Americans proudly breaking the Flag Code

Every few years, I reprise my post about the various ways in which Americans patriotically display the US flag in ways that contravene US Flag Code's definitions of what is (and isn't) respect for the flag.

So here we go around again

§176. Respect for flag
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.

(a) The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

It seems that most Americans know that the flag should not be flown upside down. All images of upside down US flags are either of actual disaster or of metaphoric disaster and not really of patriotic pride. If you find an example of Americans proudly flying an upside down US flag, let me know!

(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.

There's something ironic about a right-wing presidential candidate giving a speech to a bunch of right-wing patriots in front of a flag that is touching the ground. To be fair, the group say that they eventually moved the flag, but the whole thing could have been avoided if they didn't bring the flag or ensured that the flag had a long-enough flag pole...



But most Americans know that the "flag touching the ground" proscription is a no-no, so this makes it so strange that this US Air Force veteran posed for Playboy with the US flag touching the ground. (It makes it doubly strange that she came to national prominence for attacking demonstrators on the grounds that the protesters were not respecting the flag.)

(c) The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.

This is not "aloft and free":

nor is this:

or this:

(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.

Flag as apparel:

(The flag the lady is holding is also against another part of the Flag Code: "the union of the flag should be placed at the peak of the staff unless the flag is at half-staff")

And swim-suits also count as apparel:

And if you are wrapping yourself in the flag, I suppose it means that it's like apparel:

Flag as bedding:

Flag as drapery:

(e) The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.

Arguably, this can be easily damaged (or at least easily torn away from its moorings):

(f) The flag should never be used as a covering for a ceiling.

Flag ceiling on Hero's Highway:

Flag ceiling in a Country bar owned by Toby Keith:

(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

Marking the flag:

Insignia placed on the flag:

Design, picture, drawing placed on the flag:

(With words placed on top of the flag just for good measure.)

(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.

Flag as a receptacle for holding/carrying (even though it's a baby):

  

Flag backpacks are definitely a receptacle for holding and carrying things:

Flag baskets can be used to receive, hold, carry, and deliver many yummy foodstuffs:

Flag cellphone cases are used to hold your phone:

(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

Flag advertising:

(It doesn't matter that you are trying to become central to the celebrations of the 4th of July...)

(It doesn't matter if you're an American classic, either)

Flag cushions:

Flag handkerchiefs (and bandanas):

Flag napkins:

Flag boxes:

Flag toothpicks are definitely only designed for temporary use and discard (which is one more reason why I don't pay $1 for a US flag toothpick):

Flag stickers are also temporary use and discard (even when it's used to make a sign saying how much you respect the US flag):

Advertising fastened to a flag pole with a US flag on it:

(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform. However, a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, firemen, policemen, and members of patriotic organizations. The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing. Therefore, the lapel flag pin being a replica, should be worn on the left lapel near the heart.

Flag as a costume:

 (the costume on the top-left has been signed, contravening part (g), above)

Flag as an athletic uniforms:

(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

This is - strangely - one of the points of respect that many right-wing patriots seem to not like about respecting the flag. It's almost always right-wing supporters that protest flag burning ceremonies (especially those done in protest by left-wing demonstrators). But at least the right-wingers seem to be consistent, by not burning US flags even during a Democratic presidency (and left-wingers seem to burn US flags more often during a Republican presidency). ... but these tendencies may well just be my perceptions and may well be subject to confirmation bias.

In addition to these rules of respect, there are also rules for how to display the flag... that also don't get followed:

§175(c): No other flag or pennant should be placed above ... the flag of the United States of America.... No person shall display the flag of the United Nations or any other national or international flag equal, above, or in a position of superior prominence or honor to, or in place of, the flag of the United States at any place within the United States or any Territory or possession thereof...

US flag shown below Confederate Battle flag.

§175(i): When displayed ... vertically ... the union should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is, to the observer's left.

US flag shown with union to the flag's own left, that is, to the observer's right.

There are definitely more examples of how Americans proudly display the US flag in ways that contravene the US Flag Code. And this will definitely continue. But I don't think anyone thought of painting an entire house as the US flag, so I think that this is technically not against the Flag Code:

Ride the bus!

I wish that it was this awesome when I ride the bus.

From 2012


From 2015

Weird Al: Word Crimes

I can relate to the sentiment being espoused in this video:

Complaint Choirs: Who Says you Can't Complain in an Upbeat Manner?

In a recent jaunt through YouTube, I came across the Tokyo Complaint Choir:

And from there to so many more:

Birmingham, England


Helsinki, Finland


Hamburg, Germany


St. Petersburg, Russia


Budapest, Hungary


Chicago, USA


Singapore


Hong Kong


Florence, Italy


Turns out that this is really an organized thing, complete with a website and a Wikipedia entry:

Complaints Choir is a community art project that invites people to sing about their complaints in a choir together with fellow complainers. The first Complaints Choir was organized in Birmingham (UK) in 2005, followed by the Complaints Choirs of Helsinki, Hamburg and St. Petersburg in 2006. The project was initiated by artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen. A video installation consisting of the documentation of the public performances of the four choirs were shown at Kiasma (Helsinki, Finland), S.M.A.K. (Ghent, Belgium) and Museum Fridericianium Kassel (Germany) among other venues. When the video clips of the choirs were distributed through online magazines and video sharing websites, the idea spread quickly to many other countries. To date additional Complaints Choirs have been organized in Bodø (Norway), Poikkilaakso primary school (Helsinki, Finland), Budapest (Hungary), Chicago (Illinois, United States), Juneau (Alaska), Gabriola Island (Canada), Melbourne (Australia), Jerusalem (Israel), Singapore, Breslau (Poland), Hong Kong, Philadelphia, Enschede in The Netherlands (as part of its international Grenswerk art festival) in the Netherlands and Tokyo (Japan).

I guess the shitty world economy has exacerbated the desire to kvetch, but to do it in style. After all, anyone can bellyache, squawk, and whine all they want. However, melodious complaining makes it all the more fun to actually listen to.

A YouTube search for "Complaint Choir" also pulls up a lot of other places. Interestingly, I don't find any complaint choir entries for France, or in Latin America. Hrm. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

An a capella song from St. Andrews students: Christmas Gets Worse Every Year

The Other Guys are an a capella group from my alma mater, St. Andrews. Above, you can see them in the Scottish hills, two of them sporting college scarves (the Bute medical college and the university). Represent!

Here's their wonderfully upbeat cynical song of Christmas that so wonderfully captured the feeling that I saw surrounding me each of the four years that I was a student in St. Andrews. Lord, but I miss this cynical, negative, and depressing nature that so many Brits seem to look forward to (and dread) every year.

Enjoy the upbeatedness of British Christmas cynicism:


h/t to my friends from St. Andrews who posted this on Facebook. :)

Wednesday Wonderings: What is a popular PIN?

With 10,000 options for a 4-digit pin number (0000 through 9999), and with many PINs being personal choices, the distribution pattern of combinations is not going to be anything like random. However, what IS the pattern for the most common PIN numbers? And what is the least common?

Well, the blog Data Genetics did some number crunching on PIN numbers based on "data condensed from released/exposed/discovered password tables and security breaches", and this is what was found to be the 20 most common PIN numbers:

     PIN   Freq
#1   1234  10.713%
#2   1111   6.016%
#3   0000   1.881%
#4   1212   1.197%
#5   7777   0.745%
#6   1004   0.616%
#7   2000   0.613%
#8   4444   0.526%
#9   2222   0.516%
#10  6969   0.512%
#11  9999   0.451%
#12  3333   0.419%
#13  5555   0.395%
#14  6666   0.391%
#15  1122   0.366%
#16  1313   0.304%
#17  8888   0.303%
#18  4321   0.293%
#19  2001   0.290%
#20  1010   0.285%

To put the popularity of "1234" another way:

The most popular PIN code of 1234 is more popular than the lowest 4,200 codes combined!

The very least common PIN number (i.e., the 10,000th most common) was 8068. However, the blog author adds this warning to the result:

Now that we’ve learned that, historically, 8068 is (was?) the least commonly used password 4-digit PIN, please don’t go out and change yours to this! Hackers can read too! They will also be promoting 8068 up their attempt trees in order to catch people who read this (or similar) articles.

Check out about the Nash Equilibrium

For everyone out there using a PIN that starts with "19--"; there's some worrying news for you, too:

Many of the high frequency PIN numbers can be interpreted as years, e.g. 1967, 1956, 1937 … It appears that many people use a year of birth (or possibly an anniversary) as their PIN. This will certainly help them remember their code, but it greatly increases its predictability.

Just look at the stats: Every single 19?? combination can be found in the top fifth of the dataset!

There is a lot more information (including lots of graphics) over at Data Genetics, and so I'd check it out... (especially his "Conclusions" section) and then take some advice and maybe change your PIN (especially if it's 1234, 1111, 0000, 1212, or any of the top 20). As with many things that intersect society and numbers, xkcd has made some comics, and (like with Data Genetics) I will end with them here:

Side note: I really find it humorous that "6969" is in the top 10 most common 4-digit PIN combinations (ahead of several PIN combinations of just the same number, like "9999" or "6666").

Tuesday Video(s): Drunk History!

Yesterday's timeline of conservative US history reminded me of a series of YouTube videos called "Drunk History", in which actors portray a drunk person's version of some person or event in history:

Part 1: Alexander Hamilton


Part 2: Benjamin Franklin


Part 2.5: Ben Franklin's sexual predelictions


Part 3: Oney Judge (George & Martha Washington's slave)


Part 4: William Henry Harrison


Part 5: Fredrick Douglass


Part 6: Nikola Tesla

Monday Musing: Literal translation of bad facts

A few days ago, the New Yorker produced a time line of American history, based on statements of historical fact made by conservatives. Now, we know that all conservatives aren't historians (well, most aren't), and so they might be given a little bit of leeway on getting dates and actual people's names absolutely correct, and we know that the New Yorker is specifically choosing quotes that are wrong. However, the timeline that is produced is quixotic, funny, and properly sourced. Some examples:

1500s: The American Revolutionary War begins: “The reason we fought the revolution in the sixteenth century was to get away from that kind of onerous crown.”—Rick Perry

1619-1808: Africans set sail for America in search of freedom: “Other than Native Americans, who were here, all of us have the same story.”—Michele Bachmann

1776: The Founding Synod signs the Declaration of Independence: “…those fifty-six brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen.”—Mike Huckabee

1812: The American War for Independence ends: “ ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’…that song—written during the battle in the War of 1812—commemorates the sacrifice that won our liberty.”—Mitt Romney

1908: The real Pledge of Allegiance is written: “I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.”—Dan Quayle

1961: Barack Obama is born, in Africa: “And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya.”—Mike Huckabee

1961: The Soviet Union brainwashes its first Marxist terrorist spybot: “Soviet Russian Communists knew of Barack from a very early date… he was raised and groomed Communist to pave the way for their future.”—Janet Porter

1967: Indonesia brainwashes its first Islamic terrorist spybot: “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised—spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father—as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa?”—Steve Doocy

1993: Barack Obama appears in the hip-hop video “Whoomp! There It Is!”: “Pay close attention to his ears poking out, the shape of his nose, and skin color.”—Tennessee Sons of Liberty

September 11, 2001: Nothing happened: “We had no domestic attacks under Bush.”—Rudy Giuliani

May, 2004: Abu Ghraib pranksters pull some funny ones: “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation … I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release?”—Rush Limbaugh

2010: Flying Jihad Terror Babies invade America: “It appeared they would have young women who became pregnant. They would get them into the United States to have a baby, they wouldn’t even have to pay anything for the baby, and then they would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists.”—Representative Louie Gohmert

2011: President George W. Bush kills Osama bin Laden: “Thanks to George Bush…. Because if Obama had his way we wouldn’t have gotten bin Laden, you know that.”—Sean Hannity

Wednesday Wonderings: IS Britain finally over the idea of "empire"?

"The sun never sets on the British Empire" was something that still had a ring of cultural truth when I stepped off the plane at Edinburgh back in 1995, there in Scotland to attend my first year at St. Andrews University (quipped by many to be the "most northern English university"). Indeed, the four years that I spent at St. Andrews were - now that I think about it - a major time of change in the United Kingdom, starting with voting whether to join the "Eurozone" (the UK didn't) and ending (at least my time there) with setting up national parliaments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; devolution from "the United Kingdom", and one sort of end to one sort of empire.

It was why Eddie Izzard's sketches about the British Empire were so funny. It's why his explanation of the (amazingly fantastical in its own historical right) expansion of the Empire was met so popularly and with such humor:



It was why the end of that show was also met with hilarity, even in the UK:



Now, though, maybe, the British dream of empire is now, finally, for the most part, ended. Maybe the UK can become part of that moped-driving, "ciao"-shouting European dream. To Andrew Sullivan, the opening ceremony of London 2012 seemed to show that the UK is finally ready to give up the ghost of empire, agreeing with Simon Schama's rather chilling summary of fascist Olympic game opening-ceremony renderings, and saying:

Britain's 2012 Olympics were of the anti-fascist variety. Which is fitting, isn't it, since this tiny island nation was the lynchpin in fascism's twentieth century demise. Defeated, in part, by a sense of humor, perspective and a spot of anarchy.

Schama's piece is worth a read, and seems to be a great and chilling recounting of how we might perceive nationalism as corporatist/elitist branding for the masses while growing fat on the excesses. Or something. It does seem, however, to point to London 2012's opening ceremony as something that is definitely not chest-thumping, mindless choruses of nationalistic chants, and empty symbolism. So maybe Britain is finally getting over the idea of "empire".

Maybe.

Monday Meandering Musing: The Phases of my Laundry

Since I don't have immediate access to laundry facilities where I live, I go through boom and bust cycles of clean clothes availability. Recently, xkcd posted something about this:

Of course, the cycle is far faster (weeks and not months), and I (almost) never get to the last stage. I guess if you relabeled the chart "Forest-Living Grad-Student/Caretaker Laundry Habits".

This week is laundry week, so maybe that's why I have this on my mind.

Sunday Thoughts: I am a "Thoughtful Guy"

Rhett & Link

It's freaky that many of these things are actually things that I've thought about recently...

A video interview across time

I saw this, and it's a really fun and cool video. A well done vid:



Hehehehehe.

Hot and sticky Japanese summers

As we start what is expected to be yet another really hot not-quite-summer-even-though-it-feels-like-summer day, I remember back to what a Tokyo end-of-summer felt (and sounded) like. This pretty much sums up the feeling:


Ad Agency: Dentsu Kansai.

via CopyRanter

Old-timers on the interwebs.

So... if I have a Yahoo account from 1995, does that make me an old-timer, too?

Caloric intake overload!

Meet the new "F*ck You Pizza":



13,740 calories?!? Woah. Just... woah... (Yes, I know that it's a joke.)

Just to give people an understanding of what that means for someone like myself (6'3", 245lbs male, 35 years old), according to this site, even if I exercise daily and I have a physical job, I would "only" need to eat 4055 calories/day to maintain my weight. (Now, if I were training for the Olympics, then perhaps eating like Michael Phelps would be a good way to go, though.)



While I wasn't anything like Michael Phelps when I was swimming competitively in high school, I did pound the calories - and lost weight - every day. I remember that I would eat a box of cereal for breakfast, a whole pizza for lunch (in addition to a bagged lunch of two peanut butter sandwiches and an apple), a giant pretzel for an after school/pre-swimming snack, and half a casserole for dinner (leaving the other half for my parents). It caught up to me in my first year at university: I was able to eat a lot, I had been eating a lot, but now I wasn't doing much physical exercise... and my "freshman 15" was in kilos, not pounds.

When I was doing aikido training at Nippon-Kan in Denver, CO, I was also eating a lot of food every day, following several hours of training. My breakfasts were back up to a whole box of cereal (although never sugary cereal), and my dinners were usually a large helping of something from the adjoining restaurant. This second time, though, I was a bit smarter about caloric intake when I stopped the intense training, and I worked at lowering my intake to what seemed like mere bird-peckings.

I now find myself with the ability to eat fast and to eat a lot. It's something that helps me when I do fieldwork - eat a LOT of carbs in the morning, and then do a full day of hard work - but it's something that has made me into a person who always feels like I can eat more. Indeed, I rarely feel fully full. It's why buffets are so dangerous for me. It's why leftovers are so dangerous for me. I can eat in one sitting more than some of my friends comfortably eat in two meals, and still keep going.

That's one of the reasons why I am so happy that I can bike while on this trip to Toronto. Keeping my basal metabolism going while on vacation is very important for making sure that my body doesn't slow down any more than age and work will do to it. Biking allows me to be more mobile than walking and nowhere near as sweaty, while also allowing me to have a great workout. (And Toronto is - no matter what I had thought about Ann Arbor - a fun city to cycle in; at least the places that I've been.)

The 5th Horseman: Flatulence

I guess no one knew about it, because the deadliest flatulence is the silent one:

Via Commissioned Comic.

Do scientists have humor?

Maybe...

Brian Malow:




Norm Goldblatt:


Merle Kessler:


Tim Lee:


Okay... some aren't as funny as others, but they're still kinda fun to watch. (Some more fun than others.)

Dalek meditation for humans

So THIS is what the Daleks have been up to!



I feel much better already!

But maybe someone should let the Daleks know that cassette tapes aren't in use very much anymore - so much so that the term has been removed from the OED. (Maybe that's what is causing the scratchy voice.)

Was this you this morning?

The Day after St. Patty's Day


Gritty. Funny.

Round up your friends for a GUINNESS

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's day. Time to round up your friends for a GUINNESS!



Mmmmm.... GUINNESS....