Cops not in the business of regulating behavior

/ Austin

So the city council has passed the controversial smoking ban. Whichever side of that issue you stand on, you’ll probably find this quote, by Mike Sheffield, Austin Police Association President, very interesting:

We were going to stay out of it, because we didn’t know how it was going to go,” Sheffield says. “But our concern is whether what they left in place would materially impact what we do. Are we going to go in and tell little old ladies to put it out or go to jail? You just can’t legislate personal morality and responsibility and change behavior simply by passing laws. It doesn’t work.[Emphasis mine]

I wonder if the cops apply the same reasoning to other drugs.

Raiders Remake

/ movies

Coming home from a dour observance of Gwen’s sister’s birthday, we wound up railroaded onto I-35’s upper deck–apparently the lower deck was under construction. So as we crawled along, we half-joked about doing something fun downtown. Then I remembered there was a show playing at the Alamo that seemed interesting, and it was dollar night. So we went.

Now, the movie that I thought was showing was Schmelvis. It wasn’t: it was the Raiders of the Lost Ark remake (QT trailer, sorry, no official website or IMDB entry). This was a shot-for-shot homage to the original made by teenagers who began when they were 12 and finished six years later.

As cinematic art, the movie sucks: the video imaging was awful, the sound was worse (they really, really needed a wind baffle on the mic), and the acting left a bit to be desired. But as a monument of amateur enthusiasm and ingenuity, it is amazing. Amazing, I say! It’s also clear that these kids had very indulgent parents.

When the kids undertook difficult stunts, everybody cheered, because we knew they were working without a net. When the movie was over, everyone left with a big smile.

360 ride

/ cycling

With no work on my desk today, I decided to get out on my bike.

I started rambling in a generally southwest direction without any plan in mind, not following any of my usual routes. I eventually wound up on that path next to Lamar, which took me as far as 12th St. I felt unaccountably nervous on this path–I’d never ridden on it before, but that shouldn’t be enough to make me feel wigged out. At the southern end of the path, I did run into a few obstacles that justified some nervousness–a few dips, swerves, and one really bad bump in the pavement. I took the bump hard, but thought I got over it without incident.

Eventually I decided to ride 360, and made my way over towards the Town Lake pedestrian bridge. After crossing the bridge, I noticed that the city seems to be working on a new path that will connect the south end of the bridge to Rollingwood, which will be a boon to outbound cyclists–but in order to take advantage of it on the inbound side, one would need to ride against traffic for a few yards.

The ride up 360 was fun and uneventful, but with a wind out of the north, was a lot of work. I noticed a couple of deer grazing right out by the highway, which I had never seen before. Gosh, I wonder if they’d been displaced from their usual habitat? [he said, with great sarcasm] When I got to the convenience store at Steck & Mesa, I discovered it had been more work than I knew: my back wheel had been knocked out of true and was intermittently rubbing against the brakes. That would explain why I had been averaging 14.5 mph. I headed over to Nelo’s, my favorite shop (fortunately very close at this point), and once there, we discovered I had actually broken a spoke. I’ve done that only once before, in a really serious accident, so I was very surprised. Nelo had built that wheel, and I joked to him “you built this wheel–it should be bulletproof!” He put a loaner wheel on my bike and sent me home while he worked on my wheel.

I made it the rest of the way home without incident. Coming in on Shoal Creek, I caught up with a guy on a really fancy mountain bike–full suspension, disc brakes, the works. Except he definitely wasn’t dressed like a cyclist (gym shorts and Keds), and the one serious telltale: cheap quill pedals. Normally, someone with a bike like this would be riding clipless pedals–bikes at that level usually don’t even come with pedals, on the assumption that the rider will want to put on the clipless pedal system of his choosing. If they do come with pedals, they’re cheap throw-aways–like this guy had.

A lot of cyclists are snobs about their sport, and I’ll admit I’m one. There are levels of snobbishness: Some won’t condescend to wave at anyone–I assume this is either because they don’t want to break their perfect aerodynamic position, they view everyone else as a competitor, or at that moment you aren’t in their road/mountain/commuter clique. Some will only be friendly towards someone with a fancy bike that shows they’ve made a monetary commitment to the sport.

What turns my snob-knob up to 11, though, is a rider who isn’t as good as his bike. There’s nothing wrong with being a recreational rider of modest abilities and aspirations on a modest bike. There’s nothing wrong with being a great cyclist on a humble ride or a superbike. But when a guy in tube socks, who considers five miles to be a real workout, is riding a fancy bike, he is a fred.

Consultant, de-jargonize thyself

/ language

The NY Times reports that Deloitte Consulting has come up with a Word macro, aptly named Bullfighter, that removes or simplifies annoying consultant jargon. Words like “extensible” and “scalable” are simply eliminated; “ecosystem” becomes “system” (which isn’t much better, frankly).

All specialized professions protect their turf through the use of inscrutable jargon. Once people figure out what the hell Deloitte’s wonks are telling them, they’ll stop hiring them.

Movie night

/ music

Movie nights, actually–Gwen and I have had a couple recently that are worth mentioning.

First we saw Turkish Star Wars. OK, that’s not what it’s really called–it’s really called Dünyayi kurtaran adam (The Man Who Saves the World). Utter mind-warping dreck. This movie must have been made by Turkey’s Ed Wood. The first ten minutes was nothing but a few minutes shamelessly pirated from the original Star Wars, cut and re-cut. Much of the soundtrack was stolen with an equal absence of shame from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The quality of the filming may have been worse than those bootleggers who sneak videocams into movie theaters achieve. There was a mask-wearing bad guy, but not Darth Vader. He looked more like a kachina doll. And of course the tape has no subtitles or dubbing, so you’re pretty much obliged to fill in dialog a la MTS3K. I’ll be lazy and quote the Film Threat review here: “‘The Turkish Star Wars’ makes film criticism moot.”

Last night was a double-header. First up, About Schmidt. This movie left me a bit underwhelmed. Not a bad movie, but very flat. This was intentional–the writers clearly went out of their way to make almost every moment as blandly trite as possible, and that’s an achievement: somebody probably racked his brains to come up with a song as mawkishly awful as “Longer” by Dan Fogelberg (badly sung) for the wedding, and I salute that achievement. Perhaps the problem with portraying a universe of triteness is that the portrayal itself risks being trite.

Movie number the second was Hedwig and the Angry Inch. This was much better. A sort of earnest Rocky Horror Picture Show, if you will, it had good musical numbers, an interesting lead character (admittedly most of the other characters were slim to nonexistent), and interesting ideas, some conveyed through song. Having seen it now, I’m actually a little surprised that it hasn’t attracted more of a cult following.

Snackorama

/ tidbit

Jenny writes about snacks. She rightly ridicules snacks trying too hard to be health food.

But the other end of the spectrum alarms me. I’ve noticed that at the grocery store, there are some sections I almost never visit, and when I do, I am astounded at the shit that people are evidently cramming down their gullets. Many of these products seem to be ways to extend existing manufactured food products (or at least brand names) into new niches–especially to make condiments into standalone food items, to make messy food more portable, and to claim as much shelf space as possible in an arms race of product diversification between food-manufacturing conglomerates. In the dairy section, Philadelphia-brand cheesecake bars. Tubes of yogurt–called “gogurt” if I recall correctly–that you rip open and squeeze into your mouth (I am guessing the beneficial lactobacillus has been killed in these). In the frozen-foods section, Sara Lee (I think) cheesecake “bites”. Tubes of pudding that you freeze. Cookie-dough-flavored snack food–how incredibly perverse! Eggo waffles made with Fruit Loops. Brightly packaged string-cheese logs, cheese niblets in a can, and so on. Potato chips intended to taste like baked potatoes smothered with condiments.

An analogous trend is found among hard-liquor companies producing malt beverages (ie, beer) that’s been de- and re-flavored to taste like a margarita, rum-and-coke, or whatever.

John Dean on G.W’s WMD lies

/ current events

John Dean, who should know a thing or two about such matters, has written that if it turns out there are no WMDs in Iraq, then G.W. is guilty of “the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison.” Interestingly, he follows the format, sort of, laid down in the noted blog-post by billmon.

Coincidentally, a Pentagon report from September 2002 has made its way into public view, and it uses much more equivocal language about the existence of WMDs in Iraq than the administration. Never mind reports that the intelligence on WMDs was cooked.

Given the current makeup of Congress, it isn’t likely that anything G.W. does would result in impeachment proceedings. But it’s still interesting to hear his perspective.

Via On Lisa Rein’s Radar

Spammers are big fat hairy dirty liars

/ tidbit

I keep getting all this spam for pills that promise to make my penis larger. (And, curiously, my balls too. I mean, who ever feels they need bigger balls?)

I know this is a scam. How do I know? Because penile enlargement drugs don’t come in the form of a pill. They come in an ointment that you rub on.

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