Anna's Slant

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October 30, 2005

Pearls of Wisdom....

Things I've learned today:

#1. When you're single, a trip to the SAMS club is a bit like stepping through the looking glass.

#2. Progress in the "War on Bugs" is difficult to measure.

#3. A bug that crawls into the electrical outlet will not be zapped.

#4. Cockroach Cryogenics is an emerging science (and they just lost a research lab in Cookeville).

Posted by Anna at 12:04 AM | Comments (2)

October 29, 2005

Who Is Ivan Faulkner?

And, more importantly, what bullshit of mine is he sick of? And how many other email accounts did he send his spam to? I nominate the "delete" button as the greatest invention of mankind.

Posted by Anna at 3:07 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2005

Worthless......

Thats what I found out my blog is today. Worth absolutely nothing. Here's the proof.

Their computer is obviously not actually reading my blog ;)

Posted by Anna at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

Just gotta say......

While fall cleaning in my bathroom last weekend I came across a single application sample of Olay "daily renewal" body wash. I used it in my shower this morning, and I must say, the claim that it "deeply moisturizes for radiant, resilient skin" is true. My skin does indeed look AND feel much more radiant and resilient. And it's "uplifting scent of lemon and orange, combined with melon and fresh florals in a luxurious creamy lather", mmmmmmmm. I'm sold.

Posted by Anna at 2:26 PM | Comments (3)

October 25, 2005

To all you workin' gals.....

(And the men who love us)

After reading "Protecting Family and Race: The Progressive Case for Regulating Women's Work" by Thomas C. Leonard, I'm sure glad the "good ol' days" are over. By the middle of the third page or so, I was ready to puke, but it is well worth reading all 35 pages (ok, it's really only 26 2/3rds pages, plus a whole bunch of notes & references). It's really too bad all those "progressives" who would so quickly label me as an "unfit" worker on many fronts are dead, because I would just love for them to come work with me on the line for 10 hours. (Maybe it's a good thing they are dead, because by the end of the night I would make sure they wished they were.) To quote the old Virginia Slims ads "You've come a long way baby".

Posted by Anna at 1:40 PM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2005

Just in time for Christmas....

Good news is No news

For that hard-to-shop-for person on your list (you know, the one who's only wish is for "world peace"), I'd recommend the Human Security Report 2005. Here is a review posted by Chris Anderson on TEDBlog:

The Human Security Report 2005 published last week included the following astonishing, not-to-say exhilarating findings.
- The number of armed conflicts has declined by more than 40% since 1992. The deadliest conflicts (those with 1000 or more battle-deaths) dropped by 80%.
- The number of military coups and attempted coups has declined by some 60% since 1963. In 1963, there were 25 coups or attempted coups; in 2004, there were 10. All failed.
- Most armed conflicts now take place in the poorest countries in the world, but as incomes rise the risk of war declines.
- The period since the end of World War II is the longest interval without wars between the major powers in hundreds of years.
- Most of the world's conflicts are now concentrated in Africa. But even here there are signs of hope. Between 2002 and 2003 (the last year for which there is data) the number of armed conflicts in Africa dropped from 41 to 35.
- Wars have become dramatically less deadly over the past five decades. The average number of people reported killed per conflict per year in 1950 was 38,000; in 2002 it was just 600, a decline of 98%.

Of course there's still plenty of horror in the world, but good news should be celebrated, especially as there are pointers in the report as to how the situation can be improved further. One of the drivers of the reduction may have been a four-fold increase in UN peace-keeping missions. The total cost of these missions? The same as one-month of the US war in Iraq. Go figure.

"The wars that dominated the headlines in the 1990s were real - and brutal enough," the study says. "But the global media have largely ignored the 100-odd conflicts that have quietly ended since 1988."

The global media also, of course, largely ignored the report. Chances are this is the first you've heard of it. I'm getting more and more angry about this... the strange, unspoken, self-reinforcing alliance between media and public, which results in such a distorted world image being created. Drama, celebrity and parochialism inevitably trump insight, reason, and the global view.

You can order a copy, set for publication November 29 here, or for the more impatient who would like to read it now, it can be accessed in .pdf format here.

Posted by Anna at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2005

IMHO: Obesity in America

So, I'm in Kroger today, and I'm walking through the dairy section, and this big yellow sign jumps out at me. If I buy 8 Lean Cusine items, they will GIVE me two packages of refrigerated cookie dough FREE!!!

That's just wrong.

Posted by Anna at 4:00 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2005

The best prank ever...

On my 11:00 break at work last night a couple of guys were talking about another co-worker who was really mad at them. REALLY mad. I hadn't heard the story, so they filled me in.

Several of the guys had bought lottery tickets, since the jackpot was so incredibly huge, and since one guy wears a radio with headset while working he'd agreed to annouce the winning numbers as they were read. SO, it was time for the drawing and the group gathered, tickets in hand to hear the numbers. The guy with the radio had memorized the numbers of one of the other guys and announced those numbers!

The poor guy who was thinking he'd just won something like 340 million dollars went up to the QC lab to have the numbers pulled up on the internet to double check. The QC guy was not in on the prank, so he checked, but the numbers had not posted yet. His screams of excitement and shaking hands instantly transformed into cussing!

Mean, yes, but still, the best prank ever! (And, I should also note, he had it coming after pulling off a really great prank himself last valentines day.)

Posted by Anna at 2:55 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2005

Woo Hoo! I made the "High School" demographic

Does it count as being "hit on" if the person who is hitting on you doesn't have the guts to face rejection, and sends someone else to ask you out instead?

Posted by Anna at 11:46 AM | Comments (3)

October 15, 2005

Born to Read

This should settle the "nature vs. nurture" debate once and for all. That is me, just a few months old, when I was the much adored "baby of the family" (before being demoted to "middle child" with the arrival of baby sarah *coughcough*). Its hard to tell, but I'm sure I had my eye on "baby's first typewriter" with the idea of making the JCPenny wishbook my first reviewed book.

And, if there remains any doubt that my preferences for reading and catnapping are inborn traits, here is further evidence.

(My siblings may note the picture of me sound asleep with my plate of spaghetti is missing from this gallery, I omitted that one intentionally.)

Posted by Anna at 10:29 PM | Comments (1)

IMHO: Human Development's effect on Natural Disasters

A commenter has asked "Do you think human development on environment has lead to the occurence of the natural disaster? if yes, how does it causes the natural disaster?" in response to this post. My answer is "Yes, and No". First of all, "Natural Disasters" are all man-made in that without the presence of man, they would not be disasters, but only "Natural Phenomena". These events are only disasters because they result in loss of property or human life.

Does human development on environment lead to occurance of natural disaster? I'm in the "not really" camp on this part of the question. This CNN.com article affirms my belief that the hurricanes we are seeing are just part of the normal run of weather events. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg, a former member of Greenpeace and "Junk Science Judo" by Steven J. Milloy helped shape my understanding. Do we still have a responsibility to take care of the environment we live in? Yes. Do we need to become alarmists, and adopt a back-to-nature lifestyle? No.

Where I believe human development has made a difference is in the toll these natural events have. Development in costal regions, a fairly new occurance thanks to many modern conveniences, ensures significant loss of property, and possibly human life (in the case of people unwilling or unable to evacuate). It's a simple risk vs. reward calculation. If you want to live in an area, known for destructive weather or geological occurances, you incur the associated risks of loosing your property or your life. Americans seem to believe the consequences of their choices can be deflected on the Federal Government, forgetting the government is merely a reflection of themselves. How long can we sustain this lifestyle?

We need to keep in mind that the earth is in a constant state of change. Even the location of the continents has changed over it's history. We cannot stop hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis or even wildfires, we can however learn from them and learn to live with them. This is knowledge our ancestors may have held, and lived by, which we have turned from.

In the aftermath of the tsunami last Christmas, I recall reading a story about an entire village saved, thanks to that ancient wisdom. I can't find the article now, but basically when the villagers saw the water draining out of the ocean, they knew from folk wisdom that it would return in force. Drawing from that wisdom, the residents moved uphill quickly, and saved their people. They needed no sophisticated "early warning" system, they did not wait for a government agency to tell them what to do, and they lost not one person.

These are great questions, and hopefully will lead to great discussions. Discussions which are long overdue.

Posted by Anna at 3:53 PM | Comments (0)

Mind your manners, please...

I get off work at 2:00 a.m., after a ten hour shift. When I get home, I spend about an hour unwinding, and get to bed about 3:00 a.m. Last night (or early this morning, however you want to look at it), I crawled into bed and spent the next three hours listening to one of my neighbor couples arguing. At six a.m., the neighbor in the apartment next to theirs began bitching about having to go to work with no sleep, and kept up her tirade until she left for work at 6:30.

With about four hours of decent sleep I went in and pulled a ten hour overtime shift. Now I'm unwinding with a huge mug of hot chocolate topped with several marshmallows, and cruising through the headlines. Cookeville is quite likely getting a Starbucks, which is fine, but I'll stick with Gridges, thanks. And then I find this story, all I have to say in response is "Ya THINK?"

Posted by Anna at 1:36 AM | Comments (1)

October 14, 2005

Wheels

Tonight I advanced another step in my plot for world domination, driving the golf cart at work. It wasn't my idea, in fact I was resistant at first, our floors can be quite slippery, and I've seen the forklifts unable to get traction at times. All I need is to take out a stack of tubs full of parts, smack into a bunch of coils of steel or get t-boned by a forklift in the supervisors cart, I'd never live it down. But, my supervisor was insistant that driving to QC all night long was the only hope for decent production on my job (I made 18 trips to the QC lab in 10 hours). Once a member of "Team Them" uses the "P" word all argument ceases, I was stuck.

With much trepidation I slid into the drivers seat, the supervisor indicated which pedal was the "gas" and which was the brake (I soon learned it was not a real brake, but more of an "eject button"). I touched the accelerator and the thing lurched forward a few feet. My supervisor was beaming, training complete. After a few trips trying different routes (all requiring planning so as to avoid having to reverse the cart, that module was somehow excluded from my training session), I settled on one that kept me out of the way of forklift traffic and pedestrians as much as possible. By the end of the shift, I had it mastered.

Next stop in my plan to take over the universe, forklift drivers ed ;).

Posted by Anna at 3:49 AM | Comments (1)

October 9, 2005

The Un-Christmas List

Ok, here is one thing that won't make either my Christmas "wish list", or my Christmas "gift ideas" list: The pink, polar fleece, breast cancer awareness blanket I saw in Wal-Mart today. Not that breast cancer awareness is a bad thing, and polar fleece blankets are, in themselves, a wonderful experience, but somehow together, the two just loose their appeal.

Posted by Anna at 1:24 AM | Comments (1)

The possibilities are endless...

This is the stuff science fiction is made of. I was nuking water tonight for a huge mug of apple cider, after four minutes on high I opened the door, and one of my resident bugs crawled out UNTOUCHED! At least I think he was untouched, perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps he will mutate into some space-age heteromorphic ninja bug and exact revenge on the residents of Cookeville and the Upper Cumberland region managing to evade the best efforts of the combined Military forces of the United States before being annihilated by a troop of Girl Scouts at a jamboree or something.

Perhaps I could qualify for some sort of research grant to fund a study on the effects of microwaving on common household pests. On second thought, that could get me into a lot of trouble with animal-rights groups. I can see the new "bug friendly" microwave labels already, "No disgusting bugs were harmed in the manufacture and testing of this microwave."

Posted by Anna at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2005

baby anna

Wasn't I cute?

And, as a special note to my siblings reading this, I have pictures, and I'm not afraid to post them!

Posted by Anna at 7:22 PM | Comments (2)

October 6, 2005

Six Degrees of Separation

I watched the movie "Six Degrees of Separation" several years ago, and to be honest the only thing I remember from it was the basic concept that there are only six degrees that separate any one person from every other person in the world. Apparently the concept has been studied a couple times, and does indeed seem plausible. (For more information, see Wikipedia.)

Last night, in a totally unconnected incident, I recalled a story my grandpa told me about 6 or so years ago. I had gone to visit my grandparents, living in Palm Desert, California and one night while going through old albums my grandpa came across a small clipping from "Time" magazine. Grandpa is a great story teller, and proceeded to relate to me the importance of that clipping in his album.

For the past several years my grandpa (who just turned 90 this March) has worked at Marriott's Desert Springs Resort in Palm Desert as an athletic trainer in the health club. During the time he worked there, it seems there was a princess who had come to stay at the resort. He hadn't actually worked with the princess, but he had seen her around, and knew who she was (apparently, she kept herself in good physical shape). This princess was married to a "Prince Faisel" (In looking for the actual name of the prince, I've narrowed it down to either Prince Saud al-Faisel or a Prince Turki al-Faisel both from Saudi Arabia. I want to say it was Prince Saud al-Faisel, but am not entirely sure.) Now, this was before 9/11, when Osama bin Laden was entertaining himself by blowing up parking garages, but still it was a nuisance for the United States. So during the time he was vacationing in Palm Desert, Prince Faisel took a quick trip to meet with Osama bin Laden and told him to chill out and leave the US alone. That meeting is what was reported to "Time" magazine, which my grandpa had read, and clipped out for his album.

I count just three intermediaries between myself and Osama bin Laden.

Posted by Anna at 11:32 AM | Comments (1)

Are you gullible?

Take the "Gullibility Factor Test" here and see if your a free thinker, or a mind slave. I scored 88 out of 100 (with 0 = "mind slave" and 100 = "free thinker"). Here's what they said about me.

Free Thinker
"Welcome to the top 5%. You're a true free thinker and a person who is well informed about the reality in which you live. Although you may have been easily manipulated earlier in life, you eventually gained lucidity and developed a healthy sense of skepticism that you now automatically apply to your observations and experiences. You are endlessly curious about human behavior and the nature of the universe, and you have one or more lifestyle habits that most people would consider odd or unusual. You are not only of very high intelligence, you are also extremely creative in one or more areas (music, art, software development, inventing, etc.)
If you were in The Matrix, you would have taken the red pill, completed the combat training, and started fighting (and beating) agents from day one.

Your architects: You have cast off reality distortions taught to you by your parents, schooling, corporate advertising and government propaganda. You create your own beliefs based on what serves you best, without much regard for what the rest of the crowd is doing. You are guided by your own internal code of ethics (which may or may not agree with politically-correct ethical codes) rather than any pre-set system of ethics (such as from any one religion)."

Sounds just like me!

Posted by Anna at 11:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 5, 2005

Bird Flu.... Another "Chicken Little" Moment?

There's a lot of talk about Avian Flu these days, I've been mostly ignoring it, thinking it was just the latest media hype. But, since this is technically "Pandemic Flu Awareness Week" I decided to find out what it's all about. First, I'll just say I'm not convinced that I need to worry about this, I seem to manage through flu season without a flu shot by staying out of places where the chance of being exposed is great (medical facilities top my list), and keeping up with regular hand washing, good advice any time of the year.

So, I pulled up Wikipedia, and started boning up on Avian Influenza. As I was reading, I found myself wondering how many of the regions where Bird Flu has made the leap from birds to humans are also regions where humans live in close quarters with their animals (sometimes in the same house). So I was slightly impressed to see that someone else has considered this, and that one of the long term strategies is aimed at that demographic.

"Altering farming practices in regions where animals live in close, often unsanitary quarters with people, and changing the practices of open-air "wet markets" where birds are slaughtered in unsanitary conditions near fruits and vegetables. Cock fighting also has played a role in spreading the disease by bringing humans into contact with fowl, and this practice will also continue to contribute to infection if it is not curbed. A challenge to implementing these measures is widespread poverty, frequently in rural areas, coupled with a reliance upon raising fowl for purposes of subsistence farming or income without measures to prevent propagation of the disease." (From Wikipedia)

Does it not seem more logical that instead of throwing resources at responding to a global pandemic after the fact, we should invest them into treating the poverty that lays the groundwork for disaster? I think Paul Farmer, author of "Pathologies of Power" would agree with me.

Posted by Anna at 1:25 PM | Comments (0)

Is there an asterisk in the Declaration of Independence?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, * does not apply to gays, lesbians or single people.

I've never seen the original copy of the Declaration of Independence, but I'm pretty sure it would be safe to say there was no asterisk added by our Founding Fathers. Some members of the Health Finance Commission of the Indiana Legislature seems to think otherwise. (Read article here) I'm not gay or lesbian, and doubt I will ever use medical science to conceive a child, but I still find this concept outrageous.

UPDATE: Senator comes to her senses

Posted by Anna at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

October 3, 2005

Dr. Seuss.... some lesser known facts

Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite childrens authors, I especially love "Fox In Socks". But did you know that he was also a political cartoonist? During World War II he created a number of editorial cartoons, which you can find out more about here. So you see George, even those of us who read "high-brow" books, love Dr. Seuss. (Don't expect me to do the same for those Chiltons manuals, unless I hear some weird sound as I'm going down the road.) And remember what Dave Ramsey says about the reading habits of millionaires (of course, that would put my net worth somewhere between three and four million, so I'm obviously doing something wrong.)

Posted by Anna at 3:15 PM | Comments (3)

October 1, 2005

Frog Kissin'

Who knew? (read story)

Posted by Anna at 9:19 PM | Comments (1)