One of the few downsides to living in the States is missing out on the festival season, i.e. Glastonbury, Reading, etc. I'm not entirely upset about missing Glastonbury this year, despite the great bands playing. I have this funny aversion towards drowning in a tent.
Our friend Jess had a post on this subject last month - well, not exactly about my retarded extended family and their quest for willful ignorance, but on the general populace's gullibility and lack of critical thinking with regard to e-mail forwards. Here's my story.
My cousin Dwayne Stone is married to a woman named Nevada (yes, Nevada Stone - I am a 1/2 step from the best sort of white trash clichés). She sent a forward to all of her friends and family, including my aunts. One of these aunts forwarded it to everyone she knew - hence its arrival in my mailbox. Recognizing this urban myth (Snopes actually has it as #10 on the all-time most frequent urban myths), I replied back to every e-mail address on the forward, including Nevada's friends. I figured three things: a) in the interest of safety, it's best to correct this information, b) in the interest of reducing internet rumors, it's best to tell everyone about Snopes, and c) it's best to correct it for as many people as possible.
My efforts have garnered no less than six hateful e-mails about how I invaded their privacy. Mind you, I clearly identified myself as Dwayne's cousin in the e-mail, so it wasn't spam. Nevada, I think, was pissed because I corrected her in front of her friends (she requested that, in the future, I send corrections to her so that she could notify her friends - right). Another of her friends called my reply "petty little shit," said I was trying to be "the police squad to the World Wide Web," and that if I wrote to her again she would "have my inter net [sic] privliges [sic] removed". Is that possible? ;)
Anyway, forwarding unverified e-mails is no surprise to me. I remember an incident from years ago where I forwarded something about AIDS needles on a gas pump; Jess corrected me, sent me the link to Snopes, and I learned. The surprise is their anger at being better informed! I mean, the whole point of sending out that forward is to keep your friends safe from fake cops and providing the "life-saving" number to call. I was giving them the real numbers, but apparently I was invading their privacy and should just piss off.
So my advice to these people now is: fine. Get molested by some imposter cop because you're trying to dial CANADA (Ontario Provincial Police = OPP = *677). I tried, stubborn dumbasses.
Now I've never met my cousin's grammatically-challenged wife, and I'm sure she's an otherwise nice, well-meaning, person. But for fuck's sake - lighten up. Next I'll be telling them that we descended from apes and the world is round - then they'll stone me to death.
So apparently the computer systems of the European Parliament go through Luxembourg. Who knew.
This morning, I took our youngest daughter Ilsa for her 18-mo check-up, which included the very undignified "naked weighing" & "semi-nude length measurement", followed by the just plain painful "two vaccines". Fun. FYI, Ilsa is now 33 3/8" long (90th percentile) and 26 lb 11 oz (25th percentile) - long and skinny.
Then we went to breakfast at McDonald's, where the girls were actually really good and ate all their breakfast.
But then we did the ultimate, a trip to the Cincinnati Children's Museum. We got a family membership as part of the Christmas money that Keven's parents gave them, as a means of keeping us occupied during the winter months when playgrounds are useless and they need to run off some energy. On this beautiful sunny day when schools are out (no field trip kids), we were literally the only people there for the first 20 minutes - weird.
And then we stayed for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. I don't know where my energy came from. Maybe it was knowing that if we went home, they'd be just as active but within the confines of our two rooms downstairs. Might as well left them go nuts where there are other loud kids, lots of things to mess with, and no responsibility for keeping the place clean :)
But I surely deserve some kind of mom medal. Or a beer.
In the early 1990s a survey was carried out to find out the best business schools in the United States. Princeton University in New Jersey came a creditable 12th in the nation. Maybe a little low for such a renowned institution, but not too bad considering that Princeton doesn't have and never has had a business school. What this shows is the importance of the Halo Effect. The effect on the reputation of one department of a school by the reputation of the school as a whole. The majority of people won't be able to tell you where Harvard is in the latest Business Week rankings, but they do know it's a good school.
When considering the reputation of the school you're applying to it's obviously important to think about where you're going to be after graduating. I plan to be in Chicago directly after school so obviously going to a good school in that area will be important. In the future though I may want to move back to England so a school that is known internationally would also be useful. When looking at universities to apply to I talked to friends back home asking them which ones they had heard of. This can come up with some important insights. Notre Dame for instance is a huge name in the United States. In the UK one of my friends recognized the name only because President Jed Bartlett from the West Wing went there. Smaller colleges such as Dartmouth that are big names in the United States are almost unknown in England.
As such the London Times Higher Education Supplement ranking of the top 200 universities in the world by peer review and citations is very useful. Here are the midwest universities from the list with their World Rank on the left. Their Business Week ranking is on the right for reference.
This is nothing. My Grandad used to pull out the tongues of elephants and lions every day before breakfast just for fun.
P.Diddy got it right. Whatever happened to killing folks purely for the fun of the sport?
U.S. General: Many Insurgents in Iraq Paid
"Many insurgents conducting attacks in Iraq are primarily motivated by money instead of ideology, and can receive $150 for setting a bomb and more for other types of assaults, a top U.S. general asserted Tuesday."
"The US Army has missed its recruiting goals for the fourth straight month, however they do have a plan. The dropping numbers has the service hoping to solve the problem with more cash incentives: $40,000 to be exact.
The Army is proposing to up the anty on recruitment bonuses and they might even help new recruits out with the mortgage. An Army spokesman confirms their proposal to raise bonus' for new recruits to almost double what they are now."
Some minor things happening on the route to Madison:
Janet Jackson's apology this week: sorry for having no sense of humour, next week she'll apologize for not recording a decent album since Rhythm Nation.
Reason why I am going to Business School #458. Although if I was on $65 an hour I might have thought about toughing it out for a bit longer.
Gartner researchers say most people affiliated with corporate information technology departments will assume "business-facing" roles, focused not so much on gadgets and algorithms but corporate strategy, personnel and financial analysis.Conservatives are really stretching to find ways to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Readers will learn from the book, thanks to an interview with fifth-grade boyfriend Jim Yrigoyen, that Clinton can be one tough cookie. The old sweetheart recalled how the young Hillary Rodham had entrusted him with watching over some baby rabbits. He made the mistake of giving one to a neighbor.
"She hauled off and punched me in the nose," Yrigoyen said.
In case you weren't aware Lovely Salome has migrated her Book/Movie/Other Media reviews to her own blog Salome's Corner. So if you're in need of something a little more high-brow than the regular crap you get here that's where to go. So far she has reviews up for.
Personally I'm waiting for the review of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, but that's just me.
I had a really nice father's day yesterday. The normal stuff; cards in the morning, lie in; fried breakfast, bacon, sausages, grilled tomatoes, toast. Then we went out with LindseySoda, Justin and little JR and had a nice Italian meal at Bravo Cucina in Mason. JR was out like a light the whole meal but Juliette and Ilsa were a little fidgity. Which brings me to the point of this post. It is impossible to actually have a serious conversation with small children (specifically YOUR small children) around.
While the subject may be compelling you've always got one eye on your kids just in case they start, I don't know, throwing plates around, standing on their chair, or playing in Mr. Johannson's Yard. Then if you do have to turn your attention to them you can't go back to the conversation at hand. I think we spoke about 10-15 different things over the course of the meal, but none of them seemed to get into any depth or lasted more than two minutes.
