This is just a quick question/rant, and I sincerely would like to have someone answer it. Why do people donate burnt cookies (or burned other baked goods) to bake sales? I am talking about cookies that are completely black on the bottom, not just a little darker than they should be. (And even those should be kept at home for the family, not donated to a bake sale.)

I mean, seriously. They have to know those cookies are burned beyond edibility, and they also have to know that people won’t eat burnt cookies. People especially don’t like paying for burnt cookies in all innocence and trust that they were paying for a good product. It is so disappointing to purchase a tasty-looking cookie or brownie or whatever, and then when you unwrap it and bit into it, you find that it has that chalky, charcoaly burnt taste and texture. So you just throw it away, which the original baker should have done in the first place. (Well, in our household, it would be composted, so at least it wouldn’t be a complete waste.)

Anyone have the answer? Yes, I know that they usually have committed to supplying five dozen cookies or whatever. But for heaven’s sake, if these people burn some of the cookies, why don’t they just bake some more? What makes them think it is okay to donate inedible food? Don’t they realize they did not, in fact, meet their obligation after all, even if it looks like they did?

And then I have to ask myself, why didn’t I ever just take the cookies back and ask for good ones? Because I was being polite, I guess. But it is so totally not polite to foist burned food off on someone, and it doesn’t serve anyone to let them get away with selling inedible food. They might as well have had lumps of charcoal out—that would have been more honest. The next time I get burned cookies at a bake sale, I am going to take it back to them and ask them nicely to give me unburned ones. There is no possible other right response to that but to apologize and make good on the error.

A number of years ago, I agreed to help a young professional masseur set up his QuickBooks software. In return, he was to give me a number of massages, basically on a time spent exchange. Before I go any further, I will say that he was very good and helped me a lot.

The first thing I asked him was how he wanted me to do it. I could do it the slow way, I said, and teach him step-by-step how I was setting up his system so that, should he ever need to make changes, he could. When I ws done, I explained, he would not only know how to use the program as an accounting ledger (he was also taking a class in acocunting), but he would also understand how the program worked.

Or I could just set up his system for him. That would be faster, I said, but he wouldn’t learn how I had done it.

The difference, I explained, would be like just driving a car (that was the fast way) versus learning how to work on a car (that was the slow way). In the end, with the fast way, he could get where he wanted to go, but if the car broke down, he would have to call in an expert to fix it. With the slow way, he would be able to fix the car as soon as it broke down. Or, if he wanted to make modifications, with the slow way, he would know how; with the fast way, he would need to call in an expert any time he needed to make a modification.

Oh, he assured me, he wanted me to teach him the slow way; the “how to fix a car” way..

So I did. Or rather, I tried to. Man, did I try. But every time I was there working on his system, he always paced around the room, wanting to talk about just about anything rather than the task at hand, and every time I tried to explain something, he would be on the other side of the room or even in another room entirely doing something else. Sometimes he even left the premises entirely for 20 minutes or more at a time. It was very frustrating.

Because I couldn’t seem to keep his attention, I started to suspect right away that maybe he didn’t want to be taught. So during each session, I would ask him several times if he was sure he wanted me to teach him; perhap, I suggested, I should just go ahead and set it up for him? And then he could ask me questions later if he had any.

Oh, no no no, he would assure me each time I asked him that question. I want to learn how to set it up, he said.

In searching for another topic entirely, I came across the definition of the new term, fisking, which means to take apart someone’s argument point by point.

Any well-educated person will recognize that this technique has been around for many thousands of years longer than the new name for it. It used to be called rhetoric. But perhaps the term Rhetoric has fallen out of favor because it has gotten a bad name; nowadays, I only hear the term used contemptuously, dismissively, meaning that whatever is being labeled “rhetoric” is hollow, meaningless, with no real power of conviction or persuasion. Pretty much the opposite of what it used to mean, in fact.

Intrigued, I pursued a few links and ran aground at one Web site where there was a bit of a flurry over the fact that Robert Fisk himself was quoted as stating that he never used the Internet (“I have to be honest,” he said, “I don’t use the Internet,” it having become “a hate machine for a lot of people”), not even email, he said, and yet, one commenter at that Web site pointed out that in an article that predated that statement by two years, Mr. Fisk had spoken of having received an email. The Web log writer then stated that Mr. Fisk said that email was being forward to him.

My instant question to myself was, How are those emails being forwarded? Are they printed out and delivered as paper mail? Or are they forwarded by email? In any case, who reads that forwarded email? Mr. Fisk himself? Or does someone read them aloud to him? No matter what the answers are, he can’t truthfully say he doesn’t use email. Even if he reads printouts of email, or has someone read them to him, he is still using email.

Maybe in his mind, he has a very precise definition of what email is and isn’t (like Clinton’s definition of sex), and therefore he can with ease say he doesn’t use email since he doesn’t–what? Compose it? Read it on a monitor screen (if he has it printed out for him)? Or maybe he was just speaking carelessly, in which case one hopes he is more careful with his facts otherwise.