Some Blog Site

The concept of Miranda rights is fine, but it needs to be expanded.

People these days have a pretty good idea of what the police and legal system are allowed to do, but it seems that enough people forget that other parts of society operate by different rules.

We need Miranda Rights for 21st-century communication. Anytime someone starts using his phone, laptop, tablet, etc., there should be a prominent warning that he must acknowledge.

Here’s a suggested update:

This call may be recorded. Anything you say can end up on the internet.

Here’s another:

These texts are being logged somewhere. Anything you write can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion.

Last one:

Don’t use Facebook. Who knows how they’ll use your information?

Of course, the rights won’t be very powerful, as there is no recourse available if they were violated. Social media is not so structured as the court system – there is no capability to strike anything from the record.

An Open Letter to Restaurants

If I were tasked with making restaurant customers’ lives harder, I would keep the opaque red bottles. And I would add weights to the bottles.

That way, customers could no longer use the coping mechanisms they have found useful – hefting the bottle to assess the weight.

There is a positive correlation between weight and ketchup volume. I would exploit that by making each empty bottle weigh as much as a normal full bottle should.

Gotta stay one step ahead of the customer if you want to stay in business.

A cross between a Sudoku puzzle and Count Dooku from Star Wars, in case you are wondering what this is all about.

Encouraged by a comment from Ricky, I made an effort to write a children’s book. Here is my first attempt. It is in the form of an extended sonnet, keeping more or less with iambic pentameter (more pentameter, less iambic).

I noticed that a lot of children’s books are the ABCs of something. Most of the “something”s have already been used, except for that which is most important to the children of today – websites.

The Alphabet Book of URLs

A is for Amazon, they sell goods and bads

B is for Blogspot, opinions and tales

C is for Craigslist, all classified ads

D is for Dropbox, don’t clog up emails

E is for Ebay, the price might be right

F is for Facebook, waster of time

G is for Google, main search engine site

H is for Homestar Runner, cartoon sublime

I is for Instragram, ruin photos with filt’ring

J is for Jameco, electronics supplier

K is for Kickstarter, more funds it wilt bring

L is for Lycos, search engine old-timer

M is for Moniker, buy a domain name

N is for Netflix, watch films and shows

O is for Opera, browsers are not the same

P is for Priceline, solves travelling woes

Q is for QQ, who knows what they do?

R is for Reddit, vote on your favorite

S is for Snopes, if a story is true

T is for Twitter, short insights you’ll get

U is for Urban Spoon, meal option reducer

V is for Vimeo, simple film hosters

W is for WordPress, a blogging producer

X is for XKCD, web comics and posters

Y is for Yahoo, search, email, and news

Z is for Zillow, a new home you can choose

Now I know my TLDs,
Next time won’t you browse with me?

Remember the adage an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

If you can prevent their ounce of coloring on the walls, it’ll save you a pound of cleaning.

That is the downside of those Magic Erasers, right? It makes it too easy to undo damage done to the walls by kids. You reprimand them for coloring on the walls, then they see you just wipe it right off. And they wonder “what’s the big deal? I color on the walls, and it comes right off…”

A recent department meeting was held in a conference room with dozens of folding chairs. I ended up near the back, and I found myself staring at the back of the head of the person sitting in front of me. There was no comfortable way for me to sit so that I could see the speaker at the front of the room.

That got me to thinking about how the seats could be arranged to improve sight lines.

Problem:

If the audience were somewhat transparent, it would be okay because you could see through them in order to see the speaker. Like this:

But they’re not, so sitting directly behind people is a problem.

One that can be easily solved though.

All you need to do is offset each row by half a chair.
Solution A:

Maybe it would be better to offset each row by a third of a chair.
Solution B:

If you’re ever in charge of setting up a conference room for an audience, be sure to stagger the chairs a bit. Thanks.

The scale has gone through many iterations through the years.

First, the balance:

No, not that balance – the balance for weighing a person:

Next, the dial:
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