damp doom outlook: moderate

ahead of the possibility of damp doom sandy, i went outside to look at our backup generator. i couldn't remember the last time i'd heard it run in its hamster wheel -- it has a self-test/exercise mode -- but my schedule tells me i've been out of town enough that that may just have been timing. (it runs for twelve minutes a week. not much exercise, but all it's doing is keeping its bits oiled so they don't rust.)

nope. the trained monkey who gave the generator its annual inspection shut it off. not just the self-test, but the whole thing. *sigh*. i turned it back on and frobbed the self-test button. it took a couple tries to catch, but it seemed to run fine. none of the idiot lights came on, but i didn't give it the acid test by throwing the huge mad-scientist-capable knife switch on the house's master panel to kill mains power.

i have gently suggested to the monkey's trainers that extra training might not hurt.

lobbing the first grenade in a long war

High School Football Ban Proposal Under Attack in New Hampshire

A retired New Hampshire doctor and school board member has caused an uproar with his proposed ban on high school football, saying the game is too dangerous for underage students.

there's not much need to read past that point: the average american is as obsessed with ANSI football as their counterparts elsewhere are with ISO football.

i expect no quantity of scientific evidence will ever convince american schools to abandon ANSI football. however, a relatively small quantity of legal evidence will probably suffice. all it would take is for some teary-eyed parents to convince a jury that new east elbow high school football is responsible for why little johnny can't [walk|speak coherently|get a job|leave his cell where he's serving 20-to-life for murder] and pry a few million out of the school district. after that, school district legal departments -- and their evil masters -- will be running scared, and schools will start pulling the plug on ANSI football.

they won't all give up, of course, but if the sport is reduced to the same state as car racing was before the brief outbreak of NASCAR -- associated with rednecks -- it'll slowly die for want of advertising revenue. it could implode from hopeless mismanagement as north american hockey is doing now, but i think that's less likely.