Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, always a good time
It’s not quite winning the lottery, but we’ve been chosen to be a Nielsen Family! Woo hoo! That means we’ll get to share with the friendly TV-loving folks at Nielsen our list of favorite television shows.
I can’t wait for the call. I get to tell them we don’t actually watch television at all. No mindless drivel, laced with irritating and far-too-frequent ads for us, no sir!
Jon Swift has some outstanding proposals for how the federal government can rename certain departments in order to clarify their missions and purposes. I think we’d all agree that some of these names would really help people understand how their government is working for them.
Old Name: National Security Agency
New Name: National Patriot Agency
Let’s see how many people would dare risk being called unpatriotic by criticizing this agency now.
Old Name: State Department
New Name: Pre-War Department
I think this will send a message that there are other options on the table if diplomacy doesn’t work.
Old Name: White House Press Office
New Name: Ministry of Truth
This name would undercut those skeptical members of the liberal media and the reality-based community.
Old Name: Homeland Security
New Name: Ministry of Fear
“Homeland Security” has always sounded a bit too folksy and it gives people a false sense of safety when actually they should be terrified.
Old Name: FBI
New Name: The Untouchables
Remember when J Edgar Hoover and his G-men were free to fight crime and no one else in the government would dare lay a glove on them?
Old Name: CIA
New Name: ?
Wouldn’t a spy agency be more effective if no one knew its name? I think we should disband it and then revive it undercover with a secret name. If people really need to refer to it they can call it the Agency-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or You-Know-Who.
Old Name: Energy Department
New Name: Oil Department
Americans need to face facts that we’re not going to find other sources of energy anytime soon. The sooner we realize that, the better.
Old Name: Department of the Interior
New Name: Department of the Exterior
The name of this department always confused me since National Parks are all outside.
Old Name: Department of Transportation
New Name: Department of Planes, Trains and Automobiles
I think this would be a nice tribute John Candy.
Old Name: NASA
New Name: Global Warming Debunking Agency
Let’s see how long global warming fear mongers like James Hansen will stick around at an agency with this name.
Old Name: Health and Human Services
New Name: Government Handout Department
I couldn’t think of anything more apt than this.
Old Name: Federal Election Commission
New Name: Federal Re-Election Commission
Since most incumbents are re-elected anyway this name would make the agency’s responsibilities a lot clearer.
Remember “web rings”? They popped up in the early- and mid-1990’s and offered a way for people to find information related to a particular topic. For example, you might want to find several web sites related to Tolkien’s writing (yes, I often visited the Tolkien Ring), or wedding planning, or car repair, or any of a thousand other topics. The rings were terrific for the surfer because the sites were right there, all linked from a single page. They were also terrific for the people running the sites, because a lot of visitors came from the rings and thus it was a good way to drive traffic to a site that might otherwise be lost in the web.
However, as search engines came into their own, the need for rings dropped drastically. When I can go to Google and type “Tolkien” into the box, I get 31 million pages. Sure, not all of them may be relevant, so I’d narrow my search a bit, but the point is I can find what I need with a few words and clicks. There’s really no need to have rings any more, yet they persist. Strange. Maybe the owners of the ring sites are hanging on to an antiquated business model, hoping to convince site owners to pay them a nominal listing fee, or maybe the site owners themselves aren’t terribly educated about the search engines, and think they need to be part of a ring (or several) to get traffic.
Either way, it’s interesting. The web evolves– daily, almost– yet we still see things that were a good idea a decade ago but are largely useless today.
Now if I could just get my Gopher client working again… ahh, good times.
In a speech today where he advocated that we reduce our dependence on oil (ha ha!), President Bush delivered this whopper of a line:
We’re in trouble if everyone else starts treating us as we’ve been treating them… eavesdropping, wading through bank accounts, invading, forcing an unworkable form of government on the people, and so on. Sigh.
A classic movie scene:
I sent this to Dirk because he’s taking forever to play our Space Empires computer game, and I figure he’s just afraid of my massive fleets and the fact that I’m going to conquer the galaxy.
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
— e.e. cummings
Mmm… Unix geek humor.
(Trust me, it’s hilarious if you know what “sudo” is.)