SWCAMBORNE

“There is nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.”

Milton Friedman

US Economist

Last Friday evening I left the hose running into my pond and by morning all of the fish were dead.  No they didn’t drown.  They were poisoned by the Chloramine in the tap water.

RIP Fish

It was the Chernobyl disaster of my pond.  Fortunately I had some mosquito fish in the small fountain and the frog survived so there will be some fauna continuity.  The frog probably survived because he has been adjusting to chemicals by taking nightly swims in the pool.

The plan now is to restart the pond with local fish and more lilies.  It should be beautiful, environmentally sound and much easier to take care of.

This Lily flowered two days after the fish disaster

Stay Tuned  The Lily Pond Album on Flickr

The dilemma is:  People are willing to spend $4.00 for a Vanilla Latte but not spend $2.00 for a newspaper or even $1.00 for an internet news feed. Can the news media survive?

It costs money to gather and disseminate news.  And for the last hundred years or so the model has been to sell advertising to pay the cost.  People it seems want news but they don’t want to pay to much for it.  Now, we all know, the model is changing.  Newspapers can’t sell enough ads to pay for reporters and editors and are hemorrhaging money.  Craigs list took away the classified ads and the internet took away a lot of the print ads.  And young people don’t subscribe to or read newspapers, they get their news from the internet.  Reporting of local new is dying.

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Yesterday my nonfiction book club met to discuss A People’s History of the Civil War by David Williams.

We had a very good discussion of the causes of the Civil War, whether there is ever a just war and the fallacy of reasoning from a particular premise to a universal conclusion.  But the very best part was when Larry G showed us some original documents he had from the Civil War.

The documents included the discharge of Private Charles R Ayres and I took a photo of it.  He was a clerk from Boston who served a 100 day enlistment.  Ayres was Larry’s Great Great Grandfather.

“No objection to his being re-enlisted is known to exist.”

There were also some reminisces that Charles had written later in his life about his experiences in the war.  Touching history.

This is a Schefflera

In the 1970′s I used to call all house plants Schefflera.  It was easier than remembering the actual names and it always got a laugh.  I have moved on to misnaming other things like hardware stores and medications but my friends Larry and Kelly H. reminded me of the schefflera story when we went to dinner recently.

BTW this Schefflera is available for adoption pot trained and ready to go.

Not Scheffleras

This idea is so easy and sensible that it must be fatally flawed:

How can we create a million new jobs?

Allow young people to work for $5.00/hr until unemployment is below 7.2%

Arguments for:

• Some money is better than no money.
• For young people getting experience is critical.
• Employers will hire more people if their marginal cost is lower
• A million new workers will help to reinvigorate the economy.
• Some workers making $5.00 will keep some jobs from going overseas.
• This is already being done stealthily for college graduates under the guise of “internships.”

Arguments Against:

• The minimum wage is like social security if politicians touch it they dies.
• Once we lower pay it will take forever to get it raised again.
• Employers will fire full pay workers to hire $5.00 workers.  (see below * for the solution to this one)
• Don’t change anything our system is perfect.

* To avoid laying off higher paid workers companies can only hire at this rate if they are increasing their total payroll.

Young people could mean under 24.

A Change we’ve been hoping for.

These are not women in party burkas.  They are displays of fabric in the garment district of Los Angeles.  Nurit and I went there this week for an exploratory visit.  (near the corner of 9th and San Pedro)  Although none of the products appealed to us it was heartening to see that there are still distribution channels that are run by individuals and small businesses.

On the negative side LA need a facelift.  It has far to much deferred maintenance.  After visiting the LA Fabric Souk we drove up the Hollywood Freeway to the Valley.  The freeway was in terrible shape and landscaping was depressingly trashy and shabby.  LA you can do better than this.  The first thing to do is to raise is your expectations.  You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Only a Bureaucrat

could say “Partial Zero” without choking.

In government speak I was a “partial A student”

I’d like to send a shout out to the staff at the Loews Atlanta Hotel and especially to the assistant director of housekeeping, Stephanie P.  We were in Atlanta, over the Memorial Day weekend, for the McCowan-Blacher wedding and stayed at the Loews because the wedding recommended it.

I write postcards and have a voracious appetite for them.  I immediately liked the Loews because they had free postcards in the rooms.  I wrote the ones I had and asked at the front desk for some more.  Within the hour I got another 10 or 12 postcards delivered to the room with this really gracious note:

“I hope you are finding your stay supremely comfortable.”

We enjoyed our stay in Atlanta in part because the Loews Hotel had a super well trained and motivated staff.  “Supremely comfortable” might replace “practically perfect in every way” as my standard response to the standard question: “How are you doing today?”

Practice:

Clerk: How are things going?

Simon: I am supremely comfortable thank you.

So if you’re in Atlanta stay at the Loews and send me a postcard.

“A word to the wise ain’t necessary; it’s the stupid ones who need the advise.”

Bill Cosby

Comedian

via Funny Times