Make It a Hair Boomerang

While I found the hair boom movement a little silly, I wasn't planning to write anything about it. The people participating were well-intentioned, even if sending hair clippings to the Gulf coast to use in absorptive "booms" seemed to be one of those things people do so they can think they've made a difference in a terrible situation... rather than actually making a difference.

But now it's clear that the booms are not wanted -- and, in fact, don't even work for the intended purpose, yet the organizers are still encouraging salons to send hair to the Gulf.

According to several well-sourced articles, including one today in the Pioneer Press by Bob Shaw, the booms have been tested by the Coast Guard and found to sink. On May 21, the Coast Guard officially asked people and organizations to "discontinue the collection of hair."



According to Shaw, "Even if the hair nylons could be used on shorelines, they require intensive manpower -- which is difficult to imagine on hundreds of miles of Gulf coastline. And volunteers aren't even allowed in most cleanup areas. Crude oil is toxic and can burn the skin. Trained workers are handling most of the job."

What do the folks who are organizing the drive have to say about this? If you're expecting them to say they'll stop, that's not what Shaw found. "We hope to make a big enough splash so BP will take them," said Lisa Gautier of Matter of Trust, the organizing group.

To use for what? As a sop for your conscience?

Shaw asked Gautier, "Is it deceptive to imply the hair will somehow help the Gulf oil crisis?" To which Gautier replied, in a classic non-answer, " 'Well, BP deceived us,'... The company, she said, initially showed interest in the hair-filled nylons, then changed its mind."

Possibly they changed their minds once they found out the hair booms don't work? Doesn't that seem reasonable?

Here's a thought: Why doesn't Matter of Trust organize all those salons to compost the hair right in their own hometowns, instead of shipping it via petroleum-fueled transport to the Gulf coast? Or even encourage them to arrange with local community gardens to pick up the hair for use as a soil amendment, without composting?

Nah, I guess, that would be too much work. It's easier to ship the hair off to a warehouse in Florida where it will never be used.

Parade of Ignorance

I know I'm the only one who still reads Parade magazine. So I assume I'm also the only one who notices the incredibly stupid questions that are occasionally selected in the Personality Parade column. Of course, almost all of the questions are inane -- that goes with the territory -- but these questions rise to a level of idiocy that almost has to be intentional an the part of the editors.

From a May 30 feature about Kristin Chenoweth, the Broadway musical star who made her mark with soaring vocal work as Glinda in Wicked. The initial question: "Some readers have asked if you did your own singing when you appeared recently on Glee."

To which Chenoweth was forced to give this answer: "Oh, wow. Well, I was trained in voice and I have a master's in it, so, yeah."

From April 11: "I've heard that First Lady Michelle Obama has 17 assistants who cost the public more than $1.5 million a year. I've also heard that Laura Bush had only one assistant. True? Answer: Not true. This subject has produced a lot of mail. In fact, Mrs. Obama has a staff of 24, with a total payroll in the vicinity of $1.5 million. Mrs. Bush had a staff of 25, at a similar cost to taxpayers. "While every First Lady approaches the job differently, the duties, obligations, and opportunities for the office of the First Lady have increased dramatically over the years," a highly placed White House source explains."

From May 23: "Wasn't there a TV show called V in the 1990s, also based on human-alien interactions? Is there a connect between it and the new V on ABC?"

From May 9: "With Pope Benedict XVI much in the news lately, I wonder: Has there ever been an American pope?"

Although I suppose the hardest thing to believe among all this is that Personality Parade still gets any questions at all, given that burbling fountain of information called the Internet.

Munro Leaf

I was browsing in a high-end plant nursery a few days ago, and what did I see in between the books on container gardening and succulents for every occasion? A newly reissued series of books by Munro Leaf.


What they have to do with gardening, I still don't know, but they reminded me of a partially written post, so here it is at last.

Like many a baby boomer, I grew up reading The Story of Ferdinand (you know, the story about the bull who wouldn't fight, but wanted to smell flowers instead), but never knew who its author was until one day I was at an estate sale and came across an old red hardcover book called Let's Do Better by someone named Munro Leaf.

When I got the book home, I looked up the author and found out about the Ferdinand connection and a lot more about Leaf.

Published by Lippincott in 1945, Let's Do Better has Dr. Seuss-like lettering on the cover, and uses almost-stick-figure illustrations to tell the story of how people began to cooperate and create civilization.

Unfortunately, these groups of people would go to war with each other over resources. The story then describes people who are Thinkers, who affect us all by their thoughts and actions.


"These Thinkers can be divided into three different kinds and two of the three kinds can be good for us all. The third kind is always getting us into trouble." Leaders and Makers and Doers are the two good ones, while the bad one is Selfish Cheaters. "They are the people who mess things up, who try to push and pull the people of the world around while they are thinking only of themselves. Unfortunately, they live in every country."

When Selfish Cheaters are smart, they sometimes become Leaders, and then we're all in trouble, and wars happen. "If the people of every country will be very careful about who their leaders are, and if we all see to it that the Selfish Cheaters never become powerful, then we can live together in a peaceful world."


"If we want this world to be a better place, we are the ones who can make it so."

Many considered Leaf to be a pacifist because of Ferdinand, and I can only assume Let's Do Better was written as a commentary on leaders like Hitler and Mussolini. Leaf spent the war years writing propaganda (along with Dr. Seuss), so perhaps he felt he had something to prove. But reading the book now has a different feeling -- as if it's a more radical critique of current and recent leaders.

For Whom the Bell Suffices

I hate ringing bells for service, mostly because I assume the people who are paid to respond to them hate the sound of the bell and the idea of answering to it as if they were some Russian guy's dog.

So this little sign made me feel two things:

1. Guiltier than ever for ringing it (even just once), and
2. Vindicated that I was right about how the staff feels about the bell.

Seen at Turn>Style in Roseville.

Halfalogue -- More than an Annoying Neologism

Did you hear about the Cornell University researchers who asked people to take a series of tests?

No, I didn't. What kind of tests?

The kind of tests doesn't matter, it's what the people had to listen to while they were doing the tests.

You mean like Beethoven instead of Slipknot or something like that?

No, it wasn't about music. There were four different types of sound: silence, a monologue, a two-person conversation, and a one-sided conversation, like you might hear when someone talks on a cellphone. That's where the term "halfalogue" comes in.

And they found out what about this?

The halfalogue was the only noise that lowered their test scores.

That is so true!

I know. Now I'll be even more irritated when I'm forced to listen to one.
_________

Originally from a story in the Los Angeles Times; more details here.

If You Can Read This, You're Following Too Closely

A few months ago, Macworld included this interesting take on using Twitter as a private network.

If I don't know you, I frankly don't think you should care about my opinions. (I barely care about most of them myself.)... My every attempt at wit should not have the half life of uranium 238....

In general, if I'm not comfortable giving you my telephone number, I probably won't let you follow me on Twitter -- even if I know you and I like you.

(Why did it take me so long to post this? Macworld doesn't post its content to the web until each issue has aged as long as medium cheddar.)

Foot in the Door, Heads in the Museum

I finally made it to the Minneapolis Institute of Art to see the Foot in the Door exhibit. This is a once-in-a-decade opportunity for anyone to have a piece of art in Minnesota's largest art museum. (As long as it's not larger than 1 cubic foot.) This year, there are nearly 5,000 pieces in the show.

The museum curators hang the pieces in columns and rows at heights well above and below the viewer's head. Curiously, I found myself finding a lot of heads.


Two heads are better than one.


Unless there's a whole gumball machine full of them.

Worn out a bit from the sheer number of objects, I wandered upstairs from Foot in the Door to the modernism area.


And found yet another room full of heads. ("Head of a Woman" by Modigliani at left; "Portrait of the Artist" by Derain at right.)

Modernism wasn't all about heads, though. I was interested in a collection of early Art Deco building designs by Robert Mallet-Stevens (1922). The drawings are all black and white with a single additional color. They were beautiful as illustrations, let alone as depictions of buildings imagined by an architect.


I found this one mostly amusing, however. Called Ecole Primaire (Primary School), it made me think about the differences between the culture of 1920s France and present-day America:

• Of course, there are separate wings (or classrooms) for boys and girls. Possibly separate entrances, as on Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Scotland Street School, but that's not visible in the drawing.
  
• The scale of the building is tiny: it appears to have just two classrooms. So much for the vaunted economy of scale that makes schools so financially efficient these days.
  
• Both classrooms are on the second floor, for no apparent reason except that it looks cool. ADA, anyone?
  
• Unless it's built in a flood zone, I have no idea what the purpose of the open areas under the classrooms might be. Maybe the kids could have recess under there when it rained? Or maybe it was a school for teaching car repair, and the area below was to be used for the car lifts?
  

I almost might wonder out loud if Mallet-Stevens was using his head when he designed it... but I wouldn't want to put my foot in my mouth.

Get Motivated to Investigate Get Motivated!

Well, it's finally almost time for the much-advertised Get Motivated seminar at the Target Center in downtown Minneapolis this Wednesday.

Today's Star Tribune had two stories about it -- one in news about expected traffic problems (there's a a Twins game, too) and the other in Variety about the seminars in general, giving a balanced journalistic look at the events.

David Brauer at MinnPost noted the Strib story on his BrauBlog, as well as an earlier story in the City Pages that I'd missed. Brauer also ran down some of the SEC work concerning the seminars, so that was helpful. It turns out Investools, one of the products pitched at Get Motivated, got a $3 million fine from the SEC. According to Brauer, "The SEC alleged that the two salesmen misrepresented themselves as successful investors, and that the company failed to police its salesforce or the use of a self-selected customer survey."

Nick Pinto, writing for City Pages, attempted a bit of forensic accounting: $5 a ticket in a 20,000-seat arena equals $100,000.... which is probably just about what Rudy Giuliani gets paid for his short appearance. Not even covering Colin Powell, Sarah Palin, or Brett Favre's fees, let alone the facilities rental, or the dozens of full-page ads they've run over the last two months (which Pinto helpfully tells us sell for $21,000 apiece).

I hope some of these journalists will be at the event to observe what's being sold and how, and how many members of the audience take the bait.

Apprentice Farmers and Experienced Dogs

The Heavy Table has just started featuring recurring journal entries from Ruth Burke, a young woman who is interning on a Community-Supported Agriculture farm. She's an agronomy student at the University of Minnesota with no farming experience, so it should be interesting to listen in on her as she "jumps in and figures it out on the way down."

On a completely different note, Carmella, the little brown dog, has been doing a series of dog etiquette posts that I've found enlightening. (Don't Stare at Me, Don't Touch My Head, I Hardly Know You! and How Dogs Say Howdy.) I have to confess a moderate unease with dogs, generally -- I don't dislike them, but I'm not generally a big fan either. I guess I'd be considered a cat person (at least, I know how to interact with cats), although I wouldn't call myself one.

I think Carmella's tips will make me more comfortable meeting dogs. So thanks, C!

Cafesjian's Carousel at Como Park

When you live in one city for a few decades, it's easy to forget the great things about it. Today I was reminded of one of our local public treasures, and found out more about how it was saved. It was a reminder of what can happen when a few people work hard to make a difference.

Some relatives with younger children were visiting this weekend, so we decided to visit the Como Zoo. By chance, we picked the carousel as our rendezvous point, and just had to go for a ride on it.


I've vaguely known about the carousel for decades, but had let that knowledge leak out of my head. Here's the short version:

It was commissioned and built in 1914 by a local man for use at the Minnesota State Fair. For 74 years it was privately owned and run, until 1988 when its owner announced that it was going to be sold at auction in New York.


A local couple, Nancy Peterson and Peter Boehm, heard this news and immediately began organizing a nonprofit organization, Our Fair Carousel, to buy the carousel. With a loan from the city of St. Paul and a lot of work, their purchase offer was accepted by the owner at the last minute (or even after the last minute -- the auction had already started and the first horse was being moved out onto the auction floor).


They spent the next several years raising money to pay back the loan. One major donor was Gerald Cafesjian, who gave more than half the $1.1 million needed. Our Fair Carousel honored Cafesjian by naming the carousel after him.


The carousel was first moved to downtown St. Paul, then later to a new, custom-made building at Como Park and Zoo.

The Our Fair Carousel website provides a detailed history and many photos of the carousel, including its rescue from a 1939 fire and restoration in the 1990s. All of the work has been done by volunteers.

There are so many things in our world that need people power to make them work. It's inspiring to be reminded of a time when the actions of just a few people became the lever that moved many more people to act for the good of us all.
_______

As the oddities of life would have it, Nancy Peterson is also known as Blissed-Out Grandma, author of one of my daily blog destinations.

Past carousel posts: Lark Toys

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Web designer Jason Santa Maria wondered aloud on Twitter if someone could make a site listing all of the "awful business speak...and provide alternatives? Then I can link people who chronically use this awful language to said site."

Content strategist Nicole of Mule Design obliged him by creating Unsuckit. Here are some of her early verbal transformations:

• Action Item -- a goal, to do
• Going Forward -- in the future
• Mission Critical -- urgent

I recognize a couple of phrases I tend to use at work, although I could swear I've been using them for a long time, so maybe I started them as trends, heh:

• In the a.m.
• Table this (usually said in a meeting where it's fairly appropriate... I do have a long-ago life phase in student government, after all)

There are so many other terms that are worse than these two. Maybe Nicole could confer with Brooks of Sheffield, who writes the Lost New York City blog. He has a list to share.

Noam Man Is an Island

You can't post links to the Onion every time they run a great story, but once in a while it's hard to resist.

Such is the case with Exhausted Noam Chomsky Just Going to Try and Enjoy the Day for Once.

"Idiots Get Confident While the Smart Get Modest"

It's called the Dunning-Kruger effect: The lower the scores students received on a test, the more inaccurate their assessment of how they did. As Robyn Williams tells it on The Science Show:

...the students at the bottom end of the bell curve held inflated opinions of their own talents, hugely inflated. In one test of logical reasoning, the lowest quartile of students estimated that their skills would put them above more than 60% of their peers when in fact they had beaten out just 12%....

Even more surprisingly, the Dunning-Kruger effect leads high achievers to doubt themselves, because on the other end of the bell curve the talented students consistently underestimated their performance. Again to the test of logic; those topping the class felt that they were only just beating out three-quarters of their classmates, whereas in reality they had out-performed almost 90% of them.

The latter finding matches up well with my personal experience of what's called "impostor syndrome," wherein a clearly accomplished and intelligent person believes that s/he doesn't deserve to be where s/he is (such as graduate school or in a profession).

All of this also made me think of some other recent research, reported by Susan Perry of MinnPost, that shows athletes, lawyers and test-takers all perform worse when they believe a "superstar" is competing with them. As the Wall Street Journal reported it:

researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of Haifa compared average SAT scores with the average number of students in test-taking venues in all 50 states, and found that students who took the SAT in larger groups did worse. They concluded that the mere knowledge of their competitors — the sight of all of those other students scratching in their answers in the same room — decreased motivation.

So combining all of this, we should conclude that the students who did worse on the SAT because of the competition would think they had done better than they did, right?
_________

Thanks to BoingBoing for the heads up on Dunning and Kruger's work.

Random Photos

If you see something, say something. Even in Dubuque, where this photo was shot. That guy looks like he's up to no good.


Yes, this is my cat, in his odalisque pose.


I was out for a stroll the other night when I happened upon this box of rocks. In case you ever need an illustration of "dumber than a box of rocks," you're welcome to use it. High res version available. (Oh, that reminds me -- Carmella, the little brown dog, had a fun post recently about the expression "dumber than a box of hair.")

Baby Cardinals

Maybe it's because my small-town high school's team name was the Cardinals, but this week I've been enchanted by the tweets of nicolibrian, an Iowa City library graduate student.

She recently discovered a couple of cardinals had built a nest outside her window, and now the babies have arrived. Some of her birdy tweets:

The Cardinal eggs have hatched!! Both Cardinal parents are feeding 3 chicks, Mom still sitting on them most of the time. Overcome by cute.

Newly-hatched Cardinal update: they sleep. And eat bugs. Both Mom and Dad feeding them creepy crawlies. Have very fine gray fuzz already!

Mommy Cardinal does this funny thing where she jumps in the nest and wiggles on the babies. I am dying of cute.

And she posted a link to this video, saying "Our Cardinal nest is not this close, but this is exactly what they look like!"



But am I the only one who -- noticing how their huge mouths hide the fact that the hungry little birds even have heads -- is reminded of a slightly larger hungry beast from Frank Herbert's Dune?

Screen Snaps Crackle and Pop

I've been accumulating snapshots of text errors and other oddities from various websites, and it's finally time to share a few.

The Huffington Post is usually good for some headline amusement. First, there's the name of that famous Indian political leader. Why is it so darn hard to spell correctly?


Then there's the problem with hyphens in headlines. There's nothing wrong with this headline, but the line break makes it almost completely nonsensical. Biden took on a wall? Was he trying to protect Humpty Dumpty? And what's a street-friendly Democrat?


Which reminds me of this fun hyphen error from today's Star Tribune. The copy editor gets points for realizing a hyphen was needed, but loses points for not getting it between the right two words.


Although, I have to admit "fangled-fiber" is a great phrase that I will have to try to insert into my daily usage. "Are you having a burger for lunch?" "No, today I feel the need for some fangled-fiber."

Facebook's sidebars are usually good for a laugh. I've seen women friends identified as "he," and can't remember how many agreement problems I've noted like this one (which is actually on my status page as I write this):


I realize they're using "Facebook Ads" as a singular product name (similar to saying "Advertising is an easy and effective way...") but, really, didn't they ever learn that writers should read their words aloud to hear how they sound? Chalkboard? Fingernails?

I usually avoid comment threads, but once in a while I succumb. One bonus of reading them is a bumper crop of spelling and usage errors. I ignore most of them (considering the source), but here are a couple that are so bad they'd be right at home on signs at a Tea Party rally:





You know those codes you have to type before submitting a comment on Blogger or other websites? They're called "captchas" and are a source of amusement to many, including one Flickr user who has set up a page called Captcha Poetry. Here are a few I've had to type that I thought were particularly noteworthy:





And last but not least... there's nothing wrong with the wording of this tweet from Seward Co-op:



But isn't "reliable mango" a particularly nice example of word salad? Finally!

Too Soon

Um, yes, it can be. In fact, yes, it is.

Ad seen in a Madison, Wis., weekly.

Welcome, Spring

Maple trees try to grow everywhere, it seems.

As seen in St. Paul outside the Bean Factory, Randolph Ave.

Lifetime + 70 Years Is Way Too Long for Copyrights

Today's letters in the Star Tribune contained one I wish I'd written:

Copyrights: Current laws not what Constitution intended

As dean of libraries emeritus at South Dakota State University, I read with interest "Digital books put on hold" (May 10).

The U.S. Constitution says, "Congress shall have Power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

In our federal republic's earliest years, the "limited times" totaled 14 years. Congress, with the Supreme Court's approval, has extended this to the author's lifetime plus 70 years, meaning a century or more.

Today's centurylong copyright terms reward not only authors, as intended by the framers, but now also the author's children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, who are not mentioned in the Constitution.

The long shadow of copyright inhibits cultural efforts, events and institutions by imposing decadeslong obligations to seek permission and make payments in order to republish a poem or a scientific paper, to televise a movie, to play music or read a poem in public performance, or now to read an old book online.

This is not progress in promoting the progress of science and useful arts.

--Steve Marquardt, Lake Lillian, Minn.

I have to admit that 14 years seems a bit short... I can imagine scenarios where a book or piece of music isn't popular until after 14 years go by, then suddenly it makes it big and the author gets nothing from it.

But the life of the author (or in the case of group or corporate authorship, some set length such as 40 or 50 years) seems completely reasonable. I could be persuaded to something even a bit shorter -- 30 years, maybe.

Here's a great graph from the Wikipedia showing how copyright lengths have changed over the life of the U.S.:


See, now, isn't it cool that I can use their chart and know that they won't sue me as long as I give them credit?

Media Goodness on Parade

The piles are overflowing my filing cabinet once again, so here's a roundup of some things I've been saving to share.


I've written before about Tony Carrillo's F Minus, but something about this strip made me laugh, as they say, out loud. I think it's the idea of cute little teddy bears being perceived as pests. How can anyone be mad at them when their little faces are such a mix of sad and sweet? Awwwww.

Somehow, I didn't even realize it was a reference to "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" until my daughter mentioned it.

A New York Times op-ed, reprinted in the Star Tribune, led me to the work of Rose George. She's the author of a book called The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. Her article gives a basic rundown on how human waste at sewage treatment plants can be turned into energy. 5 million gallons of waste are needed each day to generate energy through anaerobic digestion; about a thousand U.S. plants meet that level. Of these, only 544 do anaerobic digestion, and 438 of those just burn off the resulting gas, rather than do anything with it. As George writes: "If those 544 treatment plants generated energy from their sewage, the EPA concluded in a 2007 report, they could provide 340 megawatts of electricity (enough to power 340,000 homes), and offset 2.3 million tons of carbon... equivalent to planting 640,000 acres of forest or taking some 430,000 cars off the road."

The Star Tribune's personal finance writer Kara McGuire had a column on the seminars sponsored by the AARP and Better Business Bureau to educate seniors about the many scammers who prey upon them. Now if the Strib would just stop running ads that target the credulous...

Author Gail Sheehy wrote about One Last Magical Evening a few weeks ago in Parade magazine. Sheehy's husband, magazine editor Clay Felker, died in 2008, and she tells the story of the last weeks of his life. I always assume that writers choose to be in Parade because they know they'll reach a wide audience of primarily older readers, and in this case that makes a lot of sense. Here's hoping some younger folks read it, too, because we all need to think about how we want our lives to come to a close.

Retired professor Gary Joselyn wrote convincingly on the Star Tribune op-ed page about the arbitrariness of Minnesota's high-stakes graduation tests (so cleverly named the GRAD test). Given his career in educational measurement, Joselyn's opinion seems pretty reasonable to me:

The most serious problem with high-stakes testing is that there is no scientific way to establish the score below which students "fail." Despite the best efforts of objective professionals, in the end the "cut score" will be arbitrary....

When using an absolute standard as with the GRAD, it is theoretically possible that every student could pass or that every student could fail, because it is theoretically possible that every test-taker is qualified or that none are. When a panel sets the cut score, it is supposed to be considering only whether the student is "college-ready" or "employment-ready," not how his or her performance compares with other test-takers.

But the panel cannot do this because of two other constraints. It knows it must not set the cut score too low, such that all or nearly all pass, lest it be accused of not being for "high standards." And it cannot set the cut score so high so that all or nearly all graduates fail, because that would result in a political uproar. So it must establish a cut score somewhere between these extremes. Or, to put it more starkly, it is forced to decide, arbitrarily, how many students will "fail."

Last Wednesday's Star Tribune (May 5) op-ed page had two stories side by side, both well worth reading. Law professor Eileen Scallen wrote a well-reasoned argument for disconnecting religious marriage from civil marriage, pointing out that numerous churches will now perform same-sex marriages. Yet those same churches are allowed to sign the civil marriage documents for only some of their members. "It is religious discrimination to deny my partnership and the religions that would perform our marriage ceremony the same religious freedom and respect."

The other May 5 piece was by skeptic Michael Shermer, whose book Why People Believe Weird Things has been on my Future Favorites? list for quite a while. Shermer recounts all the ways that life today is "the good old days," from lower crime to pollution to higher standards of living worldwide. Clearly, he's right, although he glosses over many challenges we face if we're going to make those gains sustainable.

There's Not Much Purple in Family Values

We all know that "family values" is the mantra of conservatives like Sarah Palin.

But which states have the most intact families and the lowest rates of teen birth? The states that voted for Kerry and Obama.

Which states have the highest divorce and teen birth rates? The states that voted for Bush and McCain.

And why is that?

Jonathan Rauch, writing for the National Journal, had a fascinating column about families in "red" and "blue" states. Based on the work of family law professors Naomi Cahn and June Carbone in their book Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture, Rauch describes a dichotomy between red and blue:

In red America, families form adults; in blue America, adults form families.

Translation: Red states hold to the traditional pattern of early marriage, in which young marrieds grow up together, while blue states have entered into a new pattern where people marry after college, with some work experience and more maturity. As evidence, Rauch cites the average age of marriage, which is lower in red states, higher in blue. The extremes are 23 in Mississippi and 28 in Massachusetts.

So that's interesting. But maybe it's just two different ways of going about life, equally valid?

Possibly not, according to Cahn and Carbone. In a society transformed economically by the information age, requiring more education to hold a well-paying job (and with the introduction of effective birth control), which way of doing things seems like a better fit? Rauch summarizes:

The postindustrial economy puts a premium on skill and cognitive ability. A high school education or less no longer offers very good prospects. Blue-collar wages fall, so a factory job no longer cuts it -- if, that is, you can even find a factory job.

In this very different world, early family formation is often a calamity. It short-circuits skill acquisition by knocking one or both parents out of school. It carries a high penalty for immature marital judgment in the form of likely divorce. It leaves many young mothers, now bearing both the children and the cultural responsibility for pregnancy, without the option of ever marrying at all.

He goes on to write:

The result of this red quandary, Cahn and Carbone argue, is a self-defeating backlash. Moral traditionalism fails to prevent premarital sex and early childbirth. Births precipitate more early marriages and unwed parenthood. That, in turn, increases family breakdown while reducing education and earnings.

Reading Rauch's take on Cahn and Carbone's book made me think of George Lakoff's earlier work On Moral Politics. In it, Lakoff applies the techniques of his field, cognitive linguistics, to modern American politics and comes to the conclusion that conservatives and liberals have divergent mental models of government, based on their world views of what families should be: Conservatives believe in a "strict father" morality, while liberals adhere to a "nurturant parent" morality. These two types of morality diverge in many important ways, of course. (Details on how they play out in political opinion are available in this good summary on the Wikipedia.)

Combined with the economic and sociological implications of Cahn and Carbone's work, Lakoff's ideas make even more sense to me. I hope that having an understanding of the structural factors that underlie our country's vast differences of opinion and approach might make it possible for us to talk with each other in useful ways.

Clues About Ellen Raskin in The Tattooed Potato

I admit I undertook my recent rereading of Ellen Raskin's The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues as a way of finding out more about the author's life.

The book is set in a Greenwich Village brownstone that Raskin acknowledged was based on her own home, and the main character, a young woman named Dickory, is an art student, as Raskin was early in her life.

We see Dickory in her art classes and hear the words of her teachers, and I couldn't help wondering how much of this came from Raskin's life, or from the experiences of her friends.

The book is focused on disguises. Garson, the artist who hires Dickory as his assistant, is both obsessed with how people disguise themselves and with disguising himself.

At one point, Garson objects to the nature of photography:

"Bah, photographs prevaricate," he grumbled. "Cameras lie. These are pictures of masks worn consciously or unconsciously by the posers. Red hair appears black; eyes are in shadow; the curve of the chin, the contours of the cheek are flattened onto the two-dimensional emulsified paper as though the face had been rolled under a paving machine."

Knowing that Raskin kept an extensive photo clip file for reference in her illustration work, I found this speech fascinating, revealing her nuanced perspective on the nature of representation.

One thing I hadn't remembered was the plainness of Dickory as a female character. There are no details about what she looks like. She has no female friends, and really no friends at all (just an occasional, platonic-appearing connection with a fellow art student named George). She is walled off from everyone else in her life.

I know it's simplistic to conflate an author with her character, but in the case of Dickory and the Tattooed Potato, there are tantalizing clues about Raskin herself.

Eau de Cancer

This full-page ad in Entertainment Weekly jumped out at me.

The copy reads: "Maybe it's unfair to get your attention this way, but nothing's fair about cervical cancer. Every 47 minutes another woman in the U.S. is diagnosed. And some treatments for cervical cancer can impact a woman's ability to have a baby. Fortunately, there are ways to prevent it. Text PREVENT to ###. And talk to your doctor."

Followed by a link to HelpPreventCervicalCancer.com, which is a Glaxo Smith Kline site with info on ways to prevent cervical cancer, including the relatively recent vaccines, one of which is made by GSK.

With the GSK logo in the lower right corner.

Thank You: Two Forms

Sitting in a restaurant, I overheard one diner asking another:

"Are you a 'thank you very much' person or a 'thank you so much' person?"

Downtown La Crosse, Wisconsin

Returning from my recent Wisconsin jaunt, I stopped in downtown La Crosse. Here are a few fun and funky sights around town.


La Crosse has plenty of classic commercial buildings and the signs to go with them. This notable mosaic now graces the doorstep of Pearl Street Books.


The Wiggert's logo is a fun example of naive lettering. Nobody else's logo looks like that! (Although some naughty person has been busy scratching out parts of letters, to rude effect.)


Unfortunately, Piggy's "historic" restaurant doesn't have one of the classic signs. Its home in the Pioneer Foundry Building is clearly historic -- the 1871 structure is the place where parts were made for the paddle wheelers that plied the Mississippi. The sign, however, is a complete disaster -- not just because it uses Papyrus, but because of the enlarged P, the vertically arranged word "historic," the random fading blocks, and the extra little touch of a pig's tail for an apostrophe. Less is more, Piggy's, less is more.


Perhaps this sign business is the source of the Piggy's sign?


A corner bakery window was graced with this Barbie-as-wedding-cake. I thought it was pretty funny (especially the use of a Malibu Barbie who really should give the tanning salon a break), but my daughter informed me that Barbie cakes are common. I guess she's right.

Plus, La Crosse is lucky enough to have a full-service food co-op, People's Food Co-op, right next to the farmers market.

The Serendipity of Independent Book Stores

Sorry for the blurry picture. Here's what it says:

"O Heavenly Father...we raise our voices in praise for your gift of this glorious day."

God responds: "Listen, I hate to rain on your parade, but I've got an alien armada headed your way to blow the planet to bits."

"What...?!?"

God: "Yeah, I told L. Ron Hubbard about it a few years back. Uh, didn't he give you all the message on that?"

"Probably, but I'm more of a Philip K. Dick guy."

God: "Oh, definitely. Me, too."

Max Cannon's Red Meat comic, as seen taped to a book case in Avol's Bookstore in Madison, Wis.

God Wants You to Buy This Pin

Why does this poster offend me?

First, let me be clear -- I have no problem with the idea expressed in the headline.

What I do have a problem with is a seller of over-priced baubles exploiting people's religious beliefs for profit, especially when mixed in with the possible guilt and obligation they may feel toward their mothers.

I also want to point out that Googling this sentence instantly reveals that it may or may not be a Hebrew proverb... it might have been Rudyard Kipling instead. At this point, there's probably no way to tell what the source of the quote is for sure (none of the Kipling references I saw mentioned a specific text). But citing Kipling wouldn't have sounded as good on the sign, particularly to the intended religious audience.

As seen at Buchkosky Jeweler, Rosedale Mall, Roseville, Minn.

Cashier's Plea

At a video store... in the process of going out of business. Bonus points for perfect grammar!

I Love a Great Headline

Well, it's not actually the headline. Sunday's Star Tribune business section had a Wall Street Journal story on risky investments, a la Goldman Sachs.

The headline was kind of blah ("Full Disclosure: Most Risks Hide in Plain Sight") but the boldface opening lines made me laugh:

You can lead investors to disclosure, but you can't make them think.

Remember NAFTA?

Joseph Moriarty, writing on the op-ed page of Saturday's Star Tribune, has a different perspective on the Arizona immigration law: Immigration Problem? Blame NAFTA.

He writes:

By permitting heavily subsidized U.S. corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, NAFTA literally drove more than 2 million Mexican farmers and their families off the land. Those former farmers, who previously made an adequate living, are among the thousands who cross our border simply to try to make a living and feed themselves and their families....

Before NAFTA, Mexico had a relatively large and thriving middle class and a viable farm economy. The country's towns and cities were home to many small and mid-sized factories and businesses that produced most of the country's consumer goods, providing countless jobs and supporting the country's economy. NAFTA's rules, however, allowed big firms like Wal-Mart to enter the Mexican market, where they began selling low-priced goods made in China with very cheap labor.

The result? More than 30,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses have closed their doors since NAFTA took effect. Tens of thousands of Mexicans who were laid off or forced off their land swarmed into newly opened "maquiladora" factories along the U.S.-Mexican border. The oversupply of workers, together with government-approved union busting, resulted in sweatshop pay often at a rate of just 60 cents to a dollar an hour. Rather than improving living standards, Mexican wages have plummeted since NAFTA was put in place.

Clearly, Arizona and its new law are treating a symptom -- with a blowtorch -- rather than working on a cure.

Here's a cartoon by Khalil Bendib that fits the situation perfectly:


Copyrights of Khalil Bendib, all rights reserved, used with permission.