How often have you read this somewhere in an article?

"The United States blames Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network for the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on the United States," (Reuters)

was printed half-way down the article in a Yahoo! News piece from today, which is almost two year after the hijackings.

How long is long enough for something like this? What's the rule?

You've heard of the recall thing, right?

Schwarzenegger for governor, right?

But... what about SCHWARZENEGGER on a bumper sticker? How do you graphically treat that? The overall effectiveness for a piece of advertising can be greatly reduced by having too much copy. Cluttered is how a SCHWARZENEGGER bumper sticker will appear, and it will get sour results for Mr. (The) Terminator.

Wouldn't it make sense for Arnold's graphic design team to begin drafting a logo for marketing materials? One that's short/conscise/powerful, and would take up less space and have more impact than Schwarzenegger, which would take up too much space.

How about creatively treating an image of a Hummer and using that for his logo? Schwarzenegger will certainly have to answer some questions about his environmental position as it relates to his support of Hummers, right? There's no easy way to run from it so he might as well embrace it. He should get a lot of soccer mom support for something like that.

I missed two flights already

and now I'm on the Belmont Avenue bus headed to Midway to catch my third attempt at a flight to San Diego. Four hours before departure.

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Rantoul, Illinois

Here are the events scheduled for the Rantoul Township High School Class of 1983 reunion, which this blogger is taking part.



Rantoul High School is here.

Barclift and I in a drunken interview at Chicago's Rock-N-Roll McDonald's



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Mental health care in America study recommends overhaul



The President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health published its long-awaited report yesterday on mental health care in America and their recommendations were met with high praise across the mental health advocate board.

President Bush established the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 as part of his commitment to eliminate inequality for Americans with disabilities. The President directed the Commission to identify policies that could be implemented by Federal, State and local governments to maximize the utility of existing resources, improve coordination of treatments and services, and promote successful community integration for adults with a serious mental illness and children with a serious emotional disturbance.

The commission was developed with the following three presumptions that prevent citizens from quality mental health care:

• Stigma that surrounds mental illnesses,


• Unfair treatment limitations and financial requirements placed on mental health benefits in private health insurance, and


• The fragmented mental health service delivery system.

The Commission's findings confirm that there are unmet needs and that many barriers impede care for people with mental illnesses. Mental illnesses are shockingly common; they affect almost every American family. It can happen to a child, a brother, a grandparent, or a co-worker. It can happen to someone from any background - African American, Alaska Native, Asian American, Hispanic American, Native American, Pacific Islander, or White American. It can occur at any stage of life, from childhood to old age. No community is unaffected by mental illnesses; no school or workplace is untouched.

In any given year, about 5% to 7% of adults have a serious mental illness, according to several nationally representative studies. A similar percentage of children - about 5% to 9% - have a serious emotional disturbance. These figures mean that millions of adults and children are disabled by mental illnesses every year.

Denise Grady, in her article published by The New York Times, reported what the report called for: "a more streamlined system strongly focused on early diagnosis and treatment in patients' own communities, a high expectation of recovery and methods for helping people with mental illnesses find work and housing."

Dr. Marcia Goin, president of the America Psychiatric Association, said that the report gave an honest portrayal of "the mental health system in a shambles." Dr. Goin said many mentally ill people became lost in the system and wound up living on the streets or, if they lack needed medication, in jail for petty crimes. The report notes that 30,000 Americans a year commit suicide, many with undiagnosed or untreated mental illnesses. Attempted suicides lead to hundreds of thousands of hospital visits a year.

"It's a horrendous system across the country," Dr. Goin said.

R. Kelly performance in Las Vegas

Joanna P. Basile, reporter from the Pesotum.com Las Vegas Bureau, files this report on R. Kelly, who performed Saturday at the Theater of the Performing Arts at the Aladdin, Las Vegas.

A letter from the President

My first reply letter from the President of the United States came today via email. It's here in Adobe Acrobat format.

Sometime last week I read an online New York Times article that reported on a new White House web e-mail system for contacting Mr. Bush, which some experts describe as very difficult to navigate. At the same time, White House staffers believe it's a more efficient method of organizing the millions of e-mails that are sent to the president.

This blogger's experience with the White House web e-mail system is more in-line with that of the critics. In particular, comments or questions for Mr. Bush had to be linked to a specific, pre-selected category. Before choosing a category in which to ask or comment, a user must first select if the inquiry is In Support or Not In Support of the current Bush policy.

This blog's particular comment--support for the legalization of medical marijuana--received the following response from a White House staffer, Desiree Thompson, Special Assistant to the President and Director of Presidential Correspondence.

While composing my original e-mail to the president, the In Support Of category was selected because it's not clear what the president's position is on any particular issue.

With an array of pre-composed replies, it's almost clear why the White House has adopted the method of pre-selected categories--so staffers like Ms. Thompson can instantly pick the appropriate PDF file and e-mail it back.

A new era of White House communications with the American public has emerged and it ain't too customer friendly.

To the right of right



Ann Coulter has published a new book, "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism" (Crown Forum), and it's getting her fired, hired, and people at either polar end of the political spectrum have something to say about it.

David Carr of The New York Times wrote

Ms. Coulter has long been a target of anyone to the left of Patrick J. Buchanan, but the wholesale indictment in "Treason" of Democrats as traitors has drawn withering fire even from fellow outriders on the right. David Horowitz, a Coulter ally who picked up her column for FrontPageMagazine.com after it was dumped by the National Review Online, assailed the book on his site, saying it "compromised her case and undermined her attempt to correct a record that desperately needs correction." Writing in The Sunday Times of London, Andrew Sullivan suggested that she "plays directly into the hands of the left by defending the tactics of Joe McCarthy." And Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal suggested, "The senator — who knew something about the art of outrage merchandising — would have understood the latest of his public advocates."

A firestorm seems to erupt whenever Ms. Coulter is in the vicinity. Mr. Carr describes an interview Ms. Coulter gave to television host Katie Couric, who Ms. Coulter has described as "the affable Eva Braun of morning television," in which the two seem to be ready to rumble on air.

2002 highway fatality stats released by USDOT
There are more reasons to be afraid of SUVs.

The U.S. Department of Transportation highway fatality statistics for 2002 suggests that SUVs and light trucks are more dangerous than previously thought.

Fatalities in rollover crashes accounted for 82 percent of the total fatality increase in 2002. In 2002, 10,666 people died in rollover crashes, up 5 percent from 10,157 in 2001. The number of persons killed in sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that rolled over rose 14 percent. Sixty-one percent of all SUV fatalities involved rollovers.

In fatal crashes between passenger cars and LTVs (light trucks and vans, a category that includes SUVs), the occupants of the car were more often fatally injured. When a car was struck in the side by an LTV, the fatality was 20.8 times more likely to have been in the passenger car. In a head-on collision between a car and an LTV, the fatality was 3.3 times more likely to be among car occupants.

NHTSA annually collects crash statistics from 50 states and the District of Columbia to produce the annual report on traffic fatality trends. Summaries of the FARS report are available here.

SUV owners "strike" back

The Sport Utility Vehicle Owners of America is an organization that purports to represent angry SUV owners who don't like to be picked on. The organization's web site describes the groups as drivers of "SUVs because they provide us with safety, comfort, utility and versatility."

Apparently, the organization's first objective is to stop the bad-mouthing of SUV owners because they choose to drive SUVs. There's a petition visitors can sign to plead with the nay sayers to stop. They describe anti-SUV rhetoric as "misguided and highly personal."

Additioinally, the site offers up "fact" regarding SUVs like "rollover crashes are relatively rare when compared to all other types of crashes;" "SUVs are considerably more protective of their occupants than the average passenger car;" "fewer than six percent of passenger cars can tow more than 2,100 pounds;" "during heavy snows and severe floods, hospitals often put out the call for volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles;" "For the first time ever, SUVs have captured the overall market share lead among female new vehicle buyers;" "since the 1970's, fuel economy of SUVs and light trucks has improved by nearly 60 percent;" "Replacing all of the SUVs to be sold in 2003 with passenger cars would save one day’s worth of oil in this country."

The "facts" go on and on and on.

Let's look at each of the "facts" one-by-one and attempt to break it down linguistically to determine if there are any flaws in the SUVOA's claim of fact.

• rollover crashes are relatively rare when compared to all other types of crashes
  True, when compared to a fender bender or a hit-and-run, rollovers are rare. Using that "fact" in that way would be like comparing the destructive forces of earthquakes in Chicago to tornados in California in an attempt to determine where one should purchase their next home.



• SUVs are considerably more protective of their occupants than the average passenger car
  That may be true; however, according to Jeffrey W. Runge, M.D., Administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, compatibility is a major issue. In a statement before the Senate Committtee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Dr. Runge said: "While light trucks represent 36 percent of all registered vehicles, they are already involved in about half of all fatal two-vehicle crashes with passenger cars. In these crashes, over 80 percent of the resulting fatalities are to occupants of the passenger cars. This problem will continue to grow as the percentage of light trucks in the fleet increases. SUVs account for about 35 percent of light truck sales." So, the issue isn't all about SUV occupant safety, but the issue of these vehicles being killing machines. Dr. Runge in his statement to the committee also challenges SUVOA's "fact" that SUVs are considerably more protective of their occupants.



• fewer than six percent of passenger cars can tow more than 2,100 pounds
  True. And the point? The problem here is that most SUV owners tow nothing.



• during heavy snows and severe floods, hospitals often put out the call for volunteers with four-wheel-drive vehicles
  SUVOA misses the point. Again. According to NHTSA statistics, 36% of registered vehicles are light trucks or SUVs. That's THE probem. It's the proliferation of these vehicles that are the sources of excessive harmful emissions and the subsequent damage to the environment, not the few that are needed to meet a hospital's call for four-wheel-drive vehicles. The SUVOA failed to point out that most large population areas in the United States never experience snow or floods, even worse, heavy or severe of conditions. Please imagine this: a typical SUV owner volunteering for anything. Sure there are some fine upstanding citizens who are SUV owners. If one really cares for others, would they drive a gas guzzling, 6,000 pound H2 Hummer?



• For the first time ever, SUVs have captured the overall market share lead among female new vehicle buyers
  That's the same type of logic--everybody's doing it--that caused Jonestown. When did market share lead among females equate to ultimate good?



• since the 1970's, fuel economy of SUVs and light trucks has improved by nearly 60 percent
  This is probably one of the only facts that SUVOA can fairly use; however, it's also misleading. Yes, fuel economy for these vehicles have improved since the 1970's, as is the case with ALL vehicles. That, doesn't mean that the vehicles in question are achieving good fuel economy. Relative to traditional passenger vehicles, light trucks and SUVs have horrible fuel economy. Sadaam Hussien's better treatment of Iraqi citizens in 2002 compared to 1991 can be considered improvement. Using SUVOA's logic of the 60% fuel economy improvement, Sadaam isn't a bad guy after all.




• Replacing all of the SUVs to be sold in 2003 with passenger cars would save one day’s worth of oil in this country
  This "fact" is under the heading of "Environmental Impact Facts" without any mention as to the source(s) or to the time in which these savings would take place. Saving even one day's worth of oil/gasoline--360 million gallons of gasoline (source: HowStuffWorks.com)--isn't worth a switch to more effecient vehicles to the SUVOA. Saving $540,000,000 is cetainly worthwhile to many others, however.

Hey, they're SUV drivers, and if they really cared about the facts they probably would drive something else.

The New York Times published an article on SUVOA and it's here.

The world's worst sentence

"They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white ... Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently."

Mariann Simms of Wetumpka, Ala. is the author of the above sentence with which she won $250. Ms. Simms won the money from the 22nd Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a parody honoring the writer of the worst beginning to an imaginary novel.

Click here for a full article.

Can this contest be considered The Jerry Springer Show of literature? What's the point.

Britney needs your attention


©Michael Caulfield/WireImage.com

Britney Spears pictured at the MTV Bash.

After the release of Britney Spears, her eponymously-titled album in 2001 that didn't sell well enough, Ms. Spears has been endeavoring to "re-invent" her image.

Jennifer Bayot, writing for The New York Times, reports that nuptial debts "are weighing down couples and their parents long after the 'I do's,' and many have been forced to seek financial counseling as a result, according to credit counseling agencies."

Ms. Bayot reports on the post-ceremony life of a 23-year-old woman, Cynthia Davis, of Coral Springs, Fla., who after accumulating $12,000 of wedding debt, eventually separated from her husband in 2001.

"I hope everyone had a good time, because I'm still paying," Ms. Davis said, laughing, then quietly added, "really paying in a big way — not only financially, but with my marriage."

The emotion of love, apparently, can lead even the most fiscally conservative of peoples to believe that their marriage ceremony is the beginning to the smooth sailing of post-matrimonial bliss. In actuality, it's the beginning of the hard stuff. And in many instances a great number of those seeking society's oldest institution--the public bond of men and women--seem to start-off with high levels of debt.

"Because there's the emotional aspect, people lose sight of the finances when they're getting married," commented Howard S. Dvorkin, president of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services Inc., in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The culture of consumerist society prevalent in the United States, at blog pesotum we call it America's One-upsterism, can lead others to go into a Keeping Up With The Joneses Debt.

For Mitchell and Sandra Crim of Bellevue, Wash., spending for their daughter Sarah's wedding day "was a matter of pride," said Mr. Crim, a customer service representative for Nintendo. "We did not want to appear cheap, or that we were incapable of giving her the wedding she wanted."

Not appearing cheap cost the Crim's $4,000.

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the need for conservative & libertarian arts funding

Thomas M. Sipos wrote "while conservatives and libertarians have influenced the culture via blogs, talk radio, and opinion journals, they still fall short in the arts, especially in music and film."

Click here.

Rumsfeld runs roughshod on rhetoric

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know. 

Sec. Donald Rumsfeld
Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

more planets in the universe?



Scientist have discovered what appears to be a 13 billion year old planet, which suggests that planets may have formed in the galaxy sooner; thus more planets in the universe than originally thought may exist.

According to NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope precisely measured the mass of the oldest known planet in our Milky Way galaxy. At an estimated age of 13 billion years, the planet is more than twice as old as Earth’s 4.5 billion years. It’s about as old as a planet can be. It formed around a young, sun-like star barely 1 billion years after our universe’s birth in the Big Bang. The ancient planet has had a remarkable history because it resides in an unlikely, rough neighborhood. It orbits a peculiar pair of burned-out stars in the crowded core of a cluster of more than 100,000 stars. The new Hubble findings close a decade of speculation and debate about the identity of this ancient world. Until Hubble’s measurement, astronomers had debated the identity of this object. Was it a planet or a brown dwarf? Hubble’s analysis shows that the object is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, confirming that it is a planet. Its very existence provides tantalizing evidence that the first planets formed rapidly, within a billion years of the Big Bang, leading astronomers to conclude that planets may be very abundant in our galaxy.

The New York Times wrote about the celestial discovery here.

You have a friend in dependability

Danny Hakim, in an article in The New York Times, reports that the recently released J.D. Power & Associates survey on vehicle dependability ranked Japanese cars best in the amount of problems reported by their owners.

The survey, one that is highly anticipated by most all automobile maufacturers, also suggests that G.M.'s Road to Redemption marketing campaign may actually have some additional evidence to bolster their higher quality claims.

Most of G.M.'s major brands scored better than the industry average, including Cadillac, Chevrolet, Saturn and GMC. Pontiac, with 293 problems per 100 vehicles (problems/100 vehicles = the scale used to measure the brands), was below average. So was Oldsmobile, which is being discontinued.

"This is consistent with the message we've had out there," said Pat Morrissey, a spokesman for G.M. "The quality initiatives we have had in place over the last three years are starting to pay off.

Macintosh platform gets the brush-off

Today Adobe Systems, Inc. announced that their video editing software, Premiere, will no longer be developed for Apple's Macintosh operating system. In the future, Adobe's Premiere, arguably one of the top applications used by video editors, who typically use Apple Macintosh computers, will only be developed for Microsoft's Windows platform.

Click here for a Chicago Tribune article

A new SUV poll



Will Lester and The Associated Press, in an article published in The Chicago Tribune, report that

People were more likely to think SUVs are safer for their occupants, 42 to 35 percent, according to the poll conducted for the AP by ICR/International Communications Research of Media, Pa. And they were more likely, 45 to 41 percent, to think SUVs are more dangerous for other motorists on the highway.

Here are some more highlights from the article and the poll:

• The public's perception of whether SUVs are dangerous for other motorists went up steadily with respondents' education level. Also, Republicans were more likely to defend the general safety of SUVs than Democrats.


• Just over half in the poll, 54 percent, said the fuel economy standards for SUVs should be the same as those for cars, and 33 percent said they should be allowed to get lower mileage.


• The mileage requirement for passenger vehicles is 27.5 m.p.g. Efforts in Congress to require SUVs (currently at 20.7 miles per gallon for SUVs, minivans and pickups, a standard in place since 1996) to meet the same fuel standards have been unsuccessful.


• About a fourth of the vehicles sold in this country in the last year were SUVs

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apple music store gets "eye roll" from metallica and chili peppers

Reuters, in an article at Yahoo News, reports that Metallica and The Red Hot Chili Peppers are refusing to let Apple Music Store sell their music online because the bands are against the music store's policy of selling single songs.

Mark Reiter, who manages the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and several other artists, said his clients felt it was more a "creative issue than a financial issue;" the bands felt that "if consumers can download their singles, they are less apt to buy entire albums."

"If you download a single, you may ignore the other tracks on the album," Reiter said. "When our artists record a body of work, it's what they deem to be representative of their careers at that time."

Metallica and The Red Hot Chili Peppers are requesting that fans buy the proverbial car without a worthy test drive, and supposedly the claim isn't about money. C'mon, dudes, it's not all about the money but money is a definite. It's a bunch of pig poop, Mr. Reiter's arguments.

Metallica, a major force that aided in the downfall of Napster, using in large part the argument that copyright holders should have the opportunity to benefit from their work, now have the opportunity to work with a legitimate online music store model, a situation they've all but wished for, and now when it's possible, they protest. Perhaps their venal hesitation into online music is based on the a large percentage of feedback by many subscribed to online music discussion groups in which Metallica are ridiculed for their technology positions and the "stale crap they call music these days."

get yo red, white and blue on

this blog's been busy (lazy's more like it), thus no entries in some time.

look for 4th of july commentary for the next few days.