Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Maybe He Learned It From "Hooked On Ponics"

I was discussing a referral to an ophthalmologist with a doctor last week. He kept pronouncing it "op-thalmologist". What happened to the first "h"? It doesn't bother me when most people use this pronunciation - it fits with the other "op" eye words such as optics, optical, optometrist, or optician - but I really would have hoped that a medical doctor would have known better.

Hot or Not?

Headlines such as "World Scientists Near Consensus on Warming" bother me. It's the word "consensus". It sounds more like a popularity vote than the result of research.

Being in the majority doesn't prove your belief is right or wrong, it just means you have a lot of company.

Practice, Practice, Practice

The targeting system at OpenRange in Crestwood lets you either select a distance for a still target or enter a program number for a moving target. With the programs, the target will move up and back and turn to the side or reverse. Recently Tami, the range's instructor, encouraged me to try a couple of the shorter programs. While I had achieved some degree of accuracy with the still target, I'm not doing quite so well with the moving one. Yet.

Fortunately I know what the solution is - more practice.

Update:

Two Cat Night

I Was Wrong, You Need to Apologize

An Islamic civil rights group is calling for an investigation to determine why 40 Muslims were not allowed to board a flight from Germany to Detroit after their pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Northwest Airlines officials said the passengers arrived too late to catch the flight, but some of the Muslims, appearing at a press conference yesterday with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), called it religious discrimination.

The Muslims arrived at the Frankfurt airport at 7:30 a.m. Jan. 7 on a charter plane from Saudi Arabia. They did not show up at the ticket counter until about 20 minutes before the Detroit-bound Flight 51 left at 10:20 a.m., said Dean Breest, a Northwest Airlines spokesman.

Why don't I have an organization that demands apologies for me when I'm unable or unwilling to follow the rules everyone else must obey?

So Not Me

I bought an iPod recently and have been buying some music from iTunes. The songs I've gotten are ones that I don't have on a CD and most of them are ones where the song I buy is the only song by that group or artist that I like. This totally skews the recommendations that the iTunes store comes up with. I understand why it comes up with the results that it does but they're way off from what my main interests are.

Call Me Irresponsible

From the information booklet about Girl Scout cookie sales:

Encourage your customers to enjoy their Girl Scout cookies in a healthy manner. Remember: a serving of Thin Mints is not an entire sleeve of cookies!

The girls should read the nutritional information for the cookies so they can answer customer questions but if the customers don't ask I don't think it's the responsibility of the girls to lecture them on their dietary choices...unless the customer is a little brother who scarfs down a whole box before his sister gets a cookie or two from it.

If you want people to pay attention to the serving suggestions on the boxes, don't make the cookies so tasty!

Cyborg Name

Get Your Cyborg Name

In the mood I am today, I can't deny there's some truth in it.

Link via vw bug.

Fair or Not?

Toys "R" Us Inc. has come under fire for denying a Chinese-American infant a $25,000 savings bond prize in a contest for the New Year's first baby because the girl's mother is not a legal U.S. resident.

...Some Chinese-American advocates say the company's decision smacks of second-class citizenship.

Uh, no. That would be non-citizenship.

Even though the contest rules stated that the mother had to be a legal resident of the U.S. they still held a random drawing to decide among the first three babies entered in the contest.

Putting People Before the Product

It's easy to feel safe when you're on a Disney property but this news story of a man who was arrested for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl on a Disney cruise ship is a reminder that bad things can happen. I am impressed with how the ship's cast members handled the incident. They immediately notified the FBI and then turned the man over to Bahamian police who now have the man in jail. It tells me that passenger safety is more important than trying to protect their image by attempting to hide what happened.

Whenever you have large groups of people, you have the chance that there will be some bad ones. And frankly, considering Disney's appeal to children it can only be a sign of the usually safe atmosphere that they provide that keeps reports of pedophiles on Disney properties from being regular news items.

First Live-Action Discworld Film

Sky One showed a live-action version of Terry Pratchett's Hogfather this past Christmas. I wonder what the chances are of it ever being shown here.

Do You Think People in Colorado and the Plains States Agree?

So far the winter weather here has been mild. My daughter came home from school yesterday and told me that her teacher said the reason for this is global warming.