Ask & Tell

I am not a morning person. Regardless of how early I may go to bed, few things hurt more than having to get up in the morning. (If I have an early morning engagement, it's often easier for me to stay up all night rather than having to go through the strain of a premature awakening.) When my alarm goes off, I usually stumble out of bed, turn it off, turn the radio on, and fall back into the arms of sweet slumber once again. Except a few weeks ago, when this story (about a possible reversal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy) on Morning Edition made me almost hysterical with laughter, to the point where it was no longer possible to stay asleep any more.

Tom BOWMAN (Pentagon correspondent): We also expect [Secretary Gates] to say that discharges of gay service members have dropped quite a bit in President Obama's first year in office, as much as 30 percent.

Renee MONTAGNE (host): And why is that?

BOWMAN: Well, we really don't know for sure. What we do know, of course, is the president has said - both as a candidate and as commander-in-chief - he wants to do away with this policy. And that may have had an effect within the military, sort of a ripple effect.

I have to say, though, that I am not entirely happy with the 'ripple effect' explanation. Maybe we can blame the reduced discharges on global warming?

Complete Transcript of the story.

And now for something completely different: in case you feel that the juvenile nature of this post could not go any farther, here is a comment I heard at a recent IT managers' meeting: We need to change our procedure so we always take a dump first.

Finally (I promise, this is the last one), another sexually ambiguous statement overheard at work: I am so excited - I am going to ride my horse bareback today!

OK, I swear this is truly the last one - a recent exchange witnessed at the friendly neighborhood home and auto insurance shop. My friend, to his insurance agent: So, you have all my paperwork, correct? Do I need to stop by and see you any more? Insurance agent: Only if you want me to service you.

Look, Ma, no Menus

Or, the more things change, the more they remain the same. The new version of Microsoft Office has done away with menus in an effort to upgrade and overhaul the now ubiquitous interface that involves clicking, pointing, dragging, and dropping. David Pogue, who double clicks through technology for The New York Times, discusses the changes with Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition.

SI: Where are they heading with this?
DP: There have been some interesting efforts. One clue is the rise of these instant search commands in both the Macintosh, and now in Windows Vista, where you type a few letters of what you are looking for, and up pops the thing, whatever folder it's buried in. And, if you think about it, that means that we needed a cry for help here because the folder thing was getting too unwieldy.

SI: Before mouses and icons and that sort of thing, people just typed a command into a computer. Might we eventually head back toward that system now?
DP: Well, that's what's cracking me up. That's what everyone pooh-poohs as the old stone age way of using a computer by memorizing and typing commands. But this is one of the most touted and beloved features of both the latest Mac OS and the latest Windows Vista, is you can start to do things by typing out little commands again. And the old timers are saying, 'Dude, didn't we do this twenty years ago?'

And what cracks me up is how The Next Big Thing is, more often than not, the same old wine in, if one is lucky, a slightly different looking bottle; little more than a forgotten and discarded leftover from the past, albeit reheated and touched up. Hooray for the shortness of public memory!

Finest Hour

I realize that it would be both unnecessary as well as futile to use this forum to sing the praise of public radio to the handful of amazingly awesome individuals known to occasionally frequent this corner of cyberspace; however, I do feel obligated to talk about a new show that I recently discovered almost by accident on KQED, which, along with KALW, is one of my local public radio stations. Radio Lab (from WNYC) is 'an investigation': each episode is usually designed to tackle One Big Idea which regularly turns out to be fairly ambitious in terms of its breadth and scope, and not only do they almost always succeed, the Radio Lab team actually manage to do so with verve and wit (and enough digressions) that keep the hour both engrossing and informative. From questions like 'How does the brain make me?' to exploring the nature of stress, from looking at the staggeringly complicated societies formed by bees and ants to examining the history and nature of time, Radio Lab is one fascinating journey where 'science bumps into culture' and 'information sounds like music'.

Season One of Radio Lab is archived here, and Season 2 begins April 14, 2006. I can hardly wait!