Lost Beeb. About two or three years ago, I, stuporously channel-surfing, caught the tail end of a BBC production on PBS. It was a mock-documentary of day to day life in, apparently, a UK banking firm, focussing especially on an insanely ambitious mid-level manager, and I remember it as being pretty funny. I saw the end of the show but never found out what the name of it was. It didn't occur to me at the time to, say, look for channel listings on line, or track down a newspaper that might have listed it.

Fast-forward to last month, and I, cavorting through Netflix's^[1] candy store, find a listing for what appears to be the lost program. So I add Seasons 1 and 2, plus Christmas specials, of The Office to our queue, and they arrive, and lo! it is not at all the program I am looking for. Not that I am disappointed – The Office is very good. And apparently there's a US version, which we've never seen or heard of until now. ("...having the boss be a bit more competent, and having plots that are slightly more upbeat, with humor less cruel." "What's the fun in that?" Moira asks.)

Does anybody out there know what the program I'm looking for (back up there in paragraph one) is?

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^[1]Amount of money spent by us at local, in-town video retail stores since signing up for Netflix: $0.00.

Heartland Retail Experience Update. Apropos a recent entry, it looks like the owners of the local mall (known around Casa Fleck y Breen as "the sad mall", because of it general shabbiness and despairing air) recognize there's a problem and are taking steps:

Barrington, Ill.-based GK Development Inc. is undertaking an expansion and renovation of its 340,000-square-foot North Grand Mall in Ames, Iowa [...] the thrust of the project will be to add an open-air lifestyle component, the Streets of North Grand.

Ahhh, that's been the cause of my restless retail dissatisfaction -- I've got a open-air lifestyle component-shaped hole in me.

Snarkiness aside, a nice, lively open-air lifestyle component would be a pretty bitchin' thing. I'm dubious that something like that could simply be manufactured and plopped down, though. Main Street in this town is sort of an open-air lifestyle component, as is Welch Avenue, but neither quite seem to have worked up critical mass in either the retail or happening-public-space spheres. Main Street is a, well, street, after all, not a big open-air space where people congregate.

Maybe I'm spoiled, though, because I tend to compare all open-air lifestyle components to Boulder's Pearl Street Mall, which is probably an unreachable standard in a town this size.

It is a good day to have a Bartlett's. Moira and I were engaged in one of our common pastimes – slagging on some random Internet lackwit – when the question arose: who said, "It is a good day to die"? Or rather, who was first famously quoted as saying it? Because the Klingons probably say it a lot, but they clearly swiped it, a la Dempsey/Reagan. After a bout of brain-cudgeling, I thought Sitting Bull might have said it, prior to Little Bighorn, but it just didn't seem like Sitting Bull's style. Searching through Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee^[1] turned up nothing. Wikipedia was no help; searching on the phrase brought up an entry for a forgettable album by a forgotten midwestern band. The entry on Sitting Bull didn't help; the entry on Little Bighorn was remarkably poor, with nary a peep about the Sioux/Cheyenne side of the battle. Googling the phrase itself, I came across a few sites that listed Crazy Horse as the speaker – that's the kind of bad-ass thing you'd expect Crazy Horse to say – but the overall consensus is that it was the Oglala chief Low Dog.

(I'd never heard of him before either.)

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^[1]Why is it that people who leave reviews on Amazon are such dweebs?

Science Quickie Saturday: Save the Ozone Hole!

Report: Ozone Hole May Disappear by 2050

TOKYO - The ozone hole over the Antarctic is likely to begin contracting in the future and may disappear by 2050 because of a reduction in the release of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting gases[...]

So that's interesting – to me, at least – because I hadn't thought that the effects of CFC's would be so quickly (relatively) reversed; I figured (well, I didn't figure at all, I just did my usual mushbrained dataless musing) that it would take centuries.

But what's with this bit:

Some, however, have suggested the hole won't heal until much later because old refrigerators and air-conditioning systems — many in the United States and Canada — are still releasing ozone-killing chemicals. Both countries curbed those chemicals in newer products.

Ahh, the mysterious Some have spoken. And they are particularly concerned about the United States and Canada. Because everybody else's fridges and AC's released only oxygen and subtle floral fragrances.

If we don't have it, it's impure of you to even think about buying it. Ever since Moira and I abandoned the damp fleshpots of the Pacific Northwest for this windy-yet-restrained Midwestern town, we have been witness to a seemingly endless debate over the building of a new shopping mall nearby. We first twigged the controversy when we noticed small signs popping up on lawns and in shop windows, proclaiming "NO NEW MALL".

As newcomers to the area, we didn't bother to get involved in any way, or really even pay attention to the issue politically. We did notice that the issue never seemed to get resolved one way or the other; the city council would make motions toward approval, then disapproval... Now the city council has made it official – it's never going to decide: "...the Ames City Council decided to postpone indefinitely a decision about the zoning for land on which the shopping center would be built..."

One apparently unusual feature of this local growth/no-growth controversy is that it's been going on so long it's spawned an active counter group advocating for mall construction (n.b.: all quotes herein are from this article).

...it is rare for residents to openly support a proposed mall.

"I have to say in my nearly 25 years, this is unprecedented," said Matt Flynn, director of planning and housing in Ames.

Many of the arguments against the mall are the usual anti-sprawl complaints (increased traffic, loss of farmland, cost of additional city services, opposition from established businesses, etc.):

In west Ames, Joe Lynch looks at his tree-lined vegetable farm and talks about how that area on the outer edge of town offers one last chance to preserve the farm and marshland from being chipped away by urban sprawl.

(Not mentioned, however, is that the land the proposed mall would occupy had already been zoned for commercial use – and that mall opponents, in an attempt to forestall mall development, got the land re-zoned for industrial use, which hardly seems friendly to all the poor bunnies and froggies.)

However, some of the mall opposition is a bit more unusual:

Opponents want leaders to reject the glitter of consumerism, and say there is no need for another shopping center.

At a planning and zoning meeting in Ames last week, Ames Smart Growth Alliance President Catherine Scott demonstrated her opposition to the mall by bringing grapes, apples and a food product made up of those two fruits up to the podium.

She said a zeal to consume new things causes people to lose touch with the things they buy.

"No store, no town could satisfy the needs for recreational shopping," she said.

(No, I don't know what the fruit thing's all about.)

John Norquist, president of the Congress for New Urbanism, an organization that advocates mixed-use developments, said baby boomers have recently started lobbying more heavily for development and shopping that still offer low prices, but don't require them to drive. [Aside from Mrs. Fleck here: Hmmm - now why does this bring to mind that ancient paternal rejoinder "...and the people in hell want ice water, kid"? On second thought, is the inevitable result of this kind of thinking more along the lines of "surely you can't expect me to shop at that ghastly Wal-Mart, so here's a growth proposal that will let y'all subsidize my charming New Urbanism shopping experience"? (Strangely enough, the local Wal-Mart is within walking/biking distance. And I am tapping my foot waiting for someone to plop a Trader Joe's into the little N.U. area hard by our neighborhood.)]

"They are so turned off by the crap that's been built for the last four years and they just don't want to see it anymore," he said. "The boomers want to sip from the cup from the good life. They don't want to have their life showing up at the big-box store, loading up their car with toilet paper and going home."

Umm, yeah, dude. Whatever.

Here at ProgReacCo we don't want to see our pleasant little college town get all suburban-sprawly like the hideous monstrosity to our south, Ankeny. (And we say this knowing and liking people that willingly moved to Ankeny; we're willing to overlook that. But the place is more soulless than Beaverton, for God's sake.) As such, we are sympathetic to the more sane of the mall opponents. However. There is a truth that must be acknowledged: shopping in this town sucks.

Being a college town, the vast majority of commercial establishments are bars and greasy pizza joints. Shops selling consumer goods close early and often, except for the few big-box stores at the south end of town. There's a small, old, shabby "mall" at the north end of town, but we find its stores meet almost none of our consumer needs. Too frequently, to find even the basics of civilized living (such as, say, a decent bottle of olive oil) at reasonable prices, we have to pack up and drive to (shudder) Ankeny, or, worst case scenario, the 45 miles to Des Moines. So when some anti-growther smugly tells us to do without, or starts constructing involved and obscure metaphors involving fruit, we are less than sympathetic.

Truthfully, what we'd really like to see is the new proposed mall plopped down on top of the existing crappy mall. But that won't happen, because the new mall developer insists (rightly) that the existing mall is too far from the Interstate.

Supporters of the proposed shopping center said this development is the key to pulling Ames out of the shadow of Ankeny, which has seen more than 110 percent growth in its sales-tax-producing retail sales since 1998, while Ames has grown just 25 percent.

The outcome of this fight is likely to influence school enrollment in Ames, which has dropped so much officials decided to close a school last May.

Two schools, actually. For as long as we don't have more retail in this town, regional shoppers will continue to toss their money at Ankeny, that painted whore of the prairies; and our town will limp along, poorer but smugly self-righteous. (Ames gets too much gummint cheese to ever really decline.)

UPDATE: Here come the lawyers!

This has been FleckWar II: The Shoppening

Nurse, please retract that greenish blob, next to all those squiggly bits and that thing that looks like melted cheese... Via Mr. Cosh, a fascinating article from The Australian on the (alleged) breakdown in teaching standards in Australian medical schools. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, not because I intend to be practiced upon by graduates of said schools, but because the teaching of anatomy and physiology ("A&P" to us jaded cognoscenti) to uppity pre-meds was my bread and butter during much of the first edition of my adulthood.

TEACHING of basic anatomy in Australia's medical schools is so inadequate that students are increasingly unable to locate important body parts - and in some cases even confuse one vital organ with another.

Senior doctors claim teaching hours for anatomy have been slashed by 80per cent in some medical schools to make way for "touchy-feely" subjects such as "cultural sensitivity", communication and ethics. The time devoted to other basic sciences - including biochemistry, physiology and pathology - has also been reduced.

Several senior consultants have told The Weekend Australian they have been "horrified" to encounter final-year medical students who do not know where the prostate gland is, or what a healthy liver feels like.

So, while the words "prostate exam" induce a particular visceral dread in most of the target population, with an Australian doctor it's just a total wildcard situation -- no telling where that gloved finger's gonna go!

When asked by a cardiac surgeon during a live operation to identify a part of the heart that he was pointing to, one group of final-year students thought it was the patient's liver.

The change apparently rose from the desire to cram ever more stuff into the standard medical school program:

The heads of Australia's medical schools fiercely contest the criticisms, saying there has been an "explosion" of medical knowledge that doctors need to know, in fields such as genetics and new drugs, and that other areas have to be cut to accommodate the newer topics.

"Doctor, I have this terrible pain in my side!" Doctor looks, frowns. "Sorry, didn't do that side. Term ended before we got over there. Could you pretend the pain is on this side? Then I think we might be able to find some new drug for it..."

The criticisms of teaching methods are fiercely contested by the heads of Australia's 17 medical schools. Lindon Wing, chairman of the Committee of Deans of Australian Medical Schools, dismissed the examples of student ignorance as anecdotal and said the attacks stemmed from a "clash of cultures" within the profession.

"It's the difference between people who have been brought up (through medical school) in a certain way, and want it to stay that way, and the people who are leading a revolution," Professor Wing said. "I have never seen any evidence ... in any of our disciplines that would show we are deficient."

...leading a revolution, eh? I have to say that that quote sets off some alarm bells. To the barricades, comrades! Against bourgeois hierarchical organ systems! Abolish the bilateralist tendency!

Cavablogging, Brut-style.

CONCEPT 1: Blog, entries of which consist entirely of entries apologizing for lack of blogging, spaced at appropriate intervals.

CONCEPT 2. Blog, entries only appear when blogger(s) have consumed sufficient (too much?) alcohol. Tends to be episodic, incoherent.

"I mean, what's the bloody point?" asks Basil Fawlty, the great big apothegm hanging over the whole bloggerly enterprise. Too frequently, yr. humble narrat'r. looks within, and realizes, "None, none at all." I mean, it's not even my blog. I'm just a guest in the house, freeloading out of the refrigerator. I have no idea where Moira's wandered off to. And 99% of the time, I have my own garden to tend to, and that is far more compelling than banging out some text here. In the words of the marketing-types where I work, that's just not adding value. I'm not adding value to the blogosphere by bashing out this-is-what-my-desk-looks-like posts (some can pull it off, I can't). Interesting thought, though - how many blog posts add value to the internet, and how many subtract value? Could blogs reach a point where they drain more value from the internet than they add? (Of course, blog posts would not be alone in this.) When other people can express your ideas better than you can, what's the point of adding your "Me, too"? (I notice a number of other bloggers of long standing are also experiencing a bit of a "WTP?" moment as well.)

Anyway, --- where was I? By Schultz's Law^[1], it is time to activate the blog. Stay tuned. I guess.

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^[1]Schultz's Law: This blog must be updated at least as often as Angie Schultz's blog is.