Collateral Damage

Logoblink has an excellent and informative display of Presidential election logos from 1960 to the present. I say informative because it is quite clear that graphically as well as politically most candidates in the last 48 years have been interchangeable.

Still, I know who I’m voting for.

Comedy Central has even more details on Battlestar Gallactica vs. the actual candidates here.

And speaking of voting for lame characters, turns out Brit PM Gordon Brown lost his latest election to NONE OF THE ABOVE. As mentioned previously Madame Tussaud’s wax museum had put it up for a vote as to whether or not Brown should be included in the collection. Well, “83.8 percent of voters, drawn from museum visitors and online supporters, gave Brown the thumbs down. Some 5,308 people told Madame Tussauds not to bother, while 1,025 people (16.2 percent) said he should be immortalised in wax.” Yeah, but I bet the Supreme Court will rule him in.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf,” Bush said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

My head hurts from this quote.

Dear George, you want to show solidarity with these families? How about you visit each and every one of them. Maybe explain why neither you nor your children have served in this or any other war. How about adequate funding and administration for the Veterans Administration? How about not being an idiot? How about not starting wars on fictitious grounds?

Good Lord.

McCain? Hillary? Obama?

I’ll take any of them over this fool.

Not Huckabee, though. I can’t live through another administration that views facts as malleable.

Listening (mostly) to the coverage of the earthquake disaster in China I learned that text messages are the most popular form of communication in China. Now I dislike using my little cellphone keyboard to send text messages in English, I can’t even fathom how it works in Mandarin. (I’m assuming they are all texting in Mandarin — China has at least six different regional/ethnic language groups most of which have about as much in common as Latin and Hungarian but Mandarin is the official default.) Now clearly they’ve got this figured out but it’s such a basic thing that no one has explained it to us outsiders.

As a typewriter collector myself I have long dreamed of adding a Japanese or Chinese typewriter to my collection. The Chinese typewriter pictured below is explained by this Wikipedia entry.

That multi-lingual typewriter was the size of conventional office typewriters of the 1940s. It measured 14” x 18” x 9”. The typefaces fit on a drum. A “magic eye” was mounted in the center of the keyboard. When the typist pressed several keys, according to a system Lin devised for his dictionary of the Chinese language, a Chinese character appeared (in the magic eye?). To select a particular character, the typist then pressed a “master” key, similar to today’s computer function key. The typewriter could create 7000 distinct characters. It could type additional “words” using combinations of characters, attaining a theoretical total of 90,000 words. The inspired aspect of the typewriter was the system Lin devised for a Chinese alphabet. It had thirty geometric shapes or strokes. These became “letters” by which to alphabetize Chinese characters. He broke tradition with the long-standing system of radicals and stroke order writing and categorizing of Chinese characters, inventing a new way of seeing and categorizing.

The StraightDope has an explanation here of how a Chinese computer keyboard works but it doesn’t do much to clear up my confusion about the whole texting thing.

Anybody clear this one up for me? Bueller?

UPDATE: NPR has come to my rescue. Apparently the Chinese use an English keyboard to type in the phonetic equivalent of a character and then that character appears in the text. Sounds clumsy to me but 1.6 billion people seem to think it works, so who am I to argue?

Apparently things are so dull in Iowa that throwing candy can get you busted.

A Drake University security guard was questioning Sean McGuire’s friend regarding a hit-and-run when the guard “noticed the colored candies falling on the ground around the officer. When the officer turned around, an M&M hit his shoulder, according to a police report.” McGuire said he was launching the chocolatey treats as a way of standing up for his friend. McGuire was released on a $1000 bond. And he was lucky. Had he been arrested for assaulting an officer with a peanut M&M there would have been no end to the puns.

My alma mater has aimed a deadly insult at me and my fellow Violets here in the land of all that is right, decent and pompous. Owing to construction on the campus green concrete that is Washington Square Park this Wednesday the commencement ceremony will take place at YANKEE STADIUM.

HAVE YOU PEOPLE NO SENSE OF SHAME?

That does it. I am not giving the school another penny until the commencement ceremony takes place at Fenway. And by “another” I mean “a first”.

(Yes, we are The Violets. I can’t tell you exactly how amusing it was to be a wrestler from a school based in Greenwich Village AND have the team name of The Violets. Once we were at a tri-meet with Stephens Tech and University of Pennsylvania and so had The Ducks and The Quakers laughing at us. We deserved it. For reasons I was never able to determine the student newspaper referred to the women’s teams as Violettes. Because plain ol’ Violet wasn’t femme enough? The school has tried to change the team names to The Bobcats, in honor of — not making this up — the library catalog. )

It’s got something to do with chicks is all I know.

A great Brazillian graphic designer named Mario Amaya has taken a few of favorite brands and run them into each other at top speed. See some of the efforts below and see more here. His blog, Following Is For Cattle, makes me wish I’d paid attention when the Providence public school system was trying to teach me Portuguese.

Not sure if this is brilliant or depressing. Or both.

Chrysler announced Monday an offer that caps the price of gasoline at $2.99 a gallon for three years for people who buy or lease new vehicles from Wednesday through June 2. The offer is based on 12,000 miles of driving per year at the vehicle’s rated fuel economy. Customers will get a card for buying gas that is linked to their own charge account, Chrysler said. The customer will be billed $2.99 a gallon, and Chrysler will pay the rest.

I’m sure the honchos in Auburn Hills did their math on this (and when was the last time a US car company didn’t correctly anticipate fuel costs?) but to me it looks like this could get pretty expensive.

The story goes on to point out that at the current $3.61 a gallon average gas price, someone who buys a new PT Cruiser (est. 21 MPG) would only cost the company $1075 per car. That seems a bit much but not ridiculous for a car with an MSRP of $15,285.

However let us take the radical notion that gas prices have not yet peaked. If the price of gas hits $5 a gallon (and I wish that were unthinkable) the total cost to the company hits $3300*. Even if the price “only” hits $4.50 per, the company is on the hook for $2580 per car. Suddenly that PT Cruiser is costing Chrysler a lot.

All of this, btw, assumes something we all know to be false: That there is a relationship between the advertised MPG and what you actually get. If the car actually gets 18 MPG then Chrysler has to pick up the actual difference. At today’s prices that means a mere $150 increase over three years. However at $4.50 it’s about $500 more — which means Chrysler is in essence selling the PT Cruiser for about $12K. For the consumer it’s a great anti-inflation move, for the shareholders though? Well, for gas company share holders it’s great.

The other thing that will contribute to Chrysler’s costs is the fact that consumers will probably buy more expensive grades of gas. Why not always get super premium if it only costs me $2.99?

Here is my own personal indicator of the impact of the price of gas: I am now driving at or below the speed limit. This news so shocked Mrs. CollateralDamage that she briefly put down the latest guide to Disney.

*(In case you’re wondering here’s the formula I used 12000[miles] / 21 [MPG] = total gallons consumed [which I'll call G]. G * price = total cost / (G * price - 2.99) = annual cost to Chrysler * 3 = total cost to Chrysler. Given my legendary inability to do anything beyond basic math I put this out there so that someone can and will correct me.)

Easy jokes:

1. Actually I’ve always thought of him as wooden.
2. Couldn’t be worse than the one they’ve got.

Sadly for Mr. Brown and happily for anyone with a sense of humor the truth is even funnier.

Embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown faces more potential poll humiliation — as Madame Tussauds waxwork museum said Tuesday opened a vote on whether they should bother making a model of him.

Quick, name an English-speaking country that actually likes its leader. … Hmmm, I’m stumped too. Maybe Canadia? They speak English, don’t they?

Some leaders are actually seeing their wax popularity waxing and not waning. The St. Petersburg Wax Museum says the public is not content with its small model of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s newly installed ventriloquist-dummy-in-chief. Apparently the people want a three-dimensional version. Should this come to pass, it will mean the museum’s version has more depth than the person it is based on.

I guess what was 31 is now down to 30 at Baskin-Robbins — nope 29, Mr. Baskins predeceased Mr. Robbins.

Robbins opened his first ice cream store in Glendale, Calif., in December 1945, following his discharge from the Army. Robbins offered 21 flavors at that store. His brother-in-law, the late Burton Baskin, opened his own ice cream store in neighboring Pasadena a year later. The two eventually joined forces.

Coolest. Family. Ever. But did they split the profits 21/10?

Ah, the omnivore’s dilemma.

The deaths of 500 ducks last week on a Syncrude Canada wastewater pond was unacceptable, Industry Minister Jim Prentice said during an acceptance speech after Canada was named “Country of the Year” by Energy Magazine.

Someone should ask the ducks which they prefer.

In an effort to have their vaguely pizza-like product and eat it too, Papa John’s “issued an apology to Cleveland and the Cavaliers for making T-shirts with LeBron James‘ number and the word ‘crybaby’ under it.“  On Thursday Cleveland residents will be able to get a large, one-topping alleged pizza from the chain for 23 cents, James’ jersey number. The company is also kicking in $10K to a charity sponsored by the Cavaliers.

Second prize is two Papa John’s pizzas for 23 cents.

Yes I know there are places in this nation where Papa John’s is considered good pizza. I weep for those places. In Boston we have places that have already been closed by the Health Department that make better.

Apparently he will carry his home state. Next up an 8-part investigative look at “Water: Is It Wet?”

Now how’s that for brand loyalty?

The case involves 21-year-old Timothy Caudill, who last year was held in a residential community corrections program in Nelsonville for breaking into a bar. While there, prosecutors said he bought the oatmeal creme pie from a vending machine and shared it with a fellow inmate who was on restriction and wasn’t allowed access to snacks.

I think someone at McKee Foods Corp. ought to be signing Mr. Caudill up for a deal.

Best part: “Plays SpongeBob SquarePants Theme at the end of temperature taking.” Yeah, that’s gonna make the kid happier.

For reasons I won’t even pretend to understand the most consistently viewed page here at the Damage is: Headline of the day: SpongeBob Squarepants Digital Camera Is Neither Square-Shaped Nor Made Of Sponges. Its 2188 views make it the 4th most viewed page after my 2006 and 2007 annual lists of the Top marketing blunders and the gallery of grenade-shaped products that was linked to from DarkRoastedBlend. But that SpongeBob headline is like money in the bank. EVERY WEEK it is either the first or second most visited post. So I’m hoping that the Square one can do some more magic here.