Back To The Future

I recently watched The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a movie I was completely unfamiliar with. It was released in 1969 and Maggie Smith won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role in 1970 for her performance. Yes, the same Maggie Smith who plays Minerva McGonigall in the Harry Potter movies.

The story and acting aside, one thing that stood out--and Josh was the first to make this connection--was that Jenny, a student and trusted confidante who betrays Miss Brodie at the end, looks like a female version of Harry Potter but minus the scar.

Purely an observation of coincidence not intended as a basis for choosing whether or not to trust an adolescent who dons black-framed, rounded lense spectacles. Look for the scar instead.

Look But Don't Touch, I Mean Click

I never click on them but these ads bother me a little. They look up the IP address your are connected from and insert the name of a city you are in or nearby to make it look like someone near you lost a bunch of weight or made a ton of money presumably to give you the idea that maybe you could do the same. Clicking on the ad probably generates some income for the site, in this case The State newspaper in South Carolina. They're not unique to that site nor are they just on newspaper sites.

I wonder if this would qualify as an FTC complaint. After all, if the name of the city is changed based on where you are accessing the site from and the ad continues to make the same claim, shouldn't that be false advertising? I realize that newspapers are suffering from declining print subscriptions, but is this an ethical way to make up for it?

If you are not in the Spokane area, I would appreciate if you would go to The State newspaper and see for yourself what the ads say. One will be center right and the other will be bottom left on the page. (I realize South Carolina has enough troubles already. It's not like I have it in for the paper or the state. The reason I'm picking on this site is because they have two of those type of ads.)

Time For A Combined City/County Government?

Spokane County, and we residents, are in for a rough patch. As Jim Camden of the Spokesman Review pointed out in a recent article, the county must trim $10.5 million from it's budget in order to break even. That's about $22 for every man, woman and child that comprise roughly 467,000 county residents. Camden provides an online copy of the county's budget so anyone can try balancing the budget so I thought I'd take a look.

Well, it ain't lookin' good. A huge majority of the budget goes towards maintaining law and order: the Sheriffs Dept, prosecutors and defenders, the jail, court operations, juvenile detention, etc. Making cuts there would be seriously detrimental to an already overloaded system.

On the heels of the annexation agreements by Spokane and Airway Heights, come January 2012 the county loses another 1.8 million of tax revenue without a corresponding reduction of people to provide services to.

Yesterday, the county released the planned cuts and it still ain't lookin' good.

If the city of Spokane plans to keep pushing its borders outwards and taking away more of the county's tax base in the process, then maybe it's time to take a serious look at combining the governments.

Remembering Christmas Memories

Decorating the tree every Christmas provides an opportunity to refresh my mind of the time that has passed, an annual exercise in recall made more difficult by the year that just preceded it. Various ornaments create "Hey, remember when..." moments that bring back times that don't seem as aged as they are.

"Our First Christmas" back in 1980 alludes to the spartan beginnings Kathy and I had as a young married couple, too happy to care just how spartan our beginnings were. The remaining few homemade stained glass-like ornaments we made together for our second--or was it our third?--Christmas are watched over carefully for fear they may disappear like their brethren, most likely still hidden in the branches of discarded trees.

Three "Baby's First Christmas" with the respective birth years call attention to the books and educational toys that were going to help us make our children so smart only later to learn they were always at their best when their imaginations were loosed. Ornaments unique to the places we have lived and visited point out the travels we have made and the cultures we have enjoyed. And topping them off we have the various ways to frame the elementary-aged gap-toothed forced smiles, the obligatory annual school picture documenting the slow growth that now seems to have occurred so quickly.

Among the decorations is a stocking I had has a child. It's zig-zag stitching around the green felt still holding strong while my red-markered name on the white cuff, in an uncomfortable foreshadowing of the inevitable, fades a little more each year. The stocking is a reminder of Christmases past when I and two brothers--the three oldest--would stealthily slip out of our bedroom and impatiently wait for our siblings and parents to wake as we almost silently examined the presents surrounding our humble tree. Real football uniforms complete with pads, pants, jerseys and helmets so that my brothers and I, still younger than ten, could mimic the pros we watched play in between Falstaff beer commercials and halftime marching bands. Once it was a bicycle that expanded my horizons and showed me a huge world existed beyond my neighborhood. Another time, a chemistry set with which I could stray from the instructions to create the most unpleasant odors and even endanger the house and family.

Second grade for each of my children seems so long ago and in comparison my elementary school years are ancient history. Years from now, what memories will be awakened in my children and what stories will they tell about the tin can they sloppily painted before gluing the poem off center, the hand prints they pressed on the construction paper, or the button-encrusted popsicle stick frame displaying a photo from a long past age of innocence?

I Bet He Totally Blew Off The Reading Material, Too

I don't go to the movies very often so maybe I'm just not used to seeing certain things. I went to the cinema with Kathy and we watched a humorous movie together. On the way out we both stopped to use the restroom. What I saw while in the bathroom raised a few questions for me. A man came out of a toilet stall with one arm embracing a full bucket of popcorn and his other hand clutching a giant cup of soda.

* Do they have flat screens showing previews in the stalls?

I did not look to see.

* At some point you need at least one hand free. Where do you put your popcorn and soda?

I don't want to know.

* Could you not wait to buy popcorn and drink until after?

Seems like a logical alternative. There were no lines at the snack counter.

* At some point you need wash your hands. Where do you put your popcorn and soda?

Problem solved. He walked straight out.

Hey, are you gonna share your popcorn?

Fear Trumps Logic

In the wake of the killing of four police officers in Lakewood last Sunday, Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick recently made some changes when it comes to Spokane police officers writing up their reports all alone. It's not allowed.

In the past police officers would park their patrol cars in the middle of the Spokane Arena to write up their reports on their computers at the end of their shifts. The parking lot afforded them clear fields of view for up to a hundred yards in all directions, giving them plenty of time to see anything approaching them and react to potential threats.

Effective Monday, Spokane Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick has banned police officers driving solo from writing their reports in the Arena parking lot in the interests of officer safety.

The shootings of four police officers in Lakewood, coming on the heels of an unrelated deadly shooting of a police officer several weeks ago in Seattle, has prompted the Spokane Police Department to make some changes in the way it does business. “My concern as I'm sure is your concern is that this is probably copycat,” Chief Kirkpatrick said to her officers during the morning roll call.

...

“What I’m asking you to do is do not write police reports in your patrol car. I want you to come to the station or go to Cop Shops or have someone with you to act as some sort of lookout,” Kirkpatrick said.

Notice the basis for this is that she believed Clemmons was inspired by an unrelated attack in which a Seattle police officer was killed a few weeks ago. And from that she thinks the likelihood for a copycat killer to strike in Spokane has increased so much so that the precautions they already take, parking in the middle of a huge parking lot so they have a clear view in all directions, are not enough. Now they have to have some sort of a lookout.

The Spokane Police Department's tarnished image is hardly going to improve if officers are in the frame of mind that every member of the public represents a danger to them.

Officers typically spend up to two hours every shift writing reports but if they do that in their cars police can stop filing out their paperwork and respond to calls for service faster. Now they will have to choose between their safety and crime-fighting efficiency and their chief open to suggestions.

I do have a suggestion. Step back and think about it. Don't get paralyzed by a "What if...?" scenario for which the only basis for thinking it will happen here is that it happened somewhere else.