• Small change

    If I had a nickel for every time my wife said, “don’t you dare write about that on your web site,” there’d be a world wide shortage of certain kinds of metals commonly associated with minting… not to mention I’d be buried up to my arm pits in those stacks of empty coin rolls you get at the bank. And don’t get me started on what kind of pain in the ass it is to roll coins. On second thought, keep your damn nickels to yourself.

    On a Saturday (a few weeks back) we did something a little different: we did grocery shopping as a family. To get the same cumulative effect I could have just gone out to the wood shed and given myself a couple good thumps on the head with a log and been done with it. This Friday (Black Friday), we had this ingenious idea to go grocery shopping on our normal day – which happened to occur on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. (Retail experts say that contrary to popular perception, “Black Friday” is not the busiest shopping day of the year… that day usually falls on either December 23rd or 24th – thanks to my people.) That’s the long way of saying I found a bigger log and recruited someone else to do the swinging (to overcome the inherent leverage problems with hitting yourself with something heavy).

    None of this is anything my wife deemed verboten, but it sure makes you wonder what was left out… doesn’t it?

  • What is in a name?

    (Foreword: I’ve got unflattering things to say about folks from both political parties… so if you’re feeling unfairly picked on… have patience, keep reading. If you’ve read it all and you still feel unfairly picked on… please feel free post a comment and pick on me.)

    This morning on the radio a sound byte was played from the first American President in Estonia. The debate point for the day (again) was: “Civil War, is it or isn’t it?” The President laid out his position on the subject.

    “What we’re seeing in Iraq right now is a pattern of violence that started in February.”

    Whew! That’s a relief. A pattern of violence sounds much better than a Civil War.

    Wait a fight pickin’ minute. That’s nine months. The word “pattern” suggests order… the opposite of random… distinct factions attacking each other. What exactly does nine months of ordered violence suggest? Even if you buy into the theory that it was all “sparked” by al Qaeda “months ago,” doesn’t a “pattern” of internal and reciprocal violence begin to add up to a Civil War at some point? It’s been argued that Iraq is not in a Civil War because most of the fighting has happened in Baghdad. I’ve heard it suggested that the same argument could be used to say the pattern of violence between the United States in the 1860’s wasn’t a Civil War because no fighting took place in Maine (and I would add that none of it occurred in the major population centers of the time… Boston, New York, Philadelphia… or anywhere in the northeast). I’ve also heard it said that more than a quarter of the Iraqi population is in Baghdad.

    At this rate, if the president doesn’t watch his step he’s going to have to give up his membership card to The American Association for the Advancement of Hyperbole (A.A.A.H.! for short).

    My biggest regret posting this message is that I’m contributing to a (mostly) meaningless debate. The energies devoted to all of this haggling over a label would be better spent haggling over a solution. Democrats need to get their imagination out of cold storage (where it’s been safely preserved since the late sixties), and start positioning themselves as a REAL solution to the problem (instead of playing one on TV).

    There’s more to this problem than a label.

  • Pick your poison

    As employer decisions go, where does restricting thermostat access rank? Is it better to restrict access to management or leave it open to the whim of anyone who passes it in the hallway? Is it better to have a few people grumble about the temperature; or, open the office to an all out, passive-aggressive civil war?

    I’ve experienced both… and either way it’s messy. I’d wager the Southern U.S. is collectively the **A/C capital of the world. We take it VERY seriously.

    Maybe there’s a middle ground. We could appoint an independent panel of experts. Armed with surveys on personal comfort and studies on building airflow, I’ll bet we could nip this problem in the bud.

    **Based on units installed per capita.