Bear attack

There was a fatal bear attack in Utah a couple of days ago. A kid was sleeping in his tent when a black bear grabbed him, dragged him away, and mauled him to death. Read more here.

Think there are no bears in your area? Think again. Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, and Pennsylvania all have bears. Here is a range map and collection of population estimates from 1994. In most places, conservation efforts have led to population increases; Missouri, for example, is now estimated to have more than twice as many bears as it did in 1994.

Paternity testing

As some of you know, one of my great guilty pleasures is the watching of talk shows (specifically Maury Povich) on which paternity test results are revealed. These shows typically involve two distinct types of situations:

1. Woman swears she's 100% sure that a man is the father of her baby, and the man swears that he's not because the woman is sleeping with the whole town.

In this scenario, I'm usually on the woman's side. In part, it's because the men seem so idiotic (on the show I watched today, one guy said he was 100% sure he was not the father because "I've slept with three virgins, and I've didn't get any of THEM pregnant!"). In part, it's because I figure the woman is in a better position to know who the father is. What shocks me is how many women insist that there is NO WAY that anyone else could be the dad and then end up being wrong. That happened to both women today.

2. Young, happy couple has a kid (or one on the way), and the woman has brought the man on Maury to tell him a "terrible secret." The secret is that the kid might not be his (one woman on today's show was sleeping with 8 different guys around the time of conception). It goes without saying that if you're in this situation, going on Maury to tell your boyfriend/husband is a bad idea. But I'm torn about whether you should tell him at all. Who does it help? If he wants to be the father, and you want him to be the father, and he's a good father, is the DNA test a good idea?

The bears are coming for me

For all those who laugh at me for being concerned about bears on my hiking trips (see my earlier post), I offer this terrifying article.

The elementary school where the bear's tracks were found is 36 miles west of my house, and the bear is moving east. Thank goodness I live in a high-rise apartment building.

Pizza guy

Last night, after getting home from a road trip, I ordered a pizza. When the pizza delivery guy arrived at my door, he said, "Are you a doctor?" I sort of stared at him, confused, and said, "Uh, no," and looked at him quizzically. He said, apparently by way of explanation, "Well, you keep such a clean house."

I should note that my apartment was quite messy at the time--within the pizza guy's view at that point were an open suitcase, two empty diet coke cans, a tipped-over tote bag with stuff falling out of it, and some shoes. In no way was my house clean.

What was he talking about? What does house messiness have to do with being a doctor? And why would a pizza guy, seconds before I am about to decide on his tip, insult my housekeeping?

Promotional items, good and bad

Sometimes, when you buy a product or donate to a cause, the company or nonprofit involved gives you free stuff to promote itself. Some of these items are good, and some annoy me.

Things I do not want to get any more of:

1. Travel coffee mugs. These are those metal mugs with plastic handles that are designed to go into car cupholders. I don't drink coffee, so I have never used these. Yet I have acquired 5 of them. They seem too nice to throw away, so I just continue to take up my extremely limited cupboard space by storing them. People who drink coffee already have them. Stop giving them away.
2. Jewelry. I donated to a cause once and was given a crappy plastic-and-metal necklace. Who is going to wear that?
3. Keychains. Everyone has a keychain already. Possible exception: value-added key-chains that have a bottle opener or (maybe) a flashlight.
4. Messenger bags. The free ones I have are poorly made, with a thin, uncomfortable strap. I'm not going to use them.
5. Buttons. What the hell am I going to do with a button?

Things I like:

1. Refrigerator magnets, especially if they're strong enough to hold up pieces of paper. They don't really take up room, but I see them every day, and I can use them. Very effective.
2. Pens. It's a little lame, but Ican always use another pen.
3. Tote bags. They're small and useful, and a cheap one works fine.
4. Tape measures. Best promotional item ever.

The lost art of doodling

In my bar review class, they give us a fill-in-the-blanks workbook, and we sit there for 3 1/2 hours every day, filling it in. There's really no legitimate need to bring a computer to class, so screwing around on the internet to combat the inevitable boredom is not an option. Instead, I have taken to doodling in the margins of the book. However, I find myself at a loss for good doodling ideas--three years of taking notes exclusively on computers have made me forget what I used to do. I am open to suggestions.

Things fall apart

Today, within a span of two hours, the following happened:

1. My cell phone fell apart. Miscellaneous external parts of the phone began falling off, followed shortly by the snapping in half of some sort of important-looking electronic-type component.

2. The power cord for my computer fell apart. Where the cord meets the big square thing, the plastic (rubber? I don't know) came off, and broken ends of wires are now sticking out. A replacement power cord for my computer costs eighty dollars. Eighty dollars! I think I can get a non-Mac-manufactured version online for less, but still.

What is going on? Have my inanimate possessions decided to self-destruct because they sense that I am done with school and should be able to afford technological items that are less than four years old? If so, they are jumping the gun by least four months.

A new addition to the blogosphere

Welcome, Perma-Three Seat! This moment has been a long time coming.

Shattered Glass

Last weekend, Fuzzy and I watched the movie Shattered Glass. It tells the story of Stephen Glass, a rising star at The New Republic, known for his extremely interesting and colorful stories. It turned out, though, that many of those stories were made up. We're not talking about a doctored quote here, a made-up source there; we're talking about people and companies that never existed doing things that never happened. He made stuff up out of whole cloth.

Take for example, the Hack Heaven, the story that got him caught. Read this story. The people in it don't exist. The software company doesn't exist. The conference didn't happen. The legislation he said had been proposed in 21 states had not been proposed in any. The New Republic supposedly had an extensive fact-checking system, yet he only got caught after another reporter at Forbes online tried to write a follow-up story [warning: very spoilery if you might see the movie] and couldn't find any of the people mentioned. A Slate article addresses some of the reasons he wasn't found out sooner. Another Slate article discusses the film.

In addition to Hack Heaven, Glass fabricated dozens of other articles, indexed here. After looking at this list, I realized that I had probably been fooled by him too. One of my favorite This American Life stories is in the episode "How to Take Money From Strangers." It's the story of former phone psychic; he tells us really moving and compelling stories about his callers, his interactions with them, his guilt over lying to them about his psychic abilities, and his guilt over bilking money out of people who can least afford it. The former phone psychic? Stephen Glass. I feel so betrayed.

Glass has since been interviewed by CBS [also spoilery], and he acts all contrite, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, see the movie. It's a fantastic story.

Scrabble report

To start my new hobby (see post below), I just (1) e-mailed the director of my local Scrabble club to ask for advice, and (2) spent a couple of hours playing a computer Scrabble game. Among the words the computer suggests are my best plays after I play much lamer words:

• fixt (past tense of "fix")
• jivey (jazzy; lively)
• pice (a former coin of India & Pakistan)
• weel (well)
• odea (theater or concert hall)
• vinier (more covered in vines)
• coelome (coelom-a type of body cavity)
• umiaqs (umiak-like a kayak)
• jo (a sweetheart)
• mazedly (the adverb form of "maze"--to daze, perplex, or stupefy)
• inarm (to encircle with the arms)

I am mazed. Clearly I have much to learn.

Hobby

I have always wanted a hobby. I envy people who cannot wait to get off work and do . . . whatever it is that people do when they're not working, watching movies, reading, chatting, or watching tv.

An incomplete list of hobbies I have tried and discarded:

• knitting (I got bored with my projects before I finished them)
• sailing (I have no gross motor skills, and I fear open water)
• running (I broke my foot)
• candlemaking (messy)
• photography (I never wanted to bother carrying my giant camera around, plus I kept forgetting how to load the film)
• cooking (I got tired of spending $30 and two hours to make something I could get for $6 at the Thai place on the corner)
  

The one hobby I do enjoy is backpacking, but it's hard to make it a daily or even weekly thing because it requires (1) a couple of free days, (2) a hiking partner who has the same couple of free days, and (3) decent weather.

Anyway, now I'm considering a hobby I half-heartedly thought about getting into a couple of years ago: competitive Scrabble. Yesterday I reread Stefan Fatsis's excellent book Word Freak, which is all about the colorful characters who populate the highest ranks of the competitive Scrabble scene. I love their weirdness and their dedication. I love the massive levels of concern over the composition of the official list of legal words. I love that it's a small enough world that I already know many of the major players and have favorites. I love that it requires no motor skills.

My city appears to have two Scrabble clubs, each meeting weekly. I'm going to go as soon as I memorize the legal 2-letter words. I don' t plan to abandon gainful employment so I can spend my time memorizing word lists, but I think I could become a decent intermediate player.

Inappropriate

I just got a mass e-mail with the subject line "sex acts." Normally, I would have assumed it was just one of the fifty spam e-mails my school's spam filter lets into my inbox every day. But the "From" line named someone who frequently sends official school e-mails, so I opened it. I learned that members of the university cleaning staff have been complaining about something: the fact that they keep coming upon people having sex in the law school. When discovered, these couples do not even stop what they are doing; they just continue and assume the cleaning staff will return later.

So, yuck. Can people not take a break from studying long enough to go home for this? And have I been studying on tables where people have been doing it?

Anyway, if anyone in my readership is one of the culprits here, STOP HAVING SEX IN THE LAW SCHOOL. It's gross.

For more stories of inappropriate public behavior (and other stuff), check out True Porn Clerk Stories, a pretty wonderful online diary of a clerk who works in a video store with a porn section. I wasted hours reading it yesterday. Not appropriate for children or work.

Happy Birthday, Nell!

Happy Thanksgiving 2006!

Good, wholesome family movies

It's Thanksgiving weekend--a time for hanging out, cooking, chatting, eating, and (at my parents' house, at least) watching movies with family. It can be tough to find movies that are inoffensive enough for 8-year-old kids and 80-year-old grandmothers, yet awesome enough to entertain hipster youngish adults. Here are two such movies I've seen recently:

The Parent Trap (Hayley Mills version). This is a classic from 1961. Two 13-year-olds are sent to summer camp, where they discover that they are twins separated at birth. Everything about the story is satisfying, from the gradual discovery of their twinhood (Hey, we're identical except for our haircuts! Hey, we have the same birthday! Hey, you only have a mom and I only have a dad! Are you thinking what I'm thinking?) to the clever scheme involving them switching places to get their parents back together. The movie is relentlessly positive and feelgood--they don't even get mad at their parents when they realize the parents never told them about each other. It's fantastic.

Akeelah and the Bee. This is a inspirational movie about a kid from a bad neighborhood in L.A. who tries to get to the National Spelling Bee. It's on the formulaic side, but it's based on a good formula. Very enjoyable.

Happy birthday Matt!

Blue state

I would just like to commend my home state for not embarassing itself during this election season by passing anti-gay constitutional amendments, nominating racists, or banning stem cell research. Way to go!

My voting experience

I voted this morning, and it was a good experience. It was in a public library, and there was a lot of indoor waiting space, so I didn't have to stand out in the cold as I have in elections past. I had no voter registration card, and no one gave me a hard time about it. Still, there were a few kinks that caused me to have to wait for about 20 minutes even though there were only 5 people ahead of me.

Some suggestions to make things go more smoothly:

1. If you are a voter who fears technology, do not opt for the touch-screen voting when you have the paper option.

2. If you are the sole election volunteer capable of helping people with the touch-screen voting, do not take a break and disappear when there are multiple octogenarians who have just stepped up to the machines.

3. If you are in charge of flipping through the a hundred-page book to find a name that begins with the letter G, and the book is currently turned to the page with names beginning with "V," you can probably go ahead and flip more than one page at a time.

Feel free to comment on your own voting experiences.

Vote!

It's election day, and most of you are in a serious battleground state, so you should vote.

My predictions for the most-talked-about issues here:

*Proposed Amendment 2 (amending the state constitution to allow stem cell research to the extent allowed by federal law) will not pass. Even though a good-sized majority of voters polled are for it, the grassroots effort against it is incredibly strong. Drive around looking at yard signs in the suburbs or walk into one of the bazillion Catholic churches in the area, and you'll see what I mean. I think some will vote against it because of true disagreement with the cloning & destruction of pre-implantation embryos, some because they're uncomfortable addressing these issues by constitutional amendment, and some because they have been misled into thinking it will lead to clones walking around.

*Jim Talent will beat Claire McCaskill, in part because of the high conservative turnout on Amendment 2.

*The tobacco tax will pass (despite record turnout in the smoker demographic) because nonsmokers really hate smoking.

*The minimum wage increase will pass, because the positive effects are easy to understand, while potential negative effects are based on boring and relatively difficult-to-understand arguments about ripple effects in the economy. I'm voting for it.

*Nationally, the Democrats will take the House but remain a couple of seats short of taking the Senate. For the Democrats to take the Senate, just about every close race would have to break their way. I don't see that happening.

I hope I'm wrong about some of this. In any case, though, I love election day. Turn on some NPR and CNN and enjoy yourselves, nation!

Two podcasts

Two things I love have recently been put into free podcast form, and I want to promote them.

1. This American Life. I discussed Ira Glass's brilliant radio show in an earlier post. Downloads used to cost money, but now each week's show is available for free download on iTunes the week it airs. Just subscribe, and you'll get them automatically. I am extremely excited.

2. Savage Love. You may be familiar with Dan Savage's fairly raunchy syndicated sex advice column Savage Love, which appears in most cities' weekly alternative newspapers. The author has recently started a free, 15-minute podcast version of the column, in which advice-seekers call and record questions, and he responds to a few of them. He admits that the first episode kind of sucked, but says he hopes to make future episodes less sucky. Even with some suckiness, I find him consistently charming to listen to. Worth a listen. It's available on iTunes too.

Can't get enough of Dan Savage even with the podcast? He's also the author of a wonderful book, The Kid, a memoir about the process by which he and his boyfriend adopted their child. He is also an occasional contributor to This American Life--you can search the site for his pieces.