Cultural Oddity

Veggie burger

 

Had to eat at an "In-and-out Burger" joint. Their meat selection was not appealing, but the counter lady mentioned "veggie burger". I thought that would be safe to eat. Turns out, their "veggie" burger is without a patty. No meat patty, no veggie patty. Just two grilled buns, a slice of onion, a slice of tomato, and a lettuce leaf. All for the low price of $1.50 . A-maizing.

 

bad-bad-bad AAA

 

Got to know the un-appealing side of AAA, the insurance company I stayed with for many years. Apparently, they cannot "forward-schedule" the cancellation of the insurance policy. I have to call them up on the day of the cancellation. It sounded so weird I could not believe it. Progressive scheduled the cancellation ahead of time with ease. Geico just did the same, and already mailed in the reimbursement check for the cancelled time of the policy. But "reliable" AAA could not do that.

And this is when it turned to worse. I called them again, to talk to a different clerk, to make sure it was not just a fantasy of the first one. Usually that's a good idea. Except the second one was not smart. Like, no smart at all. Kept repeating that I have to have AAA membership in order to have their insurance, completely oblivious to my attempts to schedule the cancellation ahead of time.

Makes me happy to leave them.

 

Watersports in Academia

 

Yet another professah professed his dislike of a colleague by using his own peeeeeeeeeeee. I say "yet another" because of persistent rumors of a certain famous scientist having already used his pee on the offensive. He got away with that after doctors got involved. Both stories feature the same elements: a dispute, puddles of liquid showing up regularly, hidden cameras.

Disgusting as it is, it makes (some) sense. You have a confluence of factors leading to abnormal behaviour:

• A lifetime guarantee of employment, at least for tenured faculties.
• A detachment from "real life" and under-developed psychology (true for most "math" types in my experience).

It's better than duels, of course, but what the stink!

I certainly was happy that automatic "low-flush" urinaries were installed in bathrooms in my neck of the woods. The goal was to save water. The side benefit was that the urinaries are regularly flushed. It's a big win, cause some luminaries did not bother to flush after themselves. Who knows why. Now, if only there was a way to force them wash there hands....

 

Whipping works

 

Public consiounsness in US is used to positive stimulation, a "carrot" so to speak. It frowns upon negative reinforcement, a "whip". Nonetheless the said whip, or even a hint of it, works quite well. It works in a workplace, where a shadow of layoffs forces lazy workers to do stuff. And it works in the public sector. In San Francisco, the adopted law of obligatory composting doubled the amount of the sorted material. With no fines applied.

 

 

Bullied bullies

 

I find it amusing, as of lately, how insecure bullies are. Just two examples.

Sara Palin. The lady does not seem to think twice before accusing everybody and his brother of all sort of sins. Given her large following, this basically amounts to public bullying. Her "reload" message is outright sinister. Yet she totally freaked out when a reporter merely rented a neighboring house. She even constructed a fense.

A certain reporter Dan Noyes got a "nice" confrontation with a PR guy Slavin when persuing his story. Slavin kept touching Noyes while saying that he wants to whelcome him to the meeting taking place. The touching is usually not acceptable in USA, especially after repeated warning "don't touch me". It might even be law-suitable. But at the basis of it the reporter was very invasive and pushy in spite of the meeting people declining the interview. The PR guy was discharge to take control of the situation. Which he did, by bullying the bully. And that clearly got to the reporter, who is usually the one on the offensive.

(My observations above pertain strictly to the bullying behaviour. There can be legitimate reasons why certain people show up in certain places. In particular, the reporter story might have persued certain impropriaties of public funds. Which hardly justifies bullying.)

 

Missing Mind

 

One of the hidden beauty of communication is that people tell you different things from what they intended. A recent article in San Francisco Chronicle meant to feature the new and wonderful iPad software. How it allows you to communicate with the holder of your lost device, and trace it, and (maybe) recover it. What it really told me is that the author is mindless and aloof most of the time:

"How could I have done this again? I once left my purse in a phone booth at San Francisco airport. I rushed back. Gone. I left my late grandmother's engagement ring on a bathroom sink at Macy's. I rushed back. Gone. I left a new leather jacket on a coatrack in a restaurant. I rushed back. Gone. Umbrellas. Earrings. Scarves. Cell phone chargers. Shoes. Glasses. Medication. I have left pieces of my life in rental cars, airplanes, hotels, cafes and cabs."

Obviously something is  profoundly wrong with this person's life. I doubt that any amount of technological advances with iPad can cure it.

More on spies

Techcrunch has a video interview with one of the "spies". Whatever you think about them and seriousness of their spying, the video is amazing. The interviewer is asking good questions. What does he get? Empty answers, some flirting, his own re-phrased questions. That's about it. Unbelievable.

Crooks, crooks everywhere

Well, not exactly everywhere. But I did go into a local "AT&T Wireless" outlet. And it was weird.

Could not quite figure it out for a while, until it dawned on me. It's but a smaller version of a car dealership. You know, a place, where crooks can work legally while "selling" crap to their customers under a disguise of "low monthly payments".

For what it's worth -- I use a pre-paid T-Mobile thing. With my volume of calls, it works out to about $10 a month, a far cry from $40-50 a month for most plans. Even if the volume of calls increases sharply, at 10cents a minute, that's a reasonable price. And I'm in a full control of this expenditure. It does not automatically fly out of pocket.

Russian Spies and FBI

There was a media event recently FBI arrested 11 Russian Spies. Journalists got  busy writing about the Cold War return, and meaning of the timing of the arrest. If you look into  it, things are much simpler and prosaic.

Basically, FBI screwed up. They have been following these people for many years. Yet they did not have any evidence of "real" secret-stealing activities. (Everybody was charged with things like failing to register as a "foreign agent" and money laundering, but not spying.) Then FBI send their impostor to an urgent meeting with one of the spies, Anna Chapman. That meeting made her so suspicious, that she bought a new cell phone using a fake Russian name and a (fake) "99 Fake Street" address, a couple of calling cards and started to call Russia for confirmation. This is in spite of a good chance of being eavesdropped on. Then FBI decided that she's a "flight risk", and arrested everybody involved.

How exactly the FBI agent gave himself in? I don't know for sure. Although when asked for more information about himself, the guy managed to answer "My name is Roman, I work in the consulate." That sure sounds inept.

And this is how those (counter) intelligence operations work. You'd like to be proud of your country's special agencies, but they f*ck up. Regularly. I know, because I've read "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" :)

Anyway, those evil Russian Spies were looking pretty strange. Some had Russian accents. This Anna Chapman woman posted her photos on a Russian social network site odnoklassnike.ru ("classmates"), as well as on Facebook. The Young Turks have a pretty good funny review of the spies ineptitude.

And so it goes with those secret "supermen".

Great State of Healthcare

"The best healthcare in the world" is kind of screwed up when:

• One of the best AIDS experts in the world is forced to close his practice. For financial reasons.
• A graduate student with a bad tooth flies across half of the globe to get it fixed in his/her native country. The whole long journey plus nearly free care at home is cheaper than a locally procured root canal plus extras.

The latter is a story I've seen too many times. It works for foreign students. What do American ones have to do? This is how the society treats it's future experts.