This Is Not News

Dear Tom Ridge,

I hear you’re talking about adding another “alert level” to our national terror alert system, something between orange and red. Burnt sienna, maybe. Or ochre. Maybe fuschia. Well, Mr. Ridge, let me tell you, your system is never really going to have the visceral, “call-to-action” effect on me that you’d like. Not that it’s a deeply flawed system whose “alert levels” occasionally get bumped up as knee-jerk reactions to hearsay or just paranoia – no, I’m not implying that at all. It’s just that your terror alert scale can never quite compete for the cumulative dread that can be instilled in my heart by two simple words.

Tornado warning. Read the remainder of this entry »

It has now been almost two years since my wife and I moved into the rental house we now occupy. Owned by her family, this house was formerly her grandmother’s, and so the utilities and other bills have been in the same name for some fifty years now. And so has the phone number. We are forbidden to change the phone number in the event that any of her grandmother’s friends call up for the first time in years to check on her. And this presents a problem.

For the past 21 months – actually, I suspect, for much longer than that – we have been innundated with calls for Cintas, the local uniform vendor. When we got our first phone book not long after moving in, we discovered to our horror that our phone number was printed in Cintas’ Yellow Pages listing for all to see.

And so it begins, every morning at about eight, the phone starts ringing off the hook. Read the remainder of this entry »

Taking your infant to the doctor can be a nerve-wracking experience. Not only do you have to sit there and not throttle the person sticking sharp metal objects into your helpless child, there’s generally something the doctor finds that you – yes, YOU – could be doing better.

This visit, it was feeding. Apparently, Alex is on the low end of the weight scale for her height. She’s healthy, but the doc would like to see her put on a little weight. Now, anyone who has seen our child can tell you that she is no waif. She’s got properly plump baby arms and legs and round, plump cheeks (yes, on both ends, thank you very much). At first I was a bit perturbed. What the heck did this doctor want, a Michelin baby? I thought Alex was fine. But the doctor is the expert and when I looked at the growth charts myself, I could see she had a point. Where had we gone wrong? I am still breast feeding as often as I can, though she occasionally gets formula bottles when I can’t feed her myself. We recently started her on solids with much success. As Dave so eloquently put it one day, “I’ve been shoveling orange stuff into her all day!� He was referring to Alex’s fondness for the yellow and orange end of the baby food spectrum – carrots, squash, peaches, etc.

This was, apparently, where we slipped up. A little too much solid stuff and not enough breast milk and formula. Apparently, the two solid food meals per day were filling her tummy so that she wasn’t hungry enough for the amount of breast milk/formula that a baby her size needs. Baby fruits and veggies are relatively light on calories whereas breast milk and formula are not. Admittedly, Dave and I may have been a little too excited about Alex starting solids that we overdid it. Now we know. Ease up on the colorful food pastes and crank up the liquid stuff – for now anyway.

Around the same time that we were revising Alex’s menu, I discovered that feeding children properly is a very hot topic these days. Earlier this year, the East Penn school district (near Allentown, PA) caused a national stir when it sent letters home to the parents of overweight students warning them about the dangers of obesity-related health problems. The national media soon got wind of the letters. The stir spurred an avalanche of articles in parenting and news magazines about an “epidemic of obesity� among American children.

In statistical terms, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 13% of American children ages 6 to 11, and 14% of children 12 to 19, are overweight or obese. The CDC says it has been ringing the alarm about childhood obesity for years but that it was the so-called “fatty letters� from East Penn that finally brought the matter to the national forefront. In the meantime, everyone’s laying blame. Some blame the fast food company for marketing fatty meals to kids. Some blame schools for cutting back on physical education programs and serving unhealthy foods in cafeterias. Predictably, there are some blaming the Internet, TV, and computer games for being more interesting than the great outdoors.

It’s obvious that there a number of factors at work here, and as much as I would like to blame McDonald’s for all the world’s ills, I cannot. Really, the bottom line is, education. Beyond calories and fat, most Americans really don’t know a lot about nutrition. Many know they should eat better but don’t take the time to learn how. Given that adult obesity rates are upwards of 55%, is it any wonder that kids aren’t making sound nutritional choices? Kids follow the nutritional examples of the adults around them. I have firsthand knowledge that babies aren’t born hating carrots but if all I eat for the next five years is cheese fries, which do you think Alex is going to prefer?

But just as adults who put themselves on strict diets doom themselves to almost certain failure, forcing kids to subsist on soymilk and spinach isn’t realistic. Eating healthfully isn’t an all-or-nothing endeavor, nor should it always be about calories and losing or gaining weight. It’s about achieving balance – and that’s hard for an adult to understand, let alone kids. Our society’s motto is, if a little is good, more is better. If you’re looking for solid information on good nutrition, here are some sources on the Net:

• Nutrition.gov – government information on nutrition
• Prevention.com – the popular magazine’s site about health and nutrition
• Delicious Decisions.org – healthy meal planning from the American Heart Association
• 2000 CDC Growth Charts: United States – pediatric growth charts form the National Center for Health Statistics,
• 5 A Day for Better Health – advice on incorporating more fruits and vegetables into your diet from the National Cancer Institute

Even though my daughter’s weight issue came from the other end of the scale, I can sympathize with the East Penn parents who received those letters. I felt tremendous guilt that someone else had to point out I wasn’t making all the right choices for my child’s health. But I made a commitment to myself and to Alex to fix my mistake. We followed the doc’s advice about solids. I also picked up a book nutrition for children. In Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense, Ellyn Satter offers the following advice:

“The parent is responsible for what, when, where. The child is responsible for how much and whether. If you are doing your job and your child’s job, you are doing too much.â€?

As I write this, Alex is telling me, in her own special way, that she is hungry. If nothing else, the kid’s got a great sense of timing.

1996
Yours truly was a humble editor of low-budget TV commercials at a low-power TV station in a low-ranking market. It was an interesting enough line of work, trying to find new and different ways to show used-car salesmen waving at the camera and bleating a hearty “come on down!�

There weren’t that many new and different ways to do this, mind you. And of course, our lovely account reps expected all of it to be done 15 minutes after they handed in the paperwork — regardless of whether or not the actual shoot for the commercial was scheduled for three days later. “Are you working on my spot yet?â€? they’d ask, poking their head into the somewhat cluttered production office repeatedly. And we laughed, oh, how we laughed. Until we realized they were dead serious. At that point, it became readily apparent that there weren’t nearly enough tape boxes and other heavy objects in the room to throw at them.

And into this arena stepped our youngest and most inexperienced salesperson, who had been tapped by someone to whom I will refer only as Agency Lady to produce a commercial for her newest client, a high-class restaurant in a city we’ll just call Fayetteville, Arkansas (to protect the innocent).

Agency Lady was essentially a one-woman advertising agency, or at least she liked to think so. She had no production facilities of her own, no one else working for her — just her trusty cell phone and an office on wheels. At best, she’s a broker; at worst, an overpaid consultant.

Agency Lady wanted us to come and meet her and her client to discuss a very fancy commercial. And after many a hearty “come on down,� I have to admit that the very prospect was intriguing. What we weren’t expecting was a group of people to whom I’ll refer, for the purposes of this article, as The Committee Of Clueless Individuals Who Should Never Have Had A Say In The Damn Thing. (Or TCOCIWSNHHASITDT for short.)

The Committee was comprised of the following Clueless Individuals.

• Agency Lady.
• The Chef, also part-owner of the new restaurant, who had an alarming and most disturbing habit of twisting the filters off of filtered cigarettes and chain-smoking them. As a result, the teeth of this man, who — by default, since he’s presumably preparing many meals a night — one would presume might wish to at least appear sanitary, were black as night.
• The Chef’s Agent. (We don’t know why he’d need one either.)

Together, these Clueless Individuals were mapping out a grand plan for the newly opened restaurant, including an elaborate commercial beyond the usual expectations for this area. We didn’t mind that. What we did mind, however, was the fact that none of the three members of TCOCIWSNHHASITDT could agree on what, exactly, the commercial in question should be like.

For example, some think that doing the entire spot in black & white would be a powerful and classy statement. Other discussions center on whether there should be a spokesperson on screen, or simply a voice-over. And so on.

We go back a week later to shoot the spot. We spend all day there. Instead of The Chef feeding us some of his fine and likely nicotine-stained cuisine, we have to go foot our own bill for burgers. So much for gratitude.

Then we return home to edit the spot. Lots of dissolves and moody lighting – in color, I might add – and The Chef even graces our production studio to provide the voice-over himself. Everything looks good. Everyone likes it. Everyone seems to agree that this is one of the better productions we’ve turned in.

And then the Committee swings into action.

They decide it needs to be different somehow, with Agency Lady, The Chef and The Chef’s Agent all issuing completely different directives as to how to “improveâ€? the spot which, only a week ago, everyone thought was grand. The Chef’s Agent thinks it should be redone in black & white with spot color on things like candles and flames from the grill. Agency Lady wants it reshot on film. (Few TV stations, if any, use film anymore. Even the top market stations don’t bother — and why should they, when they can rent the equipment?)

And so on. In all, at least a dozen revisions are made and handed in. The Chef’s voice-over is replaced, the spot goes from black and white to color and back again (and again), the music is changed nearly every time, and people keep making suggestions.

And then the damn place goes out of business while revisions are still being made.

Maybe it was the fact that they couldn’t agree on the bloody TV commercial and never got around to putting it on the air more than once or twice.

The saga ends with Agency Lady contacting the station’s sales manager, blaming we, the production guys, for the whole folly, and demanding that the production — which went far above and beyond the typical “come on down!â€? spot — should be pro bono since it was such a fiasco. Numerous 80-mile trips between Fort Smith and Fayetteville, several long days on the clock, and countless hours of post production…and she doesn’t want us to bill her for it.

That incident made me decide to leave commercial production and focus more on promotions, something which always intrigued me anyway. I had, by this point, done numerous promos and found them interesting and entertaining to work on. And if I was entertained, there was a good chance that the viewers would be too. Plus…no Committee of Clueless Individuals. With promos, you’re working directly for the station.

Never again, I said. I started looking for a promo job and eventually got one. It was fun beyond my wildest dreams. And at long last, I forgot about Agency Lady and the TV commercial from hell that had driven me out of the lucrative field of TV commercial production.

Bliss.

2002
Having been to Green Bay and back, I’m now working news promotions at Fort Smith’s ABC station. Not quite as much fun, and very frequently frustrating, but also very challenging. I’ve been here for two and a half years now.

In June, a project from hell slowly begins to coalesce in our Fayetteville office, a project which will bring me back in contact with one of my arch-nemeses from the Committee. They’re still out there – and they’re secretly plotting my destruction. Or perhaps just trying to drive me insane.

The project is an awards presentation video for a homebuilders’ association, and the account rep contacted at our station is assured that this will be a quick edit, only about five minutes long, nothing to it. But there is something to it, something dark and sinister. For our account rep has been contacted by Agency Lady, still doing her one-woman show posing as an advertising agency. The plot thickens.

By the time the sales department contacts my boss in creative services, he already has misgivings about doing a presentation video. This is usually the sort of thing that the commercial production department does. The first time I catch a whiff of Agency Lady’s name in connection with this, I voice misgivings, and remind everyone of her involvement with the Chef’s doomed restaurant. Nobody listens.

(It’s worth a mention here that just once in my life, I’ve always wanted to stage-whisper the words “I tried to warn them…but they didn’t listen.� I just always expected those words to coincide with a tragic blimp accident or something similarly momentous, not a TV project.)

The project keeps getting pushed back because Agency Lady is having a hard time getting her crap together. Once there has been a great gathering of crap, in sufficient amounts to fuel the presentation video on pure fertilizer power alone, Agency Lady will appear and issue instructions. At least this is what they tell me will happen. The crap collection procedure continues until the Friday afternoon before the Wednesday night awards dinner.

Agency Lady arrives, waving a newspaper special supplement recently published to promote the event. In this supplement are no fewer than 44 houses which need to be included, one by one, in this video presentation. Each of these houses is represented not by a photo, but by a very fine-line architectural side-elevation drawing. The kind of very fine-line architectural side-elevation drawing which, when knocked down to TV resolution, results in eye-boggling moire patterns. There are also nearly two dozen sponsors, and at one point Agency Lady asks if the entire newspaper supplement page, which must measure all of 10 x 12 inches in irritatingly tiny type, can be compressed onto the screen.

I respond, truthfully, by telling her that it would look very, very bad — and would be completely illegible. To this, she replies, “Okay, never mind about putting the page on the screen then.â€?

This is a very important thing, as you’ll see later.

That night, after my other duties are finished (around 7:30pm), I set about the extremely arduous tack of copying down, from the newspaper circular, the address and builder of each house/subdivision. All 44 of these things are clustered six to a page in the circular, again in very small type, and I don’t even get all of these things typed up that night. Oh, and once the voice track for the presentation was edited and timed out, it was not five minutes. It was closer to twenty.

Over the weekend, I spend 24 hours getting the project to a point where it’s about 85% completed. I made it look as good as possible, and aside from all the moire patterns on those blasted line-art renderings, it almost did look presentable.

On Monday morning, the client — i.e. Agency Lady — wants to see the project, finished or not. She wants to see it now. Now, keeping in mind that this is Monday and we have our routine duties to perform once again, Agency Lady is politely told that she’ll be able to see it Monday night or Tuesday morning, because we won’t be able to get around to dubbing it off until then. The project is dubbed off that afternoon, and is prepared to be sent up to the Fayetteville office via our microwave link that night at around 7pm.

Tuesday morning I walk in, and discover that I’m being accused of gross incompetence. Apparently Agency Lady wanted all of the houses’ visuals to be nothing more than the newspaper pages. She wanted everything to be exactly as seen in the newspaper circular, in fact. She wanted the newspaper circular’s pages transferred to television in whole chunks.

But did she ever explicitly tell me this? No. Guess my gross incompetence is in the area of telepathy.

By Tuesday afternoon, the project has been taken away from our station, and the station has lost its sponsorship of the awards dinner (for which the presentation video was to be our contribution, in lieu of money). Given that I clocked in over 24 hours of time-and-a-half, I’m sure that in a few days accounting will be lamenting the fact that the sponsorship wasn’t just bought outright. Having me at the station all weekend on the clock will almost certainly prove to be more expensive.

And the capper to the situation? Agency Lady, in a huff, tells us that she’ll be going to a video production house in Fayetteville to get the presentation done right.

So let’s check the score at halfway through the fourth quarter here, shall we?

It took me over 24 hours — spread out over three days — to put together the now-rejected presentation. At the time Agency Lady called to tell us we were being dumped and she was going to “start from scratch,â€? about 27 hours remained before the awards dinner began.

And I learned later in the day that, being a busy production house, the place she had chosen to redo the entire presentation could only allot four hours of prep and edit time. It would’ve taken me about 90 minutes to bring the presentation, as I had edited it, to a state of completion — but she had now burned that bridge with the station’s management.

In short, she had four hours to replicate a project I had taken well over a full day to do.

I’m not a vengeful man, nor do I pride myself on such. Sometimes, however, I do get a little bit of satisfaction from a perfectly natural come-uppance in which I had to take no action.

As I put the finishing touches on this piece, I look at the clock and note that the awards dinner began about an hour ago, and so too, presumably, did the video. If, in fact, Agency Lady, my arch nemesis, got one done. I almost wish I could see what it looked like.

Bliss.

I’ve joked in the past about the time I waste on my PC. I’m not going to say I’ve gotten any better at that, especially since I recently resumed my foolhardy quest to play all 32,000 variations of FreeCell. (I’m up to 322. Please send food.) That said, I really wouldn’t call a lot of my time online a waste. I thought it might be worthwhile to take a tour through my bookmarks and discuss some of the resources I use on the web. This list is by no means exhaustive.

Yahoo!: I use my customized Yahoo page as my home page. I can get the headlines from any number of news services, including Reuters, the AP, and ABC News, along with a weather report for Philadelphia, video and DVD release info, and scores for professional and college sports teams. I track my investment portfolio here — and boy, hasn’t that been fun the last two years! Last but not least, I can add up to three daily comic strips to the page. Right now I have Doonesbury, Fox Trot and Non Sequitur.

Philly.com: The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News have their websites here. I’m less than thrilled with the recent redesign, which seems to be consistent throughout Knight Ridder/RealCities sites. But I read my hometown papers for free on days when I don’t buy a Daily News for the subway, so I can’t argue. The last year I lived in New York, this link to home was a life saver.

Google: Search engine of the gods. Now it even has a comprehensive database of Usenet postings. I rarely bother with the Yahoo! Search feature on my home page, because it usually sends me here anyway.

TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com: I am something of a financial news junkie, and this is probably my favorite site for such info. TheStreet is primarily a straight news site, but it also has a decent personal finance section, with a lot of mutual fund-related interviews and information, plus tax tips and other information. There’s also some commentary, although the bulk of that is found on the subscription-based RealMoney. I know I have nowhere near the right psychological or intellectual profile to do the kind of stock trading that is the focus of RealMoney, but I find the window to the minds of the people that do to be fascinating. Plus, technology columnist Jim Seymour often has some nifty nuggets on personal tech.

I used to read The Motley Fool, but they made their message board subscription-based, and I decided that was money I could spend better elsewhere. Without that, there wasn’t much reason to visit the Fool, because I’ve found that their staff writers make too many mistakes and don’t really offer much in the way of useful analysis — the best stuff was contributed by the message board posters. (In fact, the Not News forums were in large part inspired by the Fool community.) I’ve also made use of the personal finance tools at Quicken.com, but I don’t spend as much time there as I used to. When I finish my Ph.D. and get a job, that’ll probably change as I have to make decisions about retirement planning, home purchasing, and so on.

CNN.com: I supplement the headlines from my home page here, and catch the occasional editorial, analysis, or review as well. It’s a good spot for breaking news, and their sports section — with writers from Sports Illustrated — is pretty good. Ah, corporate synergy at work!

ESPN.com: On the other hand, I satisfy 75% of my sports info cravings here, especially during baseball season. Columnist Rob Neyer has an almost-daily column that’s a must-read for me. Neyer is a ‘sabermetrician,’ someone who does a lot of statistical research and analysis on baseball. As a result, he tends to challenge the conventional wisdom much of the time, to the consternation of traditionalists. And you know how much I enjoy challenging tradition based on empirical research. ESPN also lured Jayson Stark away from the Philadelphia Inquirer; Stark is probably the first sportswriter I knew by name, and I’ve loved his sense of humor and the absurd since I was nine. The site does quite well with sports other than baseball, of course, and I like the irreverent humor present in their ‘Page 2‘ section.

The Digital Bits: If I want info or reviews on upcoming DVDs, I go here. End of story. (Except for the moment, because they’re changing servers.)

The Brunching Shuttlecocks: This site doesn’t update as often as I wish it did, but when it does it’s usually funny. Some very intelligent satire along with some silly but fun stuff. And I usually enjoy the Self-Made Critic‘s move reviews.

Salon: I paid for a premium membership to the site, but I admit I don’t go there as often as I probably should. They have some very nice A&E and political reporting and analysis, even if I don’t always agree with their outlook. (I find this to be more an issue with the A&E reviews than the political stuff, but that may be because I’m more selective in the political analysis I read.) I have to give the site credit for making me aware of Arianna Huffington’s latest writings; I find her current not-Republican-but-not-really-Democrat-either outlook to be rather thought provoking, and she has the guts to say when she has rethought her position on an issue.

Amazon: Not only are we an Amazon affiliate, not only are they a great resource for comparison shopping, and not only is the free-shipping-on-orders-over-99-bucks offer too good to pass up, but their Look Inside feature has been a life saver. I was doing some bibliographic research for my dissertation proposal, and none of the research databases I access through the library page at Temple University (which is itself normally quite helpful) were giving me the info I needed. I was able to look up a couple of current books in the field and read some of the opening chapters, plus check out the indexes. Very cool feature.

Comics Newsarama: One of the better daily sources for news and features on the comic book industry. For reviews, I check out Randy Lander and Don MacPherson’s The Fourth Rail and Paul O’Brien’s The X-Axis every week. For general discussion, the occasional hot tip, and hobnobbing with folks in the biz, I hang out at the Warren Ellis Forum. (Editor’s Note: Some links in this section have been altered/removed as out of date.)

The Weather Channel: Yeah, it’s wrong more often than not, it seems, but it’s still nice to get some idea of what’s on the way, and this way I don’t have to watch local TV news.

TheLogBook.com: I write for this site fairly regularly, and its webmaster Earl Green is a contributor here. So if you like anything either of us have to say, you should check it out.

As most of our regular Not News readers know, Dave and I are expecting our first child in April of 2002 (or whenever he or she feels like arriving, but that’s the ballpark). Since this is our first pregnancy, there’s been a great deal for us to learn and get used to in a relatively short amount of time. (Think the “We mustn’t panic, we mustn’t panic” scene from Chicken Run.) One thing that takes a bit of patience is getting used to all the questions we (well, mostly I) get asked. All kinds of questions. I’m patient, because, frankly, I know I’ve interrogated my share of expectant mothers so it’s only fair that I take a little. Also, I know people are just plain curious. They see a belly. They know how it got there but they still want to know more.

Bottom line, I have to be patient because if I can’t have patience with this, why the heck am I having a kid? Here’s a list of my favorites:

How are you feeling? I’ve come to the conclusion that many people have a morbid fascination with morning sickness and other pregnancy-related ailments. Oh, I know most people ask this question out of genuine concern. But deep down I have to wonder that they aren’t waiting for me to wow them with tales of uncontrolled nausea at the sight of green M&M’s or swollen feet the size of Lake Michigan. There’s a great deal of pressure to impress here. I hate to disappoint them but most of the time I just feel tired. No throwing up, just sleepy . . . hey where are you going?

What are your cravings? Expect this question and the previous one to come as a set. There is still the tremendous pressure to impress, or in this case, gross someone out so much that they throw up. If you are like me, and unlucky enough to not have had any cravings, invest some time thinking some up or stealing other pregnant women’s cravings. Why get that bored look when you have to tell someone “Oh, none, really” or “Just milk, actually” (Lord, I am dull!) when you can wow them with “sauerkraut on graham crackers” or “Oreos with bean dip?” C’mon, your pride is at stake here.

How far along are you? This is a dangerous question for two reasons. One, doctors measure pregnancy in weeks, the general public does so in months – the figures never match. I’ve been pregnant about 384 weeks now — or just over five months. To amuse yourself, you can give the person who’s asking one figure and ask them to compute the other. Hours of fun, I tell you.

Secondly, if you’re being asked by a someone who has already had a baby, there will be the inevitable comparison between your size and how “big” she was at this stage. There’s no way to avoid this. If you’re carrying larger, you may get some hearty encouragement about having a “strong one” or a “bruiser.” If you’re carrying smaller, expect follow-up questions about exactly how much weight you’ve gained, what you eat, etc. How much weight you gain during pregnancy is a very political issue. If you gain less than 25 pounds, lie as much as possible. Pad that number, double it, triple it if you have to. You’ll thank me later.

Do you know if it’s a boy or girl? I know this question is inevitable but sometimes I wonder if everyone is keeping a global tally and needs my baby’s gender to meet some sort of headcount deadline. This isn’t quite so bad now that we know. I’m quite happy to share the news. Besides, it’s not like I can keep it a secret forever. Though to be honest, I got this question so early on in my pregnancy (as early as 2 weeks, can you imagine?) – I worry that there’s some “way” to know that I just missed. Was I absent the day in Sex Ed that they gave out the “Morning After Gender Decoder Rings”?

Do you have any names picked out? I cannot imagine how some parents-to-be manage to get to the end of the pregnancy without having this issue settled. You get asked this question every eight seconds or so. Good luck to you folks who’d like to keep both this and the baby’s gender a surprise because curious mobs have been known to beat at least one out of you. Yes, it’s a complicated issue — should we name the baby after someone, who should that person be? What will the family think? However, the two most important things to keep in mind when picking a name: a) how does it sound screamed across a crowded grocery store (because that’s what you’ll be doing with it most often) and b) is it “trendy” (that is, will all the kids in the store come running when you scream it)?

That, in a nutshell, has been my pregnancy thus far. I am sure that, in some strange way, dealing with these questions has helped prepare me for motherhood. I would advise most mothers-to-be to also pick up a copy of Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care and What to Expect When You’re Expecting. These books give you clear, understandable answers to many of your own pregnancy questions. It will give you peace of mind until you get to your doctor’s office and learn that it was all wrong anyway. Good Luck.

Anyone who paid any attention to the rise and fall of the stock market over the last ten years knows that the “new economy” in and of itself, is not reason enough to do anything – lest you end up a major shareholder in Pets.com. However the competitive environment that came out of that period did lead to some important changes in the way many of us work.

A tight market coupled with a relative abundance of capital made it much easier for workers to demand more from their employers – without fear of losing their jobs. Certain perks like onsite massages and weekly beer and pizza parties (a Silicon Valley software company, of course), are easy to write off as frivolous. However, employees might be less willing to give up perks like tele-commuting, tuition reimbursement, and, a phenomenon that gained tremendous momentum in the nineties – domestic partner benefits.

Recent surveys estimate that the number of U.S. employers extending health and other benefits to unmarried domestic partners (both heterosexual and homosexual) at between 18 and 22%, or roughly 2500 colleges, governments and private corporations. Nearly 90% of those that offer these benefits began doing so in the last five years. As a spokesperson for a Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.- based advocacy group for gays in the workplace, said in early 2000, “Domestic partner benefits are increasingly becoming a standard business practices in corporate America. Employers have discovered that these benefits help attract and keep the best workers, a critical consideration in the current tight job market.”

Offering a competitive benefits package to attract the best workers may have been priority number one in the late nineties but in late 2001, it is almost certainly not. In a time where economic and other factors led to 199,000 job cuts in September alone, many are wondering if the other merits of domestic partner benefits are enough to sustain them.

What Are Domestic Partner Benefits?

Before we can discuss their merits, perhaps it’s best to describe domestic partner benefits according to the definition found in most employer policies. Domestic partner benefits can include medical and dental insurance, disability and life insurance, pension benefits, family and bereavement leave, education and tuition assistance, credit union membership, relocation and travel expenses, and anything else that spouses and other family members may be entitled to under a company’s benefits policy. While definitions of “domestic partners” can differ from company to company, the basic definition, which is intended to approximate a legal marriage, is as follows:

• there must be an ongoing and committed spouse-like relationship intended to exist indefinitely, which has existed for at least six months;
• the partners are not related by blood to a degree of closeness that would prohibit legal marriage in the state in which they reside;
• neither of the partners can be the legal spouse or domestic partner of any other person;
• both have shared the same residence for at least six months, are responsible to each other for the direction and financial management of their household, and are jointly responsible for each other’s financial obligations.

Some companies require that the employee and their partner sign an affidavit or other official document attesting to the above or be registered with a local domestic partner registry (if one exists in the area; there is a list available). Some companies also limit DP benefits to homosexual partners using the argument that the law does not prevent heterosexual partners from marrying. For the most part, however, most DP policies apply to all domestic partners and their natural or adopted dependents.

In light of the current economic downtown (and the impact on the workforce), advocates of domestic partner benefits argue that while having a benefits package with a competitive edge was the easiest way to “sell” DP benefits to corporate America, it’s far from the only reason:

Reason 1 – Practice What You Preach

One good reason to offer DP benefits is to enforce a company’s own anti-discrimination policy. If a company has already taken its policy further than the federal and most local governments by also prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, it is, some say, a natural extension to offer gay employees the opportunity to take advantage of all the benefits offered to married couples. This is particularly true since most states do not allow same sex marriages. Until the law recognizes these relationships, some companies may choose to do so in the only way they can. One Philadelphia-area company also attempts to extend this policy to companies it does business with by inquiring about the benefits polices of its clients, vendors, partners, etc.

Reason 2 – Equal Pay for Equal Work

As any employer with tell you, an employee’s take home pay is only a portion of his/her overall compensation. If that employee works full time and is entitled to benefits such as health care coverage, dental coverage, pension plans, etc., these can account for up to 40% of that employee’s total cost to the company. Therefore, someone who is in a committed relationship but not married to their partner cannot receive their full compensation without an inclusive DP policy. This is especially true of pension or life and disability plans, which normally pay benefits to a spouse in the event of the employee’s death.

Reason 3 – Reflecting America

Between the 1990 and 2000 Censuses, there was an over 300% increase in the number of same sex unmarried partner households. Conversely, the number of “traditional” households (comprised of heterosexual married couples and their children) has been declining in the past 30 years, from 40% of the total number of American households in 1970 to just under 25% in 2000. With that in mind, a policy that includes domestic partner benefits is an attempt to better meet the needs of a population that, for one reason or another, is relying less and less upon marriage as the basis of a family.

What About the Costs?

In this era of layoffs and corporate belt-tightening, it may seem unlikely that a company would agree to policy changes that would significantly increase its employee compensation spending. But, as studies among the companies already offering DP benefits, extending existing polices to include domestic partners doesn’t hurt the bottom line and the return on the investment is significant.

Separate studies conducted in from 1996 through 1998 by the International Society of Certified Employee Benefits Specialists and management consulting firms Towers Perrin and Hewitt Associates all show a “minimal” increase in medical claims. Moreover, the costs of covering a domestic partner were no higher than covering a spouse or other dependent. This last point in particular is important because one argument against DP policies has been the fear that costs from covering AIDS and HIV-related illnesses would lead to an increase in the company’s medical premiums. This has not proven to be the case. One reason, says one insurer that also offers DP benefits to its own employees, is that the costs of covering AIDS-related illnesses are not significantly higher than other illness such as cancer, major heart disease, etc. Moreover, in many cases, medical costs for same sex domestic partners is lower than those of heterosexual couples because there are fewer pre-natal, pregnancy, infant care costs to cover.

The overall costs of implementing a DP benefits program tend to stay low because very few eligible partners actually utilize the cost-bearing parts of the programs. Enrollment rates hover around one or two percent of eligible employees. The major reason for this is that a large percentage of same sex domestic partner relationships are dual-income, meaning that partners generally have access to their own health and dental care plans. This statistic, should not, says the HRC, be taken as evidence that DP benefits are unnecessary. Domestic partners who utilize these plans say that the acknowledgment of their commitment is just as important as any financial benefits. One partner said that the plan was worthwhile just because it allowed her to be acknowledged when her partner became seriously ill and was hospitalized. Hospital regulations usually limit visitors to family. Since she was an acknowledged by the company’s medical plan as a domestic partner, she had a convincing argument for hospital staff who would have otherwise barred her from the partner’s bedside.

Secondly, there have been, contrary to many concerns, virtually no instances of fraud in response to the availability of DP benefits. Some argue that an employee could allow “virtually anyone” to get “free or cheap health care” on the company’s tab. As mentioned above, the companies offering DP benefits require employees to meet specific requirements, including affidavits and other sworn statements before any benefits are paid. (Frankly, this is even stricter than what married couples are asked – when signing my husband up for my company’s medical insurance, the HR department took my word that he was my husband. I did not have to show a copy of our marriage certificate.) American Airlines, which only extends DP benefits to same sex partners, requires that the couple pledge to marry, if and when same sex marriage becomes legal, in order to get the benefits.

The bottom line: the economy may have made many workplace perks passé but, as many companies large and small (including these) have shown, domestic partner benefits do have a place in today’s working environment. Companies that are looking to offering them should prepare themselves for a backlash, but can be assured that there are practical, justifiable reasons to help the American workplace keep pace with America.

I had the following dialogue at least a dozen times in the beginning of July:

ME: I have to go downtown for jury selection on the tenth.

OTHER PERSON: Oh, they’ll never pick you. Lawyers never pick jurors with too much education.

I’ll be honest, I assumed the same thing, and I guess I can’t blame anyone who would knock a philosophy PhD student off a panel. I mean, would you want to have to convince some know-it-all punk whose job it is to nitpick and find holes in any argument? And while it bugged the nobler side of my nature, which really wanted a chance to do its civic duty, there was a side of me that really hoped the conventional wisdom would hold up. I had just finished teaching an intensive summer course at Temple, I still had a month to go in the other course I was teaching, I had a number of personal and academic projects to catch up on (including this site), and Pattie’s and my vacation in San Diego was fast approaching. So somewhat smugly, I showed up at Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Center and figured I’d collect my nine bucks and be on my way.

Whoops. I must have been really convincing during the voir dire stage, because despite my education, despite my having been mugged last November, and despite having had some relatives who’ve had run-ins with the law, I found out I was accepted for the jury, and that I would start hearing a rape case on Thursday, two days later. All of a sudden, I had to make plans to cover the two class sessions I was guaranteed to miss, to say nothing of the fact that my plane left for San Diego exactly one week after the trial was set to start. The judge had said she expected the trial to take until Tuesday, which left only a one day margin for error.

Now, like I said, I was a little annoyed by this, but the larger part of me was excited about the chance to use my reasoning skills to serve the community. And when I arrived at the courthouse the first day, I quickly realized that my fellow jurors were intelligent, serious-minded people who took the responsibility seriously, as irritated as they may have been to have their lives disrupted by it. I was feeling pretty optimistic about our chances to resolve the case fairly, intelligently, and within the expected time frame. Then the trial started.

I may be biased by this experience, but I can not think of a harder type of case to decide than a rape case like this one, where both parties acknowledge sex took place and the crucial issue is whether or not there was consent. It’s not a question of looking at facts and determining if those facts are valid evidence for a particular conclusion, like ‘Is so-and-so’s alibi valid’ or ‘did so-and-so really have the opportunity to commit the crime.’. Ultimately, it boils down to a she-said/he-said (or a she-said/his-lawyers-said) situation, where your decision ultimately rests on your assessment of the alleged victim’s credibility. And that means that the ideal defense strategy is an all out effort to destroy that credibility, in a scene right out of every rape-related movie of the week. The defense made every effort to imply that the alleged victim had been flirting with the defendant for weeks, that she had behaved suggestively the entire night of the incident, that she had invited the defendant to her room and that the allegation of rape was a hastily-concocted attempt to save her reputation with her friends and boyfriend. It was a classic blame-the-victim maneuver, delivered by a female defense attorney whose smugness and hostility made me want to get out of the jury box and slap her. At the very least, I wanted to deliver a guilty verdict to show her that This Would Not Be Tolerated.

There was only one problem. Remember what I said about the case boiling down to an assessment of the alleged victim’s credibility? Well, I had major problems there. Her testimony conflicted in major ways with just about every other witness’ account of events before and after the incident. Now, my study of history and of journalism has shown me that there are almost always inconsistencies in different accounts of events — heck, when my friend and I were mugged, we remembered different things and different parts of the event only a few hours later. But in this case, the inconsistencies were major, and concerned crucial elements of the alleged victim’s testimony, details that were so significant it’s hard to imagine how one might forget or confuse them. The only conclusion I could come to was that the witness was lying about certain things.

Now, the judge’s instructions to the jury are quite clear — a juror can believe all of a witness’ testimony, or part of it. It’s not required to assume that because a witness lied in one instance, he or she was always lying. And it was plausible to me that the alleged victim was telling the truth about the alleged crime and lying about other significant elements in a misguided attempt to make her testimony more believable; in fact, that’s what I considered the most likely explanation. But then there’s the other part of the judge’s instructions — the definition of ‘reasonable doubt.’ We throw this phrase around all the time — Lord knows I use it often in my logic and critical thinking classes — but I don’t know if I had ever heard the official definition. A ‘reasonable doubt’ is one that would cause a person to pause or hesitate before making an important decision. Well, judging by the tossing and turning I was going in bed thinking about this case (and let no one tell you that jury duty is a walk in the park; besides the effort required to listen to and retain testimony — since you can’t take notes or reread the transcripts — the sheer weight of the responsibility is draining beyond belief), how could I not say I had reason to pause or hesitate? Sure, I had concluded that it was most plausible to believe that the alleged victim was lying about some things but truthful about other things, but the idea that she was lying about the whole thing was plausible, if unlikely. Thing is, I wasn’t allowed to say that the defendant was probably guilty. The presumption of innocence means that it had to be all or nothing. And I fully support that standard, even if it means that sometimes juries will have to let a person they believe probably committed a crime go free.

However, for a small but significant minority of jurors, there was no doubt in their mind that the defendant was guilty. The scenarios that I found to be plausible enough to raise reasonable doubt weren’t at all convincing to them. And there was no convincing these people otherwise — they had the courage of their convictions, and I applaud them for that. The notion of some kind of compromise verdict that would let us all get back to our lives was raised, and quickly dismissed. Moments like that made it a trying but ultimately heartening experience. The only problem is that our deadlock meant that the jury deliberations took far longer than anyone expected — and it came time for me to fly to San Diego. The other jurors were escorted out of the courtroom while I was left alone with the judge, who thanked me for my effort and dismissed me from the panel. I was free, but I felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment and failure that I have not been able to shake. I so desperately wanted to finish what I started, to resolve the question before us one way or another. Instead, I was being told that life, and the deliberations, would go on without me. I’m trying, now, to retain the positives of the experience; my faith in the possibility of a citizen democracy is restored, and my belief in the importance of the Not News project is stronger than ever.

Back in my college days (which are now embarrassingly long ago), my knowledge of con artists was limited to the three-card monte dealer a few blocks off campus who for some reason, always seemed to find a few marks among our students. Being a paranoid native New Yorker trained since my toddler days not to make eye contact with anyone, not even my stuffed toys, I never actually saw the guy, I only heard the stories. Despite the university’s warnings and despite the fact that the con itself was older than dirt, a fair number of students blew their beer money in search of the red card. At 19, that kind of loss is a life lesson, a reminder to keep your wits about you at all times. It’s also mockery ammunition for your friends for well into the next decade.

These days, working at a financial institution (and having a slightly unsettling fascination with illegalities), my knowledge of frauds and cons has grown to the point where I’m just one big knot of suspiciousness. I’m going to make myself useful by sharing my paranoia in the form of information about the recent spike in “tech” cons (cons committed using the telephone or Internet). With these types of frauds, there’s much more than beer money at stake. When it becomes common for someone to lose thousands in a phony online auction or their savings in a phony stock scheme, life lessons like these are way overpriced.

Internet and Telephone Frauds (including telemarketing fraud) are unique for a number of reasons. In face to face cons, the con artist typically needs time with the victims to establish rapport and build trust. They’re literally building your confidence in them (which is where the term comes from). For some would-be victims, this is sufficient time for their own intuition or common sense to kick in and tell them to pull out of whatever schemes the fraudster has planned. Of course, not everyone does. Moreover, people who have been conned in person usually have a description, paper trail, or other lead for authorities to handle whereas many “tech” con artists are impossible to trace. Finally, our three-card monte dealer and his accomplice, the $20 Rolex salesman, have nothing on telemarketers and online scammers when it comes to volume. Good telemarketers can make hundreds of calls per day and online scammers are limited only by their own bandwidth and imaginations. Anyone see a problem here?

The National Consumers League, the Consumers Union (the folks who publish Consumer Reports) and the FCC are just a few of the people who see a problem. They’ve started tracking telemarketing and Internet fraud more carefully in recent years. The National Consumers League, a hundred-year-old consumer advocacy group, published a report last year, which placed online fraud losses at well over $3,500,000. (Of course, they didn’t count the NASDAQ because for some reason, getting people to invest in online pet retailing is actually legal). Tops on the list of Internet fraud were online auctions, though work-at-home schemes and multilevel marketing cons have found a home online as well. Even the tried and true Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud is alive and kicking around online. The Internet is still relatively new, and as more people move online, the number and variety of online crimes will surely increase.

Telemarketers, on the other hand, have been at the fraud game for years, honing their skills. Many are nearly impossible to differentiate from legitimate salespeople (not that anyone who calls you during dinner should really be called legitimate). A study by the NCL puts losses to telemarketing fraud in the area of $40 billion per year. The FBI estimates that there are 15,000 illegal telephone sales companies at work in this country. While they may not all operate in boiler rooms, they’re all out to separate consumers from their money selling phony investments, goods, and services.

Here are just a few examples of the telemarketing scams that have worked for many years, courtesy of www.crimes-of-persuasion.com:

You may have already won — Scammers have used “advance fee sweepstakes” for years with tremendous success. They call of thousands upon thousands of winning “entrants” (not that the people called ever remember entering anything) to tell them that they’ve “won” a large sum of money or other “valuable” prize. To collect, all the need to do is send in a check or money order (or give them a credit card number) to cover the taxes, release fees, subscription costs, etc. Companies like these target the elderly; 80% of the scam victims are over the age of 65. In one case, a pair of telemarketers impersonated federal tax officials to bilk elderly victims out of $20,000 or more each.

You may have already been scammed — If you’ve been scammed once, beware of helping hands, at least those not attached to recognized law enforcement agencies. The bottom-dwellers of the telemarketing world are those who prey on the victimized. (They actually buy “sucker lists” with names of previous scam victims). They promise to help you recover your lost money – for a small fee. Many of these scammers operate under official sounding names such as the Fraudulent Action Network and charge anywhere from $200 to $1000 to “help” victims. At best, victims receive a list of organizations to contact about the crime which the victim could have easily gotten for free out of the phone book. At worst, the victim gets a double asterisk next to his or her name on the “sucker list.”

Boiler Room not starring Ben Affleck — Real life “boiler room” (they actually use rented space in reputable looking office buildings) telemarketing operations may have up to 50 reps each making 250 to 300 calls per day selling everything from penny stocks to gemstones to time shares. The best work much like three-card monte dealers, working to gain your trust with multiple phone calls. One ingenious operation called and gave victims stock forecasts until they bit. What the victims didn’t know was that the boiler room made 200 calls, they told one hundred people that the stock would rise, and the other 100 that the stock would fall. After watching what actually happened, they simply called the correct 100 and made another forecast, cutting the groups in half until they had a working pool of victims ready to invest.

Sure, knowing a handful of the methods that scammers use may help, but aren’t con men constantly coming up with new ideas, new methods? How are you supposed to protect yourself? Many consumer advocacy groups have free fraud prevention web sites on the Internet available for consumers who have been scammed or who just want to protect themselves. Many sites are updates regularly with the latest scams and the latest on criminal investigations. Visit the links I’ve included with the article for more information. You can also check with you local news organizations to see which frauds are popular in your area. Many scammers are methodical, especially if they’ve been successful in a given area.

The surest way to avoid being scammed is to not be afraid of paranoia. I’m serious. Ask questions. Press for more information. A legitimate salesperson should be happy to answer them. A scammer doesn’t want to give away too much. Here are some questions that will help you tell the difference:

How did you get my name?

Be very suspicious if they say “the phone book” or some other vague answer.

What is the risk involved?

If they try to convince you that it’s a guaranteed investment, hang up. Investments, particularly securities, always carry risks, by their nature.

Can you send me this information in writing?

If they tell you that you must “act now,” hang up.

Would you mind explaining this information to my lawyer?

Again, if they tell you that they can’t because you have to “act now,” hang up . . . loudly.

Can you give me any references?

This may not always be 100% effective in itself because they could just give you the number of the person sitting next to them in their boiler room, but if they can’t even give you that, it’s a big red flag.

New cons and frauds pop everyday and even with advocacy groups pushing for privacy legislation (itself a controversial subject), we can’t rely on the laws to stay ahead of the criminals. Each person needs to exercise their common sense, ingenuity, and self-restraint when dealing with con artists. They make big promises but in the end, they’re only looking out for themselves. Confidence crimes are aptly named. In the end, it’s your judgment and your trust in other human beings that is stolen. How much money is that worth?

Other Helpful Links:

Internet Fraud Watch
The Cagey Consumer

Death is a strange bird. No matter what you do, no matter how you prepare, no matter how well you think you’ve dealt with the immutability of the eventual demise of someone you love, you’re always surprised when it happens. You’ve watched the jocular weatherman’s five-day forecast, you see the clouds coming, and you wear the raincoat and open the umbrella and roll up all the car windows, but somehow you still get wet. Soaked. Sopping.

This is what ran through my head as I was mopping tears off my cheeks a few weeks ago, and looking down at my cat, who had just expired on a stainless steel table in a veterinarian’s office. Since the night before, when I found her in front of our other cat’s water bowl, suddenly underweight and stinking of litterbox, I knew there was something rotten in the state of Mavis.

When I took her to the vet and he said immediately that she was critically ill, I knew I was going to have to make The Decision. When he prodded her kidneys and said he couldn’t tell them apart from the other organs, I knew I’d be driving home alone. When he showed me the x-ray, and told me her kidneys had somehow ballooned to the size of lemons when they should be about as big as a pair of dried apricots, I gulped and made the final arrangements in my head: Someone who has been my roommate for the past three years is going to die.

I’d known it all day, and I’d gone to bed thinking it the night before. I didn’t hide from the truth; in general, I’m naturally pessimistic and cynical to the point of wondering if the whole universe is just a big joke on me, so I wasn’t expecting any miracles. I was emotionally prepared for this. I opened the umbrella.

I got soaked.

Since then, I’ve thought of Mavis’s last minutes, prodded and probed and punctured on a cold table with a glass rod full of mercury in her rectum. I’ve thought about how she yowled when the technicians had to push on her bladder to make her pee in a vial. I’ve thought about how she yowled louder when the vet wrapped a tourniquet around her foreleg because he couldn’t find a vein. I’ve thought about how melodramatic I must have seemed afterward, slumping over the table and blubbering into her fur, even though I was still alive and comfortable and it was Mavis who had spent the last hour on a table in a lab, excreting water faster than she could drink it and facing the business ends of needles and rectal thermometers and unfamiliar fingers.

I thought of the signs of her illness that I should’ve seen but didn’t. I was changing the kitty-litter twice as much as usual; I’d just figured Mavis had developed some sort of litterbox treaty with Simba, the other cat, who she normally hated. Mavis started peeing when I was in the room, something she — a former stray — had always been too defensive to do; I thought maybe she was finally letting her guard down around me. I thought of how she had seemed just a little too uninterested in me, or food, or anything, over the past few weeks.

But I also thought of the time when she brought a sparrow, squawking like the Dickens, from the balcony and placed it in front of me in the bathroom and then sat there proudly, maybe waiting for me to stick it to the fridge with a magnet or something. When the sparrow tried to hop away, she would bat it down with a paw, then look at me again, with the same I-done-a-good-job-boss look on her face, like I was a Casa Nostra boss and she an up-and-coming kneecap-breaker.

And the times when she would curl up in bed next to my head and purr loudly and sometimes knead the pillow, tearing the pillowcase to shreds, and I would say “DAMMIT MAVIS I am trying to SLEEP!” and she wouldn’t move and I would roll over with plans to unceremoniously chuck her onto the floor, and she’d look all adorable with her eyes shut and her little paws working, and I’d lose my nerve and sleep on the couch.

And on warm nights when she would sit on the balcony waiting for me to come home, and meow like crazy when she saw me rounding the corner of the house, then be at the door when I opened it and practically fall out onto my feet.

And the time when she first came into my life, when I sat on my front stoop with a bowl of Bumblebee tuna and she ate the whole thing, and I tried to coax her upstairs into my apartment but she decided she’d rather curl up in my lap right there, and we enjoyed the warm night and said hi to passing neighbors. She came to live with me a few nights later.

These memories were better, and greater in volume than the one where she sat dehydrated on the vet’s table.

That’s the secret. You can’t prepare yourself for someone’s death. You can’t. Just forget about it, Kemosabe, ’cause it ain’t gonna happen. Even if Grandpa has been hooked up to machines for a year, you’ll still sob like a toddler when he finally goes away. No matter how waterproof the mackintosh, you’ll get wet.

But you can prepare yourself for the aftermath. You can dry off, eventually. You can’t help it. If you love someone, you’re prepared to dry. You’ve already got the memories, the mental Polaroids of how they looked when they were asleep, how they smiled when you bought them presents, how they laminated that cover of George magazine with the cast of The West Wing on it for you, how they talked about you in the acknowledgements of their dissertation. How they told you how great you are just at the time when you were feeling like a royal putz.

Last year, my grandmother was in the hospital, and my mother called me and said it might be a good idea for me to come home. She wasn’t responding to the medication the doctors were giving her, and she could barely sit up in bed. Soon after I got to the hospital, the medicine started working, and a few days later she went home. Nobody said the obvious: We were all terribly scared those would be our last moments with her.

Until Mavis died, I thought that I was prepared for my grandmother’s death, that when it finally happens, I would take it a bit easier, since I had been through the emotions before.

Now I know I’m wrong. When my grandmother passes on, I’ll be a wreck. There’s nothing I can do to get ready. It’ll hit me like a tidal wave, and pull me under for days, weeks, months.

But you can bet I’ll remember the hug she gave me that day at the hospital, after I had driven four hours in a rental Toyota because a reckless driver had totaled my Oldsmobile a few days before. It wasn’t the hug of a 75-year-old diabetic woman hooked up to a saline IV. It was the hug of a Navy SEAL leaving his family before a suicide mission, of a slave hugging her brother before the slavers dragged him to the auction block. Of a grandmother hugging her grandson who she feared desperately that she might not see before she died.

I’ll remember that hug, just as I’ll remember the last nuzzle Mavis gave my hand in the waiting room of the vet’s office. That hug, and that nuzzle, are what drags me out from under the riptide.

Mavis is dead now, and I’m still wet. Soaked. I’ll be that way for a while.

The secret is getting dry.