"Caught up in a teaching moment..."

Some folks approach acquiring a new skill by reading about it, and only then trying it out. 

Some view a video on YouTube and follow along when they put the instructions into practice. 

There are those who just jump in and figure things out as they go along.

Still others work with a trusted mentor looking over their shoulder as they learn on the job. Which is how Ron McDonald (not that Ron McDonald), way up in Newfoundland, was taught how to extract a tooth. He had oral surgeon Dr. Louis Bourget showing him how.

Which would have made a lot of sense had Ron McDonald been a dental or medical student. Instead, he's a prison guard.

Oh. 

In October 2020, two correctional officers from the Bishop's Falls Correctional Centre — Ron McDonald and Roy Goodyear — accompanied an inmate to the clinic.

According to the agreed statement of facts, when the patient was sedated, Bourget was explaining the procedure to the guards, and he then suggested one of the guards remove four teeth. McDonald took out the teeth while Goodyear recorded the whole thing. (Source: Yahoo News)

I mean, explaining the procedure to the guards is one thing. And it's a good thing. Most of us like learning new things on the job, even when it's not directly tied to our position, even when it's not directly tied for anything on our potential career path. 

But there's learning how to do new things, and learning about new things. And this should have been a case of the latter, not the former.

But Dr. Bourget got a bit carried away.

According to the statement of facts, Bourget said he "got caught up in a teaching moment" but regretted the decision after the procedure.

"Caught up in a teaching moment"? What the ever-loving...

How does this make any sense?

Was Bourget motivated by kindness? Was he genuinely thinking that he could help the prison guards expand their horizons, achieve a small sense of accomplishment?

Was Bourget motivated by ego? Was he just showing off?

And what about the patient who's four teeth were being yanked out? Sure, he was sedated, but was he totally under? When I was eighteen, I had my wisdom teeth removed. Back then, this procedure was done in a hospital under general anesthesia. But I believe most teeth pulling is done under local. There was no mention of an anesthesiologist on the scene, although a dental surgeon could have training in anesthesiology. Perhaps Roy Goodyear, the other corrections officer, stepped in to administer the laughing gas. Yet another "teaching moment" for Dr. Bourget.

Whether he was fully under or slightly out of it, how did the prisoner feel when he realized that he was being operated on by a screw?

Hmmmm.

Add cruel meany to kindness and ego on the list of possible motivators.

Anyway, this old story, from way back in October 2020, is in the news now because Bourget, who had been charged with assault for the incident, was recently granted something called "an absolute discharge" by a Canadian court. 

It's the lowest level of criminal sentence that an adult offender can receive. It's a finding of guilt but no criminal conviction is registered and there is no probation order.

Although he had been sanctioned/had his license suspended by several dental boards, "Dr. Louis Bourget will not have a criminal record."

Among the extentuating circumstances cited by the judge were:

...the pressureothe pandemic, Bourget's financial loss, his guilty plea, his low risk to re-offend and his completion of sensitivity training.

Although the charges against Goodyear were dropped, both guards had been charged. And both lost their jobs. (Goodyear had brought the situation to light by posting the video on social media. But of course.)

And the patient (Blair Harris) - who, because he was sedated was unable to give informed consent to have McDonald pull his teeth out - is suing those involved. 

Yet another "teaching moment." 

This ought to harsh any Vietnamese fraud mellow

When it comes to carrying out the death penalty, the United States is in the Top Ten. We're nothing compared China, which does away with 1,000 or so each year. Or with Iran, which carries out about half that number of executions. The figure for Vietnam is a bit murky, but it may be four times higher than the US number (24 last year), even though they have roughly one quarter of our population. 

Overall, our affecion for the death penalty puts us in some pretty bad company - countries in the Mideast, Asia, and Africa where you wouldn't want to live. No fellow G8 countries, no members of NATO. (If you're wondering about Russia, they've had a moratorium on the death penalty for neary 30 years. This is something of a wink-wink nudge-nudge deal, as Putin's political enemies regularly meet with an untimely death, so they do have a death penalty of sorts.)

Vietnam is an interesting case. 

They're not especially transparent about how many executions they carry out each year, but unlike the US, you can be given a death sentence for fraud. As in: 

A court in Vietnam handed the death sentence [in early April] to real estate tycoon Truong My Lan for her role in a 304 trillion dong (€11.6 billion [$12.4B]) financial fraud, the country’s biggest on record, state media said.

...She was found guilty, with her accomplices, of siphoning off more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SCB), which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies, despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders, according to investigators. (Source: Irish Times)

Her 2022 arrest triggered a run on SCB.

There were 84 defendants convicted in this scheme who:

...received sentences ranging from probation for three years to life imprisonment. Among them are Lan’s husband, Eric Chu, a businessman from Hong Kong, who was sentenced to nine years in jail, and her niece, who was sentenced to 17 years.

In addition to receiving a death sentence, Lan was given 20-year sentences "for bribery and violating lending regulations." Vietnam don't play.

She was also hit with a small financial penalty. Roughly $27M, which is a pretty small potato when compared to the $12.4B pile o' fraud. 

She will be appealing her sentence. 

Lan reached tycoon status from pretty humble beginnings. She began her business life as a cosmetics trader at the main market in Ho Chi Minh City. (What would Ho have to say about this?)

While I like to see a poor girl make it big, it's too bad she had to reach the heights through fraud.

Corruption is more or less the norm in Vietnam, but the country recently decided to crack down through an anti-corruption initiative dubbed Blazing Furnace. (Blazing Furnace? Vietnam don't play.)

The magnitude of the fraud - $12.4B - is a lot, but chump change when compared to Bernie Madoff's $64B Ponzi embezzlement (closer to $93B in today's dollars).  The Vietnam amount is more in line with Sam Bankman-Fried's grab of $8-$10B. But compared to Vietnam's GDP:

The total takings, according to the charges on which she was convicted, were equivalent to more than 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product as of 2022. (Source: Washington Post)

Put it into this perspective: US GDP in 2022 was $25.44T. Three percent of that is nearly $800B. So, yikes!

But you don't have to be a major thief to qualify for the death penalty: 

Embezzlement of as little as 500 million Vietnamese dong — $20,000 — of government funds qualifies for such punishment, according to the group.

I'm not an advocate of the death penalty. It's been misused and abused, and falls disproportionately on the poor and people of color. I'd like to see it outlawed in the US. Or deployed with colossal rarity, and only for the most spectacularly heinous of crimes where there's not one scintilla of doubt who done it. Maybe.

But as a thought experiment: wonder whether it would have any deterrent effect if we had the death penalty for fraud. 

Meanwhile, it's probably going to harsh the mellow of anyone in Vietnam contemplating fraud. 

The Department Store (oh so long ago...)

When I was growing up in Worcester, the major department store was Denholm's (formally: Denholm & McKay). Denholm's was also known as The Boston Store, because Worcester was the state's second city and was perpetually in the shadow of Boston, from whence cometh all things fine and sophisticated. 

There were a couple of other department stores in Worcester - R.H. White's and Barnard's (which I think was a full department, not just a clothing store), as well as specialty shops for men (Shack's, Ware-Pratt, Lujon's) and women (Marcus, Ullian's, Richard Healy - where one Christmas, my father bought my mother a fur hat). There was also a good-sized Filene's, with a good-sized Filene's Basement in its basement. But Filene's didn't sell furniture and housewares, so, to me, it wasn't a true department store. 

When it came to department stores, Denholm was the It Store for Worcester. 

I loved going to Denholm's. Like all true department stores, it sold pretty much everything, including furniture and toys. It's where we went for our Stride-Rite shoes, our Easter dresses, our pictures with Santa (one per childhood: I'm in the b&w one with Kath and Tom, Rich and Trish had their own pic - in color). If I remember correctly, the toy department was near the shoe department, so after we got our Stride-Rites, we could look around the toy department. Ooh! Aah!

Denholm's closed in the mid-1970's, and one of my mother's last purchases there was a fablous covered casserole dish - dark brown bottom, pale robin's egg blue and brown leaf pattern lid - which she gave me as a "housewarming gift" when I moved permanently to Boston. I still use this gorgeous dish, and think of my mother (and Denholm's) every time I use it. 

When I moved to Boston, Filene's Basement was my main source for clothing, but Jordan's was my department store. I still have an upholstered arm chair I got there 40 years or so ago. Over the years, I've gotten towels, sheets, cookware, dishware, records, books and lots of other stuff (including some clothing) at Jordan Marsh. 

(I did a Christmas season retail stint at both Filene's and Jordan's. In both cases, I worked in the stationery department.)

Most cities had an iconic department store or two. In Providence it was Shepard's. For Hartford, it was G. Fox. Philadelphia? Wannamaker's. Detroit? Hudson. Boston? Jordan Marsh.

Chicago had two: Carson Pieri Scott and Marshall Field. 

New York City has two as well: Gimbel's and Macy's.

The only one of these department stores still standing as its own brand is Macy's which, along the way, has hoovered up many of the rest, including Jordan Marsh and Marshall Field.

When it comes to department stores, in plenty of places, Macy's is the last man standing. (And it's not as department-y in Boston as Jordan's was. There's no furniture department, no books and records, no stationery, toys in the Christmas season only. And, unlike Jordan's: no bakery where you could get blueberry muffins. Fortunately, the recipe lives on, and I've made it: delish.)

But it's not clear how much longer Macy's will hang on.

It's closed a lot of its stores over the last couple of years, and plans on shuttering nearly one-third of the remaining stores. (No word as of this writing which stores in Massachusetts are getting the axe.)

There are plenty of reasons why department stores are going the way of the dodo.

Big box retailers like Walmart and Target may have lower quality, but they do the job of selling a tremendous variety of stuff. And you can even buy a lot more food at them than blueberry muffins. 

Online shopping has, of course, cut bigly into department sales. And then there was the pandemic...

Another key problem: The retail industry has been split in two as inflation has taken its toll. That means brands like Walmart that are focused on inexpensive items are succeeding, as are luxury brands for people who still have means to afford finer items. But department stores, focused on America’s middle class, are fading. (Source: Yahoo)

Hmmmm. Big department store fade as metaphor for the hollowing out of the American middle class, anyone? 

Another issue with the Macy's of the world, according to retail analyst Neil Saunders, is that they weren't at all nimble when responding to the threats from big boxdom and online. 

But to retail analyst Neil Saunders of GlobalData, the key problem for Macy’s and many other troubled department store chains is more fundamental: Company management did little to update their offerings to compete with new rivals over the years.

“Quite frankly, a lot of them stopped caring. They stopped listening to customers,” he said. “Sure online has taken its share, sure big box has taken its share. But most of all, it’s a failure to evolve.”

And that "failure to evolve" has cost the department stores big time. 

Saunders’ stats show that department stores have fallen from 14.1% of US retail sales in 1993 to just 9.8% ten years later, to 5.7% in 2013, and to only 2.6% last year. Total sales by US department stores are expected to fall from $103 billion in 2018 to only $81 billion by 2026, according to projections from Coresight Research, an analytics firm that tracks the sector.

Wow! That is some precipitous fall. 

I'd hate to see department stores entirely disappear - especially the Macy's in downtown Boston. I don't shop there a lot, but when I want a set of sheets, that's where I head. 

“Decline is inevitable. But I don’t think extinction is inevitable,” Saunders said.

Phew...

Meanwhile, I'll do what us olds do: wallow in a bit of nostalgia, in this case for shopping at Denholm's and Jordan Marsh, those long ago  department stores. Glad I still have that casserole from Denholm's.

Memorial Day with nothing new to say

Nothing to say that I haven't said before, other than hoping and in my own atheistic way praying that, when Memorial Day 2025 rolls around, we're not living in an authoritarian state.

Here are my historic thoughts on this holiday.

Have a wonderful (and a bit thoughtful) day.

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Image source: Bridgely Key Options.

Stockholm Swiftie

While I love to travel, I'm not the most spontaneous of travelers. I like to plan my trips well in advance, as a big part of the pleasure I take from traveling is the anticipation. 

While I like and admire Taylor Swift for her music and for her business savvy, I'm no one's idea of a Swiftie. 

But last Tuesday evening, I got a text from my niece Molly - also on the thread, my sister Trish and niece Caroline - asking whether we would be interested in going to Stockholm - yes, that Stockholm - to see The Eras Tour. 

Molly is a mega Swiftie. Trish and Caroline are pretty avid fans as well. And we'd all been talking about trying to catch the tour in New Orleans, making a fun trip out of it. But the tickets for the handful of North American Eras Tour dates - the 2023 leg of the tour had plentiful US stops - were super expensive, astronomically so. Molly had seen New Orleans tix for $1,700. (For the Toronto show in November, we heard that the magic number is $3K!!!) Given this, and the pumped up hotel costs, plus plane travel, Molly and Caroline had put their heads toether and figured that it would actually cost less to go to Stockholm, where excellent tickets for the upcoming shows could be had for a couple of hundred bucks. (Still a lot of money, but, whatever...)

Molly started the textthread at about 9 p.m. By 11 p.m., we had concert tickets, hotel reservations, and our flights booked. Leaving Friday night; concert Sunday night; back to Boston on Tuesday.

All four of us girlies are travel planners to some degree or another, not given to spontaneous outbursts of wanderlust. At one point, Trish texted "who are we?" Who are we, indeed.

Apparently we are the sorts of folks who ended up at Logan Friday night, waiting for Lufthansa to Frankfurt (and from there, on to Stockholm) to take off. 

We were not alone.

Maybe the other Swifties on our flight(s) had been planning their trips for a long time, or maybe they're the sponstaneous sorts (even if, as it was for us, it's only first-time or one-shot spontaneity). All I know is that there were an awful lot of folks on our flights wearing some sort of Taylor Swift gear. (We traveled chill, in mufti. 

After a couple of blessedly uneventful flights, we arrived in Stockholm late on Saturday afternoon, and cabbed into the city with a very entertaining taxi driver who was half Kurdistani and half Italian. 

Wälkommen till sverige!

Our hotel - and All-American Hilton - was in a great location, with lots of restaurants nearby. We wandered around and settled on a spectacular - wait for it - Italian place, where we got to dine out, as the evening was balmy and it stays light this time of year until after 9 p.m. 

On Sunday, we poked around town - Stockholm is very charming, full of interesting and historic (even though I know nothing about Swedish history) buildings, and was teeming with people, both locals and tourists. The weather was lovely, and we did our second outdoor dining: waterfront breakfast with yummy Swedish cinammon buns. We also - of course - popped our heads in at IKEA (which was neither the mothership, nor the largest IKEA outlet in Sweden, but was still fun.)

Lunch was authentic Swedish food. I had reindeer meatballs. Quite good.

On to the concert!

The stadium where Swift was performing is in a suburb, so we took the subway to the train, marveling at the wonderful Swedish transportation infrastructure. (In my experience, most European countries have far better transpo and other infrastructure than the US.)

We got to the stadium in plenty of time. Us and 65,000 or so other folks. I'm guessing about 90% of the crowd was women/girls. And at least one-quarter American. An enthusiastic, happy, buoyant crowd.

Taylor Swift is a brilliant performer. She goes for 3+ hours with no breaks (although there are moments during costume changes when the dancers are prominentaly featured). Our seats were great, once the American boyfriend lunkhead standing next to me got the hint  that he was bad-dancing manspreading into my space - I had to block him a few times from elbowing me in the face - and switched seats with his GF. (Their seats were on aisle, so he spent the concert bad-dancing in the aisle. Fine by me.)

Unlike most of those in attendance, including my companions, I don't know all the songs, I don't know all the words. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the entire performance. You definitely get your money's worth at a Taylor Swift concert, that's for sure. 

As I said, I like and admire Taylor Swift. I have a bunch - though not all - of her albums, and enjoy her music. And I admire her drive, her success, her business/marketing genius, and her connection with her audience. Watching her perform, listening to her, I felt uplifted and empowered. I can only imagine how she makes young women feel. 

God knows, I wouldn't want Taylor Swift's life. Being in the public eye; having millions of people weighing in on your every professional and personal move; having every lyric written, every word uttered, dissected for clues of something-or-other.

But Bravissima, Taylor Swift!

Getting back to the hotel was a crush. One of the upsides of having first-rate public transportation is that people use it. So there weren't a lot of folks driving to the concert. They were catching the train back into town. Fortunately, we were well-situated to get to the station - about a 15 minute walk - before all of the masses arrived there. We were able to cram onto one of the first trains to leave.

Monday - another beautiful day - we museumed it, taking the ferry to one of Stockholm's many islands for the Vasa and ABBA Museums. 

The Vasa is a 17th century warship that never quite got to war, as it capsized shortly after its maiden launch in 1628. Turns out the designers spent too much time on the elaborate decoration and too little on figuring out how much ballast the ship needed to keep from capsizing. 

The Vasa was raised in the early 1960's, and all those years under water had preserved most of the hull. The ship has been brilliantly restored, with the missing pieces authentically reconstructed. I seem to remember that I saw the Vasa in 1973, on my only other visit to Stockholm, but this was well before this amazing museum was built. Just fascinating.

As was the ABBA museum, where we got to sing and dance and gawk at all those crazy ABBA costumes. Unfortunately, I didn't get the message that the disco was a silent disco. We were just supposed to dance to whatever we were hearing through our headphones, without singing along. My nieces had to tell me to zip it. (It's truly impossible not to sing along with an ABBA song.) The only disappointment was the gift shop: not nearly enough on offer. That said, we were able to get a tacky souvenir for my sister Kath, an ABBA fan from wayback.

On Monday night, we had excellent Greek food.

Who knew that Stockholm would have such a diverse restaurant scene? If I'd had six months to research the trip, I'm sure I would have known. But we were seat-of-the pants-ing it. And it all worked out. 

And everything was easy-peasy, given that 90% of the Swedish population speaks English, and given that the sum total of my Swedish is hej (hi), skol (to your health), and tak (thank you). 

Our flights back on Tuesday were, again, blessedly uneventful. (Stockholm Airport is, by the way, a marvel.)

All in all, a great trip. 

No plans at the present, but now that I've done it once, I am open to another spontaneous trip somewhere, sometime. 

Talk about spies are everywhere

There's plenty of technology to be worried about, and right on the outer end of the scary scale is facial recognition.

Sure, it's terrific that it can and will be used to solve crimes, and if it can speed you through security and passport control at the airport, yipee! But there's plenty of downside. Facial recognition tech is getting better, but it's not as effective with Black faces as it is with white. This may not seem like such a big deal until you factor in the costs to individuals and society when Blacks are erroneously charged with and convicted of crimes based on problematic software algorithms. 

Then there's the potential - especially if we lurch into fascism - for facial recognition to identify anyone with the courage (or the temerity) to hit the streets to protest the government.

And now the latest thing to worry about is facial recognition software used in smart vending machines. 

Not that I use them all that often, but who doesn't want a vending machine smart enough not to let the Chuckles you just paid $1.25 for get caught up in the coil and refuse to drop down, resulting in your injuring your wrist and/or shoulder slamming it against the vending machine's Lexan window in a failed attempt to dislodge those Chuckles. Not that I know anyone that this has happened to...

And if vending machines were smart enough to alert the vending machine company that the Heath Bars slot was empty while - swell! - there were still more than enough rolls of Starbursts to feed an army, that would be good, too. (As long as the vending machine company acted on it.)

So, if vending machines were a tiny bit smarter, that would be a good thing.

But why do vending machines have to come equipped with facial recognition technology?

What's that technology going to be used for? Surely, there's already a security camera poised overhead to capture who damaged the Lexan, alongs ith their hand and/or shoulder, when the Chuckles failed to launch. Or to figure out thett culprits who, in a drunken spree, trashed the machine in its entirety. 

Anyway, a student at Canada's Univeristy of Waterloo figured out that the Invenda machines dispensing Mars/M&M's on campus were using facial recognition.

It all started when someone posted a pic on Reddit showing a vending machine error message -  "Invenda.Vending.Facial RecognitionApp.exe" - indicating that facial recognition was in use.

Waterloo student River Stanley, who writes for the University's Math NEWS, turned sleuth.

Stanley sounded the alarm after consulting Invenda sales brochures that promised "the machines are capable of sending estimated ages and genders" of every person who used the machines—without ever requesting their consent. (Source: Ars Technica)

Well, I guess they just wanted to figure out whether men preferred Snickers while women liked M&M's, and whether more men than women used a certain vending machine and stock accordingly. And that seeems like an innocuous enough use case.

Still, there's an awful creepy downside if we now have to worry about a candy machine spying on you.

Oh, but not to worry.

Both Adaria Vending Services, which stocks the machines, and Invenda, which manufactures them, jumped in with all sorts of assurances. 

Adaria Vending Services told MathNEWS that "what’s most important to understand is that the machines do not take or store any photos or images, and an individual person cannot be identified using the technology in the machines. The technology acts as a motion sensor that detects faces, so the machine knows when to activate the purchasing interface—never taking or storing images of customers."

"Activate the purchasing interface"? Huh? Why does the "purchase of interface" have to be activated? Shouldn't you just be able to walk up to the machine, scan the rows, and press E2 or B7 or whatever slot holds the goody you're after?

And why do you need facial recognition technology here? Isn't this use case what plain vanilla motion detection sensors can be used for ?

Anyway, there's a bit more from Invenda:

An Invenda spokesperson told Ars that "Invenda operates under strict policy and does not collect any user data or photos, ensuring individual identification via machine technology is unattainable. The software relies on people detection and facial analysis, not face recognition."

"This means, people detection solely identifies the presence of individuals whereas, facial recognition goes further to discern and specify individual persons," Invenda's spokesperson said. "Additionally, the Invenda solution can only determine if an anonymous individual faces the device, for what duration, and approximates basic demographic attributes unidentifiably. The vending machine technology functions as a motion sensor, activating the purchasing interface upon detecting individuals, without the capability to capture, retain, or transmit imagery. Data acquisition is limited to assessing foot traffic at the vending machine and transactional conversion rates. These systems adhere rigorously to GDPR regulations and refrain expressly from managing, retaining, or processing any personally identifiable information."

Data acquisition, blech.

Sometimes big data drives me crazy. Foot traffic. Transactional conversion rates. Wouldn't just plain knowing what items sell vs. the ones that grow stale, which you get by counting on your fingers and toes - admittedly a form of digital - be enough to figure out what to put in the vending machines? Makes me glad I'm not in marketing anymore. 

(BTW, GDPR = EU General Data Protection Regulation.)

So the Invenda machines aren't being used for nefarious purposes - yet, anyway - but does this make it okay? I used to be cash-only at CVS and the grocery store because I didn't want them knowing what toothpaste I like, or what brand of peanut buter I buy. I gave up and started using a charge or debit card, just because it's more convenient. But if I didn't a store knowing my purchase habits - a complete, IMHO, invasion of privacty - I sure don't want a vending machine scanning my face and figuring out how I impulse buy my snacks.

Meanwhile, the University of Waterloo - due to student demand - is having the Invenda machines removed and replaced by vending machines with lower IQs. 

The takeover of facial recognition seems (sadly) inevitable, but for now: good for the University of Waterloo!

What is it they say about not burning your bridges?

Many years ago, when Wang Labs was still a company - that many years ago (Wang's been a goner since the 1990's) - a friend and colleague of mine was laid off. I had already left the company, having fled screaming in December 1989, a survivor of untold Wang lay-off sprees, including a devastating pink slip fest on my 40th birthday in which thousands of folks were let go.

Anyway, my friend Cathy had survived that action, but she was caught up in one a few months later. When she called me afterwards to let me know, she described her departure. "I drove out by the main entrance, rolled down the car window, and spit." 

Cathy was one of the funniest people I've ever known, and she was also one of the best dressed. At a time and place where we all dressed ultra-professionally, she always looked especially great. So the idea of this highly professional suburban mom hocking a loogie at the Wang building completely cracked me up. Bonus points in that she aimed her venom at the main entrance, which employees weren't allowed to use. 

Oh, it's not as if Dr. An Wang, Wang's founder and ultra-leader, was there to witness this act of desecration. He died shortly after I scooted out, shortly before Cathy was shown the [side] door. And An Wang's son Fred, a very nice guy who had nepotistically been made the company's president, wasn't there to see Cathy's little spit festbut either. Just before I left, Fred had been fired by his father. I think that a fellow named Rick Miller, who had been brought in to turn the not-so-good-ship Wang around, was the man in charge. 

The thought of Cathy's departure especially cracked me up - as she knew it would - because, a few weeks before I had left the doomed company, while climbing a staircase, I had come across a massive loogie on one of the steps. (Wang had radically cut back on cleaning services, and the building was an utter dump.)

In any case, given that there were no witnesses to Cathy's little act of FU, it can't be said that she burned any bridge. She soon found another job, and did just fine. 

But some folks do burn their career bridges, dousing those bridges with gasoline and dropping a match. 

One such person is a Massachusetts school IT guy who, having been "terminated" in June 2023, decided to do a bit of paying back. He decided to use his not-yet-terminated admin credentials to wreak a bit of havoc on the info systems at Haverhill's Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, deactivating and deleting "thousands of Apple IDs from the school’s Apple School Manager accounts."

According to the Department of Justice, Conor LaHiff, 30, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Court Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV to one month in prison and three years of supervised release, with the first 12 months served at home.  In addition, he was ordered to pay $34,110 in restitution. LaHiff pleaded guilty in December 2023 to one count of unauthorized damage to protected computers.”

...“Committing a cyber intrusion to settle a score with your former employer is a bad idea but that’s exactly what Conor LaHiff did, and in doing so, he deactivated a high school’s phone system along with thousands of network user accounts,” said Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division. “This short-sighted scheme has brought serious consequences and should serve as a warning to others: the FBI will track down and bring to justice cyber criminals, regardless of what their motivation is for willfully breaking the law.” (Source: WWLP)

Before his crime was found out, LaHiff had managed to get himself hired by another public school system. But last fall, when he entered his plea in court, "a judge ordered that LaHiff notify prospective employers of his guilty plea, [US Attorney Joshua] Levy’s office said." (Source: Boston Globe)

Wonder how that worked out for Conor LaHiff.

Burn a bridge and it's not that easy crossing over it again.

Poor career move, Conor. 

What a maroon.

So much to like about minor-league baseball

For the last few years, my home town of Worcester has been the home town of the Red Sox Triple A team, the WooSox. I wish they'd been around when I was a kid. I'm sure that I'd have been a fan, and I'm sure the my baseball-loving father would have regularly taken us to games - a supplement for our once a season trek into Fenway Park to see the Red Sox.

I get out to Worcester a couple of times a year to see the WooSox play. It's  far cheaper than going to see their Boston big brothers; Polar Park is a lot more comfortable than Fenway; and the calibre of play is pretty good. Since the Red Sox have been so terrible the last few years, there's not much difference between watching minor league baseball in the minors than not-much-above-minor-league baseball played by the Red Sox at America's Most Beloved Ballpark. 

And, since the WooSox are the Red Sox Triple A affiliate, you get to see official big leaguers rehab there. In fact, in the last couple of seasons, I saw Chris Sale, the former Red Sox high-priced, perpetually-injured $uper$tar, pitch more innings at Polar Park than at Fenway.

Anyway, minor league baseball, at the Triple A level, can be a lot of fun. And, having been to a few games at the lower minor league levels (like the late, lamented Lowell Spinners) over the years, double-A and single-A - and even minor leagues not affiliated with The Bigs - can be fun, too.

One of the best things about minor league baseball is the team names, which tend to be a lot more interesting and colorful than the team names in the big leagues.

Most team names in the bigs are often just plain boring. There are a few that have some meaning that's particular to place - Texas Rangers, San Diego Padres, Minnesota Twins, Baltimore Orioles. And some of them are in cute little parings with the local football team - Cubs/Bears, Tigers/Lions. But most of the names are just plain dull. Red Sox? White Sox? Athletics? Braves? Boring, boring, boring.

Not that there's anything so novel and great about the name WooSox. For some reason, The Woo is a nickname for Worcester. (Don't know why. The city's name is pronounced Wuh-sta, not Woo-ster. But whatever.) And, given that the smiley face was created in The Woo, the smiley-face mascot makes sense. As does the little heart in the middle of the W in Woo, given that Worcester is the Heart of the Commonwealth. So the logos are great. But the name? Meh. A prior unaffiliated minor league team was called the Tornadoes. This was kind of weird, given that Worcester is not exactly tornado alley, but did suffer a tremendously destructive tornado in the early 1950's during which 94 folks were killed. So kind of a grim name, but still colorful.

But there are lots of minor league names that are great, and the teams seem to have a lot of fun with them.  

Given Michigan's industrial, automotive history, why not the Lansing Lugnuts? And let's give it up for the Louisville Bats. Bet they have some pretty good sluggers. The Durham Bulls need no introduction, other than a reminder that Bull Durham was a brand of chewing tobacco, and North Carolina is known for its tobacco. Modesto is nut-growing territory, so Modesto Nuts fits. Ditto for the Cedar Rapids Kernels. (Lots of corn grown in Iowa.)

Until I looked up the Amarillo (Texas) Sod Poodles, I didn't know that a sod poodle was another name for a prairie dog. Good one!

Admittedly, some of the minor league team names are even more boring than what you find in the big leagues. 

The Oklahoma City Baseball Club? Big yawn!

But I like the Rome (Georgia) Emperors. Props that their mascot is a toga-wearing penguin.

And the Albuquerque Isotopes? Shades of Oppenheimer!

Sure, it can be tough to root for a minor league team. (Not that it's not tough rooting for a team in the majors...) You get attached to a player, only to have them called up to the next level (or, alas, sent down). But you do get to see stars of the future. When he was with the Trenton Thunder, I saw future Red Sox Nomar Garciaparra play against the Portland Sea Dogs.

Sadness of losing your stars aside, mostly the minors have a lot going for them.

Woo, woo, woo for the Woo Sox. If they don't win it's a shame.

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Here's a link to the full list of minor league teams affiliated with the majors. Enjoy! (I did.)

Is this guy what the Brits call a wanker?

Physicians in the UK don't make as much as docs in the US. Most of them work for the National Health Service (NHS), where a junior doctor may make as little as £35,000 a year - the equivalent of about $44K. Hard to imagine any doctor putting up with that here! (Salaries in general, across many professions, are lower in the UK.) But I don't believe that NHS doctors have to work crazy hours, and I do believe that they're allowed to moonlight, taking more lucrative gigs on their days off. 

But that apparently wasn't good enough for one fellow. 

Dr Daniel Coventry, 34, was supposed to be off work at the taxpayer's expense with a suspected virus but instead he was offering facial fillers, thread facelifts and anti-wrinkle jabs at a private clinic in Brighton. (Source: Daily Mail)

His grift was discovered for both reasons old-school - taking a suspicious amount of sick time - and predictably modern - bragging on social media. And it was enough to earn him a short-term suspension of his medical license for gross unprofessional misconduct. Covenry was sent to medical-world Coventry, as it were. 

He apologized for his unbecoming conduct "and confessed to blaming his behavior on NHS 'failing.'"

Amazingly, his initial defense was that he hadn't bothered to read the rules and regulation about side hustles, implying that this was somewhat the fault of the NHS for not doing a good enough job with onboarding new doctors.

Even if one hasn't read the rules and regulations, even if one pointed one's finger at one's employer for not making sure one knew these rules and regulations, how could anyone think lying about being sick and using the paid time off to work another job is the right thing to do? 

We're not talking about an occasional mental health day when you sit around reading and eating bonbons, or taking a nice, long walk to clear the cobwebs, or binge-watching Breaking Bad. We're talking about someone getting paid by the NHS to work with sick people, while also getting (better) paid for working with unsick folks who want to Botox their wrinkles into oblivion and get themselves some big old puffy Kardashian lips. And are willing and able to pay big bucks (big pounds?) out of pocket for the privilege.

Fortunately, Coventry - who is an Oxford-educated MD, thus at least reasonably intelligent - now claims to have seen the light.  

In a statement Coventry said he now accepted 'not having a leg to stand on' at the 2023 hearing and vowed in future to be 'toeing the line no matter what the policy is.' He also said he would 'err on the side of caution' if he was unwell at work in future and follow hospital rules on treating patients.

He explained: 'My attitude during that hearing was overly defensive and on reflection I am quite embarrassed about this. I think that the depth to which I value being a doctor led to an automatic desire to bat away criticism of my behaviour rather than accept responsibility for what is such an obvious error of judgement.

'During that hearing I focused too much on my perception of the failures of the trust [which runs the NHS] and not enough on my personal failure to familiarise myself with the rules of the trust. Whilst I believe that the trust could have done more to support me, I also believe that I should have done more to support myself and absolutely did bear the responsibility to do so.'

He added: 'The judgment was the beginning of my realisation that what I had done was serious and that labelling it merely a mistake from lack of knowledge of the rule was insufficient to remedy the situation.

He goes on to state that it was only being suspended that got him to recognize "just how poor my behaviour had been." And that he's taken the opportunity of the suspension for "personal growth," including taking a free online course on Medical Professionalism, which gave him a "better understanding"of dishonesty.

Seems quite weasel-wordy to me. Quite.

The guy's in his thirties and had to take a course in Medical Professionalism to learn what dishonesty is?

I don't know if the Brits use the word 'duh,' but 'duh.'

And I'm pretty sure Daniel Coventry, MD, is what the Brits would call a wanker. 

People are weird. And some make a living at it.

The Internet has unleashed all sorts of creativity. Some of it's non-monetized (e.g., Pink Slip), and some of it wildly money-making.

Oh, Matt Farley isn't wildly money-making. He's not up there with, say Kylie Jenner - or is it Kendall? - in terms of raking in oodles for being famous for being famous. Still, he's making about $200K a year by releasing thousands of nonsense songs on streaming platforms. So far, he's posted more than 24,000 songs, sometimes producing 50 a day. 

Matt Farley has released thousands of songs with the goal of producing a result to match nearly anything anybody could think to search for. (Source: NY Times)

For Brett Martin, who wrote the Times article, the anything his anybody could think to search for was his name. And, damned, if there isn't a song entitled "Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes."

Some of the songs Farley concocts name-check celebrities (or near celebrities like Martin, who shares his name with a former MLB player and an Australian squash player), and often pulls together tunes grouped according to themes. He releases them under pseudonyms - the Brett Martin song was from Papa Razzi and the Photogs.

Papa Razzi and the Photogs is only one of about 80 pseudonyms Farley uses to release his music. As the Hungry Food Band, he sings songs about foods. As the Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns, he sings the atlas. He has 600 songs inviting different-named girls to the prom and 500 that are marriage proposals. He has an album of very specific apologies; albums devoted to sports teams in every city that has a sports team; hundreds of songs about animals, and jobs, and weather, and furniture, and one band that is simply called the Guy Who Sings Your Name Over and Over.

While Farley has a lot going on, it's his scatalogical offerings, his "poop songs," that have proven the most lucrative. These are released under two names, the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and the Odd Man Who Sings About Poop, Puke and Pee. With titles like "Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks Butt Cheeks!”, “I Need a Lot of Toilet Paper to Clean the Poop in My Butt”, and "Poop In My Fingernails," Farley has made about $469K from plays on Spotify and other streaming platforms. 

While he doesn't bring in much per individual stream, when a number like "Poop In My Fingers" gets 4.4 million (and counting) streams on Spotify alone, it all adds up.

Farley, who lives in Danvers, Mass. and graduated from Providence College, uses the money he makes for his songs to "help fund his multiple other creative endeavors."

These include his work as a legit musician; a podcast that recaps Celtics game; and quirky movies starring friends and family, and himself, which he makes on a shoestring budget.

He's a big believer in the creative urge:

His theory is that every idea, no matter its apparent value, must be honored and completed. An idea thwarted is an insult to the muse and is punished accordingly.

Well, I'm all for creativity, but I'm not a believer in any way, shape or form that every idea deserves an airing. There are a lot of really terrible ideas out there.  

“If you reject your own ideas, then the part of the brain that comes up with ideas is going to stop,” he said. “You just do it and do it and do it, and you sort it out later.”

Me? I'd be happy if people rejected the really terrible ones that are their very own. Maybe that would get them to stop.

Still, it's pretty amazing that Matt Farley, freelance oddball, is making a pretty good living off weird little ideas, and some really terrible songs about poop under fingernails. I guess it's no wonder that Pink Slip was never monetized. I've just got the wrong sort of creative mind.

There's more to Cambridge academia than Harvard and MIT

Ask anyone who lives in a downtown area of a big city: rats are one big existence bane.

Once in a while, at dawn or dusk, I spot them scurrying across a sidewalk, heading for cover in the bushes. Or slithering down a sewer. Once in a while, when I'm out walking, I come across a dead rat flattened on the pavement - and I utter a little atheist's prayer of thanks that there's one less of these nasty bastards out there marauding around.

Sometimes, when I'm in bed, I hear them rustling around in the trash. Not my trash, mind you. I'm the goody-two-slippers who gets up at the crack of dawn to take my garbage and recycle out. Alas, despite my regular texts, notes, and signs, not everyone in my building follows in my slippers. They bring their trash out the night before, leaving hours for rats to root through the their black plastic garbage bags. Not the special peppermint-infused, supposedly rat-proof white bags I buy on Amazon and leave out in the laundry room for everyone to use if they must take their trash out the night before. 

In the early hours of the a.m., when I'm bringing my trash out, I find the others' bags chewed open, the sidewalk strewn with eggshells, avocado peels and pits, apple cores. Sometimes, I pick it up; mostly I leave it for Blessed Brian of Unit One who takes care of it. 

I live in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Boston, and there are rat traps - oblong-shaped black boxes set out and serviced by the city - all over the place: front gardens, back walks, up against walls, up against trees. 

When you're up against rats, you have to be vigilant. 

I've never seen a rat in this building -just on occasional mouse - but if I were to see one on the inside, the For Sale sign would be up on the outside within hours.

I. HATE. THEM.

So I was pleased to read about a recent two-day consortium, the Cambridge Rat Academy, "a gathering of the sharpest minds in rat-extermination, to plan the counteroffensive" against these noxious beasts. Attendees came "to learn how to hone their rat-fighting skills and brush up on the latest techniques for spotting and exterminating rodents."

“Rodents tend to be overlooked in general by everybody on every level,” said Robert Corrigan, a well-regarded consultant and the academy’s featured speaker. “That’s a problem, because the rodents are taking advantage of us. We’re just like, ‘Oh, put out some poison. Or just put out some traps. Or go get a guy.’ You need to say, ‘No, if we’re going to control rodents in our cities, we need depth.’”

Corrigan has led dozens of Rodent Academies and travels the country giving seminars on the latest techniques for rat mitigation, particularly as the industry moves away from using toxic chemicals as the go-to solution to the problem.

“It’s much more than pulling out a box of poison,” Corrigan said.

Rat prevention these days, he said, is about “integrated pest management,” or IPM, which encompasses all the nonpoison-related means available to keep rodents at bay. Think: landscaping that dissuades rats from building burrows, and sealing off foundations and exterior walls. (Source: Boston Globe)

My first thought was that Corrigan was "just" an exterminator who somewhere along the line figured out that there was more money in being and expert than being the guy who sets the traps. 

Well, turns out that Corrigan does have a pest control consulting business, which sure sounds like exterminator to me. But he's also a rodentologist with a PhD in entomology from Purdue. (A quick google, and I learn that entomology may sound buggy, but that "integrated pest management" falls under its mantle.)

Cambridge is one city that's been having some success wtih IPM. Reported rat sightings are down; rat killings are up. (Cambridge uses "smart boxes" that electrocute rats; I don't believe Boston's rat traps are all that smart.)

There's another approach to IPM, and that's a canine-based method from Unique Pest Management. UPM is based in DC, but they spend about a week each month in the Boston area with their trained ratters. UPM's Scott Mullaney brought one of his ratters, a Patterdale terrier to the Academy with a "kill count under her collar in the 'thousands.'" 

Once, he said, a team of three dogs killed 88 rats in three hours. 

I'm always thinking about getting a dog, but would never consider a ratter, cute and effective as they might be. What would I do if my cute, effective little ratter actually caught one.

Shudder, shudder, shudder to the nth. 

Meanwhile, I'm just happy to learn that there's more to Cambridge academia than Harvard and MIT.  

And more than happy to learn that the City of Boston has hired Bobby Corrigan to analyze our situation and make some recommendations. 

Cambridge Rat Academy. Boola boola! Sis-boom-ba!

Fun with words!

I recently saw a Washington Post column by Benjamin Dreyer which talked about words for obsolete actions or items that are still used, even though the actions and items are long gone. 

I suppose if you have a landline with a cradle and receiver, you could still hang up a phone, but are there still any rotary phones out there that you dial? Today, we hang up the phone by pressing a button - that's not really a button - or just waiting for the call to somehow disengage. We dial our smartphones via the keypad, but most of our calls (for those of us old school enough to actually talk on the phone) are placed by finding the contact and hitting the phone icon.

Dreyer also noted that, when we email, we routinely "cc" someone. One of those c's makes sense. The one that stands for copy. But the c that stands for carbon? Us old geezers will remember inserting a sheet of carbon paper between an original page and the copy, and rolling it into the typewriter.

He also pointed out that "we listen to podcasts, though who even owns an iPod anymore?" And that Microsoft Word uses the icon of a floppy disk for its Save function. (Some of us remember a time before there was any storage on a PC, and that, if you wanted to save a file, you saved it to a floppy disk.)

The Dreyer article got me scrounging around looking for other examples, and Merriam-Webster came through. They include carbon copy, dial, and hang up on their list, and note that there was something quite satisfying about hanging up a phone by slammig it down on the receiver. Alas, the only smartphone equivalent is hurling the phone against the wall.

We still use the term soap opera, which came from the time when soap manufacturers sponsored most of the overwrought, over-dramatic series broadcast on radio. Soap operas made the leap to TV, and they live there still. I don't watch any, but I understand that, while sponsors may include a laundry or dishwashing y, but are just as likely to run ads for a range of products and services. (Family aside on soap operas. My mother didn't listen to or watch soaps, but my grandmother was a fan. Until I was seven, we lived upstairts from Nanny's first floor flat in her triple decker. After lunch, my older sister Kath would go downstairs to hang with Nanny and listen to The Romance of Helen Trent. This would have been in the very early 1950's, before we all had TVs, but when everyone had radios. Anyway, after Kath came up a few times very distraught about something that had happened to Helen. My mother had no idea what Kath was upset about, but she sleuthed out that she was getting caught up in Nanny's soap opera. And that ended that.)

I have never given a thought to the origin of the word stereotype. It's "a kind of printing plate once commonly used in newspaper publishing," used to create a plate that printed an entire page at once. A good thing. Somehow, the word moved into the more pejorative usage we're familiar with. 

M-W talks about dime stores. Talk about obsolete. While low-priced stores are (thanks to inflation) now dollar stores, dime store is sometimes used to indicate that something's of dubious quality.  

M-W missed the boat on how dime is now used as a verb. As in "drop a dime" on someone, i.e., turning them in. Which goes back to days of yore when a) there were pay phones; and b) you dropped a dime into the slot to use one. 

I was surprised that neither Dreyer nor M-W came up with album, while we still use the word album to refer to a collection of songs put together on a record (which, even though vinyl records are making something of a comeback, mostly isn't a record). 

When I first starting buying records, an album was a LP (long playing) vinyl record containing a dozen or so songs, and slipcased into a flat cardboard "envelope." But for my parents' generation, an album was an actual album - a cardboard (sometimes leatherette-covered) "book" that contained multiple paper sleeves, each of which held a collection of 78 records made of brittle Bakelite.

Even if you didn't have a full album of records by the same artist, you had to keep these 78's in an album to protect them. But some albums were thematically or artistically of a piece. 

When my war-bride mother moved from Chicago to Worcester in 1946 - my Chicago mother met my Worcester father when he was stationed at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago towards the end of WWII - among the things packed in her trunk was an album of Nelson Eddy songs. We had a 1940's record player that played 45's and 78's, and a separate, more modern, stereo that could play 33's and 45's, but we loved to play those old 78's, often to make fun of Nelson Eddy, who we considered an unappealing fop. We couldn't believe that my mother had ever swooned over Nelson Eddy. But we lustily sang along with "Boots," "Shortnin' Bread," and "When I'm Calling You." (I haven't used them in years, but I believe that my skill at imitating Nelson Eddy is still intact. I think it's like riding a bicycle...)

Fun with words!

When is a chaqueta not a chaqueta? Ay, chihuahua!

I once worked for a tech company that rolled out a major (i.e., really pricey) collection of services named Black Rocket. The name had nothing to do with anything. We had a new CMO, and he showed up with this name in his pocket and made sure that he got to use it. There was a fake "contest" to name the new offering but - surprise, surprise - his name won.

Once the company had invested a ton in all sorts of Black Rocket merch - not just the usual corporate swag like caps, shirts, mugs and lunchboxes, but goodies like lava lamps, bicycles, and (if memory holds - chairs) - and invested a ton of money in print and TV advertising, someone figured out that Black Rocket was the name for a powerful form of hashish in the Netherlands, and a condom in Spain.

Given this fond memory, I was amused to read about the nickname choice for the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, a minor leage affiliate of the LA Dodgers. The nickname: Chaquetas. Which means jackets in English, but in some parts of the Hispanic community, has another meaning. Chaqueta is slang for masturbation.

Go, Jackets! Go, Jack-offs?

Many minor league clubs have a nickname associated with the Hispanic community. Baseball is very big in the Latin American world, and many of current and recent major league superstars hail from places like the DR. (For the Red Sox: David Ortiz, Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Rafael Devers...)

The nicknames are part of the Copa de la Diversión (Fun Cup), a minor league outreach program aimed at Latin American fans. My minor league team, the Red Sox Triple AAA Worcester WooSox uses the nickname Wepa, which is a general purpose word used by Puerto Ricans when they're excited or joyful. The Wepa icon is a rocket.

Anyway, the choice of the name Chaquetas was a shout-out to the Mexican population, which is huge in California, and to mariachi music, which is muy popular.

Unfortunate association with masturbation aside, it's actually an excellent choice, given the ornate jackets that mariachi musicians wear. And there was sound reasoning behind the pick when the Quakes decided to change their prior Copa name - Los Temblores, which literally translates to Quakes - with something a bit more fun. (Little did they know...)

The idea of a mariachi theme came up, inspired part by the popularity of mariachi performances at Dodgers games and part by fond memories of Dodgers relief pitcher and Rancho Cucamonga resident Joe Kelly* wearing a mariachi jacket to the White House following L.A.’s 2020 World Series win. (Source: LA Times)

There was, of course, a bit of backlash (largely on social media). Despite this, the Quakes - after talking to members of the fanbase they were trying to appeal to, which apparently doesn't include those who associate 'chaqueta' with 'jerking off' - decided to stick with the name Chaquetas. There doesn't seem to be a ton of Chaquetas merch available. The caps are sold out, likely due to young cut-ups who do associate 'chaqueta' with 'jerking off.'

Ay, chihuahua!

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*Joe Kelly was part of the 2018 Red Sox team which won the World Series. He was wildly popular here in Boston.

Talk about waterfront property. (A real bargain!)

Nantucket is beautiful. Plenty beautiful. And quaint. Plenty quaint. And swanky. Plenty swanky.

Rich folks. Famous folks. Rich and famous folk wannabes. They all want to have a home there. 

Or so I hear. I've only been there once, and that was when I was in high school. I do remember the beauty, the quaint, the swank. And while way back then, I didn't have all that much consciousness of rich and/or famous, I was still vaguely aware that rich and/or famous folks hung out there. 

But most of what I know about Nantucket is what I hear on the news, read in the newspapers.

And part of what I know from all that hearing and reading is that a lot of Nantucket's waterfront property is under siege from the elements.

Every once in a while, usually (but not always) after a storm, there's a story about a house that just a very short while ago was on the waterfront with plenty of nice beachfront frontage is now teetering on the edge of a sandcliff, ready to fall into the drink. Sometimes the house is shown jacked up and ready to be moved a couple of hundred feet back. Good luck with that, of course. A couple of hundred feet worth of front yard can be eroded away in a couple of weeks. (Remember the kiddo Bible ditty about the foolish man building his house upon the sand? I do believe that Nantucket is all sand. So much for the wisdom or the rich and/or famous.)

Despite a number of "house overboard" occurrences, rich folks, famous folks, rich and famous folk wannabes, and - I guess - just plain folks with some money who just love Nantucket, still spend plenty of $$$  to live there. Especially on the waterfront, where most properties will run you a few million. (Median price of a home on Nantucket is $3.2M.)

But this past winter, a waterfront house - 3 bed, 2 bath, mahogany deck, "incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean and the serene sound of rolling waves"  - hit the market for the low, low price of $600K. Especially amazing given that, just last September, this place was listed for $2.3M. Hmmm. There must be a catch beyond the ominous catch-all words in the listing: Property is being sold "AS IS." Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmm.

The catch was that last fall the home "lost a stunning 70 feet to erosion in just a matter of weeks, putting the home at imminent risk."

Never fear: someone was willing to buy a charmer, whatever the risk.

A longtime visitor to Nantucket, Brendan Maddigan, who lives in New York, toyed with owning a summer home there for his young family for years. He regularly scanned the market and bookmarked links to a half-dozen properties, including the house on Sheep Pond Road. When he got an alert the price had nosedived, he submitted an all-cash offer, and in February the home was his.

From growing up in Woods Hole and now working for a real estate investment firm in New York City, Maddigan, 42, said he is clear-eyed about the risks, especially as sea levels rise and storms become more intense.

“The home is amazing. The location is amazing. And the price mitigates the risk to a good degree,” he said. “I’d like to think that it’ll be there for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of any particular storm causing a problem in the future.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Now Brendan Maddigan is no dummy. I may have way too much faith in an MIT education, but Maddigan is an MIT grad, with a mechanical engineering degree with additional focus in management, entrepreneurship, and history. So he no doubt gets the mechanics of a solidly built house. He's had a very successful career in the world of commercial real estate. And that fact that he's had a long-standing interest in entrepreneurship suggests he's a risk taker. But I've got to question that minor concentration in history, given that the recent history of this house having lost nearly all of its frontage in a matter of weeks. Even if the bargain price "mitigates the risk to a good degree."

Hmmmm, etc.

Maybe Brendan Maddigan can afford to spend $600K on a house that might not be there by summertime. Maybe it's such a pittance, that he'll be happy to get one or two summers out of it, and if that doesn't happen, well, shrug.

I don't think I'd sleep all that deeply there, give the "incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean and the serene sound of rolling waves." Those "incredible views" now appear to be just 10 feet away from the front porch, when last summer they were 80 feet away. And I don't know how "serene" the "sound of rolling waves" will be if they're lapping the foundation of your house. 

This isn't the only property on Nantucket that's being "permanently devalued." As erosion continues to occur, as the island's coastline recedes, more and more houses will plummet in price like this one. (It's estimated that hundreds of houses are presently at risk, and over 2,000 at risk by 2070.) Cautious sellers will no doubt sell out. Wait-and-see owners will wait and see. And risk takers like Maddigan will roll the dice that it'll take a while before their waterfront property turns into a houseboat.  

Recent history suggests that catastrophe isn't that far off. A home in Maddigan's new neighborhood "was demolished in October after losing approximately 35 feet of dune in a matter of months." 

Maddigan is planning on building a berm, but that might not do much good. Last fall, some waterfront property homeowners on Boston's North Shore - in a town far less beautiful, quaint, swanky, rich and/or famous than Nantucket - spent $600K on a berm, most of which washed away during a single storm this winter.

But, shrug, Maddigan's hoping that he gets lucky and that his kids end up with some fond memories of their summer home. 

Good lucky to him!

Hey, McCormick, if it ain't broke, why "fix" it.

Way back in March, on the day before St. Patrick's Day, I set out to do my annual soda-bread baking thang. I had everything I needed: flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, baking powder, salt, buttermilk, jumbo seeded raisins I had to procure online, and, of course, caraway seeds. Plenty of caraway seeds. Some Morgan & Bassett, some my old standby: McCormick, with a new-fangled, spruced up black and red cap instead of the just plain red cap I was used to.

I was mixing up my final batch, and still had a few bottles of caraway seeds on hand. And all I needed to complete my final batch was one of the small jars. A jar of McCormick's.

So I took one off of my spice shelf and tried to open it. The cap didn't budge. I tried the other McCormick's shorty that I had. Couldn't move that cap, either. 

I googled and found that the top item on McCormick's FAQ was this:

Why can’t I remove the lid on my bottle?

Sometimes too much adhesive is used when the safety seal is applied, causing the lid to adhere to the bottle. This can sometimes happen when too much heat is applied at the time the cap is applied. This was an isolated issue and adjustments have been made to resolve it.

In the meantime, to remove, carefully wrap a hot, wet paper towel around the lid for 5-10 minutes. The heat from the paper towel should loosen the adhesive and allow you to twist off the cap.

Well, that was some safety seal. I tried the hot, wet paper wrap twice on each bottle. And even tried submerging the caps in a cup of boiling water. I tried to dislodge the adhesive with a handy-dandy lobster pick.  

In the process, I managed to twist my left wrist.

Fortunately, I had a non-McCormick bottle at the ready and was able to make my final batch without having to run out for additional caraway.

I occasionally comment, seldom tweet. But I did feel compelled to take myself to Twitter X and send a little message to McCormick.

Hey @mccormickspices, If I mail you these can someone open them and get them back to me by next Paddy's Day so I can bake my soda bread? The hot water-paper towel trick from your FAQ didn't work.

I got a couple of likes, a comment or two, a retweet. But nothing from McCormick. They don't have much of a Twitter presence, but I thought there'd be some response.  

I didn't have my receipt, but the next time I was at my grocery store, I was able to return the bad bottles and get a refund. (And, by the way, I was talking to my friend Joyce, and she had had the same problem with a jar of McCormick something or other.)

Meanwhile, I'd also tried to leave a message on the McCormick support site. Alas, although there was a BIG box to enter your comment/question into, there was an unspecified teeny-tiny character limit.

So I wrote to their support email address:

Here's a pic of the jars I was unable to open. [See above.]

And here's the full message I wanted to leave. Alas, I ran into an unspecified character limit. 

I recently purchased two jars of your carraway seeds - a necessary ingredient for the Irish soda bread I make each St. Patrick's Day. Unfortunately, I was unable to open either container. I did follow the instructions given in your FAQ - wrapping the jars in a paper towel soaked with hot water (which I did twice), but to no avail. In the frustrating process, I also managed to injure my wrist in the process. Sigh! I was able to return the jars to Roche Bros. in downtown Boston for a refund, but the overall experience of not being able to open the jars was pretty frustrating. While your FAQ indicated that the problem has been rare, I was speaking with a friend in Dallas who had the same experience. Fortunately, her husband – a former college hockey player – was able to get the jar open after a Herculean 10-minute effort. All I can say is that it will be quite a while before I purchase any McCormick product that uses one of the “new and improved” black and red caps.

A eight days later, here came a long but not especially satisfying response, especially given that it included the handy-dandy tip I had found on the FAQ, which I had said I had followed. 

Dear Maureen:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We are sorry for your disappointing experience with our Caraway Seed and hope you will accept our apologies.

We are sorry the lid on your recent container of Caraway Seed was unable to be removed. This will sometimes happen to a bottle when too much heat is used at the time the cap is applied. The glue from the safety seal under the lid melts onto the threads of the bottle and 'glues' the lid fast. We appreciate you providing us with this feedback and apologize for your disappointment with our packaging. We are aware of this issue and adjustments have been made to fix this.

In the meantime, we have a helpful tip. To remove, carefully wrap a hot, wet paper towel around the spice bottle cap for 5-10 minutes. The heat from the paper towel should loosen the adhesive and allow you to twist off the cap. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention and have shared your feedback with our Quality Assurance teams for their review.

We would like to get some more information to help begin addressing your concerns:
• What is the product UPC?
• What is the full Best By date on the package (include all letters and numbers)?
• When was this product purchased?
• What is the name of the store where this item was purchased?
• Where is the store located (city and state)?
• When was this item initially opened?
• Was the inner (or outer) security seal intact before you opened it?

We appreciate that you have taken the time to bring your concern to our attention. We continually strive to provide the highest level of quality in all our products. If you have further questions regarding any of our products, we are happy to help. Please feel free to respond to this email or call us at 1-800-632-5847 between the hours of 9:00 am and 7:00 pm, Monday - Friday EST. Your patronage is important to us and we hope to continue bringing our passion for flavor to your meals.

Sincerely,

Melissa
Consumer Affairs Specialist
Ref # 3541457

Having returned the unopenable jars I did not, of course, have the UPC. But I sent back what info I did have. 

A week later, all I had gotten back was a request to rate my transaction with Melissa. I'm sure that, if she's an actual human and not a bot, Melissa is a perfectly nice person. But I was pretty darned meh in terms of providing a rating and feedback.

Even though I'm not interested in acquiring any of those new-fangled-ly capped bottles of McCormick anything, I was figuring that the'd send me some coupons or something for my trouble. To date, nada.

Anyway, in googling around, I did come across a story on CNN touting McCormick's new-fangled caps, which were "giving its iconic red-cap bottles their first makeover in nearly 40 years."

Shoppers will soon see newly designed bottles that feature updated labeling and a new “snap” cap that the company says keeps spices and seasonings fresher compared to its previous design. McCormick’s new sleeker bottles, which have already begun rolling out in the United States, will first contain its most popular herbs and spices, including cinnamon, garlic powder and crushed red pepper.

No mention of my beloved caraway seeds. But lots of yadda-yadda-yadda.

A new manufacturing process that will help "maintain freshness." The addition of a "best buy" date. A supposedly satisfying "snap" sound when you put the cap back on. Bottles made using 50% worth of post-consumer recyclable material. A design "validated" by a lot of consumer research.  An overall "multi-sensorial experience."

Well, most of my multi-sensorial experience was the twisted wrist. But maybe that's just me.  

Perhaps McCormick should have put a little more research into testing to see whether the manufacturing process worked? Or at least asked themself whether it was worth "fixing" something that ain't broken.