lornamatic

So I’m taking a class (over at LA Academy of Figurative Art) in Van Nuys. The class starts at 7PM. but I live on the west side of Los Angeles. Because of that whole traffic problem, I need to leave early enough to beat rush hour, which leaves me with a few hours to fill.

There’s plenty of nice things to do in the valley, plenty of restaurants and coffeeshops (and uh, lots of car dealerships), and I was looking for interesting things to do in the area when Google led me to the Van Nuys High School Rules and Policy page.

I noticed a number of spelling mistakes and typographical errors, so I copied the text and ran it through MSWord’s spell check. Here’s some screencaptures of the 26 errors that Word found. It didn’t pick up correctly spelled but misused words, such as “a flouring academic community.”

Academic recors?
Disciplianry actions extablished by the cousneling office?

I applaud Van Nuys for taking the initiative to get this website up and running, but the question remains: How can anyone expect students to succeed academically, or even take their administration seriously when the people running the place haven’t taken time to ensure that the school policies and rules are readable? Who wrote this?

The first sentence of the school’s plagiarism statement is identical to that of Brigham Young University:

“Plagiarism is a form of intellectual theft that violates widely recognized principles of academic integrity.”

Please understand that I don’t intend to make fun of the school or this situation, because it is evident throughout the page that intentions are in the right place. In Los Angeles, there are plenty of people for whom English is not a first language. And in any urban high school there are certainly bigger problems to solve besides some typograpical typographical errors on a webpage.

But the point is this: that’s no excuse. If you can’t afford a spell checking program, hand it to your coworker. Even one editing pass will help root out these errors and will go a long way towards cleaning up your document.

If your school is public and underfunded, turn it into a classroom project. Now you are teaching English grammar, helping your school save money, and communicating the importance of doing a project well. You’re helping create a civic pride in your school, and showing your students how to project a positive and respectable image, and to do good work, even with a lack of resources.

That’s one of the most important lessons anyone can learn in life.

This nice thing came in my email today. Now there is a fraud alert on my social security number!

December 12, 2006

Dear Friend,

UCLA computer administrators have discovered that a restricted campus database containing certain personal information has been illegally accessed by a sophisticated computer hacker. This database contains certain personal information about UCLA’s current and some former students, faculty and staff, some student applicants and some parents of students or applicants who applied for financial aid. The database also includes current and some former faculty and staff at the University of California, Merced, and current and some former employees of the University of California Office of the President, for which UCLA does administrative processing.

I regret having to inform you that your name is in the database. While we are uncertain whether your personal information was actually obtained, we know that the hacker sought and retrieved some Social Security numbers. Therefore, I want to bring this situation to your attention and urge you to take actions to minimize your potential risk of identity theft. I emphasize that we have no evidence that personal information has been misused.

The information stored on the affected database includes names and Social Security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses and contact information. It does not include driver’s license numbers or credit card or banking information.

Only designated users whose jobs require working with the restricted data are given passwords to access this database. However, an unauthorized person exploited a previously undetected software flaw and fraudulently accessed the database between October 2005 and November 2006. When UCLA discovered this activity on Nov. 21, 2006, computer security staff immediately blocked all access to Social Security numbers and began an emergency investigation. While UCLA currently utilizes sophisticated information security measures to protect this database, several measures that were already under way have been accelerated.

In addition, UCLA has notified the FBI, which is conducting its own investigation. We began notifying those individuals in the affected database as soon as possible after determining that personal data was accessed and after we retrieved individual contact information.

As a precaution, I recommend that you place a fraud alert on your consumer credit file. By doing so, you let creditors know to watch for unusual or suspicious activity, such as someone attempting to open a new credit card account in your name. You may also wish to consider placing a security freeze on your accounts by writing to the credit bureaus. A security freeze means that your credit history cannot be seen by potential creditors, insurance companies or employers doing background checks unless you give consent. For details on how to take these steps, please visit http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu/what_you_can_do.htm.

Extensive information on steps to protect against personal identity theft and fraud are on the Web site of the California Office of Privacy Protection, a division of the state Department of Consumer Affairs:

http://www.privacy.ca.gov.

Information also is available on a Web site we have established, http://www.identityalert.ucla.edu. The site includes additional information on this situation, further suggestions for monitoring your credit and links to state and federal resources. If you have questions about this incident and its implications, you may call our toll-free number, (877) 533-8082.

Please be aware that dishonest people falsely identifying themselves as UCLA representatives might contact you and offer assistance. I want to assure you that UCLA will not contact you by phone, e-mail or any other method to ask you for personal information. I strongly urge you not to release any personal information in response to inquiries of this nature.

We have a responsibility to safeguard personal information, an obligation that we take very seriously.

I deeply regret any concern or inconvenience this incident may cause you.

Sincerely,

Norman Abrams,
Acting Chancellor

Databases are databases, and security is security, and sometimes these things get broken into, but still.

EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE? Who on GOD’S GREEN EARTH stores 800,000 social security numbers in ONE DATABASE?

UCLA hasn’t had any good PR these days, and this sort of thing is not going to help their image. What is going on?

When you go through an airport with a pet in a carrier, everyone is your friend.

When you spend four hours in the emergency room with some worm-infested fish in a bag, everyone is your friend, and is also an amateur scientist. Everyone.

I won’t mention the name of the restaurant, because I would own its search results within two hours. It’s probably not appropriate to list here. If you really must know, ask me in person or email. I’ll be happy to tell you. It’s a nice restaurant.

The halibut was delicious. From Alaska, fresh, and apparently never frozen. Apparently never fully cooked, either. Between two lobes of flesh, about 2/3rds of the way through the filet, a wiggly pink ~1″ worm was quite comfortably nestled. Actually, later in the ER, one of my eagle-eyed junior scientist neighbors noticed that there were two, happily wriggling around the remaining piece of uneaten fish.

What a freaking night. We drove straight to the hospital, where we watched two hours of South Park, and they carried my worm off in a little dated and numbered cool-whip specimen container. So now I’ve got a date with the LA County department of public health, as well as a follow-up with my friendly neighborhood infectious disease specialist. Stunning.

The good news is, normally the symptoms for this manifest within a couple of hours. It’s all treatable, and if I actually did manage to ingest a friend of the fully living, third-larval stage parasitic nematode that I got to bring home from the restaurant, well, at least it’s tremendously rare to experience severe symptoms.

Overwhelming anxiety and a phobia of anything related to Google Image Search Results for “Pseudoterranova decipiens” do not apparently count as symptoms.

There’s humor in this. The scene I made in the restaurant was pretty good. And oh, later, at the ER? The part where the psycho looking homeless guy comes in, carrying a paper, sits down two seats away from me, and within 30 seconds, slams the paper as hard as he can, right down on the baggie containing my worm? Comedic gold.

“Uh, hey…”

“Oh, was that yours?”

I guess you had to be there.

It’s beyond amusing to me, that people are interpreting the recent appearance of hind fins on a dolphin as a freak vestigal mutation, caused by the pollution of the oceans.

No one gives dolphins enough credit. My theory? They’re evolving, right underneath our noses. Getting ready to pop out of these filthy oceans and open up a mighty can of whipass on all of humankind. Samuel L. Jackson style.

“So long, and thanks for all the fish, bitches!”

“[It is] one of the largest merger and acquisition scandals in U.S. history,” Greenspan said in his statement. “Deliberate steps were taken to withhold and manipulate information; money was improperly gained and laws were broken. It is my hope that regulatory bodies will begin their investigations quickly before evidence is destroyed.”

Yup. That first acquisition is always the toughest.