Tag: doh

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

I went to the supermarket tonight near midnight as I often do. The only reason I ever go to Ralphs is that it’s open late; otherwise I’m at the produce market, Trader Joe’s, etc.

The Ralphs on 17th Street in Costa Mesa, CA is very bright, painfully so. I feel like Lou Reed coming down off heroin when I walk in there out of the dark into the fluorescence. The produce is horrible except for one or two items, so it’s strictly a packaged goods and dairy kind of place for me most of the time. I really like the people who work there, though.

Lately I’ve been going to another Ralphs less than a mile away if I can; it’s only open until midnight, but the Westcliff Plaza one’s staff has revolted and replaced the corporate Slow Jam/Office Rock muzak with their own mix CDs, so that my 20 minutes of grocering are smoothed by a few tracks of 70s funk or 1940s jazz etc.

Tonight I made the mistake of going back to 17th Street and experienced the worst innovation yet. They’ve put a door buzzer in because of all the beer runs etc. and every time anyone enters or leaves it makes a piercing, cringe-inducing 70 db BEEEEP. No, not BEEEEP. More like BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. It’s the sort of sound I associate with fire alarms at hospitals. Can’t be ignored, makes you stop in your tracks and flinch. I could see people making involuntary attempts to cover their ears each time it went off, which was about every three or four minutes. We were all on a broken starship from a shitty science fiction movie.

I grabbed the stuff I absolutely needed and checked the fuck out. At first I thought the noise was a broken alarm, but the checker confirmed the worst; it was permanent and would go off on every use of the door. I expressed disbelief. “I feel like writing a letter!” She handed me a comment form to send to them. “I’d really appreciate it”. I told her I probably wouldn’t be back for a while but I’d send in the comment letter.

Another customer came up and we bonded over the hell-noise. What the hell were they thinking? As I left, I told the checker “The mental health costs they’ll pay out to you guys are going to be way worse than a few beer runs.” She high-fived me.

Eine Kleine FOAFMusik

The “Mozart Effect”, which has been a cultural phenomenon since the 1990s, is horseshit. It followed the same path as every urban legend, but the original study was never replicated, nor was the study about babies. The meta-study looks interesting, as does the researcher.

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — Scientists have discredited claims that listening to classical music enhances intelligence, yet this so-called “Mozart Effect” has actually exploded in popularity over the years. So says Chip Heath, an associate professor of organizational behavior who has systematically tracked the evolution of this scientific legend. What’s more, Heath and his colleague, Swiss psychologist Adrian Bangerter, found that the Mozart Effect received the most newspaper mentions in those U.S. states with the weakest educational systems—giving tentative support to the previously untested notion that rumors and legends grow in response to public anxiety.

the whole thing was a wash

Today’s recruiter email

This is unedited with the exception of removing names and adding a few [sic]. Note to recruiters: If you’re copy/pasting the same thing to 200 people you’re shotgun-emailing, try spellchecking at least first. Measure once, cut twice, and all that. Quadruple-spaced semiliterate notes with bad spelling and technical errors and four or five exclamation points at the end of each phrase give people the creeps.

My name is [redacted] and I am a senior technical recruiter with [redacted]. I was contacting you today in regards to an exciting opportunity that I have for you.

Linux Administrator

HOT OPPORTUITIES!!!! [sic] High profile company in the financial industries!!!!! [sic] HOT TECHNOLGY!!!![sic] LARGE IT BUDGET!!!!

Experience administering Red Hat Linux in an enterprise environment

Must have expereince[sic] with PERL[sic], Borne[sic] or Shell Scripting

Team oriented, flexible, Subject Matter Expert in some Linux area

Must have experience supporting database applications

Must have a background in Oracle on top of Linux

Red Hat Certification is a HUGE plus

Will be responsible for OS level support

Please contact me when you get a chance, I would like to find out more about your background and experience.

I hate to keep bringing up Dr. Strangelove, but

For example, of the 12,500 targets in the SIOP at that time, one of them was slated to be hit by 69 consecutive nuclear weapons. It seems superfluous to say that this is crazy, but it is important to understand how the planning process could result in such a figure.

One misconception you may have is that the people who plan our military adventures are cold, calculating bureaucrats who comb through huge quantities of data and calculate invasions, bombings, and coups d’état with analytical precision. That would in fact be hateful and frightening.

Spreadsheets are involved and there are huge quantities of data. And bureaucrats, lots and lots of bureaucrats doing this work. But they’re all completely insane.They have abstracted the world so completely that there is no longer any connection to the ordinary evil of war; they live in another place. Remember that next time you’re watching the news and we do something tragicomic on a huge scale.