Assorted Afflatuses

When I think of The New York Times, I think quality. Very rarely do I read anything that gives me any reason to complain.

Today, however, I found a piece so rife with problems, I wondered whether it skipped past the copy editor's desk and leapt straight onto the page. I speak of the article titled, "No Joke, Blub Change Is Challenge for U.S.," by one Claudia H. Deutsch, which graced the front page of today's Business section in the print edition of The Times.

As soon as the article begins, the problems emerge. The story starts, "The new energy bill signed this week makes it official. When 2012 hits, stores can no longer sell the cheap but inefficient incandescent light bulbs that are fixtures in most homes." It is as if the writer does not understand the difference between the future and present tenses. The year 2012 is in the future, so, logically, anything that will happen in that year — just over four years from now — should be expressed in the future tense. Thus, it should be, "When 2012 hits, stores will no longer be permitted to sell the..." instead.

The author continues with: "Even so, light bulb manufacturers say that worries about greenhouse gases and the high cost of energy had them moving away from conventional incandescents way before Congress weighed in."

When I read that sentence, I thought I had just suffered an aneurism. Did someone actually use "way before" in The New York Times? Fundamentally, I have no qualms with using "way" as a modifier. I use it regularly. But using such colloquial language in the Business section of an internationally distributed newspaper strikes me as, at the very least, strange. Why not say "long before" or "far before?" Neither one of those is overly ostentatious or formal, but both sound much less colloquial, come across as far more polished and convey much more authority.

The next sentence begins very awkwardly: "For quite some time, they note, they have been trying to soften the light emitted by compact fluorescent lights." The author could easily eliminate several words by simply saying, "They have long been trying to soften the light emitted by compact fluorescent lights," or something to that effect. It continues, "bring down the cost of light-emitting diodes — and yes, find ways to increase the efficiency of incandescents."

Proof that no person alive on this planet truly understands how hyphens work. She should have written, "bring down the cost of light-emitting diodes — and yes — find ways to increase the efficiency of incandescents."

Another punctuational error emerges in the next two paragraphs:

Frankly, I cannot believe The Times printed a story that contains a sentence ending in something other than a period, question mark or exclamation point. I suppose the writer could have kept both lines in one paragraph and in one sentence, which would eliminate the problem. But, either way, something went wrong.

The rest of the article moves along with some fluidity and grace. In fact, the author redeems herself somewhat by correctly using hyphens on two occasions. Though, I do have some minor quibbles about the writer's deleterious use of the passive voice, rather than the active voice in one or two places.

Hopefully someone in the quality-control department in New York reads this. The writer is, by no stretch of the imagination, terrible. I have read many a terrible story, and I know only too well what terrible is. But The New York Times is not just another newspaper. It is, as some would say, the newspaper of record. And, as such, I expect the articles to have, at the very least, correct punctuation.

Pure Genius
It's no iPhone, but it is quite clever.

While my effort a year ago — to save trees by posting this list online — failed, in the sense that it did not do what I hoped it would. That said, apparently people like knowing what I want.

So, here it is, for 2007.

$25 & Under

Books, books and more books. Perhaps ironically, I have a particularly strong desire to read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read.

• How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read (Pierre Bayard)
• Beethoven's Anvil (William Benzon)
• Made to Stick (Chip and Dan Heath)
• Powers of Ten (Charles and Ray Eames)

$50 & Under

• Kitchen Chemistry (Ted Lister with Heston Blumenthal)

$75 & Under

• The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (2-Volume Set; W. W. Norton and Company)

$100 & Under

No, that's not a typo. I still want (and still do not own) an infrared thermometer.

• Reveal Watch (Daniel Will-Harris)
• Aromatic Milk Frother (Nespresso)
• Tall Electric Tea Kettle (Breville)
• IR Gun Industrial Infrared Thermometer (Thermoworks)

$200 & Under

Spending more than $70 for a tie would, under normal circumstances, constitute an act of insane, irrational behavior. Hermès, though, has produced a tie so incredibly clever, it more or less embodies the word. From afar, one sees a dotted purple tie. But, on closer inspection, it is revealed that the small dots are really cartoon octopuses. Pure genius.

• Cashmere Scarves (Paul Smith)
• AF-S DX Zoom-NIKKOR 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED (Nikon)
• Clever Octopus Tie (Hermès)

$200 & Up

• Agatha Christie 24-Volume Hardcover Set (Agatha Christie)

Green products and services have come a long way. In 2001, when Toyota introduced America to the Prius, it was necessary for a New York Times article to help readers pronounce the name of the then-unknown quantity. Six year later, home design magazines and blogs have gone so far as to declare that, "green is becoming the new neutral color for home decor," as one GreenDaily.com blogger put it.

But, in its journey from niche-market to mass-market, a radical change has taken place in the world of green products. Unlike the Prius die-hards who immediately sought to purchase the first mass-produced hybrid gasoline-electric car in 2001, the Prius buyer of 2007 views the car more as the automotive equivalent of a Fendi clutch than as an instrument of social and environmental change. Today people buy green, think green and do green to be "Eco-Chic."

Solar power firms regularly outfit the curb-facing gables of drab suburban McMansions with a smattering of cells. Celebrated handbag designer Anya Hindmarch launched the "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" tote bag — a white leather tote emblazoned with the aforementioned phrase in highly conspicuous brown script — to great success. Even NetJets Europe, the company that pioneered the idea of fractional private jet ownership, has announced plans to be "carbon-neutral" by 2012.

It is fitting to see the same forces that popularized the gas-guzzling Chevrolet Suburban ignite sales of more environmentally-friendly vehicles, like the Toyota Prius. At the same time, however, I cannot help but wonder whether the Eco-Chic phenomenon detracts from the true goal of green products and services.

After all, it would be far more environmentally sound for someone to travel aboard a commercial jet than to charter their own Glufstream V through NetJets, regardless of whatever "carbon-offsets" NetJets intends to offer. And the idea that a leather tote bag — which requires a cow to be raised, killed and skinned before the hide is treated, dyed and fashioned into a bag — has less of a carbon footprint than one two-gram plastic shopping bag seems perfectly ludicrous.

I have no complaints that the environmentally-sound practices of 7 for All Mankind and Paul Smith add a touch of Eco-Chic to my wardrobe. But people should think of the environment first and their vanity second. Offsetting a flight from Dallas to Milan on a private jet with the purchase of an acre of protected wildness still dumps an extra ton or two of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere.

Whether as the result of objectionable policies or customer service ineptitude, some stores have lost my business. Take Best Buy. After one of their checkout clerks tried to convince me that I should buy the $25 extended warranty for a $5 keyboard, I decided never to visit again. Another bad experience at the AT&T store several years ago, where a salesperson blatantly lied to me, drove me away from that establishment. My aversion to so-called "fast fashion" emporiums, like Forever 21 and Zara, however, is much more complicated.

One cannot, of course, ignore such companies' contributions to global warming, whether by promoting consumption or fabricating clothing in materials that require more energy to clean. But do not expect to find me protesting amidst a crowd of loony environmentalists clad in taupe-colored smocks made of ridiculous organic linen. Rather, I object to such chains because they purloin the concepts and ideas designers pour over for hours, weeks, or years in order to bring them to life.

The New York Times ran a stunning piece last week on this very subject, whose accompanying online gallery really illustrated this phenomenon well. I always sensed similarities between the wares in runway shows and the garments draped over mannequins as I passed by the Zara shops in Paris, but never had I realized the extent to which fast-fashion corporations draw their so-called "inspiration" from hard-working and intelligent people in the industry.

Many would correctly note, though, that designs and trends always trickle down from top-end designer labels to inexpensive wares at run-of-the-mill department stores, just as features on high-end automobiles — like metallic paint and satellite navigation systems — eventually trickle town to budget compacts from luxury sedans. Fast fashion firms, however, have engineered a supply chain that often beats the actual designers to the store. The knockoff, then, can be purchased before the authentic garment has left the factory.

More vexingly, I doubt this would happen in any other industry. The patent, which has existed in some form for over half a millennia, protects most unique ideas from exploitation by anyone other than their progenitor. But the US government has ignored calls from American and foreign designers alike to include patent protection to designs. Would the government have denied Pfizer the right to patent Lipitor if the pharmaceutical industry did not have patent protections? Probably not.

The patent protection for product designs need not be terribly restrictive. Providing a six to nine month window of exclusivity would allow hardworking designers to scrape a living, while barely inhibiting the natural flow of ideas from top-end to mass market. For now though, it seems I will have to content myself with a solitary boycott.

Sickness, pain, genocide, bad food — all things I truly despise. But, more recently, I have come to really, truly detest these bizarre pieces of footwear called Crocs that people from all walks of life have adopted. Words alone cannot fully express just how deplorable I find those hideous bright-colored sandal-esque pieces of footwear.

For goodness sake! Buy a pair of tennis shoes, flip flops, sandals — anything — but those horrid pieces of closed cell resin. As I always say, comfort is absolutely, positively, never an excuse for choosing something incredibly hideous and tacky.

But the real reason that I have endeavored to write this little snippet is my recent discovery of a truly fantastic website: ihatecrocs.com. This website, like its second-cousin, Ban Comic Sans, has a multitude of information for the enterprising portion of our population looking for even more confirmation that their deep seeded hatred is justified.

For years I have shopped the Nordstrom Anniversary sale: the clothing is superb and the prices better. Recently, however, I have been unable to find clothing in my size: not huge. I would, for instance, see something interesting, meander over to the display containing said item and discover that, unfortunately, it was only available in extra extra large. Initially, I attributed this sudden inability to find clothes in my size to the fact that I usually shopped the sale a week or two weeks after its beginning. This, of course, meant that thousands of other people could easily have picked over the clothes deigned to fit humans, leaving me with the whale-sized offerings. And it made sense: people who wear extra extra large clothing probably do not possess the best dress sense.

With this analysis in mind, I devised my strategy for this year's anniversary sale: shop early, find clothes. But, alas, my plan failed. Shopping on the first day of the sale I still found almost nothing. I did, however, find the foible in my logic. Apparently, the growing girth of the modern American has prompted Nordstrom and other department stores from stocking more than one or two items in something smaller than a large.

Smoking, it seems, is not the only vice that negatively affects the healthy and innocent. Now the obesity of others threatens not just healthcare costs and the comfort of spectators at Cirque du Soleil performances, but also Americans' already stunted sense of style (Crocs anyone?). The madness must end. Stop second hand obesity!

I despise American Idol. This, however, is magic. I heard about Paul Potts on NPR while sitting in traffic this afternoon. For a mobile phone salesman, he really can sing. US reality television needs a Paul Potts.

I know that if I ran any kind of retail operation I would prefer that my customers not steal the merchandise. As such, I have a great deal of understanding for merchants who make efforts to secure their goods, especially when the measures have almost no impact on the world's law abiding folks. Today, however, a security system not only inconvenienced me, but also raised questions in my mind about the effectiveness of the system in question.

The story begins this very afternoon, when I decided to do a touch of shopping. After successful trips to several stores, I popped into my local neighborhood Nordstrom establishment to buy some socks. Of course, I could not help make an impulse buy: a pair of those fancy-shmancy "Seven" jeans. Nothing particularly unusual. Forty-five minutes after entering, I left the store quite content with my socks and denim in bag.

But, as seems to happen with many of my endeavors, something went wrong. When I pulled the jeans out of the bright red shopping bag and unfolded them, I noticed that the small plastic security device had not been removed at the point-of-sales terminal. I have yet to make the return trip to the store to have it removed, though it really irks me that the salesperson failed to remove the tag.

More so than that, however, this incident makes me wonder why the store bothers to put the tags on the clothes. I walked out of the store and, to the best of my knowledge, no loud alarm sounded. To me, this means that any run-of-the-mill shoplifter could easily have swiped the jeans and waltzed right out of the store. This too also seems like a lose-lose situation for shareholders: the merchandise is no more secure and the system is expensive to implement in maintain.

So, a note to retailers: make it safe or forget about it. And, either way, please tell your employees to remove the blasted security devices!

In general, I have a hard time understanding why people buy pre-prepared food. Granted, for the sake of your sanity, some items, like puff pastry, really should not be prepared by the home chef. Other items, however, are so bafflingly simple to prepare that I cannot understand why people bother to buy them.

Then again, according to The New York Times, our culture has spawned such laziness that six-year-olds now gain the most weight in the summer, when they are supposedly outside swimming and swinging. The article begins, "Summer. The perfect time for children to play outside, swim -- and get fatter?" But why should that laziness stop at the kitchen?

Americans, it seems, will stop at nothing to avoid work. Just look at the popularity of margarita mix. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have never had a margarita. I have, however, read enough cookbooks and cooking magazines to know that margaritas are dead-simple to make. One recipe I found at Epicurious.com, has a whopping six ingredients, including such hard-to-find items as salt and ice cubes. The third of America's population that can now officially call itself "obese" would stand to benefit from burning the extra two calories of energy needed to cut and squeeze a lime, rather than dumping the tequila and Tripple Sec into a bucket of powder.

Pancakes too epitomize this trend. As Mark Bittman would say, it is a matter of ones: one egg, one cup of milk, one cup of flour and so on. Is it really that much easier to pour water into a bowl of potentially tasteless processed powder? Just as comfort is no excuse for bad fashion, laziness is no excuse for insipidity.

I just love the irony: some Americans are so lazy they cannot even stop to make food to fatten themselves. We need to stop giving the rest of the world something else to make fun of. Our Fed chairman is bad enough.

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.