Cuz We Said So

43 Coins in a Fountain

I just ran across the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005. Starting in 2007, once the state quarters have run their course, they're going to start making dollar coins with Presidents on them, four a year until they run out of dead ones to honor.

Personally, I think this sounds pretty good. We need to dump the dollar bill and move to a standard -- and widely used -- dollar coin. And it might make some money, too. (Wikipedia claims that the state quarters netted the government over four billion dollars, since people "buy" the coins, and then collect them.)

Summer is Here

As of about 30 seconds ago.  It sort of snuck up on me this year.

Zuiikin Excuses and Indignation

From BoingBoing.net:  Surreal English lessons video from Japan  “Very odd video of Japanese dancing girls and salarymen uttering defensive rebuttals in English.”  I gather it's from a learn-to-speak-English program from an early 90s, and "surreal" only begins to describe it.  One of these days, I’ll have to track down and post “Let’s Sexy English”, which takes this sort of thing to a whole new level.  In the meanwhile, click the video to play

"Fires"

I don't generally suggest musical choices to other people, because my tastes are either too esoteric (New Age and movie scores) or just plain silly (dance music). But I found an album recently I just had to review.

Listening to British Top 40 radio on the internet a while back, I heard a song called "Everbody's Gone to War" by Nerina Pallot (pronounced to rhyme with fallow). The tune might be framed as an anti-war song, but it's so vague it's just as likely about this woman's life rather than Iraq. (Perhaps if I were to watch the video, I'd understand more.) And it's painfully catchy, as a pop song should be. How can you not like a song with the lyric "If love is a drug, I guess we're all sober"?

I tracked down the album, "Fires", which is unfortunately not available domestically. But I ran across it at a Tower Records with that "Import" sticker that means you're going to paying a premium to buy the disc.

It was worth it. Some of the tracks are bouncy pop tunes like "War". Others are Fiona Apple-esque downtempo numbers. Pallot seems to have quite a vocal range, sometime singing high and clear, sometimes throaty and smoky.

I hope she manages to develop a following over here across the pond.

The Leopold Story in a Different Light

I said last week that I was inclined to blame Jason Leopold for credulity for his Rove indictment story, rather than dishonesty, because it would be such a dumb think to lie about.  Having read this WaPo article by Joe Lauria, wherein he suggests Leopold may have impersonated him when speaking with Rove spokesman Mark Corallohowever, I am less inclined to be charitable:

"Joe, I would never, ever have done something like that," Leopold said defiantly.

Except that he has done things like that. His memoir is full of examples. He did break big stories, but he lied to get many of them. He admits lying to the lawyers for Enron executives Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow, making up stories to get them to spill more beans. "I was hoping to get both sides so paranoid that one was going to implicate the other," he wrote.

…We may never know what really happened. Most mainstream news organizations have dismissed the Leopold story as egregiously wrong. But even if he had gotten it right and scooped the world on a major story, his methods would still raise a huge question: What value does journalism have if it exposes unethical behavior unethically? Leopold seems to assume, as does much of the public, that all journalists practice deception to land a story. But that's not true. I know dozens of reporters, but Leopold is only the second one I've known (the first did it privately) to admit to doing something illegal or unethical on the job.

I’ll point out here that just because journalists don’t admit to Lauria that they practice deception does not mean they don’t.  They could be doing it without admitting to it.  In any case, it seems to me there’s an even bigger question than the one Lauria asks, which is less philosophical and more pragmatic:  If you lie to land stories, why should the public trust you when you report stories?

Nuns on a Plane

Our flight has some, so I'm liking our odds of getting to our destination, assuming we eventually get to board.

IAH Tonight

Chaos.  Some stormy weather blew through earlier this evening, and played merry havoc with Continental's operations.  My flight is not so far among the cancelled, so I have my fingers crossed...

I assume "security" is used here ironically

Palestinian security men go on rampage

Back in Blāk

Last week, I had my first sighting of Coca-Cola Blak, the coffee-flavored cola introduced by the Coca-Cola Company in France last year, and just released in the US in April. I immediately bought a few bottles to try it.

It was... uh, strange. Unlike some of Coke's earlier cola flavors, like lemon, lime, and vanilla, this one struck me funny. I didn't immediately dislike it, but I can't say it's my favorite, either. I'm still on the fence, but I think it struck me as too sweet. That might be in part because I drink diet sodas almost exclusively, and this one has high-fructose corn syrup along with its artificial sweeteners. But I've also read that the US formulation is sweeter than the formula released in France, where the coffee flavor was more distinct.

My initial take: if you don't like coffee, you will really, really hate it. If you do like coffee... well, you might like it.

Monroe

I spent the week just past in Monroe, Louisiana, birthplace of Delta Airlines, teaching a class for my current client. Flying in, I was for some reason picturing an even smaller place than Monroe turn out to be.  Not that it's huge by any means, but it is the state's sixth largest city, after all.  Together with neighboring West Monroe, it's about twice the size of the town where I grew up in Canada.

Not a bad little berg, though I admit I didn't do much sightseeing.  I took this picture looking along the Ouachita River (say: WAH-chi-taw) from the Louisville Avenue bridge.