The Tin Lizard

Not So Sweet

"Hocus, pocus, dominocus!" was the mantra of amateur magicians when I was a kid.

How appropriate, then, is the brand name "Domino," which has made a pound of sugar disappear? 

We don't buy a whole lot of sugar for our house.  We don't use it on cereal, or in coffee, and only once or twice a year do we make any kind of cookies or batter breads.   So, a bag can last a year or more.  

Nevertheless, when I picked up this bag at the store this weekend, I could tell from the feel of it that something was wrong - it was too compact, smaller and lighter than I remembered.  The package tells the story:  four pounds, not five.

Motivation is everything.  I'd like to think that the sugar lobby is trying to help people cut back on a product that's bad for them by giving them less of it.  HA HA HA.  No, I'm pretty sure this is the usual manufacturer's trick of reducing the package size rather than forcing consumers to face the horror of a discernible price increase on the supermarket shelf.  Like those amateur magicians, Domino hopes to distract our attention from what's really going on.  We're all used to it. 

But it seems a particularly ridiculous effort with a product like sugar, a basic commodity of relatively low price (this package cost 2.99).  Really, now, how many people even look at the price before they buy it, and how many who look would notice or care, if this package cost 3.49 instead of 2.99?  Wait a couple of years, and we'll see the 5-pound package on the shelf, "NEW! 20% more!", with a price of about 4.99.

 

 

Do You Pay More Because Of Your Zip Code?

I had long heard that in the Washington, DC area, service providers would charge more to customers they considered to be in better-off areas than to others.  Often, since I live in northern Virginia, the story was that generally people were charged more for the same job in Virginia than in neighboring Maryland.  True?  I never confirmed it.

But Washington Post columnist John Kelly seems to have found that there is some foundation for this belief.  I quote him here in full because a link might not lead you to the right spot (this is one of several items in his column of September 18):

Ratepayers

“The Potomac rate.” Until a few weeks ago, I’d never heard that expression.

What is it? It’s what happens when a plumber, electrician or other service
provider pulls up to your house, sees that you live in a nice part of town,
figures you earn a decent salary and decides to charge you more than what he’d
charge someone who lives in a different Zip code.

Does that really happen?

“I think most firms don’t do that,” said Robert Krughoff,
president of Washington Consumers’ Checkbook. “But there are firms of
all kinds.”

Some firms, Robert said, “try to squeeze every penny out of a customer, and
one way to do that is to, first of all, have flexible pricing and, second of
all, to pass judgment on the customer based on something they see. And a home is
certainly such a thing.”

The challenge with evaluating the cost of a service is that it isn’t like
buying a gallon of milk. “It’s not like going in and seeing a price on a shelf,”
Robert said. “People have to shop around.”

Getting estimates from multiple companies is critical, he said. His
organization does undercover price comparisons and often finds a huge swing
between the lowest and highest quote for the same job. For example, when it
rated plumbers in 2009, the job I needed done — reseating a leaking toilet — had
a range of $70 to $347. I paid $317.

Here’s the real kicker: “We find no relationship between quality and price in
local service markets,” Robert said.

So, it's certainly true that prices can vary wildly for the same job.  Is this geography-based?   Very possibly.  Check out the follow-up column Kelly wrote after hearing from several of his readers.  There is plenty of anecdotal evidence out there, plus at least one contractor who admits it happens.

So much data is available in the 21st century, regarding things we used to consider private; our income levels for one thing, and our political preferences for another. The former leads to variable pricing for services; the latter to ever-more-extreme gerrymandering of electoral districts.  The best advice, I suppose, is to get several estimates for work you need done.  You might also want to check sites like Angie's List, which ask their raters to indicate the prices they pay.

Even that won't fully guarantee you're treated equally if you live in a "posher" zip code.  And, it's a trend that may get worse.  Many of the smaller, family-owned local businesses who provide services ranging from plumbing to HVAC may not have full access to all the sophisticated data-plucking that bigger outfits can use; but some day they probably will.  

 

Breaking Down Barriers

I was impressed and surprised by the story of Kathrine Switzer as reported by the Washington Post yesterday.  Switzer was the first woman to run officially in the Boston marathon.  At the time there was no specific prohibition on female runners but none had actually tried it.  Perversely, that run in Boston in 1967 caused a backlash ban on women in marathons, which wasn't overcome until 1972.  Nevertheless, she effectively opened the sport for women, and helped make the marathon an Olympic sport. 

I'm not a runner (not since my army boots wore out) and certainly never did marathons, so it came as a surprise to me to learn that women had ever not been permitted to run.  (Pro football, maybe but running?)   But when you think about it, that was the conventional thinking of the time:  Women were "the weaker sex."  And the attitude of the Boston marathon coordinator, Jock Semple, who tried to stop her when he discovered there was a woman in "his" race, was also typical. 

Switzer, who is now in her 70s, had the last laugh.  She has a wikipedia page; Semple does not.        

 

Of Drivers And Copilots

I don't spend much time reading about cars, but Warren Brown's "On Wheels" column today caught my eye, indicating as it does that the fancy new electronic gadgetry on the Ford Explorer doesn't work very well. 

Brown doesn't say much about exactly what the problem is, except that there seem to be a lot of bugs in the software, and connectivity for such tools as smart phones and tablets seems to lacking in some respects.  It all has to do with drivers' (and families') expectations about what a vehicle is for.  No longer for driving, apparently, but for its ability to provide the entertainment and constant sensory stimulation our high tech society demands.

Clearly, engineers missed the mark here.  Not a unique occurrence.  Just this week we have news about the new iPhone 5 and the problems with parts of its software, including the maps.  Brown is right in asserting that missteps of this kind can kill off demand for a popular item in a big hurry; ironically, hurry - the rush to get something to market - is usually the factor that's responsible for the error in the first place. Other times, I suspect engineers (or their corporate bosses) just don't get what consumers really expect.

I had turned to the article originally because I thought it might relate to a different problem.  Recently I saw a TV ad for this vehicle, touting "My Ford Touch," the very system that Brown finds inadequate, and showing a photo of it.  Like the Iraqi army before the juggernaut of the mighty U.S. military machine, I was shocked and awed.  

Do all cars look like this now?  (My car is ten years old so I'm not sure).  But here, right in front of the driver, is an entire panel of multicolored buttons, flashers, bells, and whistles worthy of a space ship.  My immediate impression was that Ford has presented its driver with a display that in and of itself is distracting, but even worse, presents supposedly-easy and direct links to a multiplicity of things most drivers really shouldn't be dealing with while driving. This is deliberately engineered distracted-driverism.  If you're driving one of these things, you need a copilot.  But it does seem a step backward, if a function formerly requiring one person now requires two. 

 

Sunsets

Generally I'm more partial to sunrises, with their promise of things yet to come, than sunsets, which have overtones of smog, stale beer, and unfinished business.

But as a tool of government, sunsets have promise.  We should use them more.

Take, for example, the current jockeying over the renewal of tax credits to the wind power industry.  Credits were first extended to the industry 20 years ago, and it's finally paying off, in the sense that 35% of new power-generating installations recently are wind-driven; yet the industry still accounts for only 3% of U.S. power generation overall.  Should tax credits be continued longer?   To cut them would save money, but might make the industry economically infeasible. 

It's an interesting political conundrum, too, in which there is no monolithic Republican or Democratic position.  In the GOP, for example, while Romney favors cutting subsidies for wind power and other forms of renewable energy (though curiously not for oil and gas), many Republican governors want to retain them because the manufacturing and installation base of the industry is overwhelmingly located in Republican states.

In short, the issue promises to be hard-fought and controversial.  Enter the concept of sunset regulations.

It doesn't appear the typical "sunset" plan - just setting a cutoff date - would work here.  In fact, the current minicrisis results from an expiring law, and the need for a decision on renewal. 

However, better sunset laws could be drafted by looking at some of the factors that would reflect progress in areas the legislation aims at.  In the case of the wind industry, those would be some combination of the very ones discussed in the above-referenced article, such as the percentage of new power installations that depend on wind; the percentage of our overall power supplied by wind energy; and other factors. 

Three benefits of sunset laws that set specific, quantifiable goals:

They eliminate the political hassle that ensues at the expiration of this form of corporate entitlement. 
They give those in the industry a way of knowing, and planning for, the cut-off.  As they see the movement on the yardsticks over the years, they can predict the end of subsidy and factor that into their business plan.
They provide a means of judging how effective such legislation is.

Scammed If You Do, Scammed If You Don't

Two interesting items appeared in my Sunday paper this week.  The first related to financial crimes against seniors, and how to help the oldsters who are near-and-dear to you keep from being victimized by them.

It's a pretty good article, well worth a read if you have aging parents to protect, or are yourself getting into the senior category.  One interesting finding was that nearly 80% of cases involving theft, embezzlement, or misappropriation from unwary seniors is perpetrated by a family member. 

I offer one caveat:  The list provided here of tell-tale signs that someone may be being scammed needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  One of them, for example, is that the senior may complain that a care-giving or helping relative is taking their money in one form or another.  Of course that's possibly true - IF the person in question is fully in control of all his faculties.

However, in my experience it's not unusual for a senior to make such an accusation against someone who is doing nothing wrong at all.  As old age turns to dementia, Alzheimer's, and other mind-bending afflictions, seniors tend to grow cantankerous, suspicious, and even paranoid.  They can and will make such charges against a trusted relative -- a daughter or even a spouse -- who is in fact a careful and honest steward of the funds involved.  So proceed with caution.  Your loved one might be delusional, even if you have no reason to suspect so.

Another article, on the same page, deals with the arrangements that major charitable organizations make with telemarketing firms, under which the telemarketers may take 60, 80, or even 100% of the money they collect.  The charities that make such deals - such as the American Cancer Society and the American Diabetes Association, amng others - say that the percentage of their funding coming from such phone campaigns is minimal, so that they are still maintaining their vaunted claims that "75% of funds" go to helping [whatever cause]. 

But if so, why even conduct such campaigns, if their major effect is to turn the telemarketing firm into a major recipient of charity?  Furthermore, they don't seem to worry much about the violation of trust that's involved here.  I feel pretty certain that if people knew most of what they were giving would go to the telemarketer, they wouldn't give at all.  I wouldn't. 

The Post doesn't draw any parallel between these two articles, but as I see it, here are two sides of the same coin:  Getting scammed by somebody you have good reason to believe you can trust.

 

Flag Burning - Dangerous To Your Health?

Check this out:  A protester in Pakistan reportedly died from breathing the fumes of a U.S. flag he was burning.

If this story is true, it's certainly one of the best actualizations of the concept of "poetic justice" that I've ever seen.   Protesters, evidently, should take care to acquire better flags for burning, making sure ahead of time that they're made of all-natural fabric. 

So here's another victim of the violence.  I have no trouble thinking of a death as pure accident sometimes, but many these days like to assign blame.  If so, blame here lies with the protester himself, and the people who may have stirred him up to act.  And I have no doubt that purposeful provocation was at the root of the violence we've seen in many Muslim countries lately.   

But speaking of fabric, this report makes me think how complex is the fabric of the typical violent mob.  We shouldn't consider that everyone is acting out of hatred of the U.S. -- many are probably just college students letting off a little steam.  The catalyst may be provided by someone acting out of political motives; we've experienced that right here at home, back in the 60s and much more recently in the tea-party disruptions of political dialogue a couple of years ago. 

What's interesting about mobs, though, is how often the individuals who compose them can so readily explode even though they may not give a hoot about the ostensible "cause" that someone offers up.  Witness for example the mayhem that erupted more than once a few years back, at the hands of University of Maryland students, over the mere outcome of a football game.  Should we suppose that those students just had a deep-rooted hatred of the town of College Park, Maryland, that they savaged?  Probably not.

No, violence in a group, let's admit it, can just be fun.  It may be "as American as apple pie," but the Egyptian/Pakistani/Libyan cases demonstrate that it's broader than that - I don't think apple pie is a big deal in any of those countries, unless they're getting them from the American hamburger joints they're burning.

Downsized Products

There's always been a special place in my mind for all those manufacturers of consumer products who are constantly downsizing their products surreptitiously.  That place is also known as the Seventh Circle of Hell.

I just think it's annoying that a jar of mayo is now 30 ounces, not a standard quart of 32 (unless you buy Duke's); toilet paper lost a half-inch of width a couple of years ago (but the Costco brand still has it); if you read old recipes from decades ago, you'll undoubtedly come across the incredible shrinking can of tuna fish.  The assault is constant and, from my perspective, silly.  

That's why I was pleased to see a report on ABC television news lately, focusing on the problem.  The report doesn't bring much new light on the subject, except the interesting observation by a 10-year-old that a downsizing is often accompanied by words like "new, improved" on the package.

Manufacturers will say that people would rather see a downsizing than a price increase.  Of course it's the same thing, except that the former practice can be hidden more easily.  Most people just don't notice.  And, it can also be argued that it doesn't really matter.  If your bottle of ketchup is only 14 ounces instead of 16 (or whatever), who cares?  That's true of commodities, but many people buy prepared foods intended as portions.  We don't use a lot of that kind of stuff around our house, but it can still be noticed in the shrinking Boboli pizza shell, where eleven inches ins't twelve; or the reduced amount of pasta in a box -- a pound is two portions, or four, but 12 ounces is not.

For those of us who do notice and would like to share the outrage, the ABC report offers an outlet:  Have a look at www.consumerworld.org. 

Looking a little further, I note two interesting facts:

• This trend to downsize grocery packages is curiously just the opposite of the supersizing trend in restaurants.  Human behavior just seems to operate differently in these two environments, I guess.
• Ultimately you can only shrink products so much.  The "back side" of downsizing is just as common:  the re-up-sizing that comes later, with bold new proclamations on the label promising "12% more" with - are you ready? -  a still higher price.  In effect the producer gets two price hikes for one.

 

Wrongney and Lyin'

It's inevitable in the heat of a political campaign that some memes will develop to describe candidates one side or the other doesn't like.  Over four years of the Obama administration, of course, there has been plenty of time for pro-Republicans to develop a plenitude of them, but pro-Democrats will need something to refer derogatorily to the new Republican team of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

I'm going with "Wrongney and Lyin'." 

Bagging Trees

If your part of the country is like mine, you've probably seen a big increase, over the past five or more years, in those green bags full of water that people, landscapers, and institutions put around their trees to water them.  The most common brand is Tree Gator; online I also see others under the Oasis brand.

I've always wondered about their effectiveness, because:  

 
• Generally, gardeners and horticulturalists will advise that trees should be watered at the outer circle of the root zone to encourage a strong, extensive root system.  These bags, on the other hand, water only within inches of the tree's trunk. 
• Experts say to water deeply and extensively - really soak the ground around the tree -- for the same reason.  But the bags deliver only an average of about 20 gallons over the course of 8 or 10 hours; it sounds like a lot, but it's not much for a tree. 
• Gardening columns abhor the mounding of mulch around treetrunks to heights of 5-12 inches because it encourages rootlets on the trunk and near the surface, as well as harboring insects.  Yet the bags wrap the tree trunk to an even greater height and if left in place will very obviously cause the same problems. I've heard the bags being touted as protecting the tree trunk, but trunks don't need protection, that's why they have bark. 
• Finally: If like Joyce Kilmer you think you shall never see a sight as lovely as a tree, consider the aesthetics of these bags: they're ugly.

Naturally, given the popularity of the bags I assumed I must be missing something.  I decided to do some deductive field work, which led to this:

As this photo, taken in August, shows, watering bags make no difference. Moreover, just a few blocks away, trees in a median strip without bags make the same point in a different way:  Some are dead, some are not.  

The advantage the bags have, I think, is in timesaving for large-scale landscapes such as the grounds of an office building or median strips on a public roadway (above).  That sort of "gardener" can't expend the money for alternatives (personnel time and/or other watering methods like underground soakers).  The trend makes some sense for them.  But then the idea spread - like mountains of mulch - into the public consciousness as a way of handling trees in the home garden.  

Which in my view is wrong.  There are better ways for the residential gardener.  Just turn a hose on low and let it trickle at the edge of the root zone for an hour or two in several different spots. (For any tree larger than a  one-inch twig, the root zone is or should be well beyond the skirt of that treebag.)  Or try my favorite, the Ross Root Feeder (see link in right margin), which attaches to the end of a hose and lets you inject water and nutrients a couple of feet underground, where more of it reaches the roots directly.  Either way, you obviate watering too close to the trunk, or harming the tree by covering its trunk.  

If you already have bags, they can serve some purpose on very small trees, but reduce the problems of covering the trunk by filling them, letting them drain, and removing them right away.