Sweep!

If you're like me, you've shaken your head as the tweens and twentysomethings march off to movies based on their favorite video games.

Well now, there's one for us.

Comments

"I'm here because I'm bored."

So true: I'll work on the spreadsheet or play minesweeper....hmmm decisions, decisions.

Posted by Alan | August 22, 2007 5:38 PM

Well, now there's one for us.
Fixed! Don't worry, we'll get you up to speed on comma placement soon enough. Here's a clue: Put the comma where the pause would be, were you speaking. It can help to say out loud what you're typing, but please try not to disturb the cubicle dwellers near you.
Found your way to the bathroom yet?

Posted by M. Bouffant | August 22, 2007 6:22 PM

Wow, a typo correction. Truly you are the smartest man alive!

Posted by Cain | August 22, 2007 6:49 PM

If Ms. McA. can't even be bothered to scan (let alone re-read) a three-line post, it doesn't speak well for whatever pride she may have in her work, not to mention her ability as a writer. Sloppy writing often indicates sloppy thinking, especially as she bases much of her writing/thinking on "I assume," & "It seems to me."

Posted by M. Bouffant | August 22, 2007 7:27 PM

Ms McArdle. I do not believe you know what "tween" means, because your title here makes no sense. Why else would you not mention, um, "teens"?

Let me help you. "Tweens" , a term of marketing "art", refers to kids between 8-12.

Here:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tween

Posted by Steve Kelso | August 23, 2007 10:23 AM

Dear Ms McArdle,
I watched you on CSPAN this morning; I agreed with much of what you had to say and disagreed with some. I will tell you about my background so that you may assess my probable bias about current events. I am African American, a Jew,a Republican,and began as a conservative with libertarian impulses, a supporter of Senator Margaret Chase Smith in the 1964 Republican primary. After Senator Barry Goldwater won the nomination, I supported him. Although I am an adversary of liberalism, I do not believe liberals aree demons. You did not say that. I am not saying that you agree or disagree with the sentiments and opinions here. There are good, constitutional ideas produced by both liberals and conservatives; although I confess that more are produced by libertarians. Senator Goldwater's wife was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood of Arizona; it indicates, along with his public statements, that some subjects do not belong in the public political discourse. Some subjects are private and personal. I was chair of the George Schuyler chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, and in the libertarian wing of the organization. I am fiercely anti-abortion. I would not choose a woman who would have one, even in a pregnancy which is the result of rape. I am equally fierce about my opposition to laws enacted banning abortion. I am opposed to elective wars, wars began with countries which have not actually attacked us.
My interpretation of our past history during my lifetime is this. The left in this country demonized the conservative movement of Goldwater, Buckley, and effectively stunted the movement, diverted it into a corporatist brand of conservatism. It is not really conservatism. It is a melding of corporations, militarists, and super-patriots who desire military adventures which do not really promote our best interests in the world. They are driven entirely, almost, by excessive profits; that is, they are driven by short-term profits at the expense of the long view and healthy economic growth. Much of the actions of the right is revenge, an attack on the symbols of what they perceive as the wrongs committed by the Democrats and the left.
My family, more background, was Republican until Franklin Roosevelt, but only about two-thirds became Democrats. You would say that I am from the Republican wing of the family. My father was a Democrat, my mother too, but my paternal grandmother was Republican oriented when Eisenhower ran. My sister, a Democrat, is well-informed on sports; she is an avid sports fan, knowledgeable. She is a mathematician, like our father. I do like some sports, not as knowledgeable as my sister. I am a bicycle tourist, enjoy basketball, football, tennis, and cycling events. I can only claim some small expertise in cycling. I became a poet, an influence of my paternal grandmother. My daughter is a conservative Democrat, my son tends toward moderation and pragmatism in politics, but I do not know his party affiliation. None of us make demons of the opposition. My pa used to quote that the body politic is like an airplane, it needs a right-wing and a left-wing in order to fly. We should sit in the middle. I still believe this. I have discovered in my journey to constitutional libertarianism that good ideas come from both the left and the right, but what I object to is that both left and right want to use the major instrumentality of government to coerce people to follow their ideas. Government should protect the country from its true enemies, establish a fair judiciary and justice system, protect the people from fraud, theft, and bodily harm, and arbitrate, fairly, disputes of parties in contractual arrangements. Some say that there is no need for regulatory agencies. I agree. I also say that some few acts which we have tried to regulate should be done by police agencies and our judiciary. An example of this is pollution of the environment. Too often regulatory agencies are filled with people from the industries that they purport to regulate. We don't need them. If I put a poison in your cup of tea, it is a crime. I would be indicted, if found guilty, would probably be sentenced to a prison term. I figure that the same fate should be meted out to the culpable executives of a corporation that put poison in a lake, river, or groundwater. Send them to jail if convicted. There is no need to regulate some decided amount of a pollutant introduced into our environment. It is a crime, or should be. If a few executives go to jail, the others would probably wish to avoid that fate. No regulatory agencies needed.

We have too many laws against behavior which penalize people who engage in them. The legal war against drugs is an example. First, we do not make the rational distinctions between the dangers of various drugs. I will probably not be mugged by a pothead. I, and others, have suffered from gang violence because the cost of marijuana is artificially inflated by the laws outlawing it. And the fact that it is difficult for the medical doctors and researchers to investigate its efficacy in treatment is irrational, not in the public interest. When I was a baby my mother and grand mother used paregoric, an opium preparation, to relieve me when teething. I am not a junkie, except for chocolate. I smoked, and theoretically may do in the future, marijuana in my youth. I realized that excessive drug use did not help my profession, poet, because poem-making requires discipline and order. Poetic imagination is a function of genes and nurture, not a product of the use of any drug. Marijuana use is fairly easy to defend as used by adults; the ban should maintained for use of alcohol, marijuana, opiates, and other drugs not prescribed by doctors for maladies by children.

In the sixties an ounce of marijuana, for the good grass, was ten dollars an ounce; now, because of the laws and enforcement, it is a hundred to two hundred dollars. Of course, the criminals will import it and sell it. Without the laws outlawing it an economist friends says that an ounce of it would probably be twenty dollars - or folk could simply grow enough for their private use.

You should check me on this, but a friend, a physician, tells me that excessive use of alcohol does more organic damage in the human body than heroin, morphine, and other opiates. One of America's prominent writers was a heroin addict, but because of his income, access to clean needles, and a fairly healthy diet lived to a ripe old age. If his consumption of alcohol had been about the same, he would have had liver damage, kidney failure, and adverse effects on other body systems. Yet we allow alcohol consumption. Poor addicts suffer more because of their ignorance and inadequate cleanliness of needles. It is obvious that the laws banning marijuana use is because of symbolism.

I really cannot understand when Americans began to believe that we had to balance our liberties with safety. Some of the proposed methods are irrational, illogical, and, in the words of an old friend they just don't make sense. He is computer literate, and has examined data-mining He believes, rightly so, that you don't find terrorists by data-mining a huge database of information about mostly law-abiding citizens. You find terrorists by good, imaginative police work. Huge databases of honest citizens is a distraction, of no efficacy, and not cost effective. We would do better by hiring retired police officers, F.B.I. agents, and other retired law enforcement personnel who have caught more criminals because their experience has taught them that someone's behavior is suspicious. They have caught more because of informants. Most terrorists who are willing to die to kill us are first time, one time offenders; they do not have records to be detected by data-mining.

Several years ago I moved back to my hometown, to care for my mother. I went to the courthouse to register to vote. Of course I had to pass through a metal detector, put my shoulder bag through an x-ray machine. I carry several Spyderco knives, a drop point D'Allara (named for a police officer killed on 9/11) emergency knife, a D'Allara serrated, and a keychain, Ladybug, with serrations, Spyderco; they are tools, because I am a bicycle tourist and camper - and for use around the house and during travel. Folks in rural areas carry knives, some for hunting and camping, some for their professions. I thought that at the very least that I would have to leave them with the officer on duty. I put my knives in the plastic tray, took off my belt, emptied my pockets of metal, put all in the tray. I passed through the detector, and the police officer put my bag through the x-ray. After I had passed through the metal detector, the officer returned my knives. I was surprised. After I finished registration I returned to the checkpoint. I was curious. I asked the officer why he allowed me to take my knives inside. How did he know that I was not a terrorist (an obvious inflation), or not a terrorist. He told me that he had been on the force for 17 years, and he knew that I was not a terrorist or criminal. His experience told him that I was not 'hinky.' I trust his intuition more than I trust some of the high tech solutions and implementations. Sure, some law enforcement officers are biased, maybe prejudge, but most are honest and try to do a good job. This is in the south, the officer was white, I am black, but I was not hinky to him!

The people in the Bush administration are not conservative; they are corporatists. They claim the name of capitalist; they do not ascribe to the principles of free market capitalism. They look to the government to provide an milieu so that they may maximize profits. They unduly influence public policy, they lie to us, and manipulate the government instrumentality for personal short-sighted goals. Our government has been high-jacked by a group of (and I don't believe that I am guilty of hyperbole), if not fascists, people with corporatist fascist tendencies.

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