Birmingham Blues

they have now actually proved that DST is evil. Well, at least dangerous. Turns out the “falling back” lowers, and the “springing forward” raises, the risk of heart attack. Most news outlets seem to be trying to put a positive spin on this (”Good news: Falling Back is Good for Your Health!”) and I suppose that by next spring, when the headline would have to read “Bad News: You’re at Greater Risk of Dying Today,” we won’t hear about this study, because hey, they reported on that last fall. The Reuters story I linked to describes the phenomenom as a trade-off - the risk goes up in the spring and correspondingly down in the fall - but if you dig a little, you discover that the spring increase is greater than the fall decrease.

When will this madness stop? I cannot find anything on the Google about the DOE study that was supposed to decide whether the 2006 Energy Bill, the one that gave us even less months without DST, is really saving any energy. Meanwhile we have the UCSB study proving that DST saves no energy and in fact wastes more of it, now that we’re all using electricity instead of kerosene lamps.

If they found out that something else - a special strobe light display for New Year’s Eve, say - raised the risk of heart attack five percent, whatever it was would be outlawed before Sarah Palin could say “you betcha.” But this is America, the land of Magical Thinking, where we dress our children in 1940s-style school uniforms because that will make them learn more, and we monkey with the clocks because that will save gasoline.

Enjoy your sleep, Bill. You’ll pay for it next spring. No wait, I’ll pay for it, because it turns out women are more affected by the time change than men. Probably because we have to get all those sleep-deprived kids out of bed and into their stupid school uniforms.

Literally.  This certainly gives a different twist to the Republicans’ chant of “Drill, baby, drill.”  I’m just sayin’.

The husband’s co-worker sent her kids to a local Methodist VBS last week. The girls played two games that this co-worker found slightly “theologically suspect.” The first was a version of Simon Says called “God Says.” (The co-worker said she was pretty sure God never told anybody to cluck like a chicken.)

The second, and much more disturbing, game was a version of that childhood favorite, “Telephone.” You know - where you whisper something in somebody’s ear, they pass it down the line, and at the end everyone enjoys a hearty laugh at the way the original message has been distorted to hilarious nonsense.

They played this game with Bible verses.

Even if you are not claiming absolute Biblical inerrancy, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to play this particular game with a Sacred Text that’s centuries old; is translated from ancient languages, including one that lacks vowels and punctuation; and depends in large part upon reported speech.

Okay, I know it’s terribly expensive to hire actual human proofreaders, but I bet the American Family Association is wishing it had made the investment after this snafu. It seems some right-wing sites use Auto-Correct on Associated Press articles to weed out language they find unacceptable. I wonder what the AP thinks about this:

…the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon [auto-correct] one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

That means — you guessed it — the track star was renamed “Tyson Homosexual.” The headline on the piece read, “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.”

The eagle eyes at the AFA have since fixed their “fix”, but there is a screen capture here, along with some more examples of proofreading brilliance.

via Shakesville

…when they pry it out of my cold, dead hands. The WTF story for the day (well, aside from this week’s Doctor Who cliffhanger *spoiler alert*) is this one from Loretta Nall. There is a move underway in Alabama to outlaw a particular type of salvia, salvia divinorum, which is apparently a hallucinogen.

Deborah Soule, executive director for the Huntsville-based Partnership for a Drug Free Community, said efforts are currently under way to outlaw the drug once and for all. Since 2007, Soule has personally contacted many of Alabama’s legislators and Gov. Bob Riley to bring attention to the drug.

She had limited success during the last legislative session, when Sen. Roger Bedford Jr. sponsored a bill to make salvia a controlled substance. However, the bill never made it made it out of committee.

“It just got caught up in a log jam of a Republican filibuster,” Bedford said.

To Soule, the real problem with the bill was the lack of education about salvia.

“The biggest problem in the Alabama Legislature is a lot of people didn’t know about it,” Soule said.

Well, goodness, let’s get busy and inform the legislature about this terrible danger lurking in our midst. And, at the same time, clue in the kids who are supposedly at risk. Loretta makes some excellent points here:

Once Ms. Soule, in collusion with our legislative clowns, make it illegal, we will see a huge jump in its use by kids. We’ll see prison imposed for possession of a geranium plant, teens and college kids saddled with felony criminal records (according to Sen. Bedford they are the main consumers), lives ruined, forced treatment, drug court and all kinds of crazy stuff that we don’t see now when it is legal and not widely known all because of the raging, moralistic crusade to outlaw anything that might give someone else pleasure. What will they outlaw next, spinning around in circles until you get dizzy? That also alters ones state of consciousness.

Let me add my concern. How will the salvia police know which plants are illegal? I googled an image of salvia divinorum and came up with the same one Loretta uses at her place, which looks way too similar to pineapple sage. Pineapple sage like the one on my back deck. Yeah, a plant expert could tell them apart, but how many police officers will get botanical training before they’re sent out to fight the terrors of, um, sage? Especially when they can use the guilty-till-proven-innocent asset forfeiture laws to grab houses, cars, and cash from homeowners or plant nurseries that harbor suspect plants.

I’d like to hope our legislators would resist the lure of yet another headline-grabbing “tough on crime” measure, but I’m not holding my breath. Guess I’d better start building a priest’s hole for my pineapple sage.

Okay, I am totally taking advantage of the power of Glamour/Society Blog access to share a petty rant. Here goes:

DD is still in the wonderful and all-too-brief “I love my new driver’s license! Got any errands you need run?” phase. Last week at Target she grabbed Energizer rechargeable batteries instead of the regular kind, but she was more than happy to go back the next day and buy an Energizer charger to go with them. What the heck, I thought, it’s time for us to be a little greener about battery use (turning off the Wii would probably be the greenest of all, but still, every little bit helps, right?)

I was a little confused when several plastic parts fell out of the package—had I already broken the damned thing just by cutting it out of its clamshell? Then I realized that “Sleek: white, black, silver” on the package copy referred to these parts. Apparently you can change out the faceplate of your Energizer Easy Charger (they make several kinds, and we now own the Easy one) to…to what? Match your decor? Your socioeconomic status? Your mood? (more…)

This one definitely falls in the “What Were They Thinking?” category. Last night, the Vestavia Hills City Council voted to give away a 13-acre tract of land valued at $2 million for $10. Yep, that’s TEN DOLLARS. The land will be “purchased” by Life Time Fitness, which proposes to build a $25 million fitness center that will anchor a mixed-use development at Patchwork Farms off Cahaba River Road. The Council estimates the facility will generate nearly $450,000 a year in revenue for the city.

I wonder if any of the city councilors read this article before the vote:

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I opened up the intertubes a little while ago to find this headline staring at me from my AT&T homepage:

“Boxing great Tyson tells all in film at Cannes”

Part of me would like to ignore the larger message and simply concentrate on the lack of proper capitalization in a title. I’d like to write a post about the tiny tomatoes that appeared on my Early Girl this week. But I can’t ignore a report that Mike effin’ Tyson, convicted rapist Mike Tyson, ear-biting Mike Tyson, got a “prolonged ovation” at Cannes this week.

“I lived a wild and extreme life,” the former heavyweight champion told reporters Saturday. “I used drugs. I had altercations with dangerous people. I slept with guys’ wives that wanted to kill me. I’m just happy to be here, you know. It’s just a miracle.”

The 41-year-old former boxer got a prolonged ovation at the Cannes screening for “Tyson,” directed by his old friend James Toback (”Fingers”).

Seems he managed to overcome a difficult childhood to grow up and become a rapist and an abuser, and we’re supposed to cheer for that. He still denies responsibility for the rape, saying he was unfairly convicted. Well, of course. Anyone who earns adulation by living the life he’s lived must think he’s entitled to take what he wants, without consequences.

But on one issue, he still refuses to take responsibility. He insists he is innocent of the 1991 rape of an 18-year-old beauty queen for which he served three years in prison.

“I’ve been abusive to women before in my life,” he acknowledged. But in this case, “I thought (the conviction) was wrong, I thought it was unfair.”

Oh, poor baby. He only serves three years for a rape, and he’s whining about fairness?

Color me unimpressed. With him, and with the people who glorify him.

…Who In the Hell Writes These Headlines?:

Polygamists Block Girl Hunt

It’s a Birmingham News reprint of an AP article, which, incidentally, does not use this egregious title, and it isn’t linked on al.com, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

This definitely falls into the category of “what were they thinking?”

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AP now reports that authorities were able to enter the polygamists’ Texas compound peacefully and are currently searching for the 16-year-old girl who reported that she had been forced to marry a 50-year-old man and have a baby at fifteen. They haven’t yet located her. This story makes my skin crawl.

Or the longer version of the Alabama Legislator’s Lament: We don’t have adequate revenue to fund public schools and services (mostly the latter — the general fund budget regularly sucks wind), but I don’t dare ask the people who give me campaign contributions my constituents to pony up, even though they’ll be squawking and moaning when they need those schools and services, because I might not be re-elected.

Del’s comment at my post on the dangerous-dog amendment reminded me of a couple other proposals I meant to highlight. Says Del:

OMG, I think you’ve hit upon the salvation for our schools. A pit bull tax! Better yet, make dog fighting legal and tax it! Fighting cocks too! Sure, it’s unpleasant, but it’s FTC (For The Children).

I must call my local school board representative right away.

Oh, Del, if you only knew. And now you will.

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