techno.blog("Dion")

I think I have found a very important correlation that should be someone’s PhD.

My hypothesis is that the size of toy labels is in proportion to the number of lawyers in your society.

This came to me as I see the size of labels on toys. The picture below says it all.

Of course, most kids like to play with the labels more than the toys themselves, so maybe this is a selling point, but man this is getting ridiculous.

Soon we will have to swear some oaths before we can get through the packaging. A digital note will be sent back to basecamp to let the lawyers know “Yup, Daddy said it was OK. Now he can never sue us! mwhahaha”

I thought that the war on Christmas was won this year, with Walmart switching back to “Merry Christmas” from “Happy Holidays”.

Then I saw that my co-worker Jim got a Frasier Fur from the local Home Depot.

My family took the traditional route. We hunted out in the wilds of the country (Brooklyn, WI) and we bagged a tree. Sam was strapped to my backpack. We braved the snow. We bagged a wild tree, and helped out the locals.

I do respect that it probably would take a few hours to find the tree section at Home Depot, but come on Halbergs….. don’t be embarrassed by a brit next year.

I learn new things everyday, and today I got to learn about the different TV experiences of the sexes.

<gratuitous generalization>
The male likes to watch TV in the basement. The darker the better. The larger the TV the better. Having pizza with it is nice, as is a beer.

The female likes to be upside in her bedroom. Watching Sex and the City in her pajamas, maybe with some ice cream. The size of the TV matters not.
</gratuitous generalization>

I am in a mixed mood at the moment. It is fantastic that we will have checks and balances with the Democrats taking the house, and maybe even the senate (although I fear for the long drawn out process in Virginia).

Locally though I am quite dismayed at the referendum voting.

How people can vote discrimination into the constitution is mind boggling to me and is quite disgusting. I also feel the moral compass when it comes to the death penalty. Wisconsin was the first state to get rid of the death penalty, and that is something that impresses me, and now we can face having it back? This is the direction we want to take? Showing our children that killing is bad by killing people?

This all goes to show the purpleness of the state, or more correctly the blue pupils of Madison and Milwaukee compared to the red iris. Pull back and you see a purple that is telling.

I am heartened by the vote on bringing the troops home even though it was flabbergasting to read some of the verbiage in some of the communities.

One of the ballots basically read like: “Do you think that we should stay in Iraq until all organized terrorism is eliminated”. This basically means: forever.

When watching a Bill Mahr show, the right wing floozie talked about the torture craziness that got passed as “Jack Bauer Justice”.

I started off as a 24 fan. As a T.V. show it is fun, and how they made the clock part of the show was ingenious. However, we have stopped watching it in recent seasons as you can’t help but wonder what messages it sends (well it is pretty obvious). Running into a room and putting electrodes on someone shouting “TELL ME WHERE THE BOMB IS” may make for good telly, but that doesn’t actually work. If you did that to me I would tell you where some bomb is to get the electrodes off. Studies have proven this doesn’t work too (this is all besides the point on ethics).

Having this guy use 24 to prove a point scared me. “You all love Jack Bauer. He always gets the guy. We just want to enable Jack to do his job”. Ouch.

Now it is time to turn off the TV and play cards to get the real Jack Bauer.

As soon as MTV came online we knew that musicians had to think about another part of their art: the music video.

This was great news for good looking performers, and video directors with crazy ideas.

As with any medium, the majority of videos were quite boring. It took time to learn that a video didn’t have to just be a recording of the band singing the song!

Peter Gabriel did great things such as Sledgehammer.

In 2006 music videos are just another thing you produce with your songs. How important are they though?

With the advent of myspace, youtube, google video, and others, I think that they can make your band.

A great example is OK GO and their highly creative treadmill video:

I would be willing to bet that they have a LOT more fans due to this video, and the pure coverage that it has gotten both online and in traditional media.

If I was to create a new band, with the huge competition out there, I would be looking for a killer creative music video and seed it all over the shop. If I was good looking and had no talent though, I would signup with American Idol :/

Progress. You back up the car and it beeps if anything is close. It can sound annoying, but hopefully it stops people running over people behind them.

The problem is that it gives you a false sense of security. I now know a handful of people who have all done the same thing:

Whenever I reverse out of my garage, the car beeps as it is close to the side of the garage. Yesterday, when I reversed out, it beeped, and then I hit a car that was parked behind me.

I need to keep reminding myself to not assume what the beeping is in reference too, else I will get into trouble too :)

I have been enjoying the US Open, especially Andre’s farewell. His first round match was a lot more enjoyable than the women’s final today!

While talking about the popularity of the sport, I got thinking about how there is no way for people to know that you are a tennis fan.

If someone walked past you wearing a Lacoste t-shirt you probably aren’t thinking “I bet that is an andy roddick / tennis fan!”.

Roger Federer is wearing the bizarre jackets, but I doubt people will start wearing those. Some of the players have unique style, but again, the public are as likely to pick this up as they are to wear clothes from the runway.

What can tennis do to change this? Cricket had the same problem. At one time we all had boring white outfits (at least we had the crests of teams!). Then the marketing machine got in action and with shorter cricket, we started to see countries and counties having their own brands, and players names were put on the back. Then you could get an England outfit with ALMAER on the back to show your pride.

Is there anyway that tennis could do the same? Hmm.

Also, the players could become more NASCAR-esque:

… just think of the money they are leaving on the table.

This is a friday post :) I had the pleasure of taking my son to swim lessons for the first time today.

At the event I was surrounded by Mom’s and kids, and since this is a baby lesson, we had to sing and play in the water.

Not only do I not know all of the songs used, those that I did find inthe back of my mind had different lyrics.

E.g.

Hokey Pokey vs. Hokey Cokey (and we shake it around a lot more in england!)

Noble Duke of York vs. Grand Old Duke of York (come on, surely we are right on this one).

It was so fun to swim around with Sam though. I used to think “ah those poor parents having to do X when they want to go out partying”. Now I know that most of the time you would RATHER be playing with you kids than anything else!

Graham Glass has bravely started to blog about his consitution.

It is a brave thing to do, as it tells everyone a LOT about him. A lot more than a post on your cat, or your coding style/preferences.

He has a lot of good ideas, and seems basically libertarian.

In a perfect world his ideas could really work, but I think that there is a flaw.

His government would only be in control of a few things (defense, policing, etc) and a bulk of the money would come in via free markets.

One item talks about Charity, and how it is better than welfare.

If we relied on people giving, there is a chance that we all step up to the plate and the world is good.

My problem though is that this puts HUGE power into the rich (not that this isn’t true in the current world) and those with money to give (although I know that people with little money statistically give a lot more money than those with more money).

Those with money can choose the charities that they give too, and we will see even more lobbying for charities. Many groups of people will get nothing, and will be in real dire straits.

With education being in the private market, surely the rich will have the best schools (not saying this isn’t the case now).

I would rather strive for a country that was willing to pitch in for the better of the entire society. Talk to people in Denmark (include many other countries) and most do not complain about their “high taxes” but are PROUD of the services available, and how they treat their people as whole.

One of the major issues is that you do not choose your parents. This doesn’t just affect direct implications (how good your parents are at parenting) but it also puts you into an initial social class. This means that many start way behind the eight ball and have to work that much harder to get out.

Graham does have some interesting ideas here, and I agree with a lot of the social ideas (marriage, religion, etc) but feel there is more to discuss on some of the other social ideas.

Graham is a successful entrepreneur already, and when he sells Education 2.0, maybe he can buy an island and put this constitution to a test via the republic of Grahamland :)