I’d already dropped this link into 3wc, but it occurs to me that I could probably get more than three words out of the topic.

What’s disturbing about that little video clip is not Kathie Lee Gifford’s casual admission that she sleeps in the nude, or even that she doesn’t much like to see herself in the nude; it’s Hoda Kotb’s utterly amazed reaction shot, part “Well, I never!” and part “Is that even possible?” There aren’t any firm figures on how many people actually do sleep in the buff, though Esquire claims that 31 percent of men and 14 percent of women decline to play the pajama game.

I have to wonder how Kotb would deal with Eva Mendes, who told InStyle last year, “I am mostly nude in my home — that’s how I’m comfortable.”

On second thought, I’ve got enough of ‘em already.

The April issue of Car and Driver has arrived, with a letter from Hachette Filipacchi’s Alain Lemarchand giving a presumably-proper sendoff to former editor-in-chief Csaba Csere. (Last week Eddie Alterman was named as the new C/D cheese.)

And geez, this issue is skimpy: 112 pages. Even the male-enhancement product ads have shrunk. And the “Franz Kafka’s Garage” column has been renamed to a more innocuous “Ask Us Anything.” On the upside, there’s a John Phillips article on the Jerr-Dan Element, a prodigiously-impressive tow truck with a hydraulic boom on the back. The repo man asset-recovery specialist demonstrates on an unpaid-for Toyota:

Fifty-five feet before he reaches the driveway — while we’re still rolling — he toggles a switch that extends the main boom 78 inches, even as it is lowering to within three inches of the pavement. He stops, then puts the truck into reverse. As we back toward the Camry, the boom gently touches down on the tarmac and slides under the car. Meanwhile, crossbars are silently extending left and right, creating a steel cruciform that wags back and forth like a bloodhound tracking a raccoon. The thing looks alive. The right arm slides up against the Camry’s right-front wheel. It’s at a weird angle, but it doesn’t matter. Now the left arm knows where to find the left-front wheel. As both arms wedge taut against the leading edge of the Toyota’s front tires, two more crossbars — these are L-shaped — bloom from the boom. Looking like black metal snakes, they slither around until they locate the trailing edges of the Camry’s front tires, which they quickly clamp. The driver now shifts the truck into drive and toggles one more switch. As we begin to roll away, the nose of the Camry rises three feet off the ground, by which time we’re back on the street, dieseling home at a merry clip, with one 2008 Camry fastened firmly in custody. Elapsed time: eight seconds. And the driver never set foot out of the cab.

Stuff like this is why I still read this goofy mag after, um, thirty-one years.

Today The Oklahoman announced price increases on the print edition: from 50 cents to 75 cents six days a week, and from $1.50 to $2 on Sunday.

How this affects home-delivery customers is unclear: the price list on Page 2 reflects that new single-copy price, but subscriptions, for the moment, appear to be unchanged, the paper’s announcement that “Independent contractors who deliver The Oklahoman will receive a share of the price increase” notwithstanding. I pay a year in advance, and my next billing won’t be until May, so unless one of the several staffers at the paper who read this stuff can fill me in on the details, I have no idea what to expect.

In the context of the ongoing retrenchment of the industry, this is what I’d call a relatively mild step: the paper went through the hard stuff (layoffs/buyouts, cutting back the circulation area, trimming the size of the broadsheet) last year.

One of the few nearby ATMs that will take deposits was sporting a new slot today: you’re supposed to insert each check, face up, one at a time, rather than enclose everything in an envelope and give it a single shove. I had my misgivings, but I proceeded.

And, sure enough, check #2 didn’t read for some reason. The machine gave out with a Major Malfunction message and blocked the appropriate slot with bars, presumably until someone comes out Monday morning and resets everything. I asked the person at the 800 number if I’d have been better off just using the envelope; no, she said, the devices have been reprogrammed and can’t do things the Old Way.

Next time, I go back to the bank bag and the night depository. I know what happens in there.

Yes, buoys and gulls, it’s time once more to poke through last week’s incoming search logs in the hopes of finding cheap laffs. (Hey, it’s always worked before.)

buy a copy of ann coulter playboy:  Dream on.

eccentric rich:  Well, yeah. Act like that when you’re poor and they’ll lock you away.

choosing between two women “science fiction”:  More likely fiction than science.

look it is jeeves!!!!!!:  This emotional outburst is so unlike you, Bertie.

margaret thatcher/stockingtops/upskirt:  You’ll notice no one ever asks for this from John Major.

if you have a large number for an IQ is that good:  You probably don’t have anything to worry about.

“nancy pelosi” & “rack”:  Splendid idea. And how about an Iron Maiden for Harry Reid?

keep lying to cgh:  And you’ll be sorry.

50 ways to please a woman:  Give her a smile, Lyle / Buy her a rock, Jock / You don’t need to be rude, Dude / Just try to take heed / Bring her a rose, Mose / Don’t have to be all those / And don’t be a jerk, Kirk / You’ll get what you need.

Old Blue Oval types can go on for hours about the difference between Ford’s 351 Cleveland and 351 Windsor engines. Cleveland Engine Plant No. 1 quit building pushrod V8s rather a long time ago, and closed in 2007.

Now it’s back. Ford will reopen Cleveland to build the new direct-injection turbocharged EcoBoost V6, which will appear in at least four 2010 models, two Fords and two Lincolns. The 3.5-liter powerplant is supposedly good for 355 hp and 350 lb-ft of torque, a major, um, boost over the normally-aspirated, port-injection 3.5 Cyclone, rated at around 265 hp. No pricing yet on the uprated engine, though last year it was speculated that the EcoBoost would carry a premium of about $700 over base versions.

Well, we’ve had thirty games at the Ford, and the Thunder have won ten of them. Attendance has held pretty steady: through those thirty games, the average attendance has been 18,597 (12th in the league), which is 97.2 percent of capacity (10th).

On the road, the Thunder, 4-25, is not so much of a draw: in other NBA cities, the Thunder bring in an average of 16,625, ranking 26th, though earlier in the season they generally placed dead last.

Last year’s Sonics finished 28th in attendance at home, 21st on the road.

(Source for all numbers.)

The palatial estate at Surlywood, as I’ve been known to call it, is not so huge: 1060 square feet, plus attached garage, on a little over a quarter-acre. It’s enough for me. It may not be enough for you, not that there’s anything wrong with that:

Bigger houses have significantly more utility. They can accommodate more people. They can accommodate activities that people enjoy (or profit from — if you’ve got an extra room you can turn into a workshop, or an office, and work from home…) They have increased flexibility — if you’ve got an extra room, you can put up a buddy who’s down on their luck or rent it out or have another kid.

But bigger houses don’t cost proportionately more to construct. An extra room adds more value to the home than it costs to build into the home, assuming we’re talking during initial construction. There’s a point of diminishing returns, but it’s way, way above efficiency apartment level.

So of course people are purchasing larger homes and the average home size is increasing. This is a good thing, reflecting actual preferences of the people buying those homes; nobody’s going shopping for a five-bedroom McMansion when they’d actually be happier in a teeny shack.

In some parts of the country, apparently nobody’s going shopping, period. I’m pretty sure, though, hardly anybody is building anything in the 1000-square-foot range anymore except for condos. (Of the twelve units currently available at Block 42, for instance, the smallest runs 1302. Thirty units, some smaller than that, have already been sold.)

Still, my little house, since it takes up that entire lot, lacks sustainability, or some such bushwah:

But if you’re an “urban planner” with visions of super-high population density, then the availability of large homes is a direct threat to your plans — because given the choice, most people really do prefer the extra space.

And there’s a lot to be said for not having to share a common wall with, say, a stoner with a meth lab who likes to listen to death metal at 4am.

Apart from the Mad Fold-In, Al Jaffee’s major contribution to Western civilization is called “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.”

So Dutty’s going through checkout with two big bags of Purina Dog Chow, and a woman behind him asks, “Do you have a dog?”

I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog and that I was starting the Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn’t because I ended up in the hospital the last time.

On the bright side though, I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of every hole in my body and IV’s in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way it works is to load your pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry and that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was enthralled with my story by now.)

Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food had poisoned me. I told her no; I had stopped in the middle of the parking lot to lick my butt and a car hit me.

And remember: avoid any variety that makes its own gravy, especially if you’re going to carry it on your person.

Dutty says he can’t shop there anymore.

I’m beginning to wonder. Kevin Durant got banged up in Dallas t’other day, and everyone was worried if it was still possible to beat the not-so-lowly Grizzlies. Turned out, it was. Then Jeff Green came out of a practice with back pain, and guess who’s coming to town? The freaking Mavericks again.

If Scott Brooks has something in his playbook called “Kick Their Asses,” it’s what was used tonight: the seemingly-depleted Thunder, four up at the half, outscored the Mavs 31-15 in the third quarter and held on for a 96-87 win that probably no one in Loud City actually believed until Russell Westbrook dribbled it out on the last possession.

The starters: Westbrook, Weaver, Sefolosha, Collison and Krstić. The big Serb got a season-high 26 points; Westbrook had a triple-double, with 17 points, 10 boards and 10 assists. The Thabster checked in with another 15-point night. Kyle Weaver got 18 points, one short of his season high. And Nick Collison rose for 9 rebounds. Wily veteran Malik Rose is no doubt happy to be getting serious playing time these days: he scored 7 and snagged five boards in 17 minutes.

I don’t quite know what happened to Dallas, other than that they were outrebounded (41-34), outshot (49.4 to 42.5 percent), and simply outplayed. Dirk, of course, got a Dirk-like 28 points, and Jason Terry came off the bench for 20, but by and large, the Mavs really weren’t in this one. They never gave up — down 23 with a few seconds left in the third, they fought back to within four — but this time, the new kids were determined to make Dallas pay.

I’m not even going to make any predictions for when the Wizards get here Wednesday.

As Wayne Coyne noted, “It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.”

Which is by way of announcing that the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” has been declared, by popular vote, to be Oklahoma’s state rock song.

Yeah, there were nominees I might have preferred, but you know, there’s something inordinately cool about having a state song included on an album titled Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

The rest of the state songs:

• The state song: “Oklahoma!” from the Rodgers/Hammerstein musical
• The state country song: “Faded Love,” Bob Wills
• The state folk song: “Oklahoma Hills,” Jack & Woody Guthrie

You can hear “Do You Realize??” on the Lips’ MySpace page.

You can’t always find a blank wall of the proper color when you need one, so a portable white-balance device would seem to be useful to any photographer who’s graduated to an SLR, and one that takes up no extra space in the bag would seem to be even more so. Behold the White Balance Lens Cap:

Put your camera in White Balance mode and snap a picture with the lens cap still on the camera. The camera does the rest of the work, adjusting the white balance to get true to life colors in your pictures. Especially helpful if your camera allows for white balance adjustment but does not take pictures in RAW format.

The handy lens cap replaces your old one, takes no additional space and does not get lost in your camera bag.

Available in several lens sizes from Photojojo; prices vary with size.

McGehee uses it here:

Maybe that’s what we need to do: hate the moderates, and let them know it. Maybe they’ll come crawling to us begging us to like them, like they’ve been doing to the Left for years.

Which reminded me of this Chris Lawrence post, which I’ve invoked twice already:

Most Americans — and most people the world over, in fact — don’t have consistent, ideological belief systems. The absence of those belief systems makes them moderate, because they just react to whatever’s going on in the political ether; if you’re lucky, you might be able to pin their beliefs to some overarching fundamental value (“hard work”, “equality”, “liberty”).

There are only two types of true moderate: people who don’t care about politics, and centrist politicians (and this latter class of people generally care less about politics than they care about keeping their jobs — I defy you to explain the behavior of Arlen Specter or Olympia Snowe otherwise).

And, well, it seems unreasonable to hate people who don’t care about politics when there are so many people who do care about politics who deserve it so much more.

You say there’s not enough room to enter your street address on our form.

I say, if you’re going to persist in entering it as “Seventeen Douchenozzle Terrace, Route Twelve,” well, of course it’s not going to fit.

The Postal Service will happily tell you your properly-standardized address. Use it. You’ll find it actually fits on the form.

If ever I was tempted to buy the President a brewski, it’s now, in the wake of this absurd little contretemps:

He was at an NBA basketball game and ordered a brew. Images of Mr. Obama enjoying a beer have angered some people.

One caller to WWL complained, “People are losing 5, 10, 20 thousand dollars a day in the stock market, and he’s sitting there drinking a beer!” She also said, “It’s insulting … there’s a lot of people suffering.” She insisted President Obama should not publicly have fun during a time of so much pain.

Have you seen the price of beer in an NBA arena? This is a full-fledged stimulus package.

And there was this:

“The president is the president 24 hours a day. I don’t think he should drink on the job.”

People like this drive one to drink.

(Via Fark.)

Fausta was working these at CPAC:

This is “Selan” by Sofft, with a kid suede upper and a 3¼-inch stacked heel; the color is Berry, and there are half a dozen other shades. I bet it looked fabulous on her. Amazon.com sells these for around $100; of late, they’ve been on sale for $75.99, and I suspect they’re due for deletion, since several sizes are unavailable in some colors.

Melessa has promised us an exposition of several phenomena, including this one:

… why I couldn’t get a date to save my life when I was 23, thin, cute, and single; and hence my confusion at being flirted with by 27-year-old volunteer bartenders at work and some random stranger here at the hotel …

The Honeys pointed this out way back in 1963: “The one you can’t have is the one that you want the most.” (Honey Marilyn Rovell eventually married the record producer, a fellow named Brian Wilson.)

The implication, though, is that she’s no longer cute. I know better.

Auto dealers in Washington state would like to be legally authorized to stick it to you further:

Auto dealers, who have seen their sales decline for more than a year, want the Legislature to let them triple the fee they charge customers to process paperwork.

The new “documentary service fee” would be as high as $150, up from $50 today. Such an increase could let auto dealers statewide pocket as much as $100 million to $150 million, money that would go straight to their bottom line. Those figures assume dealers will sell 1 million cars and trucks and that all dealers would charge the maximum fee allowed, as most do.

Sen. Tracey Eide, D-Federal Way, said she sponsored Senate Bill 5816 at the request of the Washington State Auto Dealers Association and its 328 dealerships, and one of her former constituents, Mary Byrne, former owner of Nissan of Fife. Byrne now is a partner in Advantage Nissan in Bremerton.

I suppose mandatory extended warranties that don’t actually cover anything were considered beyond the pale in Olympia.

And actually, the doc fee is a relatively recent arrival in Washington:

Until 2003, Washington auto dealers got nothing for processing vehicle registration forms and other documents related to the sale of new or used vehicles. But the Legislature that year approved a $35 “doc fee,” which one state lawmaker characterized at the time as “extortion.”

Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, who was then and still is chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said auto dealers threatened to oppose the 5-cent increase in the state gas tax the Legislature approved that year if they didn’t get the authority to charge their customers the extra fee. Dealers were upset by the 0.3 percent sales tax on vehicles that also was part of what was then a $4 billion tax package for state highway, bridge and ferry projects.

Then-Gov. Gary Locke signed the fee into law in 2003. In 2007, the Legislature boosted the fee to $50 at the urging of Sen. Ed Murray, D-Seattle.

If $35 was extortion in 2003, what’s $150 today? Hope and change?

Incidentally, Oklahoma permits something called a “processing fee,” and I quote from an actual retail purchasing contract:

This Fee is not required by law. It is an optional fee charged by our Dealership to cover our costs for providing administrative and documentary services in connection with this transaction and in carrying out the requirements of all applicable laws including, but not limited to, costs associated with processing applications.

In other words, you can theoretically get out of it, if you know it’s there. And now you do.

(Seen at TTAC.)

I was moving around a bunch of music files over the weekend, and at some point I evidently hit the key combination for “Enqueue in Winamp.” Not a problem in and of itself, except for the little segments of memory that are chewed up as each file gets positioned in Winamp’s play queue.

I still don’t know what I hit, though, that caused this to jump to the top of the list and start playing.

Yes, children, alas, it is true: I have actually Rickrolled myself. Please note that it took me the better part of half a week to admit to it. (I told Trini, but then I tell her everything, and by “everything” I mean “just this side of TMI.”)

The NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves want to sell more season tickets, but the faltering economy makes that something of a crapshoot.

The Wolves respond by cutting the crap:

We realize that the future can be uncertain and financial decisions are more difficult during unstable economic times. The Minnesota Timberwolves No-Risk Pledge is a protection plan extended to our full Season Ticket Holders wherein should an involuntary loss of employment occur in 2009, a refund will be issued for all games that have not yet been played.

What’s more, they’ve cut prices on most seats: nosebleed-area seats will be available around the $5 level — $215 for the 41-game season — and most other areas in the Target Center will see at least some reduction.

(Via Henry Abbott.)

Computer Shopper magazine, founded by Glenn Patch in 1979 to see if computing geeks would be as amenable to a monthly hardware flea market as shutterbugs were (hint: they were), will no longer publish an actual print edition:

The announcement day was, to be sure, a bittersweet day for everyone associated with the mag. (I’ve been a Shopper editor and writer since 1993, and setting eyes today on our massive archive of Shopper tomes from 1980 to present, it was hard not to get wistful.) But it’s been plain to any clear-eyed observer that the future of tech journalism is on the Web. Product cycles are eyeblink-fast, and readers expect deep reviews the second a product hits the public eye. (Not to mention, they want the best prices on them immediately.) And, as the Web pervades every aspect of our lives, it’s unnatural to expect news and reviews about cutting-edge tech to wait for dead trees for delivery. The very products we’re reporting on made this journalistic revolution possible, after all.

Stan Veit left the Ziff-Davis machine to become the first editor-in-chief of Computer Shopper; eventually the magazine was sold to ZD. Its current owner is SX2 Media Labs.

(Via Real Tech News.)

Well, this didn’t look like a team that was 30 games behind. The Washington Wizards, despite a record even more woeful than the Thunder’s, refused to go away until literally the last minute, when Nenad Krstić got a timely rebound, dropped in a pair of free throws, and got one more timely rebound, putting Oklahoma City up 88-83 and earning a 1-1 split for the series.

Once again, Antawn Jamison had his way: he knocked down 29 points, way more than anyone else on either side, and snagged ten boards. Darius Songaila and Andray Blatche were good for 14 each. The Wizards shot only 40 percent, though they nailed three of nine from beyond the arc.

All five Thunder starters — again, without Kevin Durant or Jeff Green — finished in double figures, led by Krstić with 18. Nick Collison had a double-double — 12 points, 10 rebounds — and once again, Thabo Sefolosha finished with 15 points, not to mention three steals and three blocks. The man’s a veritable Wrecking Crew. OKC shot 50 percent on the nose.

With the hot-shoes sidelined, the bench-dwellers are emerging again: Damien Wilkins, in 15 minutes, got eight points, seven boards and two steals. Robert Swift put in a productive shift, as did Malik Rose, and Earl Watson served up his usual quantity (seven) of dimes.

It’s off to New Orleans for a Saturday night — and who hasn’t looked fondly on that prospect? — followed by the Sixers at the Ford on Sunday.

Now that we have an Official State Rock Song, we need a few other categories filled in, says Carrie Coppernoll, and one of them is karaoke:

“Never Been to Spain” written by Hoyt Axton and performed by Three Dog Night. If you’ve ever been to a karaoke bar, you know nobody can resist singing along to the famous lines, “I’ve never been to Heaven. But I’ve been to Oklahoma.” Even if you hate Oklahoma, you can’t help but sing along.

My own experience with karaoke suggests that this is not an area where we ought to get involved.

More to the point, Axton’s original lyric, modified by Three Dog Night and seemingly everyone since, contained this possibly-arguable line: “In Oklahoma, born in a coma, what does it matter?” Never heard anybody sing it that way at Amateur Night.

Folks in my immediate neighborhood might have been wondering what all that MAPS for Kids fuss was about: you didn’t see any of those millions being spent around here. It was fairly obvious why: the physical plant, built circa 1950, wasn’t in quite the level of disrepair seen elsewhere in the district, and to use the standard jargon, students have been making Adequate Progress.

Now things will start to move. The first MAPS for Kids Community Meeting for Monroe School will be on the 24th (Tuesday) at 6 pm at the school cafeteria. Given the humongous crowd at the field yesterday evening, I’m thinking they ought to spend a few bucks there.

(Historical note: The penny sales tax for MAPS for Kids expired 31 December 2008 and was replaced by a shorter-term tax to finance NBA-level improvements to the Ford Center. As of the end of June, about $280 million was on hand for school projects.)

Sometimes you just have to back away from all your connections:

These days, everyone expects everyone else to be connected all the time. I dislike it. I almost never turn on my cell phone so no one can bother me with their so-called emergencies. If you want my attention, do it via e-mail (this means everyone, even family). Of course, getting a reply from me depends completely on my whim, whether I deem a particular piece of e-mail urgent or not, or if I’m bored.

I need to adopt something like that as Official Policy.

I’m already well on the way to this point:

One day, I’m just going to let it ring forever while I continue doing whatever it is I’m doing. In the old days, people went about their lives perfectly fine without phones or other electronic gadgets. It’s not going to kill anyone if they just stopped using this stuff for a day.

And if it did, you could argue that they wouldn’t be missed: they were constantly pestering you.

Legend has it that there used to be people who traded in their cars every year or every other year or even every third year. Operative term: “used to be,” as witness:

The median age of passenger cars in operation increased to 9.4 years in 2008, breaking the previous two-year record high of 9.2 years, according to figures released today by R. L. Polk & Co. in its annual vehicle population report.

The median age for all trucks in 2008 increased to 7.6 years from 7.3 years in 2007. Light trucks increased from 7.1 years in 2007 to 7.5 years in 2008. Polk’s annual vehicle population report represents data from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008, following an in-depth analysis of more than 249 million vehicles.

My own ride is, um, nine years old.

It’s fairly obvious how we got to this point:

“The current economic environment, coupled with high gas prices last spring and summer, have resulted in consumers delaying purchases of vehicles because their discretionary income has fallen,” said [Polk consultant Dave] Goebel. “Based on the uncertainty of what the future holds, consumers are trying to keep their current vehicles running longer, until their confidence improves.”

Polk analysts also anticipate that in bad economic times, the threshold of repair costs may increase. Consumers could feel as though paying a repair expense to keep the vehicle going for a year is more sensible or affordable than a monthly vehicle payment over an extended period of time.

To me, at least, a $2000 repair bill looks a lot easier to endure than four years of $349 a month.

Richard Mize reports in the Oklahoman this morning:

Almost four out of 10 homeowners in Oklahoma County have mortgages that could qualify for loan modification under President Barack Obama’s “Making Home Affordable” program, according to Zillow.com.

That’s based on amounts owed on houses compared with what they’re worth — the loan-to-value ratio — required by the program. People who owe from 80 percent to 105 percent of their home’s value, on a conforming loan, meet the parameters of the program.

Zillow estimated that 37.8 percent of mortgages in the metro area fall into that loan-to-value range.

Lets me out. I owe something like 69 percent.

And as always, take these numbers with a whole lick of salt:

Zillow’s estimate did not consider financial hardship, which is another requirement, or whether lenders would be likely to modify any loans.

So I’m not expecting three of every eight mortgages in town to be reworked, but surely some of them will.

The 324th edition of Carnival of the Vanities is denoted “Lurgy,” which alarms us: we’d hate to think that Andrew Ian Dodge is suffering from this dreaded disease. It might somehow make him untouchable, like the number 324.

Ryan Avent’s latest brainstorm: NIMBY insurance.

It would go something like this:

I’d love to collect tiny premiums from residents looking at potential development near their homes, in exchange for which I’d take responsibility for the change in value of their home relative to homes outside of the directly affected area. If their property does poorly relative to other homes, then I’d shell out for the difference, either at an agreed upon time after development or upon sale. If it does better, well, the gain would accrue to me.

A city that was confident that it was developing well could even offer this kind of service at a deep discount relative to what the private market would likely ask. It might help combat knee-jerk opposition to development plans, and since NIMBYs seem, to me, to be bad at gauging the effect of development on their property values, it would be a nice source of revenue. And of course, if the government ended up being totally wrong, homeowners would be protected.

The Austin Contrarian, however, sees a moral-hazard issue:

New developments can pose risks to property values, although homeowners do indeed systematically overestimate these risks. But lots of other things affect property values as well — rising crime, deteriorating appearance (trash, graffiti), deteriorating school quality. (Childless households have an incentive to worry about school quality because it affects their property values, too.) Some neighbors have tended vacant, foreclosed homes out of a concern for their own property values. Insuring homeowners against the impact of new developments would give them less incentive to worry about the impact of other variables under their control. It would be impossible to separate these other influences from the impact of development.

And I’m concerned about how you’d correlate the change in value of homes thus insured with the change in value of homes in the putative control group: no neighborhood exists in a vacuum, so it’s difficult to assert that Home A is seriously affected by Development X while Home B isn’t, unless they’re far enough apart that the comparisons might not be valid anyway.

Still, the idea has a certain twisted appeal, especially to those who feel victimized by NIMBYs and their cousins the BANANAs.

A plea from Donna:

I love when people forward me silly videos BUT I HATE WHEN THEY ATTACH THE VIDEO TO THE EMAIL. Can’t you just find it on YouTube and send me a link? See, I got Vista which means my computer is slower than a tortoise, it’s slower than my old Commodore 64. If I try to open a video attachment, that’s all my computer will be able to do for a good 5 minutes. Talk about painful. And if the video sucks … it makes the pain I already feel so much greater. But if people would attach a YouTube link — it doesn’t kill my computer and it’s not eating at the space Gmail provides. I get a quick chuckle and I can move on.

Lest we forget, the Commodore 64′s clock speed was — wait for it — 1.02 MHz.

Not wishing to get on Donna’s bad side (well, she doesn’t really have any bad sides, but work with me here), I’m not emailing this video to her. In fact, I’m not even embedding it here; I’m simply posting the YouTube link, and noting that I swiped it from Robert Stacy McCain.

Or maybe that’s the wrong word. Regardless, Cynthia Yockey advances a plan for the improvement of city neighborhoods:

Harness the power of lesbian and gay self-reliance and resourcefulness by passing civil rights laws protecting the rights of lesbians and gays to jobs, housing and public accommodations. Want to put a jet pack on that turnaround? Legalize gay marriage.

In addition to enormous self-reliance and resourcefulness, the unique ability of lesbians and gays to go into blighted neighborhoods and turn them around is based on the fact that the majority of us do not have children, so we can buy in neighborhoods that have lousy schools. (Speaking as a former Realtor, the ONE thing that has the most influence on your home value is the reputation of your neighborhood’s schools. Making them excellent pays you BIG dividends.) Once we turn the neighborhood around, the schools follow.

Also, since we are a rainbow minority — people with disabilities and every race, ethnic group and religious group has lesbians and gays — we are more likely than most other minorities, with the exception of people with disabilities (which also is a rainbow minority), to have friends and acquaintances who are very different from us, so we are not afraid to move into neighborhoods where we don’t look like anyone else there.

I live about a mile from Oklahoma City’s unofficial gay nexus, 39th and Pennsylvania, and while I haven’t researched this phenomenon in any depth, it makes a certain amount of sense to me: our previous Neighborhood Association president was a gay man, and it never occurred to me to wonder if his actions on behalf of the neighborhood were entirely mercenary, purely activist, or some combination thereof, since the benefits seemed perfectly obvious.

Ms Yockey promises some background material on this subject, which I’d definitely like to see.

And on a possibly-related subject, my thanks to whoever it was who got the city off the dime and got 39th east of Penn in line for repaving. (It’s now been graded.)

If you remember the flap from last weekend in which KOKH, the city’s Fox affiliate, put out a story about price increases at the Oklahoman, followed Sunday in the paper by a full-page anti-KOKH ad notable mostly for its sheer adolescent petulance — you can see that ad here — you might like Keith Gaddie’s critique of the whole semi-sordid affair:

[T]hey are direct competitors fighting for ad revenue, and this competition will only increase.

Fox is leaving a technology that makes it easy for them to integrate to the internet from a revenue standpoint, because people still watch TV. The Oklahoman, moving from a failing ad revenue model, has to reinvent its revenue stream on the web with less of a safety net.

The folks up at the Dark Tower are sufficiently justified to be sensitive to coverage about their sales and circulation model.

But now, feelings are hurt. Whatever to do? My initial inclination — sending Billy Sims over to see the folks at OPUBCO and Fox with a platter of Boomer-Q — is inadequate to the task.

The solution: If these guys are going to position themselves as adversaries, then, by gum, we need real adversity. Here’s how:

Leveling of the playing field is in order. Sinclair needs to buy a newspaper and move it to Oklahoma City to go head-to-head with The Oklahoman, working under the same handicap of printing an edition. And, there is a perfectly good paper up for sale, and an Oklahoma City solution looms: buy the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and move it to the OKC. Seattle-based industries now know the way to Our Fair City, so it’s an easy move to make.

The sheer awesomeness of this proposal overwhelms me.

It’s hardly necessary to read the actual article, but of course I did: FULL DISCLOSURE: I am in love with Peter Suderman, which is convenient, because we are dating.

And yes, someone in comments did ask the question I wouldn’t have dared. (Seventy-four inches, if you must know.)

Even at your expense, if need be.

Out of my email this morning:

The following provision is being added to your PayPal Buyer Credit account agreement:

You agree that GE Money Bank and any other owner or servicer of your account may contact you about your account using any contact information or cell phone numbers you provide (whether previously provided or provided in the future).

You expressly agree to the use of any automatic telephone dialing system and/or artificial or prerecorded voice when contacting you, even if you are charged for the call under your phone plan.

The above provision will become part of your account agreement if you consent to the provision by (i) using your account more than 15 days after this notice is delivered to you or (ii) keeping your account open after March 15, 2009. If you do either of these things, we will conclude that you have consented to being contacted on your cell phone in this way. If you do not want to be contacted on your cell phone in this way, you may call us at 866-630-2763 at any time.

Conversely, you, GE Money Bank or any other owner or servicer of my account, agree that you are a bunch of meddlesome fools with delusions of grandeur, that there aren’t enough pegs in the world to mark how far you and your ilk need to be taken down, and that if you think I’m giving you my cell phone number for any reason, now or ever, you’ve obviously failed to take your meds for the last 72 hours and the voices have started speaking again, haven’t they? Haven’t they?

Movie City News lists The Last 120 Film Critics in America.

Actually, that’s an approximation. The original list, dated New Year’s Day, had 126 names on it; since then, seven critics have been axed, and it’s been discovered that one has actually been hired.

The Oklahoman’s George Lang is on the list, though the paper seems to run at least as many reviews from wire services as they do from Lang. On the other hand, Lang runs a movie (mostly) blog at NewsOK.

(Via Pop Culture Junk Mail.)

Mark J. Perry posted the following chart:

So what’s the deal with mattresses? They’ve hardly gone down at all, and I’d like to buy a new one. I was thinking “Well, we can’t outsource the manufacturing, they’re too bulky.” But hell, they make refrigerators in China and ship them here, so it can’t be that, can it?

(Seen at Side-Lines on American Digest.)

Actually, there are two springs, one on either side of the garage door, and at the moment, one of them is not broken, a decrease of one from the day before. (The sound isn’t sprrroingy in the least; it’s a sharp but unresonant Bam!, the sort of noise you’d get if you ordered a robot to bitch-slap Emeril.)

Replacing both springs, I suspect, is the thing to do: I’m reasoning that the inevitable difference in tension between the new spring on side A and the old spring on side B can bring about no good, and will probably break the old spring anyway.

The Amazing Doorman! will be here presently to conduct the repairs, inasmuch as I am not about to mess around with tight coils of metal that would just love to hand off a bunch of kinetic energy, or take my hand off in the process.

Last fall, I quoted one Skullturf Q. Beavispants on a lexicographical matter:

[I]t would be kind of silly to say that therefore coinages like “chocoholic” are illegitimate or wrong. It would be a little like saying the expression “the algorithm” is wrong because the “al” in “algorithm” historically comes from a definite article, making the “the” redundant.

Or, at the very least, the time to object to “chocoholic” would have been when the word was first being used. Now that it’s caught on, it’s too late.

Our beloved Redneck Diva begs to differ with Mr Beavispants:

If someone wanted to declare themselves addicted to chocolate they would be a chocolatic. Or perhaps a chocolic. A person who likes to shop is a shoppic.

Make note of it.

Duly noted.

(“If someone wanted to declare themselves?” Let’s see who picks the better nits.)

“Real terrorist defends fake Indian,” says Christopher Johnson with reference to this:

William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a “witch hunt” after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he was persecuted because of his politics,” Ayers said before appearing with Churchill at a student rally on academic freedom at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ayers, Churchill and writer-activist Derrick Jensen were to speak later at an event titled “Forbidden Education and the Rise of Neo-McCarthyism.”

Churchill was a tenured professor of ethnic studies at Colorado University until he was fired on plagiarism charges in July 2007. He denies misconduct and is soon due to go to court in an attempt to get his job back.

Those fine folks at USA Today also provided a file photo of Churchill from last August, in which he’s wearing a T-shirt with the image (and some words) of Black Panther George Jackson, who was shot to death at San Quentin in 1971 during what may or may not have been an escape attempt. Jackson made his way into the California corrections system the old-fashioned way — he held up a gas station — which in the grand scheme of things, I suppose, makes him a more reasonable subject for T-shirt veneration than, say, Che Guevara, who preferred more Stalinesque methods of achieving power.