Cheerful Curmudgeon

I am fed up with wasting clients’ dollars “fixing” web sites so that they look good in Internet Explorer 6. IE7 has been out for 2 1/2 years. IE8 is available as a free beta. There are lots of other browsers available for free. All of these browsers work better than IE6. If you still use IE6, it’s time to get over it and move on. Upgrade for free to something better.

This web site, and the others for which I am responsible, now display a warning similar to this when visited with IE6:

Sample IE6 warning message

For more information, see Moving Past Internet Explorer 6.

Watch this. I think Vanessa Hidary has something to say to all of us.

I have ranted about our national paranoia before. We are still paranoid and it still bothers me. Over the last few days, I have read about:

• AirTran Airways ejected nine people from a flight (including two women and three children, ages 7, 4, and 2) because two of the men in the group discussed the proximity of their seats to the engines.
• Amtrak police arrested photographer Duane Kerzic for refusing to delete pictures he had taken of Amtrak trains. Kerzic took the photos while standing on the public platform of New York’s Penn Station. He was trying to enter Amtrak’s own Picture Our Train photo contest.

AirTran has since apologized to the people who were removed from the flight and given them full refunds. Amtrak has changed Kerzic’s arrest charge to trespassing.

We all know the old joke: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. As a society, we seem to have taken this to heart… and it is wrecking our quality of life. Our paranoia is making people miserable while neither saving lives nor improving safety. If we want to keep people alive, to improve the level of safety in our lives, we are working way to hard in much the wrong areas.

Here is one example. I am quite sure that you can think of dozens more.

In 2001, just 2,976 Americans died from the terrorist attack using airliners. I say “just,” though this is a terrible trajedy, because 17,448 people died from alcohol related traffic fatalities in the same year. Worse, the drunk driving deaths go on year after year after year: 17,419 more people in 2002; 17,013 people in 2003; 16,694 died in 2004; 16,885 in 2005; and 16,005 in 2006.

That’s about 101,000 dead from drunk drivers and about 3,000 dead from maniacs in airplanes.

What the heck are we doing? How can anyone, in good conscience, profess that all of this paranoia is about saving lives?

The beginning of the new year is a good time for resolutions. Let’s resolve to set aside our paranoia and turn our attention and our resources to things which can actually make our lives better. We live in a bountiful world, courtesy of a loving G-d and the the loving attentions of our fellow human beings. Let’s enjoy it.

I know what I am going to dress up as tonight. A Halloween costume so scary that my wife will be upset that I am wearing it in public. I am going to wear a disguise so socially unacceptable that three entire school districts will close for a day to assure they their students do not come anywhere near these creatures.

I am going to dress up as a voting United States citizen.

Yup; you read that right. I am going to dress up as a voter because voters are so potentially dangerous that several school districts (Ft. Zumwalt, Francis Howell, and Wentzville) have canceled classes on election day, November 4. I blogged about this last February, in Paranoia is Not Safety. Since then, I forgot about it, figuring that this was so ridiculous that nothing would come of it. Wrong!

When I look around my county, I see students coming into contact with voters all over the place all the time: in stores, in shopping malls, at movie theaters, on sidewalks, at public libraries, in public parks, etc. Of course, no one recognizes these voters as the predators that they are because 364 days of the year, the voters are cleverly disguised as ordinary people including trustworthy neighbors. Thank goodness that for one day of the year, all of these perpetrators are unmasked and gather at polling places so that we can keep our children away from them.

Someone should make a list of all of these voters. If it is not safe to let our children be in the same building with them on November 4, I cannot imagine how it would magically become safe on November 5. If any of the school teachers, administrators, and support staff happen to vote, by no means should they be allowed back into the schools the day after election day. Someone should also check for 18 year old voters who are still enrolled in high school, a particularly pernicious bunch. These heinous fiends intermingle with teenagers on a daily basis and might never be spotted if we do not catch them at the ballot box.

Here are a few tidbits from “Several Schools to Close on Election Day,” published in the Suburban Journal, October 29, 2008, page C1. I cannot link to the article because it did not appear in the on-line edition of the paper.

Fort Zumwalt School District Superintendent Bernard DuBray said,

They’re expecting a huge turnout. We’re concerned with that kind of turnout about the security in the building, so it just made sense to close the schools.

What kind of turnout is that, Dr. DuBray? Do voters become a marauding pack above a certain critical mass? Is there evidence of such behavior? Has it been observed in the wild?

Rich Chrismer, director of elections for St. Charles County responded to phone calls from people “wondering why he would allow strangers to vote in a school building” by getting the superintendents “to agree to shut down their schools on November 4.” Mr. Chrismer, did you ever think to point out that these voters are not strangers? Did you mention that the voters are people who live within the same voting district as the school? Did you tell the callers that these voters live in the same neighborhoods as the kids who attend the schools?

[Added 11/4/08] I sent a copy of this posting to Dr. DuBray. He was kind enough to reply and point out that the newspaper misreported this item. All of his schools are closed on election day. The make-up day is Friday, November 7. It gets more absurd: The same Dr. DuBray who decided that voters are too dangerous also decided that they are not too dangerous if the students have already missed a day of school recently. Some of the Ft. Zumwalt schools will hold classes on November 4 because they had been closed on October 9 and those students need to make up the day. Are the voters dangerous or not, Dr. DuBray?

This foolishness will not stop until we citizens, that would be you and me, loudly voice our opinions. We deal a hard blow to our children and ourselves and our country when we pretend that students need to be physically separated from American citizens exercising the right to vote.

I am down on most career politicians (are there any other kinds?) but the Republican party has become particularly scary during the Bush administration. The Grand Old Party has shifted farther and farther right. McCain and the current party leaders are grandly continuing this new tradition. It looks like McCain’s platform, like Bush’s, boils down to this:

• Fundamental Christian Americans know what is right, not just for America but for the whole world.
• The laws of the USA should reflect fundamental Christian beliefs (e.g., anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage).
• The United States of America has a moral obligation bring its vision of “right” and “truth” to everyone in the world.
• The ends justify the means (witness the Iraq war and trumped up security theater which does little to actually enhance our national security).

Selection of Sarah Palin as vice presidential candidate illustrates this brilliantly. She is certainly pro-life and very Christian. She is also powerfully driven to realize her visions for the city and state which she has governed. She is such a “babe” that one of my neighbors actually has a sign in the front yard reading, “I (heart) Sarah.” Is that supposed to be a good reason to vote for someone???

Palin comes with a bunch of political baggage neatly summarized by an email written by Anne Kilkenny which is circulating on the internet. In all my years dealing with email, this is the first chain letter which I remember being objectively verified as factually accurate. Even with all of Palin’s bizarre and sometimes illegal behavior, McCain chose her as his running-mate. Why? I think because what she did is less important to McCain than that she follows his “platform” as I wrote it.

Do I want a president who will tolerate a VP who has knowingly violated Alaska ethics act to try to get someone fired? No.

Do I want a president who will tolerate a VP who creates the political and legal turmoil which is coming to light these days? No.

I love the inconvenience of airport security. The fact that I am paying for the privilege of being inconvenienced, in lieu of having my security enhanced, makes the whole experience all the more charming. Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg took all of these goodies through airport security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Read Goldberg’s entire article on airport security at The Atlantic’s web site.

I buy a lot of music on-line and it breaks down like this:

• 1,268 completely unlocked MP3 files, easily playable on any computer or device, all purchased from eMusic.com. (Here’s a link to get 25 FREE iPod® compatible downloads from eMusic! Choose from over 2.8 Million songs! )
• 0 DRM-locked files from iTunes, Audible.com, etc.

I hate paying money to be abused. Here is this morning’s tale of woe regarding customer “service” at the Anthem insurance company.

A few weeks ago, I received a letter telling me that the co-pay on my Zetia would increase dramatically and that I should switch to a statin instead. That is patently ridiculous advice, though, because I am also taking a statin (Lipitor). Were my cholesterol controllable with only a statin, I would not be taking both a statin and Zetia. So I just called the member service phone number and had this conversation:

Me: What is the process for appealing this increase in my co-payment?

Anthem: There is no appeals process.

Me: To whom would I send a letter appealing this increase?

Anthem: To our Grievance and Appeals department.

pregnant pause while I wait for more useful information to be offered — none was

Me: And what is the mailing address of the Grievance and Appeals department?

Anthem: You can send your letter to: Anthem, Grievance and Appeals Department – MO, PO Box 33200, Louisville, KY 40233.

I bit back my sarcastic questions about why she had told me that there was no appeals process. For what I pay for health insurance, why do I expect that I should get an honest answer to a simple and straightforward question?

Am I the only one baffled by the notion that a pregnant teenager is somehow a worthy part of a presidential political campaign? The last time I thought about teenage pregnancy (which is depressingly often, since I have two teenage sons), I considered a pregnancy to be an “Oh shit” moment which would have to be followed by some very heavy conversations with the parents about what comes next. Were it my child who is pregnant, and thankfully my children are not, I cannot imaging a) publicizing and politicizing the event, and b) focusing so heavily on the decision to marry and keep the child and not at all on the bad judgment which led up to the pregnancy.

While the “right to choose” vs. “right to life” debate is certainly a worthy one, I think a more interesting issue is that of helping teenagers avoid pregnancy in the first place. Equally interesting is how to break the cycle of premarital pregnancy which seems to run in families. I.e., a child conceived out of wedlock is more likely to conceive more children out of wedlock. How do we reach, and teach, those teens?

Sarah Palin may have been one of those teens. According to this article in AMERICAblog.com, Palin’s son Track was born just eight months after Palin married. Regardless of whether the boy was conceived before the wedding or born prematurely, this does give us all a good reason to think hard about teenage pregnancy.

Palin, by the way, does not impress me as a good person to have in the White House. I love this poem by my friend jsg:

The News

I am in Wasilla, Alaska
Tracking the orbit of Governor Sarah Palin
Whose pick for VP has energized Republicans everywhere
And independents like myself
Who are moved to the center
By this most courageous appointment
By such smart politicians.

I hope the photos I am attaching
Complement the text.

Here I am in front of the field
Where the Governor got smooched by her future husband
They will marry and eight months later
Her first child will be born
Which no doubt is the basis for the philosophy
behind her later lack of commitment
To sex education and support for unwed mothers in her state.

Her second child, by the way,
Will go to this high school
Here I am standing in front of it
Where she too will smooch her boyfriend
Get pregnant
And whose pregnancy will be announced to the world
By her mother
Whose willingness to sacrifice the privacy of her daughter
To her ambitions for the vice Presidency is only exceeded
By her willingness to rear her own special needs child
In a fishbowl with staff
Hillary Clinton’s identification with ambition is over forever
Since the Republican Sarah Palin
Has demonstrated to what lengths true ambition
Will take a person
And how clever Republicans must be to jettison all their values
To support her.

Here I am in front of the State House
Where not one person who served with Sarah Palin
Was called during the so-called vetting
They are clever the Republicans
And John McCain is some maverick reformer
To have made such a careful decision.

Here’s the road where Governor Palin’s husband
earned a DUI
and was taken to jail.

Here’s the law office of the lawyers just hired
To run interference for Governor Palin over the firing
Of her ex brother-in-law
Who left his employment
Under suspicious conditions
But of course John McCain’s people knew all that
And were courageous and reformers nevertheless.

Here’s an empty room
Where Sarah Palin has avoided
Speaking with the Press.

Here’s a picture of me in the
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD
Both the Republicans and Democrats are courting me
The future belongs to me
I am delighted to be here
And from where I stand -

The Republicans are doing a really bang-up job
Of earning my loyalty.

Your friend in the center,
jsg, usa

Woo hoo! This afternoon, I passed my glider pilot checkride in N5751S, a Schweizer 2-33A! I am now officially allowed to fly airplanes with either one or zero engines.

I owe it all to the Silver Creek Glider Club and the good folks there.