The Tin Lizard

CTIA To Reduce Deficit

Were you disappointed that the "supercommittee" didn't come up with a plan to cut spending before Thanksgiving?  Well, you shouldn't have been!  It was pretty much a foregone conclusion.  Even in the heydey of bipartisan cooperation (whenever that may have been), it would have been an extremely difficult task.  In today's divisive political climate, it was downright impossible.

But all is not lost!  It turns out that our friends in commerce and industry are ready to ride to the rescue.  This self-sacrificing spirit in the for-profit sector is not new.  The oil and gas industry (and their "people" have been telling us for months they will create millions of jobs if we just don't tax them, and open still more areas for their drilling.  Then came AT&T, which was going to create 96,000 (!) jobs if only they were allowed to merge with T-Mobile.

That was then, when jobs were on everybody's mind.  With the failure of the supercommittee, however, the problem of the hour is the deficit, so the CTIA (i.e. the wireless communications industry), which already gave us "freedom," is prepared to throw itself into the breach and help reduce the deficit.  How?  Well, if only we will devote more broadband spectrum to them, they'll sell more phones and thus pay more taxes, contributing to bringing down the deficit.

Sure they will.  

A Crash In The Merge Lane - AT&T

How do I love it that the AT&T/T-Mobile merger seems doomed to disapproval?  Let me count the ways:

1.  The public interest will be served.  No sane and disinterested observer could look at this plan and harbor any doubt that it would constitute a serious reduction of competition.  AT&T is/was hoping to silence an annoying competitor by buying it, and not coincidentally as I understand, to acquire and monopolize spectrum.

2.  Consumers will be served.  It wasn't just the huge share of the cell-service market that the new entity would have had (effectively split only with its equally giant competitor, Verizon).  Among today's carriers, T-Mobile has been the innovator in cell phone services, offering new arrangements and lower prices that forced the "big guys" to sit up and take notice.  AT&T, by contrast, was the carrier that provided inferior services at high prices.  There is no doubt which of those business models would have had the upper hand in the planned merged company.    

3.  AT&T's arrogance may suffer a minor blow.  The company was insufferably cocky that its planned deal would go through, advertising as if it were a done deal, and chatting freely with business columnists about how it was certain of approval because of its lobbying influence.

4.  Lying was not rewarded.  Those ads the company was running were full of made-up statistics about creating 96,000 new jobs, a claim that has been largely debunked.  Most people recognize, I think, that mergers seldom if ever result in the creation of jobs; mass firings are far more likely.  AT&T also puffed up its chest with patriotic pride, claiming it would repatriate 5,000 offshore jobs because the U.S. is a great place to do business.  That wouldn't be a bad thing, and sounds as if it might have been doable; but there was that nagging question - if the company believed so strongly in the U.S. as a business environment, why were those jobs offshored in the first place?

All in all, the whole undertaking of the merger was hypocritical.  No one but AT&T execs need lament its failure (if indeed that is the final outcome).   If the merger doesn't go through, I would not be at all surprised to find that AT&T was out of the wirelesss business within a couple of years.   That might (or might not) reduce the number of players in the field, but at least it would have come about as the result of real competition.  (Ah, competition, a lass beloved and coveted by CEOs when seen from afar, yet unwelcome in their own beds.)       

Black Friday Gets Blacker

Once again big retailers are laying plans to get you to part with your dollars even earlier this year than last.  So naturally, the envelope on opening hours is being pushed, with some stores announcing they will open at midnight Thanksgiving Day, and one or two even breaking the Thanksgiving barrier, turning "Black Friday" into Black Thursday by opening at 10 pm on the holiday. 

To hell with a quiet family holiday (to a retailer, any holiday that's not a big sale is just a terrible waste, and Thanksgiving is the last now to be turned into a buying frenzy), or with the thousands of store employees nationwide who will have to work on the holiday (shouldn't they just be happy to have jobs at all?), or even the half-dozen or so unfortunates who will get trampled in the stampede (it's part of the FUN of the pursuit of a "deal"!).  

And I feel certain it's all quite unnecessary.  Ultimately, people will get out and buy their Christmas gifts, and whether they start an hour or two earlier is not likely to change what they spend by very much. 

So for those retailers who have decided that 6 am, or 5 am, or even 4 am on November 25 isn't early enough to open, I have just two words:  BOY! COTT!  Yup, you heard me:  Why not just refuse to buy in these stores?  Not just for that day.  Go for the entire Christmas season, or be ambitious and go for a year.   You won't miss them - they offer nothing you can't find in a dozen other stores.  But they'll miss you. 

Relax on Thanksgiving, stay far, far away from the madding crowd on Friday, and try going out Saturday for Small Business Saturday. 

Fire In The Volt

A GM Volt caught fire weeks after being tested for side-impact crash safety.  Regulators are now "scrutinizing" the fire risk of lithium-ion batteries.  I guess it's OK for them to "scrutinize," but let's hope they don't go too far worrying about this.

Instead, let's recognize that the automobile is an inherently dangerous machine.  It's heavy, it moves fast, it's mostly driven by idiots, and (until these new electric models came along) it's a rolling firebomb because it's loaded with gasoline.  We'd be fools to expect that it can be made completely "safe."

It's known that the batteries can catch fire if penetrated by steel.  But they're protected for that reason, and this test model flamed up only two weeks after the crash test in which it presumably was damaged.  If it catches fire, it will burn hot but won't explode.   So relatively speaking, shouldn't we just concede that fully electric cars, which contain batteries and not gasoline, are actually safer than the traditional combustion engine models, and leave it at that?

Adverbs - Now You Hear 'em, Soon You Won't

Drive safe.  Eat healthy.  Treat him gentle.

What's wrong with these short sentences?  In many people's eyes, nothing at all.   But if you're an oldster or a purist, you might say they should use adverbial forms rather than adjectival ones:

Drive safely.  Eat healthily.  Treat him gently.

There is an increasing trend, especially of course in speech, to just use the adjective.  It's happening, I would guess, for a couple of reasons.  First, there are some annoyingly confusing but frequently used adjective-adverb teams.  Do you feel bad, or badly?  One says you're upset, mentally or physically; the other announces your defective tactile sense.  If someone asks how you are, you can say "I'm well" - again a reference to your health - or you can say, as many do these days, "I'm good" which some listeners might think is a boastful reference to your moral character.

That's all well and good, but a second, and more important reason for adverbs to vanish, is that people are beginning to recognize that adverbs - or more precisely, adverbial forms of adjectives - are absolutely unnecessary in most cases.  Is "drive safe" confusing as to its meaning?  Not at all.  We can do without the "ly."  If you don't believe me, check in with German, which lost its adverbs ages ago.   Here I think we can see language changing right before our eyes.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if, in a couple of generations, adverbs had complete (sic) dropped out of usage.

Of course for adverbophiles, there will always be the stand-alone adverbs - those that are words in themselves, like "always" and "almost."   Those have a place, and undoubted (sic) will remain around in the language, as they also do in German.

 

 

Here Comes Santa

I saw my first Santa of the season a while ago - in an ad for Aleve.  Holy moly, guys, it's ONLY NOVEMBER 9!   We're not even off daylight saving time yet!  Let's hold off a bit, please.

Dining Alone

It's not surprising, I suppose, that people who eat solo in restaurants are increasingly being seen fiddling with their smart phones at the table.  A Washington Post article, and a subseqent blog posting, offer a variety of excuses/reasons/justifications for the practice, but they miss a couple of points.

First, this is nothing new.  Before cell phones, solo diners could often be seen reading a book or a newspaper while eating; and at home, the traditional picture of the lonely guy was somebody eating in front of the television.

Second, those whose eyes are glued to their phones may cite various reasons for doing so but they don't seem to acknowledge the real reason:  They're alone and feel uncomfortable at being so.   And they fail to recognize the overriding reason for NOT doing so, which is that dining is an experience to be savored, and if you're a "foodie," as some of these folks claim to be, you're missing the main event while playing with your phone.

The traditional sensible advice for people eating by themselves was to get their noses out of the book, take interest in their food and surroundings, and conquer their sense of awkwardness.  It still works today.  Conquer your fear, throw away your social crutch, and proclaim your independence when you're dining.       

 

Halloween And Daylight Time

Blessed relief is in sight!  Next weekend, we begin our annual brief respite from "Daylight Saving Time," and along with it, we'll get our morning daylight back - belated and foreshortened.

Earlier today, I mused about the apparent decline in the practice of trick-or-treating.  There are lots of reasons for this, but I will just point out that Daylight Time may have something to do with it.   One of the reasons we endure DST this late in the year, according to the politicians and others who impose it, is so that the kids can go trick-or-treating. 

WRONG!  In two ways.  First, being out in the dark at Halloween is the whole excitement of the experience; go when it's still light, and you're missing it.  Parents and kids alike seem to recognize this intuitively, because the trick-or-treaters never, ever appear until it gets dark!  They don't take advantage of DST to collect their sweets before the sun goes down; who ever heard of such a thing?

Second, for kids, doesn't it make sense to get out earlier, and get home earlier, since most will be going to school the next day?  DST just makes everything an hour later.  To what purpose?  None.  Daylight Time has contributed to the demise of an American tradition.

Let's face reality (i.e., DST doesn't contribute squat to energy conservation) and stop making up false excuses (e.g., Halloween) to extend it even longer.  If we don't reverse this trend now, we'll soon end up keeping Daylight Time through Christmas so Santa can make his rounds.  Let DST, if we must have it, be "summer time," and let it run from Memorial Day to Labor Day.    

The End Of Halloween

Our peculiarly American, pollyannaish habit of celebrating October 31 by putting kids out in the streets at night to collect candy, rather than putting candles on real graves in memory of real dead, has caught on in other societies as well.  Yet it seems in decline here in the land of its origin.

At my house, we had only five trick-or-treaters.  That's not even the full complement of the kids who live on our block.  Could it be that the kids are just avoiding old Mr. and Mrs. Tin Lizard, because we're grumpy, or give out really bad treats like Big Nate's dad in the comic strip (who hands out celery sticks and other health food)?  I don't think so, because nearly everyone we encounter reports a similar downtrend in ToTs - only one at this house, only two at another place halfway across town, etc.

The Halloween experience is dying.  Kids, I know, are going to mall parties that will help to commercialize Halloween and turn it into yet another buying opportunity; or to home parties that may be good social experiences, and that provide a safe, controlled environment with adult supervision.  And that's just the problem.  I was never much of a fan of dressing up in costume, but I still remember from the Halloweens of my childhood the thrill of getting out at night, in the dark, with just a handful of friends, or maybe as a tiny tot, with my older sister.   That's the unique experience of Halloween - it's liberating, it's scary, it's when you face the big bad world (kind of) on your own.  It's not supposed to be just another birthday party.

When will true trick-or-treating vanish altogether?  I can't say, but the end seems near.  Soon, folks will be lamenting the lost "true meaning of Halloween" just as they now bewail our ignorance of the "true meaning of Christmas."