Month: December 2004

Captain of Consciousness

I helped my friend Lucia write a statement to read at the Melrose School Committee and we got quoted in the Globe. I feel like I’m contributing to shaping society in a way that I want even though I have no actual connection to Melrose.

The strength of my convictions is not what it was when I was a self-righteous little brat. But still, it feels good to do something to contribute to civil discourse.

Plus those kids better be well-educated, they’re going to be paying for my social security check!

Stupid, but Constitutional, Law

Do states have the right to regulate wine sales online? Well, this seems like one of those “stupid but constitutional” laws. This is pretty silly, honestly: we can’t even get free trade within the US?

Someone else I read commented on this issue, but I can’t remember who it was. They said something about the WSJ editorial page being knuckleheads, and I skipped over it, because I already know that.

Words and Phrases to Ban

Those of you prone to business-speak, those of you who need to talk about money and sales and markets, please pay attention.

If you are discussing, say, the size of the market for a particular category of software — PC games, for example — and it has increased, you know it is growth in the market. If it has not increased (as is the case with PC gaming, which appears to be losing out to consoles) you can describe that as “flat” or as “no growth” or as “not much growth at all.” If it goes down, like graphics software has, (apparently people are satisfied with what they have, and/or get it free with their cameras), for crying out loud, do not call it negative growth.

Now, I admit it’s not as easy as all that to figure out what to call it. You can’t call it a loss, because it isn’t: we’re talking about less money coming in, not money actually going out. Nor can you call it “shrinkage,” which is already reserved for theft of physical products somewhere between manufacture and consumer (that is, the sum of product lost to assembly-line workers taking a few home, boxes “falling off the truck,” and shoplifting). You can, however, call it a deterioration, decline, decrease, or a falling-off. Any of those is vastly preferable to the abomination that is “negative growth.”

OK, this is why I am angry

A documentary about gay people in the south is being used as an excuse to kill public television.

All research into human sexual behavior is described as deviant and horrible and evil and bad. So we’re never going to get any good science on the subject. Instead, we get people like Judith Reisman:

She claims that Kinsey actively solicited pedophiles to molest children and report back to him. In fact, she said, “there is absolutely no reason to believe that Kinsey himself was not involved in the sexual abuse of these children.” (None of Kinsey’s four biographers have turned up any evidence that he was.) Reisman also believes that Kinsey died not from heart failure but from what she calls “brutal, repetitive self-abuse.”

That’s right– we have no evidence one way or the other, so let’s call him a pedophile, and claim he died from masturbating. Also, she believes in gay Nazis and homosexual “recruitment.” In other words, science and learning have been replaced with dogma and conspiracy theories in the halls of legislature.

So, bring on the lies which we will tell to our children in classrooms and textbooks– after those books which feature or describe or mention homosexuality are burned.. Also, we’ll promote our lies with a “fun” and “hip” approach in tacky, overpriced, poorly-designed websites. Sites as Cool 2b Real and Zip4Tweens. Sometimes I think my job (marketing) consists of aiming low, advocating for mediocrity, and basically describing ugly realities in pleasant terms– and then I think of the people who build those sites, and wonder how hard it was to make the choice between moral and financial bankruptcy? Why can’t you do something decent, like the folks at Scarleteen, huh?

Yep, we love our childrens (this is has been going on for some time now). We love them so much that if we disapprove of their parents we’ll pull their health insurance. We love them so much we won’t announce that we welcome them at church, because it’s kind of controversial, and might be against national policy.

So, that’s why I’m angry today.