a deep and troubling mystery!

What is the deal with institutional clocks? In the classroom I'm working in this semester, the wall clock has been wrong, differently, every day so far this semester...but always by approximately exact-hour intervals (in other words, it might say 5:11 when it's actually 10:11). The two nearest clocks in the hallway are also incorrect - and different both from one another and from the clock in my room, but also wrong by exact hours.

This is something I've noticed about institutional clocks, in schools, universities, and the like, for years...and it baffles me. In the rest of the world, setting a clock is no big deal: it runs accurately for a good long time, and sure, once in a while someone might forget which way to move it when Daylight Saving Times comes or goes, and so for a while it might be two hours out of whack - but that's easily corrected. What doesn't happen is random, arbitrary shifting of the time such clocks tell.

There seems to be some centralized (or at least distant) control for institutional clocks...since, as I'm sure you've all observed, when they're wrong, sometimes they suddenly start progressing rapidly forward or backward. Presumably someone somewhere is causing this to happen. But that still doesn't explain why such clocks are so prone to going wrong...or why when they do so, they're so often wrong by exact-hour intervals.

One more thing: these are the same kind of clocks whose minute hands creep backwards for a second before advancing...a phenomenon well-known to clock-watching test-takers, causing momentary heart attacks as if they will never get out of that room.

my new favorite joke

Philip Glass walks into a bar Philip Glass walks into a bar walks into a bar walks into a bar walks into a bar Philip Glass Philip Philip Phil Philip Glass walks Glass walks Glass walks into Philip Glass Philip Glass Philip Glass Glass Glass Glass Glass Philip bar bar bar bar bar bar bar.

you think your parking tickets are bad?

Here's the sort of thing that gives government a bad name (and provides ammunition to right-wing nuts who think all government is out to rule the planet with an iron fist). The most ridiculous thing about this situation is: the city doesn't want to own the guy's property, yet too many of the bureaucrats interviewed in this situation seem to imagine that laws are rules for robots - rather than realizing that the reason we have actual humans charged with interpreting regulations is precisely to work with exceptional situations, such as this man's.

Of course, it's absurd on its face that any sort of parking regulation could lead to forfeiture of a house valued at a quarter-million dollars - parking simply isn't that important. At the very, very most, you'd think forfeiting the vehicle would be the most extreme remedy. But in this situation, nearly everyone involved seems to have failed to apply any sort of common sense or problem-solving skills (and I do include the owner who, despite his apparent disabilities and limitations, still seems to be acting rather pig-headedly here).

Steve is aware of all internet traditions

Yes, he is.

George W. Bush is aware of all internet traditions, because when you have awareness of traditions of the internet, that's what it means.

Finally, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) is aware only of traditions relating to big trucks.

(Look - I'm just doing my part as a citizen of the Wobbly Worldy Webly to spread its memes. Memetic imperative, you know...)

Florida brings the stupid

Note to Florida schools: Those Harry Potter books? They're fiction. There's actually no such thing as "wizardry."

If there were, Satan and his minions would surely find better things to do than have a substitute teacher use it to distract middle-school students.

Note that the article does claim that the teacher was fired supposedly for more reasons than just his "wizardry." But c'mon: even if that's true, the idea that actual adults with real jobs would seriously use such an accusation as even part of the reason for firing someone...

All I can say is, it's a good thing he weighs more than a duck.

helpful hints for would-be criminals

From today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

1. If you decide to leave your parked car blasting music - in the wake of loads of publicity about the city's new noise ordinance - it's probably better to do it somewhere other than directly across the street from a police station.

2. Also, leaving a gun stuffed between the seats of said car will increase the officers' interest in your vehicle.

3. Leaving drugs in such a vehicle is too complicated. You should instead gift-wrap them and deliver them, with a nice card bearing your name, directly to the police station. This saves the police the minor effort they had to expend of asking around to see who owned the car with the drugs, the gun, and the loud music blasting.

things to do when you're bored

Pizza Three-Way: Call up one Domino's Pizza and order a pizza to be delivered to the address of a second Domino's. Call the second Domino's and have them send a pizza to a third Domino's. Then call the third Domino's and have them send a pizza to the first Domino's. (Let their accountants figure it all out.)

It's Domino's Dominoes!

I'm shocked - shocked!

Why I was smart to not switch to Vista - and why I'll be smarter to switch to Mac as soon as my current machine bites the dust.

unbelievable

One of the classes I'm teaching this semester is in UWM's business building, which was built new about eight to ten years ago, and which came with a zillion bells and whistles: auditorium-style seating with built-in desks, everything carpeted (and with loads of signs informing students - who weren't asked their preference - not to eat or drink in the room), computers in every room, etc. etc....you know, The Future circa the late nineties. (I should note that the English department, since it serves more students than most departments, cannot hold all its classes in its home building. So no: I'm not teaching business thank god, only teaching in the business building.)

Of course now, the system not having budgeted for maintenance, the rooms look more thrashed than your standard boring classroom (which generally can look decent merely by cleaning it): the carpets are worn and fraying, and the rooms are all tiered and terraced, for no good reason except, presumably, to annoy disabled students, but the plastic step-guards are falling off and held in place with strips of duct tape, etc.

More irritating than any of that: my first class in the room was last Wednesday, and as I wander into the room, I see that only half the lights are on, and so I look for the light switch to turn the rest of them on (it was a typically gray, cloudy winter day, so they were definitely needed). There's a switch-looking thing by the door (of course it's all high-tech - no simple buy-at-any-hardware-store switches for future business leaders of America!), but it does nothing but turn all the lights off or turn on the ones that were on to begin with. I have no clue how to turn the rest of the lights on. I experiment with every other switch-looking thing in the room...nothing happens. (I'll get an angry letter from an elderly woman in Austria in a few weeks, saying "cut that out!" Thank you, Steven Wright.)

So I e-mail the classroom support people, feeling like an idiot as I ask, how do you turn the lights on? The answer?

They're controlled by the built-in computer. You actually have to log in to the computer network to turn the fucking lights on. (Was I given the password before the semester? Of course not! That might have been vaguely efficient.) So I suppose if the computer bluescreens, we'll just have to sit in the dark.

On the upside: the desk I sit at looks like something out of a science-fiction movie from the sixties (except it's covered in painted plywood - budgets, you know) and completely hides the lower part of my body from my students' view. So, if I wanted to neglect the wearing of pants, no one would be the wiser. Yeehaw.

t-shirt idea

Travel Anecdote #1: So, we're sitting at a restaurant and, as much of the conversation last week did (this is the way with parents of very young children), Tonia and Cason spent a lot of time cooing over how cute six-month-old Lanam is (and he is!). Tonia noted that people often think he's a little girl because he's so "pretty." That led to a comment about "pretty enough to be a girl," which led me - feigning hurt feelings - to claim that I too was pretty enough to be a girl. Of course, questioning looks all around - after which I modified my claim to "pretty enough to be an ugly girl."

I think you had to have been there - but I also think "pretty enough to be an ugly girl" would be an amusing t-shirt. Of course, very few people could or would actually wear it... (Tonia thought her friend Michael would, for sure - primarily because, as she said, Michael is sort of the gay version of me.)

really dumb post

If writers go on strike, who will they hire to write their picket signs?

the big red font of dumbness

For some time I've noticed that a certain type of movie - the kind in which fart jokes, it can cogently be argued, reach their absolute apogee - tends to feature gigantic red print, most typically a sans serif, all caps. At first I was thinking this look originated (appropriately) with Dumb and Dumber...but my memory's misled me, because the images of that movie's posters I've been able to find display the type in blue. The font is similar, though.

Anyway, as it turns out someone else has already gone through the trouble of creating a collage of many of the movies featuring the Big Dumb Red Font. It is a nice sort of consumer-alert feature (aside from the presence of Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider, etc.), in that the promotion for these movies instantly informs viewers that they can park their IQ at home.

Update: And here's another page...