Paradigms...where shift happens!

I don't get it!

Maybe I’m not so bright. I am a smoker, that should tell you something. Some things, however, just seem to defy comprehension. Today’s “WTF” has to do with cigarettes. Did you ever hear of “American Spirit” cigarettes? They advertise themselves as producing additive free tobacco products. True enough that the side of the pack reminds us that being additive free does not mean that their cigarettes are safer but how many smokers look at those federally mandated warnings anyway? Apparently from what I could glean on line some of the additives they mention are ones that make the tobacco burn more slowly. Seems to me that means that a consumer has more time to inhale the bad stuff in a smoke, more time to take in that life smothering carbon monoxide smokers get in their blood.
Some of the qualities of their product that they mention on their web site are:

Earth friendly farming
Leaf Selection
Organic Growers Program
Dedicated Manufacturing
No Additives
Full tobacco ingredient Disclosure
Perique Heritage
Additive Free Menthol 

The take away I get is that these product qualities only function so as  to make us feel somewhat less guilty about indulging our habit. “Yeah, I smoke two packs a day but it is earth friendly tobacco!” As I see it that’s not so much a good thing as a cop out. Finally before anyone gets too warm and fuzzy about the Native American themed graphics on the package, American Spirit was acquired by Reynolds American Tobacco 5 years ago. We should be grateful they are not presenting their product line as containing “free range tobacco”. 

Big news today!

You might want to call all those who are near and dear to you because I'm sure this will make their day. Maybe the category for this post should be Lipstick for Pachyderms. Headline level story today from multiple news sources that some scientists have concluded that elephants can recognize themselves in a mirror. I can just hear the banter in the pachyderm playpen right now. "John," she says as she pirouettes in front of a floor to ceiling mirror, "Does this grey leather dress make me look fat?"

OK, it's a piece of knowledge that may lead to something but what did it cost to find this out and who the hell was willing to pay for the huge mirrors? Did we really need this info? Other than the fact that I had something to blog about, I could probably could have limped through the day in ignorance on the subject. Elephants are intelligent animals, we know that. If these researchers want a challenge, find out if sand dollars recognize themselves in a mirror. At least the mirrors would be cheaper.

Halloween what?

Talk about trying to pretty up a porker! Yesterday my local paper, for whom I also write a blog ran a story with a headline that read Fitting Wines for Holiday Season  They may be the hosting entity for one of my blogs but this story was, in my opinion, totally out of place. I posted the following commentary on the story on my blog over there. 

It's a nice hometown paper it really is so I think I'll just write this article off as a journalistic brain fart.

That's 39 but who's counting!

One of my favorite sources of things to talk about in a blog posting is the surpassingly odd aspects of life today that are thrust into the limelight via the wacky filler items you can find on many of the major on line news sites like CNN and indeed dear old www.Fredericksburg.com . For example this headline from CNN.com fairly begs further examination: “Jumping sturgeon whacks jet-skier” Maybe I read articles like that for the same reason I’ll pause on the Jerry Springer show when I’m channel surfing but I really want to see the fish that can take out a guy on a jet ski.

It’s not what anyone would call a major news site but in her blog posting today on Blue Ridge Blog, Marie Freeman talking about the new school year in Watauga County North Carolina and says there is a new rule at Watauga County High School limiting students to 39 bathroom trips per semester. She predicts they’ll give up on that within two weeks. I give it one week: one day to realize the impracticality of it and four days to figure out how to back off the idea without formally admitting what a knot headed idea it was to begin with.

Who will keep track of how often the kids go? Will there be potty monitors with clip boards in the hall? Maybe they will print and distribute 39 bathroom passes to each student, thus creating an active black market for them and when that gets going can the counterfeit potty pass be far behind? Will there be a roll over provision for unused passes from one semester to another like unused cell phone minutes?

Who in the school administration came up with this idea and then had the nerve to propose it in front of the other school officials? Boone is way out in the mountains of western

North Carolina

but I’m surprised we didn’t hear the hoots and howls of laughter all the way up here.

Of course there could be a perfectly logical explanation for how this came to be; it could be a little known provision of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Nah, that’s too far out even for the Feds, right?

Right?

In vino veritas...

In Virginia any  new laws that have been thrashed out by the legislature go into effect on July 1st. There were two this year that caught my eye because when taken together, they just don't seem to make any sense.

In the first one, a special law was passed to allow Chuck Miller and Belmont Farms Distillery to brew AND sell "moonshine" right on site at his farm. Since as long ago as I can remember the sale of hard liquor has only been legal when it is sold in state ABC stores. Now we have a law introduced and approved for one individual and one particular commercial enterprise allowing Mr. Miller and his wife to bypass whatever controls are exercised by the ABC people.

In theory, I have no problem with this. Get the government the hell out of whatever areas we can. Yet in the same session of the legislature they pass yet another piece of legislation requiring Virginia wineries to sell their product through distributors rather than direct to the retailers. This came as a result of a Supreme Court decision which said in essence it was un-Constitutional for the state to require wineries outside Virginia to sell through beverage distributors and at the same time allow in-state wineries to sell direct to retailers.

Virginia's wine industry is growing and the state is fast becoming well known for the quality of the wine it produces. Government meddling at both the state and federal level has created so many "Catch 22s" that the viability of new enterprises is seriously threatened.

So as we discussed this at coffee one morning, the question of why this happened was answered with, "It's Virginia, that's why." The longer answer would probably have something to do with the fact that the distributors have the money to lobby politicians.

Niche marketing has...

...become a commonly used term in business today. Find a niche and fill it...or something like that. Judging by the TV ads for York, the central air conditioner company, there is a new niche in town, a pretty narrow one I would think but perhaps a niche nevertheless. They are pitching the idea of outside A/C units with your college logos in your school colors painted on the grill work that surrounds the compressor.

How big a market can this be? These things normally sit somewhere out of sight or nearly so don't they? Who can see them, rabbits, birds, snakes maybe? What does this "enhancement" cost? Ask any homeowner who has replaced an outside compressor unit what they had to pay and if they would have been willing to pay more for the optional college logo. Please write me if you get a 'yes' and include their name and address so I can send them brochures on mental health and on some beachfront  property on the Bering Sea.

I'm visualising college applications and the answers to "How did you hear about our institution?".

"I saw the college name and the nifty picture of your mascot on my Aunt Clarice's air conditioner and thought, what the hell, why not."

It's almost spring and...

...they're back. The Bradford pear trees that line the streets and by-ways of Fredericksburgare in full stinky bloom. This is a tree that is directly in front of my office door. It's deceptively beautiful but get too close to it and your nostrils will be assailed by the aroma of unwashed feet.

                           
Years ago, for some inexplicable reason the powers that be here in "Mayberry-On-Crack" decided that we should have a town symbol, something around which we could build a theme for the downtown area. They chose the most noxious tree on earth, the

Bradford pear. It heralds the Spring season with delicate white blossoms that look as if they should smell as nice as they look but one breath of their aroma and you feel as if you have done a swan dive into the dirty sock basket at the "Final Four".

This year as it happened, a sudden warm spell caused the trees to bloom even before the forsythia and daffodils. All well and good I suppose except for the fact in the fall the Bradford pear trees begin to drop small nasty tasting pears that have been lurking in their foliage all summer, thus ushering in a fifth season, car washing season, when car wash owners begin to hear their cash registers ringing like the bells of St. Mary. The overripe fruit sticks to your car, eats away at your paint and need to be washed off as soon as possible. Some of these auto deposits are even more noxious as they are the result of these pears having spent a short and productive time in the gastrointestinal tracts of several hundred thousand starlings.

Now the city fathers (and mothers) have come to the conclusion that maybe these starling buffets have overstayed their welcome. Henceforth the

Bradford pear trees will be replaced by some other species of leaf factory as they die off or split limbs from their trunks as they are wont to do. All well and good I suppose except for one small detail. We have also embraced a New Years tradition in which a giant lit up pear is dropped from above the street at Midnight to mark the arrival of the New Year like the ball in Times Square.

I wonder if anyone has a design for a giant lit up starling that could just crap on cars at midnight instead. Hmmm...now where did I put  all those strings of Christmas lights.....

Tax Deductions

As we all know, politicians have a special knack for rationalizing their positions or in a more familiar phraseology, “putting lipstick on a pig”. It’s another way of saying that they are adept at making a dumb idea or program seem at least not so dumb and in the most extreme case, a smart thing to do. 

If that’s the bad news then the fact that it is a bi-partisan ability may be the good news. A radio news report about the tax deductions available for the purchase of certain kinds of vehicles caught my attention this morning. This was, it seems to me, a fairly reasonable concept when it was enacted since it was supposed to function as a stimulus to the economy right after the 9/11 attack. 

Now, over 4 years later, when the Administration tells us that the economy is booming again, we still have the deduction in place. If you buy a hybrid car, the deduction is $3,150 but if you buy an SUV that weighs over 3 tons the deduction is up to $25,000! Why, you may ask, are we still encouraging this kind of lunacy at a time when decreasing our dependency on foreign oil is a priority concern? I can see the continuation of the program for the hybrid cars and I could even sign on for a gradual reduction of the deduction on the gas guzzlers but why the big car deduction is still in place as it was originally enacted is mystifying to me. 

I think it might be fun to look for more examples of “pig make-up”. I’m going to set this post up in a special category on the blog and invite you to submit things that occur to you. I’ll publish them on the blog using fake initials to identify who they came from. Then we can see what kind of dialogue we can get going on this topic. E-mail them to me directly at [email protected] and I’ll edit them to protect your privacy and then post them here.