the good old days

I read an article this morning about an outbreak of pertussis in a California school which resulted in closing school to try to control the epidemic. Apparently, it’s a school where only about half the students have the normal required round of vaccinations; most parents had opted-out (presumably due to fears of autism).

This drives me up the wall. Autism is not caused by vaccines. The thimerasol (mercury-based preservative), which was initially blamed, has been out of vaccines for years now; multiple scientific studies show that the rate of autism has risen since then. Now anti-vaccinationists rely on the bugaboo of “toxins” without bothering to define them — no science, just fearmongering. Thus whooping cough is able to spread.

Pertussis isn’t just a “bad cough”, it’s agonizing. Similarly, chicken pox isn’t just a week of itching, it’s a ticket to shingles (agonizing pain, again). Polio is crippling (FDR wasn’t in a wheelchair for fun). Rubella causes dreadful complications in pregnant women. Diphtheria kills. Smallpox kills. I’m not a fan of putting all sorts of weird stuff in my kids bodies — I buy organic food, for example — but fuck, letting them die instead? Kinda defeats the purpose.

Modern medicine works. Let it. And in the meantime, keep your “wholesome” unvaccinated children the hell away from me and my family.

Tired of all those 30’s Chevy ads masquerading as safety films? Me too! So today’s offering, made in 1957, is None For the Road: Teen-Age Drinking and Driving. I expected it to be a bit more “mental hygiene” than “driver’s safety”, a teenagers are out of control and drinking OMG WTF film — but the main characters are teenagers only because its intended audience is new drivers. The message applies to drivers of any age, and it’s surprisingly balanced.

A professor of physiology opens the film by explaining it revolves around two seemingly unrelated items: a good-luck charm and an ordinary hypodermic syringe. You may be beginning to see that the professor of physiology is not the best character in this film.

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So, through the magic of science, we learn that alcohol blunts your reflexes and makes driving dangerous. This is a subject that required serious scientific study? I knew a lot of people in college who wished their research was “devoted to alcohol and its effect on the human body.” You’d think thousands of years of humans getting drunk and losing their coordination would be pretty compelling, but nooo, this guy has to get rats drunk and see how well they can hold onto thin metal bars. Hey, whatever it takes to get your NSF grant renewed, right?

Humor aside: please don’t drink and drive, ever — for your own safety and everybody else’s.

In the Middle Ages, people had visions. In modern times, it’s more common to have various holy apparitions appear in food (cheese sandwiches, tortillas, potatoes, etc.)… and now, deus in machina.

This past January, James Randi has received a letter from an applicant for the JREF million dollar prize, in which the author describes mysterious communications on his computer.

Guh…

A frequent user of any word processing software is probably familiar with the automatic word checks it will do for you. I’m willing to make a large bet that this guy is using Microsoft Word, which ships with the checkers turned on, and see those green/red squiggly underlines that are on his screen but not on the paper when it prints out… with no idea what the software is doing, he concludes divine intervention is the cause.

It’s more sad than anything else, really — I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell him his deep religious experience is just a spell check. (Bill Gates is so totally not the Messiah.) But at the same time, he’s trying to peddle this deep religious experience for money…

Christians (and, really, anybody who tries to shop during the month of December) always complain that Christmas is becoming too commercialized. But Mother’s Day is what is driving me nuts this year. Even grocery stores have huge posters up reminding you to buy something for your mother. Gift Cards! Clothing! Jewelry! Flowers! Cake, cookies, pastries, chocolate! It’s annoying to watch the harassment since I’m supposed to be the target of this generosity. It’s even more annoying that the stores I actually need stuff from at the moment (Lowe’s and Home Depot, since I’m doing a fair amount of home repair) don’t mention a thing about Mother’s Day… wonder why…

A friend told me about the gift she got from her thirteen-year-old last Mother’s Day: a diamond ring. He’d listened to the advertising, and found the jewelry store’s advice to be particularly compelling — and spent what was for him a fairly large chunk of change. She was a little weirded out (diamonds are usually from the boyfriend or spouse, not children), but mostly upset at having to figure out how to phrase a response: she loved the sentiment, but couldn’t possibly keep it. “He tried so hard,” she said, “and I was just thinking, Damn, this is wrong, we have to take this back, but how do I tell him?”

Anna Jarvis initially strove to recognize the contributions of her own mother, who was active in her community in addition to being, well, a mother. Shortly after it was written into law as a national holiday in May of 1914, however, Anna rapidly regretted the commercialization.

Jarvis, says her New York Times obituary, became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. As she said, “A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment!”

For kids that are grown and away from home: what most mothers want most is to know that their children are happy and thriving. If you’re not nearby, write a letter about your great accomplishments and hopes (inside the printed card is acceptable nowadays). If you’re reasonably close, visit and tell her about your accomplishments and hopes. Bitching about your problems is a big no-no.

If the kids are still fairly young, Mom wants nothing more than to get away from the kids. Babysitting is an ideal Mother’s Day gift.

Oh yeah, and to the guy at work who was complaining about his newborn daughter arriving right before Mother’s Day last year, so he “had” to buy flowers for his wife for another holiday: fuck you, you selfish little shit — she just gave birth, the least you can do is buy her a plant.

Europe’s Unflattering Opinion Of UsFor years we Americans have swarmed over the face of the world, taking it for granted that the earth’s surface belongs to us because we can pay for it, and it is rather worse than ever since the war, when the advantages of exchange add bitterness to irritation. And yet there are many who are highly indignant when told that, as a type, we are not at all admired abroad. Instead of being indignant, how much simpler and better it would be to make ourselves admirable, especially since it is those who most lack cultivation who are most indignant. The very well-bred may be mortified and abashed, but they can’t be indignant except with their fellow countrymen who by their shocking behavior make Europe’s criticism just.

Understanding of, and kind-hearted consideration for the feelings of others are the basic attributes of good manners. Without observation, understanding is impossible—even in our own country where the attitude of our neighbors is much the same as our own. It is not hard to appreciate, therefore, that to understand the point of view of people entirely foreign to ourselves, requires intuitive perception as well as cultivation in a very high degree.

Today’s selection is brought to you from Emily Post’s 1922 Etiquette. Hurray for Project Gutenberg.

It’s a 1930’s driver’s safety film? Of course it’s made by Chevy! Ah, Jam Handy, you’ve done it again with 1935’s Safe Roads.

When Big Brother crashes Little Brother’s toy trains, Grandpa takes the opportunity to encourage Big Brother to be a safe driver. Of course, he’s trying to correlate train safety to automotive safety, so the analogy gets stretched pretty thin.

Most interesting, Grandpa asserts that, when safety rules are followed, “these modern cars are a lot safer than slower cars of yesterday.” Try to back THAT one up with some statistics. If Fast New Car A and Slow Old Car B are driven by the same person, the fast one is safer? (Maybe if you’re being chased by a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex. Remember Ian Malcolm muttering, “Must go faster!” in the back of that Jeep? If he’d been in a 1935 Chevy, he wouldn’t have been worried at all!)

Of course, the safety recommendation is following the rules, the Chevy advertising is zippy cars. See how hard it is to make driver’s safety films at the same time as advertisements? I wouldn’t have wanted to be the guy who had to write these scripts.

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Mostly, sit back and enjoy the lovely vintage shots of a time when trains were the way to travel long distances. Railroad enthusiasts will be in ecstasy. Drivers hoping for driving advice will be disappointed.

For years as a child, I didn’t really understand the Morton Salt slogan, “When it rains, it pours.” I thought it was a strange reference to the familiar idiom: after a long spell of nothing happening, then everything happens at once. What this had to do with table salt, who knows.

However, looking at some of their old ads today made me realize they were saying “when it’s raining outside [or just humid], your Morton Salt will still pour from the shaker.” That was one of those “OHHHHhhhh…” moments… followed closely by a “well, duh” moment.

One of their 1926 ads (see left) brought home another weird point: goiters. Most children who manage to stay awake through elementary school health class learn that very small quantities of iodine are vital to the health of the thyroid gland; without it, it will swell and you’ll have a big goiter in your neck. To the modern student, this is weird and strange. But in the 1920’s, goiters were a lot more common, and Morton’s inclusion of iodine was a pretty good innovation.

(On a related note, I always considered gout to be one of those diseases gone by the wayside, back in the age of Ben Franklin — but a few guys in the factory here have it. Weird!)

We’ll probably be visiting Chicago in the next couple months, and we’ll get to drive by the big MORTON SALT factory with the famous girl-under-umbrella spilling her salt all over the place. Poor kid, she’ll get home and Mother will be furious that the salt is all gone and now the family will all get goiters because the iodized salt is all over the street…

Today’s selection is brought to you from Edith B. Ordway’s 1920 The Etiquette of To-Day. Hurray for Project Gutenberg.

Wedding Presents

… The usual form of wedding gift is something of use and ornament for the new house. Silver, linen, cut glass, or china for the dining-room, furniture, rugs, lamps, clocks, vases, books, and pictures, or bric-a-brac for the rest of the house, are all appropriate….

The wedding gift should be a real gift in spirit, something expressive of the giver’s good wishes, and something which the bride and bridegroom can enjoy and appreciate for its worth to them. Foolish things, whether expensive or not, have no real utility or beauty, and have always the atmosphere of insult about them, or else always reflect upon the intelligence of the giver.

A bride should acknowledge all gifts as soon as they are received, and before her wedding day if possible. Spontaneous rather than stereotyped notes of thanks are preferable. They should show appreciation of the gift, and include the name of the bridegroom-elect in her expression of their gratitude. A bride should remember that too elaborate notes, which are a grave tax on her strength or time in the busy days preceding a wedding, are unwise, as is any other unnecessary expenditure of energy.

It is never obligatory to send a wedding present. The wedding announcement and wedding invitation are equally suggestive of such gifts, for in either case, whether one is invited to the ceremony or not, one is perfectly free to do as he pleases about conferring a gift.

I have attended a couple of cousins’ weddings within the last year or two. Each couple got something selected from their registry; I try to pick out something between “potato masher” and “set of eight highly expensive cut glass goblets”, as that’s both appropriate for my finances and also where the more interesting/expressive gifts tend to be. (I think I might have bought Bill a few random kitchen utensils, though.)

I haven’t received a thank-you note from either couple yet. While I hardly expected thanks “before [the] wedding day”, I did expect something. Seriously. My four-year-old daughter knows how to write very few words, but her name and “Thank You” are at the top of the list. If you’re getting married, you’re obviously over four.

This afternoon, my four-year-old daughter manufactured her first memory.

She has a cow-shaped book with a little microchip and button setup; when you squeeze a certain part of it, it says (surprise) “MOOOOO”. Since we were on a fairly long road trip, she didn’t have a lot to do except push the button over and over and over and over.

MOOOOO
MOOOOO
MOOOOO
MOOOOO
MOOOOO

Amazingly, I didn’t go bat-shit insane during 10 minutes steady of MOOOOOing. After a while, though, we noticed that the cow seemed to be getting a little tired.

MOOOOo
MOOOoo
MoooOO
MooOOo

So, I used this as a great excuse opportunity to preserve the cow’s power, and told my daughter it needed to take a break or the battery would die.

This fascinated her, and she discussed how hard it would be to change the battery. I agreed it would be hard (cutting the book open, figuring out the little circuit and where its battery lived, replacing the battery, fixing the book) and thanked her for stopping.

Five minutes later, she was discussing how when she was a baby, she had made the book MOOOOO so much that the battery had died. “No, dear, that hasn’t happened yet. I asked you to stop so that battery wouldn’t die.” She kept insisting I had already replaced it once, though.

I suppose I’d far rather have her recovering inventing a memory like that, than twenty years from now deciding we’d put her through extensive physical and sexual abuse.

In the 1930’s, Chevrolet and Jam Handy made a few films about being a polite, safe driver.

The Other Fellow stars Edgar Kennedy as every driver on the road, making things slightly confusing. (It’s extra difficult for the modern viewer who desperately tries to recall who Edgar Kennedy was.*)

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The driving effects make you want to scream and duck as Kennedy violently swerves around. But, you’re reassured that a Chevy has a loud horn (can’t thank the film-makers enough for all that honking), includes hydraulic brakes (explicitly mentioned) in the car, and apparently will not take damage when bumped into by other cars.

So what safe driving lesson do we learn? (1) Buy a Chevy! (2) Let other drivers know what you’re going to do (it isn’t clear how that keeps other drivers from backing into your car while it’s parked at a curb, which happens repeatedly to Edgar Kennedy Clone #17) by using hand signals. And that bit of advice completely removes the film from the category of “possibly relevant to modern drivers”.

* If you’re interested in old films, Edgar Kennedy was one of the comedians of Keystone Studio, starring with the likes of Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin. He was in hundreds of films, which is less surprising when you realize how short many films were back in the early days of Hollywood.