Ten Reasons I Hate People (7)

You can find a lot of people worth hating at (The Customer Is) Not Always Right.

This is a collection of all-too-believable interactions that employees have had with customers. Many of them are, as the banner advertises, stupid and funny. But buried (not too deeply) among the hilarity and stupidity are some of the core psychological problems that just scrape my scabs. It won't take you long to find interactions with people who believe that the world should fit itself to them; that anything that inconveniences them in any way is stupid and unnecessary at best and, at worst, is a violation of their rights.

I wish the sense of entitlement among some of these people (which I will now refer to as "self-centered douchebags") was unbelievable, but we see it every day — in TEA party rallies, in Congressional debates, in international politics, at stoplights, where people walk dogs, in the 12 items or less lane. They're everywhere.

Along with the sense of entitlement, these self-centered douchebags never seem to recognize the possibility, no matter how minute, that they could be wrong. And that's sometimes worse. These are the douchebags who rear-end you and then insist that you stopped too suddenly; the douchebags who buy a vacuum cleaner, use it for a month, and then return it for a full refund because it completely lost suction because they never cleaned the filters; the douchebags who "buy" a ginormous, flat-screen HDTV the day before the Super Bowl and then try to return it the day after and see nothing wrong with that.

(sigh)

People.

 

Ten Reasons I Hate People (8)

Ten Reasons I Hate People (9)

Ten Reasons I Hate People (10)

Sarah Palin, Language Victim

Sarah Palin has been victimized be language again.

The perpetrator is Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, in a private weekly strategy meeting "featuring liberal groups and White House aides," some expressed their intention "to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul."

Emanuel's response: "Fucking retarded." (It's unclear from the reporting whether he was speaking about the ideas or the people who had the ideas.)

Mrs. Palin has gone to Facebook to show her outrage that a public figure would use such a derogatory term, saying that retarded is a "slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities – and the people who love them...," comparing it to a more well-known and more universally hated derogatory epithet: the dreaded "N-word."

What does Mrs. Palin want? "I would ask the president to show decency in this [internal discussion] process by eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm's continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts." Leaving the Chief of Staff out of discussions by the White House staff? Is Mrs. Palin expected Rahm to be fired?

Once again, Mrs. Palin overreacts to a situation she doesn't like, which leads me to the following gripes:

Gripe One: Who Called Whom What?

In her Facebook reaction to Rahm Emanuel's horrible misdeed, Mrs. Palin once again put her son Trig — who suffers from Down's Syndrome — on public display. She argues that Trig, and the thousands of people with cognitive and developmental disabilities, were denigrated by Mr. Emanuel's scornful soubriquet.

Rahm was speaking to and about some of the people in the meeting. Mrs. Palin, Rahm Emanuel did not call Trig retarded; you did. Why are you so vehement on turning your son into a victim?

Gripe Two: Sarah Palin Plays the Race Card?

Mrs. Palin compare's Mr. Emanuel's use of retarded to "the N-word." This is an unfair comparison. Retarded has a long history of legitimate use outside of the medical (and name-calling) field, and it is still used as such. Numerous situations exist in which I — or Rahm Emanuel — could use the word retarded and no one would bat an eye. Hell, the word retard is part of the California Health and Safety Code (Section 9636)!

On the other hand, situations in which the word nigger is acceptable are few and far between (such as in a discussion of derogatory terms). Nigger has no history outside of racial disparagement.

Yes, in recent decades the word has been claimed and owned by some African Americans and defused so that it is acceptable within their groups — in the same way that the homosexual community has claimed ownership of fag and dyke. But that's the opposite of what Mrs. Palin is apparently doing with retarded. Instead of defusing a term that can and has been used derogatorily, she has suffused it with more power.

I grew up with a cousin who was born with mental retardation. At the time, we used the phrase mentally retarded to describe his disability. In our family, he was retarded, and there was nothing derogatory about it. That was way back during the 1980s. If calling my cousin retarded was acceptable in the Christian family I grew up in, then comparing retarded to nigger is totally too far. At worst, retarded is comparable to person of color. Or Afro-American. Or homeboy.

And anyway, who dealt Mrs. Palin a race card?

Gripe Three: A Tribute to Eric Clapton

The knee-jerk reaction of right-wingers to any faux pas, simple error, or moment of temporary stupidity from a Democrat is to call for a resignation or termination.

As Eric Clapton sang, "Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself." Right-wingers' lack of "outrage" to the (sometimes extreme) shortcomings of fellow right-wingers is a clear sign that it isn't about Right or fairness or "protecting the children"; it's all about politics. Consider:

• Pat Robertson claimed that the entire population of Haiti suffered from a horrible cataclysm because they made a deal with the devil. Yet the outrage that Mrs. Palin most assuredly felt at such unconscionable claims apparently didn't merit the public response that Rahm's gaff did.
  
• When South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer compared people on government assistance programs — including children on reduced-price lunches and the hundreds of thousands of people who suddenly found themselves on unemployment comp in the last few years — to stray animals, Mrs. Palin did not feel compelled to call for him to withdraw from the race for South Carolina's governorship. Why not?
  
• But the greatest example of hypocrisy — and the most ironic considering Mrs. Palin's attempt to play the race card — is that the GOP and southern conservatives (and yes, I recognize that Alaska isn't part of the South) are the ones who kept segregationist Strom Thurmond in Congress until he died of old age! Calling an African American a "nigger" is one thing; trying to keep African Americans out of the good schools, restaurants, theaters, etc. is something entirely different.
  

Gripe Four: What a Rush

I feel dirty that I fall on the same side of this controversy as Rush Limbaugh. Filthy. Ick!

Gripe Five: V for Victim

Sarah Palin didn't get a fair shake because of sexism. She was treated unfairly because she had an accent. She was unfairly mocked because her teenage daughter got pregnant out of wedlock. She was made fun of because someone overspent on her wardrobe.

At every turn, Sarah Palin is a victim of some new liberal attack. You might say she's made a career out of being a victim. And now she is steering her children toward a lifetime of being victims. Her younger daughter was a victim of David Letterman's unacceptable and unfunny "jokes." And now her poor son Trig is a victim of the potty-mouthed Chief of Staff of ultra-liberal, un-American President Obama.

It's time someone in that family reconsidered what it means to be strong and stopped being the victim.

Gripe Six: Members Only?

Who told? The real douchebag in all this isn't Sarah Palin or Rahm Emanuel, but the person who attended that private meeting and took it to the press. If the President needs to eliminate someone from these closed-door strategy meetings, is the one who opens those doors to let the press in.

How She Should Have Reacted

The reaction I would have loved to hear, which would have finally put a point on Mrs. Palin's "Sarah vs. The Liberals" scoreboard, would go something like this: "Rahm Emanuel's the one who's fucking retarded. My son Trig has enough of a sense of decency not to talk to people like that." But that would have been out of character, unfortunately. Too much for me to ask for.

So besides that, Mrs. Palin's response should have been to demand an apology from Mr. Emanuel.

But wait. He did apologize. Twice. First, in a private phone call to Tim Shriver, head of the Special Olympics. And then again to a group of disabilities advocates. (To be fair, the apologies probably started after Mrs. Palin's Facebook reaction.) I would hope that this would be enough, but the story is still growing like a foot fungus.

The Worst Part of Fatherhood

During the last weekend of 2009, Gremlin the Younger, who had just turned seven, was complaining about a toothache. I peeked in that gaping maw and saw that his gums were a little red area, but not much else. When the next day rolled round, he wasn't complaining about pain anymore. After a while, we just sort of forgot about it.

This evening, I got a call from the Mom, and apparently the toothache is back. She took a gander in his gob and found some sort of red, infected-looking growth on his gums. We're going to try to get him into the dentist tomorrow, but in the meantime I've got the fatherhood flutters, imagining all sorts of horrible worst-case scenarios, from oral cancer to herpes, that result in the most horrid medical procedures: pulling a tooth, slicing out a growth and sewing his gums back together, chemotherapy, removal of his entire lower jaw. Sometimes it doesn't pay to have an active imagination.

This isn't nearly as bad as the time he literally cracked his skull and spent a night in the hospital after a playground stumble, but the worrying is definitely the worst part of being a father.

And I'd like to take this moment to apologize to my parents for every time I put them through this. Especially the time, that one summer, that I gave Beth a ride home after band practice — with a little half-hour unplanned 'diversion' on the way. Don't ask.

[Update Tuesday morning: Got the little guy to the dentist after lunch this morning. The X-ray showed that he had tooth decay between two teeth, and it had eaten down to the root of both. This decay had caused an abscess in his gums. (Imagine cutting the eraser off a pencil and shoving it up under your gums, on the outside. That's what it looked like, plus it was red and bleeding a little. Yuck!)
Anyway, the best course of action was pulling the two teeth, which isn't a big deal because they're both baby teeth. When I left him there with his mother, he had made it through the syringe-to-the-gums stage (the worst part), and they were waiting for the Novocain to kick in.
All in all, not even close to the worst that could have happened. Stomach flutters are flittering away.]

The Ten Top 2009 Top Ten Lists

Sweet December, the time when editors scramble to use up the last of their vacation days by the end of the year, when their temps and interns abandon forward-looking news and recycle the content from days past. In short, December is the time for lists of the best and worst of everything from the past year.

And so here I follow suit, offering my choices for (and links to) the best "Top Ten of 2009" lists out there on the Internet. Some of them are informative, some fun, some beautiful (and at least one that's all three). And in order not to be a total spoiler, I offer up the number two item for each list.

10. Top Ten Sports Moments from AskMen.com

I don't follow a lot of sports, so this type of highlights list is perfect for me. Why watch the whole forgettable game/match/round/inning when I can just skip to the cool parts and then go back to reading and writing? (The pix of bikini- and underwear-clad babes are a plus as well.)

• Roger Federer regains his #1 position after defeating Andy Roddick in a marathon 4 hour, 16 minute final match encompassing 30 sets at Wimbledon.
  

9. Top Ten Google Doodles from InventorSpot

You never know what you'll find on the Google home page from day to day. Over the years, the "standard" Google logo has been artistically replaced with so-called "Google Doodles" to mark holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries of all sorts.

• #2: On November 4, GoogleUK marked the 20th anniversary of Wallace & Grommit with this search page image.
  

Note: This is currently listed as #2, but when you get to the end of the list, you'll find a poll that lets you vote for your favorite. Vote now to move your favorite to the top spot!

8. Top Ten Books of 2009 from The Book Maven

Everyone and their brother has posted a list of the top ten books of the year, from book-biz mainstays like Amazon, Publisher's Weekly, and the New York Times to readers, writers, and influencers like Stephen King and Oprah. Although I haven't read any of the books on any of these lists yet, I prefer The Book Maven's list for her relaxed writing style and succinct yet informative summaries.

• The Book Maven lists her books in no particular order, so there really isn't a "#2" to list here. From the descriptions, though, Zoe Heller's The Believers goes near the top of my to-read list.
  

7. Top Ten 2009 Cryptozoology Deaths

This is a strange one, yes, but it is interesting to see what insiders have to say about the frontiersmen of fringe science. This list includes people who searched for Bigfoot, people who spotted the Mothman, and even the recently deceased director of the X-Files episode in which the word cryptozoology was first uttered.

The deaths are listed in the order in which they occurred. The first, James Colvin, who died January 4, was the director of two expeditions in search of the Loch Ness Monster, funded by World Book Encyclopedia in the late '60s and early '70s.

6. Top Ten New Species of 2009, from the International Institute for Species Exploration

We so often hear about the effects of global climate change and the endangerment of various species around the world that we sometimes forget that scientists are discovering (or creating) new species all the time. I'll give you #2, but you've really got to see #1; it's just difficult to believe without seeing.

• #2: Coffea charrieriana:
  A new caffeine-free coffee bean from Cameroon.
  

5. National Geographic's Top Ten Discoveries of 2009

This list is based on the popularity of the coverage and not on the decisions of Nat'l Geographic Researchers or any other scientific (or intern-packed) committee. The list is in large part taken up by large, dangerous, and downright weird animals that were discovered, rediscovered, and sometimes eaten.

• #2: Fish With Transparent Head Seen Alive for First Time

4. Discover Magazine's Top Ten Astronomy Pictures

As new technology for studying the heavens is created and improved, the images we get of the outer reaches become clearer, more useful, and more beautiful. To quote the blog itself, "Colorful stars, wispy, ethereal nebulae, galactic vistas sprawling out across our telescopes . . . it's art no matter how you look at it."

• #2: Images from Mars: This is an image of the sand dunes of Mars, swirled and swept by the mysterious winds the tickle the Red Planet's plains, taken from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
  

3. Top Ten Fails of 2009 from FAILBlog

From cryptic signs and stupid warnings to crotch-crunching skateboarders and Darwin Award nominees, FAILBlog offers up the stupidest, silliest, and most unbelievable idiocy in the world today. FAILBlog offers not one, but three lists of this year's top fails:

• Top Ten Most Memorable FAIL Moments: #2. Bolivian newscasts air a scene from Lost as actual footage from the last moments of Flight 447.
  
• Top Ten Most Memorable FAIL People: #2. Jon Gosselin.
  
• Top 10 Most Memorable Videos and Photos on FAIL Blog: #2. A photo of a playground slide that ends in a small pit about a foot deep — suitable for an episode of Parks and Recreation.
  

2. THE FUTURIST Magazine's Top 10 Forecasts for 2010 and Beyond

From the site itself:

Each year since 1985, the editors of THE FUTURIST have selected the most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts appearing in the magazine to go into our annual Outlook report. Over the years, Outlook has spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, virtual reality, and the end of the Cold War. Here are the top ten forecasts for 2010 and beyond.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

• #2: In the design economy of the future, people will download and print their own products, including auto parts, jewelry, and even the kitchen sink. (Neal Stephenson fans may recognize a hint of The Diamond Age in this forecast.)
  

1. Buzzfeed's Top Ten Flash Mobs

There's something heartwarming about a large number of strangers coming together for a single purpose, even if it is only to dance in a public place. (I assume that these are actually listed in reverse order qualitatively, considering that the video in tenth place is listed as "The apex of flash mobs. This is what all flash mobs strive to be.")

• #2 (er, 9): Sweden's Tribute to Michael Jackson
  

Wish List 09

Holiday season rolls around again! Last year's wish list did so well, I figured I'd give it another go. So, here are a few gift ideas to consider:

Music

• Tori Amos, Midwinter Graces
  
• Amanda Palmer, Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
  
• Coldplay, Viva la Vida
  
• Stevie Wonder, Talking Book
  
• The Tiger Lillies with Kronos Quartet, The Gorey End
  
• Counting Crows, August and Everything After [thanks to the kids!]
  
• Anything from Red Hot Chili Peppers
  

Books

• Look at the Birdie by Kurt Vonnegut
  
• Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
  
• Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (yes, I've already read it, but I want to read it again)
• The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch
  

Other Stuff

• An application to turn PowerPoint presentations into videos
  
• An end to debt
  
• A microSD card for my phone — the bigger the better [thanks, dad]
  
• The new Star Trek movie [didn't get it for Christmas; couldn't wait so I bought it myself]
  
• Spiderman 3
  
• A house
• A 32GB iPod Touch
  
• Something I can use as a medicine cabinet [thanks dad, er, indirectly]
  
• Bath towels — navy blue or a dark olive
  
• Spore Heroes for the Wii
  
• Nine ladies dancing
  
• Whole-bean coffee
  
• A fun calendar or two
  
• A comfy office chair
  
• A nice dinner
• Pretty much anything from the ThinkGeek catalogue
  

We're Too Fat! Please Send Money!

I honestly hope someone can come along and prove that this article in the Telegraph is a hoax. Here's the short of it:

A family of four in Blackburn (somewhere in the UK) has a combined weight of 83 stone. A stone is (somehow) 14 pounds, so in total they weigh 1,162 pounds. The members of this family receive government assistance because of numerous medical conditions — all related to being overweight — in the amount of £22,508 a year, approximately US$37,500. They claim that their income assistance checks are too small.

But here's the rub: They haven't worked in 11 years! They claim that their hereditary weight problems keep them from working regular jobs. They believe that the government should give them more money, and that they shouldn't have to find jobs. Says the father, "It's not our fault we can't work. We deserve more."

Where does this overblown sense of entitlement come from? I'll admit to having problems with my weight, but I would never, never, claim that someone else is responsible for my livelihood because of it. Someone please tell me this is a hoax, that there really aren't people in the world like this!

(Sadly, the next "job" this family is likely to find is a reality TV show. Will we soon see The Couch Potatoes on BBC? Superfatties on FOX? Little Minds, Big Asses on TLC?)

The Story of the Birthday Roadkill

My 35th birthday was Saturday, and as usually happens among my friends, we celebrate by going out for sushi. J and E and lil Lil arrived at the apartment first, but V wasn't far behind. As soon as I close the door behind V, she says, "You know how they say that it's the thought that counts? That really applies here." Turns out she made some sort of rich, fat-packed chocolate-brownie/cookie dessert squares for me. She took them out to the car, along with her coat in case she needed it (she didn't), set the nummies on the roof of the car and fished out her keys to unlock the door. Then she slid into the car and started off.

Somewhere between her condo and my apartment, she heard a couple mysterious thumps. She didn't realize what it was until she got to the apartment complex that I just moved into. She had left my chocolate nummies on the roof of her car, and the directions to my new place were on a sticky note attached to them!

Luckily, she remembered my building number and some sketchy directions, so she made it there for sushi. I guess she was able to find the doomed desserts the next morning, completely flattened at the edge of the road.

When I came into work this morning, sitting on my office desk were four dessert squares that V hadn't originally wrapped up the night before. (They're like finger sandwiches but with cookies for the bread and fudge for the meat. I think she's trying to kill me.) The note on top of the nummies said "NOT ROADKILL."

It's the thought that counts.

 

Generic Update Title about Being Really Busy

I haven't posted in quite a while because I've been so godawful busy. And stressed.

The last week of October was particularly packed for me. During the course of that week, I moved to a new apartment. It's a bit cheaper, and it's a lot closer to where my kids live and go to school. Moving there has cut 10 minutes a day off my usual morning drive to take them to school, which I'm hoping will help clear up some of my financial difficulties.

So I spent most of my free time that week packing stuff up and moving it. I got the last of my stuff moved on Halloween and turned my keys in with time to spare — though I realized the next day that I forgot to empty out the freezer at the old place. Not much of a loss, though: months-old half-empty bags of frozen tilapia and broccoli. I did have two relatively recent servings of ground turkey that I left behind, though.

Friday night, the IWS had its Halloween concert. Since I do the group's programs, as well as a lot of other stuff, concerts in general can be pretty stressful. This one was moreso for three reasons:

1. We played The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I haven't had my ass so thoroughly kicked by a piece of music in quite a while. Essentially playing the violin part on a clarinet is normally a horrid experience, but this was one of the worst. (Not that it wasn't a good transcription; it was just so damned hard!)
   
2. We were supposed to come in costume. I fretted (waaaaay too much) over my costume since the end of September. I originally thought of dressing as a cubicle, but in the end, I took my mother's old bee outfit and paired it with a sword, shield, and crown. That's right, I was a Bee King. But not just any king! I was Bee Arthur. (I have to stop being so obscure with my costume. Nobody recognized it right away, and when I told them the pun, I got a mix of laughter, rolled eyes, and disgust. Two years ago, very few people even recognized that I was dressed as Ned Flanders. Next year, I'm just wearing a white T-shirt with the words "Obscure Fictional Character" written on the front.)
   
3. I had to create a PowerPoint presentation to be shown while the band played Barry Kopetz's The Raven. Our concert was in part billed as a commemoration of Edgar Allan Poe's 200th birthday. We had an actress from Cabaret Poe (which I know nothing about) come in and enact the poem before we played. For the presentation, I was lucky that Gustav Doré had created a series of engravings to illustrate "The Raven," so I could just use those. If the recording of our performance is any good, I'll eventually put the two together, turn it into a movie, and then post it online.
   

All this on top of my usual nine-to-five job, some freelance copy editing, and going with my kids to see the Headless Horseman at Conner Prairie. Things are finally calming down, though.

My "next big thing" is that I'm making my way through Beginning XML, Third Edition, from Wrox Press. (Full disclosure: I work for Wrox Press's parent company.) I'm trying to learn XML for a number of reasons — number one is just because it's there. I'm hoping that, eventually, I'll be able to put together a small XML program that'll let people track Google Sidewiki comments on their Web sites (I'll probably write more about Sidewiki later), but I won't consider my efforts a failure if I never make it that far. I'm learning XML mostly for fun and to boost my overall skill set.

Is 7 Lucky for Microsoft? Changes You'll See in Windows 7

Windows 7 becomes widely available today, and it's big. How big? On Amazon UK, more people have pre-ordered Windows 7 than pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I haven't had the chance to actually try Windows 7, but I've been editing a lot of articles about the new OS at work. After reading a bunch of Windows 7 how-to's, I'm kind of excited about the new Windows. At least as excited as someone can get about an OS upgrade. Here are some of the changes you can expect to find:

New Win7 Features to be Happy About

Aero Shake. Grab a window and shake the mouse, and all the other windows minimize. Shake it again, and they all pop back up. It sounds like a great way to unclutter your desktop, and also to quickly hide what you were really doing when your boss walked into the office.

Aero Snap. Drag a window all the way to the left or right, and it automatically resizes to cover half the desktop. You can place any two application windows side by side now!

Slide Show Wallpaper. Can't decide which picture of your kids to plaster on your desktop? Select them all, and the desktop wallpaper will flip through them like a slideshow.

Expanded calculator. It seems kind of backward that it has taken so long to make the built-in calculator as powerful as some TI handheld, but there it is. The calculator noew does unit conversions, date calculations, statistics, and number system conversions (e.g., decimal to hexadecimal), as well as, well, adding, subtracting, and the like. These improvements will make someone, somewhere happy.

Adjustable user account settings. One might describe Windows Vista's security as, well, paranoid. Any time anyone does something that remotely looks like it will affect the system, an annoying UAC security window appears. Sometimes twice. Windows 7 lets you customize how, er, paranoid the Windows lookouts are.

The Sidebar is gone. All those gadgets that you added to the right side of the Windows Vista desktop — from weather alerts and stock price tickers to xkcd cartoons and virtual strippers — have now been cut free from their anchors. Place your gadgets wherever you want to on your desktop and they'll stay there. ('So what?!' say Mac owners. 'We've been doing that forever!')

The return of the Disk Defragmenter. Microsoft really wants you to automate this maintenance process, but I guess enough people complained about its disappearance in Windows Vista that Microsoft brought it back in Windows 7. To some, it's an important maintenance tool; to me, it's just a neat-o visualization tool.

Stability and speed. By all accounts, Windows 7 fixes most or all of the major problems apparent in Vista, making it more secure and less prone to falling to the BSOD. Plus, the new search feature is expected to work with Google-like speed to find documents on your hard drive.

Win7 Changes I'm Not So Sure About

The Scenic Ribbon. Microsoft expanded on the Ribbon interface that was introduced on Office 2007 and took it into a number of other programs, rebranding it as the "Scenic Ribbon." Most notably, you'll find the Ribbon in MS Paint and Wordpad, but Microsoft has released the API for the Scenic Ribbon and is encouraging developers to incorporate the Ribbon into their programs.

The Device Stage. Vista switched around the Control Panel, and now Windows 7 is redoing how you interact with hardware. In the long run, this may prove to be a good change, but there'll be a learning curve here that'll slow you down in the beginning.

Fewer parental controls. Microsoft cut down on the parental controls in Windows 7, but they ramped up the parental controls in Internet Explorer 8. (Of course, I use Firefox . . . )

Win7 Changes to Grumble About

Where's Windows Defender? I haven't been able yet to verify this claim, but I have read that Windows Defender, though it's still built into the system, is more difficult to find. It isn't where it used to be. Although I don't interact directly with Windows Defender very often, it is quite good at telling me what programs are launching automatically when I log in.

Fewer built-in freebies. If you upgrade to Windows 7, you might be surprised to find that you no longer have the Movie Maker, e-mail, an Instant Messenger, and a few other things. Some of the mainstays of Windows have been removed from the installation disc (probably because of a lawsuit or the threat of one). You can, however, download the Windows Live Essentials pack. It just makes installation that much longer and more tedious.

No Ink Ball! That fun (ish) new game that appeared in Windows Vista has been axed. (It has, however, been replaced by online, multiplayer versions of backgammon, checkers, and spades.

Then there's the new desktop, which acts a lot more like a Mac desktop. (Is anyone surprised?) It'll be a change, but, like using the Ribbon, it'll just take time to get used to it. The toolbar offers more useful features than it has in the past. Buttons now have jump lists that pop up showing related documents that you pin there, or recently used or frequently used documents (you can tell Windows which you want to see). These really do sound like navigational improvements rather than bells and whistles . . . time will tell.

If Windows 7 is all it appears to be, the days of those last XP holders-on are numbered. That, of course, depends on Microsoft keeping its promises and avoiding stupid choices, both of which have been problems in the past.

One last bit of info that I want to share. It came up in my forays through windows 7 info, but it's something you can use now, in XP and Vista.
I don't know why it never occurred to me that this might be the case, but there are cheats built into the windows games, specifically, in Minesweeper, Free Cell, and Solitaire. Follow those links and get the lowdown. (Anyone know any cheats for Hearts?)

(Full disclosure, those are links to the Web site that I get paid to help maintain.)

Global Climate Change — Whom Do You Trust for Information?

[Quick note: When I began this blog post, it was going to be about finding honest, complete information about global climate change. It spun off into an epistemological tangent. My apologies if you don't think this truly falls under the "global climate change" topic for Blog Action Day 09 that prompted this post. What can I say? Sometimes you control the pen, sometimes the pen controls you.]

As both individuals and governments scramble to find ways to slow or reverse the progress of global climate change, one barrier consistently gets in the way: The information barrier.

This may sound like an odd statement, what with this ginormous, ubiquitous Internet thingy out there feeding us terabytes of new information every hour. There's plenty of information — or data, or just words, depending on how you look at it — about climate change out there on the Interwebs. A quick Google search for "climate change" yields 46.5 million web hits in under a second. So it isn't the lack of information that's the problem, it's too much information. With so many words and images and tables and charts and graphs to choose from, how do we separate the noise from the music? The opinions from the facts? The jejune meanderings of schmoes like me from the hard data from the people working the front lines of discovery?

And when we do find a morsel of seemingly good data, how much can we trust it?

Government debate — salted with both expert opinions and million-dollar science budgets as well as corporate lobbyists and pork barrel politics — is one thing, but when it comes to really understanding what the global climate change conversation is really about, and what it all means, it really boils down to the individual. What do I, a lowly, lonely nonscientist, really know about climate change?

I don't have the gear or the background to test, research, and gather my own raw data about what is happening in the world. And even if I get my hands on raw data, I likely won't understand how to read and interpret it. No, I must rely on someone else, or several someone elses, to discovery, decipher, and deliver the relevant scientific research. But how do I know that such technological jargon is being interpreted accurately?

I don't.

And that's the point that I've been getting to: My understanding (hoi polloi's understanding) of global climate change boils down to a matter of trust.

Whom can you or I trust to give us accurate and complete information about what's really going on in the atmosphere? Very rarely do we get unfiltered information directly from researchers. We get science news from, well, new reports, and bloggers, and science magazines, and movies. Many times, these reports are based only on a reading of a research abstract. More common, though, is a report written after reading a couple of other articles or reports which were in turn written after reading a research abstract.

Science journalism in particular has taken a pretty
severe
beating
around
the
head
and
shoulders recently. Reading about shoddy and suspicious journalism in particular cases can make one wary of journalistic practices as a whole. Even if people aren't consciously withholding the truth, it's too easy to just let some fact-checking slide. But if I can't trust the news media, where do I go for good information?

There's always Al Gore!

I trust that Al Gore's efforts truly are an attempt to create positive change. Unfortunately, that trust also leads me to more doubt. "Creating a positive change" isn't the same as "presenting the whole truth." Al Gore (and Michael Moore, and Ralph Nader, et al.) have their own agendas based on what they believe and the information that they trust. And when you have such an angle, it's difficult, if not impossible, to be totally unbiased. It's too easy to ignore or undervalue data and opinions that don't jibe with what you already believe and what you're trying to say.

(Who'd've thought that science and religion would have so much in common?)

But if we can't trust someone to accurately describe the facts, surely we can trust what we see with our own eyes! There are plenty of videos and images floating around out there showing glaciers crashing down and icebergs melting and starving penguins, but do we really know that we're seeing the effects of climate change? Do we know that an image is truly representative of a larger trend and not just an isolated event?

So if we can't totally trust science journalists to get it right, and we can't trust Al Gore and his ilk to give us the whole story, and we can't connect disparate images to global data, who can we trust? Where can we get the information we need to draw real conclusions?

Some may argue that the simple volume of apparent evidence is enough to point us toward the truth, that so many people saying the same things couldn't be wrong. But how much of the buzz about climate change is just the same handful of stories recycled and rewritten and reposted online . . . the game of Telephone on a grand scale?

And besides, the idea that general agreement can dictate truth is a cop-out. Think flat Earth. Think slavery.

So I guess the issue of trust is really just a stepping stone. Ultimately, deciding whom and what to believe is a matter of faith. (Again, science meets religion.) You have to believe something, but you can never know everything about anything. Ultimately, you have to have faith in the sources you've chosen and go forward as if that information is infallible — at least until some better, more trustworthy information comes along.

And that's the epistemological conundrum behind every decision we make: we're always basing our decisions on incomplete and unprovable information.

 

Not to elevate my intellectual status, but I imagine this is the type of conundrum that Descartes slogged through before arriving at his famous Cogito, ergo sum — I think, therefore I am — the ultimate undeniable truth. I doubt even Descartes could start with that one foundational belief and work his way all the way up to global climate change.

I certainly can't.