Wickersham's Conscience

The Oatmeal is arguably the worst-drawn, popular comic on the web. It would certainly be on the short list if it isn’t demonstrably the worst. But the very bad art can’t defeat the very good messages. A case in point:

The Oatmeal is drawn by Matthew Inman. He reports that the idea for this cartoon came from a reader. The reader was vague about the origin of the idea. Inman tried to perform his due diligence, but it turned out that there was a much older, 2009 cartoon on the same meme over at Atheist Cartoons,

Inman has apologized, which is pretty much all you can do in these circumstances. But WC draws two additional lessons from The Oatmeal Experience.

First, it’s increasingly clear to WC that public avowal of atheism is less unacceptable than formerly, to the despair of WC’s Christianist acquaintances. There was a time in this country when atheism was widely regarded as the moral equivalent of child molestation. Atheists have been criminally prosecuted for blasphemy in America. So amid all of the general deteriorata, there are some positive developments.

Second, truly original material is hard. There are hundred of thousands of bloggers all chasing the same set of memes. While there are certainly bloggers who steal without credit, at least among the passably honest bloggers, it’s an unavoidable by-product of lots of authors and a limited set of current events. WC has certainly read other folks’ blogs and used the ideas there as the starting point for his own works. The present blog is obviously a case in point.

So if some of WC’s blog posts resemble other bloggers’ work, keep in mind the blogger/subject ratio. Perhaps the issue can be the next blog meme.

George Washington, by Gilbert Stuart, 1796

Everyone has a few pet peeves. Okay, WC demonstrably has more than a few. But one of WC’s pet peeves is the whole business with “Presidents’ Day.”

Alaska law makes the third Monday in February “Presidents’ Day.” Of course, it used to be celebrated as Washington’s Birthday, and actually celebrated on February 22, the real date George Washington was born. And the federal holiday is still called Washington’s Birthday. None of this “Presidents’ Day” stuff for the Feds, proving they can get some things right. Washington’s birthday got changed to a floating date as apart of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, a triumph of convenience over history, back in 1971.

Some states, including Alaska, formerly recognized Abraham Lincoln‘s birthday as a holiday. Sensible states still do.  But apparently someone at the Alaska Chamber of Commerce decided having two holidays in one month was wasteful. But then the Chamber of Commerce is still annoyed by the ideas of holidays in general, minimum wages and overtime. The Chamber of Commerce thinks Foxconn is just fine and that we should stop scrutinizing it. But WC has again indulged his tendency to digress.

No, WC’s peeve is that by celebrating “Presidents’ Day” seems to imply we need to honor all presidents. Not just Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. No , the generic Alaska version of the holiday demands we honor Richard Nixon, Warren G. Harding, Millard Filmore and, shudder, George W. Bush.

WC isn’t having any of it. WC is celebrating Washington’s Birthday today, thank you very much.

If you agree with WC that George W. Bush doesn’t deserve a state holiday, write you legislators and demand they amend state law to restore the honor to the Father of Our Country, not to the sad posse of hacks that have served latterly. The Legislature’s not doing anything anyway. If they can spend hours debating and tweaking a resolution addressed to themselves, they have time for this more important task.

So here’s to you, George <clink>. And thanks.

Update: You think WC is worked up about this? Check out Stonekettle’s screed over at The Mudflats.

Olympus Logo

WC’s photography buddy Richard Ditch was kind enough to forward WC a link to still more bad news about Olympus: apparently, the cops and regulatory authorities will be raiding Olympus’s office on Monday morning. You’ll recall Olympus, which manufactures WC’s preferred camera equipment, has been in a slow motion catastrophic avalanche.

First, WC has to tip his hat to the Japanese authorities, who are apparently kind enough to warn the target of a criminal investigation of an impending raid. That’s a really  different culture. Can you imagine that in Alaska? Hey Bill Allen, we’re going to put a secret microphone and television camera in your hotel suite…  The mind boggles.

But the link inspired WC to look further into the scandal. Reuters has done a fine job of investigating and reporting. The accounting and corporate machinations are ridiculously complex, but, at the risk of oversimplification, here’s what seems to have happened.

Back in the late 1980s, Olympus invested in some risky securities. When the Japanese stock market crashed in 1989, Olympus was staring at big losses. Instead of taking the losses, Olympus has attempted to hide them in a long series ever more convoluted and expensive accounting scams. Eventually, they had more than $1 billion in losses to hide. The clumsy effort to pay some of those losses off, by exorbitant commissions in an over-priced acquisition of Gyrus, a British medical equipment company. The real purpose of the commission was to payoff some of that hidden, off-books debt.

The scam was reported bythe Japanese magazie Facta, then a little-known investigative journal. New Olympus president Michael Woodford tried to find out what was gong on. When he was stone-walled by senior corporate board members, he tried to hire an auditor. He was fired. He went public with his concerns. And now it has all come out, 25 years of fraud. 25-year old chickens coming home to roost.

Stay tuned. There’s sure to be more bad news to come.

WC’s frequent – one reader called it “unrelenting” – sarcasm  turns out to distinctly helpful to WC’s readers. Seriously. Smithsonian Magazine reports,

Sarcasm seems to exercise the brain more than sincere statements do. Scientists who have monitored the electrical activity of the brains of test subjects exposed to sarcastic statements have found that brains have to work harder to understand sarcasm.

That extra work may make our brains sharper, according to another study. College students in Israel listened to complaints to a cellphone company’s customer service line. The students were better able to solve problems creatively when the complaints were sarcastic as opposed to just plain angry. Sarcasm “appears to stimulate complex thinking and to attenuate the otherwise negative effects of anger,” according to the study authors.

Feel free to insert your sarcastic rejoinder here, but this conclusion is backed by serious science. John Haiman, a linguist at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, his Talk is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation and the Evolution of Language, wrote, “Sarcastic statements are sort of a true lie. You’re saying something you don’t literally mean, and the communication works as intended only if your listener gets that you’re insincere.” Because appreciating sarcasm requires a bit more thinking, and because exercise is good for the brain, appreciating sarcasm makes to just a little smarter.

Note the equivocation: “appreciating.” Your average Dunning-Kruger challenged Teabagger misses all the exercise because he (or she) is unable to recognize, let alone appreciate, sarcasm.

Overall, this is good news. If your four year old chid says, “Smooth move, Mom” after you’ve done something clumsy, your child’s sarcasm is a sign of intelligence and not just a smart mouth. If you have a brain injury, or a psychological condition, you are much less likely be able to recognize sarcasm.

Unfortunately, there’s no data for WC’s preferred writing tone: irony. It’s WC’s gentler cousin. Great.

There’s a long and thoughtful study on the impact of high energy prices from The New America Foundation that WC strongly recommends. There are some very effective charts and interactive graphics, too. While the study’s focus is on gasoline prices, those of who live in northern climes recognize the same issues apply to heating oil and natural gas.

Read the article, but WC would summarize the key point this way: affordable housing leads to a long commute. A long commute means more gasoline. A tough economy means it’s difficult to buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle. One result is high price inelasticity for gasoline; that is, when the price goes up demand doesn’t go down. And because demand doesn’t go down, neither does price. In the meantime, those who can move closer, which reduces the value of homes further from the jobs, creating a whole new liquidity trap for the middle class.

Politicians who want to solve the problem by “finding more gas” don’t recognize that the combination of worldwide demand and increasingly expensive production costs means you simply can’t produce your way out of the problem. It also means that, subject to bumps up and down, over time the price of gasoline will only increase.

There aren’t any elegant solutions. We’re in for a long, painful period of weaning ourselves off of gasoline.

It’s a very good report, and the more you think about the implications beyond the report, the more concerned you will be.

It’s likely a sign of old age, but from time to time WC is appalled by the deterioration in the quality of life. Little things and major things. The Deteriorata thread of blog posts explores and rails about those changes.

WC travels on business and vacation far more than he would like. In Fairbanks, Alaska, that means mostly travel on Alaska Airlines. WC has a membership in the Board Room, Alaska Airlines’ pricey lounge system. It’s generally quieter, there’s superior internet service and WC can get a little work done.

WC received an email from Melyssa Schug, Manager, Airport Club Rooms today, talking about “Important Board Room Improvements & Policy Updates.” After a very bad flight back from Seattle to Fairbanks, it provoked a response from the normally equanimous WC. Which WC will share with his readers:

Ms. Meylyssa Schug, Manager
Airport Club Rooms
Alaska Airlines
PO Box 24585
Seattle, WA 98124-0585

Dear Ms. Schug -

WC has your email on Board Room “improvements.” Since it is impossible to reach an Alaska Airlines Board Room without a current boarding pass – TSA is fussy about that, isn’t it? – this seems to be more a matter of spin than benefit. You seem to assume we are incapable of seeing the difference.

The requirement of a “same-day ticketed boarding pass” is nonsensical. If WC’s flight leaves at 12:30 AM on Tuesday, and WC checks-in – as required by your airline’s policies – two hours in advance, WC won’t be able to use the Board Room on Monday night, will he? If it were open, of course.

WC assumes WC will now present his boarding pass to a scanner, which will admit him to the board room. Instead of a charming and helpful professional to greet WC at the counter, WC will be greeted by a bar code scanner? So Alaska Airlines can reduce staffing in the Board Room and save a few dollars? Or Alaska Airlines will save itself a few dollars by avoiding the cost of making and distributing Board Room cards?

WC would put this on a par with the food served in first class on WC’s most recent flight: a cold slab of chicken breast smothered in a tasteless, nearly unseasoned white sauce. In fairness, WC could see very small quantities of what might have been dill in the white sauce. But you sure couldn’t taste it. The meal was garnished with eight (8) leaves of lettuce, two small pieces of tomato and a small, inedible hard candy.

And that was after sitting on the ground in the aircraft Seattle for an hour and a quarter with little or no explanation.

If this were really about customers and not profits, you’d add a Board Room module to you Alaska Airlines smart phone app, along with the electronic boarding pass, and have all of the paperwork digitized. But before you could do that you’d have to get your scanners to recognize and read a smart phone-based boarding pass…

Ms. Schug, Alaska Airlines is becoming what its advertisements used to mock: bad food, bad service and a bad experience. WC expects to see recycled plastic parsley soon. Sure, Alaska Airlines has a near-monopoly in and out of Fairbanks, but could you and your employer treat us with a little more intelligence, courtesy and thoughtfulness?

Thanks.

/WC

PS. If you don’t remember plastic parsley, Ms. Schug, try this video, at about 5:23 into the clips.

(WC sent a copy of this letter via email to Ms. Schug on September 28. WC has not had a response.)