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May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
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Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
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Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
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Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
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Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
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Jewish World Review
Hey caller, where's the fire?
By
Jim Mullen
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A friend of mine who works at the firehouse is great. He's a stand-up guy, ex-military, highly trained, dedicated, hard-working and about to go insane.
"I got in trouble with the higher-ups the other day for being rude to the public. Someone called and said, 'There's a deer in my backyard.' I said, 'Is it on fire?' and the guy said, 'No,' so I said, 'Then why are you calling the fire department?'
"You wouldn't believe the silly calls we get. One guy phoned to say he had a broken water pipe in his basement. So I asked him: 'Is the pipe on fire? No? Then why are you calling the fire department? Call a plumber.'"
My friend has a theory that he gets all these calls because no one can do anything for themselves anymore. As a society we have become lazy and dependant, more like pets than people. I told him that I'm sure fire departments probably started getting non-emergency phones calls the day after they first got phones installed, hundreds of years ago. Didn't we all grow up seeing cartoons and advertisements showing heroic firefighters rescuing cats from trees? I don't want him to ask a crying child "Is the cat on fire?"
Anyone who deals with the public can tell you stories that will make you wonder how our species survived but the dinosaurs didn't. National-park employees tell stories of visitors to the Grand Canyon who ask what time they turn on the lights at night and where are the escalators to the bottom. Rangers in the Everglades tell of finding a woman sunbathing on a deserted -- but alligator-frequented -- island, with nothing but a bottle of suntan lotion to ward off the hungry carnivores.
"Didn't you see the warnings signs?" they asked.
"Yes," she said, "But I didn't think they meant me."
I know a professional photographer who works for advertising agencies and catalogs in Manhattan, and when we were young and just starting out, he built a portfolio of different photographs he had taken to show clients what he could do. This was long before Photoshop could change any photo to look slick and professional. Daniel would spend days setting up shots of what they used to call "tabletop" photography: stills of hamburgers with just the right amount of lettuce peeking out from under the bun, a sliver of ketchup visible, the meat glistening -- all things that are impossible to achieve with a real hamburger under hot, withering lights. The lettuce wilts, grease drips from the meat and stains everything it touches, the ketchup runs. So the lettuce is really plastic, and the meat is dried and sprayed with silicon. Cheese is a nightmare. Silly as it sounds, this is hard, trial and error, obsessive/compulsive work. Hold your next real burger up to a picture of one in an ad and you'll see what I mean.
Daniel had to have the best cameras, the best lights, the most expensive film and a large Manhattan workspace. It was a huge investment for a man with no clients. All day long, he or his agent would drop off his portfolio of pictures off to art directors at magazines and advertising agencies, trying to get work. One day a big ad agency called him back. He was thrilled. The art director flipped through his book of pictures while Daniel watched. Finally the guy stopped at the picture of the hamburger. He hits the button on his desk and asks the account manager to come in. They both stare at the hamburger for a while. Finally, the account manager turns to the art director and says, "Sure, he can shoot a McDonald's hamburger, but can he shoot a Wendy's hamburger?"
Maybe if it's on fire.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Jim Mullen is the author of "It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life" and "Baby's First Tattoo."
Previously:
My sad cushy life
Pacemaker, don't you mess around with me
Big Brother is skinny
Flight of the snowbirds
This HDTV needs child support
Dear Future: Where's the dome?
Not so elementary, my dear Watson
A vacation revolution
Your call is very unimportant to us
Life: There's no app for that
Bam! Practical kitchen magic
Poisoning myself
Ban Huck Finn in schools --- even the sanitized version!
$38,000 for traffic and weather updates
2011 Predictions: Nostradamus was a hack
2010: A year of annoying junk
Why do bad things happen to stupid people? Moving on from movie theaters
Money never sleeps, but it does pass out
President Trump kept it classy
Stalking your college kid won't change a thing
Putting my life in Jeopardy
Mo' government, mo' problems
iLostIt
Dressed for excess
Expert tease
The mysteries of Jersey
You are a toilet, where am I?
Don't we all cheat at the game of life?
What happens when I forget where Google is?
Don't let the doorman hit you on the way out
Picasso fiasco
Purple (hair) Daze
Let me hear your body talk
Working from work
Babies deserve clean restrooms, too
3-year-old bear-killers are a thing of the past
Money-making ideas on the fly
Collecting and hoarding
Chain of fools
Please come pick up your acting awards, ESPN commentators, you've earned them
You've been superpoked by the U.S. gov't
e-Readin', e-Writin' and e-Rithmatic
A pose by any other name
Warning: Column contains 2010 spoilers
He loves only gold, only gold
Think about direction, wonder why …
Flushing your money down a diamond-studded toilet
More like wack Friday
The good, the ad and the ugly
The desert of the real
Let books be large and in charge
I was insulting people way before the Internet
GPS drill sergeant: Left, right, left!
Butterfly in the sky, you make winds go twice as high
Music to my ears it's not
You don't light up my life
Fair or not: Country living is far from Little House
A parable for the ages
Top 100 Cable news stories of the century
Green dumb
A developing story
Thinking outside the lunch box
What's good for the goose is good for the scanner
Newspapers will survive, but network TV?
A really big show of generation gaps
When pigs flu
The reports of our decline have been greatly exaggerated
Mergers and admonitions
Invest in gold: little, yellow, different
Stuck in Folsom Penthouse
Collecting karma
Setting loose the creative juice
It's all in the numbers
You're damaging your brain with practical skills
The real rat pack
The unspeakable luxury of the Park-O-Matic
Gross-ery shopping
© 2009, NEA
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