That Is All

Practical Joke Idea:

Water balloons filled with thin sugar syrup.

I Don't Think I Understand Economics

Is it me, or is this paragraph peculiar?

Fears that an economic slowdown in the United States could spread to other parts of the world and lead to lower energy consumption pushed oil prices down sharply for the second day on Wednesday. The drop in price contributed to a jump on Wall Street with the major markets all rising more than 2.5 percent.

In other words,

Fears that an economic slowdown in the United States could spread to other parts of the world... contributed to a jump on Wall Street...

Is that how it works?

Update: Scooped!

¡Neologism Alert!

Launching a nuclear strike will now be known as (giving someone a) plutonium overcoat.

Under the Spotlight: Washing Machines

Why do so many people own washing machines, and dryers? Sure, they're a sign that you've made it in this world, a status-symbol somewhere between houseplants and pearl-handled revolvers, but are they justified on economic grounds? Clothes-washing technology has come a very long way, but it's still a fussy business. Every 40-odd minutes you need to empty the washer, empty the dryer, fill the washer and fill the dryer. If you wash your clothes at home, and have a fairly large wardrobe, this can take all day. Ever tried to parcel a day's activities into discrete half-hour chunks? You're going to watch a lot of TV.

The main alternative is to go to the laundromat, which is cumbersome if you have to carry your whole collection around. Nevertheless, it has the under-appreciated advantage that because there are dozens of washers and dryers, you can wash all your clothes at once, in less than two hours. It costs money, but the cost is only significant to the poor. Someone rich enough to afford a washing machine could easily shoulder laundromat fees, and find the savings in time that much more valuable.

Indeed, I don't know why anyone would consider a washing machine a wise investment. The first rule of manufacturing is to keep your machines busy as much as possible, because you want the maximum return on your capital. A household washing machine is only in operation a tiny fraction of the time. How much more efficient to "rent" a laundromat for the few hours per month when you need its industrial capacity.

There are so many household industries that we don't literally invite into our households. What about car repair, aluminum recycling, butchery, or publishing? We all read books, but why own a printing press?

P.S. This doesn't really fit in with my other arguments, but washing machines will make your house smell like soap forever and ever.

Wedding Presents Are Liquid Assets

With all the news coverage focusing on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I got to thinking: Wouldn't it be cute if they got married?

E-dict

The Pope has a website. Now, to be fair, he's not the "real" pope. He's not even a medieval-style antipope, backed by the Holy Roman Emperor in a naked power grab. He's just one man, out there on the streets, who had a dream. Now I don't know whether the Pope in Rome is web-savvy -- I doubt it -- but I do know that Pope Michael I, né David Bawden, was elected with a quorum of six, and that he has a website, and that makes him Pope in my book.

Pope Michael came to this momentous decision when he realized that the Catholic Church, and all of its so-called Holy Fathers, were tainted with Modernism. Among the charges: Pope John Paul II gave Mass to half-naked Papuans. Clearly something had to change, and an antipope was born.

Concerns about Modernism aside, I'm delighted that we finally have a pontiff who understands Web 2.0. While John McCain still can't read his e-mail, Pope Michael is pioneering bold new tithing techniques. And in his segment, "Questions for The Pope," we are invited to e-mail Pope Michael "any honest questions." Please don't abuse this invitation, guys. I don't want to be known as someone who directed a lot of spurious e-mail to the Pope.

Because this is 2008, the centerpiece of this ecclesiastical website is a blog: The Pope Speaks. I was initially pleased to learn that he calls his posts "popsts", but I think that might just be a typo. No true Pope would be that fanciful. The actual blog, I'm sorry to say, is that Catholic argot which is as hard and pointless to wade through as any encyclical or chirograph. He may be a child of the Information Age but in a lot of ways, the new Pope is the same as the old Pope.

Alternative Lifestyles

I've always believed that although we may speak different languages and worship different gods, people all over the world can come together through their lifestyles. Case in point, The Times of India, the world's largest-circulation English newspaper, has a lifestyle section that's every bit as pea-brained as your local paper's.

It carries all the latest buzz about Bollywood of course, but also articles about Kollywood and Tollywood. If Bollywood is where the musicals come from, is Tollywood where they make the Indian detective stories and Westerns? Just a thought. A headline asks us to wonder, "Modelling: Ticket to Bollywood?" Oh, if only.

An entire sub-section is devoted to "Parties", with sub-sub sections for Bangalore and Hyderabad parties. You would think a country of over 1 billion people might find parties commonplace, but evidently when a party happens, they send the reporters.

Since this is monsoon season, we get some monsoon fashion advice -- 'Suchismita Dasgupta, a prominent fashion designer says, “Gone are the days when people used to look clumsy during monsoon."' -- and monsoon personal advice. "Twenty-four-year-old Divya V. hates the monsoon." Chin up, Divya, V.! It'll be, um, not-monsoon season pretty soon.

Moving on, we see that the yoga craze has spread to India, that Indians can't resist a married man, and that cricket gets its own section, to distinguish it from other (lesser) sports.

And lest you forget this is India, there's the poverty. Due to "the steep rise in the level of inflation," The Times is now offering recipes for vegetable peels. Tired of wasting those watermelon rinds? Just "heat a little white oil in a pan and pop a little jeera into it. Add the chopped peel. Add salt to taste, a little haldi powder, [and] some dhania powder." I'm told you can add amchur powder if you want, but personally, I just don't know.

It's Terrific!

Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McCain needs you!

A design team has volunteered their time to create the flyer that we have been talking about and now we need to have writers submit their ideas what we should have on the fliers. Please write us how the flyer should read, what we are interested is that the copy should be perfect in grammar and spelling. Fill out the form below and submit it.

Please help 'em out. My idea:

Not a flyer -- but a movie! The greatest story in American cinema: We open with a shot of Hillary Clinton's palatial estate. Then cut to an aged Clinton uttering her last words: "John McCain".

The rest of the film follows a reporter assigned to find out the meaning of these enigmatic words. He interviews Bill Clinton, arch-rival Barack Obama, and the banker who raised her. An engaging character study is drawn, but nobody can shed any light on Senator Clinton, a woman who got everything she ever wanted, and then lost it. The reporter walks off, baffled.

Then, in one long tracking shot, as workmen sort and burn her innumerable possessions, we are led to Hillary Clinton's personal computer, browser open to Hillary Clinton Supporters For John McCain. The furnace consumes it, and the secret dies.

This is fertile ground. The story of Hillary Clinton is the story of our times, and hcsfjm.com speaks to the human condition. There's tragedy in there: "Don't worry about me Obama! I'm Hillary Rodham Clinton!"

Would a Onesie Fit On My Cat?

Not to be outdone by NPR, our presidential candidates have stores,where you buy overpriced merchandise, just for the privilege of donating money to a political campaign. At the 20-dollar contribution level, you can get a canvas tote. You can't get a John McCain spoken-word album, but at the $45 level you can buy 125 McCain bumper stickers. What could one person want with that many stickers? You gotta think, nothing good. For $200 you get this semaphore pin, spelling out JSM, although the website gives no hint as to its meaning. I'd rather have the sticker swarm:



Perhaps I don't understand modern campaigning, but I think it would be wise for campaigns to subsidize their merchandise, as a form of cheap advertising, rather than trying to gouge it for raw cash. I might wear this lime green McCain polo shirt at market price, but I'm sure not gonna pay 50 simoleons for it.

In the interests of fairness (this blog observes equal-time laws) we turn to Barack Obama. He sells golf balls for 5 dollars apiece, surely the most ephemeral item it is possible to brand. Campaigns would probably sell ice cubes if they thought they could get away with it. Also available, "winter gear," for canvassers in the Patagonia wards.

All this merchandise is suffused with meaning, but the onesies speak volumes:

Both campaigns sell them, and why not? Babies gotta wear clothes, and if politicians didn't try stuff like this, we wouldn't really respect them. It's brilliant: Coo at a child and you're cooing at America. Harvest some of your infant's cuteness for McCain. Heaven knows, he needs it. Even more adorable, both candidates have URLs emblazoned on their clothes. If your baby leads just one person to BarackObama.com, he's done his part for democracy.

Today's Wikipedia Sentence

"A young snail, denoted by a blue shell, makes its way across her path. She is unaware of its potentially fatal proximity."

I'm Pretty Sure This Was in Amélie

Idea: A shop selling individual pet butterflies, in tiny gilded cages.

Change We Can Believe In

As far as I can tell, presidential campaigns have never really had distinctive logos. In previous years, campaign imagery was dominated by wavy flag motifs. Everything was colored red, white and blue, and the font choice was between boring serif (favored by liberals) and boring sans-serif (favored by conservatives). Fringe candidates sometimes indulged themselves, but mostly it was this kind of thing:




The stylized, choppy flag (is that supposed to be bunting?) proved to be such a winner for our last two presidents that Hillary Clinton can be forgiven for thinking that the country was hungry for more of the same. But a startling backlash against smushed-up stars and stripes handed Obama the nomination. Although Obama's logo suggests the flag, the red and white stripes are clearly supposed to represent plowed fields, while a rising sun forms the negative space of an "O" (O for Obama). I would vote for this image.



McCain's logo is less advanced (What do you want? He's old), but it does have some nice features. The choice of colors -- white, yellow and navy blue -- is especially pleasing, and the bowed letters are interesting. Evidently McCain decided that he had such a stockpile of patriotism, he could afford to dissipate some on his logo, which bears no reference at all to the American flag. Good for him, I say, because the American flag is a cluttered, incoherent mess.

Indeed, although the best men won, the graphic design of the whole presidential field is a step up from four years ago. Edwards, Biden and Giuliani all had emblems I would describe as "attractive". On the other hand, Brownback's logo looks like it was designed by a first-grade teacher, and Tom Vilsack might as well be running for president of Abercrombie and Fitch.

The Yes Zone

How come tractor-trailers don't just have better rear view mirrors, or even a closed-circuit camera system? Of course the trucker doesn't care, since it's not his car that's going to be wrecked in a collision. But it might be worth passing a law, just so we can delete that preachy passage in the DMV manuals. With luck, our children may grow up in a world without No Zones.