Tracy and the Anti-Strib gang have the market cornered on “Hot Chick Friday” – where they take a moment to post pictures of gorgeous women that I’ve nailed – so it’d be unseemly to horn in on their act.

And I love being unseemly.

It’s a ’57 Gibson Les Paul Standard, one of perhaps the three most sought-after electric guitars in the business. I recall reading that they went for $279, brand new out of the Gibson catalog, during Ike’s second term. When I first started playing guitar during the Carter administration – before the guitar collectors market went insane – they were already going for a stellar $3,000; thirty years later, some of them fetch mid-to-high five figures.

The tiger-stripe lacquer finish and the brick-heavy body create an afternoon’s worth of sustain. The action, like most Gibsons, is nice and low; your fingers just race, which is disconcerting to a Fender player like me. Even thirty years ago, the whole assembly – aged nicely even then – yielded a sweet, round, weathered tone that was the tonal equivalent of James Earl Jones’ voice; it had credibility just because of how it sounded.

I played a ’57 once – not a tiger-stripe, but a Gold-Top, its first cousin – that a friend of the bass player in my very first band had picked up ten years earlier for maybe $100, before the collectors value became established. I’d been playing guitar for maybe two years; I had a long way to go. And yet strapping that bad boy on was like sitting in an F1 Lotus after learning how to drive a combine; it’s hard not to feel like a guitar hero playing a ’57.

I’m not sure why this event got gavel to gavel (?) coverage (albeit only on the USA Network), or front-page coverage in the Strib…:

A sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden that called and chanted Uno’s name stood and roared when he was picked as numero uno. He got right into the act, jumping on Wilkerson and confirming his other title: noisiest in show.

Years from now, it’ll be known as the “ah-roo!” heard ’round the ring.

But I have known a few dog-show people in my day.  And from what I’ve seen, Best in Show wasn’t a comedy; it was a documentary that just used fictional people.
And I know at least two of them are going to be barbering about the whole “the beagle won” thing for years.

Jeff Horwich at MPR’s “In the Loop” reports on the Super Tuesday mania among Twin Cities’ twentysomethings.

It’s notable, if only for being the first time in history a public radio personality has performed as a human beatbox.

Except maybe Peter Segel.  I can’t remember.

Ed Morrissey has been showing his commitment to his Irish roots by learning to speak Gaelic.

That’s committed!

But is Ed as committed as Will Ferrell, who declared during his monologue accepting the James Joyce award…:

“I’m so committed to my Irish roots that I intend to continue wearing this outfit [a green rugby jersey] upon my return to the United States,” Ferrell told his audience. “I will also continue to drive on the left-hand side of the road. Will it be dangerous? Yes. Is it illegal? Highly. But that’s just how committed I am.”

That’s commitment.

(Via Sheila)

Yesterday, in a thread about the South Carolina primary, commenter “Peevish” wrote in the midst of a tangent about Barack Obama’s appeal to voters…:

Obama, like Reagan, has an extraordinary oratory presence

Interesting point there.

I give speaker points.  My father was a speech teacher; I’ve earned a living from speaking, and had it as a wonderfully-rewarding avocation for almost the past four years.  Winston Churchill is one of my personal idols, if only for his talents as an orator.  Like radio, oratory and communication are skills about which I am pretty remorselessly clinical; I’ll state my admiration for the politicians purely on their communications skills, leaving their actual policies and beliefs out of the mix (for the moment, anyway). 

Bill Clinton, while a poor big-crowd orator, was wonderful at the up-close and personal stuff, and a master at the use of television.  George W. Bush is famously bad at prepared oratory (although he’s had his moments), but is as good at off-the-cuff ad-libbing as anyone in the business.  Paul Wellstone was an odd case; he could be a riveting speaker, as long as he didn’t let his emotions run away with him – then, he’d become a sputtering caricature that reminded one of the bastard love child of Benito Mussolini and Daffy Duck.

Obama is an excellent speaker.  How excellent? 

“Like Reagan?”  Well, he’s good.  Good enough to cajole mainstream Republicans to vote Democrat? We don’t know.  So far, he’s spoken almost exclusively to friendly or benign audiences; campaign appearances, mostly.

Is he good enough to sell conservative values in a state that is, and has been for decades, fundamentally hostile to them?  We don’t know – Obama has never been an executive.

Is he good enough to rally a nation behind a vision that goes against a congressional majority?   We don’t know – he’s never been an executive.  His (short) legislative career has focused on voting on other peoples’ stuff, not making an intractable mass of enemies tractable.

Good enough to rouse several nations full of slaves to hope for freedom, against not only the nations’ own governments and his own legislative opponents but elements of his own administration?  We don’t know; Obama has never faced a situation anything like that. 

Could Obama do any of these things – things at which Reagan excelled?  Perhaps – but there’s nothing in the record to tell us one way or the other.  It’s said when Cicero spoke people said, “Wow, what a wonderful speaker Cicero is,” but when Demosthenes spoke they said, “let’s go pants Phillip of Macedonia.” (or words to that effect). 

Can Barack Obama get Democrats to come out and vote for him?  Sure.

Can he get Republicans to go pants Philip of Macedonia?

As good a communicator as he is, that remains to be seen.

One of life’s bigger lessons, whatever the context – in this case, Jeff Wise and his trip to survival school:

If learning how not to die is the main benefit of survival school, here’s another lesson I’m loving just as much—knowing how to appreciate the sweet pleasures of civilization.

The whole thing is worth a read.

…and have them try an infinite number of careers, and eventually you’ll get lucky.

Actually, I got lucky ten years ago, when I switched into my current career. And it seems that people are finally sitting up and noticing, as FastCompany’s list of “Ten Jobs You Didn’t Know You Wanted” does:

Interaction designer
Interaction designers work at all stages of product development to design innovative and user-friendly products. In addition to wearing the traditional hat of a designer, they work with executives to define goals for products and systems in development. They also investigate how people actually engage with new products and systems by creating “personas,” hypothetical users with constructed life stories, to predict their reactions.

Although many interaction designers have advanced degrees in design, such a background isn’t a prerequisite, says David Fore, head of consulting services at Cooper, a pioneering interaction design firm. Fore previously worked as a reporter for industry publications — valuable experience, given that interaction designers’ research requires “the skills of a reporter and an anthropologist,” according to him.

 Reporter and anthropologist?  Sure.  Add engineer, negotiator and psychologist.

In addition to the competitive salary, interaction designers enjoy the opportunity “to learn about every walk of life and industry imaginable,” says Fore. “There’s working with stock brokers, working with a golf course superintendent, an advertising creative director, working with a nurse to build infusion pumps. Everyone needs product design.”

They don’t all know it, but they do, indeed.

I ask “Why Not?”

A farmer built an entire mock castle behind a screen of hay bales…

 Of course, the long, stultifying arm of the law is there to screw things up:

…and lived there concealed for four years to evade planning regulations, officials said on Friday — but it may be torn down anyway.

Robert Fidler hopes to take advantage of a provision of planning law that allows buildings without planning permission to be declared legal if no objections have been made after four years

But Reigate and Banstead Borough Council in Surrey is not impressed.

“It does not count because the property was hidden behind hay bales,” said a spokeswoman. “No one knew it was there.”

You’d think they had bigger things to worry about over there…

even I could learn to dig electric cars…

LAW AND ORDER
SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT
EPISODE (redacted)

SCENE 1:  SMALL GREENWICH VILLAGE APARTMENT, SPATTERED WITH BLOOD AND GORE. 

A MAN IS IMPALED TO THE WALL, APPROX. FIVE FEET OFF THE FLOOR, BY A LONG PIECE OF METAL DRIVEN LONGITUDINALLY THROUGH THE LENGTH OF HIS BODY. 

DR. HUANG AND MEDICAL EXAMINER WARNER ARE ON SCENE WITH THREE CRIME SCENE (CSU) OFFICERS AND DETECITIVES MUNCH AND TUTUOLA.  DETECTIVES STABLER AND BENSON ARRIVE ON THE SCENE. 

STABLER (HOLDING HANKIE OVER FACE):  Wow.  What’s up?

MUNCH:  It’s a bad one.  Vic was shot 24 times with a .22 pistol.  We’ve got casings…well, all over the place.

BENSON:  How’d the killer get in?

CSU1:  Killer blew the lock off its hinges with three shots from a .44 Magnum.  We have the slugs here (points), there and there.  Vic was killed over there (pointing to desk with computer); see the blood pooled on the floor?

STABLER:  Yep.  Good job.  So he blows the door open with a big gun, but he kills the vic with a tiny little popgun?

TUTUOLA:  Look at this;  CSU found the gun’s magazine. 

BENSON:  (Examines metal object).  It holds eight rounds.

MUNCH: The perp would have had to have fired eight shots, reloaded, fired eight more, and reloaded again. 

STABLER:  Wierd.  (Ponders).  Wonder why, when he had the .44 handy?

HUANG:  He wanted to cause pain.  A single .22 hit hardly ever kills; it takes a hit to the medulla or heart, pretty much.

WARNER:   Look at this – all 24 shots hit the stomach.  All those nerve endings – it had to be incredibly painful.

BENSON:  That had to hurt!

TUTUOLA: Word.

HUANG:  What we have here is a deliberate attempt to cause intense pain. 

STABLER:  OK.  Perp comes in, confronts vic, fires eight shots, reloads, fires eight shots, reloads, and fires eight more times.  And then…

MUNCH:  Then, the perp dragged the body over there…

 BENSON:  Blood smears on the floor in a trail from the desk to the wall…

MUNCH: …took this (points at victim) nine-foot-long piece of rebar and used this mallet to hammer it down the vic’s mouth, all the way through and out the…

BENSON:  Spare me that detail, thanks…

MUNCH:  …and then nail the whole thing to the big beam along the wall, five feet up.

STABLER:  Like a pig on a spit.

BENSON:  A monster…

WARNER:  Judging by the lividity and the blood spattering on the floor below the body, I’d say he was alive while the perp put in the rebar.

MUNCH:  Ow.

CAPTAIN CRAGEN WALKS IN. 

CRAGEN:  Whadda we got?

STABLER: A real sick puppy!

CRAGEN:  I need a collar on this one.  The media’s camping out on the commissioner’s front door demanding answers.  Canvas the neighbors?

TUTUOLA: Neighbors heard nothin’.

BENSON:  What motive could someone have to kill someone like…this?

CSU OFFICER 1 (sitting at computer along the wall opposite the body):  Detectives?  Take a look at this.

DETECTIVES, CRAGEN AND HUANG GATHER AROUND, LOOKING OVER CSU1’s SHOULDER

CSU OFFICER 1:  It looks like our victim wrote spam and trojan horses for a Russo-Nigerian online “marketing” company.

BENSON:  (Reading) Get…A…$500,000…mortgage…for…$25 a month…

BENSON, STABLER, CRAGEN, MUNCH, TUTUOLA, HUANG and WARNER TRADE GLANCES.

STABLER:  I call it a suicide.

BENSON:  Me too.

CSU OFFICERS ABRUPTLY PACK UP THEIR GEAR. 

CRAGEN:  Bagels, anyone?  I’m buying.

AND…SCENE.

Sheila gets nominated for the coolest awards.

So go and vote for her, already.

I saw this link on Drudge:

FEDS: GOOGLE cleared to bid on airwaves...

…and I thought “What would the world look like if Google got to bid on radio stations?

There’d be 5,000 channels on your dial – but 4,200 of them would be obscure liberal talk stations.

Actually, I see it’s just an article about the auction of wireless frequencies.  Never mind.

“No, Ms. Gun Controller…”

“…I’m not compensating…”

“…I’m reporting”.

American Airlines is testing anti-missile jamming devices on some of its passenger planes:

Tens of thousands of airline passengers will soon be flying on jets outfitted with anti-missile systems as part of a new government test aimed at thwarting terrorists armed with shoulder-fired projectiles.

Three American Airlines Boeing 767-200s that fly daily round-trip routes between New York and California will receive the anti-missile laser jammers this spring, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which is spending $29 million on the tests.

Jets will fly with the jammer device mounted on the belly of the plane, between the wheels. The device works with sensors, also mounted on the plane, that detect a heat-seeking missile and shoot a laser at it to send the missile veering harmlessly off course.

I’d heard that the airlines and DHS were going to start testing some kind of countermeasures on passenger planes.  I’d wondered if it would be the little flare launchers that you see on fighters – the ones that launch the magnesium flares when they’re going on bombing runs.  I had visions of spent flares plopping into backyards in Richfield and Eagan.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

Officials emphasize that no missiles will be test-fired at the planes,

Rumors that the “officials” had to emphasize this point to prevent Northwest Airlines from attempting a live-fire test are completely unconfirmed.

Next, they need to put machine guns in the wings, like on WWII fighters, so that the next pilot on the take-off or glide path can come in and strafe the terrorists after they launch.

…I remember reading books from the 1910’s through the 1930’s, in the back room of the local library, that predicted what life’d be like in, say, 1975 or 2000.  The technology predictions, of course, were the funniest in retrospect; dreams of personal aircraft buzzing people about on sky highways, robot servants, automated houses looked like the quaint noodlings of a bunch of grade school kids, to my sophisticated eighth-grade perspective in 1977.

But I can imagine, say, certain bloggers sitting around in 2040 looking at yesterday’s Houston Chronicle and muttering “hurry up, dammit” under their breath.

Via Pianomomsicle, a car quiz:

1. If money were no concern and LOOKS the only consideration, what car would you get yourself? A Triumph Spitfire.  
   
2. If money were no concern and YOUR LIFESTYLE the only consideration, what car would you get yourself? Jeep CJ7 (with a freshly-overhauled transfer case).  I used to have one a lot like this one:
   
3. What is the best thing about your current car? It’s almost paid off.
4. If cars could be skinned the way cell phones, laptop computers, and iPods can, what would be a really cool skin for your car? I life-sized skin of itself, only bigger.
5. If you were going to decorate a friend’s car with a custom-made skin as a practical joke, whose car would you skin and what would it be? There’s a lady down the block who’s Subaru is entirely encrusted in “Franken ’08” and “Air America 950” and “You Can’t Simultaneously Prepare for Peace and for War” bumper stickers.  I think a skin to make it look like a Hummer H2 with “Kill a Commie for Mommy” and “Gun Control Is Hitting Your Target” stickers (and, of course, AM1280 The Patriot) would be fun.  And an inexpensive neighborhood improvement. 

That is all.

…with this blogger.

The following minutes were taken at a secret meeting of McDonalds’ Corporation’s corporate Strategic Marketing department.

All names are redacted to protect the innocent.

ATTENDING: [MARKETEER 1], [MARKETEER 2], [VP STRATEGIC MARKETING], [ADVERTISING DEPT 1], [VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING], [AD AGENCY REP 1], [AD AGENCY REP 2], [THE ANIMATED HEAD OF RAY KROC]

[VP STRATEGIC MARKETING]: OK, come to order! Let’s get this meeting underway. [VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING], I’d like to to turn it over to you to talk about “Project Berfunkle”

[VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING]: Thanks, thank you. As you know, as part of McDonalds’ long-term plan to win even more market share, we’ve decided as part of our long-term strategic marketing initiative that, perhaps counterintuitively, “winning mindshare” isn’t as important as helping our competition lose mindshare. Our campaign has been proceeding anon. And so I’ve brought in my assistant, [ADVERTISING REP 1], who has brought in a couple of the agency vendors involved in what may be our most successful “anti-mindshare” campaign yet. [ADVERTISING REP 1]?

[ADVERTISING DEPT 1]: Thanks. As you know, conventional advertising – the whole “draw people to your brand” – peaked out as a “means of getting people to try your brand” nearly twenty years ago. After years of intense market research, we found that launching spoofs – what used to be called “black parodies” – of our competition’s advertising is actually much more effective.

[MARKETEER 2]: Is that actually ethical?

[ADVERTISING DEPT 1]: Was bombing Dresden ethical?

[MARKETEER 2]: Hm.  Good point.  Continue.

[ADVERTISING DEPT 1]:  Thanks.  So, approximately three years ago, we started Project Berfunkle – an initiative to launch black parody advertising “on behalf of” our competition, Burger King and Wendy’s. We combined this with our innocuous, “message”-free “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign.

[MARKETEER 2]: I figured there had to be an ulterior motive for that campaign.

[VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING]: You’re right! At any rate, I’m happy to say that this strategy has come to fruition. I’ve brought in [AD AGENCY REP 1], from [COMPANY 1 REDACTED], and [AD AGENCY REP 2], from [COMPANY 2 REDACTED]. Go ahead.

[AD AGENCY REP 1]: About three years ago, our company launched a subproject of “Berfunkle”, called “Burger Knave”. We started running ads “for” Burger King, featuring “The King” as a grotesque, plastic-headed clown that appears as if from a nightmare in all sorts of surrealistic situations.

[MARKETEER 1]: We paid for those? Good G_d, those were awful!

[ADVERTISING DEPT 1]: That, of course, was the point. And it was hugely successful across nearly all demographics! Young children were frightened by the gargoyle-like, frozen-faced apparition. Middle-class adults were turned off by the forced, post-hip irony. Parents were repulsed by the implied obscenity of the “Big Huckin’ Chicken” spots…

[MARKETEER 2]: Oh, maaaaan. I had to listen to those spots like five times to make sure there wasn’t an “f”-bomb in there!

[AD AGENCY REP 1]: Precisely. In the end, every demographic except recent college liberal arts grads ended up less likely to go to Burger King – and even among that demographic, only the left-leaning ones who really, really love kitschy irony ended up actually eating there…

[MARKETEER 1]: Er, is that a good idea…?

[ADVERTISING DEPT 1]: Yes! They’re more likely to steal the food than pay for it!

[MARKETEER 2]: Ingenious!

[VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING]: Thanks, [AD AGENCY REP 1]. Now, I’d like to turn to [AD AGENCY REP 2].

[AD AGENCY REP 2]: Thank you. We covered the Wendy’s business. We got a later start, because we didn’t want to draw suspicions. Our ad campaign involves a series of incongruous archetypes, wearing the Wendy’s brand’s signature “Pippi Longstocking” wig. Market research since the campaign began running shows that over 60% of respondents thought “Wendy’s” was now a place to go to hear lesbian coffee-house poetry, or a French avant-garde art film outlet, rather than a burger joint.

[VP STRATEGIC MARKETING]: Wow.

[MARKETEER 2]: I call that “success”!

[AD AGENCY REP 2]: Thank you. Phase Two will involve images of cattle wearing the “Wendy” wig being pushed down the gates to the slaughterhouse as “Yakkity Sax” – the “Benny Hill” theme – plays on a bullhorn in the background, driven to their doom by a gaggle of “My Little Ponies”.

[VP STRATEGIC MARKETING]: Wow. Excellent!

[MARKETEER 1]: I’m speechless. Brilliant.
[VP STRATEGIC MARKETING]: So what is the next phase of Project Berfunkle?

[VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING]: In February ’08, we start the “Culvers’ Custard presents Linda Ellerbee speaking for 9/11 Truth” blitz. And in August, we roll out the White Castle “”Jughead” campaign, featuring a loveable, dope smoking NASCAR-watching androgynous 20-something high school dropout who rides a skateboard and leers at young girls as he wishes for a slider.

[ADVERTISING DEPT 1]: Excellent!

[VP SPECIAL ADVERTISING]: Well, Mr. Kroc, sir?

[THE ANIMATED HEAD OF RAY KROC]: I pronounce it good. Burgers on the house!

[ALL]: Yaaay!

And…scene.

Our friends at the Minnesota Voters Alliance – including regular NARN guest Andy Cilek – have taken the first step in their battle to try to stop the Instant Runoff Voting juggernaut, which has already absorbed Minneapolis and threatens Saint Paul.

A group called the Minnesota Voters Alliance filed suit Thursday in Hennepin County District Court seeking to keep instant-runoff voting from starting up in Minneapolis.

The group’s lawyer, Erick Kaardal, cited an opinion from Attorney General Lori Swanson saying the system of ranking candidates by preference probably isn’t permitted by the state Constitution. That opinion, issued this year, stopped short of calling the system unconstitutional.

Kaardal also referenced a 1915 state Supreme Court case that struck down a Duluth system that ranked candidates.

All the best to the Minnesota Voters Alliance.

I have objections to Instant Runoff, too. But they’re not personal; it’s just business.

———-

Background: I analyze systems – software, hardware, processes, print publications, what have you – to empirically determine how *usable* they are.

And speaking not as a partisan, but as a professional whose entire line of work involves figuring how to make things easier for real people to use, there’s a truism at work whenever people design systems; the designer *always* thinks he/she has designed something
so intuitive that someone’d have to be an idiot not to be able to figure out how to do it. It’s true for programmers writing websites, for executives designing processes for other people, for engineers building freeway ramps, for architects designing public spaces; *everyone* designs things to be blazingly intuitive – to other programmers, executives, engineers or architects.

And when those programmers, managers and engineers watch real people in controlled usability tests actually trying to do real-world things with those websites, processes, ramps and spaces, and making mistakes and doing things they were not intended to to, they tend to have one of the following reactions:

• “Nobody’s that stupid!” But it’s not usually a matter of stupidity. It’s human nature – especially if that human is not a programmer, executive, engineer or architect.
• “It’ll never happen in real life!” But it just did!
• “Wow. Who knew? We gotta redesign this!” These are the good ones…

Allowing that everyone who’s stumping for IRV expresses it via rose-colored glasses (that, too, is human nature), I can see several places where confusion is potentially built into the system.

Allow me to walk through a fairly simple conundrum that faces usability people and, by the way, real people using real systems, drawn not from political ideology (of ANY sort!), but from the experience of someone who has had to ask these questions of programmers, executives and engineers for a living for the past decade:

IRV proponents respond “but it’s simple! You just rank your preferences!”

So when “simply” ranking, say, five candidates from top to bottom, do you number them 1-5, or 5-1?

Remember – in many Asian cultures, 1 is “better” than 5, while many people think bigger numbers are “better” than smaller numbers (like a hockey score).

And if you answer “that’ll be explained in the instructions”, please bear in mind that people – REAL people – tend not to read instructional writing, and retain even less for any amount of time. So – how do you make sure everyone gets the directions the same way? Verbal instructions from poll staff? (Mightn’t those be potentially legally-problematic?)

Will people be able to cast “Tie” votes if they have no preference? Rank everyone “1” (or “5”), or rank five candidates “1,2,2,2,3” or “1,1,3,3,5?”? (If you don’t think people will try, think again!) What’ll happen to the ballots if people try to do that? More importantly, how will people KNOW the consequences of trying that, whatever they are, and whether it’s OK or (emphatically) not?

On what medium do they cast their vote – a paper ballot? Marked with what? Pencil? If they change their mind before submitting the ballot, how are changes made? Erasing numbers? How does one know, for audit purposes, WHO erased the number, then? What if they do a poor job of erasing (with older people with arthritic hands, this is not uncommon); how are ambiguities caused by poor erasing and faint handwriting resolved? How about people who don’t erase, but scribble or overwrite? And let’s not forget that immigrants frequently write numbers differently than Americans do; I run into this myself, since I usually use German numbering, and sometimes people read my “1”s as “7”s, and my “7s” as “4”s (I cross my 7s, European-style); how are these ambiguities to be resolved? And if the answer is “by telling immigrants to make sure they use American numbers”, do you realize the problems you’ll run into?

Indeed, how are the votes of the handicapped to be tallied? How would someone with, say, arthritic hands vote? (I won’t even ask the obvious question about voting for the blind; I’ll have to assume SOMEONE’s on top of that one).

And none of this even touches on the issue of “how the ballots are designed”. And that is a huge issue. Remember – whomever designed the infamous Broward County Butterfly Ballot thought they had a perfectly workable, usable design!

———-

Bear in mind that NONE of the issues I raised above is, in my decade’s experience as a usability geek, outlandish, or even especially far-fetched; certainly none of them are remotely political. These are the sorts of issues someone in my field EXPECTS to see when ANY new system intersects with new users. Smart system owners run usability tests before their system “goes live”, and fix the issues they encounter. Dumb ones…well, thank goodness for them, since usability disasters keep me employed.

I’d be very interested in seeing a real, live, end-to-end, empirical test of an IRV system and all of its components – the ranking system, the ballot and media, the counting process, the system of explaining the process to new voters in various languages – and seeing how it REALLY works in a reasonably-complex, contested polling. (I say “contested” for a reason, by the way; IRV seems to have only been tried in locales with relatively monobloc politics, from what I’ve seen. Without trying to judge the politics themselves, professionally speaking, that’s not necessarily a thorough workout).

I think we owe ourselves a Christmas present:

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs

That’s us – right?

I’m hoping to take the kids to New York this coming spring to attend my stepson’s wedding.

Of course, there’s a certain amount of culture shock, going from Saint Paul to New York…

…well, no. There’s usually some of it for people who come from New York to Saint Paul, but I’ve observed rather little of it from people going the other way. The big sticking point would seem to be language.

So – for the children – I’m going to present this brief primer on translating key Minnesota terms to New York-style English.

You’re welcome, kids:

Minnesota term: “You betcha”
New York translation: “Fuhgeddaboutit”

Minnesota term: “Oofda”
New York translation: “Mo********er!”

Minnesota term: “Sheesh, it’s cold”
New York translation: “Jeezus H. Christ, the Yankees suck”

Minnesota term: “Diablo Cody”
New York translation: “Brett Easton Ellis”

That is all.

It’s all right here.

Well, a guy can dream…

…and you’re in the greater Southeast Metro/Western Wisconson area, I’m just gonna tell you that this place really, really rocks.

That is all.

Foot brings the word; CompUSA is circling the drain:

Consumer electronics retailer CompUSA said Friday it will close its store operations after the holidays following sale of the company to Gordon Brothers Group, a restructuring firm. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

The reason?

Dallas-based CompUSA has struggled for nearly a decade with falling prices on personal computers, its most important product, and competition from big-box retailers such as Best Buy.

Also surly, hostile service, unimaginative and stodgy marketing, a terrible website, stores with downright off-putting phone autoattendants that rarely found a human destination, and being a rotten, cold, irritating place to shop.  Sort of like the K-Mart of electronics.

The silver lining – besides the chain’s forthcoming extinction itself?

CompUSA operates 103 stores, which plan to run store-closing sales during the holidays.

I think I could salvage just a tad of goodwill…

 It would be up to the buyers whether to continue the CompUSA name.

Note to buyers:  no. 

After two years of squibs, America’s Hurricane Forecaster is predicting another busy year for hurricanes:

Hurricane forecaster William Gray called Friday for seven Atlantic hurricanes, three of them major, during the 2008 season.

Gray’s team at Colorado State University issued the prediction six months before the June-November season begins.

The preliminary forecast calls for a total of 13 named storms in the Atlantic. It also says it is probable that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coastline.

“Despite fairly inactive 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons, we believe that the Atlantic basin is still in an active hurricane cycle,” Gray said. “This active cycle is expected to continue at least for another decade or two.”

Gray has been forecasting hurricanes for more than two decades, and his predictions are watched closely by emergency responders and others in coastal areas.

The predictions are not always on the mark. Gray initially forecast nine hurricanes for the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, and later lowered that prediction to eight. Only six hurricanes formed.

I’m going to go with the coin toss, myself.