Comments on APA-NYU, Volume 8, #11 (e-APA-NYU #79)

ICONOCLAST (Joel Nelson):

(¢Blackman) "At Starbuck's I usually get the unfancy (Pike Place™ Roast) coffee unless my friend is working there, in which case I get the cafe mocha." I get coffee at a Starbucks so seldom that when I do, I figure I might as well get one of the interesting flavored ones; the difference between $2.50 and $3.50 for a cup of coffee seems slight compared to the difference between nothing (what I pay at work) or about 25¢ (what it costs per mug when I brew it at home from grounds bought on sale) and $2.50. But if I had to pay Starbucks prices more often, I might be more strongly driven to economize. /*/ "Actors lie much more frequently than lawmakers," and so do authors of fiction—because it's part of the job description. Too bad that it seems to have become part of the job description for politicians as well. (Did it become part of the job description because so many actors went into politics, or did so many actors go into politics because lying became part of the job description?) /*/ (¢me) "Currently, Christians spend huge amounts of time saying how evil Obama is (criticism) and very little if any time saying how good Jesus is (evangelism)." If I'm accurately reading the New Testament passages you cite, Herod had publicly violated a clearly defined law, part of a canon he professed to adhere to, and John the Baptist had called him on it. So are you saying that evangelists should confine themselves to telling people which god to worship, but not speak up if they believe they see those worshippers violating that god's laws? (Whether the accusations are fair, or accurate, is a separate issue, of course.) Or perhaps that they should only speak about such things privately, to the violators themselves? /*/ (¢Cinii) "'a version of the Star Wars story done with 3D CGI animals' The world has indeed gone to the dogs." Since she was writing about Legend of the Guardians, that metaphor is for the birds. /*/ re "HERDING CATS": You may have been asking for trouble by naming your cats after wrestlers, without first having a planning session with the one who writes the scripts. One of your cats changed from a face to a heel and began trashing the other. When the plot changed him back to a face, he started being easier to get along with once more. /*/ There seem to be several free Yahtzee-style games (and some that cost a buck or two) available for download to a Droid phone; I've grabbed a few and begun comparing features. I generally don't look for sound effects on PDA/cell phone games, though; depending on where and when one plays, being able to turn them off seems a lot more important.

JAMISON, TAKE E-LETTER (Mark L. Blackman):

"Tom reported on Andrew's wedding (on 10/10/10...)" A news report I heard the next day mentioned the number of weddings held that day because of its supposed auspiciousness. It also mentioned that for at least some geeks, the day was even more auspicious because 101010 is the binary for 42. (Yes, there was a digression explaining the Hitchhiker's Guide reference.) /*/ (¢self) I note that the Abkhazia Marx/Lennon stamp sheet has white birds (presumably doves) and an erroneous "peace" symbol (that could pass for a Mercedes-Benz logo), but nothing particularly representative of Groucho's career. Why-a no duck (with glasses and mustache)? /*/ "Plus, besides the risk of 'overvoting', as candidates are endorsed by multiple parties, minor parties will not properly be credited in future ballot positions." No? I received robocalls from the Working Families Party urging me to vote on that line for the cross-endorsed candidates so as to help the WFP attain permanent ballot status. /*/ (¢Cinii) "Re THE SOCIAL NETWORK, the movie runs longer than I've spent on Facebook in a year, so I'm not bothering." It would be fitting to watch it over the 'Net, but I'll probably be all 20th century and see it on cable.

LA VIE* Á [sic] DIX-NEUF (Ariel Cinii):

Congratulations on 19 years at one address. I realized, as I read that, that I'd reached a similar milestone in the past year: 23 years at the Cadre as of last January, beating out by about six months the length of time I lived on East 18th Street at what I later dubbed Ancestral Mansion (1952–1975). /*/ If the Passport Center is being coy about whether the problem with your digital picture is with the file's resolution or the printer's, perhaps you could take the file to a Staples or a chain drug store and get it professionally printed. "Why can't I just submit a jpeg file to the Passport Center like I can for any e-mail and save all this tsuris?" Because it's government. You can't just submit your own JPEG for a driver's license either; the DMV won't even let you submit a physical picture as the Passport Center does, but demands you show up there to get snapped. /*/ I hope you've once more found the tune for "The New Red Rovers." In my head it's turning into something like "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye"—is that what you meant by "Irish funeral march style?"