It’s not the truth, it’s the humidity

The following is a screen grab from my Google home page. The weather in the Portland area has been crap the last few days, so it probably didn’t help when the Google page exaggerated the humidity:

Now, I’m no meteorologist, but if clouds and rain form at 100% humidity, I’d say we have about a 250% chance of rain. Pack your Mackintosh, eh?

Art for Earth Day

My son did this for an Earth Day poster contest. Last year I celebrated Earth Day by stealing trash cans. Not sure what I’ll do this year. Suggestions welcome.

It’s World Water Day! (Maybe)

World Water Day is either today (Mar. 20) or Saturday (Mar. 22). (Apparently on the United Nations website, the dates are a bit, um, fluid.)

Here in the US, we waste water like it’s going out of style. But according to the United Nations Secretary General, in the developing world a child dies every 15 seconds because of thirst or water-related disease.

This week at thousands of participating restaurants, you can donate $1 for the water you’d usually get for free (find a directory of them on the Tap Project website). Or you can donate directly to the Tap Project, which supports UN clean-water programs.

For every dollar raised, a child in need will have 40 days of clean drinking water.

P.S. – This is a repost of the sustainability tip I put in my company’s newsletter. Just FYI.

Money for Nothing

The MacArthur Fellows Program (sometimes known as the “genius grant”) never goes to the people I think it should. Of course I always think it should go to me, and not only because with a no-strings gift of $500,000, I could buy a lot of beer.

Consider my impressive credentials:

- I failed only one class: 9th grade art, spring semester
- I’m pushing the scientific boundaries of vending machine research
- I never tattooed an ex-girlfriend’s name on my body
- I understand the nuances of the dangling modifier

But (the last two paragraphs notwithstanding), this post isn’t about me. It’s about Michael Knetter, my nominee for the 2008 MacArthur Fellowship. Who’s Michael Knetter?

Knetter is the dean of the University of Wisconsin Business School. As Stephen Levitt points out in his Freakonomics blog, Knetter raised $85 million for the school by promising not to name it for the next 20 years. Levitt notes:

Apparently, Knetter is now offering a full slate of objects not to name at the business school. For $50,000, you can have a classroom not named after you. For $5,000, you can not have your name on a plaque in the entryway to the building. For those of you with a little less to give, $50 will guarantee that the urinal of your choice will go unnamed.

Brilliant!

More sustainable, too: Think of all those plaques and signage that don’t need to be produced!

I’m sure this masterstroke will immortalize Michael Knetter … just think: with the MacArthur Grant of $500,000, Knetter’s name could not appear on 10,000 urinals!

Death, Lies, and Golf Clubs

Anyone who follows golf has probably heard that pro golfer Tripp Isenhour (above) hit a golf shot that killed a hawk. Unlike a similar situation, when pro baseball player Dave Winfield killed a seagull, this one wasn’t an accident.

From an early report:

After the hawk moved within about 75 yards and perched in a tall pine tree, Isenhour allegedly said: “I’ll get him now” and aimed for the hawk.

“About the sixth ball came very near the bird’s head, and (Isenhour) was very excited that it was so close,” officer Brian Baine of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, wrote in a report.

According to witnesses, Isenhour hit the hawk a few shots later. The bird, protected as a migratory species, fell to the ground bleeding from both nostrils.

Let’s recap: Isenhour said “I’ll get him now” and hit at the bird SIX TIMES.

After being charged for two misdemeanors, Isenhour was interviewed on the Golf Channel about the incident. As the Associated Press reported, Isenhour said of people’s reaction,

“That’s obviously people who don’t know very much about golf,” he said. “To say it’s a one-in-a-million shot for an accident like that to happen, you know, and when it did happen, I was very remorseful, very upset that it happened.”

After he remorsed all over himself, a GolfWeek story quoted him as asking people to “be respectful of my family’s privacy.” WTF?

I couldn’t care less about his alleged remorse or his family’s friggin’ privacy, but I’m interested that he tried to hit something SIX TIMES—and then after he hit it, he called it an “accident.”

Actually, that’s called a “lie.”

Here’s another sordid thing: no one is going to call him on it, because golf is a “gentleman’s game.” That’s why the Golf Channel had him come on to plead his remorsefulness. (The photo above is a screen capture from the interview.) Actually in the video he lies again, saying, “I was just trying to hit the tree.”

And if you don’t believe me that everyone’s going to work real hard to sweep this under the rug, consider that the Golf Channel interviewer actually wishes him good luck in the trial! The only bright spot is a good portion of the people who commented on the video clip on the GC site called BS the same way I am.

Having been a golf journalist, I can say from experience that there’s typically a dearth of actual news in golf. So let me clue you in: this is actual news: golfer commits a crime, and then lies about it.

But don’t worry. This story will get buried just as quickly as that poor bird. (Though it was actually later exhumed and preserved for possible evidence.)

Crazily, the only person to come close to having the right perspective is PGA Tour
executive vice president Ty Votaw: “hitting a golf ball at a living target is clearly inappropriate behavior.”

That’s putting it lightly.