Assorted Afflatuses

In our world of disposable doodads and throwaway thingamabobs, I always regarded fountain pens as valiant survivors. After all, most people buy a fountain pen and keep it for life. And, in affirmation of that fact, most fountain pen manufacturers offered a lifetime mechanical warranty on their pens. The idea was, of course, that, should the pen break sometime in one's lifetime, then it could easily be repaired. Today, however, the fountain pen has entered the sad Age of Disposableness.

In my bout of post-school organization and cleaning today, I realized that, after sitting on my desk for nine months, my fancy French fountain pen remained unprepared. So I pointed my web browser over to the Waterman website and started hunting for the repair instructions.

But between the glamourous front page of waterman.com and the slightly more austere repair services page, I stumbled upon the warranty information page. Initially, I was confused. "Why?" I asked myself, "Would Waterman have printable two-year warranty extension cards?" After all, my Waterman fountain pen came with an indisputable, written in thirteen languages, lifetime warranty. Then I discovered the sad truth: Waterman pens now only come with a three-year warranty.

In addition to hurting the pocketbook, this measure also remove part of the wonderful romantic aspect of the fountain pen: its timelessness. So, I suppose, I will have to plunk down the big bucks and buy a Mont Blanc when I next decided to augment my writing arsenal. Hopefully their inflated prices and efficiency-minded German thought processes will stop them from falling to the same disposable demons.

I have never understood why Brian Williams bothers to read viewer mail on-air. Especially since the usual feedback consists of some overly treacly comment about a special report or a scathing criticism of some very unimportant detail. Tonight, however, a viewer comment opened my eyes to the latest method that the lovely folks over at Fox News have begun to employ to further calumniate their least favorite politician, former President Bill Clinton.

The viewer wrote to the NBC News program complaining that, in his recent interview with the former president, Brian Williams erroneously addressed former President Clinton as, "Mister President." Said viewer continued by saying that said title was reserved for our current president, the illustrious W, and also that he or she would go back to the real journalists at the Fox News Channel. Fortunately, Mr. Williams corrected the disrespectful viewer by informing the viewer that the title of "President" is, to use Mr. Williams' phrase, "for life." *

But the latter part of the viewer's comment disturbed me. He or she, with the help of the Fox News Channel, genuinely believed that it was disrespectful to President Bush to call a former president, "Mr. President." That kind of thinking is far more dangerous than a conscious choice to demean someone through impoliteness.

The viewer's blind adherence to the ideas set forth by Fox News also underlines the fact that Americans do not think for themselves. Rather, many of them rely on the tainted information spoon-fed to them by politicians and the left- and right-wing news media. That too, seems very dangerous.

Though, in this case, the viewer would only have needed to consult Miss Manners to see the error in his or her ways.

As the banal phrase goes, Rome was not built in a day. Similarly, thirty days does not a great novel make, as I have discovered in the last three weeks.

For almost three weeks ago today, for whatever insane reason, I decided to — certainly not for the first time — challenge myself. But instead of attempting a set of insanely difficult math problems I have endeavored to write (or, perhaps more aptly, type) a fifty-thousand word novel in thirty days. For my English class, of course. Insane? Yes. Painful? Yes. Rewarding? Potentially.

At first the idea seemed a good one: I had an idea for a novel, but I never actually sat down to write it. With this project for my English class I could kill two birds with one stone. The first draft of the novel would be complete and I would help myself succeed in English.

Yet, three weeks into the project, it is beginning to wear me down. So far, I have written a pitiful 25,817 words, which puts me slightly behind the recommended target that, mathematically, one should have reached by this point in the thirty-day novel writing process.

My real problem stems from a lack of planning. The idea I had for my mystery-thriller novel was very vague and, with only thirty days to write the book, I did not spend as much time planning out the various twists and turns the plot would take beforehand. This lack of planning has manifested itself in numerous plot incongruities that will have to be ironed out later.

Frankly, I just want to cross the fifty-thousand word mark to assure myself that such a feat can be accomplished. I imagine that I will feel less internal resistance toward the notion of writing a novel, perhaps in sixty or ninety days and with more planning, knowing that I can weave a fifty-thousand word tale.

(Read the prologue after the discontinuation).

Apparently the lives of small children and golf clubs are quite threatened by the menacing power of the garage door opener. Sates across the nation have, in the last two decades, imposed regulations forcing households with garage door openers to attach small infrared transmitters on either side of the door in the hope that they will manage to detect objects that people do not want crushed by the heft of their designer doors.

But the infernal infrared boxes have now become my enemy. Today, after taking an AP test and failing to find a good bakery at which to eat lunch, I came home to grab my backpack. That exercise was intended to permit the quick retrieval of my school-related effects so that I could make it to school in time to begin my chemistry lab. Then the garage door would not close.

Despite my repeated attempts to nudge, clean and otherwise realign the infrared receivers on either side of the door, it simply would not acquiesce to my will. I suppose, especially as I do not live in a neighborhood with a high crime rate, I could have left the door open. But given my luck over the past two months, I decided against it.

Unlike some people, however, who would simply expound upon their hatred and leave it at that, I have a solution that would — if implemented — save the annoyed and the threatened in one fell swoop: ultrasonic sensors.

New cars from manufacturers like Audi and Mercedes-Benz use a series of small ultrasonic sensors on the front and rear bumpers to alert inept parkers of their distance between vehicles. Similarly, such sensors could discern the distance between the bottom of a garage door and any objects on the ground. That way, whenever the ultrasonic waves detected something more than two inches high on the ground, the garage door opener would stop.

With said system, nothing requires alignment — so I would have made it to my chemistry class — and children everywhere would still be able to frolic safely in our nation's driveways, at least, without the looming dangers of garage doors.

Now if only I could find someone to manufacture this.

Browsing the Internet this morning, I discovered that Cingular — or whatever they call themselves now — now offers the Nokia N75 to its customers. When first I heard, I said to myself, "Wow." After all, no US carrier has never sold, subsidized or supported a Nokia N-Series multimedia phone. But I soon discovered that, once again, Americans have been blessed with a bottom of the barrel handset.

Initially, I had a very sanguine outlook on the matter. The Nokia N75 sports a 3G radio that actually works in the US and a high-resolution 2-megapixel camera. It also happens to run the fantastic Symbian Series 60 operating system. Cingular's first N-Series phone even has a swanky external screen that displays pertinent information, like the time and date, when the phone is closed. With so many supposedly wonderful features, I saw only two disadvantages between the N75 and the N80 I was on the verge of purchasing.

Firstly, the "initial handset investment" with the N75 is only lower than that of the N80 when you sign your soul away to Cingular for two years and send in a mail-in-rebate for fifty dollars. Yuck. But then, I doubt I will change carriers in the next two years: Cingular has never offended me too seriously. Secondly, the N75 has only one camera (the N80 has two) and the one it has takes less detailed pictures than the better of the N80's two optical capture devices.

Then I read an actual review of the N75. Aside from its messaging features, the reviewer could not find much to praise. Commenting on the design, the reviewer says, "The closed shell is shaped like a brick, and open isn't much more attractive." Call quality, something Nokia usually does very well, also falls short of expectations: "We couldn't help but be disappointed by the sound quality on calls, which came through a bit muddy and far too warm for our tastes." The review describes the camera as, "A real letdown from a phone in a family with such a photographic pedigree." As for the 3G features I so enthusiastically received, "We had some serious problems getting Cingular Video to function properly." It reads almost like a movie poster, but with negative comments instead of well-chosen praise.

My hope evaporated before it ever melted; sublimated, if you will. I would buy the N80, but Amazon.com has conveniently decided to be "Sold out" of the more attractive (and more inexpensive) black model. So wait I shall.

MSNBC managed to redeem itself, at least a little, this evening with its second debate between 2008 presidential candidates, in 2007. The candidates actually disagreed on certain points and Chris Matthews did a much better job forcing candidates to answer the questions asked of them. None of the Republicans, however, offered a particularly compelling platform.

I find that I agree with most Democrats on social issues, but I take issue with their insane attempts to make our economy more Swedish. Conversely, I tend to agree with traditional, Republicans on economic issues, but I consider their stances on so-called "moral issues" ridiculous. Of course Republican candidates like Mike Huckabee — who wants the government to enforce morality and despises free-trade — are impossible to endorse.

In this debate, however, the Republicans almost never spoke about economic policy or anything else of substance. Instead, they focused on security and "moral issues." So I found myself constantly annoyed with their statements. I see no purpose in discussing the candidate's positions on abortion, gay marriage, evolution or anything else of the sort. It has no impact on their ability to actually solve problems. It would be akin to saying that an engineer might build a faulty tunnel because he supported abortion rights and, by some ludicrous extrapolation, did not care about life. It's absurd and it needs to end now.

Mitt Romney did manage to make the debate interesting because he was so articulate. If I were casting my vote based solely upon who communicated the most effectively, I would vote for Mr. Romney. Unlike the other candidates, he almost never used fillers — um, and, uh, like, et al — choosing instead to do what any competent speaker would: pause. I may disagree with him almost completely, but at least I can disagree agreeably. He is a breath of fresh air in a sea of politicians, like our current president, who cannot speak to save their lives.

My worst-speaker-of-the-night award goes to Sam Brownback, the Senator from Kansas. O the inarticulateness! It makes me wince.

I will begin with the classic run-on sentence technique, in which the incompetent speaker strings together two or more sentences that should be discrete:

Unfortunately, those are but a few choice examples. Almost every one of Mr. Brownback's statements during the debate used the word "and" at least twice, if not more frequently.

Then come the annoying grammatical problems:

Note the fact that even the transcriptionist thought the grammatical errors in the second excerpt were so obvious, he or she added a "sic" to the end to indicate that it was Mr. Brownback's error, not the transcriptionist's.

Some of Mr. Brownback's speech was blatantly bad:

Granted, that last one may be a clever political tactic to skirt the question by using pronouns so as to make people forget the question's subject.

But the candidates galled me most with their so-called "visions." Not one candidate has put forth anything particularly bold. In fact, the word "oil" was only used in the context of Iraq, not in relation to any sort of visionary energy policy. The word "energy" was mentioned a pitiful seven times, whereas "abortion" and "Iraq" received sixteen and thrity-seven mentions, respectively.

None of the candidates had a visionary education policy designed to put the US back ahead in science and technology. Mike Huckabee made reference to "school," though that statement concerned our progress in Iraq, not actual schools in the United States. Tommy Thompson, the former governor of Wisconsin, spoke about "educational diplomacy," again, in relation to the Iraq war. And Representative Duncan Hunter came the closest, still missing the mark by a mile (or a light-year) with his statement emphasizing his belief that colleges and universities should work with private industry to combat climate change.

John F. Kennedy had a vision when he said America would put a man on the moon. Tonight, the Republican candidates had Ronald Reagan. It's going to be an interesting election.

Today, French high school and university students protested. Again. And, once again, the students had crowded the streets of Paris to protest more liberal economic policies. The students think that a new government headed by the UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, will strip them of workplace rights and create more unemployed young people in France.

Admittedly, unemployment, especially among persons 18-25, has become a real problem in Europe. In the more socialist economies of Spain, France and Italy, unemployment in that age group hovers around 25%. But the lack of work stems not from a lack of governmental regulation, but rather an excess of it.

Employers in France, for example, hesitate to hire new workers because obscene regulations make it very expensive to replace a worker, regardless of how little work the old worker does. Perhaps making it easier to fire people would mean more jobs because employers might actually posses the means to pay them. Quelle bonne idée!

But the real problem lies in education and innovation. When the French government realized that, just maybe, there was money to be made in online search, they did not make funds available for smart people to bring their smart ideas to market. Instead, they created a government-owned search engine, "Quaero." I doubt whether one in ten-thousand Americans has ever heard of Quaero. But even people living in rural China know what it means to "Google" something. Unsuccessful? Just a little.

And when it comes to education, just look at what students do during their free time. Do they sit in class and take advantage of a resource that millions of children would love to have, a free education? No. Instead they hold protests to advocate for change that will ultimately hurt them.

Admittedly, French students probably spend most of their time in class, though the whole "learn instead of protest" bit does make for a nice title. No, the real problem with education concerns the education itself: tests determine far too much of their fate. Rather than learning to think creatively or just learn in the first place, most students just learn enough to pass a test. The result is not terribly appealing.

When I spent a month in France over the summer, I met dozens of high school students who had taken five or more years of English. Only two of them, however, could actually string together a complete sentence. One university student explained that some university-level courses spend over a month teaching students something as simple as telling time.

France, Italy, Spain, Germany and every other socialist country in Europe needs their own Margaret Thatcher to break down the oppressive walls of protectionism and open Europe's eyes to the beauty of capitalism. To the French, then, vote for Mr. Sarkozy.