Verizon Wireless Called Me After Survey

I just got off the phone with a Verizon Wireless representative. She called because I submitted a negative survey response yesterday. The question was how likely was I to recommend Verizon Wireless to a friend. Not bloody likely was my reply, with a lengthy explanation. I reviewed many of my family's complaints on the phone with her today just to give her a flavor for our general disgust with Verizon Wirless and Verizon. And I mentioned the recent customer grumblings about Verizon Wireless billing practices regarding charges incurred for inadvertent use of the Internet. I see that that issue hasn't gone away, btw. She was pleasant but backed the company. So we basically agreed to disagree. And she wished me a Happy New Year.

News Updates as of 28 December 2009

• Marlboro defeated the Matawan Regional High School boys varsity basketball team 56-39 in Round 1 of the Husky Holiday Tournament, according to NJ.com and APP. (BTW: The school's mascot is the Husky and the school website is calling the event the Husky Holiday Tournament, so I'm not sure why both news sources are calling it the Huskie Classic.)
• Justin Eric Farnham of Matawan received his Associates in Visual Arts from Raritan Valley Community College, according to the Somerset Reporter.
• Rob Ratcliffe, of Matawan, is featured as a guitar-playing Giants game tailgater in a photo at NJ.com.
  

New Releases to See Over the Christmas 2009 Holidays

Here is a set of previews of the newly released movies I've seen or am planning to see over the holidays at Hazlet Multiplex.

Articles on the History of First Presbyterian Church of Matawan

I've been doing a series of articles on the history of the First Presbyterian Church of Matawan on another blog. My most recent contribution is a biography of Charles H Bruce, who served as minister from 1912 to 1925. Local history buffs and genealogists might find some of the articles in this series of interest.

The church is developing a new website, btw. They're still working on it, so you should continue to use their current site for regular business, but you might just want to take a peek from time to time to see how things are progressing on the new site. I hear they've been burning the midnight oil of late.

News Updates as of 25 December 2009

• Former Matawan Borough Council member Lillian G. Burry is to head the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders when a Republican majority takes control of the board on 7 January 2010, according to APP. She was the first woman to hold the position when selected for the 2008 term. Since the Democrats took control and replaced her as director after she'd served only one year, the Republicans are making sure she gets her second year in what is typically a two-year term of office.
Derek Burlew of Cliffwood Beach, a freestyle Motocross pro, will perform in the inaugural 15 city tour of Gravity Slashers, which begins in Charlotte, NC on 2 January 2010 and ends in Cleveland, OH on 6 March 2010, according to SXdirt.com.
The Husky Holiday Tournament will be a three-day boys varsity basketball event held at Matawan Regional High School on Sat 26 December, Mon 28 December, and Tue 29 December, beginning each day at 8 am, according to the MRHS boys varsity schedule. Manalapan, Marlboro, and Howell are invited to the tourney, according to The News Transcript. The MRHS boys varsity team is 0-3 after their loss to Raritan on 23 December. The next Huskies home game will be Tue 5 January at 6:30 pm against Shore Regional. Check out the team's roster here.

The Lady Huskies defeated Franklin 74-35 on 23 December, making them 2-1-0, according to NJ.com. With three games under their belts already, maybe it is time for the girls varsity page at MRHS to be updated with a roster, schedule, new photos, etc?
The Independent provided a nice summary of Matawan Husky Wrestling's Icebreaker Invitational held last Saturday during the blizzard. Home opener will be Mon 4 January, when MRHS hosts Marlboro.

After seeing Up In the Air today, the world is back in balance after reading Thomas McDermott's article Coping With Layoff by Inventing a Holiday. He suggests riding the Staten Island Ferry past Ellis Island and pretending that you've just landed in America, the land of opportunity, with only the shirt on your back and a dream. What is that dream? Not a bad way to adjust one's thinking. And certainly a better choice than Ryan made in the movie.
Bank of America's Matawan branch at Ravine Drive and Main Street is having some asbestos removed by Synatech as part of an interior renovation project, according to APP. The websites related to the Asbestos, Lead, and Hazardous Waste Laborers Local 78 in New York, which is so upset about BOA using non-union laborers for this project, were corrupted, so I couldn't do much research. What I could find showed the union has jurisdiction over New York City and Long Island, so I assume they are down in Matawan because BOA is headquartered in Manhattan. It isn't clear that they represent local workers here.
NJ Transit trains heading into the city were stacked up on their approach to Newark Penn Station for hours on Wednesday, not unlike planes trying to land at Chicago's busy O'Hare Airport. This writer had a 3 1/2 hour commute into the city that day. Presumably all lines were affected by the problem with the tunnels, not just the North Jersey Coast Line as suggested by The Independent. Conductors explained that each train entering Newark Penn had to be turned around after its passengers disembarked, which was the primary reason for us sitting for hours outside of the Newark International Airport stop.
Matawan residents will be paying an average of 10% more for their tap water beginning in January 2010, according to The Independent. Borough Ordinance 09-23 was presented to the Borough Council on 1 December 2009 and was brought up for a vote and passed by the Council on 15 December 2009. The details of the ordinance are not readily available as the ordinance is not posted online and The Independent article provides an utterly confusing rate calculating scheme.
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  A Rowan University mechanical engineering student from Matawan is heading to the Gambia in January 2010, according to Newswise. She and two other local students will join their teacher on his 4th Engineers Without Borders trip to Africa to finish assessing a roughly two-mile stretch of road adjacent to a swampy area that regularly floods waist high and keeps villagers from getting to town. They will also begin to train the local villagers on how to fix the road once the assessment is completed.
  
• A Keyport campaign has degenerated to name calling, including accusations that one of the candidates really lives in Cliffwood Beach, according to The Independent. Oh my. Say it isn't so.

Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas to all the naughty and nice readers of Aberdeen NJ Life. I hope Santa brought you something that you really wanted this year, but also that the spirit of Christmas has left you with something that you really needed.

I have to say that we have a bit less under our family's tree this morning, but we're good with that. Sitting back from all the bustle of Christmas shopping has allowed us to see that we already enjoy many blessings, probably more than our fair share.

Trading gifts can be a joy but it also can keep us from taking stock of what we already have. Be sure to give thanks for what you have and to share your relative bounty with others.

Sometimes Two Is Less Than One

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times was Brooke Gladstone's guest for the 11 December 2009 edition of On The Media. In her piece, called "Follow For Now," Kristof tells Gladstone that researchers have discovered the plight of an individual is much more compelling to onlookers than the struggle of thousands -- or even two.

Kristof explains that he was getting frustrated that he couldn't stir his readers to action when he wrote about war, poverty, and the AIDS crisis in Africa, but they readily were taken in by media stories of individual struggle, such as that of Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk, who was fighting all odds to continue his life in the most unlikely of habitats -- Manhattan.

So Kristof did some digging into the psychology of all this and found the work of Paul Slovic, of Decision Research. Among Slovic's experiments he found that if you ask people to help a starving seven-year-old girl from Mali named Rokia, people will want to provide support. It makes them feel good, especially if they can remedy her problem. But if you describe her problem as resulting from famine in her country, their interest tends to drop. And if you add a brother Moussa with the same issue, they are even less willing to donate.

Kristof said, "You know, we all know that at some point people tend to get numbed and tune out, but one of the things that I found fascinating was the number at which we tend to tune out. It’s not a million, it’s not a thousand, it’s not even a hundred - it’s two."

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If you want to learn more about what is happening in Africa, you may wish to explore the International Crisis Group website. I also recommend making an end of year donation to WNYC, which produces On The Media and other fine public radio shows. And if you have an iPod, subscribe to the podcast while you're at it.

And if you're interested in exploring human empathy for the individual but a lack of interest in mass philanthropy, Slovic has a one-hour webinar on the Communications Network you may wish to check out. Personally I think the webinar's format is rather frustrating. Slovic's voice is weak in comparison to the interviewer's, the event takes too long to get underway, and, most maddening of all, you can't stop, start, or move about the recording at all. But the topic is surprisingly fascinating, so maybe you'll endure these issues to listen to some or all of it.

MAMS Faculty/Student Basketball Game - Videos

As promised, I've uploaded six video segments to You Tube covering the MAMS Faculty/Student Basketball Game last week. Here are a few of them.

Meth Hunter

Had to sign for your Sudafed lately? Check out Kris Wheaton's Sources and Methods for an interesting post on how the police use pill purchasing data to shut down meth labs. Part 2 of the 5 part TV news series from Erie, Pennsylvania contains a discussion of the development and use of a computer program called Meth Hunter.