August 2008 Archives

While the rest of the nation has a three day weekend, I get to work two days out of three. At least I get sunday off.

This is the joy of working in the food-service industry. What are holidays for everyone else tend to be your busiest work days. Everybody wants to eat out on a holiday.

I suppose the good news is that my boss has the confidence to keep me on the schedule for these busy days. If I really sucked he would bring in somebody a little more competent.

In the mean time, I have today off, so I get to enjoy one of my favorite passtimes: watching tennis. In particular, I get to watch the US Open.

In the past I was fortunate enough to live close enough to New York and have time off from work so that I could actually attend the Open. I would drive up in the morning, since play starts at 11:00 or 11:30 or so, and stay for the day session. After spending a whole afternoon watching live tennis, I would head home. Usually I would visit the Open twice during the tournament: once during the first week and once during the second.

And today, I miss it.

I think it's been five years since I've been to the Open, or seen any live tennis for that matter. I should really do some research and make it a point to catch some live matches next year.

My new favorite player is the Polish sensation Agnieszka Radwanska for no other reason than she's Polish ... and she's good.

She's been on my radar for a couple of years - first as "oh, look, a Polish tennis player" - but over time she's just gotten better and better and has gone from "up and coming" to "arrived."

Now she's a top ten player. Her next opponent is Venus Williams. I really want to see that match, but I'm pretty sure it's tomorrow. By the numbers Venus and Agnieszka are pretty close to equal, but I really think the numbers are deceptive here. Venus has an established track record and should be considered the favorite. Agnieska will have to prove herself.

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to read about it.

Two resourceful high school students have done a rather clever investigation of some sushi in New York city. Apparently many of the stores and restaurants have been caught selling product that was not what it claimed to be.

The article does point out that the sample size of the girls' experiment is a little small to draw dramatic conclusions from, but it IS larger enough for one to be "concerned." Clearly more investigation needs to be done.

As someone who has worked in restaurants and grocery stores, I'm going to wager a guess - total guess - that the fault lies not with the stores and restaurants, but with the suppliers. Somebody far up the supply chain is pulling a fast one, but nobody has noticed all the way down.

I know from experience that certain kinds of fish can be very difficult to distinguish from others once they are cut. That is, fillets from two different fish can be almost next to impossible to tell apart, depending on the fish.

If an switch is made far enough up the line, and a fish gets mislabeled, the nobody would notice it ... ever.

From this statement on John McCain's website:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement, but ...

WTF does Dungeons and Dragons have anything to do with ... well, anything? And WTF makes the McCain camp think insulting D&D players (with the trite "mom's basement" cliche and essentially calling D&D players cowards) is supposed to accomplish. Seriously, WTF? Why is there a reference to Dungeons and Dragons in this statement?

I guess McCain is really trying to win over the Monopoly crowd. I here the Chutes and Ladders voting block is on the fence too, so insulting D&D players should go far in winning them over.

More than half of randomly surveyed adults -- 57 percent -- said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile.

I'm not even going to try to argue against this stupidity. I say that anyone who wants to put their faith in the healing powers of the divine should simply do so ... and never see any doctor... ever, including a dentist. In fact, they shouldn't even take aspirin.

In a few generations that 57 percent number should drop waaaaay down.

This speaks for itself .... you decide what it's saying.

Since W took office, I've been increasingly disappointed to the point of outright repulsed by the republican party.

I am a registered independent. I like to believe that whenever I have to choose between the republican and democratic candidates for an office, that I can ignore party affiliation and make some informed and objective decision. Increasingly I find that more and more impossible because the republican party embraces some positions that I cannot tolerate.

Perhaps the most revolting thing about the new republican party - something that has come dramatically to the forefront - is their ability to spew absolute nonsense and falsehoods, yet still expect people to accept it.

Wow! Did you hear that?

In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.

What chutzpah! McCain says it, and with such conviction. How can anyone hear those words and not think "This man is trying to deceive me?"

The problem is, that statement classifies as pretty low level political rhetoric for the republican party. For eight years the republicans have spewn a continuous stream of lies and deception. They've been blatant about it. There press releases are saturated with Orwellian double-speak. Anyone with two brain cells should be able to see through them.

As long as this continues I cannot possibly support the republican party, making me a de facto democrat. I'm not really happy about that, believe me. I feel so sticky and unclean. But I really have no other choice.

Seriously ... my whole day pretty much just disappeared.

I get up, feed the dog, and go to work. Once I get to work I make myself breakfast.

I like to get to work a few minutes early so I can eat breakfast "off the clock". For some reason I just feel guilty about taking that 15 minute break early in the day just to stuff my face. I mean, they ARE giving me free food, so the least I can do is not make them pay me for taking and eating it!

I also feel guilty about asking somebody else to prepare it. I'm a cook! That's my job. I cook food. Why should I ask somebody else to cook my breakfast for me? Ok, I know the answer to that. The answer is: because I would be in the way. When the folks working the line have orders to prepare it's really much easier for everybody if I ask them to make me something rather than go back there and make something myself. However, this morning, I arrived before the restaurant was open! There were no orders waiting to be made, so I just went back there and made my own meal.

So the point is that a few more minutes of my day were consumed (ha-ha, get it? consumed?) by me making my own breakfast ... and eating it.

And then I worked a nine-hour shift.

I came home, took a shower, fed the dog, and then took her for a brief trip outside so she could pee and poop. After that, I had to hustle over to the laundromat so I had clean work clothes for tomorrow.

By the time I get home, thirteen hours of my day have passed since I'd gotten out of bed that morning. I finally have time for my daily internet routine.

Check both e-mail accounts. Read the news. Read the blogs. Check all the bulletin boards.

I suppose that's me time, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it. Sometimes it really does seem like a task. Could I skip the reading my e-mail for a day? Maybe. Probably not. Could I skip the news? Maybe. But I feel that one has a duty to stay informed, especially about important topics. Could I skip the blogs? Sometimes. I suppose this is partially recreation. Some of the blogs I read, however, and more about keeping on top of the news and staying informed. Some of them are personal - keeping in touch with friends - but not all of them.

By the time it's all done, 14 hours of my day is gone. Pretty soon I'll be going to bed. I have about six hours of things I *want* to do, and only a couple of hours to do it.

I know. I'll whine about not having enough time on my blog first. Once that's done, maybe I'll read.

I spent some time this morning in the laundromat, reading about witch hunts in fifteenth century Europe. The hunts originated when Pope Innocent VIII commissioned the writing of the Malleus Maleficarum - a how-to manual for identification of witches with horrific details on how to exact confessions via torture. This book, along with plentiful funding for witch-hunters, led to a massacre of countless innocents; not to be confused with the Pope who started it all.

One particular village slaughtered around 150 people - mostly women, many of them children, amazingly well documented - for the crime of witchcraft in a single year. Disturbingly, such was the norm for villages all across Europe. Multiply 150 witches per year by all the villages in Europe for a few years and you get (as a rough order of magnitude) ... hundreds of thousands? Millions?

Pope Innocent VIII died in 1492, the allegedly illegitimate father of 16 children. As his death neared physicians attempted 3 "transfusions" to save the ailing pontiff, resulting in the death of three young boys who "donated" blood. (See here, last paragraph).

And that was the same year Columbus discovered the Americas.

When my wash came to a stop I put my book down and loaded my wet things into the dryers. An older woman came pretty much out of nowhere to advise me that dryer number 5 ran hot and would dry my clothes off faster, thus saving me a few quarters. I had my doubts - because I always have doubts - but loaded my clothes into machines 5, 6, and 7, just to see what would happen.

Human beings, in general, believe what they're told far too easily. On the one hand, there is some benefit. When someone is told "don't eat the red fruit because they're poison," it's beneficial to believe the source without checking. Even if the source is wrong, no real harm comes from believing the bad information. On the other hand, failing to check facts for oneself leads to an abundance of bad information floating about, like "the earth is flat", "witches cause rain storms", or "Barack Obama is a Muslim."

Or for that matter, dryer 5 runs hot.

After 8 minutes dryers 6 and 7 stop spinning, but dryer 5 is still going strong. In fact, I have time to paw through my laundry from the other two dryers, extract the dry pieces, and combine what's left into a single dryer before dryer 5 completes.

The woman's advice wasn't bad, but her facts were wrong. Yes, it's advantageous to use dryer 5, but not because it runs hot. It runs long, giving one a few extra minutes of drying.

It was not long enough to save me any quarters, however. I still needed to run the vaunted dryer five a second time.

Nevertheless, the issue remains - people fail to check the facts. When presented with a supposed truth people are more likely to simply accept it, rather than verify it first. Failing to test the validity of supposed truths can result in horrible consequences, like the slaughter of a hundred thousand witches.

Bad things seem to keep happening to my co-workers. Today I spent the first half hour of my day working alongside a woman in tears until she pulled herself together. Apparently her father is going through some major medical issues right now, which is stressing her out. One can't blame her for being upset about it.

After a rocky start she managed to make it through the rest of the day without incident. That's probably a good thing. I imagine that coming to work is a great distraction from whatever is going on in the rest of her life.

Now I have two stressed out and otherwise miserable co-workers. Hopefully everything will resolve nicely.

One of my co-workers comes from Moldova. Although I hadn't read anything about it on my usual news outlets, Moldova has been experiencing some rather severe flooding in its eastern section - what might actually be considered the independent republic of Transdniestria, depending on your politics.

The floods also span further to the east into western Ukraine, so basically the whole region is just underwater. I've read reports, however, that the Ukrainians - looking out for number one, so to speak - released the flood gates on a few dams, easing the situation in Ukraine by dumping even more floodwater onto Moldova.

According to my co-worker, the whole area is without power or phones, which for him is very distressing. He has family in the area that he hasn't been able to contact for some time. He pretends to be unaffected, but his normally stoic exterior can really contain the fact that there's something on his mind.

To put it simply, he's been in a bad mood for days.

There's really nothing anyone here can do but sympathize. The US has offered a whopping $50,000 for food aid to the area (that's like 16 seconds of the Iraq War budget). Apparently the Russians are doing more, which is probably appropriate since they already have troops in the Transdniestria area.

My friend's family is probably alright, in the sense that they're alive. Everything they own, however, is probably underwater, although that is really nothing but conjecture on my part.

Hopefully everything will turn on OK for them, but surely others are suffering horribly.