Adding insult to injury

As if inviting Dick Cheney to speak at commencement wasn't bad enough, BYU decides to give him an honorary doctorate for public service. What exactly is their idea of public service? Starting a bloody mess in Iraq on false pretenses and saying it's about fighting terrorism and spreading democracy and protecting Americans when it's really about oil? I'm horrified.

Reader's Forum Roundup

Oh, BYU Daily Universe opinions page, how could I have neglected you for so long? You're like a one-stop shop for all of my needs for ignorant, racist, sexist commentary. Here's a sampling from the April 16 and April 18 editions:

Richard Garn of Coldwater, MN, on the BYU anti-Cheney protests: Recently I had heard news accounts about BYU professors protesting the Vice President coming to BYU to give a commencement address. The school must come to grips with this situation. The school allowing this to happen and to make quiet a good and honorable person is unacceptable. The effort by the academic community across the country to quell free speech is unacceptable.

Ok, any efforts to take this guy seriously immediately disappeared when he called Cheney a "good and honorable person." And apparently, Cheney is the only person in this whole controversy who is entitled to free speech.

Jason Miller of Provo, UT, on Virginia Tech: The shootings of Monday were a terrible tragedy and unfortunately as long as universities like BYU continue to ban legal licensed citizens from carrying guns on their campuses these types of tragedies will continue to take place.

Of course, guns aren't the only thing at issue here, but if we lived in a society that made it harder for certain individuals to buy guns, isn't it obvious that average citizens wouldn't need to be armed?

David Blackmer of Draper, UT, on the recent suspensions of two BYU football players on breaking and entering charges: [Head coach Bronco Mendenhall] may have had a swift reaction, but I do not see any swift action (or any action at all for that matter) to clean up the team. . . . I think the problem is we are recruiting and pampering players who do not care about BYU values. . . . I don't even care if we lose a few games as long as I don't have to be afraid of some of the people walking around campus.

Why don't you just come out and say it: you think BYU should stop recruiting those scary-looking non-Mormon minority athletes and stick to the clean shaven, returned missionary variety. Because we all know that Bronco Mendenhall can tell exactly which of his potential recruits will be BYU honor code following, law abiding citizens just by looking at them.

Matthew Crandall of Twin Falls, ID, on girls who wear sweatshirts to class: I heartily disagree with the letter "Unrealistic expectation" (April 13). Shame on you for encouraging casualness and sloppiness. To all the girls who wear make up, high heels and who care about how they look, I say thank you. It is people like you who make this world a prettier place to live in.

Right, because the main reason girls attend class is to look pretty for people like you.

Hollinger gives Nuggets/Warriors some credit

John Hollinger from ESPN, who originally gave the Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors almost a zero percent chance of advancing past the first round based on his prediction model, admits now that his data might have been a little skewed.

Hollinger, who makes his career by doing bad statistics with bad assumptions (which in turn creates bad models), always acknowledges that his models are based on assumptions, and things such as injuries, streaks and "tanking" may not correctly reflect the true odds. However, his correction is still not accurate according to his logic. He throws out all data points for the Nuggets and Warriors if they had a significant player injured, if they didn't need to win or if the team they were playing didn't need to win or may have been trying to lose. But he didn't do this for their playoff opponents, which means the Nuggets/Warriors records get inflated because of bad situations and the Spurs/Mavs don't get this same benefit. Although those numbers would greatly improve Denver and Golden State and only mildly improve (if at all) Dallas and San Antonio, which means his corrected numbers are a lot better than his old ones. The point is, his logic is always a little misguided.

My main problem with Hollinger is his famous PER, which supposedly is the tell-all of how good a player is based on efficiency. Of course he doesn't publish his formula, except in a his book that he expects me to buy. Having said that, I don't know what he emphasizes in his PER, and I haven't really tried to figure it out, but I do know that there are several things wrong with it. The most glaring error is Steve Nash, who's having his best season and one of the most efficient seasons I've ever seen as an NBA fan. Steve Nash is apparently the 12th most efficient player in the NBA according to Hollinger's numbers. If you base this on offensive efficiency, Nash should easily be number one. His fg% is .532, which of the 11 people in front of him, only Duncan, Gasol and Boozer are better, and these are guys who spend a lot of time under the basket getting easier shots. Not to mention that in true shooting % (which factors in that 3-pointers are worth more) Nash is at .654, which is a lot better than anyone in front of him. In fact, he's number 2 overall in that category behind Brent Berry, who basically only shoots wide open three pointers and doesn't exactly have any pressure to create offense. So basically Nash is the most efficient shooter in the NBA, and as far as other offensive stats go, there would be assists (which Nash dominates) and turnovers. The turnovers for Nash can be easily factored into an assist to turnover ratio, which is 3.08 for him, much better than anyone ahead of him on the list. The only major category which Nash isn't relevant is rebounding.

I don't know how Hollinger got his numbers, but it just seems to me that the best shooting player in the league who also leads the league in assists and who might be in the top 5 all-time efficient players, should probably be higher than number 12 in the 2006-07 PER.

13yo is txt msg champ rofl!!1! <3 <3

In today's news of the obvious, a 13-year-old girl from Pennsylvania won a cell phone texting contest by typing "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" from "Mary Poppins" in 15 seconds.

And what does she plan to do with the $25,000 in prize money? Save it for college, maybe? Help her parents pay off the 8,000 freaking text messages she sends to her friends every month? No, she's "going to go shopping and buy lots of clothes."

And if that isn't bad enough, let's check in on the runner-up:

So dedicated is she to the art of the text message that Tirosh apparently unwittingly uses abbreviations such as BTW (by the way), TTYL (talk to you later) and LOL (laughing out loud) in her normal speech.

Seriously, WTF. What is this world coming to? Why does this contest even exist? On one hand, you're rewarding a spoiled brat who apparently has nothing better to do with her life than annoy the crap out of her friends by sending them hundreds of text messages everyday. And on the other, you're encouraging a 21-year-old law student who can't even use actual words or sentences in normal conversations. Please, the legal system has enough problems as it is. Put down the phone, go back to English class, and get a hobby. Read a book. Go outside.

Ahoy, mateys

During my lunch break today I spotted an item in the LA Times about a just-announced TV series that combines two of my greatest passions in life: pirates and reality shows.

“Pirate Master” will send 16 modern-day pirates on a high seas adventure where they will live as buccaneers and travel around the Caribbean island of Dominica in search of hidden treasures worth $1 million. Over the course of 33 days, these pirates will live aboard a massive 179 foot, square-rigged barque which carries 12,500 square feet of sail.

Unfortunately, the rest of the description makes the format sound really similar to Survivor, which I hate (and which also makes sense, since both shows are produced by the same guy). But I really want to like this show. I mean, it's pirate themed, for one. Plus, what else am I going to watch between the end of Amazing Race and the beginning of Project Runway? Baseball? I don't think so. Unless it involves someone getting hit in the face with a pizza.

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

More details from yesterday's shooting at Virginia Tech emerge. Several of the 32 victims have been named and the gunman was a student from Centreville, a city about 30 minutes away from where I lived growing up.

Reading news reports as the events unfold has been disturbing. It gets worse when you read about some of the people who lost their lives: the world-class biomechanics researcher who was also kind and dedicated to his family; the 75-year-old aeronautics professor who blocked the classroom door with his body to save his students; the 22-year-old student who was known by his friends for always smiling and being a good listener. It's sad to think that they are gone. They were the kinds of people we need in the this crazy, messed up world.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Virginia Tech had become a popular college destination for kids from the D.C. suburbs. I don't have any direct ties to the school, but I know several people who do. Probably half of my high school applies there every year. *I* applied there. My best friend's brother went there. Forget the Cavaliers, it's the Hokies I cheer for during rivalry week. It's so terrible and bizzare to me. I can't even imagine how it feels for those who survived the mayhem or who lost friends and family when the madness was finally over.

And of course, there is already the inevitable talk about things like gun control and media violence, and I don't like it. I personally hate guns and don't care much for images of death and destruction on my TV screen, but please, barely a day has gone by with little facts or motives to speak of and we're already going to try and politicize what just happened?

I don't know. I'm still just trying to wrap my head around the whole thing.

The ship just keeps on sinking

Right on the heels of the new Watergate scandal:

The Justice Department identified five Bush administration insiders as replacement U.S. attorneys almost a year before most of the prosecutors were fired, contrary to repeated claims that no such list had ever been drawn up, according to documents released today.

E-mails sent to the White House in January and May of 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, list potential replacements for U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Little Rock, Ark.

The replacements on the list were all high-level administration insiders, including two who have gone on to different U.S. attorney postings: Jeff Taylor, now chief prosecutor in the District, and Deborah Rhodes, now U.S. attorney in Alabama. The others were Rachel L. Brand, currently head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and Daniel Levin, a former senior Justice and White House official, the memos show.

Read the full article here.

This comes two weeks after Sampson, testifying under oath, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no one in mind to replace any of the dismissed prosecutors.

Considering this administration's past record, I can't say that I was totally surprised.

Noooooo

Apple just pulled a Microsoft and announced it will delay Tiger for 4 months.

In its statement, Apple cited the need to divert its team of programmers to the challenge of introducing the iPhone, which it said was still on track for shipment in “late June.”

Four months is so far away! Stupid iPhone.

Jackie Robinson Day

So I was watching ESPN today, and they were talking about how all of the Dodgers and anyone else in Major League Baseball that chooses to do so, will wear Jackie Robinson's number 42 on Sunday to commemorate the 60th anniversary of his MLB debut. Baseball is probably one of the only sports where you could get away with everyone having the same number. This idea came from Ken Griffey Jr. and was approved by Bud Selig. Sounds like a respectable tribute to remember a very important figure of the civil rights movement. Nobody could disagree with that, right? Well, apparently at least one MLB player disagrees, and surprisingly, it's an African American player.

Torii Hunter (yes, that's really how he spells his name) was on PTI and SportsCenter, explaining that he doesn't think everyone should be allowed to wear number 42 because some people will be wearing it "to look cool" without understanding what Jackie did for baseball. He also went on to say that people don't understand that Jackie played in games where fans yelled out racial slurs at him, and that many of his teammates and other players in the league harassed him. Now, I'm white and I don't even like baseball, but I know at least as much as Torii does about the Jackie Robinson story (or at least as much as he explained in his interview). Torii continued to dig himself into a bigger hole and was about one step away from saying that only African American players should be allowed to wear Robinson's number.

Later on, some ESPN baseball experts were talking about the decline of African American baseball players in recent years, mentioning that inner-city kids typically think that baseball isn't as cool as football or basketball. One guy even mentioned that Jackie Robinson is rolling over in his grave because of how few African American baseball players are in the MLB today. I have a problem with this conclusion. First of all, Jackie Robinson was doing more than just paving the way for African Americans to play baseball in the MLB. He opened the door for both football and basketball to accept African Americans (the first to be allowed to play in the NBA happened in 1950) so I don't think Jackie Robinson would be upset that inner-city kids choose to play basketball instead of baseball. From what I can understand from Jackie Robinson's story, he would be very happy to see that everyone has the chance to play any sport of their choice and should be just as happy to see Tiger Woods dominate golf. To compare what the world was like in 1972, when Jackie passed away, and what it's like today, I see progress and he would be proud of his legacy. We just had a Super Bowl with two African American head coaches going head-to-head for the first time. There are several African American coaches and even an African American owner in the NBA. We even have an African American with a good chance to become our next president.

I guess what I'm saying is that Jackie's legacy should not be tainted by the fact that African Americans would rather play football or basketball instead of baseball. The fact that they can choose to play baseball or any other sport and be given a fair chance is exactly what Jackie Robinson was fighting for. Sunday should be a day to remember him and what he has done, and I think this tribute is an appropriate way to remember his legacy.

Chain Reaction on GSN

Bwahaha. First of all, this show probably has the hardest final round format of any game show I've ever seen. Two team members have to help a third team member (who is blindfolded) guess seven hidden words in 90 seconds by building sentences made of alternating single word clues.

That explanation probably doesn't make any sense if you haven't seen the show. But I am a nerd who has seen it plenty of times, and never in my life had I witnessed any team good enough to win the final round.

Until tonight.

You're sitting there amazed, watching the two guys building really great clues for the guesser and basically tearing through the round. And then they get to the point where the hidden word is frog.

Guy #1: What
Guy #2: is
Guy #1: opposite
Guy #2: [looks confused] of
Guy #1: toad
Guy #3: [hits buzzer really fast] Frog

I laughed so much, and I don't even know why. I mean, it makes perfect sense, right? The opposite of toad is frog. Like the opposite of alligator is crocodile, or the opposite of Coke is Pepsi.

Still can't touch the Family Feud hamburglar incident, though...

So it goes.

I was scanning the headlines for something stupid and/or political to write about, when I discovered that Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at the age of 84.

It makes me sad to think that we just lost someone who had so much moral vision.

What would James Dobson say?

Yesterday's global warming debate between Newt Gingrich and John Kerry took a bizzare turn:

Before Kerry got a word in, Gingrich conceded that global warming is real, that humans have contributed to it and that "we should address it very actively." Gingrich held up Kerry's new book, "This Moment on Earth," and called it "a very interesting read." He then added a personal note about saving vulnerable species from climate change. "My name, Newt, actually comes from the Danish Knut, and there's been a major crisis in Germany over a polar bear named Knut," he confided.

The warm and fuzzy Gingrich surprised Kerry, who jettisoned prepared remarks that accused the former speaker of "marching in lock step with the climate-change deniers." Instead, Kerry found himself saying: "I've always enjoyed every dialogue he and I have ever had." He added that "your statement is very, very important" and gushed: "I frankly appreciate the candor."

The debate ended. They shook hands. Kerry put an arm around Gingrich. Gingrich put an arm around Kerry. For a brief but terrifying moment, they appeared to be on the verge of a hug.

Alright, so Newt did offer a bit of a reality check when he proposed tax incentives as the answer to the warming problem. But seriously, cue the Twilight Zone theme. First Geraldo, and now Gingrich? Is someone trying to run for office somewhere?

No news day

Recent news stories I liked (aka not about Don Imus or Anna Nicole's baby):

• In a social experiment devised by the Washington Post, musical virtuoso Joshua Bell goes incognito to play six classical masterpieces on a rare violin worth $3.5 million in a Metro station during morning rush hour. No one really notices.

• Durian, a spiky fruit native to Southeast Asia also known for its abilities to hatch a Yoshi egg, has the kind of odor that one food writer describes as similar to "a bunch of dead cats." A Thai government scientist figures out a way to make it odorless by crossing 90 varieties of the fruit. Durian purists are not happy.

And that's pretty much it...

Indie for the masses

You know those Now That's What I Call Music! compilations of top 40 songs? I guess there's like 30 volumes now. Well, Pitchfork reports that we could be seeing the first Now That's What I Call Indie Music! compilation. Vice, Sub Pop and Matador have allegedly teamed up to start this CD series. Vice is supposedly releasing the first one, although it will include artists from several labels, not just Vice artists.

This most likely won't sell to indie purists, because many of them already own the albums they want. Why would they buy a compilation of songs they already have? They will also argue that this disrespects the art of the album, which Lauren posted earlier is being threatened anyway.

Obviously this is an attempt to make money off the recent popularity of indie music. I guess they are hoping that young high schoolers will think it's cool and buy it. Either that or hipsters will buy it for their friends who are still listening to top 40 radio, but it seems like they'd just make their own mixes for friends...

Touching Chris Kaman

We just got back from the Clippers game down at the Staples Center against the Denver Nuggets. It was a reunion game of last year's altercation between Reggie Evans and Chris Kaman, which you can see here if you really want to (warning, it involves nuts getting grabbed).

One thing that's pretty amazing about NBA games is the amount of advertising involved in a single event. The time outs, the dance team, the halftime show, the game where you shoot a lay-up, free throw and a three pointer are all brought to you by different sponsors. Good thing Union Bank forked over a few thousand dollars, otherwise we wouldn't have had the game ball.

Another thing is that the Clippers have a really annoying on-court announcer that shows up during breaks in the game. When we walked in he was interviewing three Clippers fans that were obviously not prepared for the questions. He asked one of them, "If the Clippers make the playoffs, what do you think of their chances to move on?" The guy seemed almost disgusted with the question, then he responded "I don't know, I wouldn't put any money on it." Probably not the pre-game pump-up-the-crowd response people were hoping for. This announcer also sounded like a voice from a haunted house every time he said "Cuttinooo Moooobley." He was almost spooky enough to do the Monster Mash with these guys.

We had seats 24 and 25 of a row with 26 seats, which left one open seat to my left. We were there a little early, and I was thinking, is it possible somebody bought this seat and is coming to the game alone? Then I thought, if someone does have this ticket, it's probably going to be a pretty interesting person. Shortly after that, a man wearing blue Army fatigue-style pants with a Clipper Nation shirt and a leather jacket comes walking up by himself, looking at his ticket and trying to figure out where his seat was. I almost wanted to point to the seat next to me to let him know where to find it.

He didn't say anything until we heard the announcer say, "Now introducing the visiting Denver Nuggets." We then heard "boooooo" coming loudly from the left of us. I soon realized that this guy is one of those guys who talks as if he's best friends with everyone on the team. Saying things like, "C'mon Cat, you gotta make this technical unlike your last one," or "Q needs to get the ball into Chris in the post," or "Chris, show me that baby hook." When referring to anyone on the Clippers team, he was on a first name/nickname basis. Who he was talking to, I never quite figured out. I was the closest person to him, but I never spoke to him directly. Although sometimes it seemed like he was responding to things I would say. One example, after Corey Maggette made a pretty amazing off-balance shot, I said to Lauren, "Wow, I don't know how he made that shot." To which this guy responded, "Yeah, that shot was Kobe-esque." It seemed that his favorite player was Chris Kaman, because he seemed to say "bad shot (insert another Clippers player's first name here) you need to get that to Chris" a lot.

After watching Tang-tsu-wu at halftime (I don't know if that was really their name), which was about 200 martial arts students acting like they were fighting, we tried to search for some Dippin' Dots. We ended up getting a caramel apple, which was surprisingly good. I guess I didn't have much confidence in the Staples Center concessions.

The game ended with Iverson taking over in the 4th quarter, by scoring 17 of the 30 Nuggets' points and getting the game-clinching steal and free throws. Chris Kaman ended up going 4-13 after starting the game 3-3, which makes me wonder why everyone else had bad shots except for Chris.

Even though I wanted to see Denver win, in the end I felt sad for my new friend, the dedicated Clippers fan who comes to games by himself to cheer on his team.

Wedding pictures

Thought we'd post some wedding pictures for anybody who hasn't gotten to see them yet.

Showdown at Fox News

After watching the closing minutes of Olbermann a little while ago, I've felt like I entered the Twilight Zone. Go Geraldo? What am I saying?

Basically, the 'Stache destroys Bill O'Reilly for trying to insist that a tragic drunk driving incident had something to do with illegal immigration.

Mensaje para Newt Gingrich

I have no idea how I missed this, but Newt Gingrich posted a video on YouTube on Wednesday to say he's sorry for essentially calling Spanish "the language of living in a ghetto."

Nice try, Señor Gingrich. Even if you aren't racist, you're still a hypocritical scumbag.

Watch the video. The guy makes Bush sound like a Spanish-speaking genius.

Low + Wilco = best show ever

Pitchfork says that Low is opening for Wilco during the North American leg of Wilco's world tour. Of course, none of these places are anywhere near California:

6/13 Davenport, IA - Adler Theater
6/15 Indianapolis, IN - Murat Theate
6/19 Atlanta, GA - Chastain Park Amphitheatre
6/20 Charlotte, NC - Ovens Auditorium
6/22 Red Bank, NJ - Count Basie Theater
6/24 Northampton, MA - The Pines
6/25 New York, NY - Hammerstein Ballroom
6/28 Boston, MA - Bank of America Pavilion
6/29 Shelburne, VT - The Green at Shelburne Museum

I think it's safe to say that Drums and Guns is the best new album I've listened to so far this year. I don't think I'll ever look at a chocolate cake the same way again.

And the worst album so far? Some Loud Thunder by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Right out of the gate, someone got the genius idea of muddling up what could've been a perfectly enjoyable pop song by drowning it in distortion. As for the rest of the album? Not all of the songs are bad. But for the most part, maybe they thought that if they covered everything up with noise and sound effects no one would notice how tired and stale it sounds. It definitely doesn't have the energy of the last one, but hey, at least we can count on the vocals on being as whiny as ever.

Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = crazy delicious

On the other hand...

Dick Cheney + Rush Limbaugh = just plain crazy.

From my cold, dead hands

In seeking the NRA's support for his presidential candidacy, Mitt Romney has just moved one step closer to Charlton Heston--proving once again that he's willing to say just about anything to get into the Oval Office. And yes, I'm talking about the same Charlton Heston that showed up for an NRA convention in Denver days after the shooting at Columbine High School.

CNN reports that Romney was quoted as saying, "I've been a hunter pretty much all my life." This statement gives you the idea that he's been hunting ever since he was a kid and goes on summer hunting trips with his family. He might even have a deer head mounted over his fireplace, overlooking the bear skin rug on the living room floor. So is Romney really the lifelong hunter he claims to be? It seems like the answer is obviously no, unless you consider shooting some rabbits with his cousins when he was 15 years old and going on a trip with major donors of the Republican Governor's Association last year as the marks of a lifelong hunter. That's it. Only twice in his life has he been hunting, a fact which was even confirmed by his aide.

Let's not forget that he had a much different view of gun control and hunting while running for Massachusetts senator in 1994. During that campaign, Romney was adamant about banning assault-style rifles and supporting the Brady bill. He said, "That's not going to make me the hero of the NRA. I don't line up with a lot of special interest groups."

Well, now he's trying to become the hero of the NRA, or at least wants them to like him enough to get their support. He wants this support so much that he's willing to lie about his love for hunting to get it.

So just as a review: Romney, to appease the state of Massachusetts, was pro-choice, supported gay rights, supported gun control, and supported stem-cell research. Now that he's seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency, he's pro-life, anti gay marriage, supports the NRA, and is against stem-cell research.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that it would help out Romney in the primaries if he were more conservative than his track record shows. What does Romney really believe?

The death of the album?

The New York Times has recently printed a couple of articles looking at how digital downloads are making record labels rethink their strategy for selling music.

The first article (subscription required) is about this all-girl R&B group named Candy Hill (amusingly misprinted in the original article as Cherry Hill), which Universal/Republic signed to record two singles instead of a full album. This coming on the heels of news that people are buying singles over albums by a margin of 19 to 1.

The second is an op-ed column written by the guys who owned NYCD, the (now defunct) music store on Manhattan's Upper West Side. They write:

The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.

Funny how the music industry is now hyping the single as the wave of the future after embarking on a decade-and-a-half-long campaign of suing 12-year-old girls to eliminate it.

I'm not sure that all of this is going to completely kill the album, though. If anything, I think we'll just see even more cookie-cutter, flash-in-the-pan artists who will give VH1 a whole new countdown of one-hit wonders. Who needs artistic vision when your fan base consists of MTV spring breakers with the attention spans of a grapefruit, anyway?

I think fans of real artists (you know, the kind that don't rely on computer algorithms to write their tracks) will continue to demand full-length albums. I mean, part of the labels' problem is not that people won't buy albums, it's that people won't buy crappy albums. I remember reading somewhere that Dark Side of the Moon still sells around 10,000 copies per week. Neon Bible by Arcade Fire is still at the top of the charts, and that's without the benefit of a major label marketing machine to back them up.

Stop. Think.

I realized what my real wish is while I was driving home from work today:

That motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians in Santa Barbara would start paying attention to what they're doing on the road.

How much would it cost to send that to Iceland?

I really don't understand what it is with this place. Is it just me? I've lived in Utah (which I think has an undeserved reputation as bad driver central) and DC (home to some of the worst traffic in the nation) and my memories of driving in those places are calm and happy compared to my daily experiences of driving in Santa Barbara. Are the drivers here terrible because people walk or bike more often than they drive? Do cyclists and pedestrians do stupid things because they think they own the road? Or are they all victims of this city's awful street planning?

So here's the latest scene: I was waiting for a left turn arrow. The arrow turned green, and the cars in front of me proceeded to make the turn. When it was my turn, I had to slam on my brakes because a guy on a bike zipped in front of me, oblivious to the fact that if it weren't for my cat-like reflexes (I'm channeling Tobias here) he would've ended up trampled under my front tires.

I could honestly write a book about stuff like this.

Imagine peace

Yoko Ono wins the prize for coolest art project ever (sorry, Chocolate Jesus):

Yes, that was Yoko Ono whispering into the bark of a cherry tree at the Tidal Basin yesterday morning. The artist, performer and widow of John Lennon visited Washington on Sunday and Monday to bring her "Imagine Peace" project to the city.

In yesterday's brief "Wish Tree" ceremony at the foot of the Jefferson Memorial, the 74-year-old Ono invited people to write wishes on small pieces of paper and tie them to the branches of potted cherry trees. Ono has installed the trees in cities across the globe and says they were inspired by temple wish trees that she saw during her youth in Japan. . . .

Ono promised to collect all the Washington wishes and add them to her cache -- she claims to have more than 100,000 collected from trees throughout the world. The papers will be incorporated into the artist's Imagine Peace Tower, which will be installed later this year in Iceland. Ono was vague about the structure's exact design and said it would be made of light.

What would I wish for? (After world peace, obviously.) I don't know. Right now, sitting at work, I wish that every day could be a holiday.

And I guess it would be nice if Elliott Smith were alive and happy and still making great music. Or at least that he knows how much his songs meant to so many people.

It's too bad I don't live in DC anymore.

Edited to add: According to the Street Scenes DC website, people who can't make it to the wish tree can mail their wishes to:

IMAGINE PEACE TOWER
P.O. Box 1009
121 Reykjavik
Iceland

Stepford, the sequel

Today's most-emailed article in the New York Times:

For Girls, It's Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too

First, a correction issued from the paper:

A front-page article on Sunday about the experiences of high-achieving high school girls in Newton, Mass., misstated a verb property of Latin, which one of the girls in the article studies. It is the subjunctive mood; there is no subjunctive "tense."

Ok, I couldn't tell you that, and I took five years of Latin in high school plus two semesters in college.

Now on to the real article:

Esther and Colby are two of the amazing girls at Newton North High School here in this affluent suburb just outside Boston. “Amazing girls” translation: Girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitious and confident (if not immune to the usual adolescent insecurities and meltdowns). Girls who do everything: Varsity sports. Student government. Theater. Community service. Girls who have grown up learning they can do anything a boy can do, which is anything they want to do. . . .

To spend several months in a pressure cooker like Newton North is to see . . . these girls struggle to navigate the conflicting messages they have been absorbing, if not from their parents then from the culture, since elementary school. The first message: Bring home A’s. Do everything. Get into a top college — which doesn’t have to be in the Ivy League, or one of the other elites like Williams, Tufts or Bowdoin, but should be a “name” school.

The second message: Be yourself. Have fun. Don’t work too hard.

And, for all their accomplishments and ambitions, the amazing girls, as their teachers and classmates call them, are not immune to the third message: While it is now cool to be smart, it is not enough to be smart.

You still have to be pretty, thin and, as one of Esther’s classmates, Kat Jiang, a go-to stage manager for student theater who has a perfect 2400 score on her SATs, wrote in an e-mail message, “It’s out of style to admit it, but it is more important to be hot than smart.”

“Effortlessly hot,” Kat added.

If you are free to be everything, you are also expected to be everything.

So there's the universal problem of feeling like you don't measure up no matter how well you do. And then there's the problem of hyper-competitive societies that are so intent on churning out smart, beautiful, athletic, charitable robots that it doesn't matter if they believe in or care about anything they do, as long as it looks good on a college application.

Oh, and then on the other side of the coin are all the less-advantaged kids who don't have the benefit of SAT prep or the luxury of schools that can afford the AP classes and the extracurriculars.

But here's what gets me: nearly 50 years after the emergence of second wave feminism and the strides made by women in the workplace and education, girls are still expected to be perfect. Sure, you can be yourself and have fun, but if you want to get anywhere in life, you'd better be flawless. Have we really only gotten this far?

My head hurts.

It's Finally over

After watching the final of the NCAA Division I championship I learned the following things:

1. Florida fouls a lot, and they get called for those fouls sometimes when Oden has the ball.
2. Oden is better than Noah, Horford and Richard combined.
3. Humphrey is better than the entire Buckeye backcourt.
4. Noah still talks like an idiot.
5. The only good thing to come out of this game was to see the Gator mascot dance at the end.
6. I'm ready for the NBA playoffs.
7. The armistice that officially ended World War II was signed in Tokyo Bay on USS Missouri on September 2, 1945.

That last one was actually from Final Jeopardy! because I got too bored watching the game and found Trebek more exciting.

Mmm, cupcakes...

I thought I'd take a break from my usual posts of political discontent to talk about a happier subject that everyone can agree on: cupcakes.

This is what I know about cupcakes: they have been around since the 1800s. The name comes from the amount of ingredients used in early recipes (a cup of flour, a cup of sugar, a cup of butter, etc.) and the fact that they were baked in small cups. The shift from weighing to measuring ingredients saved a lot of time in the kitchen, and the small size made for more convenient and consistent baking in traditional hearth ovens.

What else I know about cupcakes: they're sweet, portable, fun to decorate, easy to share, and require no cutlery to enjoy.

I have been on a cupcake-baking kick lately. In the past month I've attempted chocolate cupcakes, cinnamon puff cupcakes, and crumb cupcakes. I also discovered what is perhaps the perfect recipe for classic yellow cupcakes. They're light, easy to make, versatile, and call for oil instead of butter (great for those of us who are too impatient to bother with softening butter).

Classic Yellow Cupcakes

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 large eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line regular-sized cupcake tins with paper liners. Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until lightened, for about 2-3 minutes (essential for achieving the right texture in the end). Mix in the oil and vanilla, followed by the sour cream. Add the flour mixture and continue to beat until the batter is smooth. Fill each cup about 2/3 full of batter and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 24.

I love these.