Another Good Way to Alienate Customers!

I have now spent nearly three hours over the course of two days attempting to access my pension account from my former employment. What a colossal waste of time--some of it my fault, but much of it the fault of an astonishingly badly designed system.

My quest began last week, when I contacted my financial advisor and asked him to be thinking of what I might do with the small amount I have in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America pension plan. From the moment I was informed that I was to be cast out of my nine-year position with the ELCA's South Dakota Synod, I knew that I would not keep my money in their pension fund for long. A report on National Public Radio the week before last, indicating that religious organizations are exempt from federal laws that protect workers' pensions, which can and does result in workers, as usual, getting the short end of the stick when their church-affiliated employer decides to terminate the plan, reminded me that I have a few pennies entrusted to a religious organization and that I might be better off getting them into a secular account quickly.

In preparation for my meeting with my financial guy, I had the brilliant idea of printing out my most recent account information, rather than rely on the latest quarterly report.

And the fun began.

I went online to log in to my Board of Pensions account. I haven't done this very often--maybe twice--so the first hurdle I encountered was not knowing my password. I set up the account so long ago that I didn't have it in my password database. I made a few likely guesses, to no avail. The website does of course provide a "forgot my password" link...but there's a catch: I not only needed my password, but also the e-mail address I used to set up the account!

Do you have any idea how many e-mail addresses I have?

Further, since my former employer used the e-mail system at Augustana College, and the college changed its e-mail format--and since the synod subsequently set up its own e-mail address scheme--I had no fewer than seven e-mail possibilities from the office alone! And the Board of Pension's website is not set up to deal with that possibility.

So I hit the "contact us" link, explained the issue, and waited for a reply.

I didn't have to wait long, so points for them, but the reply wasn't that helpful. It boiled down to speculating that if I hadn't accessed my account for an unspecified while (true that) the system might no longer remember me. The suggestion was to try entering as if I were a new user and set up a new account.

But in the meantime, I found a note on which I had recorded my password! No e-mail address, alas, but with the password I should be able to work out the e-mail address.

I made a list of likely addresses. Eleven of them.

The system liked the sixth one on my list. Of course, I had to re-enter my password twice with each attempt. But I'm lucky the system didn't lock me out after a couple-three shots.

Okay, so now I'm in. And here's a handy button I can click on to Access My Retirement Account. Perfect!

Yeah, well, "perfect" might be overstating it.

First I get the screen that tells me You are about to leave this site. This is almost never a good sign. The screen tells me also

To access your online retirement account you will be required to sign in at our record keeper, ACS HR Solutions.

To sign in, use the PIN you received in the mail. If you do not remember your PIN, please select Continue and use the Forgot Your PIN? feature in the login box. You will receive a PIN in the mail. Please remember your sign-in information for future visits.

Already I know that this will not end well.

But I bravely depress the friendly green Continue button anyhow. And down the rabbit hole I go!

The entrance page is straightforward enough: A bunch of small type about the retirement funds, including information that only inclines me to accelerate my departure:

Neither the ELCA Board of Pensions nor its funds are subject to registration, regulation or reporting under the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 or state securities laws. Members, therefore, will not be afforded the protections of those provisions of those laws and related regulations.

Yikes! Okay what else? Ah, yes: Here's the log-in box. I need my Social Security Number, which I know, and, as promised, a PIN, which I don't. I don't dispute that at some point in the distant, foggy past the board mailed me a PIN. But I certainly don't remember it, and it seems a waste of time to go hunting for it when, I have been assured, there is a "Forgot Your PIN? feature in the login box."

And there is! So I click Forgot Your PIN?. And get a screen telling me that I need to enter my SSN first, and then click on Answer Challenge Question or Mail a PIN Reminder. Okay, that makes sense. I do so. And click Answer Challenge Question. This is looking promising.

Hahahahah! Foolish human! I am rewarded with a screen that says

The information you entered to log into the system does not match our records.

Which does not inspire much confidence. I like the idea that my pension fund remembers who I am. If nothing else, their records should include my Social Security Number, no? So at this point I realize that I was right to experience misgivings as soon as I was told that I'd be shuttled off to a third-party site, and that my initial instinct--viz., This will not end well--was accurate.

And then, to add insult, the screen that tells me they don't know who I am concludes with this advice:

Please Log In again now.

Uh-huh. You know, the only reason a person would be reading this message at all is that he or she could not log in in the first place, yes? So the suggestion is not only pointless but downright cruel.

And yet...

So I click the Log In link and have another go at it. This time I enter my SSN and click the Mail a PIN Reminder button. I mean, better than nothing, right? I'll get the PIN in a couple-three days, access my account, print out current numbers for my financial guy, and make an appointment with him to see what great ideas he has about putting the money in a safer place.

Except that the Mail a PIN Reminder button takes me right back to the "does not match our records" screen.

So what we have here, folks, is a "help" feature that is 100% unhelpful. It can't help you with a forgotten PIN, it can't issue you a "challenge question," it can't mail you a reminder, it can't do a blessed thing except waste your time, for it doesn't know who you are even when you give it your SSN repeatedly.

And we also have a certain growing misgiving about the management of the ELCA pension fund, if the "record keeper" doesn't seem to have a record of me.

Which, given what I know about religious organizations' exemption from pension-fund protection laws, makes me feel a little anxious.

Naturally the board's 800 number is answered only during business hours, so I'll have to wait another day to see about getting the information I need.

Oh, and I did dig through the filing cabinet and found all the information from when I signed up with the fund nearly a decade ago. No sign of any PIN, however. So we wait.

Now you may be inclined to say, "Hey, Ace, it's not the Board of Pension's fault you couldn't remember what e-mail address you signed up with all those years ago." And you will be entirely correct. You may be further inclined to say, "It's not ACS HR Solutions's fault that you can't find your PIN." And again you will encounter no argument from me.

But it is somebody's fault that the retirement-account system is badly organized and provides no help to customers who need it. I would say that that is a responsibility shared by ELCA Board of Pensions and ACS HR Solutions. And I would say that it's worse to promise online assistance that doesn't exist than to simply tell the user that he or she must call the 800 number during business hours to receive assistance.

As a lover of irony, however, I must chuckle at the fact that I entered this little exercise in futility as part of my intention to sever my connection with the ELCA Board of Pensions, so it's not like I can threaten to take my business elsewhere as a result of their goofy online account system.

The Curse of Success?

This seems to be happening a lot lately. It's either a good sign (lots of users!) or a bad sign (too hard to get through; skip it). Time will tell. That's what it does.

And I Quote:

Here's another mash-up of quotations, many from the fine newsletter A Word a Day, many from other sources:

Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear. -William E. Gladstone

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

... it is helpful to recall that Jesus did not write a book but lived a life. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Let no man pull you low enough to hate him. -Martin Luther King, Jr., civil-rights leader (1929-1968)

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. -George Bernard Shaw, writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. -Richard Dawkins, biologist and author (b. 1941)

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. -William G. McAdoo, lawyer and politician (1863-1941)

In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

Doubt is like a front porch. All of us go through it before we get into the house of faith.... The Rev. Dr. William L. Self

The most miserable pettifogging in the world is that of a man in the court of his own conscience. -Henry Ward Beecher, preacher and writer (1813-1887)

Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. -Agatha Christie, author (1890-1976)

In the struggle between yourself and the world second the world. -Franz Kafka, novelist (1883-1924)

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

The tragedy of modern war is not so much that young men die but that they die fighting each other, instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

"I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose." — C.S. Lewis

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Strange Headlines, Part Two

Not so much strange headlines as interesting juxtaposition of headlines. Did someone not look at the overall look of the page before sending it out...or did someone note the layout and decided--as did I--that the placement of these two headlines was rather amusing?

Again from The Daily Beast's Morning Scoop Cheat Sheet (which, it must be said, seems to have at least one title too many: "The Daily Beast"; "Morning Scoop"; "Cheat Sheet." I get that they're separate albeit umbrella'd pieces of a whole. But that doesn't make it easier to type) for today:

Nuff said, I think.

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Strange Headlines, Part One

Having spent a fair number of years coming up with headlines, subheads ("decks," if you prefer), pull-quotes (call-out quotes), photo captions, and the like, I get that it's not always an easy task. Indeed, it's a pretty precise skill, one that, like any skill, requires practice and patience.

Evidently those commodities are sometimes in short supply.

Here's an item from The Daily Beast's Morning Scoop Cheat Sheet one day last week:

Wait. What? "Homicide Student"? You mean this guy was, like, majoring in homicide? In which case, wouldn't murder be, I dunno, his final project or something? What next--"French major accused of speaking foreign language"?

The Cheat Sheet's little blurb contains no useful information, other than that the accused is a grad student, meaning he must have taken a lot of Homicide over the years. A regular fixture in his college's Homicide department. Bit of a Homicide geek, truth to tell. Probably going to become a Homicide professor himself. You know, those who can't do...oh. Wait. That's wrong. Forget that part.

One must click through to the Telegraph's report to get the full scoop:

Ah--the accused is a PhD student whose focus of study, apparently, has been Jack the Ripper. Okay, that makes some sense--evidently he was doing his practicum--and I suppose it's fair enough to call him a "homicide student." It's a grabber headline, and I get that. But The Daily Beast would have been well advised to do a tiny bit of explication in their subsequent blurb.

On the other hand, it was pretty intriguing for a few minutes there. I was all set to go back to school.

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Free* Advice!

* Not really.

When you see the word "free" followed by an asterisk, you know that the advertiser means free in the sense of "not free."

Witness ye this from my inbox a few days ago:

The asterisk tells me that the "free" sample of fruit snacks will be mine all mine just as soon as I complete "program requirements" for some company that takes pains to inform me that it is not "endorsed, sponsored by or affiliated with any of the products, brands, or merchants listed above." Phew.

Perhaps needless to say, I declined to participate in the "gift program." "Free"--or rather, "free*"--sounded like too much trouble. If I want fruit snacks I'll buy them, and consider myself ahead.

I spent enough time in the advertising rack-- business! I mean business! that I know and appreciate the value of the word free. And I maintain that it is far more valuable than the word free*. I imagine there are a few people around who overlook the asterisk and thus are to a greater or lesser extent snookered into "participating" in a program. Or parting with cash for their "free*" treasure. Or both.

But even at this late date I retain enough optimism to believe that that number is indeed small, and that the majority of folks have long since wised up to the meaning of the asterisk.

And I maintain that those who have been snookered by the asterisk will refrain from putting themselves in that position again. Fool me once, etc.

I'm a bigger fan of the expression "free with purchase." Um, yes. A new and exciting use of the word "free," but again indicating "not free," and coming right out and saying so. I mean, isn't everything "free with purchase"? Big Macs, flat-screen TVs, used cars--I make a purchase (Big Mac, flat-screen TV, used car) and then it's absolutely free!

Meanwhile, here we are well into the twenty-first century and we are still in thrall to the hoary practice of pricing products mere pennies below some real or imagined break point, and sticking the word "just" or "only" in front of it as if that really convinces anybody that the purchase is inexpensive. Does anybody really believe that $24.99 isn't, for all practical purposes, twenty-five dollars? Does anybody, looking at an item priced $12.97, not think, "Huh! They want thirteen bucks for this piece of junk!"? Does anybody look at a catalog and become convinced that a given product is inexpensive because the copy says it's "only" $999.99?

I wouldn't have bought it, except the ad said it was "only" $999.99, which makes it cheap. And anyhow, it was under a thousand bucks. I wouldn't have bought it if it cost $1000.00. That would have been too expensive. Unless they put "only" in front of it.

Anyhow, it's just "pennies a day"--another meaningless phrase. My house costs just pennies a day, after all, as does my car--several thousand pennies, to be sure, but still just pennies a day. And note that that's just pennies a day, which makes it all better, so no worries.

Well, make that no worries*: I actually do worry that we are raising a generation that believes the word is in fact spelled ef-ar-ee-ee-asterisk.

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Seeing Doubles

Facebook does so many weird things these days that it sometime seems hardly worth the effort to comment on them. (Lately, for instance, it's been having trouble with links on shared items: the description of the item is lost and a mere generic link--shar.es or bit.ly or something equally uninformative--appears, no matter how things had looked in the Post to Profile popup.)

But previous to this latest oddity, Facebook has for some little time now been vexing me with thumbnail schizophrenia on its Post to Profile window. I will elect to share an item--it doesn't seem to matter if I do so with ShareThis, Share on Facebook, or via a link in the original publication--and after a moment in which all appears to be progressing normally I will be greeted with a Post to Profile window that looks like this:

Invariably, the top thumbnail is the appropriate illustration. But, also invariably, my clicking the "share" button at this point means that the bottom thumbnail will appear on my News Feed.

A little exploration reveals that the last of the number of thumbnail options presented--in this instance, seven--is the winning entry. Of course. So a conscientious poster must go through the entire inventory before he can share a post with a thumbnail that will be anything but a head-scratcher to his devoted readers:

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Typically, the proper thumbnail remains in the top position. But at any point in this process, clicking
"share" will post the item with the bottom thumbnail appended.

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Until finally--literally, finally, for there are no more options save "no thumbnail"--the right illustration appears all by its lonesome, and will be properly attached to the post. What a nuisance.

On the other hand, Facebook's latest troubles with correctly (or at least helpfully) rendering links is even more of a nuisance...meaning that I now long for that which I considered an annoyance only two days ago!

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Are You Paying Attention?

Eric Barker's blog Barking up the wrong tree features an interesting little post, "Does doodling make you smarter?"

The conclusion of the study that Barker references--"Unlike many dual task situations, doodling while working can be beneficial"--is intriguing enough, but what really caught my attention is Barker's own subsequent commentary, especially this:

...Well, now I post this and play my trump card against every one of my elementary school teachers. (Have no illusions; just like all of you, I thrive on petty vengeance.)

Exactly! Not the petty vengeance paty--that goes without saying--but the elementary-school teachers part. (And junior-high teachers. And high school. Don't remember any of my college profs caring, however.) The assumption always seemed to be that doodling in the margins, which I do to this day, some 30 years after my college graduation, indicates a lack of attentiveness. I suppose it may do so, but my experience and observation incline me to think that it indicates greater attentiveness. A distraction it may be, but I think it's a way of distracting the hand while the mind focuses on the matter before it.

Likewise the closing of one's eyes.

We are taught from the earliest days that "paying attention" means "look at me." That makes sense in the case of a demonstration. But I have always found it easier to concentrate on a speaker if my eyes are closed. Unless I'm taking notes. In which case the results can be disastrous.

But in our society, to listen with eyes closed is somehow considered rude. It makes no more sense to think that my closed eyes mean I am not paying sufficient attention than to think that my fixed stare means I'm hanging on every syllable. And yet society seems to think that the latter is inarguably true.

Nor is it logical to assume that my closed eyes mean that I am asleep...although I must confess to having sat through any number of sermons, homilies, and presentations where that outcome could easily have occurred. Why my desire to shut out extraneous distractions (look at that bird on the window sill! I wonder how long that pencil has been embedded in that ceiling tile. It's annoying how that fluorescent tube keeps flickering) should be interpreted as an insult instead of a compliment is beyond me.

That said, I must weigh in with my belief that to engage oneself with a laptop or smartphone is not the same thing. Electronic devices distract the mind as well as the hand. I've taught enough classes with students hunched over their laptop computers--and, more to the point, graded their subsequent papers--to know they're not listening. Certainly they're not taking notes!

Oh, and that eyes closed thing? If snoring and/or drooling is involved, forget all that stuff I said above.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day, I am given to understand, originally was intended to honor Union soldiers who died during the Civil War. Today it seems to get confused a lot with Veterans' Day. Be that as it may, here are ancestors of mine who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Perhaps there are more.

Anthony McGrale (my Grandma Reynolds's great-grandfather) - Company A, 48th Regiment, Illinois Infantry. Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, among others.

Phineas Bates Reynolds (my dad's great-grandfather) - Company K, 34th Regiment, Illinois Infantry. Wounded at the Battle of Shiloh.

Alfred Nye (my dad's great-grandfather) - Signal Corps. He appears to have been at Little Round Top, though I am still researching details.

I have a small family history website here, though I see I need to do some housekeeping.

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What Passes for Christianity

I thought I was done with this subject when I wrote about it here a couple-three months ago (Said, and Done)...and it's true that I can't get all that worked up about it anymore, being now on the outs and no longer having any material stake in what happens. But the assaults upon the character of--nay, the character assassinations of some of my friends and former co-workers in the local synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), by self-styled "reformers" who think they're pretty swell Christians, is really over the top.

(These "reformers" remind me a lot of Tea Partiers: They're certainly angry, but it's hard to know exactly why. They say it's because the ELCA voted last year to allow its congregations to call "practicing" gay clergy, but given that no one tells any congregation that it may or may not or must or must not call a particular pastor, their all-consuming angst and ire seems more than a little overdone. Not unlike Tea Partiers' "anger" about taxes, which are at their lowest level in years. And as with Tea Partiers, these "reformers"--who travel under such banners as WordAlone and Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and LutheranCORE and, most recently, the North American Lutheran Church (NALC)--speak frequently of their burning desire to "take back" "their" church...though, as with the Tea Partiers, it's unclear from whom they intend to be "taking back." Which leaves one to conclude that, as with the Tea Party movement, it's really about making sure that "the other" is kept at bay.)

Well, whatever. I'm not a Lutheran and I no longer work in a Lutheran organization, thanks to the "reformers" and their successful efforts to siphon funding away from their church's national and local offices. But I am a "Lutheran in-law" and, as indicated, I have friends who still have to put up with the slings and arrows of outrageous "Christians," so, my hard feelings notwithstanding, I find I'm not as far removed from the matter as I had thought.

Indeed, I proved that to myself a couple of weeks ago when I spotted in the Rapid City Journal a brief article, "Bishop warns four congregations violate church law." The article reported that "a Lutheran pastor from Philip [S.D.] and the four Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregations she leads have been told by their bishop that they are in violation of church law for affiliating with another Lutheran association and withholding funds from the South Dakota synod."

Asked by the reporter to comment on the article, a friend of mine who is an associate to the bishop misspoke. He said the letter was not a "censure," when in fact it was. In the trade we call this "a mistake."

But in the world of righteous and self-righteous Christians, evidently, there is no such thing as a simple mistake. Everything is part of a grand underhanded conspiracy against them. Nobody's motives are innocent. A follow-up comment on the newspaper's website--perpetrated, predictably, by one of the local pastors who has been most vocal in excoriating the ELCA for its sins and heresies and who likes to demonstrate what a fabulous Christian he is by slinging lots of mud--gives the proof. This great "Christian" writes:

I have been in direct conversation with the pastor involved. The information from the assistant to the bishop who is quoted in the article is incorrect if not intentionally misleading.

Ah, the passive-aggressive junior-high balderdash: Not sufficient nerve to actually come out and call the other guy a liar--which this so-called pastor can't and couldn't know--but just enough to sling mud at the other guy's back. "...if not intentionally misleading." How charming. How typical. As is the parting shot to his comment:

There is no reason for [the associate to the bishop] to be spreading this "disinformation."

Nor is there any reason to be casting aspersions in re my friend's motives, if any, for using the words he used, but there they are anyway. Eighth Commandment? What Eighth Commandment?¹

Add to that another bit of slander popped up on my radar screen a few days ago, courtesy of a "discussion" group called Friends of LCMC. The subject line of the thread in question is "Bishop Zellmer: Kool-aid drinker."

Well, that's certainly attention-getting, no? If there's anything these guys are good at, it's getting attention. And smearing people with whom they disagree. Long ago I noted that the members of these various "discussion" groups on this and related topics are far more interested in slandering other people than in actually "discussing" anything. Evidently this will serve as a cornerstone to their new denomination.

The thread--remarkably uncharitable and ill-tempered, even by these people's own standards--seems to have begun when someone posted to the group an "important news" item drafted by the pastor whose comment I quoted above. It starts off pretty straightforwardly, summarizing the facts of the "censure" against the congregations and their pastor. But this individual is incapable of maintaining the pretense of impartiality for long, and soon has to give the back of his hand:

Frezil [the pastor] is on medical leave recovering from surgery for colon cancer. She is scheduled to return from leave in two weeks.

It is fascinating that Zellmer chose to take this action while Frezil is on medical leave.

It's interesting that he chose to have this done while he was visiting Cameroon (no doubt, spending the synod's supposedly limited funds).

Ah, again with the snide, underhanded, reach-around smear: "It is fascinating..." "It's interesting..." "...supposedly..." Not exactly coming out with a full-fledged accusation but certainly insinuating, with smarmy smugness, that something here doesn't smell quite right. And then, for lovers of irony such as myself, he proffers this little gem:

I guess the bishop has decided it is time to play hard ball with any and all who dissent.

Wow...the guy vilifies his bishop, then follows up by slamming him for "playing hardball" with those who go against the policies of their denomination. Astonishing. And, I have to assume, he delivers it with a completely straight face, too.

Of course, this being a "discussion" group, that post is followed by a couple of other comments that are delivered with the same degree of Christian love and charity as the initial comments. First you have the bloke who asserts that his bishop has

...in-hailed (sic) what we, in the early WordAlone movement, referred to as the "blue gas" (i.e., the historic episcopate). He follow-up (sic) his inhalation with a chug-a-lug of ELCA kool-aid regarding the party line against LCMC.

Yes, how astonishing that a bishop of a religious body would feel obliged to uphold the policies of that body. It defies the imagination. And then someone else piles on with this shining little bit of bilious nonsense:

We could use the LCMC secret weapon. Our very own LCMC mascot to perform an exorcism on the bishop.

I confess, I have no idea what that means. I suppose the "secret weapon" and the "mascot" must refer to something that is well known to the inner circle of the movement but is no more than a wink and a nod to those of us who are not among the chosen. But I do, of course, understand full well the meaning behind the references to exorcism and Kool-Aid. The latter, of course, is a reference to the people at Jonestown who, under the sway of their leader, the Rev. Jim Jones, drank poisoned Kool-Aid. I find that right-wingers like to throw that insult at people pretty frequently, their intent being to say that one's disagreeing with them automatically means that one must be so mentally impaired that he or she blindly follows orders from another even when to do so is suicidal. And the former, the snide comment about exorcism, quite plainly is intended to assert that his bishop has been possessed by demons--how else to explain the fact that someone disagrees with us when we know what God wants, except to say that that benighted soul must be in the thrall of the devil?--and must be exorcised in order that he see the light, i.e., agree with us.

It's probably a bad sign when you quote yourself, but I will anyway. In my previous post on the subject, I included a comment that I had left on the blog operated by the pastor whom I have quoted above, a comment I concluded thusly:

Is that your idea of "church?" Is that your idea of "Christianity?" If so, you are welcome to them both.

My feelings in that regard have not changed since I wrote that post almost three months ago. Nor have I changed my belief that this "reform" of theirs--CORE, NALC, whatever they wish to call it--stands scant chance of success. Successful institutions are built on something, for something. An institution built on opposition, on negativity, on character assassination, cannot long endure, simply because its so-called leaders must forever keep the "faithful" riled up. There must always be an opponent, there must always be an enemy, there must always be a siege, a conspiracy, a death-struggle that we are eternal victims of. There must always be a hated and reviled them so that there can be a pure and holy us, otherwise we are nothing.

A group can go on that for awhile, but in the long-term it can't hold together. Sooner or later there's going to be yet another disagreement within the ranks, yet another heresy, yet another blasphemy that simply cannot be tolerated by those of us who have the inside line to God's thoughts. Which will mean another split, another round of mud-slinging and name-calling and arm-wrestling to see who's the "better" Christian.

Which, come to think of it, is another bonus to those of us who appreciate the ironic.

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¹Depending on your religious tradition, it could be the Ninth Commandment. It's the one about bearing "false witness," in any event.

Be There. Aloha.

I'm looking forward to CBS's upcoming revival of Hawaii Five-0.

But I'm not sure why.

Sure, the iconic original was one of my favorite cop shows as a kid. But that alone might be good reason for me to plan to avoid the remake. After all, how often do these things really turn out to be better than the original?

For that matter, how often does the original turn out to be less than what one remembered, upon later viewing? I certainly felt that way when Barney Miller, one of my favorites from the 1980s, turned up on TV Land some years back: Didn't it used to be...better? However, when Five-0 debuted on whatever incarnation of CBN might have been in existence at the time (to much fanfare, which made its sudden and unannounced disappearance from the schedule mere weeks later a bit odd), I found it just as enjoyable as I'd recalled.

Again, maybe a reason to avoid it. But I won't.

Today's unveiling of the revival's title credits give one some feeling of hope. I'm not that wild about the "tech" aspect, either visually or melodically, and it's a shame that, in keeping with the dictates of this age, the unforgettable Morton Steven's theme has been shamefully truncated; but at least it's the proper theme music. And the fact that the creative team seems hip enough to make a few hat-tips to the original, (here comes that word again) iconic opening is another good sign that they respect the original material. Witness ye:

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That original opening has got to be one of the best ever created. The matching of visuals to music is as close to perfect as anyone's ever come. There's not a shot out of place.

One wonders, though, to what extent the original series' success was owed to Jack Lord. Could anyone else have carried the series the way he did? Even when the original cast had departed, even after the series had passed its prime, there was Lord as McGarrett, still barking out orders and taking no guff. It's near impossible for me to imagine anyone else in the role. We'll see how Alex O'Loughlin does as McGarrett. I'm unfamiliar with his work.

There is undoubtedly a danger associated with recasting these parts. The safer route would have been to go with a "next generation" team instead of the familiar group. But would it then be Hawaii Five-0? A failed attempt to revive the series in 1997 seemed to take that tack--with Gary Busey as Jimmy Berk and no McGarrett in sight. James MacArthur, Kam Fong, and Harry Endo did reprise their roles as Danny WIlliams (now the governor), Chin Ho, and Che Fong, respectively...never mind that Chin Ho had been killed off in the original series. Maybe that's one of the reasons that, as previously indicated, this was a failedattempt.

(Aside: In college I was friends with a kid who was Kam Fong's nephew or great-nephew. Also I was friends with a girl whose mother worked in a big Honolulu hotel, and who (the mom) could be seen briefly behind the front desk in a scene shot in the lobby. I was friends with a great many kids from the islands, who for some reason had been lured away to attend college in Omaha, Nebraska. We would make a point of watching the show whenever we could, and my Hawaiian friends would helpfully point out all of the geographical mistakes.)

One alteration: In the upcoming series, Kono Kalakaua is now Kona Kalakaua, and is played by Grace Park, late of Battlestar Galactica. I suppose if the BSG reboot could recast Starbuck as a woman, the Five-0 revival can do likewise with Kono/Kona.

As is so often the case, time will have to be the final arbiter of whether the new venture is worthwhile. I recall that I anticipated Dick Wolf's update of Dragnet a few seasons back, and was sorely disappointed with everything except Ed O'Neill as Joe Friday and Mike Post's update of the original theme. But I semi-dreaded the revival of Doctor Who, which I soon discovered I like at least as well as the original. I guess that's the sort of thing that keeps us tuning in.

---

Some links:

The new series' intro is here.

Here's the classic series' opener.

Here's the opening credits for "The Cocoon," which was the original series' pilot movie.

The intro to the failed 1997 series also was faithful to the original series' opening, but it wasn't enough.

And for kicks, here's the Ventures' hit version of the Theme from Hawaii Five-0, as well as a more recent take by the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

This Is a SUPPORT Group?!

Good thing I don't need a lot of outside support. This is the kind of thing that can really undermine a person's confidence:

A week or so ago a Facebook friend suggested I join something called Word Nerds Support Group. I was sufficiently intrigued to visit the group's page, which successfully told me virtually nothing about it:

Okay, well, one sure way to find out if it's worth anything, yes? After all, I can always unjoin later. So I click "Request to join":

Um, yes, yes, I do. I was sort of hoping to imply as much when I clicked the button labeled "Request to join." Having perhaps not made my intentions clear, I click "Join." Again. And...

...hit the brick wall. Interesting way to make friends. Not to mention an interesting approach for a "support" group.

Now, I get it that there are Facebook groups that exist to attract as many participants as possible (if I get one more post for a group called I bet we can find 1,000,000 Facebook users who _________ (fill in the blank) I shall have to start a group called I bet we can find 1,000,000 Facebook users who hate getting invitations for groups called "I bet we can find 1,000,000 Facebook users who _________" (fill in the blank), and groups that are meant to be more clubby, established by and for an existing band of people. And I get it that someone might mistakenly think an acquaintance is part of the "in" crowd when in fact he's hopelessly un-hip. But don't you think such a group could at least indicate on its page that it's closed and thus will take no requests to join?

I think I shall start a Facebook group and allow no one to join. That will show them! But of course it can't be my group I bet we can find 1,000,000 Facebook users who hate getting invitations for groups called "I bet we can find 1,000,000 Facebook users who _________" (fill in the blank), for that would, you know, defeat the whole 1,000,000 users thing.

Careless Headlining

Well, "careless" unless it's intended to be "provocative," to use an overused word.

Here's a screenshot from The Daily Beast's Cheat Sheet for today:

As you see, the headline offers the declarative statement NBC Cancels Law & Order. However, a reading of the blurb immediately reveals that a more accurate headline might have been NBC Might Cancel Law & Order or NBC to Cancel Law & Order? or any of a number of other variations. The point is that until NBC makes an announcement, everything is speculative. But the Daily Beast's headline makes it sound like a done deal.

This sort of inattention to detail (which I assume to be the case) is a bad thing in general where reporting is concerned, but in a publication such as Cheat Sheet, which exists primarily to be skimmed, it's especially nasty. I can't believe that I'm the only one who merely peruses the headlines of two-thirds of the daily dose of Cheat Sheet, pausing only occasionally to read the blurb on stories that interest me, very rarely clicking through to the source publication. Except for the fact that I'm interested enough in Law & Order to stop and read the blurb, I would come away thinking that the show's cancellation was a done deal.

Of course, it's only a television show. One hopes the editors of Cheat Sheet would be a little more careful if they're referencing, say, the death of a public figure or a declaration of war or something.

How Do They Know?

It has nettled me for some time. An election takes place, and the pundits immediately dive in with their learned analysis of what the voters “meant” with their votes. And the question always rattles around in the back of my head, How do they know? We saw it, in spades, when the Republican Scott Brown was elected to the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s former seat: The punditocracy assured us that this was, somehow, a “referendum” on President Obama’s policies, or Kennedy’s, or the entire Democratic Party’s, or all of the above. And I asked myself How do they know? Since all the while the election struck me as being Massachusetts voters’ “referendum” on the extraordinarily bad campaign run by the Democrat Martha Coakley.

The question--How do they know?--popped into my head again on Thursday afternoon as the stock market tumbled. I received in short order half a dozen news alerts on the subject, most of which followed the same tack as this from CNN:

Dow plummets more than 900 points on Greece’s debt crisis.

The first part, of course, is empirical, factual: the Dow Jones Industrial Average either did or did not fall more than 900 points. Everyone says it did, so I assume it did.

But the second part is only speculative: How does anyone know, really know that it was because of Greece’s debt crisis? Obviously no one went and polled investors and traders and other parties, all of whom said, “It’s Greece, man, it’s all about Greece’s debt crisis.”

How do they know?

Well, maybe it’s as I’ve long suspected: They don’t. For about an hour after the first news alert from CNN, which assured me that the plunge was because of Greece’s woes, came this bulletin from CNN:

Dow closes down about 350 points. Faulty P&G stock quotes, Greek debt issue roil investors.

Wait--what? Where did the P&G angle come from? An hour and twenty minutes earlier it was all because of Greece. Now it’s “faulty” stock quotes. And--oh, yeah--that Greece thing, too.

And now here’s this from yesterday’s New York Times, which pretty well summarizes everything I read or heard on the subject on Friday:

Origin of Wall Street’s Plunge Continues to Elude Officials

The article offers this intriguing quotation:

”The problem is you don’t come in and find out what the clear answer is,” said Art Hogan, the New York-based chief market analyst at Jefferies & Company. “We don’t have the clear explanation for how it happened.”

Really? All of the news outlets sure did on Thursday; they were near-unanimous in reporting that it was because of Greece. Now everyone’s saying we don’t know, we won’t know right away, maybe we won’t know at all.

Huh.

So my longstanding question is answered, and the answer is as I’ve suspected. They don’t know. They’re speculating. They’re guessing, in fact. But it doesn’t sound good to say, ”Dow plummets more than 900 points, maybe on Greece’s debt crisis, maybe not. Nobody knows for sure.”

Although that’s kind of what they’re all saying now, isn’t it?

Might it not be better to come off a little less certain in these news bulletins? Might it not pay to use words like maybe or perhaps or some speculate? I’m thinking long-range here. I’m thinking of the credibility gap that widens whenever I read something like Dow plummets more than 900 points on Greece’s debt crisis, followed mere hours later by something like Origin of Wall Street’s Plunge Continues to Elude Officials. Because the next time I read an assertion that purports to know the unknowable I will again ask myself How do they know?

And I will remind myself, They don’t.

So what’s gained by their behaving as if they know the unknowable? Nothing. They have only undermined their own decreasing credibility. And both the news outlets and their audiences suffer for it.

And, really, all they have to do is stop acting like they know when they’re speculating. That’s all. It’s a matter of phrasing. And a matter of attitude.

Questions, So Many Questions!

As may be obvious to regular readers of this little blog, I enjoy (sometimes) taking various online surveys, all of which earn me points that I may use to purchase overpriced baubles that I don't need or enter me into sweepstakes that I won't win. Clearly my purpose in taking these things is merely amusement...it's a step above playing solitaire, perhaps. Also, I have occasionally been sent products to use and report back on, which is kind of fun.

Part of the amusement, for me, is noting oddities in the preparation of these surveys. Having written more than a couple of them in my time, I know they can be tricky little devils. And I know how easy it is to be pulled off-track, or to discover that that which was plainly obvious to you is not so much to your participants. (I've had the same experience in my teaching endeavors: If the "correct" answer is A but three-fourths of the class put down B, perhaps the question was not worded as clearly as it might have been!)

Along that line, here's Exhibit A, a screenshot of a page from a survey I took a couple of weeks ago:

Don't ask me why, but I am tickled by the request for approximate number of employees followed by the first option, one, which is pretty specific. "Approximately how many employees do you have at your location?" "One." "No, I need the approximate number of employees." "Oh. About one."

Then there's this, which has nothing to do with the survey itself but struck me as a strange dialog box. We did some fiddling with our Verizon account last week, ending up with a couple of new phones, and the company followed up by asking if I'd take a brief survey about the experience. Why not? There was only a handful of quick questions, at the end of which appeared this:

As instructed, I used the red Close box to close the survey tab. Or at least such was my intent. Evidently the survey didn't think much of the idea, and gave me the dialog box at the top of the screenshot: Please close your browser explicitly. Explicity? Um, okay: Close, you #@$%* piece of #@!^& or so help me I'll @*%#®!! Explicit enough?

Finally, a shout-out to Alert Reader Ronald: You are absolutely right! Talk about hoisting oneself on one's own petard!  I deleted the blog post because I didn't want the survey creators identified when in fact the mistake I chided them for was my own, but the gist of it is this: I tweaked them for an unclearly phrased question, but as Ronald pointed out, the question was fine: It was the reader, yours truly, who was misreading it! Which, in a strange, funhouse-mirror way, sort of made my point, which was that it's important to have more than one set of eyes peruse these (and other) things before they go out the door. Would that I had followed my own advice!

Nice to know people read these posts. I should include errors on a regular basis so as to elicit more feedback!

Back to the Polls!

Today is yet another election day in my fair city, this one the inevitable runoff election for mayor. I hit the polls at about the same time of day as a couple of weeks ago--about 8:15--and was voter #60 as opposed to #40 or 42 last time. Maybe voter turnout will be merely abysmal rather than execrable? Too soon to say.

I did note, as something of a follow-up to my April 13 post, Trying to Be a Good Citizen!, that even though the city did not feel inclined to correct the error in my precinct's polling-place address in time for the general election, it did at some point these last three weeks make the fix and properly identify Longfellow School as being on Fourth Avenue instead of clear across town on Fourth Street. Better late than never.

Makes a guy wonder, though: Was the higher number of people having voted in the first hour of polling due to the public's increased interest in the outcome of the election, or did 20 people end up lost last time because the street was wrong in the voters' guide? We'll never know.

Not Seen Every Day

This caused some pause. I always thought it was supposed to go the other way.

Uh-Oh...

This doesn't bode well:

In Others’ Words

Regular perusers of this modest enterprise know that I am a collector of quotations, which I occasionally am moved to share here. And so we come to another small batch of other people's pithy observations. As is typical, many of these come from the fine newsletter A.Word.A.Day; quite a few come from Odyssey Networks' newsletter Daybook; and the remainder come from here and there across the interwebs.


We are called on to do the work of healing the broken world. If our world were perfect, we would not be obligated to undertake its repair. —Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less. —General Eric Shinseki

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer. —Douglas Adams, satirist (1952-2001)

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. –Abraham Lincoln

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. –Voltaire

Make things as simple as they can be and as complex as they have to be. —William of Occam

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts. —John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. —Milton Berle

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying "End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH," the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry. —Terry Pratchett, novelist (b. 1948)

"Did God have a mother?" Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask. —Michio Kaku, physicist (b. 1947)

Only the educated are free. —Epictetus, philosopher (c. 60-120)

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. —Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God s sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose. —Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect, and author (1743-1826)

I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university. —Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. —Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them. -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. —Chapman Cohen, author and lecturer (1868-1954)

Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles, though the most opposite to the plan of a wise superintendent, impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religion. —David Hume, philosopher, economist, and historian (1711-1776)

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. —C.S. Lewis

The less people know, the more they yell. —Seth Godin

You get respect when you give it. —Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot

Trying to Be a Good Citizen!

Sometimes all you can do is lead 'em to water. The rest is up to them.

Case in point: Last week I received a regular updates from the City of Sioux Falls, which included information about today's municipal elections. Since the community occasionally flirts with the idea of "super precincts" and otherwise is given to play around with polling locations, I thought it best to follow a provided link to make sure we're still in the same place.

We are, but I noted that the address of the neighborhood school was wrong. The list of polling places said it's on South Fourth Street, but in this town there ain't no such animal. Streets run east-west; avenues run north-south, so you'll never find an address on South Forth Street. The proper venue is South Fourth Avenue. Not an issue for us veterans, but newcomers might be confused.¹

So I, civic-minded as always, quickly dashed off e-mail to the entities indicated at the bottom of the list, viz., the County Auditor and the City Clerk.

In reasonably short order I received replies from each of them, thanking me for bringing the error to their attention.

And today comes another update from the city, with the link to the list of precinct polling locations...and the still-wrong street for Longfellow School.

Well, to be fair, both the County Auditor and the City Clerk merely thanked me for my efforts on behalf of clarity and accuracy; neither of them said anything about correcting the error.

---

¹Indeed, anyone attempting to find number 1116, east or west, on Fourth Street in Sioux Falls will quickly find himself on the wrong side(s) of town entirely. In other places I've lived--specifically, Omaha--numbered streets and avenues conveniently run parallel, meaning you'd never be more than a block off if, say, someone told you Fourth Street instead of Fourth Avenue. Not so here. Another oddity of Sioux Falls' street numbering system is that the center of town is said to be the intersection of Phillips Avenue and Ninth Street, the location of City Hall. All well and good, but it confuses the heck out of people who are used to cities where, say, 1116 South Fourth Avenue would be found near the corner of Eleventh Street and Fourth Avenue--when in Sioux Falls it's on Fourth Avenue between Nineteenth and Twentieth streets. You gotta have your wits about you if you're going to drive in this burg.

Something New Under the Sun!

Here at last is something that's never happened in my experience. Let me know if it's befallen you.

I am, as is my custom, wading through my various e-mail accounts, when a message from my wife pops up in my Yahoo account. I click on it, of course, and the message displayed is an ad from HP Home & Home Office Store. I assume that I clicked on the wrong line in the message queue, but note that there is no "previous" link even though my wife's note, being the most recent, was at the top of the list. Back to the message queue, where I observe that the HP message is actually three messages down the list from my wife's, making it pretty unlikely that I clicked on the wrong line. Try, try again...and here's the HP message again!

Weird, yes?

Back to messages, where I click on the HP message, and am rewarded with the latest Nikonians Newsletters, a message that appears four places down the list from the HP message.

So I close the tab in which I had Yahoo Mail running, create a new tab, re-enter Yahoo Mail...and presto! everything is working again.

Just when a guy thought he had seen it all...

Surveying the Surveys

Occasionally I enjoy taking online surveys. I don't consider them terribly significant--by their very nature, they are not scientific, although I'm not sure that's all that important when it comes to product or lifestyle questions--but some of them can be interesting enough, and most of them feature some kind of point-earning scheme or enter you into a drawing that you'll never win, which makes it fun. Sort of. Beats playing solitaire, mostly.

But having written more than a few surveys in my time, I'm often amazed at the poor writing, illogical questions, and just plain sloppiness that often makes it through to the respondent. I can only conclude that the proofreading department at some of these research companies has been downsized out of existence. And that they don't have a handful of volunteers take the survey before they unleash it on the public.

I've written of this before (Survey says huhn??,), when a survey dated 10/8/08 asked me if I felt "the new president's administration is doing enough to fight unemployment?" Note that 10/8/10 was nearly a full month before the 2008 election (11/4/08) and more than three months before the inauguration. There was no "new president" in October 2008!

I pointed that out to Harris Interactive, and never received a reply.

Which is why I won't bother to share these survey oddities with the various companies that perpetrated them. But I will share them with you!

---

This snippet is from a longish "lifestyle" survey that I took a few weeks back:

The problem is one of consistency. The only "abstinence" answer option given is "I do not smoke," but three of the five products it asks about are "smokeless" products. Since the question is about "tobacco products" and not smoking, a more properly worded option would have been "I do not use tobacco products."

---

This snippet is from a customer-satisfaction survey following my recent stay at a Day's Inn:

The problem here is dumbness. Sorry, but I have grown weary of supposedly professionally produced publications, signs, and, yes, surveys whose creators can't be bothered to educate themselves about the difference between it's (a contraction, usually for it is and occasionally for it has) and its (a possessive pronoun indicating belonging, as in Every dog must have its day). I used to be more patient about such things, but this is so widespread, and so wrong, and so easy to figure out, that I can no longer do but immediately relegate the perpetrator of such dumbness to the Chowderhead file and move on.

---

And finally this, from the same customer-satisfaction survey:

As you see, I did not complete this portion correctly. I foolishly assumed that since I indicated that I had paid my tab with American dollars it was unnecessary to indicate also that I did not pay it with Canadian dollars! What was I thinking?

Seriously, does it make any sense at all for me to have to tell them that my room cost me $90.00 US and $0.00 Canadian? Which, after all, turned out to be the "correct" way to complete that section. Is there any instance in which my stay would have cost me, say, $45.00 American and $46.33 Canadian? Had I completed the section in such a fashion, would anybody on the other end even have noticed?

Given the survey crafters' issues with its and it's, I would assume not.

Good advice in putting together instruments such as surveys (indeed, good advice for any piece of instructional writing): Give it to someone else, someone out of the loop but whose opinion (and, more important, intelligence) you value. If they turn up puzzled, go back to the drawing board. Repeat as necessary.

Two Oddities

A couple of strange things in my electronic world...not unsettling, not even annoying, just strange:

First: A couple of weeks ago ShareThis made an update to its nifty service. Since I use ShareThis as my primary sharing mechanism (to Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Diigo primarily, and often as a quick way to e-mail links to my far-flung correspondents as well), I was excited at the prospect of the update. Which, for the most part was worthwhile. Early on I had an issue with Twitter: Basically, nothing would happen. But if I chose "More Sharing Services" from the menu, I could share to Twitter in a sideways fashion. I reported it to the Proper Authorities, and was told that a bug fix in the next day or so should address the problem, which it did. Great.

But ever since then, something peculiar happens if I share something to Facebook and am not logged in to Facebook: My browser window rolls up to about two inches in height, and won't "unroll" back to full size until I either log in or cancel. After which a simple click on the green button (Mac OS X) and I'm back to normal. Well, my browser window is, at least. If I'm logged into Facebook already and share something via ShareThis, the collapsing window doesn't occur. Weird, no? Hasn't seemed worth reporting to ShareThis, but I am curious if others have encountered anything like this. I'm using Firefox 3.6.2.

Second: I noticed toward the end of last week that I wasn't getting e-mail from The Washington Post--not my daily news update, not my Opinions e-mail, no breaking news, nothing. Went to my account and everything there is as it should be. I even clicked the "update" button, just for kicks. But nothing. (No, it's not suddenly routing to my spam folder. Why do people always ask that? Am I the only one who checks the contents of his spam folder before hitting the "empty" button?) When I'll get around to it I'll swap a different e-mail address for the one they've been sending stuff to for all these years and see if that breaks the logjam. Strange, though, when something that's always worked suddenly...doesn't.

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A Lot of Candles

Today is the 103rd birthday of my grandfather Paul Bryan Reynolds, who died in 1987. I'm not sure why the date sticks with me--I would, for instance, have to look up the birthdates of my other grandparents--but it does, to the point that I realized signing a bunch of car-purchase papers three years ago that it was the old boy's 100th birthday. The memory is an odd thing.

Here's a couple of photos. The first, undated, is my grandfather as a young man. Looks like it might have been a work-related photo.

And here's one that I imagine was taken perhaps 25 years later, including, from left, Grandma Reynolds, Mom, Great-Grandma Reynolds, Grandpa, yours truly, and Dad. My guess is that it was taken in 1957.

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go round up 103 birthday candles. And a lighter. One of those long-handled jobs, I think.

---

"Did You Know?"

A friend e-mailed me the link to this video; the person who originally sent it (it was one of those fwd: fwd: fwd messages displaying about two dozen previous recipients' addresses) made this comment: "Sony Corporation played this video at their executive conference this year.. Caution: It may leave you a little breathless ----."

I don't know about "breathless," but it is very interesting and extremely well done.

"Somebody's Not Paying Attention" - UPDATED

In re the previous post: 

MoveOn.org seems to have given up on Stephanie; she is not included in their latest list of undecideds at http://bit.ly/9Nizyv.

Somebody's Not Paying Attention

Amazingly, MoveOn.org keeps sending me e-mail about my state's sole delegate to the House of Representatives, like this one this morning:

Dear MoveOn member,

The big House vote on health care reform is scheduled for Sunday, and Rep. Herseth Sandlin is one of the key votes needed to pass the bill.

But she still hasn't publicly said how she'll vote.1 And it might come down to a single vote.

Rep. Herseth Sandlin's office is getting bombarded by calls from both sides, so a quick visit to her office is the best way to break through the noise and remind her what's at stake on Sunday.

Rep. Herseth Sandlin has an office right near you in Sioux Falls. Can you print out a flier showing the tremendous impact that reform will have for residents of South Dakota, and drop it off before the end of the day TODAY to ask her to vote yes on reform?

Yes, I'll stop by Rep. Herseth Sandlin's office today

No, I can't make it

The office is located at:

326 East 8th Street
Suite 108
Sioux Falls, SD 57103

Passing health care reform would be historic. It would lower costs, expand coverage to 32 million Americans, end insurance company discrimination for pre-existing conditions,2 and be the biggest deficit reduction measure in 25 years.3

The flier shows, in detail, what health care reform would mean for families, young adults, small-business owners, and hospitals in your area. It will remind Rep. Herseth Sandlin that reform is not just an abstract concept or a political battle—it would have a profound impact on real  people in her district. She needs to see this handout before she makes up her mind.

Please make time today to visit Rep. Herseth Sandlin's office. You can download the flier and get all the information you'll need here:

http://pol.moveon.org/finaldropby/?office_id=14&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=3

Thanks for all you do.
–Kat, Joan, Daniel, Michael, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Hoyer Likes CBO Numbers, Sees Health Vote on Sunday," NPR, March 18, 2010

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=87083&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=4

2. "CBO: Health-care reform bill cuts deficit by $1.3 trillion over 20 years, covers 95%,"
The Washington Post, March 18, 2010

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=86994&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=5

3. "CBO: Health bill would cut $138 billion from deficit in 10 years," The Washington Post,
March 18, 2010

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=87002&id=19455-6895690-R4nuDkx&t=6

After a message from MoveOn.org a week or two ago, warning me that Herseth Sandlin was being "targeted" by the GOP in her re-election bid, I sent them e-mail in which I basically said, "So what?" It's my opinion that Herseth Sandlin, whom I previously supported with enthusiasm, has proven to be a DINO who votes the wrong way on every important piece of legislation (credit-card reform? Vote to protect the big banks. Health-care reform? Vote to protect the big insurance companies), fails to support the president, and behaves in every respect like a Republican. My take: I'd rather have a genuine Republican in that seat than a name-only Democrat.

Obviously ignoring my wisdom, MoveOn.org now sends me today's message. Which is bizarre on a couple of levels.

For one thing, la Stephanie has made it very plain on more than one occasion that she intends to vote against health-care reform. Again. I heard it from her own lips the other day on South Dakota Public Broadcasting Radio (used to just be South Dakota Public Radio, but for some reason now it's always rendered "SDPB Radio"); it's been repeated in the local rag here and here, the latter in fact being an AP report. Which I presume the folks at MoveOn.org would have access to.

So what makes them think that she "still hasn't publicly said how she'll vote?" It's bizarre.

Bizarre too is the footnote MoveOn.org supplies after their assertion, number 1 above, which links to an item on NPR's website that doesn't mention Herseth Sandlin at all. It's as if someone felt there needed to be a citation there and just threw in a quasi-related article. Maybe they don't think anyone ever reads the footnotes. (Note ye well, Jim Wunsch, that I listened to you 30+ years ago when you railed at the class for ignoring the footnotes! I still believe, as I told you at the time, that if stuff's really important it should be in the body of the text and not the bottom of the page, but I took your rant to heart and have kept it there ever since.)

Anyhow, I don't know where MoveOn.org is coming from -- the Land of Wishful Thinking, I suspect -- but I do know that unless my Congresswoman has some sort of road-to-Damascus experience in the next few hours and winds up voting on the right side of history, I shall have cast my last vote for her. I believe I have provided her more than enough rope; it remains only to be seen what she intends to do with it.

Opportunity Lost?

We received this e-mail today from the financial aid office at our daughter's college, Augustana College:

ATTN: Parents of Augustana students who receive the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship:

2010 South Dakota Legislative News:

As you may have read or heard, funding for the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship is on a list of proposed cuts being strongly considered.

Under the proposal, $2 million of the scholarship funding would be replaced by funds from private donors. Legislators have been advised by the Board of Regents that the possibility of donor support for this state-funded program is minimal. If the $2 million is cut, the scholarship program is in jeopardy. It is anticipated that awards to students will be cut in half or perhaps eliminated.

We want students and parents to know that this change is under consideration. If you feel strongly about this issue, we urge you to contact your local legislators regarding this issue immediately. The Legislature is expected to act on the final appropriations bill tomorrow (Friday, March 12).

Please paste this link into your browser to gain access to email contacts: http://legis.state.sd.us/who/index.aspx

Well, naturally, that's upsetting on a couple of levels. First, of course, our daughter obviously is a recipient of the Opportunity Scholarship, and its loss certainly would be felt.

But second, we spend a lot of time in this state worrying about our talented young people scampering off to find opportunities elsewhere. I'm pretty sure that's why they call it the opportunity scholarship.

Without getting into the question of exactly who was sleeping at which switches, causing the state to be thrown into a vast pit of red ink, and understanding that hard choices must be made, blah blah blah, one does have to question the long-term wisdom of encouraging young people to seek opportunity somewhere else. Actually, one doesn't have to question the wisdom, for it is patently unwise. Whittling away at one of the
mechanisms designed to encourage the upcoming generation to stay, work, and contribute here will have the effect of causing them to seek opportunities elsewhere.

I've already contacted my legislators to encourage them to do what they can to preserve the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarship. If you live near my ZIP Code, I encourage you to do likewise.

Alright, Already!

Some people need to decaffeinate.

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