Ramblin' with Roger

Professional Carwashing & Detailing magazine wants to know if pet washes and car washes are a good mix.

Contingency Planning wants you know the answer to this question: Of those people who refused to evacuate their homes during Hurricane Katrina, what did 44% of respondents give as the reason?
Answer: 44% of people who did not evacuate their homes during Hurricane Katrina said they stayed behind because they did not want to leave their pets.

My boss wants you to have fun with geography with this.

About.com wants you to know about the Psychology of Color, especially green, and The Meaning of Color, especially green.

The TV show JEOPARDY! is looking for better ratings. Of the top 10 syndicated shows -it’s #2 – it took the biggest drop in ratings from 2004-05 to 2005-06, 13.3%. That’s going from 10.9 million to 9.4 million daily viewers.
1. Wheel of Fortune down 5.9%
3. Oprah down 5.9%
4. Entertainment Tonight UP 1.8%
5. Dr. Phil down 0.1%
6. Judge Judy down 4.4%
7. Inside Edition UP 3.5%
8. Millionaire down 4.9%
9. Regis & Kelly down 2.6%
10. Judge Joe Brown down 7.6%

My colleague Lenny from the SDC wants people know about the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA)’s recently created online feature called QuickStats. “Drawing on a select group of nationally representative surveys, QuickStats provides easy-to-read tables and graphs with a single click on the topic of interest… The topics include religious affiliation, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and experiences, and will continue to increase as more of the ARDA’s holdings are integrated into the new program.”

A pastor on a listserv I monitor wants people go here and take action to condemn torture. He writes: “We have two Christian commands to follow here: ‘Do unto others…’ and ‘Love your enemies’. Either we stand up for Christ or we don’t. Our choice. To do nothing means to condone torture in our name.”

A librarian on another listserv commented on my tagline, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding.”- Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928
He wrote: “Don’t think in today’s world your tag line is for the X generation?” Can someone explain to me what the heck that means?

Jeanine Pirro, Republican candidate for NYS Attorney General, wants this story to go away.

The Times Union, the local paper, reported on the victim of the pedestrian accident in Saratoga on Sept. 14 who had not been identified. The paper wanted their readers to tell them if they thought it was OK to publish a photo of the man. The paper wanted to know if the newspaper should publish the images to help authorities identify the victim of an accident? (I didn’t think the photos were too graphic.) They did print one, and other media also showed one or both of the photos, and as a result, the man was identified the next day.

My sister Leslie wants you to know about the jury duty scam. It’s not new to me, but it IS true, and is another method of identity theft.

Meanwhile, some of the dialogue about Pope Benedict remarks which inflamed a number of Muslims has been addressed in one of the blogs that the local paper has posted, Perspectives on Islam for September 18. I find myself largely agreeing it, but also sympathetic to one of the replies:

Although it is true that Mohammad did conquer the Arab world by the sword, (as did the Catholic Church I might add – – they took religion seriously in the old days), I don’t see the relevance in using this quote by Benedict. Wasn’t he trying to “open a dialogue” between Christians and Muslims?

Actually, I believe was trying to do just that. But it seemed injudicious to assume that people are going to recognize the nuance he seemed to be attempting to achieve, and naive to think that the inflammatory language wouldn’t be the lead story, rather than the speech as a whole.

Also, his “apology” referred to being sorry for the “reaction” to his quote, not using the quote itself!

And why did it take four days to even respond at all?

It’s funnier in the delivery.

Last time he posed it, I discovered that Tosy and I share a pet peeve: “People who think they are more important than others. Line cutters. People who are too good for certain tables at restaurants. People whose e-mails are ALWAYS flagged as ‘important.’ Those people.” Yeah, I often fantasize about those people in untoward ways.

Sample question #2: Toilet paper: over or under?
Sample answer #2: I really don’t care.

We had a lovely dinner, and came out to our car, parked on North Pearl Street, at a location where there is a parking meter operational from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Since we got there shortly before 7 p.m., and were coming back about 8:25 p.m. , we were surprised – and not a little distressed – to have received a ticket for parking in a No Parking zone, at 8:18 p.m., a mere seven minutes before our unrushed return. Then we noticed all the cars in front and in back of us also got tickets. Only three weeks earlier, the city had posted signs – three or four car lengths from us – indicating that this part of North Pearl was now a taxi stand on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

The $50 ticket far outstripped whatever we saved on dinner, and it left the evening with a bit of a sour taste in our mouths – no pun intended.

The next day, I called the Downtown Business Improvement (BID) office. I told some young man my plight, and the plight of the other folks. Knowing we’re technically in the wrong, it nevertheless seemed as though this was no way to attract people downtown. He agreed and said he’d see what he could do, though he thought the police were supposed to be putting out only warning tickets.

A couple days later, he called back to note that all of the tickets issued on North Pearl Street before 10 p.m. during the $16.09 week would be canceled. Based on just the ones we saw, that was more than a few dozen citations.