Tag Archive for ‘questionable’ at Three Roads Blog

Tag Archive for 'questionable' Page 2 of 3

Bacn

Published on December 20, 2007 in Uncategorized.

The neologism bacn describes e-mail that’s not quite spam but nonetheless isn’t welcome. (It’s lesser spam, thus its place in the growing cyber-pork family.) Let’s say that somewhere along the way you willingly gave a company or organization your e-mail address, and now they’re sending you crap—bacn—all the time.

For me, the biggest senders of bacn are McAfee and Ticketmaster. As a (reluctant) user of their products and services, I could initially tolerate a certain amount of e-mail. But they’ve tested my patience again and again, and all of it is used up.

So here are my imperfect options: Erase the messages when they come (while cursing their names); hit the ‘Spam’ button, even though, technically, I gave them my address. (This increases the chance that the sender will get into trouble from my internet service provider (ISP) and/or e-mail service—kind of harsh, especially since it was I who offered up my e-mail address; or take the 20 seconds required to unsubscribe from their promotional e-mails.

The thing about the last option is it’s a pain. (OK, a minor one, but still.) What if you want to send a message to Company X that you will tolerate—appreciate even—a few e-mail promotions here and there, once in a while? But you also want to emphasize that you won’t abide a constant deluge of offers and uninteresting newsletters.

Enter the ‘Bacn’ button.

This button will let you send that warning message, that shot across the bow. By labeling an e-mail bacn, you’re saying to Company X, “I realize I willingly gave you my e-mail, but you’re testing my patience, and you can’t continue on your current track.”

Your e-mail provider, Gmail, yahoo, etc., would take note of your bacn reports and, if they got to certain number, would then notify the sender of imminent peril should they keep sending unwanted e-mail.

Good idea?

Mitigation vs. adaptation

Published on November 26, 2007 in Uncategorized.

Responding to climate change involves an iterative risk management process that includes both adaptation and mitigation and takes into account climate change damages, co-benefits, sustainability, equity, and attitudes to risk.

From the November 2007 Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report

To offer a pretty huge simplification, the popular argument about climate change has been, until recently, about whether anthropogenic climate change is truth or fiction.

Now that we’ve all (the mainstream, at least) come around to the inconvenient truth of the matter and the skeptics have scurried for cover (I realize it could be a tactical retreat), there’s a polarization vacuum. I don’t expect there to be a vacuum for long. People need to take sides. Since the denial iceberg has melted, I suspect people are looking for another floe to jump on.

I predict the new debate will pit those who would seek primarily to mitigate the effects of climate change against those who would seek primarily to adapt to the effects of climate change. While both will no doubt be necessary, as the latest and final installment of the IPCC’s report makes clear, I suspect that there will be partisans for one approach over the other. And look for the people who once denied climate change to make the leap to the Let’s Just Adapt argument.

To simplify even further and venture another guess, I bet that wealthier countries will prefer the adaptation model to the mitigation one, because while mitigation involves putting the breaks on certain behavior (never popular in a capitalist society), adaptation trends toward growth and new development (always popular).

Chuck Norris Approved

Published on November 19, 2007 in trends.

A new (and quite funny) ad for GOP primary candidate Mike Huckabee features none other than Chuck Norris. (Huckabee: “When Chuck Norris does a push up, he’s not lifting himself up—he’s pushing the earth down.”)

The spot leads me to wonder: Is this the start of a new era of action-figure endorsements? If so, I predict the following declarations of support:

Keanu Reeves avows that John Edwards is “The One.”
Tom Cruise jumps around violently for Mitt Romney.
Toby Maguire (Spiderman) senses Dennis Kucinich’s potential.
Steven Seagal says Rudy Giuliani will issue a series of quick jabs and chops, leaving the competition in a heap.
Linda Hamilton (Terminator I) says Hillary is made of liquid metal and cannot be defeated.
Clint Eastwood sees a little Dirty Harry in John McCain.
Mel Gibson says he’s casting Tom Tancredo for his next movie, “The Passion of the Xenophobe.”

Say it with me: Jean-Claude-Van-Damme

Published on October 23, 2007 in movies and trends.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams likes saying the words “monkey god” over and over, because “for some wonderful reason, that combination of words – monkey god – releases a little snort of serotonin directly into the part of my brain that likes it the most.”

For me (and at least one or two other people) the words Jean-Claude Van Damme produce a similar effect. It’s hard to say why this is so. If you have any clues as to why the name of a short Belgian martial artist/actor would be so intrinsically funny, let me know.

As it happens, there is a new movie on the way that will star Jean-Claude as Jean-Claude. It’s called JCVD in JCVD. It sounds like a documentary but it isn’t. It’s a biopic that will star the actual subject.

Leave it to Jean-Claude to break with convention and create an entirely new film genre—the auto-biopic. I’m sure that my blogging comrade Visionary Larry saw this coming.

The necktie returneth

Published on October 12, 2007 in trends.

I don’t know about other bloggers, but whenever I have an itch to write a post, I throw on a button-down shirt and necktie.

Well, not really, but what if doing so made me a more productive blogger? What if it made me a more productive AND hipper blogger?

According to the NY Times, the necktie is back. But these days, instead of signaling a desire to get ahead, the half-Windsor knot reveals the desire to be seen as a cool and groovy guy. Someone cool and groovy like, say, Justin Timberlake or Frodo Baggins.

“Wearing a tie is a kind of style. It’s a thing you’re doing. It’s seen as ‘creative,’” a 31-year-old film executive told the Times.

Continue reading ‘The necktie returneth’

Poop in the food

Published on October 10, 2007 in Uncategorized.

The timeless maxim “Don’t shit where you eat” has saved countless lives over the centuries. And the societies that have most closely followed this imperative have, throughout history, dominated the world, starting with the Romans, whose empire was built on and with its systems of public sanitation.

We’ve since expanded upon “don’t shit where you eat.” Now, it’s “Don’t eat anything that has come close to any kind of fecal matter, human or animal, unless it has been thoroughly scrubbed, sterilized and disinfected.” And but for a few cases here and there, we’ve been successful in implementing this mandate.

But what if a little shit was good for you? And what if our totally shit-less diet was turning us into a bunch of wusses who can’t survive the occasional tainted patty from Sam’s Club? That is, more or less, the argument that Slate writer and practicing doctor Kent Sepkowitz put forth recently. (Ironic last name, eh?) I think he’s got a great point.

Continue reading ‘Poop in the food’

Bike safety starts with a wig

Published on October 10, 2007 in Uncategorized.

Here is some angst that anyone who rides a bike on public roads can appreciate:

Every day on my way to work, I mentally compose a book as I ride my bike through the streets of DC. This book is aimed at the pedestrians and cars who seem ignorant of the basic physics of bicycles–the pedestrians who act as if my bicycle and I were a slow-moving car, and the cars that act as if we were a pedestrian. The book would be aimed at communicating one simple, but apparently incredibly difficult to grasp, concept: unlike a slow-moving car or a pedestrian, I cannot suddenly stop or reverse direction.

Today I composed Chapter Three: The Reason I Want to Get into the Right Lane is That It’s Dangerous Over Here On the Left (And Not That I Have Failed to Sufficiently Appreciate the Grandeur of Your Magnificent Internal Combustion Vehicle). This is the follow-up to Chapter Two: If You Run a Red Light and Hit Me (Because I Can’t Stop) I Will Die Even Though I Am Wearing a Helmet. Chapter Four will be the first of our many chapters aimed at pedestrians; I have tentatively titled it “Pedestrians Who Leap Out in Front of Me and Get Hit (Because I Can’t Stop) Will Probably Get Hurt Worse Than Me, the Helmeted Bicyclist”.

It’s a work in progress.

Perhaps she (Megan McArdle, blogger for the Atlantic) should consider not wearing a helmet. Recent research shows that cars tend to drive closer to helmeted riders. The study also showed that cars give a wider berth to riders with long hair. My question, of course, is what about mullets, which are sort of short and sort of long? I fear that cars may drive even closer to mulleted riders.

Three Roads Blog