What Caught My Eye Today

Indonesia - Indonesia has opened thousands of "honesty cafes" in schools and government buildings, in which patrons use the honor system to leave money for snacks and drinks. The attorney general's office, which sponsors the cafes, hope they will teach civil servants and ordinary citizens to think about the importance of being honest. Only about 5% of the cafes said customers were walking off without paying, and schools that operated the cafes have reported a decrease in cheating on tests. According to corruption watchdog, Transparency International, Indonesia is one of the world's most corrupt nations. While I applaud the effort--and more so the early success--of this program, I have to admit that I'm skeptical that something like this would work in America. Don't get me wrong playing on a guilt conscience is a powerful ploy, but, speaking strictly for myself, I'm not one to let my conscience get in the way of a free meal.

National Anthem - Some dude at the Washington Post is attempting to make a case for replacing "The Star Spangled Banner" as the U.S. national anthem. "The Star Spangled Banner" has to go. As a national anthem, Francis Scott Key's "notoriously unsingable" song is highly flawed. The melody, stolen from an old English drinking song (Really? I did not know that.), spans nearly two octaves, when most people are good for only one. The first eight lines constitute one enormous sentence with no good place to catch your breath. In the entire first verse, the only vaguely American ideal is "land of the free"; the rest is just bombs and war and bloodshed. Fortunately, there are plenty of good alternatives--"My Country 'Tis of Thee," "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "God Bless America," and "This Land is Your Land" just to name a few. Okay, maybe I'm missing the point, but it seems to me that the song isn't the problem--the quality of the singer is. Seriously, you don't see operas being rewritten just so Uncle Bob can sing along. Why would you want to change an iconic piece like "The Star Spangled Banner". There is a time and a place for change; this isn't one of them.

Clouds - This one is for all my meteorological "get your freak on" readers. The last time a new category of cloud was added to the official meteorological atlas was in 1951. Now the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society (I kid you not. This is a legitimate organization--click here), is lobbying to add a new variety: asperatus, or the "Jacques Cousteau cloud," because it resembles a rolling ocean. This particular formation does not appear to be one of the 80 previously classified. A spokesperson for Britain's Royal Meteorological Society said that the discovery is "astonishing. It's not every day that you get a new cloud." You just have to love the enthusiasm exhibited by weather geeks. In fairness, you cannot blame them. For some strange reason, cloud formations don't seem to garnish the headlines that you might expect.

Potpourri - For those of you looking for a break from news on the Iranian presidential election and the global recession, I offer you these next couple of items, all of which, tragically, are deemed newsworthy:

• A survey on road rage declared New Yorkers to be the angriest, most aggressive drivers in the U.S.
  In a related story, Los Angeles drivers are set to stage a protest claiming that they, not New Yorkers are the biggest jerks on the road.
• Students in a California elementary school found out they must attend 34 days of summer school because their school day was 5 minutes too short on 34 days. The school district must make up the entire days or lose funding.
  Has anyone checked to see how much it is going to cost to open the school for an unplanned 34 days?
• A California lawyer has won a $510,000 discrimination settlement from the Oakland Athletics because the team gave free floppy sun hats to female fans to promote breast cancer awareness.
  Yeah, that money will be put to a much better use on this than finding a cure for breast cancer. Lame litigation like this is what gives lawyers such a bad reputation.