Category: Annoyances

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Despite Bush’s appeal to Kerry supporters [in his acceptance speech], Cheney said the popular vote victory gave Bush a mandate and the Bush White House would continue pushing for the Republicans’ “clear agenda.”

Excuse me, but how the #@*! is a 51% victory a “mandate?”

In any other race, that would be called “barely squeaking by.”

Yes, it’s unusual for a presidential candidate to actually get more than 50% of the popular vote, but that still means 49% of the voters preferred someone else. If you broke a cookie in half, and got a 51%/48% split with 1% of crumbs, you wouldn’t notice the difference.

Last night there were state propositions hovering at around 53%/46%, and the LA Times thought they were too close to call. That kind of victory in a state race would never be considered a mandate, or a repudiation, etc. — it would have passed by the skin of its proverbial teeth. A 66% win? That would be a mandate. A 60% win? Maybe. But 51%? That’s a sign that you’d better look at what people wanted from your opponent, not a blank check to ignore half the population of the country.

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Every once in a while I listen to Star for a few minutes. And every once in a while I catch their station break. And I cringe whenever I hear them talk about being the whatever station for “L.A. and the O.C.”

I’ve lived in Orange County most of my life, and I have never heard anyone here refer to it as “The O.C.” Sometimes just “O.C.,” but really—when was the last time you heard someone say “I live in the L.A.” or “I’m from the New York?”

Incidentally, it seems that as far as IMDB knows, the show is filmed in L.A. Excuse me, the L.A.

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We were at the grocery store earlier today, and Katie was grumbling about the stylus-only touch screens they had for entering a PIN. Unlike actual keypads, you can’t hide the number you’re entering, because you have to move that stylus around instead of 10-keying it in.

On one hand, a touch screen with a stylus is great for visual feedback and for collecting signatures, because the store can keep things on file digitally instead of or in addition to a paper copy. And once you’ve got that, it’s reasonable to drop the keypad, since you can simulate it in the touch screen. But unless it can react as quickly as actual buttons, and react to fingers instead of a stylus, it can’t completely replace the way a keypad is actually used.

An even better example is checkout line at Fry’s. Continue reading →

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Time to add an “outrage” category. This is just insane: A church panel has invalidated a girl’s communion because she can’t eat wheat (original article here).

The girl has celiac disease, which means any amount of wheat can cause her serious health problems. A local priest was willing to let her use a rice-based wafer, but higher-ups declared it was invalid — that if there wasn’t wheat, it didn’t count. She can either take the communion with a wheat-based wafer, or not take it at all.

For all intents and purposes they’ve excommunicated this girl because of a medical condition.

Good thing I’m not Catholic and the sacrament doesn’t involve peanuts.

I wonder if the church would be willing to pay for emergency room visits (or funerals) resulting from this kind of situation?

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Some people think it’s a great idea to block spam by having their email system automatically reply to any unfamiliar address, forcing the sender to jump through hoops that spammers presumably won’t bother with.

About half an hour ago, the IEEE Communications Society sent out a call for papers on its mailing list.

So far I have gotten three challenge-response requests, two out-of-office notices, and a response to one of the CRs.

I expect to see more when I get back from lunch.

Update 2:30pm: Four more challenges, another vacation autoreply, and four more responses. No sign yet of any discussion, complaints, or even (as I half-expected) a rash of misdirected “unsubscribe me” messages.