Beijing Olympics: "No Engrish Spoken Here"

A lot of preparation is underway for next year's Olympic Games in Beijing. Among the projects being undertaken by the Chinese authorities is an effort to rid restaurant menus of mangled English translations:

Hungry visitors to next summer's Beijing Olympics won't have to choose between "steamed crap" and "virgin chicken" if Chinese authorities succeed in ridding restaurant menus of mangled English translations.

The Beijing Tourism Bureau has released a list with 2,753 proposed names for dishes and drinks, designed to replace bizarre and sometimes ridiculous translations on menus, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

Foreigners are often stumped by dish names such as "virgin chicken" (a young chicken dish) or "burnt lion's head" (Chinese-style pork meatballs). Other garbled names include "The temple explodes the chicken cube" (kung pao chicken) or "steamed crap" (steamed carp).

"These translations either scare or embarrass foreign customers and may cause misunderstanding on China's diet habits," Xinhua said.

It's the latest effort by Beijing Olympics organizers to clean up the city and ensure that the best image is presented to the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected next summer.

Etiquette campaigns are afoot to stamp out bad manners such as jumping ahead in line, spitting, littering and reckless driving. The revised menu names are part of an effort to ban unintelligible English, known as "Chinglish," that abounds on signs everywhere.

Part of me is disappointed to hear that news, because this phenomenon, also known as Engrish, has provided hours of entertainment for me and my friends. Sure, not everyone is brave enough to try a dish named "Salty egg king steams the vegetable sponge," but others might be intrigued enough to at least inquire about it. (That dish, mentioned at the bottom of this post, came from a menu posted here; also included are such delicacies as "Cowboy leg beautiful pole," " The carbon roasts the sheep sparerib" and "Big bowl flower immerses pork kidney." Read it and be prepared to laugh.)

Another Made in China story: A Japanese man claimed on an Internet posting that China's famed Shaolin monks were beaten in combat by an unarmed ninja. The monks are demanding a retraction.

The compasionate criminal: A guy in New York state robbed another man at knifepoint, but he only needed four dollars, so he waited patiently as his victim got change for a ten before taking the money.

The Fun Police Strike Again

A school in Colorado has banned tag on its playground:

An elementary school has banned tag on its playground after some children complained they were harassed or chased against their will.

"It causes a lot of conflict on the playground," said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.
Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other, she said.

Oh, no--we couldn't have kids chasing each other. Someone might have fun...or even get exercise!

If this story sounds familiar, it's because you may have seen it before; I included an account of another school district doing so in this post. That district was even more chicken-hearted, in my opinion, because they did so out of fear of liability for injuries.

And yet people wonder why we're raising a nation of overweight wimps. So many things that were the bedrock of childhood have either been squelched by overprotective parents or outright legislated out of existence by schools and municipalities running scared of lawyers all the time. We're past due for a return to sanity; who's going to step up to the plate and lead us there?

Cool gadget of the week: The Mac G3 Beer Server.

Blowing out the candles: Happy birthday to my old buddy Fletch, serving our country in parts unknown.

Give This Guy an A in Entrepreneurship 101

When George Hotz starts classes this fall at Rochester Institute of Technology, he might have to write a "what I did this summer" essay for an English class. If so, he'll have some ready-made material that might well outshine the efforts of anyone else in the class. Besides the usual hanging-with-friends stories, Hotz has a unique one: He hacked the iPhone in order to untether it from the AT&T network.

Hotz announced the news on his blog last week and then provided step-by-step instructions which, if followed, should allow the phone to be used with any SIM card. After an unsuccessful attempt to sell the phone on eBay (where fraudulent bids pushed the price of the phone into the stratosphere), Hotz ended up trading it to a Louisville-based cell phone repair company this week for a "sweet Nissan 350Z" and three iPhones.

(There could, however, be a snag in the works for anyone with commercial designs for the unlocking procedure, as word comes today that Apple might consider legal action against anyone who plans to make money from the hacked phones. The Louisville-based company, Certicell, has stated that it currently has no desire to commercialize the unlocking procedure.)

So Hotz has moved into his college dorm now, and will probably start blending in with all his fellow students. But he has a very noteworthy accomplishment under his belt, and a well-documented blog by which to remember it. (And he also has his own Wikipedia page, as well as a very quotable way to describe his major, neuroscience: "hacking the brain.")

Do not Despair, the blog is there: Despair, Inc. has started a blog, which is bound to be hilarious. Here's a paragraph from the opening post: "Yes, at the moment, the much hyped and already once delayed blog is rather sparsely populated with videos already available (in lower-resolution format) in our Corporate Spin section. Is there any better way to kick off the Despair, Inc. blog than with a dollop of disappointment, sprinkled with annoyance?" Check it out on a regular basis. (And yes, as always, in the spirit of full disclosure, this company is run by a family member, but I'd buy their stuff no matter what.)

Happy anniversary, not-so-happy anniversary: Today is the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. If you have a chance, visit the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund site for a moment. (It's also my sixth anniversary as a homeowner, and I'm still lovin' it.)

Famous Restaurant is Ducking Out

I was quite dismayed to read over the weekend that the Duck Inn in Lake Dallas is closing its doors on December 1 unless a new owner can be found:

Just as renovations of the hush puppy room at Tierney's Duck Inn are complete following a fire last year, the doors of the well-known restaurant are about to close.

Greg Tierney, who reopened the restaurant in May 2002, is planning to close in Lake Dallas by Dec. 1 and open the Old Town Café and Tavern in Lewisville.

[...]The 8,424-square-foot building is now up for sale for $639,500, according to Steve Howard, whose grandmother, Nellie Howard, opened the catfish restaurant more than 60 years ago.

With the rights to the restaurant's name, Duck Inn, and the knowledge of family recipes, Mr. Howard said he hopes to find someone to reopen the restaurant that is the family's legacy.

"Help me find somebody who wants to keep it alive and I'll do like I did with Mr. Tierney and I'll come and show them how to do the hush puppies," he said. "I'm one of the only people who know how to cook them."

Mr. Howard said that Mr. Tierney, who was leasing the building, wanted to purchase it, "but he didn't have the funds to purchase it for what it was appraised for." Mr. Tierney said he made an offer to Mr. Howard, but it was less than the amount the family was seeking.

The building needs renovation, he said, and the cost of the building was too much.

"It's a gamble I'm not willing to take," Mr. Tierney said.

Besides having great catfish and hush puppies, the Duck Inn has recently been home to the Original Texas Jazz Orchestra, a big band of UNT faculty and other alums, led by my former professor Jim Riggs. (Among the many highlights have been the regular appearances by Leon Breeden, Director Emeritus of Jazz Studies at UNT.) The once-a-month gigs are resuming this weekend, and the excitment about their return has now been tempered by the news of the Duck Inn's impending closing. I really hope that either someone will be able to buy the restaurant and keep it open without interruption, or that the band will be able to find a new home in the area.

A good walk spoiled by a not-so-good ride: Across the country, golfers are getting upset at courses that have instituted mandatory cart requirements in order to speed up play.

Somebody give this guy a hand: A London teenager went to visit his girlfriend, parking his motorcycle outside her house and leaving his prosthetic hand attached to the bike's grip. When he came back out ten minutes later, the bike was still there, but the hand was gone.

Evidently, These Guys Didn't Learn from Dallas

On this, the first day of school (i.e. the day I have to start wearing long pants and real shoes again), it's only appropriate that my post is one that tweaks somebody for trying to impose a dress code where it probably doesn't belong.

At this time last year (one year ago yesterday, to be precise), I blogged a story about a Dallas school board member who tried to get the City Council to ban saggy pants. That's right--not just in school, but in the city at large. Efforts like this (as well as a more recent effort by a small-town mayor in Louisiana) never seem to actually be made into law--and they tend to get splattered all over the Internet, making a laughingstock out of its originator in the process--but that never stops people from trying the same thing somewhere else.

This time, it's happening in Atlanta, and the City Council is behind the effort. It's pretty much the same old song and dance:

Baggy pants that show boxer shorts or thongs would be illegal under a proposed amendment to Atlanta's indecency laws.

The amendment, sponsored by city councilman C.T. Martin, states that sagging pants are an "epidemic" that is becoming a "major concern" around the country.

"Little children see it and want to adopt it, thinking it's the in thing," Martin said Wednesday. "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

The proposed ordinance would also bar women from showing the strap of a thong beneath their pants. They would also be prohibited from wearing jogging bras in public or show a bra strap, said Debbie Seagraves, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia.

The proposed ordinance states that "the indecent exposure of his or her undergarments" would be unlawful in a public place. It would go in the same portion of the city code that outlaws sex in public and the exposure or fondling of genitals.
The penalty would be a fine in an amount to be determined, Martin said.

I only have two points in response to this. First, as the ACLU's Seagraves points out later in the story, such a dress code would be unlikely to survive a court challenge, because it targets a style that comes from black youth culture. (Whether I agree with this logic or not is immaterial, but that's probably how it would go in court.)

Also, let me repeat something I said in the earlier post:

Is this style of dress annoying? Sure. But do we really need to get the police involved in enforcing it? Surely not. The time when the council should be devoting the city's resources to something like this would be when crime levels are nonexistent, when all the potholes are fixed, there's not a homeless problem downtown, the police and firefighters are paid the same as their suburban counterparts....in other words, not anytime soon.

I may not know firsthand whether Atlanta has all of the above issues, but you get my point: This is a waste of city time and resources to be talking about this when so many truly serious problems are out there.

More dress code cluelessness: In an effort to tweak administrators who had instituted a new "business casual" polo-and-khakis dress code at a Florida high school, one student, Austin Perkins, decided to go "above and beyond" the code by wearing a coat and tie to class. The principal suspended him. (Check out the comments at that post--especially the ones by a commenter named "PrisonPlanet" from yesterday at 11:40 and 11:41 a.m. They offer some historic reinforcement of what I've been saying all along--dress codes in schools have very little to do with safety and a lot to do with control. Hat tip--Dave Barry's Blog, where there are also some good comments, including an appearance by yours truly.)

Better saggy pants than none at all: Last Thursday, for no apparent reason, a guy decided to get naked in the Dallas County Courthouse.

The Summer of Broken Stuff

It doesn't matter what the calendar might say; for myself and many other educators, today is the last day of summer. Since the public schools were required to start no earlier than tomorrow by the Legislature, both the schools and my college start on the same day--no more buffer week, where the former started before the latter. I haven't been able to do too much with the Dread Sked yet, as everyone's loads are still being solidified at the college, so I'm just taking each day as it comes, knowing that it will all be settled soon.

It's really been quite an enjoyable summer--lots of time to relax and hang with friends--but there has been an unusual underlying theme from almost the beginning: This has truly been the Summer of Broken Stuff. Never can I remember a time when so many things have fallen into disrepair. Here's the list as I can remember it at the moment:

• The main entrance to my neighborhood has been closed since mid-June. They're widening the main road next to us, so some downtime was not unexpected, but they closed it with little notice, requiring me to scramble and email all the students for the rest of the week to give them alternate directions. (Some people missed the email or got lost anyway.) Despite the fact that another street farther down in the project (to a neighborhood which has many more options for ingress and egress*) was only closed for a month or so, we remain blocked off and seemingly forgotten-about. An email to the city yielded not even a response; my council member is the next one to hear from me.


• Kevmobile 1.2 broke down on two different occasions over the summer. It really got to the point for a while there where I wasn't sure I could trust it, but, after an uneventful month and a half (and last weekend's roadtrip to Austin), things are finally back to normal for a while. *knocks wood*


• My cable went out at pretty much the exact moment that Dad and I completed the contstruction of a new entertainment cabinet in my living room; it would be out for over two weeks. The repair to the outlet was quick and easy, and my Internet wasn't affected, but the bill would get messed up; that's just now getting resolved.


• The heavy rains we had in June and July made the ground so saturated at my house that it messed up my underground power lines, and I started having brownouts. After a call to the city, the lines had to be rerouted to above-ground, encased in something that looked like a vacuum-cleaner hose (with special plastic barriers across the driveways of my house and the one next door). They didn't get returned to their underground location for nearly a month.


• My alto case was already broken and basically being held together by the custom-fit case cover that goes over top of it. During the summer, the zipper on that case cover broke as well.


• About a month or so ago, I developed a small crack in the corner of my windshield. Thankfully, it hasn't gotten any bigger for a few weeks now.


• And finally, my washer hasn't been agitating or spinning for several weeks now. It appears to still get clothes clean, but it's definitely not working right.

The latter three things aren't fixed yet due to the diminished finances of summer. The ironic part is that, now that I'll have money to fix everything, it'll be tricky finding time to do it while I'm teaching in schools all day. I'm betting that a windshield-repair place might do weekends, but I'm less confident that a washer could get fixed in that time frame. At any rate, I hope that all my stuff will be considerate enough to not break down quite so much at once in the future.

*I love using words like those because of the "exotic" factor; they just sound fancier than "entrance" and "exit." But I still say that "egress" could also be the name for a female egret.

This guy took the "Boomer" part of "Boomer Sooner" a bit too seriously: An Oklahoma University fan became verbally and then physically abusive to a guy who committed the egregious "offense" of walking into an Oklahoma CIty bar wearing a Texas Longhorns T-shirt.

When Grandpa goes bad: William Tinnen was charged with cocaine trafficking this week, which wouldn't be all that unusual except for the fact that the North Carolina man is 93 years old.

Unfortunate criminal of the week: A guy who was already on probation for drugs was set to be arrested for questioning in a new case. When officers arrived to take him in, he asked if he could put his pants on first; they obliged and followed him to his room. Unfortunately, the dresser drawer where he kept his pants also contained his bag of pot.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Check out Grip, a live video with professional trampoline gymnasts who simulate various computer effects.

The Doctor Will See Play For You Now

Remember the rock group Queen, and its guitarist, Brian May? Well, it's Dr. Brian May now; the rocker has finally completed his doctorate in astrophysics this week from London's Imperial College. He had started working on it in the '70s, but he had to put it on the shelf when his band started to take off.

His 48,000-word thesis, incidentally, is called "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," and he noted that submitting and defending it to his examiners was, at least at first, as nerve-wracking as playing any stadium gig.

In other rockin' news: Enjoy a list of the Ten Best Bands That Never Existed (think Spinal Tap, the Rutles, etc.). The band in first place may surprise you...

For really lazy music lovers: Japanese engineers have come up with a piece of gear that lets iPod users start the device hands-free by clenching their teeth.

Maybe he should have stuck to doing his homework: A Finnish high school student has been fined for posting a video of one of his teachers singing karaoke at a school party. It wasn't the singing part that caused the trouble, but rather the fact that the student labeled the video as taking place at a mental hospital.

Another Smorgasbord

So many unusual stories, so little time to post this week...

• Stupid criminal of the week: A woman, upset that the cocaine she bought turned out to be a fake, calls the police for assistance.


• Stupid crime of the week: A 12-year-old boy was accused of assaulting a senior citizen...with a cocktail sausage. (A court later threw out the case and gave police and prosecutors a lecture for pursuing it.)


• In the same vein--and also in England--charges were also dismissed against a pair of female sunbathers who flashed a TV camera in a public beach area.


• One more from across the pond, and this one hasn't been dropped yet: A man was arrested in London for surfing the Web using someone else's unsecured Wi-Fi connection.


• Weird technological item of the day: A urinal for women.


• An interesting day, and a good name for a heavy-metal band: Goth Day at Disneyland. (I always got a kick out of the Goth kids that showed up to outdoor rock concerts; their skin was so pale that they burned in an instant. And here's a Fun Fact about me: My last Halloween costume--save for the Chipotle burrito thing, of course--was as a Goth, in 1998.)


• Speaking of Fun Facts, some of you know that I was an extra in the movie Necessary Roughness, which was filmed on my campus while I was in college. Among the players on the ragtag Texas State Armadillos (before an actual university assumed that name) was a 35-year-old quarterback. But now another Texas school can do that one better: Sul Ross State University in Alpine will include a 59-year-old cornerback on its fall roster. (Another piece of trivia that I just found out while researching this article: Among the cast members of Necessary Roughness was former Senator and possible Presidential candidate Fred Thompson.)


• I'm in ur iPhone, hax0ring ur networkz: A 17-year-old from New Jersey has figured out how to hack the iPhone in order to get it on other networks besides AT&T.

I'll have a more topical post or two over the weekend.

30-3

I listened to a bit of the Rangers game last night on the way to a faculty meeting at the college. When I went inside, our boys from Arlington were doing well--they were ahead of the Orioles, 14-3 in the seventh inning. So I was quite shocked to get in the car about an hour later and learn that the Rangers had tacked on sixteen more runs in the last two innings! That's right, thirty runs--the most scored by a single team in a single game since before 1900.

(Incidentally, this game was the first of a doubleheader, and the Rangers entered the nightcap already holding the record for most runs in a doubleheader before the first pitch of that game, which they would also win, 9-7.)

The Rangers haven't had a great season so far, but it was great to see a bright spot like this--one that won't be forgotten for quite some time. (The funniest stat connected with the game was provided by KRLD's Victor Rojas, who pointed out that the Baltimore Ravens, who play next door to Camden Yards, haven't given up 30 points since Game 10 of the 2005 season. You have to admit that 30-3 really does sound like a football score.)

Here's hoping that the team can build on this and salvage a respectable finish this season.

UPDATE: Here's a great essay from the Dallas Morning News writer Jean-Jacques Taylor on the magic of sports; it's true that you really never know when something special will happen during what might otherwise be a completely ordinary game.

A Fairly unusual snack: It's way too hot for this in Texas, but a lot of other places are having their state fairs right about now. Over at buzz.mn, James Lileks will be making live appearances and blogging the Minnesota State Fair for its duration. Meanwhile, in Illinois, the food vendors are going beyond the everyday corny dogs, fried Twinkies and fried Coke for an unusual sensation: Breakfast on a Stick.

A fair trade? A Malaysian man who married two wives has to give his original family a buffalo and a pig as compensation

I has a donut! Nooo, they be stealin' my donut: Senior citizens in Putnam County, New York were up in arms because the city decided to stop allowing day-old donuts to be donated to senior centers, citing health worries. The seniors decided that they were old enough to make that decision themselves, and the donuts will be coming back, though still not stored at the centers.

Grilled bird? It's not on the menu quite yet: A wild bird was hit by a car in Michigan and then spent two days trapped behind the vehicle's grille. Amazingly enough, the bird surivived and is recovering at a local residence.

Another yourbaby.com story: Last week, I posted a story about a Chinese couple who wanted to name their baby with the "@" symbol. Now comes word that some couples here in the U.S. are choosing baby names based on availability as a domain name, which they are then securing for the baby upon its birth.

Chocolate Reigns

Unless you have either 1) been in a cave for the past few weeks, or 2) don't have a computer, you've probably heard the song "Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday (if you haven't, click here). The song has taken on quite a life as an Internet meme over the past several months. The song actually has a really deep message about racism, even if, upon first hearing, it almost comes off like a parody. (Between the extremely deep voice coming out of Zonday--he's actually a 25-year-old Ph.D student at the University of Minnesota, but he looks so young that I'd probably card him if I worked at a movie theatre--and the random graphic messages such as "**I move away from the mic to breathe in" superimposed over the top of the video, it takes a while to realize that he's serious.)

But the song has spread like wildfire. I've had friends tell me that they'll break into that song in random public places and always gotten a laugh out of someone. And the parodies are great; the song has "performed" by Darth Vader and McGruff the Crime Dog, spliced into a really old McDonald's commercial, mashed up with Radiohead and Snoop Dogg and sung by someone using a helium balloon. But the funniest by far are the individual parodies, the best of which is Vanilla Snow. (Not so successful, but still funny, is the song being sung rather badly by a fat white guy.)

UPDATE: How about a DDR remix?

Among all the hype, Zonday actually is a serious musician; other songs (with more than a single looped chord progression are on his MySpace page. A recent article about him from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune appears here.

This place was so secure, it made her feel insecure: A woman in California, examining her safe-deposit box, was accidentally locked in the building for six hours after closing time.

Some people blew their tops over this: Signs advertising a "topless car wash" in New York state were quite disappointed when they arrived to find that all the car-washers were shirtless male firefighters.

Thinking way outside the bun: Police were called to a Taco Bell parking lot in Arkansas after patrons noticed a couple apparently having sex in a van. (The guy was also busted for pot at the same time.)

When animals attack...each other: Croc vs. shark.

The most tabloid-sounding story of the day that's actually true: Elvis's stolen handgun found in portable toilet.

Putting Up the "Gone Fishin'" Sign for a Day

Two hours of teaching this morning. Five-and-a-half hours of auditions at the college this afternoon and evening. Another hour and a half of discussion thereof.

In other words, I'm beat. Regular posting will resume tomorrow.

Spam? A Lot! Part 3

A while back, I posted on the subject of spam, and the noteworthy element that time was unusual word strings (such as "nadiaprovisiondonahue") that were used for the "name" of the alleged sender. (An even earlier post covered the nonsense combinations of words used in subject lines.) And now, being inundated with spam once again on the two listservs which I manage, the creativity continues, as the subject lines have now become (sometimes rather lengthy) sentences of their own:

• If your browser supports Java, you should see an animated image above (generated by a Java applet embedded on the page).


• Can you take me to her.


• Extended features are available through modules which can be loaded into Apache.


• I've also had to do this to ease the communication between mappers and packers several times.


• A lichnyj transport vsjo-taki, na dannom etape, predstavljajet soboj tupik civilizacii, jesli ispol'zujet iskopajemyje vidy topliva. (from a Norwegian address)


• I often get drunk these days, there's no denying it, but that's the only way I can stomach the thought of what we're doing over there.


• Due to the side effects performed by this intrinsic, the function form is not recommended.


• This option is always enabled by default on certain machines, usually those which have no call-preserved registers to use instead.


• It was some fiend.


• No, my old friend, don't worry.

I'll see if I can find a Norwegian translation engine later.

This would have been a great SNL skit in the old days: Samurai Gas Station Robbers.

It hasn't super-sized them yet: A British couple has eaten lunch at McDonald's every day for 17 years.

Talk about a frivolous lawsuit: A South Carolina prison inmate is suing Michael Vick for $63 quintillion dollars, claiming that Vick stole his pit bulls and sold them on eBay to "use the proceeds to purchase missiles from the Iran government." (This guy has filed other wacky lawsuits in the past.)

A Sign of the Times

While I was down in Austin yesterday, I stopped at an intersection where there were panhandlers on three of the four corners. The one closest to me--looking every bit the part, with long hair, scraggly grey beard, tattered clothes--was holding up the funniest sign I've ever seen a panhandler use:
LEAR JET
OUT OF FUEL
PLEASE HELP
Being near the end of the down side of my business cycle, I didn't actually have any "gas money" for him, but I did get a good laugh out of it. (And one of my friends pointed out later that I should have told him he could have sold the jet and gotten quite a bit of money out of it!)

Those T-shirts don't say "KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD" for nothing...

Best excuse, used by an adult, that could have come from a middle-schooler: The goat ate my euros!

I'm in ur atmusfeer, defyin' ur gravities: A cat fell out an 18th-floor window of a Chicago highrise...and survived. Eight lives to go...

Travel Advisory

I'm taking a quick day trip to Austin to help celebrate my nephew Micah's first birthday. Too much work left to stay more than a day, so I'll be back tonight and might even have another post for the day.

Tax Takes a Holiday

If you're here in Texas, enjoy the sales tax holiday this weekend. Here's a list of what is and isn't exempt from the tax.

Looking at the list...does anyone buy handkerchiefs anymore? Does anyone in Texas buy gloves in August? And how would anyone consider personal flotation devices (which aren't on the list) or cowboy boots (which are) a necessary back-to-school item?

Me, I might snag a few pairs of pants over the weekend, but otherwise, I'm good. My only issue this weekend is the Dread Sked, which is even more complicated than usual. Too many people, not enough slots, just like always. Thankfully, there's still a week to tweak it.

(Lack of) Fire Safety 101: It's bad enough when your lawnmower blows up as you try to start it. It's even worse when you try to throw the gas can out of the garage to avoid the flames, but you miss.

Sticking it to the man, in small denominations: An Indiana man showed his frustration with having to pay a large (as in over $12,000) tax bill by doing so in $1 bills and coins.

Tour de Amputation: A Japanese bicyclist got so caught up in the race he was riding that he didn't even notice that one of his legs had come off during the ride.

This would be even funnier if they added ".com" to the end of their last name: A Chinese couple has rankled government officials by choosing "@" for the name of their new baby.

Thursday Smorgasbord

All the news that's fit to print type and hit the "publish" button:

• Remember the blind guy who was caught driving drunk? He's been caught again.


• A woman attacked a man in a Seatlle karaoke bar because she didn't like the way he was singing a Coldplay song.


• Happy cat: A New Jersey feline survived a house fire by hiding in the couch.


• Not-so-happy cat: A man who was upset with his ex-girlfriend took it out on her cat by castrating it with a box cutter.


• Someone who robbed a bakery in Phoenix took several boxes of cupcakes, but left the cash.


• A New Hampshire homeowner called police after she saw a couple having sex on her trampoline.


• A British university lecturer hopes to improve his students' spelling performances by publicly shaming them; in other words, he plans to publish the most egregious of their errors in a professional journal.


• Interesting thought for today: What would have happened if Elvis had never been born?

Blowing out the candle (singular): Happy birthday to my youngest nephew Micah, who's a year old today. Cute baby picture here.

Supermarket Loyalty Programs: Is Something Bad in the Cards?

Longtime reader Gary P. left a couple of interesting comments in Sunday's post (about the adulterer who was "caught" by an online floral company) that I thought deserved further discussion here. This was his original comment:

The purchase records of supermarket "loyalty" cards are another data source being mined in legal proceedings. Folks in divorce proceedings who bought condoms or pregnancy tests on a "loyalty" card without the other spouse's knowledge, or people in child custody cases who bought cigarettes or liquor or lots of fatty foods on their "loyalty" cards wind up with lots of 'splainin' to do in front of the judge regarding their fitness for custody.

NoCards.org had a link to a story some time back of a Seattle-area firefighter who was convicted of arson primarily based on the evidence that he used a "loyalty" card to buy some firestarting material similar to what was used to burn down his house shortly after. Just before he was to be sent to jail, someone else stepped forward to claim responsibility for the fire and the innocent firefighter was freed.

But hey, "loyalty" cards are all about "convenience" and "great price savings," right?

The story he's referring to is here, and the writer notes that "The moral of this story is that even the most innocent database can be used against a person in a criminal investigation turning their lives completely upside down."

(I've been trying to find a link for the story I heard on the radio several years ago, where someone sent a reporter out to pretend that they had found a set of keys with a card from a local chain attached to the keyring. If I recall it correctly, they called the store and were able to get the person's home address from the number on the card, despite not being asked to verify that they were in fact the card's owner. If memory also serves, the person at the store who did that got in quite a bit of trouble.)

Some of the stories at nocards.org are certainly enough to make one think twice about using these cards. I don't have that big of a personal dog in this fight, because I do the bulk of my food shopping at Super Target, which is cardless thus far. I'll occasionally get gas at Tom Thumb with their card, or maybe some breakfast stuff if it's late and ST is closed, and I use my Albertson's card far less than that. Still, the question is this: Should companies like this be required to turn over such information to law enforcement officers and/or attorneys of other parties in lawsuits? And will people cut up their club cards well in advance of the time when, say, insurance companies start monitoring one's purchases (of, say, junk food, beer, cigarettes, etc.) and using that information to deny a claim? How much paranoia is healthy in this situation? Feel free to chime in using the comments.

A view from the other side of the checkstand: One of the things I discovered while researching this post was the Mad Cashier blog. It appears to be written by a DFW-area worker who was a casualty of the recent Albertson's downsizing.

(More links later, or tomorrow.)

Floored by the Tone

I had a Big Serious Post about a major social issue planned for today, but things took a wonderful detour instead.

The distraction came in the form of a simple MySpace bulletin from whomever runs Bill Frisell's site (maybe the man himself?), announcing today's release of a CD from a group called Floratone, featuring Frisell on guitars and effects, UNT and SNL alumnus Matt Chamberlain on drums, and...two producers? OK, now I remember reading about this group.

Here's what happened: In much the same way that the legendary Teo Macero assembled the Miles Davis masterpieces Bitches Brew*
and On the Corner, Tucker Martine and Lee Townsend took raw material generated by Frisell and Chamberlain's studio jams and ran with it--editing, looping and processing it until they came up with a set of "songs." From there, bassist Victor Knauss (of Frisell's West Coast group) came in and added bass lines, and Frisell wrote horn and string parts to be played by Ron Miles (cornet) and Eyvind Kang (violin/viola). Chamberlain and Frisell added some more tracks of their own, and, two years after the initial studio jams, Floratone was born.

This isn't music that's easy to describe with one or two simple words, as it doesn't really fit into a specific genre. John Kelman of All About Jazz calls it Ambient Americana Sound Sculpting, while co-producer Townsend chooses "futuristic roots music." All I can say is that it's a fascinating combination of sounds--not 100% jazz, but there's a strong element of that in there, along with Chamberlain's catchy grooves, Frisell's trademark sound painting and the cool, skronky effects added by the producers. (Incidentally, the band's name is a hybrid of Martine's Flora studio and Townsend's Tonefield Productions.)

The band's website generously allows the first five tunes on the CD to be played in their entirety, and I heartily recommend checking them out. Having just seen Frisell in concert recently and purchased one of his CD's, I've been getting into things that have been a bit off the beaten path. The CD has already been ordered, and the website will keep me sated until the package arrives.

*Uh-oh...there goes my blog's "G" rating, I bet...

Weird gadget of the week: As the temperature continues to top 100 degrees in the Metroplex this week, office workers who are not fortunate enough to work in casual settings might enjoy this device: A USB necktie cooler that plugs right into a laptop! (It's a Babelfish translation from a Japanese site, so the instructions contain a wonderful helping of Engrish. Hat tip: Lileks, over at buzz.

The iBill is a New Kind of iBook, In a Way

Now that the iPhone has been out for a bit over a month, people are starting to get their first bills for the new service...and evidently, they're huge--not necessarily in price (though that could be the case as well), but in sheer volume. Ben at Ars Technica posts that his bill was 52 pages in length:

As you enjoy your weekend, ponder this bit of humor: while the iPhone may be master of the digital mobile experience (for now), dead trees come in for a flogging, as AT&T's iPhone bills are quite impressive in their own right. We're starting to get bills for the iPhone here at Ars, and while many of us have had smartphones for some time, we've never seen a bill like this.

One of our bills is a whopping 52 pages long, and my own bill is 34 pages long. They're printed on both sides, too. What gives?

The AT&T bill itemizes your data usage whenever you surf the Internet via EDGE, even if you're signed up for the unlimited data plan. AT&T also goes into an incredible amount of detail to tell you—well, almost nothing. For instance, I know that on July 27 at 3:21 p.m. I had some data use that, under the To/From heading, AT&T has helpfully listed as "Data Transfer." The Type of file? "Data." My total charge? $0.00.

This mind-numbing detail goes on for 52 double-sided pages (for 104 printed pages!) with absolutely no variance except the size of the files.

Read the whole thing; there are pictures.

As I've said before, I'm in no hurry to get one of these things, though I'm sure it'll happen sometime down the road. And when it does, I'd have to think seriously about taking the plunge into e-billing if they're going to mail me War and Peace every month. (My reasons for not doing e-billing thus far? Among other things, I would be nervous about somehow missing a bill; I have a separate email address for "commercial" concerns, and it gets more than its share of spam. I'd also have to figure out a different system besides the old-fashioned bill holder--with its numbered slots for each day of the month--that sits above me on the computer desk, and I'd have to print the e-bills out using my own paper and [overpriced] toner. For now, I'll kick it old-school on this one.)

I'd hate to see the printout for this one: Meanwhile, in Malaysia, a wireless company sent a dead guy a bill for $218 trillion dollars--this despite the fact that the man's son had gotten the service disconnected in January.

Cheating Spouse Tripped Up by Toll Tag

People who feel that they might be the victims of a cheating spouse have plenty of tools at their disposal to find out the truth, be they old-school (spy supplies, actual private detectives, credit card bills) or new-school (GPS records, cell phone records, surveillance cameras). But I bet that a philandering spouse would never expect to have been caught in the act by electronic toll records:

Adulterers, beware: Your cheatin' heart might be exposed by E-ZPass.
E-ZPass and other electronic toll collection systems are emerging as a powerful means of proving infidelity. That's because when your spouse doesn't know where you've been, E-ZPass does.

"E-ZPass is an E-ZPass to go directly to divorce court, because it's an easy way to show you took the off-ramp to adultery," said Jacalyn Barnett, a New York divorce lawyer who has used E-ZPass records a few times.

Lynne Gold-Bikin, a Pennsylvania divorce lawyer, said E-ZPass helped prove a client's husband was being unfaithful: "He claimed he was in a business meeting in Pennsylvania. And I had records to show he went to New Jersey that night."

Generally mounted inside a vehicle's windshield behind the rearview mirror, E-ZPass devices communicate with antennas at toll plazas, automatically deducting money from the motorist's prepaid account.

Of the 12 states in the Northeast and Midwest that are part of the E-ZPass system, agencies in seven states provide electronic toll information in response to court orders in criminal and civil cases, including divorces, according to an Associated Press survey.

The obvious way to avoid get caught cheating is simply to not cheat in the first place, but, as the article makes obvious, it's best to cover one's tracks carefully when doing so. In fact--despite some justifiable concerns about privacy, common sense is the best way to go:

Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman from Georgia turned Libertarian and privacy rights advocate, said people who want to protect their privacy shouldn't use electronic toll systems.

"People are foolish to buy into these systems without thinking, just because they want to save 20 seconds of time going through a toll booth," he said.

But for those of us with nothing to hide, they sure area convenience, aren't they?

(It's important to point out that I "misspelled" the term "toll tag" on purpose; "TollTag" as all one word is the trademark of our local North Texas Tollway Authority, which was not profiled in the article, and their policy in this area is unknown to me. Even though it's tempting around here to use that term generically, like Thermos, Kleenex or Dumpster, I didn't want anyone from the NTTA reading this and getting the wrong idea. OK, there--the legal stuff is out of the way. 5.7% APR, all products not available in all areas, your mileage may vary.)

1-800-YOU-BLEW-MY-COVER: In a related story, a man here in Texas is suing 1-800-FLOWERS for inadvertently revealing an affair to the man's wife. He bought flowers through the service for his girlfriend and, citing the company's own policy, asked them to keep the purchase private, but the company sent a thank-you card--with a record of the name of the recipient and the "I love you" message to her--to the man's home, where the wife read it, turning what had been an amicable divorce between the two into something much less so.

A possible movie sequel for next summer: Snakes and Crocs on a Plane (and by "crocs," they don't mean the shoes).

The shape of even more jazz to come: Ft. Worth native Ornette Coleman--still going strong at age 77--gets a front-page profile in the GuideLive section of today's DMN. Among other things, the article notes that he's doing much better since he collapsed from heat exhaustion at the Bonnaroo Festival in June. There's video and audio of Ornette here.