Category: What the…?

A company I reported to the Oregon Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection division earlier this year because I felt they used misleading tactics in order to jack up monthly service fees related to digital telecommunications sends me a mass-mailed postcard stating “BEWARE: Some will stop at nothing to get a sale.”

They go on to say “do not rely on what the door-to-door salesperson tells you as factual,” and suggest you report any deceptive sales tactics to their company. From my experience with them, I’d say don’t rely on what their own salespersons tell you as factual; they probably want you to report the tactics so they can include them in their repertoire.

Moving kind of slow

No I never had much balance,

Why does everyone I know

Keep making lots of dough?

I guess I’ll find out soon

When I get to that

Crystal palace in the sky.

I’ve heard stories second-hand

About its grand interior

Its gold and silver strands

Cathedral ceilings way up high.

All the furnishing’s unique

When you get to your

Crystal palace in the sky.

Well I’ve worked as a part-time circus boy,

Collected cans down Saticoy,

And patiently put forth my master plan.

I’ve imagined futures and full plates,

And slept with every subliminal tape,

But now I’m so angry at someone.

My contract is in breach.

Why must my crystal palace

Always be on hold this week?

I feel lucky, I suppose,

At least we’re all still breathing.

Stuck here in escrow

Just a-waiting out our loan.

But no big-arm patrol will stop me

When I get to my crystal palace

Bye and bye

And it’ll be my way

Or the highway

Getting to my crystal palace

In the sky.

Stan Ridgway. “Crystal Palace,” Black Diamond

Another day, another memory from the box of long-ago Mays.

In 1988, as the Pioneer Place project was getting underway, they chose May Day to blow up the Corbett Building, which housed the downtown Fred Meyer store on the floor level. So far as I know it’s the only time a controlled demolition procedure has been undertaken in Portland. The first of May that year was a Sunday morning, and the demo was scheduled for about 7am to deter crowds of onlookers. Several thousand people (including Barbara and myself) nonetheless made their way downtown to see it, and I did my best to raise awareness among my fellow college students with the flyer above. May Day? Buildings blowing up in downtown? Of course the thing that made it most entertaining was that it was clearing the way for Banana Republic, Saks Fifth Avenue, Victoria’s Secret, and Sanrio. Adobe Illustrator 88!

There’s a (watermarked) photo here of the building in mid-collapse. In it, you can see that the lower-rising buildings in the block had already been conventionally demolished and removed. The photo looks north, from where Pioneer Tower is, across SW Yamhill Street. On the left, across SW 5th Avenue, are some of the trees on Pioneer Courthouse Square, with the Meier & Frank Building behind them across SW Morrison. Beyond the top of the Corbett Building as it falls, you can see the 620 Building on the southeast corner of 5th & Alder.

We were standing to the right of the photo area, back another block on SW 2nd Avenue, which was as close as the police would let the crowd. It was still pretty impressive.

Great. Now, in addition to the computers taking over Jeopardy! by the time I get a chance to compete, I’m going to have to worry about opponents amped up on Adderall or some other form of neuro-enhancers.

On the other hand, Phillips said, Provigil’s effects “have attenuated over time. The body is an amazing adjusting machine, and there’s no upside that I’ve been able to see to just taking more.” A few years ago, Phillips tired of poker, and started playing competitive Scrabble. He was good, but not that good. He was older than many of his rivals, and he needed to undertake a lot of rote memorization, which didn’t come as easily as it once had. “I stopped short of memorizing the entire dictionary, and to be really good you have to get up to eight- and nine-letter words,” he told me. “But I did learn every word up to five letters, plus maybe ten thousand seven- and eight-letter words.” Provigil, he said, helped with the memorization process, but “it’s not going to make you smarter. It’s going to make you better able to use the tools you have for a sustained period.”

After breaking my leg and ankle (again) a few years back, one of the rehabilitation regimens I started to try to build up strength in the leg was to walk up Mt. Tabor, the extinct volcano down the street from my house. It’s a little under two miles horizontally, and about a 450ft. change in elevation, with most of that coming in the last half-mile or so. Not particularly challenging, but if you tackle it more or less straight on there are a couple of tough bits for the overweight guy with a limp.

Last summer’s construction project and inevitable associated accident put a crimp in my walks, but I finally restarted them this month. The first one took a lot longer than I remember, but today’s walk went pretty well.

In fact, I thought I was doing quite well when — on the downhill return trip — I was slowly overtaking a healthy-looking 13-year-old boy on the other side of Belmont, despite having dropped a table saw on my knee last fall (which doesn’t make downhill much fun). Was pretty pleased with myself until I pulled even with him and saw that he was sucking the helium out of some Mylar balloons he was holding and talking on a cell phone. Maybe he wasn’t walking as fast as I thought he was.

Just about the last place you might expect to see the name of the town you grew up in (at least if you’re from Eugene) would be in the subtitles of a German movie about one of the plots to build a tunnel under the Berlin Wall in 1961-62, but there it was in an early scene of Der Tunnel, as disabled Italian-American US Army vet Vittorio Castanza explains his rationale for helping East Germans get out to new escapee (and swimming champion) Harry Melchior.

I just want my chance to play Jeopardy! before the computers take over.

Computer Program to Take On ‘Jeopardy!’

I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human “Jeopardy!” contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward.

…

Under the rules of the match that the company has negotiated with the “Jeopardy!” producers, the computer will not have to emulate all human qualities. It will receive questions as electronic text. The human contestants will both see the text of each question and hear it spoken by the show’s host, Alex Trebek.

…

Mr. Friedman added that they were also thinking about whom the human contestants should be and were considering inviting Ken Jennings, the “Jeopardy!” contestant who won 74 consecutive times and collected $2.52 million in 2004.

In a demonstration match here at the I.B.M. laboratory against two researchers recently, Watson appeared to be both aggressive and competent, but also made the occasional puzzling blunder.

For example, given the statement, “Bordered by Syria and Israel, this small country is only 135 miles long and 35 miles wide,” Watson beat its human competitors by quickly answering, “What is Lebanon?”

Moments later, however, the program stumbled when it decided it had high confidence that a “sheet” was a fruit.

You better top up your suntan

Otherwise your skin is gonna turn to leather

We made a movie in Vietnam

Tax break said “we’re gonna shoot on location”

The rug says made in Korea

Manufactured in a factory using cheap labor

And all over Asia, Third World becoming

a major league player

Mass production in Saigon

While auto workers laid off in Cleveland

Hot Jacuzzi in Taiwan

With empty factories in Birmingham

now it’s Baby boomers in Hong Kong

and Cowboys in Vietnam

Makin’ their movies

You better top up your suntan

Looks like we’re in for heavy weather

Economic meltdown

Nobody said it would last forever

Let’s make a movie in Baghdad

Take the culture right to the Third World

Blow up a brand new Civilization

In the name of Globalization

Big confusion in Hollywood, now it’s

American major league in japan

Hamburger in China, with

Sushi bars in Maine and Boston

The dollar sign said expand, now it’s

Cowboys in Vietnam

Makin’ their movies

Watch out, ride off with your

debts into the sunset

—Ray Davies, “Vietnam Cowboys,” Workingman’s Café

Those economic vultures

Stole our dreams and told us tales

Then they towed away our culture

To their depot in south Wales

Corporations get the tax breaks

While the city gets the crime

The profit’s going somewhere

But it isn’t yours or mine

Still we blindly trust in the divine

Let’s sing for the old country

Come on, one more time

And if this should be the last time

I should ever see your face

Let’s part with no hard feeling

And a positive embrace

And I will speak well of you

When they ask if you were mine

Till then the jet stream up above

Shows us the warning signs

Till we meet again bravely walk the line

Let’s sing it loud with feeling

Come on, one more time

Let’s sing for the old country

Come on, one more, one more time

—Ray Davies, “One More Time,” Working Man’s Café

Friday at the marvelous Khun Pic’s Bahn Thai, with great conversation with my cousin and her husband. Best of all, Kelly paid!

Treat yourself to a good book for a needed rest and escape.

Sounds like a plan!

Be prepared to modify your plan, it’ll be good for you.

Doh!