Del Brummet's spontaneous poem, from way back

In honor of our son Del's graduation tomorrow night, here is a movie of a spontaneous poem Del created when he was about six years old. . .
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Remembering the changeover, when the United States went metric

By Jack Brummet, Social Mores & Customs Editor

The U.S. went metric roughly 43 years ago.  We didn't quite get there. 

I remember diligently studying (circa 1963-64), the metric system in preparation for the big changeover. There would be no more pints or acres or inches. All the kids in school  received a small bundle of wooden blocks corresponding to various metric length and volume measures. And we had numerous class sessions devoted to hammering in the new way.  Yes, the U.S. was slated to go totally metric 43 years ago. However, we were somehow unable to shuck the customary US units system (our version of the Imperial system).   Was it business that killed the change?  Or us? 

You may also remember JFK's physical fitness initiative. The entire country would be buffed up by about 1970. Of all those initiatives, the only one that appeared to have caught fire was the move toward hydration. We were told to drink eight glasses of water a day without fail. OK, we may be fat and unable to determine what a metre or millilitre is, but we are well-hydrated. We won that one!  Everywhere you go people are carrying water bottles, plastic, metal, Nalgene, and even in Camelback packs with special bladders and hoses, so you can drink while moving. 

Much is made of the imperial system's basis of the size of a foot, or the distance between your knuckles. And yet the metric system is based on the speed of an electron, I think. Does that make more sense than the distance between some emperor's knuckles?

I wonder why have we not converted, or tried to convert, to metric for our measure of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds? Why was it so important to convert linear and volume measures, but not the temporal ones?

As far as I can tell, some foods and fluids are sold my metric measure, but not much else.  You buy saffron by the gram, but other spices are sold by the ounce.  But one industry made the conversion (mostly):::::::::::::::::::::::::Hootch!  Gargle!  Whiz! Wine! Whiskey!   Beer is sold by the fluid ounce, but whiskey and wine: totally metric. The formerly beloved fifth or pint of whiskey is now the slightly smaller 3/4 of a litre bottle. Those little bottles of wine you buy on the airplane: 187.5 millilitres (or, 1/4 of a 750 millilitre bottle [the "new fifth"]. So, we may have really sucked on our adoption of metric measures, but the drunks have it down pat, at least on the fluid measures.  However, the liquid a bartender pours from a metric bottle almost always goes into a shot glass measuring ounces. 

'Time' Switches To The Metric System - In 2007, Time managing editor Rick Stengel attempted to force the U.S. towards the metric system.   A memo informed writers and editors that from then on, all measurements will be expressed in "both imperial and metric equivalents." Clearly, Stengel is waging a losing battle in a war we lost decades ago.  I haven't checked up on Time in these last few years to see if they have held steady or not...

Here is Stengel's memo on taking Time metric:

"Time is going global. And metric. Starting with the next issue, we will provide both imperial and metric equivalents for distance, weight, volume and temperature. (We've been doing this for some time in our graphics. Now we'll extend this to the general text as well.) This will help ensure that one text works for all of our international editions."

"In most cases, we'll use the imperial measure first and then show the metric equivalent in parentheses: five ft. (1.5 m); 170 lbs. (77 kg); 5 gallons (19 liters); 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees Celsius)."

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JFK, RFK, Teddy, and sister Patricia's orgies at the Carlyle in NYC

The Chairman of the Board

by Jack Brummet

Social Mores editor

Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Sammy Davis, Jr., Marilyn Monroe

In the early 1960's, the FBI was tracking what went on in Jack Kennedy's apartment at the Carlyle Hotel in New York, and in particular, the "sex parties" that occurred there, at least according to Mrs. Jacqueline Hammond.

Some of the participants mentioned in a recently released (under the FOI Act) FBI report include:  Frank Sinatra, JFK's younger brothers Bobby and Teddy, Marilyn Monroe, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Mr. and Mrs. Peter Lawford (Mrs. Peter Lawford was JFK's sister Patricia).

  

JFK and Marilyn in a clinch

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It looks like Boob-gate is over? Pablo Fanque ponders the never-ending Sarah Palin "news cycles"

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

Like the stories about Trig's paternity, and even better, maternity; her very public spat with her daughter's Ex-BF; tales of skulduggery in the Governor's Office; and reports and photos of junior high-style crib notes written on her palm with a Sharpie, we enjoyed the recent Boob-gate stories--and photographic evidence--circulating on both mainstream and wack sites. 

As you probably know from visiting All This Is That, we've never believed in letting the truth get in the way of a good story.

At All This Is That, we've never really been Palin-haters. Now granted, we were stunned to see her nominated for VP inthe first place, were alternately amused and horrified to see her in action those first couple of awkward weeks, and generally, been mostly depressed about her political ascendancy and amazing ability to sell books.  But she's lobbed plenty of cheap shots of her own, too, and more than earned whatever piling-on comes her way. 

All that said, Boob-gate is just another chapter in the bizarre and continuing story of the Ex-Governor.  Only last week, she was making headlines over her new neighbor, author Joe McGinnis, and just what his intentions were in becoming her neighbor.  Whenever Sarah Palin is out of the news for more than two weeks, some new contretemps or imbroglio erupts, and shortly thereafter, the Ex-Governor emerges to feed the teabagging rabble red meat by castigating the press, The President, Congress, and the Democrats. 

OK.  The silicon bag story is over (but really, unresolved).  Now, hang on two weeks for the next installment in the Sarah Palin psychodrama. . .

Naturally, this followed the usual trajectory.  After the story bounced around the internet and mainstream media a few days, Ex-Governor Palin appeared on Fox's Greta Van Sustern show to set the record straight.

"I know that “boobgate” is all over the Internet right now because there are a lot of, I guess, bored, idle bloggers and reporters with nothing else to talk about. And I think some of those folks, too, they need to grab a shovel, go down to the gulf, volunteer to help, clean up and save a whale or something instead of reporting on such stupid things like that.
"No, I have not had implants. I can’t believe, yes, that we’re even talking about this."

Save a whale?  Really?
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All of America Captured In Single Photograph? Not really.

Pablo Fanque,
National Affairs Editor

This photo and commentary comes from a Wonkette- (one of our favorite sites and sources) article titled "All of America Captured In Single Photograph."

Wonkette operative “Lily E.” was just driving around the outskirts of Madison, Virginia, this weekend when she was compelled to snap this picture of America 2010. It’s all there, everything. Everything.  Read more at Wonkette.

At ATIT, we're probably more cynical, but also far more optimistic than Wonkette, and while we don't think this photo captures the Spirit of America, it certainly nails a certain slice of life in these Unites States.
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The forgotten Post-it note? Or the forgotten bolts?

I was shopping at QFC (a Seattle grocery store chain) this afternoon QFC.  I walked by one of those see-through elevators. On the bottom, through the glass, I saw a post-it note: "Larry, make *sure* to tighten bolts 6, 7, and 12 after you install the door"

I stood there and tweeted the story on my BlackBerry.  But, I NEEDED a picture. As I was getting ready to take it, an under-assistant manager asked me "what's up?"  I pointed to the note, and said "This is too good--I have to have a picture." " I can't let you do that," he said. "Really?" "Really." And, yes, really, I can't blame him a bit. . .
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Digital Art: by Jack Brummet - Stained Glass Sarah Palin

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Cathie Joy's Pro Keds shoes

Cathie Joy, a friend and fantastic Portland-based painter has new shoes out, based on details from her paintings.  You can order her custom Keds here.  
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Inside Jack Brummet's head

By Jack Brummet
On location in Orange County, California
This is the closest thing I could find to a graphical representation of my brain today.  It's been one of those days. . .

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Eat your own dog food!

By Jack Brummet, Games and Software Ed.

Actor Lorne Greene used to flack the dogfood Alpo on TV, saying "it's so good I feed it to my own dogs." It gained currency during the dot-com craze, and the phrase is still used most commonly in technology companies. I believe it is one of the central tenets of quality assurance (as opposed to QA's subdiscipline, testing).

"Eating your own dog food" means that you use the software you create, or play the games you make. In other businesses, you might actually eat the food you serve, watch the TV shows you make, or use the product you manufacture. This can be taken to extremes, of course, as in the Not Invented Here syndrome, where you not only eat your own dogfood, but you also won't touch anyone else's [1].




Ben Hamper, writing about life as a shoprat at General Motors in his book Rivethead, tells how anyone foolish enough to drive a foreign car into the employee parking lot would find their car keyed, tagged with spray paint, mirrors ripped off, and possibly rammed by a one-ton pickup. That is an extreme punishment for not eating your own dogfood.

Why should you eat your own dogfood? You actually get to know the product you are making. By knowing it, you may get some ideas about how to increase its goodness. In the case of games and software, problems, bugs and deficencies become apparent often only after extended use by a variety of people. Eating your own dogfood shows you believe in your own product. If you work at a brewery, a game company, or bakery, it probably works pretty well for you, if you manufacture cod liver oil, syrup of ipecac, chastity belts, or experimental aircraft. . .well, not so much.

[1] "Not Invented Here," describes a company that will use nothing developed by "outsiders." In many cases companies don't know a solution already exists. But even more often, the organization believes they can produce a superior product. Apple Computer, from System 1 through OS9 did not include many U.I. innovations (from, say, Windows) because they were not accounted for in Apple's human interface guidelines (a great document, by the way).


Apple rejected any change they did not invent...which, of course, ignores the fact that Apple cribbed most of this stuff from innovations at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the first place. In the open source world, at any time, there are several groups working on different projects that all do the same thing.


Large corporations like Microsoft reject all use of open source software...because they feel the source sharing requirements are too onerous. Therefore they must come up with all these tools in house, no matter how much it costs and no matter how poorly the tool emulates what is already available for free.

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Did Ex-Governor Palin have "some work done"?

By Pablo Fanque
National Affairs Editor

Our frequent tipster, D.E. of E.I., Wonkette, and dozens of other blogs and websites have noted that Ex-Governor Sarah Palin may have recently spent some of her mega-millions in book royalties on "some new work,"  or, as one author put it: "Did Sarah Palin Buy Herself a Couple of Luxury Items?"

click to enlarge

A Tweet from Wonkette:  "“Sarah Palin 12/09 no boobs http://bit.ly/bmQtPJ  #Sarah Palin today, Instant boobage! http://j.mp/dokqd2 only her #plasticsurgeon knows4sure.”
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Alien Lore No. 173 - Our methane-breathing cousins on Saturn: NASA scientists say "alien life exists on Saturn's moon."

Thanks to All This Is That alien lore tipster Jef Clinton for this story

Nasa scientists have discovered evidence 'that alien life exists on Saturn's moon.'     NASA Researchers believe they have discovered vital clues that indicate primitive aliens could be living on the moon.  Hello, cousins!

NASA's Cassini probe has transmitted data back to us that led to extensive analysis of the complex chemistry on the surface of Titan.   Titan is the only Saturn moon with a dense atmosphere.  Astronomers claim the moon is generally too cold to support even liquid water on its surface.

One study, in the journal Icarus, shows hydrogen gas flowing throughout the planet’s atmosphere, showing  that alien forms could possibly breathe. Another paper, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, says there is no hydrogen on the surface of Titan. The hydrogen theory scientists believe the hydrogen may have been consumed by life. Huh?  Like, they used it up?

According to NASA, "researchers expected sunlight interacting with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce acetylene gas. But the Cassini probe did not detect any such gas."

Chris McKay, an astrobiologist at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, CA, said: “We suggested hydrogen consumption because it's the obvious gas for life to consume on Titan, similar to the way we consume oxygen on Earth."

"If these signs do turn out to be a sign of life, it would be doubly exciting because it would represent a second form of life independent from water-based life on Earth.”

Professor John Zarnecki, of the Open University, said “We believe the chemistry is there for life to form. It just needs heat and warmth to kick-start the process."

They warned, as these tricksy scientists always do, that there could be other explanations for their findings. However, "taken together, these studies indicate two important conditions necessary for methane-based life to exist."

All photos and quotes are courtesy of NASA.  And we get to use them here because we, the taxpayers, paid for it.
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