The Death of the Garbage Disposer

I clearly remember seeing my first InSinkErator - garbage disposer built into the kitchen sink.
I was in college, and I visited a friend's house in Dubuque, Iowa.  The friend was a banker's son, and decently well-to-do.  The first thing I noticed was the horizontal light switch next to the sink.  Gosh that was odd, as was the rubber drain in the sink itself.
Now, remember I grew up on a farm in central Iowa.  The garbage disposer on the farm was simple if laborious.  First, we had to eat at least some part of all the food on our plate.  Next, Dad often played pickup food consumer so it wouldn't go to waste (poor-starving-kids-in-China syndrome - pun intended).  You put the garbage in a bucket and you took it out and slopped the hogs.  For pigs who were used to a grain meal diet, potato peels and kitchen scraps were a gourmet treat.
Anyway, I had to be instructed on how to use the InSinkErator in Dubuque, and it was a wondrous machine to behold, chewing and crunching the scraps is a loud and onerous voice, at the same time taking noxious odors down the drain with them.
As an adult living in Seattle, we've had a household kitchen disposal all our lives.  Indeed, when we totally remodeled the kitchen a few years ago, we dutifully added a brand spanking new disposal devices.

Our disposals received some use the first few years we lived in our house, but the ecological mindset of Seattle quickly overcame it.  We tried composting for years, with more or less - mostly less - success.  For some reason I could never keep the compost heap alive and well, and never knew exactly when to remove the compost and put it in the garden.
For the last few years, Seattle's had an active program of yard waste bins.   In addition to grass and leaves, the yard waste can include any kind of kitchen scrap including most food-soiled paper and cardboard.  So suddenly, my lack of composting skills has become irrelevant.
Equally irrelevant is the InSinkErator, which now sits forlorn and alone at the bottom of our sink, never used.
Another old appliance enters the dustbin of history.

The Prison of Pope Francis

Habemus papam!   We have a pope!

I can still remember some of the Latin from my time as an altar boy when mass was still said in Latin.  Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, et vobis fratres.

And I'm still a bit excited about a new pope.   A new pope is, to some extent, like a new Mayor or a new CEO of Microsoft or a new job.   There's always excitement around potential change and new direction and new leadership.  

Yes, I wish we had a pope who would embrace married priests or women priests or birth control or acceptance of gay humans into the fold of the church - or all four.   None of those changes violate the basic theology of the Church or the Catholic Church's interpretation of the Bible.   And there is a basis for hope - Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was elected almost as an "interim pope" yet wrought vast, sweeping changes as Pope John XXIII and via the convening of Vatican II.  

This new Pope Francis carries an impressive personal history of humility.   He rides public transit, he lives in an apartment, not a palace, and he even showed up in person to pay his hotel bill in Rome after his election as pope.

But one thing I've learned the hard way, is that no leader has freedom to lead, and few leaders can break out of the prison into which they've been placed.  

Mayors and Governors, for example, have campaign staffers to place into jobs and contributors to listen to and (in some cases) please, and elections to win by keeping a vast variety of competing interests at least tolerant of their policies and plans.

Similarly, Pope Francis has a deeply embedded Vatican bureaucracy to contend with, an almost criminal Vatican Bank, and a college of cardinals who, for the most part, have very little desire to change.  And I haven't mentioned how he might address the scandal of the abuse of children by priests and others.

Yes, it is a beautiful new beginning.   I can only hope Francis recognizes the prison which surrounds him, and somehow breaks out of the jail.  

If I had a get-out-of-jail-free card, I'd play it today.   I'd play it for Francis.

Carrying Muskets in the National Guard

Musket

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Over the last few weeks, since the unfortunate and tragic murders at Sandy Hook, we've heard unlimited debate about those words.  They are, of course, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  Because weapons technology has advanced so much since the Amendment was passed in 1789, pundits and people from across the nation debate their meaning in 2013.

Do those words grant an unlimited right to ownership and carrying of weapons to every citizen of the United States?

Here's the way I would think about it.

The framers of the constitution clearly intended to allow citizens to carry "arms" because the nation needed a militia - an Army - to defend itself.  The founding fathers, having just defeated the professional forces of King George III, were very skeptical of permanent standing armies.  They hoped the United States could get along with state militias - what's now known as the national guard - to mobilize when needed.

And the primary weapon available to the individual citizen in 1789 was the musket.  Now, most muskets had no rifling and therefore short range with poor accuracy.  And it took a long time to reload a musket with gunpowder and a bullet.  Clearly, therefore, the framers of the constitution and second amendment meant that at least citizens who were willing to serve in a militia (the National Guard) should have the right to own and carry muskets. 

Time and technlogy march on.  And they've marched a LOT in 224 years.

Special Atomic Demolition Munition

Today a human being can carry a nuclear bomb.  The United States developed "Special Atomic Demolition Munitions" (SADM) in the 1960s which could be carried by a single soldier.  Does the Second Amendment allow someone who is NOT a soldier - just a regular citizen - to carry around a SADM nuclear bomb?  

Clearly this is a ludicrous proposition - we certainly would not want private citizens owning nuclear weaponry any more than we want nation-states such as North Korea and Iran owning and "carrying" them.  

Between these two extremes - a citizen-soldier member of the National Guard owning a musket and a citizen carrying an atomic bomb - who should be allowed to carry which kinds of "arms"?  Should people be allowed to own 155 millimeter howitzers?  How about drone aircraft with on-board bombs?  Machine guns?  Grenade launchers?   These are all "arms" in every sense of the word.

I'm not going to further weigh in on the issue, but merely will say that technology has far outstripped the foresight of the framers of the Constitution.  They could not envision machine guns or aircraft carriers or drone airplanes or nuclear weapons. It sure seems like the intent of the second amendment should be interpreted much closer to a sworn member of the national guard carrying a musket than most of the other potential scenarios.

A Tax Cut for the Rich!?

From Henry Blodget, Business Insider

I find the tax cut proposals by some candidates in the 2012 election to make no economic sense.

Specifically, why should the government give wealthy people a tax cut now, in these austere economic times?

Certain candidates argue that wealthy people create jobs, and giving them a tax cut would create more jobs. This is a particular form of lunacy.   If someone who already has all the money they need to live gets more money from a tax cut, are they going to expand their business or hire more people?   Of course not!   You only expand your business if you can sell more product or more services, and that implies more customers or more buyers for those products or services.   Without more demand, you won't take that extra money from a tax cut and hire more people, you'll just sock it away someplace.    And you'd probably put the money some place with low tax rates or where its "invisible", e.g. the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.

Plus, many United States have huge hordes of cash and record-high profits right now anyway.  Why aren't they using that cash to expand today?   Again, giving them a tax cut just adds to the unused pile of cash.

No the solution to growing the economy and adding more jobs is to get more customers for existing businesses, that is, create more demand for goods and services.    And who are the customers for most goods and services in the United States?   The Middle Class.

It is the middle class which buys the computers and iPads and automobiles and services.  It is the middle class which has been hurt in the Great Recession.

So the solution to creating more jobs is to get more money into the hands of the middle class, and also expand the middle class by putting more jobless back to work.   So its logical to give the tax breaks and tax cut to middle class taxpayers, putting more money in their pockets, thereby expanding demand for goods and services, creating more jobs.

In a perfect world, the wealthy and corporations with lots of cash would see this logic, and give raises to workers, putting more cash in their pockets.  Of course, one of the features of capitalism - with its competition - is pressure to do exactly the opposite, reduce wages and prices to be me competitive.   Nevertheless we are seeing some significant wage increases for high skilled occupations in technology, for example, because of demand for workers in the high tech industry.

And how do we get more highly skilled workers?  By expanding our college and University capacity, which means hiring more educators and professors.   Many of those educators, of course, work for state and local governments, and, of course, with squeezed budgets we are actually laying those folks off.   But that's a topic for a different post, or you can just read Ed Lazowska, who holds the Gates Chair of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, who writes here.

Incidentally, you don't have to take the word of this lowly resident of West Seattle (me) on this economic logic, you will find the same logic that tax cuts for the rich don't create jobs from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, Henry Blodget of Business Insider, venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, Paul Krugman of the New York Times.

So if tax cuts for the wealthy don't create jobs, what will they do?   Well, enrich the campaign chests of the politicians who propose such cuts, for one thing!

New York Media Centric

The biggest trending news today, Friday, August 24th, 2012, was a shooting at the Empire State Building.  Two people died, the shooter in hail of police bullets.  Nine bystanders were injured, probably by police bullets.

This story headlined every major news network's reports all through the day, as well as Today, Good Morning America etc.

Gee, welcome to the real world, you networks and media who continually navel-gaze on Manhattan Island.  These shootings occur almost every day in every City in America.  There were 19 - NINETEEN - shootings in Chicago last night.  Did that make the national news?  No, because it wasn't within a few blocks of the media moguls on Manhattan.  One teenager died and five people were wounded (none by police bullets) in Seattle on July 1st.  Did that make the national news?  There were 8,775 deaths by firearms in the United States in 2010.  How many of those made the national news?

Why does the New York City shooting get media attention, when very few of the others do?

Is it laziness - events just easier to cover when they are within a few blocks of network headquarters?  Are the network reporters (or executives) scared for their own skins - that is, the shootings are hitting too close to home?  Or is there really nothing worth covering outside of Manhattan or the East Coast?

I'm reminded of the famous New Yorker magazine cover of March 29, 1976, except that cover shows way too much space in the rest of the United States.

Hello CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and the rest of NYC.  We're still here too.

Thunder and Light

I've got to admit I love the Blue Angels.
I love the roar of the jets as they fly low over West Seattle, scaring cats and dogs and babies.
That thunder gives me the shivers just like listening to the Star Spangled Banner.
It's not so much about the military.  Sure, I'm proud of my service as an Army Reservist.  But I'm equally angry about how the military has been misused around the world, such as pursuing that godforesaken war in Iraq.
No, I think the Blue Angels give me the shivers because I know that they are a symbol of the military power which keeps us a free, safe people.  I look at my little granddaughters, and wonder how many 2 and 7 year old girls are growing up, around the world, in places which are not safe.   Places torn by civil war - like Syria - or places rife with criminal activities and gangs.  Or places where women are distinctly second class people, virtual slaves or chattel.
But here, in West Seattle, we can walk out, any time of the day or night, and wonder about the stars in the sky or the beauty of the Sound and mountains, and feel safe.
That's why I shiver when I hear the thunder.

Endangered Phrases

Image source: San Diego Coasthugger

I recently ran across the Museum of Endangered Sounds, which is trying to preserve the sounds of clacking typewriters, the PacMan game, and AOL's "You've got mail" message, particularly near and dear to fans of the late Nora Ephron's movies like "Sleepless in Seattle".
But words and phrases are also endangered.
I was reminded of this again on July 1st when a new Seattle City ordinance took effect banning plastic bags for most retail uses.   You can still get paper bags for grocery or other checkouts, but only the brown kind and only by paying five cents.
"Paper or Plastic?" is an endangered phrase.
That's a great development from my point of view, although not perhaps in the view of the American Chemistry Council,which spent $1.4 million to defeat an earlier version of the ban in 2009.
I wonder what other phrases, either hated or beloved, have become endangered or passed away in our lifetimes?