I’ve had enough of the pretentious stringing together of clauses and predicates. I think news people do it just to look smart. But they don’t look smart at all, they just alienate their readers.

Take this opening sentence from a story in the Chicago Sun-Times, for instance.

HARVEY — A man believed to be in his 20s who died after he was shot by a Harvey police officer when he allegedly pointed a handgun at the officer Wednesday night in south suburban Harvey suffered a gunshot wound to the chest, authorities said.

Are we clear? Did you understand that? Neither did I.

Let’s take a look at this sentence grammatically, bit by bit.

• subject:
  authorities
• verb:
  said
• object (noun clause):
  a man believed to be in his 20s who died after he was shot by a Harvey police officer when he allegedly pointed a handgun at the officer Wednesday night in south suburban Harvey suffered a gunshot wound to the chest

Wow. That’s a really complicated object. Let’s break it down:

• subject:
  A man
• adjective (noun clause):
  believed to be in his 20s
• adjective (noun clause):
  who died after he was shot by a Harvey police officer when he allegedly pointed a handgun at the officer Wednesday night in south suburban Harvey
• verb:
  suffered
• object:
  a gunshot wound to the chest

Okay, so on a simplified level, what the authorities said was that a man suffered a gunshot wound to the chest.; But that second noun clause is still too convoluted. Let’s dig deeper:

• subject:
  (still the man)
• verb:
  died
• subordinate clause:
  after he was shot by a Harvey police officer when he allegedly pointed a handgun at the officer Wednesday night in south suburban Harvey

Holy cow. It’s like an onion. Let’s keep peeling:

• subordinate conjunction:
  after
• subject:
  he (the man)
• verb:
  was shot
• object:
  by a Harvey police officer
• subordinate clause:
  when he allegedly pointed a handgun at the officer Wednesday night in south suburban Harvey

You’re kidding me, right? This subordinate clause establishes that the man was dead, yet it was placed in the original sentence as an adjective of the man. To paraphrase, what they’re saying is that “the dead guy who got shot to death got shot in the chest.” Welcome to the Redundancy Department of Redundancy and Repetition.

What’s worse is that we could keep digging. There is another grammatical layer hidden in that subordinate clause above.

What I want to know is, how did this get past the editor? It should have been rewritten to make more sense, like so:

HARVEY — According to authorities, a man believed to be in his 20s was shot by a police officer in south suburban Harvey after allegedly pointing a handgun at the officer. The man died of a fatal gunshot wound to the chest.

Isn’t that much easier to read? I think so.

Thanks to Chicagoist for pointing out MenuMap, one of the most useful Google Maps mashups yet.

Why are we still fooling ourselves into thinking all this security stuff actually matters?  It’s all just window dressing. Take for instance this story in the Chicago Tribune:

More than 20 workers were arrested today at O’Hare International Airport after authorities said employees at a suburban staffing agency used fraudulent security badges to gain access to unauthorized areas of the airport.

Twenty people? Surely we must have uncovered a major terrorist cell, and prevented a big attack, right? Read on:

According to criminal complaints unsealed today, Ideal Staffing managers told workers they needed identification to work at O’Hare, but that the documents did not need to be legitimate. Federal authorities allege more than 100 temporary workers employed by the agency were in possession of fraudulently obtained airport security badges, which allowed the workers to gain access to secure areas of the airport while loading pallets, freight and meals for companies doing business at O’Hare.

Look. When a staffing company tells its employees that they need badges but they don’t need to be legitimate, that’s a sign of just how impotent our national security window dressing actually is. Sure, it’s illegal, and they should be punished. But is terrorism legal? No. The point of national security isn’t to stop the people who are following the rules, it’s supposed to be there to catch the people who are breaking them!

This is the same as the gun control laws that only take guns away from good citizens while doing nothing to stop criminals. The security badges only stopped legitimate, law abiding citizens who follow the rules from being in areas where they don’t belong. Meanwhile the people with fake IDs - potential threats to our national security - were granted full access to the airport.

I found an article at Girls Who Network, a blog for woman entrepreneurs, which talks about how to build a lifestyle to justify your desire to spend, spend, spend.

Their solution? Figure out what you want to spend, and then create an investment which yields that amount.

Your principal is your “golden goose”, the interest is the “golden eggs”.  You keep the goose and spend the eggs, forever!  As long as your goose lays eggs, you can have a shiny, new car parked in your garage.

For instance, if your desire to be in a new car every few years ends up costing around $6000 per year, you can invest $50,000 at 12%, and then the interest pays for your car without you having to work for it.

While I have a few minor problems with the theory (eg, what about inflation?) I feel that the idea is still an excellent plan and is far better, on the whole, than what most people do with their money.

Jay White at Dumb Little Man offers five tips to improve your social networking skills.

5. Be a Hub: A hub is a connector. Find a way to connect people with what they need and you will be valued. If you meet two people (separately) at an event who you think would benefit from each other- introduce them! Don’t be shy. If they don’t click, they will just walk away. If they do click however, you will be the one they always remember as making that introduction.

This dovetails nicely with the book I’m reading this week, the Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell. In fact, the five tips seems to describe all the key traits of Gladwell’s description of Roger Horchow.

All five tips are good, and I recommend reading them. The book is good to.

Rumor has it that the White Sox are considering trading third-baseman Joe Crede to the Yankees for outfielder Johnny Damon. The Chicagoist seems to think it’s not only likely, but a good idea:

This trade seems to make a lot of sense for both teams. While Crede hit 30 home runs for the Sox in 2006, he missed most of ‘07, so Josh Fields filled in and proved he’s too good to keep down in the minors any longer. That make Crede expendable. And the Yankees need a third baseman now that Alex Rodriguez has opted out of his contract.

Meanwhile, the Sox are desperate for both a center fielder and a leadoff hitter — both rolls that Damon can fill. The Yankees have Melkey Carbrera waiting in the wings.

Take a photo on your iPhone and then automagically post it to Twitter, Flickr, Wordpress, Facebook, Blogger, and more, all in one shot.

Something strange happened over the weekend. Last week, everywhere I looked were Halloween-themed decorations. But somehow, between Friday and Monday, all of that disappeared, and now there are Christmas decorations everywhere I look. Funny how there’s never any thought given to Thanksgiving… it’s already time to ramp up the holiday sales.

So, if you’re looking for Christmas gift ideas for that hard-to-shop-for person you know, here are a few suggestions.

DIY Donuts
Light the sign in your front yard, the donuts are hot off the press! Who needs Krispy Kreme? Now you can package all the sugar and starch into bite-sized donuts all by yourself with the Dough-Nu-Matic. $130.

Cubicle Doorbell
The cubicle dweller on your list will never again be surprised to look up from the exhausting workload only to find that someone’s been hovering over their shoulder for five minutes. Now, visitors can signal their visit by ringing the Cubicaller. $12.

Portable Rotary
This is incredibly cool. It’s a fully functional mobile phone, but it looks like an old fashioned rotary dial phone. It even has something that no other mobile phone has… a dial tone! Just stick in your SIM card and you’re up and going on your existing account with your Port-o-Rotary. $249.

Flintstone Car
If you really want your Christmas gift to be neat and original, you’ll have to make it, rather than buying it. A Flintstones car, for instance, would be an ultra-cool, enviable present for a toddler.

Deputy Dog has a really interesting collection of creative staircases worth taking a look at.

I like data mining. I like numbers. I like indicators. I didn’t realize it, but I like economics.

Freakonomics is a look at some of the issues of the real world through the eyes of an economist. Morality is irrelevant. Common wisdom is useless. All that matters is data.

The authors find some interesting answers buried in data. They find evidence that a child is significantly safer in a house with a gun than in a house with a swimming pool. They give valuable insight into why a child’s name matters. They also reveal data which shows that legalized abortion has been the single most effective thing we’ve done to lower crime in America.

In addition to the stunning revelation about the very positive effects of legallized abortion, I was also quite impressed with the data analysis showing which factors matter regarding the raising of a child and which don’t. They reveal that having a full-time, stay-at-home mother made almost no difference, whereas the age when the mother had her first child make a huge difference — one that cannot be corrected for later. Likewise, frequent visits to museums had no relation to a child’s education, whereas parent involvement in PTA did. Also interesting was the data which showed that urban children generally test higher than suburban and rural children.

When you look at life through the realistic eyes of an economist, rather than through the filters of morals and common wisdom, you begin to see a very different world. I, like many people I know, always thought that having a full-time parent, or frequent visits to museums were important to a child’s development, but now I see that those beliefs are quite plainly wrong, and that those things are irrelevant. Far more important are the education of the child’s parents, their involvement in PTA, and the age at which the mother had her first child.

Moreover, it seemed clear that these things are not causes, but rather indicators of the real cause: breeding. In fact, on the whole, it seems that there is very little you can do for your child once it is born. The best chances of raising a smart child seems to come from your choice of mate more than anything else.