Let’s see. I can sit here in the darkness and congratulate myself for my moral superiority for a whole sixty minutes, totally overlooking the fact that there are untold millions who would consider themselves fortunate to have lights at that hour of the night, or I can blow off the whole deal and speculate as to the motives of the proponents.

Easy choice, really, and this Facebook update from E. M. Zanotti makes it even clearer:

Telling a major city to go dark during Earth Hour is probably not the best idea, Chicago. Have you SEEN that Batman movie? Don’t you KNOW what happens?

And the Bat-Signal, after all, is a light against a dark sky. Not exactly Q.E.D., but close enough.

“At 7 pm a main hatchway caved in.” Or not:

[A] Canadian documentary claims to have proven the crew of the ship, the Edmund Fitzgerald, was not responsible for the disaster.

The yap films documentary, simply called Edmund Fitzgerald and airing on the premiere episode of Dive Detectives on the History Channel on March 31, concludes there is little evidence that failure to secure the ship’s hatches caused the sinking and that it was a rogue wave instead.

So what actually happened?

Reports show three large waves were detected, two of which were reported by the Anderson. Such a grouping of waves is often called “three sisters”. As per the investigation, it was theorized that the Fitzgerald was badly battered by the first two waves, further damaging the hatch covers. It was surmised ultimately that the Fitzgerald took on water through the damaged cargo hold covers, which flooded the ore cargo and severely stressed the ship’s hull, and was then overwhelmed by the third wave that snapped the weakened ship in half.

Gordon Lightfoot was indeed available for comment:

In an exclusive interview with QMI Agency backstage after his Casino Rama show, Lighfoot said: “I can’t use the hatch cover line anymore. And the whole verse was really conjecture right from start to finish anyway. It’s the only verse in the whole song where I give myself complete poetic licence.”

Lightfoot also praised the documentary for answering a lot of questions about the sinking.

“It absolves some of the deckhands who were in charge of those hatch covers because I’ve been in touch with these people for years,” he said. “The mother and the daughter of two of the deck guys who would have been in charge of that have always cringed every time they’ve heard the line. And they will be very pleased. And they know about it and they’re very happy about it.”

Still, you must remember:

[N]othing completely removes hazard from life at sea, for nature still enforces its whim and ships are still expected to brave adverse weather to deliver their cargoes. Today’s captain, however, has much more accurate and immediate information than did those sailing even 25 years ago, when the Fitzgerald was virtually blind and wallowing in huge seas and heavy winds on its way from Caribou Island to its final resting place.

It’s now 35 years, but the truth of the matter remains.

In the wake of all these new health-related (sort of) schemes, Fishersville Mike comes up with a weight-loss plan that would presumably pass the sniff test at the Congressional Budget Office:

It’s really simple. If you sleep eight hours a night — like 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. — during that time frame you will lose weight. They can’t judge what happens outside that time frame; they have to follow what I wrote.

Looks like I should probably quit getting up at six, then.

Yesterday’s phishers, quite accidentally, had a decent sense of timing: they sent me a fake order confirmation from Apple’s App Store.

Now I don’t own an iPhone or any of that iStuff, but as it happens, I did buy something from Apple yesterday: some music, from the iTunes Store. On the other hand, I’ve bought enough from the iTunes Store to be able to recognize Apple’s we-have-billed-your-credit-card-so-much emails on sight, and this particular phish didn’t even bother to make its URLs inscrutable, which you’d think would be more or less mandatory in this era of user sophistication marginally-reduced user helplessness.

I expect to hear some fairly-terrifying stories about the aftereffects of the new health-insurance bill — and, politics being the sort of business it is, some unfairly-terrifying ones as well — but this one strikes me as unusually tragic:

There are a few errands I have to run this morning, the first stop will be at the tanning salon to cancel my membership. I’m not willing to pay the 10% Pelosi tax to fund a bill I despise and I’m totally irate that those morons in Washington are causing me to give up one of the few affordable luxuries I indulge in every Spring solely for myself. Slipping my tan legs into a pair of shorts come April makes me feel good.

I left this recommendation: “Couldn’t you apply for, say, a Federal grant? Because God knows this improves the environment, at least in your hometown.” And what city couldn’t benefit from a bit of beautification?

This morning, Royce at Daily Thunder made the following observation:

The Lakers don’t have a great bench with Shannon Brown, Jordan Farmar and Josh Powell, but it’s serviceable.

I think the service light must have kicked on: through three quarters, those three had zero points. (The only L.A. reserve to score through the first 36 minutes was D. J. Mbenga, with three.) At the time, it was Thunder 80, Lakers 47, and L.A. was shooting 32 percent; they didn’t nail so much as a single trey until two minutes into the fourth, when Farmar finally got one to fall during a 10-0 Lakers run and Phil Jackson opted to let his starters rest for tomorrow night against Houston. After that, the Laker bench earned their keep, pulling to within sixteen at the end, but 91-75 still seems a stout thrashing, especially since it was L.A.’s lowest point production of the season.

And what of Kobe? He hit four shots and three free throws, and turned the ball over nine times. Lamar Odom had a team-high 15 points.

Meanwhile, the Big Three were doing their thing — Kevin Durant 26, Russell Westbrook 23, Jeff Green 10 — and Nenad Krstić collected a double-double with 10 points and 10 boards. It wasn’t an enormous amount of offense, but it was more than enough on a night where defense was king and the Lakers were thoroughly jacked.

Now to manhandle the Blazers on Sunday.

Nets watch: New Jersey got its ninth win (and second in a row!), beating the Pistons 118-110. They’d have to lose all ten remaining games to tie with the 1972-’73 Sixers for Worst Ever. At this point, I have to believe they won’t.

This campus is expecting to pocket some cash as a result of a minor settings change:

The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has switched the default font on its e-mail system from Arial to Century Gothic.

It says that while the change sounds minor, it will save money on ink when students print e-mails in the new font.

Diane Blohowiak is the school’s director of computing. She says the new font uses about 30 percent less ink than the previous one.

That could add up to real savings, since the cost of printer ink works out to about $10,000 per gallon.

I don’t question her numbers in the least — in fact, I’ve done the math on the cost of ink myself — but what kind of brain-dead doofus actually prints out email?

(Via Fark.)

If you live in New Jersey, you’re under 21, and you’ve only recently gotten your first driver’s license, starting in May you’ll be stuck in shore traffic required to display a red rectangle on both front and rear license plates so that you can more easily be spotted by law enforcement. (Of course, you’ll have to buy that rectangle from the Garden State, at a price of four bucks the set.)

Once you’ve completed your provisional period, you may discard the telltale piece of plastic.

This is something called “Kyleigh’s Law,” after a 16-year-old girl who was killed in a traffic accident. Frankly, I think we do a disservice to people when we slap their names on laws, especially bonehead laws of the OMG WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING variety.

(Via Autoblog.)

From Bill Quick’s back pages, an idea whose time has arrived, and then some:

Years ago I had a story published in Analog in which an American congress operated on the pain principle — every time it voted on something, the constituents of each representative could also vote, and the aggregate positive or negative opinion was translated immediately into either pain or pleasure (the deeper the division, the stronger the sensation) on the part of the representative.

The story revolved around the notion of a congressman who was so dedicated to what he believed was right, that he voted for something his constituents hated so much that the resulting pain killed him. His death, however, made him a martyr, and eventually helped his beliefs achieve ascendancy.

Although the author reminds you:

(Yes, I was much younger when I wrote this thing.)

Think of it as kinder, gentler term limits.

“As the sun shows up … for a day,” the 366th Carnival of the Vanities materializes above the horizon.

Of course, if your desire is to let the sunlight in while keeping the solar heat out — and it well may, come summertime — you might be interested in Cardinal’s LoĒ³-366^® Glass, which apparently does that very well.

Is this one of those times?

(Seen at Picture Is Unrelated.)

Okay, we may devote a paragraph or two to this sort of thing once in a while, but I’ve long suspected that most people prefer to tune it out to the greatest extent possible.

There is indeed a disconnect between Washington and the electorate, says Jenn, but conservatives may be overestimating its effect:

Most people just aren’t that interested in politics and maintaining a high level of awareness and anger without generating backlash will be tough. Example — Last night Mr. X and I went to the pub down the street for dinner (they make an excellent French Dip sandwich) … while we were there Fox News was on and they started talking about health care. Someone hollered for [the] channel to be changed and there was an almost universal agreement. People are already tired of it.

Of course, what we really want to know is what they changed the channel to. ESPN, maybe? If they talk about health care, it’s because someone just went on the disabled list.

It makes things go so much more smoothly:

Police in Connecticut say even they were surprised by the actions of these criminals: two would-be robbers called a bank ahead of time to get the money ready and were arrested at the scene.

Fairfield police say they arrested 27-year-old Albert Bailey and an unidentified 16-year-old boy on robbery and threatening charges Tuesday afternoon at the People’s United Bank branch on Stratfield Road.

Sgt. James Perez says the two Bridgeport residents called the bank and told a worker to get a bag of money ready. Perez says they showed up at the bank 10 minutes later, but police had been notified and arrested the suspects in the parking lot.

Maybe they should have used the drive-in?

(Via Consumerist.)

Emalyse reports on channel-shuffling at the Beeb:

After weeks of speculation the BBC is to cut radio stations 6music (and if I hear one more ignoramus refer to it as radio 6 I swear I’ll explode. Pass the ammo) and the Asian network together with many web sites and youth orientated initiates whilst re-branding BBC radio 7 to Radio 4 extra (because it’d be strange to highlight the legacy of a missing number 6 station presumably) and trying to make Radio 2 ‘more distinctive’.

The motivations, she says, are transparent:

They are political in motive and designed to placate any future Murdoch/Cameron axis (of evil?) and the near certainty of a thorough butchering by the traditionally BBC-hostile Conservatives.

“Please don’t hurt us. As you can see, we’re already bleeding.” Followed, one assumes, by “Knife? What knife?”

We begin with Sam Cooke:

Now I don’t mean to bother you but I’m in distress
There’s danger of me losing all of my happiness
For I love a girl who doesn’t know I exist
And this has me pissed

Okay, that last line isn’t Sam’s. But I’ve always been severely vexed with the little imp with the arrows, so I have to endorse Jennifer Love Hewitt’s new memoir The Day I Shot Cupid.

And in this promo shot, anyway, J. Love seems pleased with herself for having done the deed:

Little bastard had it coming, if you ask me.

(From HuffPo via Smitty. We’ll leave it at that.)

I suspect there will be many more statements like this in the next few weeks:

I’ll be changing my voting registration this week. I’ve been a Democrat since I was old enough to sign the card — and I signed it so I could vote in what was, I believe, some kind of special election or runoff for county sheriff, not for any presidential or statewide office. I may have voted Republican a number of times, but a look at who my party put up for office would show you why. I stayed a Democrat because of the members of that party who were worth admiring, like Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Henry Jackson, Thomas O’Neill, Daniel Moynihan and so on. Even though the leadership of my party came to be vested in people who couldn’t lead lemmings off a cliff, I stayed because it was about who I was and not who they were.

And no, he’s not becoming a Republican, which tells you something else.

After that two-game skidlet, the Thunder took out all their frustrations on the Houston Rockets, rolling up a 74-57 halftime lead en route to a 122-104 conquest of a team that had beaten them three times already this season and ten times in succession before that.

Houston wielded the long ball well — in fact, they shot better from beyond the arc than from inside it — but every time they got a run going, the Thunder responded with one of their own. It didn’t help that Shane Battier and Jared Jeffries were sitting with injuries, although Rocket stalwarts Luis Scola (25 points) and Trevor Ariza (20) were their usual productive selves, and reserve point guard Kyle Lowry added 15 from the bench, actually outscoring starter Aaron Brooks (11). And just about everyone outscored Kevin Martin, who managed to get off only half a dozen shots all night.

The Thunder would get some big numbers tonight, shooting an awesome 58.8 percent, including eight of 16 treys, and blocking a dozen shots. (Serge Ibaka got four, including two on a single possession.) James Harden returned from his hamstring pull, and ran off 23 points in 26 minutes. Kevin Durant, by comparison, had 25 points in 31 minutes. Four other Thundermen were in double figures; backup point man Eric Maynor fell one assist short of a double-double. (OKC aggregated 30 assists on 47 made shots, indicating some serious ball movement.) The Thunder also narrowly won the battle of the boards, 41-37.

So this elevates my mood considerably before the Lakers get here Friday. And what’s more, the Nets won tonight — 93-79 over Sacramento — which must be considered a plus.

Symantec/Norton has evaluated the online risks that confront residents of the nation’s 50 largest cities, and apparently the overall risk is greatest in Seattle:

Seattle took the No. 1 spot by a huge margin, according to Symantec. It was the only city with top 10 scores in each category. Seattle took home the second-highest scores for risky behavior and number of Wi-Fi hot spots, and the third-highest scores for Internet access and online spending.

Almost 68 percent of Seattleites hop onto the Internet regularly, while 29 percent use it at least five times a day — both figures were highest among all cities studied. More people in Seattle (26 percent) go online to check their bank accounts and pay their bills than in any of the other 50 cities, said Symantec. The city also came in second for Wi-Fi access points, with more than 103 hot spots per 100,000 people.

As always with the promotion of these surveys, the focus is on the Top Ten: you want to know 11-50, you have to look elsewhere. Which I did. Oklahoma City comes in at 37th; Tulsa ranks 40th. Detroit was dead last. I did find one surprise: Dallas is mid-pack (22nd), but Fort Worth is near the bottom (46th).

The Irritated Tulsan has been made more so by the presence of Bimbo^®-branded bread in a North Tulsa supermarket. Of course, being the Irritated Tulsan, he made sport of it:

I’m not familiar with “Bimbo,” but I refuse to eat bread that has a whorish name.

I can’t stomach the words ‘bimbo’ and ‘yeast’ in the same product.

It’s economics antibiotics.

Suggested alternatives: Oroweat or Mrs Baird’s. We don’t have to tell him they’re also made by Bimbo.

There’s quid pro quo, and there’s whatever it was Bart Stupak got:

Poor Bart. What did he get for his sellout? He didn’t even get the lousy tee shirt, which at least has some practical utility. He doesn’t even get some mild respect from the swamp creatures on the Left, who spew their vitriol on him now that they don’t need him anymore. All he got was a legally non-binding piece of paper with a promise the President has no intention of keeping written on it. Mary Landrieu held out for $300 million; Bart will be lucky to get $10 for that executive order on eBay.

Maybe if he asks the President to sign it with twenty pens. (Which is actually, come to think of it, on the low side for this level of pomp and/or circumstance; reportedly LBJ used seventy-five pens to sign the Civil Rights Act in 1964.)