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2.28.2006
Torts, re-formed
Look! Medical malpractice insurance rates stabilized!
Good thing we enacted all that "tort reform" and stopped all those dirty, dirty trial lawyers from bringing their frivolous lawsuits and... waitaminute. No we didn't. (1) Huh. Funny how that worked out. (1) well, maybe not nationwide. Here in Ohio, we of course have Senate Bill 80, signed in December 2004 and effective April 2005, which made some kind of inroads against supposed frivolous suits and skyrocketing damage awards, but I'm kind of having a hard time seeing how that bill, or any other like it that might have come up in the 2004 election cycle contributed to the already-steeply declining trend in insurance rates shown on the report. Also, this post is of course a HUGE snark on my part, and the subject deserves a lot more actual thought than I've put into it here -- so I promise that I'll address it in more detail in the near future. 2.23.2006
Open call for research subjects
Do you drink socially? Do you like beer? Do you like beer some of the time but not all of the time? Are you a beer snob?
I'm looking for willing participants to either submit themselves to an in-depth interview (20 to 30 minutes, can be done over the phone). Let me know if you want in on the action, I have to complete these puppies by next week. Specify if you are are a beer aficionado or a multi-alcohol consumer. Merci!! 2.22.2006
Weirdness
Val reminded me this morning that the Maurice Clarett gag had disappeared. Didn't show up in the Blogger list of posts, and though it was showing me the text in Google's clip, it wasn't showing up in Google's cache.
On a whim, I tried to find its original permalink page, and lo and behold, there it was. I reposted the text back into its place in line, but we'll see if there's any more Blogger hiccups... 2.21.2006
More Politics
Some other odds and ends here in the C-O (as my pal Tony calls it):
*** Dude, I went to law school with this guy and now he's running for the House (Ohio 22). *** Thought I was PO'd about the so-called "St. Valentine's Day Massacre"? There's allegations surfacing that the Brown campaign not only was behind Hackett's abrupt exit but that they were actually floating rumors of war crimes. ***  Kind of speaks for itself. Cartoons Redux
As a followup on the earlier post about the Danish cartoons and the escalating crisis (Dad and I had a good back and forth about this -- I've been meaning to post up the link to Bill Kristol's piece) -- Warren's note reminded me that I have been remiss in not pointing you all to the continuing coverage that Tom Spurgeon is providing of the whole story. Pretty much hitting it from all angles, and Tom is of course uniquely suited to providing the comic/cartoon world's perspective on the subject.
Video Killed the Dahlbergcentral Blog
2.20.2006
Does Not Play Well With Others
Via waxy, a tale of a camera lost and then found:
"Hello," I said, when I reached the woman who had reported the camera found, "I got your number from the park ranger, it seems you have my camera?" [more] 2.19.2006
Soooooper-genius
2.17.2006
Take My Bucks...Please!
Got this from Polly and it was too funny not to share:
Capital One just announced they have signed Maurice Clarett as their spokesman. His job will be to stand in front of the OSU Stadium with a gun and ask people "What's in your wallet?" Oh, I mean, that poor misguided young man. (reposted by Gus because Blogger hiccuped and ate it) 2.16.2006
Help Is On the Way
A funny thing from yesterday: yesterday's Dispatch had a wonderful letter to the editor casitgating Columbus-local Schoedinger Funeral Homes for some ill-chosen remarks. I couldn't believe what I was reading -- stuff like that doesn't happen in real life -- so I went to look for the original article, and yeah, it's not exactly the kind of thing you want to say in print:
Heh. (emphasis added, of course, and there's more to the article after that; link is from the Dispatch archives, which are registration-required) 2.15.2006
Bully?
 Could MY baby angel possibly be a bully? So I got the dreaded phone call from the daycare today. Turns out Carl's been hitting his "friends", not just a little, not just once or twice, and not just with his hands, but occasionally with toys. So I asked, hoping for the best, "Is it just when he's frustrated or about a toy or something?" She was kind, but direct, "No, sometimes he just hits them when he wants them to go away." WHAT! Could he have inherited my horrible temper? Too much TV? Too much daycare? And we can't even blame it on the baby yet!!! Worst one was today I gather from her description and the timing of her call. Seems hard toy + friend's head = big trouble for him, and for us. She held his arm back just as he fired up to give this poor kid another whack. So any advice or reassurance is very welcome. Gus and I will certainly be needing it! - Valerie 2.14.2006
And that, my friends, is love.
 I don't know how your Valentine's Day went, but I got filet mignon from my sweetheart. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. EDIT TO ADD: Brak, for context. 2.13.2006
Train Wreck, Slow Motion, et cetera
OK, so yes, it is teh funny to gawk at the Ohio GOP gubernatorial primary these days. A frequent lunchtime topic of conversation at my office is just how much more painful it could be to watch Ken Blackwell and Jim Petro try to outdo one another. The spectacle is something we should probably be greatful for, because for the moment, it's taken away some of the attention on just how pathetically inept the Ohio Democratic primaries are about to become.
Three candidates in the gubernatorial primary? Nope; after an embarrassing round of "we're not really trying to make this endorsement process difficult for anyone" (see, for instance, ODP Chair Chris Redfern actually calling a blogger to reassure her that they're not trying to make Fingerhut drop out of the race), lo and behold, Fingerhut's out. (Not that I think he had much of a chance in the primary, anyway, but come on, it's a primary.) Then there's the now-contested race between Paul Hackett and longtime Congressman Sherrod Brown for the chance (chance!) to run against Mike DeWine in November -- Hackett declared first, Brown later only when he sensed some vulnerability in DeWine's seat. Only now there's pressure on Hackett to drop out of the Senate race and go back to Cincinnati to run against Jean Schmidt again, leaving the field clear for Brown -- which is suddenly trumpeted as "Hackett definitely out" from some quarters. (No definite response from the Hackett campaign yet.) Oy. Bickering over who should go to which race in order to make it "easy" for the party's preferred candidates kind of, I don't know, defeats the purpose of the primary, yes? Save it for November, guys. (Chris's on-the-money post on the subject is what spurred all of this tonight, so start there and work your way through the links. Worthwhile reading.) UPDATE: Hell, I hadn't even finished the last post edit and he dropped out. Terrorism?
I've kind of stayed out of the whole "Mohammed cartoons" thing because it seems like it's too big to get around (on the one hand, if the group reacting to the photos were here in the States, I'd probably dismiss them out of hand as crackpots and crybabies -- but because it seems like it's now at least a couple of sovereign nations doing the "crying", it's harder for me to be so glib.)
But then I see things like this:  and it's harder to be quite so undecided. (The photo is an AP photo from Nairobi, Kenya; the link is here.) Found this at the Volokh Conspiracy, where I also saw this story about similar reaction to an editorial cartoon published in the Akron Beacon-Journal which (I thought, anyway) very clearly pokes fun at the way in which news organizations are dodging coverage of the issue rather than the Islamic religion itself. You can read for yourself, but the gist is that Muslim groups in Akron are condemning the paper for even that. ... Not wanting to leave a poor taste in everyone's mouths after that, I'll relate a story from yesterday's Mass at St. Francis. I don't know how it came about, but a couple of guys from Turkey -- Muslims -- were hosting a special feast in the church basement after Mass. One of them made his invitation pitch from the pulpit at the end of Mass, and from what I could gather (his accent was pretty thick), it was a celebration in rememberance of Noah and the flood, a story present in both Christian and Muslim traditions. After the flood, Noah and his family had to mix together all of the meager food they had on the Ark and made some kind of pudding with it in order to share and celebrate being saved, and apparently the tradition now is that you cook this pudding up and share it with friends and neighbors, Christian and Muslim alike. Anyway, so this guy got up and gave his spiel in heavily accented English, and when it was all done, the whole church applauded. I don't know exactly why (it's not like everyone who gets up to make an announcement gets applause), but it was nice to see. 2.12.2006
Open Season
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.
Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday, said Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System. The accident occurred Saturday at a ranch in south Texas where the vice president and several companions were hunting quail. It was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported locally by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday. Katharine Armstrong, the ranch's owner, said Sunday that Cheney was using a 28-guage shotgun and that Whittington was about 30 yards away when he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest. Each of the hunters was wearing a bright orange vest at the time, Armstrong told reporters at the ranch about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. She said Whittington was "alert and doing fine." [more] Since I didn't see the news tonight, found first at boingboing, where the first question was, "Are lawyers in season right now?" 2.09.2006
Jealous?
I should stay home with Carl more often, if stuff like this is what I can expect in the mail on those days:
 And particularly when it's personalized:  2.07.2006
Calling all beer drinkers
All right, all you readers out there who have a passion for brew. I'm working on a project at school where we are--TA DA--promoting the whole damn category of beer.
The slight catch is that those silly beer brewers have already launched a campaign (you may have seen the "cheers" commercial during the Super Bowl), but we need to tell them whether or not it is a good idea. So, in the name of good market research, take a few moments to check out Here's To Beer, the campaign website, and tell me what you think. Is this information that is useful to you? What do you think? 2.04.2006
one "track" mind
2.03.2006
Ad Mania!
To many, Super Bowl Sunday is a celebrated athletic contest. To those of us studying marketing, it's a case study in progress. (In fact, today, we trudged through a short, one-hour midterm and were rewarded in the second hour of class with a screening of several brand-spanking new beer commercials to be aired during the big competition.) It's funny, in the ad world, they talk about who "wins" the Super Bowl--which one big commercial strikes a chord? USA Today and the Wall Street Journal both have polls that crowns a winner.
**Spoiler alert!** I don't know if the beer commercials I saw will win, but at least two were pretty funny. One involved an office full beer hidden like Easter eggs, and the mayhem that would ensue; another showed two roommates who came up with a way to hide the refrigerator stocked with beer--a revolving wall that unfortunately, revolved into the neighbor's apartment. Anyway, watch the game for the commercials. And if you're interested in seeing what some of my schooling is like, my professor will be on the NBC Nightly News this evening! 2.02.2006
Taurus: Sign of the Right-Winger
OK, seriously, I usually like the Washington Post. They provide good, in-depth coverage of all goings-on inside the Beltway. But
this?!? I must say I'm wondering about the editors... Do we really need to know the role astrological sign plays in political decisions? 2.01.2006
And Starring John C. McGinley as Keith Olbermann
If, like me, you enjoy watching the childish taunting and catfighthissyfits of cable network talking heads, then you, like me, will enjoy this video clip of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in an apparently on-air dressing down of Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly.
It's a train wreck, yes, but it's a HILARIOUS train wreck. (Quicktime required, but OH SO WORTH IT) Bush versus Dr. Moreau
RE: the State of the Union last night (if you missed it, don't worry, you didn't miss much), my reaction pretty much echoed Wonkette's, particularly where it concerned "human-animal hybrids".
Seriously. Where the hell did that come from?
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