Yay Hormel

Via Crooked Timber I see that the Hormel corporation is putting the contact information for email telemarketers on cans of its Spam meat product, like missing children on milk cartons but with a different purpose.

Kudos to Hormel. It is always hard for a company when your product name enters the general language, especially when in this case it is being used as a derogatory term. I like to see them using some humor while they sell their salty, fatty, spiced pork product.

Of course, the press release is dated April 1, 2004.

Still, it is a clever idea.

Of blobs and logos

As always happens when you shop for a car, I have been looking harder at the various vehicles on the roads as I drive my errands and toddle about.

I have trouble telling minivans apart, although I can now spot a couple of the more distinctive models, and so I have been looking at the corporate logos on the front grill.

While doing that I noticed something that I then looked for and confirmed while looking at car cars - most automobile company logos look like blobs from more than about 50 feet away.

There are only a few really distinctive and readily identifiable car logos: the Honda H, the Ford blue oval, the Chevrolet tilted cross, the GMC ugly red letters, and the Chrysler wings. Most of the rest either read as little blobs from a distance - Subaru oval, Dodge sheep heads - or as distorted but indistinguishable circles - Mazda, Lexus, Infiniti. A few, Toyota and VW, are distinctive blobs and sit on the margin between clarity and blobbiness, but by and large most of them seem designed to show off the car at short range.

It is not much of an observation. I certainly can't tie it into the state of relationships, the war in Iraq, the history of automobiles, or the price of tea in China. I was just struck by the fact that there are dozens of nameplates still on the road, that they all worked very hard to come up with their logo or image, that most of them are indistinguishable blobs, and that the newer plates are the least clear.

There is something to be said for clear and simple heraldry - consider that you can spot a New Mexico flag from miles away, while in order to tell a Pennsylvania from a Virginia you have to be close enough to read the logo and figure out who is the woman on the state seal.

Uncle Fester?

The folks at the toddler's day care want to know if the infant looks like me or like J or like the toddler.

I told them the truth.

Right now he looks like Uncle Fester.

Where did my van go?

Yesterday we spent more hours shopping for minivans.

We narrowed it down to one make and model, deciding that J was enough more comfortable in the Honda than the Ford that we would pay the extra money for the more reliable vehicle.

We made an offer on one, realized it was the only used Honda we had driven, and took the offer back. Now we get to spend early April shopping for a used Honda so that we can make an offer towards the end of the coming month.

What a time sink.

If the 91 wagon held baby seats securely we would keep driving it rather than spending time shopping.

End of rant.

Why the Great War?

I just finished writing up lecture notes for this afternoon's class on The Guns of August - I am stealing Barbara Tuchman's title for my class lecture. One of the students commented last month that their previous (high school) history classes tended to skip over World War One and focus on World War Two. I am going the other way. We have three lectures on the events of 1914-19 (The Guns of August, The Great War, Reds) and two for the Second World War (Gathering Storm, Second World War). Why? I do believe that the first was the more significant conflict. It destroyed the 19th century empires, approved Nationalism as the dominant justification for state organization, and opened the door for Communism. The second war, despite its far greater human cost, was in many ways the second act of a three act play.

When I cover the great war in US surveys students have trouble imagining the network of interlocking alliances and mobilization schemes that led first one and then another Great Power to declare war, much less do the grasp the joy that came with the declarations of war. Why go dancing in the streets at the thought of marching off?

The answer, of course, is that for many people in 1914 War meant a brief clash of arms, some marching, and a return home covered in glory. There had been a great many short wars, most of them victorious colonial wars, and no one imagined what was to come.

Precis and Argument

I am once again revisiting chapter three.

My second reader wanted me to more clearly articulate the chronological changes and my argument about benevolent organizations, denominations, and common Christianity.

I went through once and revised my transitions to better foreshadow what would come and to play up the notion that common Christianity inspires people to differentiate themselves from the mainstream, and that through cooperation and competitive emulation the broad sphere of Christian action expanded.

Now I think I get to sit down with a yellow pad and sketch out the bare bones of what I think I am arguing, then compare that bare bones to the blocks of text, then write a brief precis.

As I go through this exercise I see what the second reader means, despite all my work I do still have problems with the chronology and organization of this chapter.

And so it goes.

Belated Garden Blogging

The plants, they grow.

The peonies are starting to poke their noses above ground. I must have a dirty mind because the little red pointed shoots look like miniature erect penises as they break through the ground. Plants can be phallic.

Elsewhere, the miniature iris are fading, the tulips have their leaves up but have not yet flowered, and some of the roses show some growth. Several of the roses are still silent and woody - I do hope I did not kill them by over-pruning.

The seedlings have their second set of leaves. Soon I will transplant the peppers and tomatoes, discard the failed daisies, and re-seed the second crop.

But not today. Today I run errands and finally get my hair cut.

Marques and Styles

We have been car shopping. I hate car shopping - it eats a lot of time; I have yet to find a vehicle that meets all my desires much less a vehicle that meets both my desires and my budget; car shopping is the place where the average consumer encounters barter and negotiated price. I have been spoiled by the department store approach to market transactions, where all goods have a price, the price is fixed, and the customer's choices are a simple take it, leave it, or shop elsewhere.

That rant out of the way, I did notice some amusing things. To my perspective, the cars we are looking at all look like each other but they all drive very differently. Oddly enough, we are looking at the same three marques we looked at last time we went car shopping, and there too, we found the vehicles boring and indistinguishable while the driving experiences were markedly different. Not surprisingly, a Toyota Sienna drives much like a Camry only bigger, a Honda Odyssey drives much like an Accord only bigger, and a Ford Windstar drives much like a Taurus only bigger. And yet, when I go grocery shopping in the Accord I can never pick it out of the host of look like metallic cars in the parking lot while to me all minivans look like blobs on wheels.

Now, someone who is used to a very different road feel would likely say that all three family sedans drive like each other and that all three minivans drive like each other, but to my perspective the drive experience on all three is widely different.

We drive some more things today, at this point we have ruled out the Toyota - the best handling of the lot - because we don't like the way they arranged the anchors for the child seats. We will likely get a used Windstar for about half the price of a new Odyssey - used Odyssey's are hard to find and run so close to the price of new vehicles that we might as well get the extra 3 years of use. The only question is whether I get scared when J drives a Ford while she is a little tired or frazzled.

Four years ago we vetoed a Taurus with the standard suspension because I was convinced that J would drive it off the margin of one of Virginia's narrow, no-shoulders, twisting country roads. The Taurus with sport suspension was fine, but we got the Accord because I liked it better and J was even less likely to cross lanes while cornering.

We found one acceptable used vehicle, we drive another candidate today, we might look again at a used Honda, and then we will rank them and decide what we like.

That means that, with luck, sometime this afternoon or Thursday we get to dicker over price. I hate that part, which is odd because my Dad is a really good negotiator - he did deals for a living before he retired.

Doing this right takes forever, and even so I feel like I am rushing.

Kipling

Do you like Kipling?

I wouldn't know, I've never kippled.

Now that is an old joke, yep.

Yesterday the kids kippled. As they came into the classroom I gleefully announced that it was Poetry Day, to which most of them replied "cool." I then handed out sheets with Kipling's "The Widow's Party" on one side and "White Man's Burden" on the other.

Partway through the class we stopped to talk about Kipling - I used him as a window into imperialist ideology.

Interestingly, the first section thought WMB was parody it was so over the top. The second thought it was straight. I gave them the poem very differently - for the first I reviewed the US role in the Philippines as they read, for the second I had them read the poem out loud.

I am always amused at the way that presentation shapes interpretation, and I struggle to present my materials to the kids in a way that is fair to the materials and useful for the class plan.

I do like Kipling. Much of his stuff is occasional poetry, like "Our Lady of the Snows" and much of it is doggerel, but good doggerel and good occasional poetry are hard to write. More, Kipling is deeply bounded in place and mind and that makes him a fine window into the Edwardian age. I like authors who are bound in time for they are easier to use to do history.

Feh, cars

We are shopping for a new minivan, which has taken up much of the second-order productive time that I usually use to blog in.

In fact, this blog entry was interrupted by a phone call from a Ford dealer.

So far we are underwhelmed - then again we are often underwhelmed by cars. This might be part of why we buy them so seldom - the minivan will replace a 1991 Corolla wagon.

And so to do some work before we visit the Toyota people this afternoon.

I think I would rather be getting a haircut.