- Dougal Campbell asks: are WordPress & Drupal converging on CMS Nirvana?
- A cautionary tale on the importance of punctuation: the million-dollar comma.
- 1980s cartoons as concert posters by Steven Thomas. Voltron, MASK, Silverhawks and more.
Category: Life
Orange Clouds at Sunset
If This Were a Real Emergency, You’d Be Dead By Now
I suppose I can understand putting one of those “If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 911” messages on a health insurance phone menu. But if you’re going to have one, shouldn’t you put it before the five-minute member identification/sign-in process, not after?
Admittedly, the process only took that long because their voice recognition system wasn’t getting along with my voice, but still, isn’t the point to route people to the fastest response in an emergency?
No Earthquake Watch
The heat wave has people freaking out again…
There is no such thing as an “earthquake watch.” Unlike tornadoes and hurricanes, they strike without warning and cannot be predicted (so far). There’s also no such thing as “earthquake weather”…and I say this as a lifelong Californian.
Taking Aim at Whooping Cough
I got the pertussis vaccine this morning. California is experiencing an epidemic of pertussis, its worst in 55 years, with 4,223 cases as of September 21….and 9 deaths, all infants too young to be vaccinated. The state Department of Public Health is recommending that anyone who expects to spend time around infants get a booster shot. If you can’t get pertussis yourself, then you can’t pass it on to your children (or the kids you’re babysitting, etc.).
Ape Tomatoes

LA Music Center at Night (Photo) & The Glass Menagerie
On Saturday we went the the Mark Taper Forum to see The Glass Menagerie. It seemed an appropriate night for a “little silver slipper of a moon” (next to the Bank of America tower).
It was a great production, and one that really made use of the idea of it being a “memory play.” Most of the productions I’ve seen (including the one I did in high school) tend to switch between past and present as if they were two distinct experiences. This one mixed them together freely.
(Interesting thought: I’ve probably been to the Ahmanson Theater a dozen times or more, and I’ve seen three shows at the Mark Taper Forum…but I’ve never been inside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the Walt Disney Concert Hall.)

