Whether that’s his name or not:

Tulsa blogger Brian Bates has some 21st-century advice for local law enforcement: Get with the social media program. “The Tulsa Police Department could be making better use of the Internet and social media tools to communicate with the public, particularly in emergency situations,” Bates writes. “TPD has a blog, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter account … but they aren’t using them in an effective and timely fashion.”

Um, that Tulsa blogger was Michael Bates. Brian Bates runs JohnTV.com in Oklahoma City. Whoever is running the op-ed page in the Oklahoman needs to get with the program.

Or maybe not:

I tend to interpret these things as desperate attempts to monetize widgets.

I can’t say I’m surprised by this, but it’s still a tad weird:

“OMG!” she said, quickly backing up and heading into the other available stall. Her peroxide blonde hair about stood on end, I imagine, from the sound of her voice. Whatever was in that stall was likely disgusting.

I don’t really care.

What I couldn’t get past was hearing someone speak the letters “O” and “M” and “G”, a text messaging abbreviation, instead of the actual words. We have, oh joyous day, come to a place in the demise of the English language in which we save on syllables by speaking the nonsensical abbreviations we used to save on text characters.

In fact, it’s worse than that: we’re not even saving on syllables. “OMG” takes precisely three, as does the phrase for which it stands. And certain phrases — “WTF” comes immediately to mind — actually take more syllables, IYKWIMAITYD.

And if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never quite understand 1174.

Former sailor Jenn says she’s tempted to smack Glenn Beck in the forehead with a shoe:

This morning he was going on about the new Navy recruiting commercial. His complaint, that the Navy is described as a “Global Force for good”.

What does he want, a local force for evil?

Which leaves me with one question: how much admission should she charge for this event?

New management at the Chilean mint, following a minor misprint:

The general manager of the Chilean mint has been sacked after thousands of coins were issued with the name of the country spelt wrongly.

The 50-peso coins — worth about 6p — were issued in 2008, but no-one noticed the mistake until late last year, the BBC reported.

Instead of C-H-I-L-E, the coins had C-H-I-I-E stamped on them.

Of course, things like this never happen in the United Snakes.

(Via Tim Blair.)

(Spotted by Trini. Original source here.)

I was glancing at the Enhanced Weather Page for this part of the world, which normally features four different radar views, from different segments of the County Warning Area. One of them this evening was a bit more different than usual: admittedly, we’ve had a fair amount of rain today, occasionally mixed with snow, but nowhere near enough to give us a farging ocean.

This didn’t last long, though: while I was cutting the image from the page, they did an update, which replaced the offending image with one a bit less geographically unacceptable.

Still, I have to figure it’s probably at least slightly nicer on the Carolina coast than it is here, at least right this minute.

Though that seems a secondary function, really:

“Must be worn by a siren,” says SondraK.

(Hat tip: Jeffro.)

There are times when life itself needs a Wikipedia-style disambiguation page:

What do the authors of the children’s book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and a 2008 book called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation have in common?

Both are named Bill Martin and, for now, neither is being added to Texas schoolbooks.

In its haste to sort out the state’s social studies curriculum standards this month, the State Board of Education tossed children’s author Martin, who died in 2004, from a proposal for the third-grade section. Board member Pat Hardy, R-Weatherford, who made the motion, cited books he had written for adults that contain “very strong critiques of capitalism and the American system.”

Incidentally, if you type “Bill Martin” into Wikipedia’s search box, you get yet another Bill Martin: a Scotsman who wrote lots of pop songs.

(Via Steph Mineart.)

Consumer Reports reviews luxury sleds in the $50k range in the February issue. They didn’t buy any overtly-sporting models, so all of these have automatic transmissions, listed in the “Tested Vehicle” box as follows:

• Mercedes-Benz E-Class: “7-speed.”
• Acura RL: “5-speed.”
• Cadillac CTS, Audi A6, Lincoln MKS: “six-speed.”

Is this some typographic convention that has escaped me all these years? Why spell out “six,” but not “5″ or “7″? (In the comparison table, all data and no narrative, they actually render it as “6-speed.”)

Tom Lehrer on the New Math, many years ago:

In the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you’re doing, rather than to get the right answer.

Which these days apparently demands cultural sensitivity:

Teacher Jill Brody’s class started learning about Mayan math in September, part of the school’s efforts to incorporate “ethno-mathematics” into some of its classes.

Ethno-mathematics links math with culture. Some educators say it can help kids feel more connected to the subject and better understand the why and how behind the skills they learn in school.

One such educator is Hank Kepner, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics:

In many schools, there’s too much emphasis on testing, Kepner said. Getting the right answer is important, but that’s too narrow. “Math isn’t just rote answers without understanding,” he said.

To which Roxeanne de Luca replies:

Kepner would do well to explain how students can have a deep understanding of math and still manage to get the wrong answers. He should also indulge us with an explanation of how the universal language of math is in need of a cultural context.

I’ll take a stab at it.

• Children from some cultures do not score as high on standardized math tests as children from some other cultures;
• This can only be due to cultural bias deep within those tests;
• And we can’t have the children becoming despondent over test scores that can’t possibly be their fault, can we?

What’s more, this principle is infinitely extensible; you can even cover foreign-language study with it.

I mean, nobody likes impatient, surly drugs, right?

(Via Fritinancy.)

Paul Scott, who currently represents District 51 in the Michigan House of Representatives, is running for Secretary of State, an elective office in Mittenland, and he’s listed four policy changes he advocates. All of them involve drivers and/or their licenses, but #3 seems a bit odd:

I will make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance.

A priority, yet. There is, of course, an explanation for this:

When asked to explain how such a mandate from the Secretary of State would benefit Michigan, he said it was about “preventing people who are males genetically from dressing as a woman and going into female bathrooms.”

Unfortunately, he forgot the old rule that says “Stop digging”:

He said his mandate would be in place even for those who had completely undergone sex reassignment surgeries.

“That’s who you are. You can have cosmetic surgery or reassignment surgery but you are still that gender,” he said.

As a guy, I suppose I consider this sort of thing discriminatory: why would I want some post-op M2F hanging around in the men’s room?

Okay, “hanging” is the wrong word. But if this is his idea of a “priority,” I shudder to imagine his idea of trivia.

(Via Zoe Brain.)

What’s worse than a shoe with a gun for a heel? Right: a hoof with a gun for a heel.

This design comes from Iris Schieferstein, who calls it, with disarming simplicity, “Gun Hoof.”

I suppose this is the point where we discover if there’s something Lady Gaga won’t wear.

(Forwarded by a reader who shall remain anonymous for his own safety.)

Time reports on Viktor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine, and comes up with an implausible comparison:

Once seen as the Barack Obama of his day, with approval ratings topping 70% in February 2005, the sitting President is now badly trailing the frontrunners in the race…

In February 2005, not even Barack Obama was seen as the Barack Obama of his day. David Fleck speculates:

Time Magazine appears to have acquired a time machine, but instead of the useful, H.G. Wells kind of time machine, that allows you to go back to time t – x and replay events as they would have occurred to t – (x + y), it is instead a poor-quality or defective time machine that apparently plays time backwards.

Given the state of the balance sheets over at Time Warner these days, they should kill Time’s time-machine research and put Fortune to work making, um, Money.

I suppose they thought this name was a trifle less alienating:

The Air Force’s classified test range at Groom Lake, Nev., has never lacked for evocative nicknames — it and its restricted airspace have been called Dreamland, Paradise Ranch, The Box and, most famously, Area 51. Now there’s a less romantic moniker to throw on the pile: “Homey Airport,” according to a few civilian aviation journals.

“Homey Airport” now appears as the official name for a certain air base near a certain dry lake bed in Nevada, according to reports in the Web site of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, as well as the Daily Aviator blog and others. New editions of flight planning software and civilian aviators’ GPS gear lists the name and the official designation “KXTA” — which online wags have speculated stands for “extraterrestrial airport.” (The “K” designation indicates only that the field is in the U.S., according to the Federal Aviation Administration.)

How well does this work? It took me two years to find it out, assuming of course you can believe the date on the news release.

(Via Snoopy the Goon.)

Shot by Elisson, who presumably did not shoot the deputy.

“One a day is enough,” asserts Unfortunate Names.

Lurking in the footer on the bottom of several National Weather Service Web pages, including this one:

I have no idea what it’s supposed to say, though. Local NWS address, maybe?

From the AP wire:

Some House Democrats say the proposed government insurance option remains alive, although they speak publicly of its possible demise as long as insurance companies aren’t let off the hook.

California Rep. Xavier Becerra, who’s on the leadership team, said House members would only be willing to abandon the public plan if they were certain the final bill achieves the goals they want, as [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi described.

“We’re willing to give up what’s good for America as long as we get something good back,” he said.

Oh, those crazy Democrats, always willing to give up what’s good for America.

Amazingly, this hasn’t been all over Twitter. Yet.

(Hat tip: farblondzhet, via email.)

Jessica Rabbit comes to life, kinda sorta:

This is Annette Edwards, 57, former model and present-day rabbit breeder, who has decided that it’s worth rather a lot of dieting and plastic surgery to look like Mrs. Roger Rabbit.

The surgery reportedly cost in excess of £10,000. She’s not bad; she’s just overdrawn that way.

“Awkward” seems fair enough:

The WaPo news section reports … that since the Underpants Bomber, Michael Chertoff has been repeatedly telling the media and anyone who will listen that we need to buy lots of full-body scanners for airports, without mentioning his own financial interest — one of the Chertoff Group’s clients is Rapiscan Systems. (I assume the first syllable of Rapiscan is pronounced with a soft a as in rapid, not a hard a as in rape. If I were planning to sell scanners that pictured people naked, I’d have put some more thought into that name.)

Back in Elizabethan times when I went to school, these were “short” and “long” vowels respectively, rather than “soft” and “hard,” but none of these adjectives make me feel any better about scanners that picture people naked.

(Via Fritinancy.)

It’s snowing in parts of the Nutmeg State right about now, but not to worry: the DVD has already been returned.

Wait, what?

Thank you for using redbox! The receipt below is for your first night’s rental. If you keep your disc(s) for any additional nights, redbox will process those charges after your disc(s) have been returned. If you return your disc(s) by 9:00 PM tomorrow, you won’t receive any additional charges and this will be your final receipt for the rental.

Please keep this receipt for your records.

Billed To: [email address redacted]
Receipt Date: 12/29/2009 9:23:17 PM
Order Total: 1.06
Payment Card: Visa…6894
Redbox Location: Price Chopper
2985 Berlin Tpke
Newington, CT 06111-4601

I have snipped out the invoice number and transaction ID. The email address in question is mine. I think. Not the one at this domain, but the one I was assigned by my ISP. Said ISP also has a substantial presence in Connecticut. It seems unlikely that two people would be assigned the same email address; perhaps a typo by the person in Newington?

I left a note to redbox explaining that no, I wasn’t the renter in question, who incidentally kept the disc for two days, running up a charge of $2.12.

I’m debating whether I should mention here what movie was actually rented.

Addendum: Redbox has responded. They’ve unsubscribed me from the rental details, which presumably means that the person who is supposed to be receiving them is wondering where they went.

A Best Buy, in fact: buy one of these CDs and get the TweetDeck app for iPhone absolutely free.

Of course, if you don’t want one of those CDs, you can get the TweetDeck app for iPhone absolutely free.

(Via Consumerist.)

That’s pronounced “Twenty-Ten”:

Until the turn of the millennium got us all confused, we had an easy familiarity with each year:

When did William the Conqueror invade England? Ten Sixty-Six.

When did Christopher Columbus cross the Atlantic? Fourteen Ninety-Two.

When was the Declaration of Independence signed? Seventeen Seventy-Six.

And that Tchaikovsky piece? The Eighteen Twelve Overture.

Pearl Harbor? Nineteen Forty-One.

How did Prince want us to party? Like it’s Nineteen Ninety-Nine.

Two thousand? Party over. And we’ve been choking on “two thousand whatever” ever since. (Although Bonne Bell never had any trouble with “Ten O Six.”)

Fortunately, none of us have to go through that again, except maybe Phillip J. Fry.

Edward Champion opens his mailbox, and finds that Amazon.com is offering a new version of Joseph Conrad’s classic The N-word of the Narcissus.

Not that this particular expurgation is a new idea for the Age of Sharpton or anything: I read this back in high school, from the Really Old Edition on hand, and it bore the title The Children of the Sea. (It wasn’t, however, this old.)

Still, if you’d just as soon not spend your money for a book with a bowdlerized title, it’s old enough to be out of copyright, and you can download the whole thing if you so desire.

I mean, it’s next, right?

Someone please tell me I did NOT just see an aisle full of Valentine heart box candy at my Rite-Aid. Please? Lie if you have to.

(Tweeted here.)

Not everyone loves orange as a fashion color. From a thread on this very site:

Duyen Ky: “Orange should be reserved for road-hazard cones by federal law.”

Lisa Paul: One fashionista once observed that orange is a hard color to wear: “In general, if you look good in orange, you’ll look even better in another color.”

There are, admittedly, few really stirring examples of going orange — although I confess I am slightly shaken by this one:

From not quite a year ago, Alyssa Milano, who turns 37 this weekend.

Bonus orange content: An actual rhyme, sort of, by Tom Lehrer:

Eating an orange
While making love
Makes for bizarre enj-
oyment thereof.

Your inflection may vary. See linguist for details.

The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) has decided that “hymen,” the word itself, has got to go:

Etymologically, the term “hymen” comes from the Greek word for “membrane.” In Swedish, the hymen used to be called “mödomshinna,” which translates literally as “virginity membrane.” In fact, there is no brittle membrane, but rather multiple folds of mucous membrane. A vaginal corona, in other words.

And that’s the term they prefer. In Swedish, it’s “slidkrans.”

RFSU has issued a booklet [pdf] which explains the motivation for the change, and which also addresses “myths about virginity,” a condition often associated with the corona in question.

The myths surrounding the hymen were created to control women’s freedom and sexuality. The only way to counteract this is by disseminating knowledge.

There was no comment from organist Dick Hyman.

(Via Ann Bartow, Feminist Law Professors.)

Yours truly, commenting upon the condition of Atlanta roadways:

84 percent of their roads are rated “good” and none of them “poor”; if there’s a downside, it’s that 23 percent of them are named “Peachtree.”

You might suspect that the latter figure is indeed PDOOMA, and I plead — well, basically I plead that this hadn’t been posted yet.

(Found at Miss Cellania’s.)