Inspecting gadgets

There was an interesting listing on boston.com the other day of ten gadgets you are probably not aware of needing. Generally, I despise these things you have to click through – I’d always rather read a traditional full article – but this one was amusing enough to hold my attention.

Some of the gadgets seemed pretty useful, if you actually had any use for them. Like the Kangaroo water bottle that has a storage space for your keys and ID. This seems like a reasonably good idea for someone who always carries a water bottle around on a run or bike ride. Me, I’m a walker, and, if I’m going to be carrying a water bottle around on my walk, I might as well be carrying some type of small pack that will fit said water bottle, keys, ID, plus other essentials. Like my phone. A far better app, which might not be technologically possible just quite yet, would have your smartphone or Google Glass dispense water.

There was also a wine saver. May not be right for me - as if, once opened, wine actually needs to be saved for all that long –but I can theoretically appreciate the value.

There’s an umbrella with a coffee cup holder in the handle, which does free up a hand. That is, until you want to take a sip out of the coffee cup, in which case you need to use that spare hand to bring the coffee cup to your lips. Or risk poking the eye out of the person walking just behind you.

Ben and Jerry’s is offering the Euphori-Lock, which wraps around a pint of B&J’s and only opens when your personal code is entered. (Its tagline: “There is no “u” in “my pint.”) This would have been a good one for my brother Tom when we were kids. Tom was known to use his allowance to buy his own personal pints of orange and lime sherbet and leave them in the freezer with his name on them.

U-Socket lets you power up four devices simultaneously, two via AC plug, and two via USB. Good idea.

And as a rising senior, I could use a BiKN, which is a smartphone app that comes with tags you clip onto items you tend to mislay – like your sunglasses, your keys, your wallet, etc.  Unfortunately, the item I most tend to mislay is my smartphone, and since I generally have it on vibrate rather than ring-tone, tracking it down is not as simple as calling it from another phone. But I suppose that BiKN has thought of this, and that there’s an app for it…

I thought the Drizly iPhone app that let’s you order liquor from your local packy for home delivery was just numbnuts. (There’s an app for that? Don’t most urban packies already deliver? Can’t you just call them up and place and order? Or do I just know that because ours does, or at least it does when we order a case of wine…) Sure, ordering in is certainly better than drunk driving if you find yourself running on empty halfway through the par-tay. But as far as I can tell, at least in the city of Boston, which is where Drizly is making its debut, pretty much everybody lives within a five minute walk of a packy. If you’re so hammered you can’t make that five minute walk for your packy run, then I suggest you’re better off ordering an extra-large everything pizza and a couple of meatball subs to soak things up.

Anyway, having inspected the list, my favorite gadget – in a non-favorite kind of way – was:

The My Choice Gateway “let’s you watch the game, not the ads.”

MyTVChoice protects the family from the sex, violence, materialism, and degrading images of women that are common on TV commercials during live sporting events.

I suppose I should take their word for it that there’s way too much “sex, violence, materialism, and degrading images of women” present in TV commercials for sports, but, for the life of me – and I watch a lot of sports on TV – the only place where I recall seeing such ads is on the Super Bowl. Maybe I don’t pay enough attention, or maybe nothing much offends me anymore, or maybe my husband clicks off too fast, but I watch baseball pretty much every night, and don’t find the ads all that offensive. Sure, I could live happily if I never saw another ad for Bob’s Discount Furniture, which is degrading to furniture, but not women. Other than that, nothing particularly off-putting comes to mind.

Of course, there is way too much “sex, violence, materialism, and degrading images of women” (and men, for that matter) on the shows, as well. And the solution to that is JUST DON’T WATCH.

But just how much of a problem is it to hit the “Last” button and go somewhere else if you don’t want to watch a commercial?

The simple to use application and the proprietary MyTVChoice Gateway monitor a live broadcast and automatically change the channel when a commercial break begins and switch back when the break ends.

Oh, I see. It’s smart enough to get you back there when the break ends, so you don’t have to deal with the terrible, awful, really bad problem of getting back to the game two seconds too early and being exposed to something sexy, violent, materialistic, or degrading, or getting back to the game two seconds to late and missing the catch of the century.

No do-or-die searches for the remote control; no young eyes seeing objectionable content; no guessing when commercials will start and end; and no missing key plays.  RELAX and ENJOY the game, instead of worrying about the commercials.  Watch the game, not the ads. If you watch a couple of games a week -  for less than $2 a game.

Maybe I’m just not sensitive to this hideous problem because I don’t have kids to protect, but the risk of seeing “objectionable material” or “missing key plays” doesn’t seem all that awful, and searches for the remote control, while annoying, are hardly do-or-die.

Are there really all that many folks who can’t enjoy a game because they’re “worrying about the commercials”? And are willing to pay a pretty hefty price to eliminate all that worrying?

MyTVChoice Gateway (one-time purchase):  $79.95
Annual Subscription (billed monthly): $9.95
MyTVChoice Smartphone/Tablet Application:  Free download.

Upfront cost, and $10 a month in perpetuity, to save you from having to hit the “Last” button? Sounds like a solution – and a high-priced one, at that – in search of a problem.

MyTVChoice will cover the most popular sporting events from the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and NCAA Football. Additional sports and family events such as American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and The Voice will be added based on subscriber input.

Hmmmm.

There are people who don’t mind their kids watching 300 pound linemen bash each others’ helmets in. Who don’t mind their kids watching a snarky host make mean comments on American Idol. Or have their kids see has-beens shake their booties in risqué costumes on DWTS. But are nonetheless offended by ads for GoDaddy that only seem to crop up on Super Bowl?

I could be dead wrong here – it’s been known to happen – but if they’re looking for some non-subscriber input, I’d suggest that they stop throwing any more money at this non-starter, or that at least they lower their prices.

Sometimes the headlines deliver, and other times… (Thank goodness for potash.)

I’ll admit it.

The summer blogging doldrums have most definitely set in.

Despite a raft of topics in my queue, nothing was calling to me, nothing was whispering a sweet something in my writerly ear, I was hearing no ‘pick me, pick me, pick me’ for today’s post. Not one peep out of the entire group.

So I did what I generally do when desperately seeking blog ideas, but have neglected to put the latest Economist in my backpack. I hopscotched my way across WSJ, Bloomberg, and Business Week, with an occasional sordid stop at the Daily Mail UK.

Based on headlines alone, Bloomie’s looked the most promising.

I knew I was on the right track.

Certainly Pink Slip could make plenty out of Bill Gates Mugshot Inspires Teenage Misfits to Lead.

Alas, the headline lead to a video – an uninspiring and misfit way to communicate with me. So I’ll never know how Bill Gates’ mugshot works its mojo on teenagers.

That foray having failed, I noted with interest the headline that read Sexagenarian Bus-Fare Cheats Cost Creditors in Worst Rout.

While I am not a bus-fare cheat, I am a sexagenarian, so I was intrigued at the thought of learning just what my fellow cohort members were doing to “cost creditors in worst rout.” Who? What? Where? When? Why? How much?

As it turns out, Santiago, Chile’s public transpo is losing ridership to Chileans who are opting for cars, and are losing fares to the 19 percent of their pasajeros who sneak onto the buses through the rear doors, rather than enter up front and swipe their prepaid fare card.

But where was the evidence that these fare evaders were sexagenarians?

The sweeping headline indictment of an entire half of a generation was apparently based on this one observation:

Antonia Besares, 60, a maid in north Santiago, said she occasionally skips payment. It’s partly out of frustration over the long wait times, she said.

“I only do it sometimes when there are lots of people,” she said in a telephone interview. “It makes me angry. You wait at a bus stop for 20 minutes and eight come past, but they don’t stop.”

One scofflaw interviewed, who just happened to squeak in on an age cohort by a couple of months. Sheesh!

Journalistic standards just ain’t what they used to be, back when us sexagenarians first started reading the news.

I was about to give up, and declare today a Pink Slip-free day, when this one caught my eye: A Century of International Potash Intrigue.

YES!

Completely and utterly relieved, I clicked through and found that, while my eye was off the potash ball:

…the world’s potash markets went haywire last week, after the announcement that Russia's OAO Uralkali, the world’s largest producer of this crucial ingredient in fertilizer, suspended its participation in an alleged cartel with its long-time Belarus partner Belaruskali.

It’s speculated that this is all part of a Russian oligarch’s rich-get-richer power play. (What the potash is a kleptocracy to do if it can’t play power play?)

Potash, as it turns out, is no stranger to “geopolitical power plays.”

In the beginning, life in potash-ville seemed simple. While potash was exceedingly important:

…indispensable for making glass, soap and gunpowder as well as for bleaching and dying fabrics.

It was pretty straightforward to produce: mix wood ash with lye, and boil ‘em up.

No single country controlled potash production; anyone with fire and wood could make it.

Nonetheless, it took a lot of wood to make a little potash, and so periodic shortages plagued the global economy, encouraging constant refinements in potash manufacture. The first patent granted in the U.S. was for an improvement “in the making of Pot-ash.”

But along the way, deposits of potassium salts were discovered in Germany. No longer relying on home cookin’, potash making shifted from a small-scale enterprise to a large-scale industry, which grew as agri-business fueled demand for potash-based fertilizer.

A potash cartel was born.

And when a couple of producers tried to buck the cartel and work directly with potash-hungry American fertilizer companies:

…the German government imposed a prohibitive tax on export contracts set up outside the cartel. A diplomatic row ensued, with the U.S. government taking up the cause of the fertilizer companies, to no avail. The export tax forced the dissenting Germany companies to rejoin the cartel and nullify the contracts.

Well, fast forward through Weimar, Alsace, Herbert Hoover, antitrust, and the scary sounding “International Potash Syndicate,” and, as luck would have it, the U.S. found its own source of potash, right there in new Mexico.

Alas, the wily Euro-cartel bought up the American producer.

Enter the Nazis, who “kept the cartel alive and well until the outbreak of World War II.”

After the war, new cartels emerged, and we ended up where we are today,

…in the current arrangement splitting the industry between the North American group and the now-imperiled one based in Belarus.

And the conniving Russians waiting in the wings to screw everyone.

Potash? Yes, potash!

Who knew?

Living over the store

There’s finally some forward movement on the Ghost of Filene’s Past, which has been haunting downtown Boston for a good long time. As my gym overlooks what has been up to now the non-building site, I have had ample opportunity to look wistfully at Filene’s still-standing graceful Beaux Arts façade, which they’re going to be keeping when they erect the new glam office-retail-luxury living space. Maybe I’ll even live there someday, perhaps when we decide we need to live in a full-service rather than full-aggravation building, and/or when Boston experiences a Sandy-type power storm, and we have to seek higher ground. (First I’ll have to look at those MIT maps of what Boston’s flood plain will look like if the 100 year storm strikes sooner rather than later to make sure that Filene’s is above it all.)

Even though I know that it won’t be Filene’s below me, I’d be perfectly happy living over the store.

Until I was seven, we lived not above the store, but above my grandmother, in her three-family house. We overlooked a building that for a long while had been a grocery store, and the family that owned the store lived in the flat above it. The family was completely exotic, especially by Main South Worcester standards of the 1950’s. The daughters, who were  roughly the same age as me and my sister Kath, had long dark curly hair worn wild, and, I believe, pierced ears. I also remember that they wore rather florid clothing. I remember them in off the shoulder blouses, running around barefoot. I thought they were gypsies. (They weren’t: the family was Jewish.) Anyway, they moved out, and Kaplan’s Market was replaced by Pat’s Laundromat. No great loss for us, as we shopped just down the street at Morris Market, not Kaplan’s. Still, I envied those Kaplan girls living over the store, which seemed so much more interesting than living over the grandmother.

I also envied the folks who lived over the Esso station on Route 9 out Spencer way. Not only would they have been able to smell gasoline all day – an odor that I completely adored as a child – but the flat, supported by stone pillars, extended over the pumps, making it something of a canopy, protecting the attendants.

We didn’t get our gas there, but we frequently passed it on rides, including our regular fall treks to Brookfield “Happy Apple” Orchard. 

As my taste improved – at least I like to think so – I swapped out my desire to live over the Route 9 Esso station for a longing to live, not over the Happy Apple building, but in the charming little farm house next store, the one with the apple cut-outs on the shutters. Who wouldn’t want to live in the middle of an orchard, especially in spring, when the apple blossoms were blossoming, and in the fall, when the Happy Apples ripened?

While it is far more likely that I’ll live on top of old Filene’s than it is that, at this advanced age, I’ll find myself living in the middle of an orchard – apple or other - whenever I pass the Happy Apple house (which is about once a year), I think about how wonderful it would be to live there. (I have completely outgrown any desire to live over a gas station and smell the fumes.)

Thoughts of living over the store were triggered by an article I saw on boston.com the other day on a repurposed funeral parlor that’s for sale in Hudson, Massachusetts.

As is true of so many funeral parlors in these parts, this old house began life as a house-house in the late 1900’s. But as sensibilities changed and wakes were outsourced from a home game to an away game, nice old homes like this one became funeral homes. (Drive through any New England town and you’re almost guaranteed that there’ll be at least one gorgeous old Victorian that’s now a funeral parlor.)

The place for sale is rather nice looking, and I suspect it made a pretty nice looking funeral parlor back in the day.

One of its finer features is the extra large three-car garage which, while not attached to the home, is large enough to accommodate at least one hearse.

I’m pretty sure that the downstairs room converted pretty handily back to their original purpose – all those nice pocket doors, etc.  And remember: they don’t call them funeral parlors for nothing.  These rooms were meant to be lived in, fine details and generous proportions. After all, they used to fit row upon row of folding chairs, not to mention room at the top for the casket. And all those baskets of gladiolas.

But it’s the rooms in the basement I’m wondering about.

I suppose the cool room would make a fine wine cellar…

And that double-wide floor drain would be perfect for the laundry area…

However creepy and embalmy, I’m Irish enough that I could easily live in a converted funeral parlor. Or even a living-breathing (metaphorically speaking) still active one.

After all, I knew several girls who did just that.

I was a “scholarship girl” at the high school that catered to Worcester’s Irish aristocracy.

While not quite up there with doctors, lawyers, and mayors, funeral parlor daughters were definitely part of the ascendancy. Off the top of my head, I can think of five girls whose families owned funeral parlors. One had her very own Mustang: definitely rich! I wasn’t all that friendly with her, but I was reasonably friendly with another funeral parlor daughter – and this one did live over the store.

I visited her home on a couple of occasions, and the upstairs décor more or less mirrored the downstairs: Victorian furniture, including ones that looked kinda-sorta like this. Much fancier than anything we had chez Rogers, that’s for sure.

Those funeral parlor folks, they sure knew how to live. (Or could afford to.)

With an office in my home, I suppose it could be argued that I do, in fact, live over (or under or on the side of) the store.

But it’s not the same as living over a place where fruits and veggies are sold, where fuel is pumped in, where folks are shown out.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day…

How to accessorize your Glock

So what do you do when you’re a gal who’s all fired up about concealed carry, and you live in the part of the country where it’s usually so warm that you’re not likely to be wearing a jacket to conceal your carry in, but you don’t want to give your assailant the upper trigger finger while you’re trying to stand your ground while fumbling around in your Coach bag or Longchamps tote looking for your personal modus defendi?

Well, if you’re Kate Woolstenhulme, you design a handbag fitted out for your handgun.

Created for self-defense. Crafted for self-confidence.

And all part of a new fashion trend toward concealed carry clothing.

In truth, if folks are going to carry a weapon in public, I’d just as soon have it be concealed. Watching folks walking around playing Marshall Dillon and Little Joe Cartwright with their six shooters on both hips would – silly me! – actually make me feel less safe and secure.

But it really hadn’t occurred to me that there are so many people who own handguns who actually carry them with them, as opposed to leave them in their night table or ironing basket or sock drawer, that there’s a demand for specialized clothing and pocketbooks.

Fashion that fits any lifestyle. Holster that fit any gun.

Before she got into the handgun handbag biz, Woolstenhulme and her husband had a Dallas-based business refurbishing private jets.

In 2006, we sold our business and moved to Florida. We were there for a while, and around the 2008 election, there was a movement toward getting firearms. Being in Miami, my safety and security started to concern me. My husband bought me a Smith & Wesson 9 millimeter for Christmas. I went ahead and signed up for a Florida concealed carry permit. While waiting for the permit, I realized that all of those upscale handbags I had bought were not made to safely and properly carry a gun. You need to be able to lock it up. (Source: Interview with Kate Woolstenhulme in Fashionista.)

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a Smith & Wesson, that’s for sure. Think stocking stuffer (stalking stuffer?) or Yankee swap.

Woolstenhulme looked around and discovered that the available handbags were focused on function, not form.

So I decided to try and make something that is fashionable for women who don’t want to leave their personality at the front door.

Or leave their personality in the nightstand or sock drawer.

(In truth, I have no idea whatsoever what not wanting to leave your personality at the front door even means in the context of handbags and handguns. This may be because I am not a pistol packin’ mama, with gun ownership as an integral part of my personality.)

Anyway, the bags come in a number of different styles, and they don’t come cheap.

A low-ender will run you $269, but if you’re really serious about your pocketbooks, and you don’t have a lot of worries when it comes to your pocketbook, you can spring for a $4,200 bag made out of crocodile. Most are in the $300+ range, like this one for $344.

Whose buying these bags, other than rich Dallas ladies who are snapping up those $4,200 Caiman croc bags at the Dallas Beretta store? (Who even knew that there are Beretta stores? Well, there are, and not just in Big D. There’s one on Madison Avenue, too.) Anyway, Woolstenhulme’s business is growing – up 30% year over year – and among her buyers:

…undercover or plain-clothes officers are becoming a bigger part of the business. The other market that has opened up is women who aren’t necessarily carrying a firearm. The holster is removable, but the locking pocket [the secure spot where you keep the holster] can be used for anything. A gun-carrying woman might buy a bag for herself, but she also has a mother who may take medication and can use the locking pocket to lock that up.

Matching mother-daughter concealed carry handbags. Gotta love it.

Well, find a niche and fill it, I always say, and this is what Woolstenhulme is doing, with:

CONCEALED CARRY BAGS that not only look smart, but have …smart features.

These smart features include quick release holster retention straps, “pig suede or textile lining,” and an “outside pocket for spare magazines”, which my brain first interpreted as a place to stuff your New Yorker.

And, just to make sure you’ve belted and suspendered up, weapon wise:

Elastic loops secure flashlight, pepper spray, spare magazines or baton.

Baton?

Twirl on, concealed weapon fashion mavens!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I originally read about Woolstenhulme in The New Yorker. But even if you subscribe – which I do – you can’t get a digital version of the copy. So I found a couple of places where I could get info without having to retype it. In addition to the Fashionista interview, I looked at Woolstenhulme’s business site, Design Concealed Carry.  (And hiss, boo, New Yorker, for your crappy online edition.)

At last: research chimps get their golden parachutes

One of the saddest things I ever saw was a chimp imprisoned – there is no other word for it – by himself, in a cage, at the zoo in York Beach, Maine. The poor creature just looked so incredibly depressed, and how could he not be?

Not only was he the only chimp at the zoo – a nasty bit of solitary confinement for an incredibly social animal – but, let’s face it, York Beach, Maine is not exactly the natural habitat for a chimp.

This was many years ago, when the York Beach zoo and amusement park pretty much defined the word “tawdry.”

Other than the poor chimp, what I remember best about the York Beach whatever-it-was-called was the hideous road side come-on advertising its swell attractions. Off to the side of Route 1 as you neared the turn-off for York Beach were two poles about twenty feet high, topped by small, dog-house sized enclosures. The poles were attached by a swaying slat “bridge”, over which a billy goat meandered back and forth.

I remember driving by one time on a ground-foggy day and seeing this billy goat suspended in mid-air.

The park has apparently pulled its socks up. It looks far nicer than it was when I was there a million years go, and gets pretty good reviews on Trip Adviser. 

I am also happy to report that they no longer seem to have a chimp on their animal list.

At other zoos, of course, the chimps get far better treatment than they did back in the day at York Beach.

The San Diego Zoo has bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) who were treated pretty well, and able to live in families, hanging around doing what bonobos and other apes do, largely grooming, eating, leaping around, and screwing. And, of course, the San Diego weather was a tad more ape-friendly than the climate of York Beach, Maine.

I have always liked chimpanzees, second only to dogs on my roster of excellent animals, and, once I was introduced to the bonobos – and I do mean introduced – back in the 1980’s, they became my go-to ape. (Although they are called pygmy chimpanzees, bonobos are actually a separate species (pan paniscus) from common chimps (pan troglodytes).)

DNA-wise, they’re both pretty close to us humanoids, the bonobos, I believe, a tad closer.  Of course, that 2% difference is a big one…

Because apes, especially chimps, are so genetically similar to us they have, over the years, been used for medical testing. (We’re talking chimp-chimps here, not bonobos who, as far as I know, haven’t been involved in medical experiments.)

As you can imagine, the use of great apes as guinea pigs has been quite controversial. They’re not exactly lab rats. They’re intelligent, sentient beings capable of developing relationships, communicating effectively, etc. 

So it was quite a triumph when the National Institutes of Health decided to:

…end the use of chimps in nearly all of its government medical research. The announcement means that 310 chimpanzees that have been locked away in laboratory cages for nearly all of their lives will now be retired, released to live out the remainder of their days in sanctuary habitats that mimic the wild. (Source: Inhabitat.com)

And, by the way, we do not have to fear that this means no cure for the whooping cough, gingivitis, or irritable bowel syndrome:

In 2011, the Institute of Medicine declared that there was almost zero justification for using chimps, our closets biological relatives, for invasive medical research.

In announcing the news, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins underscored this:

Americans have benefitted greatly from the chimpanzees’ service to biomedical research, but new scientific methods and technologies have rendered their use in research largely unnecessary…Their likeness to humans has made them uniquely valuable for certain types of research, but also demands greater justification for their use. After extensive consideration with the expert guidance of many, I am confident that greatly reducing their use in biomedical research is scientifically sound and the right thing to do.”

While a subset of the chimps will still be part of a handful of NIH studies, hundreds will become part of the Federal Sanctuary System, which sounds a bit like witness protection - which may not be that far off the mark, come to think of it.

Some of the chimps have been sent to Louisiana’s Chimp Haven , where, for the first time in their lives for many of them, they’ll experience the great outdoors. Plus have a few not-so-found-in-the-wild activities, as well. This I surmise by some of the items on the Chimp haven wish list:

Sensory Enrichment Items

• Large Paint Brushes (plastic preferred)
• Canvas to paint on
• New toothbrushes, combs, brushes
• Water Misters
• New Halloween masks
• Used percussion instruments (maracas, tambourines, etc.)
• Lava lamps
• Plastic Mirrors, 48 x 96 or 12 x 48

Nesting and Paper Enrichment Items

• Fleece Blankets
• Towels – for the veterinary department
• Burlap Sacks
• Fleece
• Surgical Drapes
• Butcher Paper
• Wrapping Paper
• Wood wool

Although I’m not quite sure what wood wool is, this sure sounds like more fun than being in a research cage and getting infected with the AIDS virus.

See for yourself here, on HLNTV, how the recently retired research chimps are getting on.

They may not be born free, but they’ve now had freedom thrust upon them. Not to mention that, from the sound of what’s on the wish list, they’ll be having a rhythm band, painting up a storm, wrapping presents, and having sack races. Other than the sack race, sounds like it has a lot in common with the recreational opportunities at a human retirement community, as I’ll no doubt be finding out for myself one of these fine days. Dibs on the V mask! (Or maybe the Richard Nixon.)

Good luck to all the newly freed chimpanzees. Centanni to all of you.

Sometimes retirement actually is the start of a new life, rather than just a wind-down of your old one.

There’s no good way to do this, but the Plain Dealer’s method is plainly a bad deal

Having been on both the giving and receiving end of the lay-off transaction, there is really no good way to do this.

Unless someone has another job lined up, or has volunteered for separation – as happened one of the times I was laid off (which made things easier for my boss and for HR: one less distraught and pissed-off ex-employee to deal with) – most people will not be jumping for joy when they’re let go.  And unless someone is heartless and/or a sadist, giving someone the news is a truly awful experience. (Heartless and/or sadists do, of course, exist. At one company I worked for, a fellow was laid off, via phone,  while standing outside the NICU where his newborn was struggling to stay alive. When the boss man got off the phone, the heartless and/or sadist remarked to a friend of mine how much he enjoyed the process.)

So there’s really no good way to give someone the ‘hit the road, Jack’ news.

But, unless someone works remotely, it really should be face to face, up close and personal.

Not done via e-mail. Not done via text. Not done via phone.

That said, one of my lay-off notices came over the phone, and I was just fine with it.

The action had been anticipated for a long time – my team was being wiped out after an acquisition in which the acquired company turned out to be following the script of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or maybe it was  Aliens. Anyway, they were hell bent on ousting anyone they didn’t think they’d be able to possess, and I found myself on the list.

As noted, I was expecting the news, and when my soon-to-be-ousted boss called me on my work-from-home Friday, I was not surprised. I was also happy to be able to give a head’s up – via IM, while I was in the process of being fired – to two friends and colleagues who I figured were also on the list. (Indeed they were.)

But this was a special circumstance, and I didn’t mind at all.

I chugged into the office to pick up my personal effects – what few there were; by that point, I had pretty much packed it in – and that was that.

In most cases, however, I think that a phone call is a poor substitute for look-me-in-the-eye human interaction.

A phone call, however, was the method of choice for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Although as many of half of those canned had volunteered for it, this still seems like anything but plain dealing to me.

Yesterday [July 31], between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., 50 editorial staffers at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland got the ax—not face to face but by phone, at home. They were then asked to collect their severance materials the next day, not at the office but at the paper’s production center, which is about 10 miles away.  (Source: Business Week.)

If you’re a journalist these days, losing your job has to be anything but a shocker. In the case of Plain Dealer writers, they knew that something was coming, and they knew that the paper was scrunching down from a daily print addition to a combo someday print/everyday online.

Still, a phone call? And not being allowed to go back into the office to make your farewells?

I know, it’s bad for morale to have all those ex-es floating around, with their long faces, and black-humor jokes about where, after the plane crash on the border, they bury the survivors. But that pain is a cost of doing business, I’m afraid, ugly, necessary, cathartic…

Terry Egger, president and publisher of Plain Dealer Publishing, said in a statement that these “difficult but necessary staffing decisions” are required “to realign our workforce for future growth.”

Ah, where I have a heard that bunch o’malarkey before?

Oh, at just about every lay off I got through dead or alive.

Then there was the requisite ave atque vale ending to the memo that had gone out asking employees to hang by their phones from 8-10 a.m. on D-Day to see whether they should bother coming into work that day.

We sincerely regret having to go through this process and we thank all who are impacted for their years of service and wish them all the best for their future.

It’s always so touching when a grateful nation thanks you, isn’t it?

The Plain Dealer was working with a company called Right Management, which just may have been the outfit George Clooney was working for in the movie Up in the Air.

Having worked with a couple of outplacement groups, I know that they can be quite wonderful, and a big help.

Their good points are, of course, somewhat offset by the bromides, euphemisms, and gumbo-speak that seem to go along with them.

Our firm has earned its reputation as a leader in talent and career management through the sustained excellence of our execution, for our responsiveness, and for the wisdom of our counsel. The scope and scale of our capabilities and solutions are unparalleled in our industry. We can provide borderless strategies and total workforce solutions, no matter what your industry or where you are in the world.

Remind me never to use the word “unparalleled” when I’m talking about any of my clients or their products and services, will you?

How do you help employees transition to new career opportunities?

Your organization’s workforce is a dynamic asset, requiring constant adjustments in response to changing marketing conditions and emerging business opportunities.

Dynamic asset, indeed.

One of Right’s services is “notification support.”

We have more than 30 years of experience in both well-established and innovative techniques to support your company during the entire process from notification to separation. We’ll be there to address employee reactions, counsel them toward their next steps, and connect them with Right Management for a supportive career transition.

I don’t know about you, but I find that “innovative techniques” thang a bit frightening.

I suspect that notification phone calls are part of the established techniques. Even e-mail might be considered old hat by this point. Maybe even a text message.

But what might be some “innovative techniques”?

Tweets with a tiny URL listing those being hosed?

Finding the handwriting on your Facebook wall?

Instagram pic of your severance package?

YouTube announcements?

And how about a reality show. Suggested name: Pink Slip.

Perhaps it’s just that I’m hopelessly old school.

Maybe the millennials, so used to doing everything on an electronic device, will be just as happy to lose their jobs that way, too.

Me? When it comes to lay-offs, I’m a face to face kind of guy.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember the joke about the singing telegram? Your sister Rose is dead…

The Internet of Scary Things

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the Internet of Things – the world in which pretty much every last object is connected and can be accessed from anywhere. Thus, you can lock your door or spy on your dog or lower your thermostat anywhere, anytime from your smarty-pants smartphone

Some of this is for the good – lock your door, spy on your dog, lower your thermostat – while other things are useless, evil, and/or just generally fall under the  “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it” category.

Then there are the downright scary possibilities. And one of those is the possibility of evil-doers hacking into your smart car.

Two white-hat (good guy) software hackers:

Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek say they will publish detailed blueprints of techniques for attacking critical systems in the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape in a 100-page white paper, following several months of research they conducted with a grant from the U.S. government. (Source: Reuters.)

For years, white hat hackers have worked to expose security vulnerabilities. Many organizations hire them to test their systems to see just how locked-down they are. Better to have a white hat embarrass you than a black hat hacker destroy you.

They said they devised ways to force a Toyota Prius to brake suddenly at 80 miles an hour, jerk its steering wheel, or accelerate the engine. They also say they can disable the brakes of a Ford Escape traveling at very slow speeds, so that the car keeps moving no matter how hard the driver presses the pedal.

Fortunately, the scenario in which Charlie and Chris did their sleuthing is not a real-world one, and, thus, the information they will be revealing won’t let someone hack into your car and drive you off the road:

They were sitting inside the cars using laptops connected directly to the vehicles' computer networks when they did their work. So they will not be providing information on how to hack remotely into a car network, which is what would typically be needed to launch a real-world attack.

Nonetheless, as the wonderful Internet of Things has shown us time and again, if you can direct connect to something, you can probably remote connect to it, as well.

Both Ford and Toyota (and other car makers) are spending lots of time and money trying to make sure that their cars are secure. They don’t want any 21st century version of the exploding Ford Pinto or the Chevrolet “Unsafe at Any Speed” Corvair on the road any more than you do. And as Ford spokesman Craig Daitch said:

"This particular attack was not performed remotely over the air, but as a highly aggressive direct physical manipulation of one vehicle over an elongated period of time, which would not be a risk to customers and any mass level.”

Still, as someone who wishes that electronic car windows had a manual override, the thought of parts of a car failing because of an electronics glitch is bad enough. The idea of some bad guy slamming on my brakes when I’m tootling down the left lane is a bit unnerving, even if at present there’s no “risk to customers and any mass level.”

Why do I think that last part in Daitch’s statement might just have really meant to say at any mass level?

Meaning an individual car and driver may be at risk.

Which is probably the case, given earlier (unpublished) work by some academics who found:

…ways to infect cars using Bluetooth systems and wireless networks in 2011.

These folks – also white hats – didn’t publish their findings, but it did prompt the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to launch their own cybersecurity initiative:

"While increased use of electronic controls and connectivity is enhancing transportation safety and efficiency, it brings a new challenge of safeguarding against potential vulnerabilities," the agency said in a statement. It said it knew of no consumer incident where a vehicle was hacked.

Yet.

I’d say it looks like we’re all going to have to be very careful before we modestly beep at some yahoo who’s about to cut us off 0r is drifting lanes because they’re too busy texting to pay attention. We’ll need to think twice before we lightly tap our brakes at the nimrod tailgating at 90 m.p.h., in hopes that he’ll back off a bit. And we’ll have to adopt the habit of smiling sweetly – the far better choice than flipping someone the bird, no matter how egregious their behavior.

After all, if they can just hack into your car and run you off the road…

Think of all drivers with their “brakes failed” defenses.

And imagine all sorts of “it just happened”, poltergeist defenses.

Sometimes the Internet of Things can be a big, bad, scary-ass place, that’s for sure.

And while on topic of dangers on the road, somewhere in my wanderings, I came across a fellow who’s got a business building desks for cars. He calls his business Dashboards to Desktops, or D2D, which makes for a clever play on B2B.

Most of this guy’s products make sense for people who work out of their cars or trucks: construction workers, field engineers, truckers. But I was a bit scared by one of his products. It may be a bit hard to see, but that’s a keyboard bungee’d onto the steering wheel.

Now it’s one thing to pull over and use your D2D apparatus to get some work done safely and comfortably. But I’m trying to envision the circumstances under which someone would actually want or need to use a computer keyboard attached to their steering wheel.

Is this just a paucity of imagination on my part, or do I really need to be afraid, very afraid?

Celebrity Love for Sale. (That’s entertainment.)

I have no idea who Jeremy Piven is, but if I decide to have a party for myself anytime soon, it looks like I can get him to come for $50,000. If I decide that’s a bit on the steep side – especially given that I have no idea whatsoever who Jeremy Piven is – I can get Dennis Rodman to show up for a mere $20,000, letting me pocket that significant difference. But Dennis Rodman, while the devil I know, is, unfortunately, the devil I do know. And he may be a tad too flamboyant for my tastes (and that tastes of my friends and family – most of them anyway). The hair, the outfits, and that crazy episode in which he spent time hanging with his homey, Kim Jong-Un…Do you suppose that Brilliant Comrade lil Kim paid Dennis $20K to come over and enjoy the good times, good times in North Korea? And if so, couldn’t he afford Jeremy Piven? Or Usher, you shops himself up for a cool $250,000?

I got this pricelist when I was bottom-feeding for Pink Slip topics, and found myself over at the NY Post.  (Okay, I’m a bit embarrassed, but I have to say it is, in many ways, more interesting than the Wall Street Journal. Plus it’s all free!)

Increasingly, all kinds of celebrities are available for hire — at every event imaginable.

While it was reported this week that Jennifer Lopez has earned $9 million performing for tyrants around the world over the past two years, a growing number of celebs are making big bucks entertaining regular fans at private soirees.

It’s not all tyrant performing, by any means. And J Lo’s busy – what with the kids, and ads, and perfume, and concerts – what does Jenny from the Block know from tyrants?

One of the big celeb booking agents for private parties is Headline Booking, whose owner, Matt Altman, claims that “every star has a price.”

Bob Dylan’s is $500,000+. So’s Journey’s.

There is, of course, an awful lot of difference between $500,000+ and $500,000+. I’m guessing that old Bobby is the latter and Journey the former, but who knows? Maybe there are people who’d rather hear Don’t Stop Believing than Rainy Day Women #12 and 35.

On the other hand, a date with Linda Rondstadt will only set you back $20-$100K.

Jethro Tull’s available, but his fee isn’t. (Now that would be the group for a special event for my brother Tom. Aqualung!)

Neil Young commands $500,000+, but David Crosby is a bargain at $100-$250K, as is Stephen Stills. I guess Graham Nash is playing hard to get, as I didn’t see him on Headline Booking’s roster. (I know that being in the great-unwashed crowd is different than a personal croon-fest, but didn’t we use to get all three of these guys – plus Graham Nash -  together for a ticket that might have cost ten bucks?)

Looking through the list, I got to wondering just how many people get up in the morning and decide that they want Meatloaf for their private par-tay, and are willing to fork over $250-$500K to get him there?

And truly, I’d pay the Steve Miller Band their hefty fee ($250-$500K) to not play Abracadabra and Space Cowboy. I’d do the same for America to keep them from playing Horse With No Name, the hands-down worst song ever. But they weren’t on the Headline Booking list. They are available through Booking Entertainment roster, however, where the first face that appeared when I clicked on the site was Ted Nugent.

Ted Nugent! I’d double down on Ted Nugent’s price ($100-$250K) if he’d just STFU for a couple of weeks. (All of the acts are available for fundraisers. Other than the NRA, what group would use The Nuge for a fundraiser?)

Some of the entertainers might be fun: Bette Midler ($500K+) and Bernadette Peters ($20-$100K).

And some might be just plain embarrassing: Frank Sinatra, Jr. ($20-$100K). Talk about a stranger in the night… And Jackie Mason ($20-$100K) – oy!

Once in a generation, a performer emerges who is so extraordinary, so brilliant, that he or she become the standard to whom all others are compared. Jackie Mason is such a performer, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time.

What???????

I’ve been to a few celeb-for-corporate-hire events. When I was at Genuity, they had Michael McDonald (the Doobie Brother) perform at a function at a function at the awards trip to Hawaii that I was awarded with. He was very entertaining, but at $250-$500K, is it any wonder that Genuity went bankrupt?  Genuity also had Carlos Santana appear at some big-splash we did at a trade show. At $500K+ is it any wonder that Genuity went bankrupt?

We also wrote a big celeb-a-check to Jack Welch to sit on stage and get interviewed by Charlie Rose (I believe his fee was one-quarter of what we paid Jack, who through in a cart-load of his eponymous puffography) for a bunch of clients at a golf tournament we were sponsoring. At least Jack had something to do with business.

Let’s see…I heard Chicago play at a trade show once. (Microsoft  hired them.) And I can’t remember whether I was actually there in person at the sales kick-off at IDC where they had Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello) show up, or just heard so much about it, I feel like I was there. The company’s sales VP did a mean Father Guido imitation, and while he was doing it, they brought the real Father Guido out. Most amusing.

But my experience with entertainers for hire has been strictly corporate events:

In the past five years, the niche entertainment business of booking celebrities for private parties has grown, as elite New Yorkers compete to throw bigger, better, splashier events for their children and other loved ones.

Usually stars don’t brag about their freelance work, preferring to keep any moonlighting hush-hush. (Source: Back to the NY Post.)

Funny that, but there is undeniably something sell out and tawdry about entertaining at a corporate or private event that’s completely absence from a concert venue, isn’t there? Is it just that it’s hard to imagine Bob Dylan singing Masters of War to a group of Lockheed-Martin execs and their customers?

But it’s not all Bob Dylan for a hefty fee. One of the Long Island Princesses – an exceedingly execrable “reality” show – will appear at your event for $500. (Thanks, I’ll hold out for Frank Sinatra, Jr.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In any case, I was pleased to learn that Bruce Springsteen does not perform for corporate or private events. Phew!

Masterpiece Theater of the Absurd

Last year, there was a majorly major art heist in Rotterdam, with works by Picasso, Money, Matisse, et al., valued in the tens of millions of dollars, spirited away, allegedly by a gang of Romanian no-good-niks. (Or whatever the Romanian word for no-good-niks is. My Romanian is pretty much limited to “duce la dracu”, which means “go to hell.”)

Radu Dogaru was prime on the theft and, last winter, while:

…sheltering with a computer at his mother’s house in this remote Romanian village [Cracaliu], set out the terms for a deal that had eluded him for months but that now suddenly seemed tantalizingly close. (Source: NY Times.)

Dogaru did so via Facebook, letting a fellow gang member know that he had someone lined up, and:

…that the eager buyer could have “the dogs” for 400,000 euro, about $531,000, and agreed to take the paintings to a meeting the next day to complete the sale.

Guess Dogaru and his pals didn’t realize that, given that you can’t exactly go to Sotheby’s with stolen paintings, the key to a successful art heist is having a buyer lined up in advance. Someone who just wants the paintings for private viewing, and who won’t blab that they’ve got them. Or try to sell them through Sotheby’s.

But absent a buyer, Picasso’s “Harlequin Head,” and Monet’s “Waterloo Bridge,” and Matisse’s “Reading Girl in White an Yellow,” were just “dogs.”

What Dogaru didn’t know was that his potential buyer was working with the Romanian prosecutor’s office, and that Dogaru was going to be nabbed when he showed up with the art.

But corruption being corruption, someone tipped Dogaru off.

And now the art world is in a swirl trying to figure out what happened to the paintings.

At one point, Dogaru’s mother claimed that the paintings were burned.

Mommy Dearest then changed her tune and suggested that the paintings may have been “spirited away by a tall mystery man in a fancy black car.”

Sonny-boy Dogaru, meanwhile, has admitted that he stole the paintings, but hasn’t given up their whereabouts because he’s scared to, or doesn’t know what became or them, or whatever.

Dogaru gets something of a mixed review in his home town.

His grandmother claims that her grandson was a good boy who “prayed, crossed himself and read the Bible.”

“He is a very serious man,” she added.

Villagers say that they occasionally saw Mr. Dogaru at church and that, unlike many local men, he did not get drunk or smoke and took great pride in his physical condition. But, according to a neighbor who declined to be named because he feared retribution, Mr. Dogaru’s only real interest in religion was the theft of icons from village homes.

“When he is here, we have trouble. When he goes, everything is calm,” the neighbor said.

Meanwhile, Romania being Romania, Carcaliu is not just any old plain vanilla Romanian village. It’s populated by an eccentric Russian Orthodox schismatic group, the Old Believers, who pretty much don’t cotton to outsiders.

Though only a small village, Carcaliu has so far defied months of insistent probing by the anti-organized crime unit, which hired a man from the area to try to make sense of the archaic Russian spoken there and carried out some 60 searches. The village has resisted giving up its secrets.

The big secret being what happened to all those works of art.

Were they buried in a cemetery?

Burned “in a stove used to heat water for the bathroom and a sauna”, a stove that “is barely a foot wide and seems far too small to contain what would have been a bulky bundle of canvas and wood.”

The only hard, but still very tentative, evidence of what might have happened has come from a laboratory at the National History Museum in Bucharest, which last week completed a forensic analysis of ash collected from the stove.

“It is quite likely that something terrible has happened,” said the museum’s director, Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu. Analysis of the ash, he said, had found nails, tacks, color pigments and fragments of canvas indicating the remains of at least four paintings.

“We know that she burned some paintings, but we don’t know if what she burned were the paintings from the Kunsthal,” the director said.

Dogaru’s mother sounds like a first class pip. So does her son.

He’s not only an (inept) art thief, but when he first landed in Rotterdam, he pimped out his 18 year old Romanian girlfriend.

While the girlfriend made about $2,655 a week from clients — about four times the average monthly salary in Romania — Mr. Dogaru and two Romanian friends spent their time pimping, pumping iron and robbing houses, according to the indictment.

But what’s $2,655 a week when you can make big money in the art world?

Should be easy-peasy. After all, Dogaru’s specialty seemed to have been fencing luxury watches. Expensive watches? Expensive art works? What’s the big diff, especially if you tune out the “one of a kind” nature of the art works.

Dogaru’s involvement in the theft came to (ultra)violet light when a prospective buyer brought in an expert, who decided that the paintings she examined were authentic. And called the police.

While Dogaru’s in prison awaiting trial, he’s still trying to parlay the paintings – which may or may not be burnt – into getting a better deal for himself.

When two Dutch police officers and a prosecutor traveled to Romania in June to interview him, according to Romanian officials who were present, Mr. Dogaru offered to give them four paintings if they moved him to stand trial in the Netherlands, where he apparently judged prisons to be more congenial than those in Romania.

No dice on that one.

Personally, I’m just as happy that Dogaru will be rotting I a nasty Romania jail rather than enjoying comfy digs in the Netherlands. And I hope  that his mother ends up keeping him company in the hoosegow, too.

Too bad this gang who couldn’t steal art straight didn’t get busted before they turned so many masterpieces to ashes.

But all the odd-ball threads of this story… Old Believers, pimped out girlfriends, burning the evidence, Romania period…

This theater of the absurd will make for some made-for-TV movie.

And Radu and Olga Dogaru can both duce la dracu.

This is a specimen of my best Palmer handwriting…

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.

Which means more than the usual number of useless articles to read online. Or which, alternatively, means that I am more inclined to read more useless articles online.

In either case, now that I’m played out on the Royal Bébé, I’ve been clicking elsewhere, and came across plenty o’ nonsense.

There was the list of rules for wearing sunglasses in the office. (No croakies, no fluorescent frames.)

Then the one on Starbucks’ rolling out smartphone charging mats in some of its stores. Which would have been fine, if it hadn’t been for the completely nonsense headline: “Starbucks Adds Phone-Charging Stations. What's Next, Showers?” Showers? That’s quite a leap. I can think of a few things  - printers, maybe – that would make more sense as a What’s Next.

And don’t get me going on Anthony Weiner. (Did he really think that no one would figure out that he’d continued his sexting ways well after he resigned from Congress. Huma, Huma, Huma, easy to say, but I really do think that you can do better than Carlos Danger. Speaking of Carlos Danger, Slate has a nifty Carlos Danger name generator. Mine is Mateo Covert. My husband’s is Diego Menace. Huma Abedin’s is Ricardo Calamity.)

So it was almost a relief to come up with a sober and nuanced article on the decline and fall of cursive, which I ran into on CNN.

One young whippersnapper  - 26 years old -  recalled his penmanship lessons:

"I remember I hated it and I told my teacher I thought it was dumb," he says…"I don't even think I know how to write in cursive anymore."

There’ll be plenty more like him as time marches on, that’s for sure.

There are only a handful of states that even have a writing requirement (printing or cursive) anymore. Massachusetts is one of them, so at least our citizens will have a non-oral form of communication at their fingertips if there’s a nationwide electronics meltdown.

Technology is constantly increasing communication speeds, often anticipating words before our brains can send signals to our fingers.

And as anyone who’s ever hit “send” before reading through their text message can tell you, the words that get anticipated are not always going to be the ones your brain wants to send. Meanwhile,

…experts say handwriting is being sacrificed for the sake of technology's convenience.

Wendy Carlson [is] a handwriting expert and forensic document examiner. Carlson works as an expert court witness, maintaining offices in Denver and Dallas. She says the dramatic decline of handwriting is causing "great" deterioration of the mind.

"Texting played a role in it because people are trying to write quick short sentences," she says. "People aren't using their minds and they are relying on technology to make the decisions for them."

I’ll buy that those who’s sole form of written communication is texting (or, in the case of Carlos Danger, sexting) may not be thinking things as fully through as you do when you’re dipping your quill pen in ink and writing on parchment. Still, just because you’re writing “quick short sentences” doesn’t mean you’re “relying on technology to make [your] decisions for [you].” Or in the case of Carlos Danger, relying on something other than technology to make the decisions for him.

Carlson says cursive writing combines mental and physical processes which involve both sides of the brain. She says she's noticed that the number of people who write cursive decreases as technology becomes the most dominant means of communication.

"If you are typing or texting, it's a matter of punching and finger-moving," she says. "You are doing very little thinking because you are not allowing your brain to form neural processes."

I do know that when I’m handwriting a note, I have to think ahead about what I’m writing in a way that I don’t do when I’m typing. But when I’m typing – as in this blog – I’d like to think that I’m doing a little more than “punching and finger-moving.” Maybe my brain is forming a different neural process, but it’s not as if I’m just mindlessly moseying around the keys as if I were channeling to a Ouija Board. (Even if, at times, it might seem as if that’s the case.)

In any case, I don’t want to see the decline of cursive.

Who doesn’t feel great when they get something handwritten in the mail, let alone a love note left for you? (Okay, that love note is apt so be asking me to pick something up a Gary Drug. But it does have an XXX on it.)

I think that cursive should be taught, if only to teach patience and stick-to-it-ive-ness, and fine motor skills that involve something more than the opposable thumb.

My writing isn’t the greatest, but it’s decent enough. And I would definitely survive in case of catastrophic electronics failures. Just think of it. If the worst happens, us Baby Boomers would be called on to keep civilization alive. We might end up like those Irish monks who manually transcribed the existing body of Western knowledge when the barbarians got beyond the gates, and a darkness settled in on Europe.

When I was in grammar school, we learned the Palmer method, and had to write out samples, fall and spring, to show that we could write cursive. Wonder what became of them. Perhaps there’s a warehouse in the Diocese of Worcester with bales full of Palmer penmanship specimens.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

For an earlier take on this topic, see The Lost Art of Penmanship. (Cursive! Foiled again.)

I really wasn’t going to heap on poor Leslie Cohen Berlowitz

I really felt that I had exhausted my interest in and ability to blog about Bad Business Behavior, Résumé Inflation Division. Didn’t I say everything I needed to say, way back in the olden days, when I wrote about MIT Dean of Admission Merilee Jones and her less-than-honest c.v.?

But it may be precisely because of the Merilee Jones incident – which happened over six years ago – and the subject and object lessons that her sad case should have taught everyone, that I think Leslie Cohen Berlowitz deserves special mention. And a boot in the rear, which is what the American Academy of Arts and Sciences gave her the other day.

Not familiar with Leslie Cohen Berlowitz?

Well, neither was I.

But I am passingly familiar with the American Academy, which I have tromped by on many a walk through Cambridge, always with a wistful glance up the hill at it’s beautiful building and lovely grounds. If only greatness had been thrust upon me, I could’ve been a contender, up there with this year’s newbies – an illustrious group that includes cartoonist Roz Chast and Bruce Springsteen. Sigh.

Since its founding in 1780, the American Academy has served the nation as a champion of scholarship, civil dialogue, and useful knowledge.

As one of the nation’s oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers, the Academy convenes leaders from the academic, business, and government sectors to address critical challenges facing our global society.

Well, while I’m a big fan of both of them, I don’t quite see how Roz or Bruce fit into the academic, business, and government sectors, but there is quite of list of Humanities and the Arts folks who are among the 4600 fellows.

Anyway, up until the other day, Ms. Berlowitz was The Academy’s chief executive.

Berlowitz got the booty in her booty for having:

…falsely claimed a doctorate from New York University and misstated her work history in federal grant applications and other documents over the past decade. (Source: Boston Globe.)

Berlowitz was allowed to resign, but other than her accrued vacation, deferred comp, and retirement benefits – which amounted to a nifty $475K payout – she did not get any severance package. But at her salary level:

… more than $598,000 in fiscal 2012 alone for an organization with only three dozen staffers.

She should be able to max out her unemployment benefits!

She may need them for her legal bills. The Massachusetts AG is looking into her executive perks, and the feds are investigating any federal grants that were given when everyone thought it was Doctor Leslie Cohen Berlowitz to you, bub. (Berlowitz denies that she ever claimed to have received her doctorate, but it seems pretty incredible that she never noticed it on any documentation over the years and corrected someone else’s error.)

Résumé inflation aside, Berlowitz was widely regarded as just awful to work for.

I know, I know, you have to take anonymous reviews on Glassdoor with a grain of something-or-other. Still, the comments from employees/ex-employees were almost uniformly savage about Berlowitz.

Under the “cons” of working at The Academy, one wrote: 

Executive Officer = primary “Con.” Condescending, Convoluted, Condemning, Contemptuous, Controlling, Congenial – no wait,, how did that get in there? And now, with the current news of falsified degrees, I guess “CON” itself may be applicable.

Another wrote:

I personally experience visceral disgust whenever I pass the Academy grounds. I am a successful survivor of the Norton Woods [Academy location in Cambridge], and I take very seriously the moral import of the words I am using in this review. The nightmarish interhuman reality at the Academy is directly attributable to the culture of intimidation and belittlement that the CEO narcissistically perpetuates in the name of high standards and commitment to the mission.

So I take it she won’t be missed by the employees.

While she may have been a beast of a boss, Berlowitz was not without her accomplishments. One was co-editing a volume entitled Restoring Trust in American Business.

Embroidering your résumé?

Not exactly a very smart way to go about restoring trust.

Wednesday is Berlowitz’s last day at the Academy of Arts and Scientists.

George Washington was one of the original members off the Academy.

Wonder if Berlowitz has a farewell to the troops planned?

How to lose your job in a fast food outlet

I logged enough time in the restaurant biz to have witnessed plenty of messin’ with the food, in ways that were sometimes deliberate and sometimes inadvertent.

One place was particularly notable for egregious food handling – across the boards – was Ye Olde Boston Tourist Trap, the Union Oyster House. This was forty years back, and I’m guessing (hoping) that such behaviors are no longer part of their modus operandi.

For one thing, Union was not just a tourist trap, it was a rat trap.

Screaming when a rat ran over your feet was a firing offense, but mostly the rats weren’t in evidence when there were customers moving around. But during the pre-close clean-up, rats raced out of their holes with such alacrity that you’d have thought the Pied Piper of Hamelin was piping them aboard.

Tossing soup spoons at their holes generally kept the rats at bay long enough to get our final clean-up done, but after dark these bad boys (and girls) pretty much had the run of the place. As we could often see the next day when we opened the house.

One day, there was a clogged sink in the kitchen. A dish-boy known as “The Animal” reached into the drain to see what was holding things up. Out came a drowned rat, held in the same hand, that a few minute later, was used by The Animal to dip into a five-gallon tice cream container and scoop out a mitt-ful of maple walnut ice cream. After that, the only ice cream any of us would eat was from a freshly opened container.

Other Union Oyster House “best practices” included frying up cockroaches with the Fisherman’s Platter and the salad guy who dusted his creations with cigar ash.

I was in the kitchen one lunch when a (completely stoned) older waitress dropped a platter of steamed Cherrystone clams on the floor. At this point, it pretty much goes without saying that the floor was filthy. Anyway, most of the Cherrystones popped out of their shells. In the spirit of waitress solidarity, we all helped Marilyn K stuff those clam back in their shells. Ready to serve!Yum.

But, with the exception of the fried cockroaches, I don’t think any of these practices were done with malice aforethought.

Anyway, I’m never all that surprised to read about food service workers who spit in the coffee and other gross and indecent acts.

Yet even I will confess to experiencing a feeling of at least modest  shock and disgust when I read about:

A Subway "sandwich artist" admitted today to putting his penis on the store's sandwich bread and posting the photo on Instagram. (Source: Huffington Post)

He was joined by a colleague in this funfest.

Their Twitter and Instagram pages are festooned with photos of their exploits In several photos, Subway's signature bread is shaped into penises.

One of the men, Cameron Boggs, admitted on Instagram that "today at work I froze my pee" in a water bottle.

Boggs posted -- and later deleted -- the most incriminating photo, which depicts a man rubbing his genitalia on foot-long bread...

In an exclusive interview with HuffPost Weird News, Ian Jett copped to defiling the footlong, but denied doing the dirty deed at work.

"I would never do that at work -- it was at home," he said. "This isn't something I'd ever do at Subway. It was totally a joke."

Not surprisingly, the comic-duo of Boggs and Jett were fired, and Subway released a statement:

This isolated incident is not representative of SUBWAY Sandwich Artists™. These actions are not tolerated and the franchisee took immediate action to terminate the two employees involved.

No longer Sandwich Artists™, Boggs and Jett can, I suppose, now rebrand themselves as performance artists (not ™’d, as far as I know). Which may be the only job they can find for the next little while, at least until they build up enough positives to drop their foodish hijinks to page two or three in a Google search.

In any case, they’ve joined the ranks of other recent food violators. Like the owner of a New Jersey pizzeria who was “reportedly caught on security footage” jerking off in the kitchen. And the Taco Bell worker who – Ay, Chihuahua! – posted a picture of himself – Ay, Chihuahua! – “licking a stack of taco shells”.

Makes fry-o-lating a handful of cockroaches look like good, clean food fun.

Shave and a haircut, two bitcoins

First off, I will admit that there is a lot that I don’t get about Bitcoin. But I do at least vaguely understand that it’s a virtual currency that doesn’t have anything to do with any government issued specie, and it’s multi-national, or non-national, or non-denominational, or whatever. If you’re using bitcoins to buy something with, you purchase them in whatever currency you want, and stop worrying about exchange rates and multi-currency handling fees.

At least that’s how I think it works.

Anyway, since it’s money, honey, it was just a matter of time before someone started scamming with it.

That someone was Trendon T. Shavers, who:

… raised at least 700,000 Bitcoin starting no later than September 2011 through his firm Bitcoin Savings and Trust and improperly used currency from new investors to cover investor withdrawals, the SEC said in a complaint filed today in federal court in Texas. (Source: Bloomberg.)

First off, is it really possible that there’s someone whose real name is Trendon T. Shavers?

Trendon?

As in – according to that unimpeachable, peach of a source, Urban Dictionary, is:

A update to the word "trendy" so you don't have to sound like your dad.

As in:

Your shoes are fabulous, they're SO trendon.
I really like your haircut, its really trendon

Or, your name is so trendon. Not!

Then there’s Shavers, which brings to mind the charmingly old-fashioned Little Shaver. Or the 1950’s college basketball scandal Point Shavers. Trendon T. clearly conjures up more of the latter than the former.

There’s also “shave and and a hair cut, two bits” which can so easily be transmogrified to “shaver and a hair cut (to the investors), two bitcoins.” At least it can be thus transmogrified when I get my hands on it.

Not that Trendon T. Shavers was quite good enough. According to the SEC complaint, Trendon T.’s Internet handle was pirateat40. Not to mention that the bank was formerly known as First Pirate Savings & Trust.

Good rule to observe: never do financial business with someone or something named “pirate.”

Anyway, while we can make up names for ourselves (like pirateat40), we can’t help the names our parents choose to gift us with. (Just ask the Winklevoss twins, who, as it happens are Bitcoin investors – although not through the Trendon T. Shavers Ponzi scheme.)

Shavers falsely promised investors as much as 7 percent interest weekly on purported trades, including selling the online currency to individuals who wished to buy it “off the radar,” quickly or in large quantities, the SEC said. Shavers also misappropriated investors’ funds for his personal use, according to the complaint.

Part of me wants to say you don’t get what you don’t pay for. And that the credulous schnooks who think they’re going to get 7 percent interest weekly almost but not quite deserve what they get. After all, that interest rate may have been achievable in, say, Weimar Germany in the twenties, when you could do even better – maybe even get 7 percent by the minute, if not by the second. But, let’s face it, 7 percent annually would be excellent these days. So, while the fact that someone’s a fool – and a greedy one at that – doesn’t justify the Ponzi scheme, it’s still stunning that there are people out there just ripe to be scammed.

But, darned the luck for Trendon T. Shavers:

“Fraudsters are not beyond the reach of the SEC just because they use Bitcoin or another virtual currency to mislead investors and violate the federal securities laws,” Andrew Calamari, director of the SEC’s New York office, said in a statement. “Shavers preyed on investors in an online forum by claiming his investments carried no risk and huge profits for them while his true intentions were rooted in nothing.”

Speaking of great names: Andrew Calamari! Which I think is Italian for Sponge Bob’s friend Squidward. An altogether excellent last name – even better than my mother’s, which was Wolf. (As in “who’s afraid of the big, bad”.

Meanwhile, before he set up Bitcoin Savings and [Who Do You] Trust, Trendon T. Shavers had a company called Business Cognition:

Business Cognition is a full service business efficiency and information technology consulting company. We provide expense analysis, technology, energy and telecommunications solutions for small to medium sized businesses. Located in McKinney, we serve clients in the North Dallas and surrounding areas.

I guess Ponzi Schemes are easier money and more lucrative than expense analysis and telecommunications solutions.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still don’t quite get Bitcoin? Can’t blame you. Let The Economist explain it all to you.

And here’s a link to the SEC complaint.

 

Volunteers of America, make that Volunteers of Malibu, are Rita Meter-Maiding

Even without the sterling example of George Zimmerman, I’m a bit hinky about community patrols. I suppose if I lived in a neighborhood where the folks wanted to make their streets safer, instead of in one where they’re pretty darned safe to begin with, I would consider tromping around with my neighbors in a show of ‘take our streets back’ force.  (Just thought of the Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels for the first time in years. Are they still around?)

Anyway, IMHO, with community patrolling – especially in locations that are on the gun-happy side -  there’s a lot of potential for cop wannabe run amok (c.f., George Zimmerman) and vigilantism. Mostly, I’ll leave the policing to the po-po, thank you.

While I was familiar with the concept of community patrols, I was less aware that there are also people who explicitly volunteer to help out their local police force.

There are so many worthy places to volunteer, being a fake cop would be pretty low down on my list.

Isn’t policing what we pay out taxes for?

But the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has a group called Volunteers on Patrol, a group of civilians:

…dedicated to providing excellent service through relationships that build trust, create a safe environment, and enhance the quality of life in our communities within a “Tradition of Service”.

VOP Program Principles:
  To be proud representatives of the community by being highly visible while on patrol. The primary objectives for the members shall be to prevent crime by mere presence, or identify public hazards. Members shall also act as the eyes and ears of the Sheriff's Department by identifying suspicious activities, crimes in progress, or dangerous circumstances. The members shall not take action themselves, but shall notify the proper authorities for handling.

Other than the explicit “prevent crime by mere presence’, which we all do, I guess, whenever we go out in public, don’t most citizens do this already? We call in pot holes. We report crimes in process and dangerous circumstances.  Suspicious activity, well, that’s a slippery slope. Talk about eye of the beholder. But, sure, if I saw suspicious activity – say someone shimmying up my back fence – I’d dime it.

In fact, a number of years ago, I did report someone shimmying up our back fence and standing on the roof of the backyard storage shed. It was 2 a.m., it was one of the rare times when I was home alone, and there was a big guy standing on that roof, about six feet from our living room window. Perhaps if I were a braver type, I would have confronted him. But I dialed 9-1-1 instead. Turns out it was a kid staying with his friend upstairs, and he’d gotten locked out. (He apparently wasn’t familiar with the conept of the buzzer.) But it could have been the real deal…

Anyway, I don’t think that the Boston PD needs me to be any more than a citizen on alert.

But those official cop volunteers in Malibu, well, as of last week, they’re empowered to give out parking tickets.

The city said the program could save Malibu as much as $50,000, preserve deputies' valuable time for more serious crimes, and enable it to enforce new parking restrictions. (Source: Southern California Public Radio.)

I realize that every community’s strapped these days, but tell me Malibu needs to save $50K.

The effort is an extension of Malibu's "Volunteers On Patrol" program. The group's members have been assisting deputies with directing traffic, monitoring parking, and issuing warning citations for the past two years. 

Come on, I can sort of understand wanting to help the cops catch bad guys, and keep a watchful eye on the neighborhood, but volunteering to be a traffic cop or meter made?

"They attend a half-day training wherein they're taught about what constitutes a moving violation, how to mark tires on cars, how to deal with people and avoid conflict — that kind of thing," [City of Malibu spokeswoman Sandi Turner] says.

Something tells me that a half-day training won’t be enough to handle the wrath of someone’s who particularly peeved that they’ve gotten a ticket, wrongfully or rightfully.

And talk about the temptation for abuse.

A friend or a cute young thing goes a bit over the three-hour max, and you give them a pass.

Same for someone who looks a bit scary. Not that there are a lot of them in Malibu, but who wants to wrangle with the tatted-up dude with a American Nazi Party bumper sticker?

But someone you just don’t like the looks of. Or the make and model of their vee-hicle. Tickets ‘r Us.

Not that meter-maids don’t make judgment calls all the time, but they can always pull official rank if someone they know tries to weasel them, or the tatted up dude tries to intimidate them.

The Malibu volunteers are given uniforms and police radios, so they can call in the cavalry if the tatted up dude gets pissy, or the cute young thing turns out to be a psycho escapee from Girls Gone Wild.

Still…

Curiously, the volunteers don’t have any fixed schedules – they just go out whenever they feel the urge – as long as they’re on patrol 16 hours a month. (I must be misreading something here. How can this system possibly work if the city doesn’t have a clue whether there’s going to be someone out there directing traffic or tagging cars?)

Anyway, one of the reason why Malibu is so keen on its volunteer ticketers is that parking is at such a premium there.

Parking scofflaw  techniques are many and varied (and often involve trying to illegally restrict beach access).

"So you have a lot of problems on the public roads where people have put up no parking signs, where they have fake driveways, where they have fake garage doors, where they put out orange cones, sometimes in conjunction with no parking signs, where they actually send security guards out and tell you you can't park there," [Jenny] Price [an advocate for public access to Malibu beaches]said.

Price’s concern is that Malibu is putting to much focus on “parking near the big public beaches, and yet they've shown no concern at all about the really serious problem of blocking off public parking by private homeowners," she said.

In real life, neither might be a problem much longer.

I saw an article in Vanity Pair on beach erosion in Malibu.

Another couple of years, there may not be any beaches to illegally or legally park at.

The volunteers will have to find something else to do with their 16 hours a month.

Move over, Twinkie Defense

A few weeks ago, here in Boston, a fellow was arrested for trying to swindle the fund set up for the Marathon bombing victims. He claimed that his aunt – who had died a couple of years ago – had been killed at the finish line. He was nailed when he went to pick up a check for $2M. His mother claimed that her son was just trying to get the money so that he could help the poor folks in his community. Right…

I suspect that, if this defense sees the light of day in court, it will be as laughed in court as Dan White’s Twinkie defense was.

But people being people, there re plenty of them who will always look somewhere other than into their own eyes when it comes to explaining their poor decisions that result in a cart-load of troubles for them.

The latest is a lawyer from Tennessee who’s going after Apple, blaming them for his porn addiction and the breakdown of his marriage that resulted from said porn addiction.

The man is seeking damages, and wants Apple to "sell all its devices in 'safe mode,' with software preset to filter out pornographic content."

Per the complaint, [the man’s] problem began after he tried to visit "Facebook.com," but -- accidentally, he says -- typed "F**kbook.com," an adult site that "appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male and led to an unwanted addiction with adverse consequences." (Source: Huffington Post.)

I understand completely that someone could accidentally type in a wrong address. A kabillion years ago, when the web site F**ked Company provided a forum for companies that were on the skids, I would check it regularly at lunch, just to see what was there about the place I was working. One day, I accidentally typed in a similar URL, leading me to a porn site. I was at work, and my screen faced my office door, so I spent a couple of frantic minutes trying to close down the site. After trying to x-out an endless supply of x-rated pop-ups, I pulled to plug on my PC.

Not that I’m the audience for porn to begin with, but does one get addicted at a glance? Is it like love at first sight?

Anyway, in the mind of the lawyer filing the complaint, Apple’s the culprit here, as they’re enabling “unfair competition” between porn stars and his wife.

In what must be one hell of an interesting complaint to read through, he further argues that Apple is hurting “brick and mortar or 'mom and pop' porn shops" that have suffered as a result of the ubiquity of free online pornography.”

When I first starting reading about this lawsuit, I thought maybe this guy was one of those blame-someone-or-something for your troubles. But this lawsuit actually makes the Twinkie Defense seem reasonable and sane. So, having read through a couple of articles, I have to conclude that the poor man is mentally ill. Which is why I’m not using his name. I don’t imagine he needs yet another cite showing up when folks google his name.

Anyway, this pathetic story does raise the question – at least in my mind – about whether the world would be a better place if there were at least a modest hurdle or two to get over in order to have full access to the wonderful world of porn.

Not that I know all that much about the genre, but my understanding is that, in the old days, you did actually have to go to one of those ‘mom and pop’ – or perhaps just ‘pop’ – stores and actually purchase dirty mags. Which meant you had to show your face to the store clerk, plus risk your neighbor or your wife’s best friend spotting you walking in or out. Or you had to order them through the mail, and have it delivered in a plain, brown envelope.

In either case, there was, more or less, a practical, physical limit to the amount you could accumulate.

Not so on the Internet.

But what could that hurdle be?

Surely not preventing people from accessing porn sites. I don’t suppose that everyone who looks at porn becomes an addict.

Anyway, this suit will, of course, go nowhere, and I do hope that the man who filed it gets the help he so clearly needs. And that he can overcome the professional and personal embarrassment of having his name and meshugas splashed all over the Internet.

Meanwhile, I also read that Apple, itself, can be addictive.

In 2011, researchers featured in a BBC documentary claimed that Apple users bond with the brand in an unusual way. According to brain imaging, they said, Apple devices trigger activity in the areas of the brain normally associated with religious devotion. (Source: RawStory.)

No wonder that, other than an ancient iPod, I’ve resisted the lure of Apple products.

I need a device addiction like I need a hole in my head…

Quelle horreur gastronomique

I have no idea who runs it now – and I’ve never actually eaten there to begin with – but at one point in time, the restaurant atop Boston’s Prudential Building, Top of the Hub, was run by Stouffer’s. Our joke*at the time was that they boiled the plastic bag containin your meal by the side of your table, like when the waiter showily bones a fish, makes steak tartar, or mixes up a Caesar salad. (Are any of these still done anywhere? The Caesar salad production number was performed before Caesars became ubiquitous.)

Fast forward a couple of decades, and there was a baguette problem in France when it came to the fore that a lot of the little corner boulangeries were no longer baking their own, but were selling bread from commercial factories. Of course, factory bread in France is not exactly a loaf of Wonder Bread. Nonetheless, bakers who do their baking on-site now display signs that read ‘Artisan Boulangerie.’

I’ve been to Paris a few times, and baguettes, and their skinny sister, the ficelle, have always been on my must eat list while I’m there.

A couple of visits ago, we saw a colossal line outside a bakery in our ‘hood. We decided that its bread must be pretty good, so the next morning I headed out to pick up a baguette. Alas, when I got there I found that the bakery was closed for good, and that the line snaking outside was just the locals grabbing their last. We missed out on what was probably a very good thing. But Paris being Paris, there was another boulangerie around the corner, and I got myself a baguette. Whether it was factory-made or home grown, I don’t recall.

Apparently, it’s not just the baguettes that are mass produced.

As I saw in a recent Economist, not-invented-here dishes are all over the restaurants. And the situation has made it all the way into the halls of government, where:

…one of the hottest topics in parliament these days is how to force restaurants to reveal whether they make their boeuf bourguignonon the premises or rip open packets and warm up the contents. (Source: The Economist)

What? Madame et Monsieur Manger aren’t back there behind the swinging doors whipping up canard and quenelles and coquilles saint jacques? Sacre bleu, is nothing sacred?

On June 27th the lower house approved an amendment to a consumer-rights bill that will force restaurants to label the dishes they prepare from fresh ingredients in their own kitchens as “fait maison”, or “home-made”. This is tougher than the optional label the government proposed, but less stringent than the obligatory description of every dish on every menu as either home-made or based on industrial products, which some want.

On the one hand, if someone can’t tell the difference – and that would probably include moi – what’s the difference?

On the other…

If you believe that you’re paying for Madame et Monsieur Manger aren’t back there behind the swinging doors whipping up canard and quenelles and coquilles saint jacques, because you like those dishes and you don’t have the time, interest, or ability to cook ‘em up for yourself, and M et M are just peeling back the lid on a high-tone version of an MRE, well, that doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

The estimate is that at minimum one-third “of all restaurants serve dishes prepared largely or entirely elsewhere…Improbably long menus at small eateries are one giveaway.”

Back home, I don’t think that I frequent restaurants that don’t at least cook from scratch on the entrees. But I do always gag a bit when I see “house-made” or “artisanal” whatever.

Maybe it’s time for a little truth in menu-izing on this front, too.

________________________________________________
*Which works if you remember that Stouffer’s frozen dinners used to come in boil bags.