bugs their entire lives and it is totally normal for them. Yeah, well, I would counter that argument by remembering that there is a reason they open a new KFC every 20 minutes in China - once they get a taste of the food group I like to call "not bugs" people would rather eat that than "bugs". (I can only imagine what they would do if we gave them Five Guys.) But beyond taste, here is the other problem these guys face - for our entire childhood our parents taught us to avoid putting insects in our mouth. I don't care how powerful the UN thinks it is, it is not more powerful than mom. But, if this is really what they want people to do I say there is no more powerful leadership tool than being the one who sets the example, so let all these ambassadors be the first in line to start chomping on grasshoppers. Given how often they take advantage of their diplomatic immunity to illegally park in front of really nice restaurants I don't expect that plan to take off.

Weekly Sporties

-I have to say, for an NBA team which I couldn't care less about, the ongoing saga of Sacramento Kings is really interesting. When last we left them, the Maloof family which owns the Kings were trying to sell the team to a group from Seattle who intended to move the team there to replace the Sonics, who were bought and moved by a group from Oklahoma City. The only problem was that the NBA ownership committee voted against the team being allowed to move. At the time I assumed they were just being greedy and when the Seattle group offered to pay $65 million more as well as an extra $4 to each team just for the hell of it I thought that would be the push which was needed. That is why I was so surprised that when the NBA ownership group continued to vote against allowing the Kings to leave. Instead, they wanted the Maloofs to sell the team to a group from the Sacramento area which was offering about $80 million less than the Seattle group. (We've since learned one of the big factors is that the Sacramento group was so desperate to keep the team they were willing to spend millions on a new stadium while opting out of things like revenue sharing - giving every other team money while never making a profit for themselves.) At first the Maloofs said they had another idea in mind, which was that they just wouldn't sell at all. Or if they did it would be a smaller piece of the team, like 20% of the franchise and they would sell if to the main investors from the Seattle group, allowing them to take control of the team slowly. It had begun to have all the making of a long, drawn-out fight and I was going to enjoy every minute of it. That is why I was so surprised to wake up Friday morning and discover the Kings had been sold to the group from Sacramento and they didn't even raise their offer. Revenue sharing or not, the NA can't force an owner to sell because if they could the Suns and Clippers would have had new owners a long time ago, so I am dying to know what changed the Maloofs' minds. I can only hope that somewhere someone is writing all this down for a book and when it comes out I will be one of the first in line to read about how all this really went down.

-Speaking of books, former Lakers and Bulls coach Phil Jackson has a new one coming out. This is his eighth book, which means he is running out of interesting things to say and if he wants to make the New York Times best seller list he was going to have to start talking about some of the more juicy aspects of his coaching career. Now, for the last 10 years or so everyone has been debating who was better in their prime, Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan. (I've always maintained it was Jordan.) Since he coached both in their prime Jackson is the only one who can adequately answer this, but had refused to up until now. However in his latest book he finally broke down and compared them, ultimately deciding that Michael Jordan is better than Kobe Bryant because he was a better teammate, passer and leader (while conceding that Kobe was never asked to be a leader as long as Shaq was in Los Angeles). For the most part this nothing the general public outside of Los Angeles hadn't decided on its own, but it was nice to get confirmation. However, here is what I really find interesting: after their flame-out in this year's NBA playoffs, there had been a lot of speculation that Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni was going to be tossed overboard and the Lakers would bring back Phil Jackson, something most of their fans (and Kobe Bryant) wanted them to do for this season. I have to imagine this type of slight would pretty much put an end to that because even though Bryant is going to miss most of next season with an Achilles injury, he still has as much influence over that team as any player in the league. The two may have mended fences when Jackson called Bryant immature in a previous book, but I can't see someone as competitive as Kobe Bryant being willing to move on from a comment like that twice. Phil has long maintained he was no longer interested in coaching and if he were to return to the NBA it would be in a front-office capacity. I have to say that for the first time I'm starting to believe him. But even better, I can now definitely tell any who is a Los Angeles resident or under the age of 20 to shut up when they claim that Kobe is better than Jordan.

-I was very surprised the other day when I got the news that the Patriots had cut defensive tackle Kyle Love. While not a star of the defense, Love had played very well during his time in New England and had started a lot of games for them the last two season. With no clear replacements in line it was a questionable move. It wasn't until a couple days later that I learned why this decision had been made and I have to say the reasoning behind it was another one of those things which makes me squeamish about all the people so blindly loyal to the NFL. You see, the Patriots cut Kyle Love because this offseason he discovered he has Type 2 diabetes. Love will hardly be the first diabetic in the NFL but the difference is that the other players which come to mind are a quarterback and cornerback, two positions which value speed and mobility. Playing defensive tackle is all about girth and power and while trying to get his diabetes under control Love lost a significant amount of weight. While you would think someone who is trying to get a serious medical condition under control would be seen as a good thing, NFL teams are more worried about the short term - specifically their goal-line defense. (Fortunately for Love not all NFL teams are worried about his condition as he was claimed by the Jacksonville Jaguars. Not ideal going from one of the best teams to one of the worst, but at least he stays in the league.) Still, this just speaks to a larger issue. For all the talk about player safety and making sure the long-term impact playing football has on the brain is being studied, people seem to forget that there is just as much damage being done to these guys' bodies simply by trying to carry all that weight. On top of that you would think Love could have brought a legal case against the NFL because he was essentially being fired for having a disease, something which should be illegal. Of course, no one would ever bring this up to the NFL because they love football too much. This is just another example of a league which has a tremendous amount of power at the moment and is more than happy to use it. I would just warn them that those days are going to come to an end eventually, so they shouldn't get too used to being able to do whatever they want.

-While we're on the subject of weight, the NBA combine was this week. Now, if you think the NFL combine is useless, you really don't want to pay attention to the NBA combine because it is even worse. It is just a bunch of guys running drills with no one playing defense and the really good players only half-trying because, unlike the NFL version in which a bad combine can cost you a lot of money, the highest NBA prospects know their draft position is secure and just don't want to get hurt. The only interesting part of the whole thing is seeing how tall some of these guys really are because college programs are notoriously inaccurate. In doing all the weighing and measuring one number stood out from the crowd: Kentucky center Nerlens Noel clocked in at 6'10", which was expected, but only 206 lbs, which is a lot skinnier than people thought he would be. Now, if Noel played shooting guard or small forward like Kevin Durant this wouldn't matter to me because KD has proven you can be skinny and still impose your will on the NBA. However, Noel was a center in college and was projected to play at least power forward in the NBA. If he tries to do that he will be going against guys like Kevin Love, Marc Gasol and Dwight Howard who are all roughly the same height as him but weigh anywhere from 40-60 pounds more. It is going to make holding his spot on the low block a real problem. I know there are guys like Kevin Garnett who are stick figures and still play in the low post, but Garnett is a special kind of player and in his one year of college I did not see Noel have that kind of fire. I'm not saying he should go undrafted, but it does make me think it will take him a couple of years to bulk up before he can be an effective player. On top of that he is coming off a knee injury and probably won't be able to play his first season. It just all adds up to him being taken a few spots lower than projected in what was already supposed to be a pretty weak draft class. You know, they say the best thing for a young player is to go to a team with a lot of veteran leadership, this may be the first time the most important thing a team can have for a player is really good catering services.

-If you follow baseball at all you know the last couple of weeks have not been very good for umpires. First they got a homerun call wrong even after reviewing it and then they didn't know the rules and allowed an illegal substitution when a pitcher was taken out despite not throwing to any batters. Since all this was in addition to the mundane, everyday stuff that umpires seem to get wrong with regularity, Major League Baseball has been considering expanding replay to include pretty much everything short of balls and strikes. I have to say, I couldn't be more in favor of this kind of thing. I know purists say it will slow the game down, but I would counter by saying those people haven't been to a baseball game in a while because it couldn't get much slower. On top of that I think it is far more important that the correct team wins versus a game only taking 4 hours instead of 4.5. (If they really cared about games moving faster they would start enforcing some of the time rules, but they never do.) That being said, rather than going the other way and allowing everything to be reviewed all the time, MLB needs to make sure they have some kind of challenge system in place like the NFL does. I mean, there are way more stoppages of play in baseball and baseball managers are such sneaky bastards they could do something like ask for a review of regular play just to give their pitcher a little more time to warm-up. Thus, like the NFL where all scoring plays are reviewed I think they should continue to automatically review any homeruns which are close, but beyond that I think managers should only be able to request two reviews per game. I know through the course of a 162 game season that sounds like a lot of time spent under the hood, but I really don't think most of those will be used. Despite the bad couple of weeks if you broke down the performance of most umpires you would find that they get most of their calls correct (just when the screw up they really screw up). Thus, many games would pass without needing reviews it is just a matter of being able to use it should it be needed. Trust me, it is more important to have the rules in place and not need them than the other way around, which is how MLB currently operates.

-Staying on the subject of expanded replay, after some iffy calls in the playoffs a few NHL stars have come out and suggested the league needs to expand replay to include reviews of penalties. Now, given what I just said about MLB's plan to expand you probably think I would be in favor of more replay in the NHL, but in this case I am not. To me it is a totally separate argument because calling penalties is the hockey equivalent to calling balls and strikes - it's a judgement call which needs to be made in an instant and if you start to undermine that you may as well not even have refs. As long as they continue to review goals in hockey that is really the only thing that matters because while a bad call in hockey may put you at a disadvantage, a bad call in baseball usually costs you the game. For example, this reason this issue came up because the refs called a delay of game penalty against the San Jose Sharks for shooting the puck into the stands when replay made it look as though the puck actually caromed off a Los Angeles Kings player first. While that was bad for the Sharks, it was their sloppy play on the power play which actually cost them the game, not the penalty itself. The other issue is that you would have to ask yourself where would the line be? Could you ask them to check if a guy flopped? What about going back because you think they missed a penalty? Think about it like this - even the NFL, which expands replay almost every offseason, doesn't review penalties with replay because they know you could call holding on just about every play if you went looking for it, just like you could probably call a high stick every couple of seconds. It would ruin the flow of the game. The NHL is actually one of the best league for fixing broken rules on the fly but in this case I think they would be better served to slow down and make sure it is necessary before going off to replay every little thing. Unlike baseball, which needs 8 years and an act of nature to change an obvious problem, the NHL can wait a little bit before seeing if this becomes a real issue in the future. If it does they can address it then, but no need to insert a new rule in the middle of the playoffs because of one bad incident.

-As you may have heard there was a bit of a dust-up at last weekend's Player's Championship. Playing together of Saturday, Tiger Woods was accused by playing partner Sergio Garcia of pulling a club at the wrong time on purpose. You see, Sergio was on one side of the fairway and Tiger was off in the trees. Tiger pulled a fairway wood out, meaning he was going to try and pull off the more risky shot and the crowd murmured its approval. Unfortunately they did this loud enough for Sergio, who had just begun his swing, to hear it. His shot shanked off to the side and he glared in Tiger's direction. After the round Sergio said Woods did it on purpose and began playing the victim. Meanwhile Tiger admitted he and Sergio aren't exactly friends, but he only pulled the club after getting the all-clear from a marshall. (The next day this became a game of he-said, he-said, he-said, he-said as one marshall claimed Tiger was never told Sergio had hit and was showing back character by throwing the volunteers under the bus, while another marshall came out and said Tiger absolutely had been told it was his turn. We may never know the truth.) Either way, I don't care if Tiger was told it was clear or not, to me this is Sergio's problem. Garcia has always been known as a whiny player and this is just another chapter to add to his legacy. I've long said that golfers complaining about noise is one of the worst things for the image of golf and it is especially bad when it comes from people who should know better. Sergio has played with Tiger before and has to know that means playing in front of a larger gallery who will mostly be casual golf fans and may not be as up on the etiquette of the game. But even if that is the case it is not like they were excessively loud. Basically, I think this is Sergio, once again, looking for a way to excuse bad play by accusing someone else of breaking the rules. Normally he blames everyone from the course architect to the golfing gods so, sadly, blaming a playing partner is an improvement. You know, I've obviously never been to Garcia's house, but for some reason I feel strangely confident in saying there probably aren't any mirrors in it.

Fish Foreclosure

Back in the summer of 2001, I helped my sister move down to Washington, DC (yes, members of my family are actually allowed to leave Massachusetts... for brief periods of time). Anyway, while I was down there we decided to see a few of the local sites and as I so often do when I am in a new city, I decided I wanted to see the aquarium. I figured that something with a title as grand as "The National Aquarium" was bound to be good. After all, this was the aquarium which was supposed to represent the entire nation. The National Zoo is certainly one of the best ones around, so it stood to reason that the aquarium would have been just as impressive. Also, it has the right kind of address because it is right off the national mall and near the Smithsonian, which gives it an air of respectability. That is why the fact that we got to the address and found it was the Commerce Department building did not phase me too much. I figured it was just a way to save space, even though it really should have been my first hint to lower my expectations. As it turned out the "aquarium" was in the basement and had all the charm you would expect from the part of a government building where they would normally store reports on the expected growth of the popularity of the penny from the 1940s. Seriously, the Alamo has a nicer basement.

Of course, I am hardly the kind of person who judges a place just by its exterior - I love it when people reconstitute old buildings into quirky apartments rather than tearing the place down and putting up a bunch of cookie-cutter condos and some of the best food comes out of buildings which were never meant to house a restaurant. Thus, if it had turned out that the National Aquarium was filled with exotic fish and rare animals I would still be raving about the time I went to the cool, secret aquarium hidden in Washington, DC. Sadly, my dreams did not come true because, again, the place is subterranean and actually has less light than your average basement apartment. It felt a lot like a dungeon and you end up just feeling bad for all the animals. I know all zoos are essentially animal prisons, but some places do a better job of hiding that fact. The exhibits consisted of a few lobsters, a couple of alligators which may or may not have been stuffed, a nurse shark which appeared to be desperate to get out of the water and while they had the occasional tropical fish their main displayed was a large tank of goldfish. I'm not even joking - your average rich person in Miami has a more impressive collection of fish in their living room, though given the conditions that is probably for the better because if the National Aquarium had some extremely rare fish in this location I would have felt compelled to construct a rescue team.

I bring this up because last week the aquarium learned it is going to be kicked out shortly. You see the Commerce Department needs to do some serious updates to the building and that starts with the basement. So the animals need a new home until renovations are complete, sometime in 2015. Now despite the name of National Aquarium, it turns out the entire place is privately funded so it is not like they can just have taxpayers rent them a new space while the current location gets updated. The Commerce Department has said they will try to help the National Aquarium find a new location around the mall, but they will not delay the start of renovations to do so. If the Aquarium can't find a temporary home for their fish they will have to donate most of their animals to other aquariums, most likely starting with the one in Baltimore. (I think if the fish were allowed to see both locations and vote they would gladly take the short drive up to Baltimore sooner rather than later. For their sake I would hope the move becomes permanent because the Baltimore aquarium is quite impressive and to see how the other fish live only to be thrust back into their cramped basement would actually be cruel. Fish may not have much of a memory but they can tell when the have a lot less room to work with.) As you can see, the clock is ticking.

Part of the problem is that I grew up in Boston, which has one of the best aquariums in the nation. When everything is getting held up against that it was already going to have a hard time meeting my lofty standards. That is why if the aquarium is ever going to come back to DC I hope they do so with either a much better location or at least a better set-up. Since there are only so many ways to dress up a basement I think an entirely new location is in order. Frankly, I feel like they have gotten too hung up on being close to the mall when tourists have shown a willingness to travel provided the sites are interesting enough once they get there (and believe me, the Washington and Lincoln Monuments are not as close to each other as you think they are). There has to be a location which is close enough that people could take public transportation to get there but not too far so that it couldn't be done on the same day as the Air and Space museum. You may think DC doesn't need to have a particularly impressive aquarium because Baltimore's is so close, but I would just like to point out that this is a country which is willing to build a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks, so don't get hung up on redundancy now. Besides, which city do you think gets more International visitors? I certainly wouldn't want them going back to their home countries telling everyone that this National Aquarium was the best we could do.

See You In Syndication

Later tonight they are going to air the series finale of "The Office." I have to say, 9 seasons is a pretty good run for a show no one thought would make it more than 2 or 3. Now I have to admit I won't be watching tonight's final installment but that is par for the course, because I rarely watch episodes of "The Office" and when I do it is never the new episode. The more likely scenario is that I eventually catch a rerun on another network. The first few years the show was on everyone told me how much I would love it but for some reason their recommendations always fell on deaf ears. I guess there was just always something I wanted to watch instead, though right now I can't tell you what that would be. I did try to watch the show on a few occasions and even watch an episode of the original, UK version of the show but by that point I feel like too much time had elapsed to be invested. Plus, the show had been on the chopping block for a couple of seasons, so I figured why get attached to a show which was going to be cancelled soon anyway? (This is what stopped me from getting into shows like "30 Rock" and currently prevents me from tuning in to programs like "Community.) And this is not the first time I have felt like I have missed my TV viewing window.

Previously I mentioned that when gamers are in their early teens they make a very important decision in their lives - X-Box or Playstation - and once that decision has been made there is no reversing it because the effort required to master the controllers is simply too time-consuming to allow for both. More and more I am feeling like TV shows are demanding that same level of loyalty. With a vast number of channels offering original program and only so many hours in the day to watch shows if you still want to be a productive member of society you just have to pick your programs, hope they don't fail you and refuse to alter your schedule. It also doesn't help that TV episodes are being forced to cram as much story into 22 minutes as they can (it is not like commercial breaks are going to get shorter). The days of being able to skip an episode without missing a lot of key storylines are going away, especially if you are talking about a drama. There is nothing worse than not catching an episode, being convinced you are caught up with everything going on and suddenly realizing you have no idea what the characters are talking about because they are referencing some fact which happened the night your cable went out.

The other problem is that after a while having a mountain of old episodes of a TV show to watch is a rather daunting task. For example, I think I would like to go back and start catching up on "Breaking Bad" but at this point it's around 60 hours and do I really want to sacrifice all that time in the summer? When the task is that large watching old episodes of a TV show starts to feel like homework and the entire point of television is to escape the feeling of doing something out of obligation. Seriously, the only way I catch up on that show now is if I get a monster version of the flu and does that sound like something I should be wishing for just to watch a TV show? Even the invention of DVRs isn't helping because while you think you can record something now and watch it later people rarely ever go back and clean up their library as instead the shows just sit for months. On top of that the newest episodes in the On-Demand library usually disable the fast-forward option, which means you can't even catch up quickly. That's like having Cliff's Notes which are just as long as the regular book. And the networks aren't doing you any favors either because for all the crap they seem to churn out in a given year (they just released the teasers for most of the new shows coming out next year and I can already confidently predict 75% of new shows won't get a full-season run), they still manage to put the only two quality shows on opposing networks on at the same time. I can't tell if this is brilliant or idiotic, but I know which way I am leaning.

The funny thing is that you would think shows like "Justified" or "The Wire" would be easy to catch up on because they are on cable channels, which means their seasons are only 10 to 13 episodes long versus a network show which can crank out 20+ episodes per run. However, those shows are actually crazy complicated to keep up with because writers are always trying to out-think themselves by adding new characters and multiple over-lapping story arcs which will be repeatedly referenced in the future. As it is you pretty much need to take notes as the show airs, so if you aren't in with a program from the very first season you have a small window to catch up on all the action or there is simply no hope for you. Thus, with 8 previous seasons to catch up on you can see why I didn't bother to try and cram all the back episodes of "The Office" in before tonight's finale. The good news is that I don't work in an office in which people want to talk about all the shows they watched last night, so tomorrow I won't feel left out of the loop. Plus, I think if you are in an office talking about "The Office" it creates some kind of weird space/time loop and those never turn out well for anyone.

Rolling To The Front

If you have ever been to an amusement park in your life you know that you spend most of the day standing in line. The waits to get on ride which are only going to last 10 minutes can take well over an hour, especially if you go during a busy season, like school vacation week. In the last couple of year various theme parks have come up with programs to combat this, such as making ride reservations for specific times or a system which will allow you to put your name in at the most popular ride and then walk around to less-crowded attractions, like the beeper system at restaurant. Still, none of those things get you to the front of the line faster, they just mean you don't have to stand around for quite as long. (Don't let the parks for you into thinking these concepts are for you, though. These ideas are for their benefit because the less time you spend standing around the more time you have to spend money on crap.) Apparently, the only way to totally cut the line is to have a disabled person with you. Now, this seems totally fair to me - any person fighting a disability clearly has a hard life and would gladly trade places with you if given the option, so it feels like the least society can do for them is let them cut the line at a stupid amusement park. But today I read a truly disturbing story which claims that some entitled families have begun hiring disabled people to guide them around Disney World and using those people to cut the lines for rides.

Yes, apparently there is a woman who has been confined to a wheelchair and for a few hundred dollars she claims you as a member of her party, toting you around the park for the afternoon and allowing you to walk right passed the lines of people either too poor to afford her or too much of a normal, well-adjusted human being to think of such a scam. (Let's be honest, the disabled can be sociopaths as well.) You know every stereotype society has of the entitled rich family who thinks they are far too good to mingle with the rest of humanity just because their grandfather made money back in the 1920s and they haven't had to work a day in their life? This is the kind of story which does nothing but reinforce those stereotypes. The people interviewed for this story (and of course the families which took advantage of it are going to talk about it without shame because the only think rich people like more than their money is being able to flaunt it to the world while talking about themselves) even try to justify it by saying things like they are doing this woman a favor because she wouldn't normally be able to work. While it does take two to tango and it is not like anyone is forcing these people to rent themselves out for line-cutting purposes, that doesn't change the fact that if these people weren't so wrapped up in themselves she wouldn't have any customers. It's nothing more than trying to justify bad behavior.

Look, I love walking passed a long line of people and being able to tell the person working the door that "I'm on the list" as much as the next guy, but I find the very concept of this practice really bizarre. I'm not sure if it is because someone out there is twisting what would normally be a sweet idea and making a profit from it or if the fact that her customers don't see why what they are doing is wrong that I find more unnerving. I know the idea is that when life gives you lemons you make lemonade however I don't think then turning around and selling the lemonade to the 1% is what the people who came up with that saying had in mind. On a personal level this doesn't impact me in the slightest because I have no desire to go to Disney World anytime soon. (I actually hate amusement parks and wouldn't go to Disney if someone else was footing the bill.) However, it makes me fear for the kids of these parents, who are being taught at a very young age that if you have enough money than the normal rules don't apply to you. These are absolutely going to be the people who guide us into the next great financial disaster in 20 years. I mean, if you are willing to skirt the rules just to go on the teacup ride than where is it going to end?

Now, Disney has said they will look into this and vowed to stop the practice. I'm sure they would like to ban this woman from the park, but kicking out a woman in a wheelchair is going to be some really bad PR (though maybe not in this case because helping rich people get even further ahead isn't going to win you any popularity contests). The bigger issue is that I think it would be nearly impossible to enforce, because someone else will just pick up the business and how would you know which people are actually friends of the disabled person and which people are their customers? Of course, seeing as how this is Disney as long as they keep pumping out irresistible kids movies they can pretty much do what they want. It is not like they have a great reputation among adults to destroy, because we know that the reality is probably more along the lines that they will look at how much money this woman made per family and begin marketing line-skipping passes on their own because as we know they have no shame as long as it makes them money and the last thing they want at the Happiest Place on Earth is for anyone to be making a profit but them. In some ways they are exactly like the people who were buying their way to the front of the line, so maybe they deserve each other and it is fitting they this is happening at Disney World. I guess it is a small world after all.