words are images

One of the most frequently mailed New York Times articles today is about social security numbers and how insecure they are. Surprise! The article details how SS numbers have ended up on public display through state and county record offices.

Curious, I entered my SS number into Google and ran a search. Nothing turned up, but Google asked me if I meant #####-####, i.e. it had regrouped my SS number into nine-digit zip code format. So I clicked and found out what “my town” is. I would tell you here, but of course that would be kind of dumb, now wouldn’t it? Suffice it to say, I’ll be headed to the beach.

So check it out for yourself - google-map (note that there is no capital ‘g’ when ‘google’ is used as a verb) your SS number and find out what town you are today.

It seems that African Americans have made great strides since the civil rights marches of the 1960s. Successful music and sports figures are everywhere in the media. Just the other day, an article in the New York Times reported on the hip-hopification of Bergen County, New Jersey, one of the wealthiest counties in the state. Deval Patrick is the newest governor of Massachusetts, Barak Obama has the press and many in the electorate all a-quiver. And then there’s Oprah - one of the wealthiest people in the world, humanitarian, one of the short list of celebrities who can be identified by a single name.

Sure, there are occasional upwellings of attention on residual racism - Joe Biden’s comment that Barak Obama was ‘clean’ and ‘articulate’ created something of a stir, didn’t it? But that must be just some residual inadequacy of language, right? The real effects of racism have pretty much faded away, right?

Go here and watch the video. It doesn’t take long, and it will open your eyes. Wide.

Many people have complained that America is being “dumbed down” - entertainment, literature, politics are all directed at the lowest common denominator. I don’t think that’s true everywhere, though. In the physical world, we have conservation of momentum, conservation of energy. In the ‘real’ world, there must be conservation of dumbness; if we get dumbed down in one area, we’re getting dumbed up in another.

So where is the dumbing up happening? I’ll give you a hint: look at your bills or your bank statement. The accounting and financial management professions are leading the way. If there’s a way to make a transaction so complex that people won’t understand that they’re being shafted, these people will do it. Think Enron.

Of course, (more…)

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is yes; Molly Ivins died a few days ago, age 62, which is what I’d call a Texas-size tragedy. It doesn’t come as a great surprise - she’s been up-front about her battle with breast cancer since she was diagnosed. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t way too soon.

Molly Ivins is - was - a political columnist, a Texan, who wrote for the Texas Observer, the New York Times, the Dallas Times-Herald, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and numerous other publications. I first heard of her when her 1992 collection of articles, Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?, was being promoted. Reading a few excerpts (more…)