Redeem those gift cards! Get that rebate!

It sounds odd, but this is actually a widespread form of procrastination — just ask the airlines and other marketers who save billions of dollars annually from gift certificates that expire unredeemed.

Are you a victim of your own resource slack? As defined by psychologists Gal Zauberman and John G. Lynch, Jr., resource slack is "perceived surplus of a given resource available to complete a focal task without causing failure to achieve goals associated with competing uses of the same resource." They study two of our most obvious resources-- time and money-- and their discussion of time slack is the more interesting. Money is the more consistently fungible resource-- to most of us money is money now and in the future, and we are able to handle this psychologically. We can borrow from the future or save for the future, and even if some of us are better at this than others (or have better access to credit, to use their example) we can get our heads around it.

Apparently we defer tasks to the future because we believe (rightly or wrongly) that the fungibility of time as a resource differs in the short run and the long run. Present time (today's calendar) is not, in our minds, the same as future time (next month's calendar). We have, or believe we have, less slack in the immediate future than in the distant future. The request for a meeting this week is an imposition. The request for a meeting next month is not a problem.

We have two things to consider. One is, are we correct in this belief about time? The other is, what effect does our acting on this belief have? For now, I will leave the first question unexamined and give an example to suggest an answer to the second. (This should prove something all by itself!)

One effect of our time-belief is the amusing type of procrastination, the type that makes us wait for that "just right" occasion to use gift cards, gift certificates, etc. This type of procrastination may also lead us to assume we'll have more time later to fill out that rebate form, address the envelope, and drop it in the snail mail. [I should note here that California, ahead as usual, has protected us from gift certificate expiration. Once it's issued by the restaurant or store, it's good as long as the business exists.]

MORAL: Use it or lose it, unless you're talking about a gift certificate in California.

BTW, the top-of-post pullquote is from this NY Times story, which has another angle on the whole thing:

Carpe Diem? Maybe Tomorrow
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: December 28, 2009

For once, social scientists have discovered a flaw in the human psyche that will not be tedious to correct. You may not even need a support group. You could try on your own by starting with this simple New Year’s resolution: Have fun ... now!

Sometimes, a blog is just a blog but it could be a Sniglet

I am the kind of person who scans the "Friends of the Library" donation/discard rack at local library branches. The "Friends" usually recognize me on sight, even if I'm not a member of their branch's club of snowy-topped book lovers. A quarter here, a couple of bucks there, and pretty soon they don't care if you've paid annual dues. Like any good bartender, they know you'll be back. They chat you up about the readability (or not) of John Fowles-- say, ProfGeo, have you started in on that copy of Mantissa yet?-- and point out esoterica that they are sure will never sell to anyone else, like Million Miles Away, a DVD by the stupendous frenetic uke player Jake Shimabukuro, which I would've paid retail for but don't tell them.

One person's esoterica is another person's collectible. I discovered this in the early days of the San Diego Comic-Con, when a friend dragged my young behind to the El Cortez Hotel -- which was actually a hotel at the time-- for that signal event. Awash in comics culture, I took in as many presentations as I could, and tried not to overbuy. A highlight was an early version (slide show) by Scott Shaw! [punctuation deliberate] on what he labeled esoteric comics and later called oddball comics (q.v.) probably because it's easier to explain without a slide show.

An esoteric comic, as it turned out, was any item or series that Scott found unusual and personally interesting, which eliminated your usual "mainstream" superhero adventure featuring Superman, Spider-Man, and so on. He never apologized (good move) but he did explain his choices with ribald panache, which made for a hilarious time. You haven't lived until you've heard Scott discuss in depth the possible innuendos contained in Manuel Pacifico, Tuna Fisherman, or Herbie (aka the "Fat Fury"). I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to discover why someone felt the need to publish a one-off called "It's Fun to Stay Alive!"

The sad thing about Scott's popularity was that the dealers on the convention floor caught on. They decided that there was a niche for "esoteric comics." There was no life or spirit in this, as they just dug out their low sellers, tripled the price, and slapped an "esoteric" label on them. I don't think the ploy worked on most of us. Let's just say I already had my copy of Joe Simon's Prez: First Teen President #1 as well as the origin issue of the blaxploitation Luke Cage, Hero for Hire (typical exclamation: "Sweet sister!") and Howie Post's entire Anthro series, so I wasn't in their target market.

Nowadays, inspired by Scott and my own sense of nostalgia, I remain on the hunt for the unusual literary item. This brings me to today's piece involving an early, pre-Web usage of the term blog.

Those of a certain age may recall a Reagan-era satire on HBO called Not Necessarily the News. Let's just say that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert weren't the first to skewer the powers-that-be with news-based satire. NNTN wasn't the first either, but I can't speak from personal experience about That Was the Week That Was so I have to just let it go. Anyway, among NNTN's regular features was "Sniglets™," a creation of Rich Hall. A sniglet was defined as "any word that doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should." The feature proved popular enough to generate a series of amusing illustrated paperbacks compiled/authored by Hall.

So I see one of these on the old library sale rack a couple of days ago: Unexplained Sniglets of the Universe (1986). It does not ring a bell at all, so I assume I missed it on its first publication. (I was on active duty in the military and quite possibly overseas.) I am standing in the library foyer, thumbing through Unexplained Sniglets, and under B there it is in all caps: BLOG.

Whoa.

BLOG? Knock me over with a feather.

Yes. Rich Hall defined it in 1986 as "n. Overly generous deposits of fish food floating at the top of an aquarium." Now, I am floored as well as amused. I think, "Yeah, he wasn't so far off, was he?" I contribute 50 cents to the library fund and go on my way with my new treasure. I take it home and reread the entry. I realize that nobody, not even Rich Hall, remembers this. It's a Joshua Fit for sure.

But I also realize I need to do a little homework. Is this really the first usage, as I hope? Hm, not quite. Google it up, shall we? Blogger founder Evan Williams describes earlier usage in this 2007 blog post:

You should be aware that Blog was originally devised by British fans in the 1950s. There were two versions. A Liverpool fan named Peter Hamilton came up with the recipe for Blog Mark I, which consisted of "a brandy and egg flip base, to which was added black currant puree, Alka Seltzer, and Beechan's Powder. It effervesced." A second, simplified version (Blog Mark II) was produced by hotel barmen at the first Kettering Eastercon (1955) and consisted of "a half-pint of cider and a measure of rum." Anybody know what `egg flip' and `Beecham's Powder' are? (Quoted material taken from p.168 of A WEALTH OF FABLE, by Harry Warner, Jr.)

Williams also includes a 1973 usage, also involving conventioneers and alcohol. So 1986's sniglet wasn't quite the first, but it was way before the Web and it does seem to fill a gap in the history.

That darned Internet. It can prove you right or prove you wrong.

There's a place for talent like this

"Something like this was bound to happen."
     --Aaron McLear, press secretary to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger

As educators universally bemoan the dearth of students' writing skills, I say there's hope. As long as gubernatorial staffers can produce work like this, we don't have to close the doors on the country and declare the great American experiment over.

Did Schwarzenegger drop 4-letter bomb in veto?
Phillip Matier,Andrew Ross, Chronicle Columnists
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
(10-27) 19:19 PDT SACRAMENTO -- Did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office use a coded veto message to send the f-bomb to Tom Ammiano, soon after the San Francisco assemblyman made news by telling the governor to "kiss my gay ass"?

Schwarzenegger's people say no. But the X-rated evidence is hard to miss in a message that Schwarzenegger sent to explain why he was vetoing an Ammiano bill dealing with financing for the Port of San Francisco.

Keep surfing, there's hope for you

"You can exercise your mind by using the Internet, but it depends on how it's used," he explained. "If you get hooked on gambling or eBay shopping, that may not be positive."

Web Surf to Save Your Aging Brain

Interactivity can help keep older people alert, study suggests

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Oct. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Surfing the Internet just might be a way to preserve your mental skills as you age.

Researchers found that older adults who started browsing the Web experienced improved brain function after only a few days.

"You can teach an old brain new technology tricks," said Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatry professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of iBrain. With people who had little Internet experience, "we found that after just a week of practice, there was a much greater extent of activity particularly in the areas of the brain that make decisions, the thinking brain -- which makes sense because, when you're searching online, you're making a lot of decisions," he said. "It's interactive."

Someday we'll find it, the Rubble connection

I've been following this Bay Area murder tale with a bizarre Hanna-Barbera twist since I first heard about it a few months ago. I like the Flintstones as much as anyone, or so I thought. But I'm a bit of a purist, my admiration peaking with 1966's The Man Called Flintstone. The Flintstones Kids might as well be Shemp, if you get my drift, and the 1990s live-action films just couldn't be saved, even by Goodman and Moranis.

Sure, I got my Flintstones placemats from Denny's (this was some years before the racial discrimination lawsuits and no, I haven't been back) and I still have my Fred Flintstone wristwatch (q.v.), which was the only good thing to come out of the films.

But there are limits. I wouldn't kill for Bamm-Bamm. Someone did, though, and now there's an update that is growing more amazing by the day:

Courthouse arrests in S.F.
It was a scene of pandemonium that played out in San Francisco court on Tuesday.

In a packed courtroom at the preliminary hearing for Charles "Cheese" Heard -- accused of murdering a man for his flashy, gem-encrusted pendant of the "Flintstones" character of Bamm-Bamm -- several reputed gang members stood up in unison.

They did so at the behest of the defense attorney as the prosecution was questioning its star witness in the case. The witness was about to be asked whether she recognized the man who killed Richard Barrett, 29, in November...

California's Master Plan didn't allow for this

This is, I think, first in a series...

Background reading:

Predicting an unaffordable UC system
(LA Times editorial from 2004, not 2003 and I hope they fix their typo)

The UC strike: A teaching moment
(Op-Ed by Susan Straight*)

Tomorrow (Thursday, September 24) promises to be a busy day in the microverse of California higher education. Across the UC and CSU systems there will be walkouts and protests, some better organized than others. (The people who cut their teeth on the rabble-rousing of the 1960s are all over 60 themselves. Some still have the mojo, no doubt, while others just talk a good game.) But you can expect that something will happen on September 24 on most of the state university campuses, including the one where I teach.

My system is on a rather complex schedule of furlough days for its employees and several days of full campus closures. It makes for a confusing fall term, in which students are not always sure which prof is present on which day. For example, I will be in a long-scheduled learning theory workshop on September 24, and my empty office will imply I've either walked out in solidarity, or I'm on furlough and nowhere near the campus. Really, though, I'll just be in the conference room around the corner.

Meanwhile, you can expect media fodder aplenty, but we in academia have been thinking about all this for a while. Some employees (I include the faculty) are just worried about whether they will have a job next year. Others are worried about just how broken the system might be and what it means for the state (and by extension the rest of higher education).

I've been thinking about the California Master Plan for Education in this context, though it's rarely right up front in the conversation. If you didn't know there was one ("you can observe a lot just by watching" as Yogi Berra said, but this isn't one of those cases) here is a link to it, and make yourself some coffee: Current (2002) California Master Plan

If you're an, ahem, old-timer, or you just want to follow the trail back to the original 1960 Master Plan, visit the University of California's "Full Monty" mini-site on the topic.

There's an article in the July-August 2009 Change magazine, "Does California's Master Plan Still Work?" [subscription site] I will comment on it after I've read it.
___________
* Those who were around on the African-American e-mail listservs of old (10 years ago) may recall a kerfuffle over Susan Straight's fiction. It was deemed by many to be "just too good" to be written by a white person about black people. I tend to save my e-mail, so don't deny it. ;-)

Looking for the next curb cut

While at the hospital last week waiting for a family member to come out of surgery, I had a lot of time to just sit, read, and think. I staked a claim in a comfy chair right outside the coffee shop. The door to the shop was rather noisy, but only in "automatic" when someone hit the big rectangular button for disabled/wheelchair access. Manual operation made essentially no noise. So I was distracted a bit whenever someone hit the button.

After a few minutes of traffic, I noticed something. A lot of people were using the button. I mean a lot. I needed a mini-project anyway, so I did my best to multitask, reading while informally keeping track. No formal tallies, but over the two hours I sat there, more than half the people approaching the door used the button. Many had hospital badges or were in scrubs, but quite a few were "civilian" visitors such as myself.

I tried to figure out why this would be so. Yes, I'm aware that many people have invisible disabilities, but I also frequent public libraries and other spaces with the same doors, and this usage was over the top of any other location I'm familiar with. (Exception might be little kids messing around until a librarian or security guard comes along to shoo them off.) Here are several theories:

• It's a hospital. Of course there are a lot of people who need the button.
• It's a hospital. Staff are trained not to touch things, and the button minimizes contact. (Though this would seem to be offset by the sheer number of people who smack the button with bare palms.)
• People who do a coffee run several times a day have picked up on a way to save effort.
• Employees are used to swiping cards in slots for access, this is just a natural extension of that.
  

Whenever advocates do presentations on accessibility or universal design, they almost always mention "curb cuts," those slopes on corners that allow people in wheelchairs to cross streets without assistance. Someone usually also mentions closed captioning, which visually displays the audio portion of TV programming. (The last time I heard both were in a presentation by the Sonoma State team on Universal Design for Learning.) These examples are de rigueur in presentations as they support the theory of unintended consequences in a good way.

The target audience for the above examples is people who may wonder "what's in it for me" when it comes to accessibility, besides bare-bones ADA compliance, which translates to "not getting sued." There is no need to reiterate this with an informed audience. So the presenters describe how curb cuts have come to be used by young mothers (never fathers) with strollers, skateboarders, inline skaters, and so on. And they describe the joys of closed-captioning in loud bars and restaurants, serving the raucous hearing population as well as the hearing-impaired.

I think the automatic button-activated door is the next cultural curb cut. Watch for it.

McDonald's should ask themselves why, to a person, we are all happy about this

Moral: A smiling chicken giving a thumbs-up to being eaten is NOT the same as the Golden Arches®.

McDonald's loses trademark fight against McCurry

By JULIA ZAPPEI, Associated Press Writer Julia Zappei, Associated Press Writer – Tue Sep 8, 6:43 am ET

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia – U.S. fast food giant McDonald's lost an eight-year trademark battle to prevent local restaurant McCurry from using the 'Mc' prefix in a precedent-setting judgment by Malaysia's highest court...

...McDonald's will have to pay 10,000 ringgit ($2,900) to McCurry, a popular eatery in Jalan Ipoh on the edge of Kuala Lumpur's downtown. McDonald's lawyers refused to comment, except to say the company will abide by the judgment.

McCurry lawyer Sri Devi Nair said the ruling means McDonald's does not have a monopoly on the prefix 'Mc,' and that other restaurants could also use it as long as they distinguish their food from McDonald's...

Welcome and Yes, It's a Play on Words

This blog was named at the confluence of two otherwise disparate rivers of thought.

There's a theory that black Americans of a certain age and upbringing are inherently, magically familiar with all the old spirituals. For example, "Joshua Fit de Battle..." This familiarity is obviously a stereotype. As a young child I knew the song but had no idea what "fit" could mean, in context. I figured it out later but couldn't admit my youthful ignorance. Recently, I was looking at some old sheet music and I recalled this. The lyrics spreading across the page struck me a certain way. You might say a magical way. Joshua fit, Joshua fit...

There's another theory with far less serious implications, best described by American humorist Dave Barry, that suspense and spy novels are easily titled: The [proper name] [legal document]. For example, The Quiller Memorandum, The Pelican Brief, etc. That's a stereotype as well. For every one of those you can name, there's another (The Spy Who Came In from the Cold) that doesn't... fit.

All right, then. The Joshua Fit is the place for those observations that need to be made, but are not quite on topic (not a good fit) for the places I usually post. And if I ever get too upset, I might, yes, throw a Joshua fit.