The Tin Lizard

Brainy Fish

Studies show that fish have gradually, over the past several decades, shifted their ranges toward the earth's poles. 

We are, or should be, fairly accustomed by now to stories like this.  It's known that birds, and even plant life zones, are gradually moving north too.  Polar bears are threatened.  Ice is disappearing from polar zones and from the tops of mountains.  And on, and on.

Still, deniers of this clear trend still exist, and by and large, governments are doing little to avert what could be a global disaster.   

When I was young, my parents and many others, I believe, used to refer to fish as "brain food," in an effort to get us to eat that mostly tasteless white stuff that most kids didn't much care for.  They may have been right.  The evidence suggests that fish may have better brains than we do.

Do Dogs Wonder?

My wife and I walk for exercise most mornings.  If we are running a little late, we run into the dogwalkers, who tend to emerge about 7 AM.

In our area we have a fairly strict leash law which, fortunately for those of us who don't have pooches, is almost universally observed.  So it's not at all unusual to happen by when the owner is bending over with his/her little plastic bag while the dog stands nearby, waiting patiently to continue the walk.

I've always thought the dogs must be wondering, "Jeez, what do they WANT with that stuff?" or "Ick! What are they gonna DO with that?"

Memorializing Eisenhower Or Not

I've mentioned the planned Eisenhower Memorial  before ... its original design, by Frank Gehry, seemed a little flukey, but on the other hand, too many of our public monuments seem to become paeans to the artistic values of the last century -- to wit, the ruin of the original clean design of the Vietnam War memorial, the WW II memorial, the clunky Martin Luther King memorial -- while this one did have some promise of standing out from the crowd. 

It also drew complaints from the Eisenhower family, but I tend to believe the family should be invited to butt out in these matters -- the monument isn't for their benefit. 

Ultimately, the original design was withdrawn (so now I'm certain, we'll be headed back toward pre-traditional style).  Architecture critic Fred Bernstein has an original idea.  He suggests that in light of all the controversy, we just not build any Eisenhower monument. 

To me, that's very reasonable thinking.  So of course it will never prevail.  But as Bernstein points out, there are a number of monuments for Eisenhower in various places; and as he doesn't point out, there are far too many monuments and narrow-interest museums in the District of Columbia anyway.  I also believe Ike would have understood the desirability of saving the money in these austere times.  Let's pass on this one.

Phil Mickelson, Walking Signboard And Sometime Golfer

I'd become used to seeing pro golfer Phil Mickelson on television promoting his favorite prescription drug (it's Enbrel, I think - but I'm not sure what it does).  In my mind, he had become notable mostly for being able to pronounce the phrase "I've been in your shoes" so woodenly that you would suppose he actually HAD been in them.

But this week something new caught my eye.  What's that on his cap?  Hmm, a logo - KPMG!  A consulting company, as I understand it.    But wait, there's something different on his shirt ... "Barclay's," it says - presumably the banking folks.  I checked briefly on the internet to see if by any chance these products were related -- maybe all owned by Walt Disney or something? -- but that seems not to be the case.

What I did find, though, was a brief report in Forbes Magazine that notes:

Mickelson earns more than $30 million annually from endorsement partners: Callaway, Barclay's, KPMG, Exxon, Rolex and Amgen/Pfizer. He picked up the deal to promote psoriatic arthritis drug Enbrel after he was diagnosed with the disease in 2010 and used the drug for his treatment.

Obviously there's a whole new trend of product placement, with ads visually touting one or more brands while the speaker is pushing a difference product.  I'm not sure if it's effective - I thought subliminal advertising had been rather discredited some time ago.  We grew used to the practice in movies in the first decade of this century, but we don't see it so much any more.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Mickelson were wearing a Rolex in that ad, too.  And if they can figure how to run an ad that shows him bending over, I strongly suspect he'll have Exxon on his back end!

In An Easy-Come, Easy-Go World, You May As Well Stay Well Lit

We've all heard the tales of slogans and brand names that have been trotted out only to fall flat, or even to have negative connotations.  The classic, probably, is the Chevy Nova - as I heard it, the car had actually been marketed in Spanish-speaking countries before somebody discovered "No Va" in Spanish means "it doesn't go."  Maybe this tale is apocryphal, because presumably, "nova" in Spanish also has the same astronomical meaning as it does in English.  (Hmm... but doesn't a nova kind of flare across the sky briefly and then peter out?  Even in English, an ill-fated name for a car.)

While I'm on the topic of cars:   I'm still waiting for somebody to consider that "Subaru" spelled backwards comes out as "You're a Bus" (more or less), and I wonder if very many KIA automobiles are sold to military men and women.

Latest observations:

Those fancy lenses for your glasses that dim automatically in the sun, called "Transitions" are now advertising under a slogan urging you to live "Life Well Lit."  Gosh, I've been living life well lit for many a year now, and I agree it's good advice, but for the life of me I can't see what drinking has to do with eyeglasses.

The Baltimore Airport (officially it's known as "Thurgood Marshall International" nowadays) is close enough to many of Washington DC's northern suburbs that it's really like a third DC airport.  So it's not surprising that it advertises on television in the Washington area.  But they've chosen an unfortunate slogan: "The Easy Come, Easy Go Airport."  It depends on when you were born, I guess, but to me that phrase implies throwing money away unnecessarily, or paying too much for something.

Keeping The Music Coming II

To summarize my last post:  the compact disc is obsolete technology, I'm moving all my music online, but it's discouraging to think about all the times I've had to do this.

The other reason I hesitate with the task is the sheer labor of it.  I recall just a couple of years ago when I got energized to preserve a lifetime of photographs in digital form.  Energized for a month or two, until I realized that each of several thousand photos would require about three minutes or longer to scan, tweak, and store  -- and working with old negatives or slides, the results would still be far from perfect. 

I've done enough research to know that digitizing music is easier and quicker than film; I can probably get the job done in two or three months in my spare time. 

But there remains the Sisyphean nature of the process.  My music will now have been reborn at least four times in various formats.  Each time looked like it would be the last. Digital music looks perfect now, but I'm sure that in ten or fifteen years or less, there will be something to replace it.  Maybe in future, we'll have some little chip embedded in our brains at birth.  Is updating even worth the effort, or should I just be happy with the radio?  

Doesn't this whole process imply that a whole lot of modern living is no more than just keeping up with "stuff" that we own?  And in that case, do we really own it, or does it own us?   It's hard to deny that the material culture, usually interpreted in American society as progress that benefits us, at the same time also has its costs, both in money spent and in quality of life.  

We each make our own judgment as to where we want to be on that scale.  Certainly our affluent society pushes us toward the higher end - buy that 100-inch television, that new car, or that new house!   And perhaps it's only as we age that we begin to consider more seriously the choices we have in that regard:   Digitize your music collection but let the photos rot.   Trade in your three-year-old car or keep it for a decade.  What's important is to recognize we (most of us anyway) have such choices, and not to allow ourselves to be swept willy-nilly into the maelstrom of acquisition for its own sake.

 

Keeping The Music Coming I

I recently began the process of digitizing my CD collection.  Music stored as electrons is the future.  The compact disc is already outmoded, a fact that was brought home to me lately by touring the Washington DC car show last month -- many cars, especially those with a younger demographic, don't offer a CD slot any longer.

I approach the task with reluctance, because I've already made this "tech-tonic" shift several times in my lifetime.  LP records were the only medium for buying music in my high school and college days, but even then their problems were legion:  too easy to scratch and warp, too voluminous and heavy. 

The easy access to tech gear during my short stretch in the military led me to the magic of reel-to-reel tape; after mustering out I could (and did) put as many as five or six LPs on a single reel of tape, a medium that was less subject to damage.  Not too much later, the cassette was perfected enough to become a hi-fi medium, and it had the added advantage of being playable in the car, so for a few years I used both tape media indiscriminately (but I still had to buy LPs, record them, and discard or sell the LPs).

Finally came perfection:  the compact disc.  More compact, almost indestructible.  I remember buying my first ones in 1986.  Ultimately the weight and volume of my old tapes started to become a nuisance (not to mention the high cost and decreasing availability of equipment on which to play them).   I began at some point to replace my taped music with CD versions of the same;  recording to CD wasn't possible then for the consumer.   About a dozen years later, I just pitched out all the tapes - many of which hadn't been played in ten years - and donated my last reel-to-reel tape recorder.

So the CD has had a surprisingly long run for a consumer technology - almost 30 years - but clearly now, its time is past.  No more clutter of physical media at all, just little blips stored on your computer, or better yet, in the "cloud."   (Well, OK, yes, you can transfer those blips to tiny physical media like SD cards, music players, or flash drives when/if you want.)

Why They Call It "Carfax," Not CarFacts

ABC-TV recently did a little "expose" on use and misuse of the Carfax service, which provides automated information about a used car's history.  I was shocked, shocked I tell you (NOT) to learn that (a) Carfax doesn't necessarily include everything about a car's history and (b) that dealers presenting potential buyers with a Carfax report are likely to exaggerate its comprehensiveness.

As with all such efforts to corral information on the internet, the consumer just has to be aware of the limitations of the medium.  Carfax officials point out that they can only record the information that comes to their attention, but their report can't be considered 100% comprehensive.  Just consider what that means in terms of cars that might have been in floods ... we're always told to avoid those, but how would that get reported?

Last month I traded in a car I'd bought new and owned for ten years.  Several dealers just gave me a stated trade-in value, but one actually showed me the Carfax report on my vehicle.  It's easy to see the limitations of the service.   It showed an accident within months after the car was purchased.  True enough - it was rear-ended when the driver behind me failed to stop in time for a highway slow-down.  But there was no detail - simply "accident."  Moreover, because the car dealer, like many these days, doesn't do his own bodywork and sent me to a body shop down the street (which evidently was not connected into any reporting system), there was no record that repairs had been done.  The rest of the report showed that I'd been in regularly for service over my ten years' ownership, but not even a hint of what was done.  Oil change or major problem with the drivetrain, it's all the same to Carfax.

Carfax's limitations also have implications for owners who want to trade in or sell their used cars.  The mere mention of an "accident" can affect the price or value you'll be offered, even if, as in my case, the damage was repaired and I'd been driving the car ten long years since! 

The lesson of Carfax, as usual if we don't want to be duped when buying something, is advice so old that it comes in Latin as well as in English:  "Let the buyer beware."  Caveat emptor.  It hasn't changed just because of the internet.

Downsizing The Big Gulp In The Big Apple

It wasn't at all shocking to hear yesterday morning that New York Mayor Bloomberg's campaign to ban giant-sized (32-ounce) servings of soft drinks was halted in court.  

Well, maybe a little bit surprising -- the judge ruled the new law didn't treat all parties equally, so the shock was to learn that the city had not sought to ban the oversized portions in all types of stores, or to ban large sizes of all caloric drinks. 

The question of whether it's legal to try to regulate the size of portions at all has been left unanswered.  Personally, I think Bloomberg's effort can't stand up to a challenge on that issue.  It may be a health concern, as the Mayor claims, but to what lengths can we go to try to save people from their own bad judgment?  And can't they just buy a larger number of smaller drinks and get around the law that way?

I'm not much of a soft-drink consumer.  Maybe one or two a year.  But I have noticed, when I go to a fast-food place, or a movie, that there typically is no drink small enough for me.  In many such places, 16 ounces is "small."  I might suggest to the Mayor that both health and freedom of choice would be better served if he proposed to require all places serving cold drinks in cups to offer an 8-ounce size so that those who want less, for health or other reasons, have a choice.   Let the people decide if they want to be chubby or not.

Alzheimer's At The Polls

On this morning's television news I saw a brief snippet concerning an elderly woman somewhere in the frozen northland (Minnesota, maybe?) who suffers from Alzheimer's and who is being investigated for, and may be charged with, voter fraud.  I can't find this report now anywhere online, but if it got the facts right, she filed an absentee ballot thinking she couldn't get to the polls, and subsequently appeared in person and voted.  It's apparent that under these conditions, it's unlikely that this woman will really be prosecuted, or sent off to spend five years in jail. 

But maybe someone ought to be - someone at the polling place.  How would it be possible for her to vote as an absentee and also vote in person?  In my jurisdiction, an absentee voter is noted in the electronic lists of registered voters, and would be precluded from voting again.  Something went wrong here.  It should give us pause about pie-in-the-sky plans for online voting, though. 

This incident reminds me of a book I just read:  Turn of Mind, by Alice LaPlante, offers  interesting insights into Alzheimer's.  It's told from the point of view of a woman suffering from that condition, and you see - in a ficitonalized way, of course - how her mind fluctuates from full recall, to partial, to none at all, through the early, middle, and late stages of the disease.  In the book, interest is maintained by the literary device that our narrator's best friend has been murdered.  The police think the narrator did it; they reappear occasionally to interview her, hoping to spark a confession from her.  Turn of Mind makes for an interesting tale, and offers a novel perspective on Alzheimer's, so it's worth a read.