The Tin Lizard

Fire Hot

No doubt everyone has heard or seen some news clip about the Christmas fire in Connecticut that killed five members of one family.   It seems to have attracted a little more attention than the numerous fatal fires that occur across the country nearly every day, I suppose because it happened in a large, expensive house in a fancy neighborhood.

Reports concerning the origin of the fire soon surfaced: 

"a family friend who had worked on the home as a contractor ... according to firefighters, is believed to have placed the ashes in or outside an entryway, near the trash." 

This is of course a huge tragedy, and I don't mean to disparage the sorrow of the woman whose parents and three children died, or the undoubted guilt being experienced by the "family friend," but geezo-peezo, I'm really bowled over by how dumb this guy - a contractor, no less - must be.  Mistakes can happen, and many people wander through life unconscious, but even a caveman should know better:   "Hey, Unggh, dis red stuff hot! Make fire!"  I guess it's a caution for us all.  But seldom do we learn from other people's mistakes. 

A Christmas Story

Years ago, my wife and I happened to see "A Christmas Story" in a movie theater.  That must have been back in the '80s, when it was a first run flick.  And it must have been accidental, as it's not the kind of thing we usually would go to see.  Yet we found it one of the most enjoyable movies we had ever seen.  Before long, we made it a seasonal tradition to watch it every year.  Yesterday we fulfilled that tradition for 2011.  What occurs to me as most surprising is that even after so many viewings (it must be at least 20, maybe more, at this point) it can still make us laugh.

If you haven't watched it, you're missing a wonderful comedy, a great nostalgia trip back to 1940s middle America, and a great sociology lesson about how certain problems were dealt with more simply back then - admittedly in perhaps simpler times.  You don't have to believe in Christmas or Santa Claus to enjoy it.  It's an unadulterated hoot.  And I'm told it runs continuously on TBS all day today.

Incidentally, this year I wondered about the actor Peter Billingsley, who at 12 played this film's central character, "Ralphie."  According to that invaluable resource Wikipedia, he remains an actor, though he's still best known for his role in A Christmas Story. 

 

 

Expanding Website Naming Suffixes

In business and in politics, it seems the obvious explanations are often overlooked by journalists, either from naivete or - more likely I think - from a deliberate effort to keep the story going.

Such is the case, I think, with the plans announced by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN - that's mumbo-jumbo for the outfit that controls the naming of internet domains, websites, and such) to greatly expand the number and type of available "top-level domains".  More explanation: TLDs are the three letters after the dot, as in ".com" or ".edu", sometimes also referred to as "suffixes" (but not simply as "domains" as the writer mistakenly claims). 

Our intrepid reporter here duly quotes ICANN to the effect that the expansion will "promote innovation," as well as critics of the move who claim that it will more likely promote confusion.   So, like big oil companies which publicly scoff at profit and promote themselves as creators of jobs and friends of the environment, ICANN is just looking to serve the public interest.   I think critics have the better argument.

It's true that ICANN is nominally a non-profit organization.  But its livelihood clearly depends upon the companies that sell and register website names, and increasingly offer hosting and site-creation services as well.   There used to be only a couple of such authorized registrars; now there are dozens.  And now that every company and entity in the world already has a website, demand for names is probably down. 

How could business be pumped up?   Well, it's been pointed out that many existing companies may very well want to buy up alternate versions of their name (for example, WidgetCo might have Widgetco.com, but might want to block others from creating similar-sounding websites like Widgetco.usa or Widgetco.edu).  That's particularly true for the planned ".xxx" suffix, which would denote pornography and the like.  There's already evidence that these .xxx suffixes are being preemptively snapped up.  That's lots of dollars headed into the coffers for website names that will forever remain blank.

Following the money gives a strong hint that the main effort is to create an artificial demand.   Why expand the available suffixes so dramatically when there is no visible surge of interest in them?  Apparently,"because ICANN."  It's business as usual.     

 

Helping The Customer Save A Tree

I've long espoused the notion that in roughly 9.8 of ten cases, when a business or government organization touts changes for the benefit of you, the customer, you'd best hold on to your wallet.   Most often, changes are made primarily for the advantage of the organization enacting them, and usually, they have to do with reducing costs - to the service provider, not to you.  If some real convenience or saving for consumers happens to be a by-product of changes, the perpetrators will gladly play them up.  If not, they'll invent some and present them as benefits anyway.  

This idea has recently been restated by Washington Post local columnist John Kelly; he says it well, so it's worth a read.  I liked this line in particular:

“Improvements” are what companies do when they want to save money. The word is synonymous with “to better serve you.” You know how that one goes: “In an effort to better serve you, we are burning your village, killing your livestock and sowing your fields with salt.”

Everyone has his/her own examples.  One of my favorites, because it's so widespread, is the push to have us all receive account statements and other financial documents electronically on line, rather than via paper in the mail.  In some cases it's convenience-neutral, but in many it's a serious hassle.  Have you tried, for example, to balance your credit card statement against your receipts and your own records in (say) Quicken?  The switching back and forth between windows takes me twice as long.  The bank's change may save them the cost of paper, envelope, and postage; it might in fact save trees (this is the way the bank presents it to me of course) but not if I ultimately print out a paper copy anyway to save time.  Presto, that cost of paper and ink (both more expensive to me than to the bank which buys it in bulk) has been transferred to me. 

I think the reason this works pretty well for the banks, though, is generational change.  I compare receipts, charges, and the like, from my credit card.  I'd guess that a high percentage of people in my age group probably still do.  But I know a high percentage of younger people who do not.  Call them the trust-but-don't-verify generation. 

 

Juice And Old Lace

Everyone seems to be getting excited about arsenic content in commercial fruit juices.  Consumer Reports has put out a report; news media have propagated their study.  Not that we shouldn't expect this news.  Arsenic is not only present in nature - our air, our water - naturally, just as the juice bottlers maintain, but it's also a component of insecticides.

Juice has other disadvantages.  It's usually relatively caloric, because (for example) a typical glass of orange juice contains the juice and calories of at least three oranges.  It's also sweet; naturally, to some extent, but also often excessively so due to the addition of more sugars.   And finally, it's adulterated.  Many juices labeled as a fruit (cranberry juice, cherry juice, apricot juice) contain only a limited percentage of the juice of that fruit, and a large percentage of apple juice.  No doubt this is because apple juice adds sweetness, and because it's cheap.  But it's not what you're paying for.

I was surprised to learn that many mothers are giving infants juice in bottles, several times a day.  Wow.  I suppose they think of it as "natural," but besides the various indignities inflicted upon pure juice by the folks who bottle it, it's useful to keep in mind that drinking juice isn't "natural" at all.  Cavemen, I feel pretty certain, didn't squeeze the juice out of their fruit into some rudimentary stone bowl and drink it.  The ATE THE FRUIT.

So:  Save your kids.  Drink water.  Eat fruit. 

 

Old King Coal For Pres

Busy with other projects this week, I've scarcely had time to glance at a newspaper or even online reports.  The news is really the fodder (and come to think of it the mudder too) for most blogs, so I haven't written much.

Still, I usually catch at least a few minutes of television news with my morning coffee, so I found out that the Coalition for Clean Coal is the latest economic sector to spin off a new business endeavor, that of opposing those nasty ol' "job-killing" regulations.  This time, Old King Coal is telling you in no uncertain terms that you should make your voice heard with the EPA, which is rushing (Coal's term, not mine) costly regulations that are intended to reduce noxious emissions but that will (you guessed it) cost jobs!

Actually I doubt that some of these regulations can possibly be rushed too much.  Climate change is a fact; so is the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; likewise ozone emissions... the list goes on.   And all of these are matters that have the potential to seriously vitiate modern civilization as we know it, or even to make life on this planet unsustainable.   Undue haste to set limits?  I think not.

Even if time were not of the essence, however, I'm struck by this prime example of an industry unable to see its future clearly.  The U.S. automobile industry was in this mode and it could be argued that, absent government intervention, they still would be, with the buggies they make on the verge of following buggy-whips down the road to industrial oblivion.  Now, American carmakers seem to have found new purpose and energy, though they're not out of the woods yet.

The coal mining sector is a similar such case:  Rooted in past perceptions, failing to adapt, unwilling to change, certain they know what's "good for the USA," ignoring basic issues of worker safety, unable to think of doing business any other way than just the way they've been doing it for 100 years.  Or so it seems.  Possibilities exist for positive change, and other basic energy/utilities have begun to adopt them in varying degrees, but coal so far doesn't seem open to adaptation. 

The trouble (for the coal companies) is that an industry that can't see profound exogenous changes looming ahead, and devise a strategy to deal with them, is likely to be a dying industry.  Failure to adapt is a form of corporate suicide.  Coal is not yet completely unthinkable as a fuel; it remains plentiful and relatively cheap in the U.S.; but if the industry continues to drag its feet, coal could indeed fall so far behind other energy sources that it just wouldn't catch up.  In what insane world does an outfit calling itself the "American Coalition for Clean Coal" seek to delay the adoption of clean coal technology?   

Retailers See The Light

There was a brief glimmer of euphoria among retailers when "Black Friday" produced unexpectedly robust sales.  Now, however, just a few days later, rosy predictions about the coming Christmas season are giving way to doubts. 

In part, this is the usual retailer handwringing.  In January, when it comes time to assess the results of the holiday shopping season, they are never satisfied:  If sales were lower than expected, they groan about that; but if sales set records, they still complain that the growth wasn't as much as they had hoped, or that it should have been more.

This year, the plaintive assessments seem to be starting earlier, but there is also something new.  From the article linked above: "several industry experts said Black Friday is turning into a black hole, sucking up sales from the weeks surrounding the big day."  Some chains are suggesting that people are just waiting for the big bargains and aren't shopping at other times.  Not only were stores empty in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, but they now fear they'll remain empty in December, as people maxed out last weekend.

Gee, do you think?  To me it just stands to reason that as consumers come to expect the constant and predictable pattern of gigantic discounts, free shipping, and other deals, they aren't going to shop when no such deals are on offer.  They'll just wait until the next sale.  How astute of the retail giants to have figured that out!  Perhaps before too long they'll get around to the realization that a business model in which you never turn a profit until the 12th month of the year is somehow flawed.