So British studies recently published in the journal Nature, show that girls have a gene which gives them a natural ability to socialize. Girls are genetically more polite? So what? According to these Limey professors with nothing better to do, females' brains are "hard wired" for polite social behavior while boys' brains lack this little feature. Dang, us guys just have to try real hard to learn etiquette and such. Speaking as a male, let me just say most of us don't bother and even fewer of us care. (Which fork to eat the salad with doesn't keep me up at night.)Guys are much cooler though, if you ask me. Males may not have that social gene but every young man seems born with instinctual knowledge of the esoteric skill of igniting one's own flatulence. I don't see many studies on that nor have I heard of many women who've attempted it. Or wanted to for that matter.
So these Brits think males are cursed with The Jerk Gene. Didn't the British invent manners or something? Don't they still wear powdered white wigs in court? Didn't they lose the war? Who really cares about the British anyway? They may rule the waves alright; the waving of delicate white hankies maybe. Pish posh to them I say! Anybody got a match?
Without the Jerk Gene, guys wouldn't take a hammer to an alarm clock to find out what makes it tick. They wouldn't stomp in puddles to see how high they can splash and they wouldn't invent new and exciting ways to hurt themselves like hang-gliding and Bungee jumping. Remember, someone once said that a Texan's last words are usually: "Hey, watch this!" Guys aren't polite on purpose and we're proud of it!
When a guy meets another guy and says "Jeez you're an ugly SOB but I like your car," they've bonded for life. That's male socializing and it comes naturally--no politeness necessary. All hail The Jerk Gene. You can have your tea parties girls, I'll take a lighter, a six pack, a buddy or two, a sack of burritos and a fishing boat over cotillion class any day. BURRP!!
I apologize to those readers weary of the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation but it's the little murder mystery that just won't go away. That and the links about the incident on the web just keep getting more interesting.
Situations surrounding the case continue to grow stranger as we approach the seventh month of the investigation. Previous columns in this space have focused on the prime suspects in the JonBenet Ramsey murder: her parents. This time we examine how Boulder's law enforcement officials have dealt so clumsily with the case that, short of a confession, the killer or killers will probably go free.
A few months ago Boulder Police had constructed, at a cost of almost 38 thousand tax dollars, a high-security "war room" specifically for the JonBenet Ramsey investigation where sensitive documents, pieces of evidence and investigators' notes were kept under lock and key. Last week someone managed to gain entry to this war room and copy certain files or all the information held on the "secure" computer they have there. All indications is that this was an inside job. Some feel it is the work of an individual working on the case trying to cover their butt for what will surely turn out to be a witch hunt for scapegoats when the wheels of the botched investigation finally come off.
From the beginning of the case, information has been handed over freely to the prime suspects' top-flight legal team--at the horror of the FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. (Remember, John Ramsey's first telephone call the morning the body was discovered was to his lawyer.) Seasoned law enforcement pros could not understand the behavior of Police Chief Tom Koby and District Attorney Alex Hunter when they, for instance, provided the family's lawyers with a copy of the "ransom note" before Patsy was required to submit handwriting samples. Crime fighting professionals were at a loss to explain the unprecedented procedure of providing the Ramseys with all notes concerning their previous casual interviews before conducting the only formal one, delayed by months due to the Ramseys suspicious stalling.
The men and women on the Boulder Police Force have voted no confidence in their chief Tom Koby. Koby has been in his home state of Texas for the past two weeks looking for another job.
The police and the district attorney's office are no longer on speaking terms about the case and each faction is holding its own evidence from the other in a childish keep-away game. Contention runs so deep in the police department that a sergeant who had been removed from the case early on is suing his superior officer for defamation of character. The female detective who was first to arrive at the murder scene the morning of December 26th reportedly "bonded" with the grieving Patsy on an emotional level, giving control of the house back to the prime suspects while the body lay undiscovered in a windowless room in the basement. She is responsible for allowing evidence to be tampered with, trampled on and destroyed, and is currently on stress leave. It was her first, and most probably her last murder case.
The high-ranking officer leading the Boulder investigation is now in Cocoa Beach Florida looking for another job. Boulder's mayor and district attorney have both suggested they will not seek additional terms. Not only has/have the murderer(s) gotten away with a heinous crime, he/she/they have managed to destroy the careers of the officials responsible for solving the case. No small feat, even for a millionaire, in the little murder mystery that just won't go away.
Well it's good news and bad news for AOL these days. The good news is that a Florida judge let them off the hook last week for the unfortunate 1994 sexual assault on a 14-year-old boy by a male pedophile he met in an AOL chat room. Judge James Carlisle sagely ruled that the boy's parents were responsible for what he did on the computer in his home, not the online service.
The boy's parents intend to appeal anyway. They didn't keep their eye on the kid but they certainly have their eye on the prize. They're asking for 8 million dollars, a buck for every AOL subscriber, revealing their true intentions.
The bad news is that AOL's policy of selling personal information about their subscribers to the highest bidder is coming under intense scrutiny. Again, dating back to 1994, Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey began complaining about AOL's practice of revealing the private details of its members for a price and, at that time, without permission. Needless to say, protectors of privacy have always been appalled at such practices and are requesting that the Federal Trade Commission put a stop to AOL's privacy invasion.
Attention AOL fans: your name, age, address, phone number, estimated income, number of children, and how long you've lived at your present location is all being sold to "list brokers," who probably sell them to such scourge as telemarketers and spammers. Wonder why you get all those annoying calls at dinnertime when you're just trying to drink your milk? Got AOL? Got spammed lately?
AOL stresses that the fine print of its membership agreement has been changed to allow this, but most folks who sign up for their 10, 20, 40 "free" hours (just try to disconnect) don't really go over the boiler plate language with any degree of attention to detail. If you have the time and the patience to read through AOL's 5,700 word terms-of-service contract you might catch the "removal procedure" that may slow AOL's packaging of your life to "select, reputable companies." Or, you could give your online business to a service you can trust instead of one you have to personally watchdog.
People are tongue clucking about Susan Molinari, recent member of the U.S. House of Representatives trading in her seat in government for a gig behind the news desk at CBS. Some feel that a public servent becoming a television personality is deeply disturbing (are these the same folks who voted for a television personality who became president?) This is nothing NOTHING compared to what Hazel O'Leary just pulled off.
We've all probably put Ms. Hazel O'Leary out of our minds. She was the Clinton appointee who ran up exhorbitant travel bills carting an entourage around the world on our tab (we who pay taxes) and generally ignoring the important business of her role as Secretary of Energy.
One of the most dispicable abuses of the public trust is leveraging a high ranking government position that oversees a dangerous industry to secure a lucrative (read: payoff) position in one of the companies that office supposedly regulated.
Replaced at the DOE with another corruptable player, Frederico Pena, Ms. O'Leary has been picked up by ICF Kaiser International, a company whose business she used to control from Washington. ICF Kaiser is doing the ten billion dollar clean up of Colorado's Rocky Flats nuclear waste dump. O'Leary wasted millions of tax dollars in Washington. Now she's in the private sector with billions at stake working for the "other side" with an insider's perspective. She is beneath contempt.
What stinks about this is that she left public service in disgrace, just to be rewarded by a private industry she probably granted some sort of unproveable favor allegedly maybe kind of could have. She was incompetent in Washington, yet the executives at ICF Kaiser feel she is worthy of a seat on the Board of Directors. The hubris involved is immense--all involved must feel the general public is so stupid or preoccupied they won't care or have the time to notice. Unfortunately, they are probably right.
Ms. O'Leary stands as an example of what is wrong with Washington and especially the Department of Energy. ICF Kaiser International demonstrates with its adoption of O'Leary exactly how tight the relationship between big energy business and Washington really is, and that's frightening. The public continues to demonstrate its vast apathy in not demanding Hazel O'Leary be investigated for influence peddling while in public office. Who cares is Molinari wants to be seen on teevee--we should be watching people like O'Leary move by move.
Russian film genius Sergei Eisenstien practiced in the Twenties and taught in the Thirties that, when it comes to film one plus one equals three. The sudden fascination with the juxtaposition of Pink Floyd's recorded work "Dark Side of the Moon" and the film "The Wizard of Oz" is amusing but hardly startling.
I felt compelled to pull two works off my shelf, start them up and see what I got. Conspiracy? Pre-construction? Prophecy? Pshaw! Happy coincidence.
I chose two relatively well-known works so you, dear readers, might try this at home. The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" provided the accidental soundtrack to "Star Wars."
I gotta tell you, it was spookey!
People are told to start "Dark Side of the Moon" right after the third MGM Lion roar of the opening titles of "The Wizard of Oz." Okay, here goes my experiment--start Sgt. Pepper (the CD version) right after the title "A Lucasfilm Limited Production" (original "Star Wars" laserdisc version) fades to black. Hold on to your seat, this is scary.
R2-D2 and C-3P0 get into trouble and need assistance just as "A Little Help From My Friends" begins. (I got chills.) During the song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds," the lyrics ". . . towering over your head. . . " accompanies Darth Vader holding an unfortunate gentleman by the throat--wait for it--over his head! Wow.
But there's more. When C-3P0 and R2-D2 find themselves wandering in the desert this scene accompanies The Beatles' "Getting Better" and the words, " . . . me hiding me head in the sand . . ." (George Lucas HAD to have planned this!)
The hair rose off my arm when Princess Leia appears in a hologram projection in perfect sync with the haunting sitar beginning of George Harrison's "Within You, Without You." The hologram reappears during the reprise of the album's title tune. Get it? Frightened?
I wondered how it would all end. On the last lingering chord of "Day In The Life," (the longest fade-out in rock history) Luke Skywalker discovers that on this day in his life, fate had dealt a cruel blow. As the chord slowly fades away, so does all vestiges of Luke's previous domestic security. Skywalker must now seek his fate and begin his odyssey. A day in the life, indeed.
Now, lets see. I think I'll try "Frampton Comes Alive" alongside "Gone With The Wind." Or maybe a Three Stooges episode and a Wagner opera. Hey kids. . . this is hours and hours of fun! Let me know if you find some happy coincidences.