Some Blog Site

We had an urgent ladle situation on Saturday. I drove up to the dollar store and bought some ladles, and one of the ladle labels caught my attention.

It listed the characteristics of the ladle. They were

• Best quality
• Easy to use
• Right choice
• Excellent design

Just think how often that distinction is overlooked. I mean, if you’re comparing two different ladles, and one says it’s the right choice and the other doesn’t say it’s the right choice, then you should go with the one that is the right choice, right?

I think the label should go one step further: add a line to say “The other ladle you’re considering is bad.”

… from their own mission statements.

Of course, no one is perfect. But, if a school district is going to put its mission statement on its website for the whole world to see, you would think they would make it a good one.

For your reading pleasure (and because Arby has me looking for typos now) (and because school is starting so I’ve been looking at official school information), I present to you eight different mission statements from various school districts in the area.

1. ___ Schools are committed to providing a quality educational experience for all students in a safe, orderly, healthy, and nurturing environment.

   Nothing too bad there. Although if I were nit-picking (which I am), I would note that the schools are not committed to providing a quality education. Rather, they are committed to providing a quality experience.

   Me: How was school today?
   Child: Great! I loved it!
   Me: What did you learn?
   Child: Nothing! But I had a great experience!

   Oy.

2. Realizing that each child is unique with varied experiences and opportunities, we will strive to promote an intrinsic desire to learn and gain the skills necessary to achieve academically. The ___ school community will nurture a sense of self-worth and self-discipline for all students to provide an excellent educational environment.

   A lot of fluff, although I suppose it could be worse. Plus, what else do you expect in a mission statement?

   If you look at what they are really saying you see that all the district wants to do is to cause your children to desire. I don’t see that the district wants to actually educate the kids.

   We don’t want your kids to learn – we want your kids to want to learn.

   No, wait… They don’t want to cause your children to desire; they just want to promote that desire.

   No, wait again… They don’t want to promote that desire; they just want to strive to promote that desire.

   Let’s see how far we can go here:

   • “we aim to strive to promote desire” …
   • “we work to aim to strive to promote desire” …
   • “we yearn to work to aim to strive to promote desire” …

   I think I’ll stop there. I’m sure the committee meant well when it produced that mission statement.

   One more thing: the child is going to “achieve academically.” I really dislike the intransitive use of “achieve”. Some verbs can be both transitive and intransitive, but there is usually a good implied object for the intransitive case. Why not “achieve academic success”? Just put a noun in there for an object – the sentence would be much better.

   Okay, the sentence would be a little bit better.

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One of the problems with the word “microwave” is that it is both a verb and a noun.

This caused a problem recently. I was making brownies, and I followed the instructions as written on the box.

and here’s a close-up view of the instructions:

It clearly stated that I was to add water and microwave. So I took out a big bowl and poured in the brownie mix. Then I poured in the water.

Then I put a microwave in the bowl and stirred everything together.

It didn’t taste very good.

I think their instructions were wrong.

As I mentioned in the post about visiting the Lego store, we saw a 4-D movie.

Needing to attract tourists to visit, the Lego store had to do better than just a 3-D movie. Everyone has those nowadays. To stand above the crowd, you need to have more D than the other places. So the Lego store advertised their 4-D movie.

Being ignorant in the ways of movie technology, I (and the rest of the family) did not know what made the extra D until after we sat through the movie. It was, as you know if you read last week’s post, falling snow.

That got me thinking what the Ds actually are. I know it stands for Dimension, but what are the dimensions?

• A normal movie is considered 2-D, because the screen has width and height.
• A 3-D movie adds depth to the visual aspect.

So far all the Ds are limited to the sense of sight.

• A 4-D movie adds the sense of touch – falling snow, misting water, blowing wind, etc.

But if one of the five senses counts as a dimension, why hasn’t anyone counted sound? Back when movies went from silent to talkies, they should have marketed that as 3-D, right?

And then stereo sound should count as 2-D by itself. Add that 2-D to the visual 2-D and you should get 4-D.

• So what people today are calling 3-D movies are really 5-D.
• And the 4-D movies are 6-D.
• Add in another sense, like smell, and we’re up to 7-D movies.

So we’ve covered sight, hearing, touch, and smell.

• All that’s left is taste. If someone can figure that out, we get 8-D movies.
• But we have two nostrils, so in theory we should be able to get stereo smells. And that would take us to 9-D movies.

But wait! Sound isn’t just 2-D. That stereo stuff is old news (AKA olds). Kids these days have 3-D sound, which is best experienced with headphones. Hey, the theater gives you 3-D glasses, why not 3-D headphones?

• So upping the sound from 2-D to 3-D brings the total to 10-D.
• And, again in theory, if two eyes can observe 3-D sights and two ears can hear 3-D sounds, why can’t two nostrils smell 3-D scents? Woohoo! 11-D!

I am trying to think what a 3-D smell would smell like, but I am having a brainblock on that one. Maybe it’s the holiday weekend. If anyone figures that out, let me know please.

So, for you advertisers and marketers out there who are trying to promote your tourist attraction: your theoretical maximum for a movie is 11-D. I expect some race between competitors to get there.

Or maybe the razors will reach 11 blades first.

I don’t know how sales of Monopoly are going. But if the Parker Brothers have some excess inventory that they need to move, I have an idea.

Even if they don’t need to sell more games, I still have an idea.

Make some games with real money instead of Monopoly money.

Kind of like the Golden Tickets of Willy Wonka fame. Just advertise that 10 random Monopoly games contain actual currency and see how well they sell.

Last I checked, Monopoly is sold with $15,140 of Monopoly money. I picked the count of 10 games because that would be $151,400 – close enough to the cost of producing and airing a TV commercial so it should fit in an advertising budget.

Better yet, plan the viral route: don’t advertise that those sets are being sold. Just make a few and send them to stores like any other game. Chances are good that some local TV news station will report that someone bought a Monopoly set filled with real money

reporter voice: “Too good to be true? Find out what happened to one lucky family when they went shopping! That story and more on your local news at 10.”

Once the story breaks, wait for it to gain coverage and wait for a news reporter to contact you. Then you can release a statement that you had been planning an advertising campaign with Monopoly games that contained US dollars instead of play currency [insert own joke about the federal reserve, bonus for mentioning gold or silver], but a few of the games got shipped before the ad materials were released.

That should start a buying spree.

Of course, the problem with planning a viral campaign is that some people might see through it – “you mean to tell me that their quality control is so poor that they don’t know what boxes were shipped?“.

And since Monopoly has been producing new games with a credit card instead of piles of cash, this might not work so well anymore (“Some games contain a real debit card” doesn’t have the same ring as “Some games contain a pile of real cash”). But if they have a stash of paper money-based games that they want to clear out, this idea would work well for that.

This could also apply to the game of Life, but that has way too much money. Monopoly has tens of thousands of dollars per game; Life has millions of dollars per game. It wouldn’t be worth it, even if it was only one game. Unless they didn’t mind losing money on an ad campaign…

I subscribe to World Magazine. The cover a few issues ago had an advertisement that tried to get my attention.

I ignored the ad until I had finished the issue. Then I looked at the Rubik’s-like puzzle that they used as the centerpiece of the ad. And, being the good engineer that I am, I tried to solve it

But I couldn’t solve it because it was wrong. I found 8 and a half things wrong with it.

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or, Be Aware – The World Needs More Wares.

or, Be Aware – Be Very, Very Aware.

I heard a radio interview where some lady was “raising awareness” for an issue near and dear to her heart. I don’t begrudge her the chance to make her story known, and I do wish her well in her endeavor to find a cure for her child’s affliction.

But . . .

There comes a point where raising awareness is not going to do anything anymore. We may be at or past that point already. You know, diminishing returns and all…

If all the issues are raising awareness of themselves, then people will be equally aware of all issues and the net effect is no one issue gets more attention than any others. In other words, when everyone is special then no one is special.

Ahh, my favorite movie quote is applicable once again.

Not everyone should be aware of all the issues facing everyone else. There are just too many people and too many issues. We do need to have experts in each area, and I think that’s not a problem currently. But the more issues there are of which to be aware, the less attention or interest each one gets or generates.

Feel free to keep (or start) raising awareness for whatever you want. Just don’t be offended if I tune you out after I hear the phrase “raising awareness”.