Scott Sherman Online

How to Wash Your Mouse

It would never occur to me to hold a mouse under running water, but that's why I'm not a marketing genius like the good folks at Belkin.

They just released a press announcement trumpeting the fact that they've developed "a water-resistant mouse that can survive spills and can be hand-washed under the faucet to stay clean and disinfected."

Doesn't this picture look like it came off a Saturday Night Live skit? "Mouse-Soap – the miracle cleanser that washes your hands AND navigates your spreadsheets!"

All this waterproof goodness can be yours for $29.99 USD.

The Kids Are Alright

A poll conducted by the unlikely trio of The New York Times, CBS News and…wait for it…MTV, reveals that young Americans are "leaning left."

Here are some bullets from the article:

• Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage
• More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008.
• Forty-four percent said they believed that same-sex couples should be permitted to get married, compared with 28 percent of the public at large.
• They are more likely than their elders to support the legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.
• In the current poll, 62 percent said they would support a universal, government-sponsored national health care insurance program; 47 percent of the general public holds that view
• In one potential sign of shifting attitudes, respondents, by overwhelming margins, said they believed that the nation was prepared to elect as president a woman, a black person or someone who admitted to having used marijuana.

Holy cow, I was born into the wrong generation. Imagine: They want to share marriage and insurance benefits with everyone – not just a select few! They're Democrats ! They'd vote for a woman or a black person! They don't think you should spend a few years in jail for smoking a joint!

One weird finding was that they think the war in Iraq is going well. They "were more optimistic about the outcome than was the population as whole. Fifty-one percent said the United States was very or somewhat likely to succeed in Iraq, compared with 45 percent among all adults."

But apparently, young people tend to support this country's wars." Contrary to conventional wisdom, younger Americans have historically been more likely than the population as a whole to be supportive of what a president is doing in a time of war, as they were in Korea and Vietnam, polls have shown."

I'll chalk up their enthusiasm for armed conflicts to child-like optimism and leave it at that.

On almost everything else though, I love these kids. They're proving that the next generation is going to be better, smarter, fairer and kinder than the present one.

Seeing how bright the future looks reminded me of this quote from Tony Kushner from Angels In America:

The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.

Read the whole story here.

You Know You've Been A Parent Too Long

This morning, I was singing along to "I Love Rock and Roll" and, at the chorus, enthusiastically shouted:

"Put another dime in the juice box, baby!"

Let's Get This Party Started

OK, this is the obligatory first post in which I have nothing to say.

But I have to start somewhere.

I'm Scott Sherman and this is my blog.

I've spent a few days futzing with this site, creating content for the headers at the top of the page. Now, I have all the background filled in and no excuses not to start. So here it is: The First Post.

Beyond that: Zippy. That's it for now. But check back, OK? I'll try to post at least a few times a week, although I can't always guarantee that it will be this interesting.

And I think I'll put my name - Scott Sherman - here one more time so that the search engines will find me!