Tipping: Why I'm Against It*

I’ve never been a tipper. Due to my current circumstances, I rarely have the opportunity these days, but even when I do there’s a voice in my head that prevents me. The social pressure to tip can be intensely hard to resist, especially when you’re out for a night of entertainment with a group of friends. I’ve gotten in arguments over the issue and have even lost the friendship of a college buddy over it. Our friendship simply couldn’t weather my aversion to tipping. Over time I’ve learned to limit my time out with friends and to cut the evening short rather than put myself into a situation where tipping is expected. I’ll make excuses and just slip away to avoid confrontation. I’m a product of my upbringing I suppose. My father had nothing against tipping when he was much younger, and has indicated to me that he certainly did so as a young man, but by the time I was born he had come to believe it was wrong. He taught my sister and me that it was actually harmful, bordering on abuse, and encouraged us not to be herd-followers for the sake of tradition, but to be free thinkers instead.

Dad grew up in a fairly rural area and while they had no cows of their own there were certainly plenty of opportunities for cow-tipping on the neighboring spreads. He’s shared stories of late night escapades in the surrounding pasture lands where he and his buddies allegedly competed to see who could knock over the most cows in a specified time period. They’d get likkered up and take the tractor down the road a piece (plausible deniability I suppose), climb through the barbed wire, stagger out to the nearest concentration of snoozing bovines, and cut loose in an orgy of animal upending.

Sometimes I wonder how accurate his stories are, though. There’s a semi-scholarly analysis of the various moments and forces at play in your typical cow-tipping scenario here. Apparently it’s exceedingly difficult (if not impossible) for a single person to tip a cow. Especially when you’re smashed out of your gourd and fighting to remain vertical.

In any case, as I said, he has come to believe that cow-tipping is abusive and cruel, and has managed to impart that principle (along with many others) to his offspring. So now when my buddies and I get likkered up on a Saturday night and they get a hankerin’ to knock over some poor unsuspecting bovine, I usually suggest we throw rocks at cars instead. Or I make excuses and slip away to avoid confrontation.

*Elevated sensitivity to all things bovine brought to you by Urquhart.

I See a Red Door and I Want to Paint it Black

Relax. I'm not suggesting Charcoal as the final color theme for the forums. But I did want a dramatic contrast from the original color set.

This is a democracy, isn't it?
I also want to throw open the color design to all members. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to bend your considerable collective skills to the task of proposing color themes for nuponuq (and eventually for "The Arena", or whatever it ultimately becomes). Do so by commenting on this article with your suggestions (more on how to do this below!). I'll take your suggested color themes and apply a new one every day or so for the enjoyment (and commentary) of the community. After a while we'll vote for our favorites and select a winner (Note: Schad will ultimately have veto power if he wants it).

How the hell do I create a color theme?
Many of you no doubt recall Ender's eye-searing foray into forum colorization a few weeks ago. If you were paying attention the next day, you may have seen my own attempts as well. The problem we were grappling with was the rather poor interface that the forum software has for managing colors. There's no effective way to preview color choice and so the only option we had was to pick colors that seemed like they might play well together and slam them into place in the live site. Chaos. For that reason I created a simple preview tool to dry run color themes. You can find the tool here:

nuponuq color tool

You can play around with color combinations and see how they will work together in the forum. When you have a theme you like, simply copy the color values and paste them into a forum comment. That's all there is to it!

So let's get cracking!

New Forum Feature - Inline Login

This is really of interest only to those of you with blogs feeding comments to the nuponuq forum. Currently most such blogs display both a Login and Register link (and occasionally some prompt text asserting something like "You must login to post in the forum").

Inline login allows the comment posting code (Post New Message) to detect when the user is not logged in and redirect the user to the login page. After login is finished, the code remembers that a comment post was being attempted and redirects once again to continue the process.

This means you can remove the Login link and prompt (and probably the Register link as well since registration is possible from the login page; note, however, that since registration involves sending an email with temporary password, the comment process doesn't continue if the user has to register).

So clean up your blog articles today!

The "conversation"

(How I imagine it happening...)

Dramatis Personae

John Ashcroft, Ailing Attorney General
James Comey, Deputy Attorney General
Andy Card, White House Chief of Staff
Alberto Gonzalez, White House Counsel

The scene: a dingy hospital room with a sputtering yellow light bulb dangling from a frayed wire. A ratty bed occupies the center of the room. Ashcroft, looking pale, is slumped down in his pillow, festooned with tubes and wires, face partially obscured by an oxygen mask. A bank of bedside monitors produces a rhythmic beeping sound. Card and Gonzalez are nattily dressed in pin-stripe suits with vests, silk cravats, and spats on their Italian leather shoes. Comey stands on the opposite side of the bed from Card and Gonzalez, dressed in a summery blue frock nicely accented with a strand of pearls around his neck and matching earrings, clutching a tiny, stylish white purse.

Gonzalez is leaning against the stained gray wall holding a sock filled with birdshot in one hand and bouncing it on the palm of the other. Andy Card leans over Ashcroft’s bed and adopts an overly friendly, conversational demeanor.

Card: "So, Johnny... I hear you don’ wanna sign the papers Mr. Big sent over. Whaddya thinkin'?"

Gonzalez: "...mm...mzz...mlrzmr....."

Card: "Alberto says Mr. Big wants you to sign the papers. Mr. Big don’t got a lotta patience. Alberto says he's kinda preoccupied with the 34th Street Muscle Men an' he's thinkin' they might have a mole in the organization. Mr. Big don' like moles. Alberto says he's gotta clean house. You wanna help Mr. Big clean house, don’tcha Johhny?"

Gonzalez: "...zlrz...mrhhz...hnhrmlrzr....."

Card: "Alberto says the Crosstown Boys are gettin' uppity too. They don' wanna play by Mr Big's rules no more. Alberto says they're startin' to encroach on our territory. You don' want the Crosstown Boys encroahin' on our territory, now, do ya, Johnny?"

Ashcroft (coughing weakly): "I ain't gonna sign those papers, Andy. Mr Big's outta control. The Crosstown Boys maybe gotta point here-"

Ashcroft’s voice cuts off as Card leans on the tube supplying his oxygen. Ashcroft’s breathing becomes labored and the beeping from the monitors becomes more strident.

Card (grinning sympathetically): "Aw, Johnny... why you gotta be that way, huh? Don' make us have to rough ya up. We're civilized people here, Johnny. Don' make us give in to our baser instincts."

Gonzalez: "...lmnm...ddlflz...prmmfn....."

Card: "Alberto says you gotta play nice, Johnny. Mr. Big took you under his wing, made a spot for you in his organization. Alberto says you owe Mr. Big. You like to honor your debts, don’tcha Johnny? Alberto says you gotta man up. You wanna be a man, don'tcha Johnny?"

Comey (looking alarmed): "You get away from him, you... you got no hold on Johnny, he's a man's man. He ain't afraid'a Mr Big. He's gonna do what's right even if it kills him!"

Comey steps forward, fingers curled into claws, reaching for Card, who easily fends off the half-hearted lunge. Comey collapses to his knees, sobbing. Card shakes his head regretfully and steps away from the bed.

Card: "You do what you gotta do, Johnny. Mr. Big'll do what he's gotta do. God help you, Johnny."

Card saunters out of the room.

Gonzalez (looking pointedly at Ashcroft): "...rrzlz...pthpp...gggzznnd.....pphpht....."

Gonzalez follows Card out the door, leaving Ashcroft alone with a softly sobbing Comey.

[Fade to black]