Two-Tiered Support for Retaining Walls

In an absolutely brilliant item, Brian Ferguson relates that some folks in San Francisco were hesitant about letting private parties donate money to make repairs and upgrades to public property [retaining walls and a median strip]. Quoting from CanadaEast.com,

Robin Williams and his wife, Marsha, offered to donate $80,000 US to fix a retaining wall and median strip near their home in the city’s Seacliff neighbourhood.

City supervisor Gerardo Sandoval balked, fearing Williams would be getting preferential treatment. Sandoval said he didn’t want the city to go “down the slippery slope” of putting privately funded projects ahead of those needed in less affluent areas.

But after city staff assured him that Williams’ generosity would free up funds for poorer neighbourhoods, Sandoval joined nine colleagues in voting unanimously Tuesday to accept the comedian’s gift.

Brian’s response to all this is:

No, no, no, no, no. Has this man paid no attention to progressive Canada’s efforts to protect Medicare from the two-tier virus. Any of the true friends of medicare could tell him that private money doesn’t free up funds for poor neighbourhoods, it doesn’t add to total resources available, it doesn’t reduce waiting times for things that are crucial to a community’s identity:

City officials said the funds will be used for new benches, irrigation, planters and bronze memorial plaques.

What will actually happen is that as the rich start to buy their own bronze memorial plaques, their own retaining walls and their own median strips, support for the publicly funded median strip system will fall, leading not to increased funds being available for poorer areas but to a reduction in total public funding for median strips. And before you know it, every median strip in San Francisco will have two tiers.

There is much more at his site.

Brian Ferguson is one of Canada’s best health economists. If you do not recognize the sarcasm in what he wrote, let me assure you that he is a strong advocate for allowing people to spend more to supplement the health care coverage provided by the gubmnt.

Profiling and Political Correctness:reductio ad absurdum

Profiling makes statistical sense. Paul Sperry argues this point very cogently in an Op-Ed in the NYTimes [registration required], in which he criticizes New York City Mayor Bloomberg for saying that inspection of bags in subways will be completely random. U.S. Constitutional rights aside, this is a dumb policy.

From everything we know about the terrorists who may be taking aim at our transportation system, they are most likely to be young Muslim men. Unfortunately, however, this demographic group won’t be profiled. Instead, the authorities will be stopping Girl Scouts and grannies in a procedure that has more to do with demonstrating tolerance than with protecting citizens from terrorism.

Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it’s based on statistics. Insurance companies profile policyholders based on probability of risk. That’s just smart business. Likewise, profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement.

Alan Adamson, at Silly Little Country, has a similar response to the critics of profiling. Noting that Suspect #1 in a recent Trono mugging is a white male, Alan says,

We would not want any ‘racial profiling’. So I hope it is recommended they pull over some young black males in order to catch suspect #1.

… Sex should be fair game too. So I hope the police are apprehending women as well in looking for suspect #1.

Reductio ad absurdum. Very effective.

Profiling and Political Correctness:reductio ad absurdum

Profiling makes statistical sense. Paul Sperry argues this point very cogently in an Op-Ed in the NYTimes [registration required], in which he criticizes New York City Mayor Bloomberg for saying that inspection of bags in subways will be completely random. U.S. Constitutional rights aside, this is a dumb policy.

From everything we know about the terrorists who may be taking aim at our transportation system, they are most likely to be young Muslim men. Unfortunately, however, this demographic group won’t be profiled. Instead, the authorities will be stopping Girl Scouts and grannies in a procedure that has more to do with demonstrating tolerance than with protecting citizens from terrorism.

Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it’s based on statistics. Insurance companies profile policyholders based on probability of risk. That’s just smart business. Likewise, profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement.

Alan Adamson, at Silly Little Country, has a similar response to the critics of profiling. Noting that Suspect #1 in a recent Trono mugging is a white male, Alan says,

We would not want any ‘racial profiling’. So I hope it is recommended they pull over some young black males in order to catch suspect #1.

… Sex should be fair game too. So I hope the police are apprehending women as well in looking for suspect #1.

Reductio ad absurdum. Very effective.

Profiling and Political Correctness:reductio ad absurdum

Profiling makes statistical sense. Paul Sperry argues this point very cogently in an Op-Ed in the NYTimes [registration required], in which he criticizes New York City Mayor Bloomberg for saying that inspection of bags in subways will be completely random. U.S. Constitutional rights aside, this is a dumb policy.

From everything we know about the terrorists who may be taking aim at our transportation system, they are most likely to be young Muslim men. Unfortunately, however, this demographic group won’t be profiled. Instead, the authorities will be stopping Girl Scouts and grannies in a procedure that has more to do with demonstrating tolerance than with protecting citizens from terrorism.

Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it’s based on statistics. Insurance companies profile policyholders based on probability of risk. That’s just smart business. Likewise, profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement.

Alan Adamson, at Silly Little Country, has a similar response to the critics of profiling. Noting that Suspect #1 in a recent Trono mugging is a white male, Alan says,

We would not want any ‘racial profiling’. So I hope it is recommended they pull over some young black males in order to catch suspect #1.

… Sex should be fair game too. So I hope the police are apprehending women as well in looking for suspect #1.

Reductio ad absurdum. Very effective.

Uncle Booger and the Bumper Dumper

Phil Miller comes up with another great link: Uncle Booger’s Bumper Dumper.

The Ultimate Portable toilet for the outdoorsman. The only hitch mounted portable toilet patented to use any standard full size toilet seat.It’s the most comfortable,stable and sanitary porta potty in the world.

And he followed up with inflat-a-potty.

The man’s a genius.

Calories and Calories from Fat; a good listing for many fast foods

Not that I want to ruin your fun this weekend or anything like that, but here, courtesy of Jack, is a site that provides all the nutritional information you may not want to know about the foods available from these places:

Arby’s
Blimpie
Burger King
Domino’s
Hardee’s
KFC
McDonald’s
Papa John’s
Pizza Hut
Subway
Taco Bell
Wendy’s

Calories and Calories from Fat; a good listing for many fast foods

Not that I want to ruin your fun this weekend or anything like that, but here, courtesy of Jack, is a site that provides all the nutritional information you may not want to know about the foods available from these places:

Arby’s
Blimpie
Burger King
Domino’s
Hardee’s
KFC
McDonald’s
Papa John’s
Pizza Hut
Subway
Taco Bell
Wendy’s

Calories and Calories from Fat; a good listing for many fast foods

Not that I want to ruin your fun this weekend or anything like that, but here, courtesy of Jack, is a site that provides all the nutritional information you may not want to know about the foods available from these places:

Arby’s
Blimpie
Burger King
Domino’s
Hardee’s
KFC
McDonald’s
Papa John’s
Pizza Hut
Subway
Taco Bell
Wendy’s

Chicken Catching

My friend, Don, is a chicken farmer. He makes a lot of money chicken farming because in Ontario we have “supply management” meaning chicken farmers are strictly limited as to how many chickens they can produce, with the effect that consumers pay more for chicken, and the right to produce chickens is worth millions of dollars. See this for more details about chicken farming.

Don’s 24,000 chickens [this is small-scale, compared with many operations in the area] had to be sent to the processor on Friday night. You catch the chickens late at night because that is when they are groggy and sleepy, making them much easier to catch. You feel for their legs to grab ‘em and pick ‘em up in the dark.

Last night, the chicken catchers picked up three birds in each hand because the cages on the trucks are designed to hold 9 birds each of the size that Don raises. I went out there last night to observe/help. There was no way, at my age and state of de-conditioning, that I would catch 3 birds per hand, and it was clear that I would just be in the way if I tried. I limited myself to catching the strays that got away from the trucks they were being loaded onto.

The chickens don’t like being caught, and it is not a pleasant job. Good, experienced chicken catchers can make good money, but it is hard work. Maybe this girl is in training….

I’m an omnivore; some of my children and grandchildren are vegetarians. I have no problem eating meat. In addition, I think people shouldn’t be squeamish about watching it get processed if they want to eat it; but I understand that many, many carnivores happily pay others to do the butchering so they won’t have to think about it.

Before I went out to “help”, I thought I’d read up on chicken catching on the internet. One of the first articles I came across was this screed about how chicken-catching is “specie-ist”. These are some folks with serious problems with their priorities if they really believe this:

In “For the Birds,” Washington Post writer Tamara Jones declared at the outset: “Yes, Karen Davis is serious when she says the extermination of 7 billion broiler chickens is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust”

There are machines available to do chicken-catching [big-time capital-labour substitution!]. The problem with them is that they must be disinfected between catches, and if a machine breaks down, it is like having no catchers at all and the crop doesn’t get harvested at the correct time and weight.

Civic Holiday

This is a holiday weekend for us. The first Monday of August is Civic Holiday in much of Canada.

When I first moved here 78 years ago, I had never heard of Civic Holiday. Colleague Robin Carter carefully explained to me that Canadians very intelligently decided they should have a holiday in August because they had official holidays in May, June, July, September, and October and they didn’t want to go through August without having one then, too.

Civic Holiday commemorates nothing. It’s just a good excuse to have a three-day weekend in August.