Monthly Archives: December 2024

Dear diary

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When I saw it working that day in 1954, I felt like some latter-day Newton who’d just had an Idaho potato caromed off his skull. That night in my motel room I did a lot of heavy thinking about what I’d seen during the day. Visions of McDonald’s restaurants dotting crossroads all over the country paraded through my brain.
– Ray Kroc

Beth took me out to eat last night, a birthday celebration. We went to Ruth’s Chris in Middleton. The steaks there are ridiculously delicious, absurdly huge. Today we have half of my USDA prime New York strip nestled in the refrigerator next to the remains of Beth’s rib eye, the makings of at least one more dinner. Ruth’s Chris is an upscale chain that caters to a privileged clientele. Its regular customers are people who make at least twice as much as we do. Even so, the maitre d’s question put me off a little.

“Is this your first time at Ruth’s Chris?” he asked.

We had been talking about this in the car. It was definitely our first time at the Middleton Ruth’s Chris. It’s an odd name, “Ruth’s Chris.” We wondered about its provenance again last night. Wikipedia says,

The chain was founded by Ruth Fertel, a single mother of two, in 1965, after she bought the existing Chris Steak House in New Orleans. In buying the restaurant, Fertel had to agree that the restaurant keep the “Chris” name for a specified period of time. After the original location sustained a kitchen fire, she relocated the restaurant about one-half mile (0.9 km) to the west on Broad Street and renamed the rebuilt establishment “Ruth’s Chris.” Under the purchase agreement, the name “Chris Steak House” could not be used at any other location, and she did not want to lose customers already familiar with the Chris name. Fertel started to franchise the restaurant in the 1970s to locations throughout the United States and the world.

Ten years ago or so, Matt introduced us to the Beverly Hills location. We were baffled by the name then, thought maybe it was named after a favorite nephew or something. I’m glad Wikipedia has since emerged to resolve these bar-bet issues. Following that celebration of Matt’s graduation in Los Angeles, we didn’t find our way to another Ruth’s Chris for five years or so. That was in Kansas City, on the Plaza, another special occasion with Ben and Katie. Finally, Beth had enjoyed a night out at the King of Prussia, PA location across the mall from her hotel on a business trip a few years ago. That was the extent of our Ruth’s Chris experience.

So, yes–last night was our first visit to our local Ruth’s Chris Steak House. We had tried to eat there a few years ago, but in the welter of retail construction that is Middleton, we weren’t able to find it. I forget where we celebrated that night on the town. Later, we applied our amazing Google skillz and found the place, but it took a birthday to motivate us to make reservations.

The maitre d’s question had made me wonder if he thought he’d seen me stash my shopping cart and recyclable aluminum before we came in. Maybe he suspected me of pulling some of the longer butts from the ashtray, saving them for later. But, I was wearing a nice sweater, slacks, an overcoat, decent shoes… surely it’s a question he asks everyone he doesn’t know by sight, an icebreaker. I let it go. I enjoyed the meal, and topped it off with a delicious crème brulée, compliments of the house because it was my birthday. Ruth’s Chris: upscale franchise food, conveniently adjacent to the Verizon retail outlet, just across the boulevard from the Costco Wholesale Warehouse, and a hop, skip and a jump down the road from at least half a dozen retail cosmetic surgery clinics. Liposuction? You’ll need it after dining at Ruth’s Chris!

Census 2024

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Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. — Thomas Malthus, 1798

How many of us are there? How many of THEM? The results of the 2024 census will be released today but the census doesn’t do a very good job of counting hedge fund managers, housing bubble billionaires, or people who own impressionist paintings that are worth more than most of us make in a lifetime. Those are the people who can be expected to hide behind the closed door of their shabby inner city tenement and quietly wait for the census taker to depart. The down side of their reluctance to respond to the census is that they will be terribly under-represented in the House of Representatives. The census numbers drive reapportionment, and the quietly oppressed billionaires among us, afraid to show themselves lest they be deported to the Caymans, will again be under-counted.

The first numbers released today will be the important Fox News Market Penetration data. These numbers have already been rushed to the News Corp Oyster Bay enclave on Long Island. The News Corp marketeers will spend the next few months analyzing the data before selling houses and hotels and moving their most important media properties to Boardwalk and Park Place. News Corp, dedicated to getting their message to the wall mounted plasma screens of the super-rich, will have two years to coax “the shy majority” to the polls. If the fair and balanced journalists prevail, perhaps we will see the promise of democracy fulfilled before the next decennial headcount.

7 things to suck you in

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Shy people start to sing along at concerts. Tea Party meetups start with group prayers that encourage participation from people who might otherwise be uncomfortable talking politics with strangers. Ostensibly unbiased journalists applaud at Apple keynote presentations. We are transformed when we’re part of a shared experience. — Anil Dash


Darren Rowse says, “One of the easiest ways to write a post is to make a list.” Rowse is a professional blogger. His Wikipedia entry says that two of his blogs generate $20,000 a month in ad revenue. When Rowse posts, people listen. I guess. OTOH, it seems likely that many if not most of the people who bought “Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income” haven’t opened it, being too busy with Facebook, foursquare, and twitter.

1. If you post links to Amazon dot com, you might as well use an Amazon affiliates link in order to collect a few random pence from those who click through and actually buy the book you’ve linked. I know a blogger in Boulder who makes a three figure income using this simple technique!

2. Join the A list!! This is easier than it seems because niche blogging assures plenty of A-list room for everyone! Consider the R-Pod. The A-list of Airstream bloggers is full. Breaking into big-time via the Airstream A-list would be a serious challenge. But how many RPod bloggers could there be? If you build it, will they come?

3. Onibalusi Bamidele puts time management at the top of his list of seven things that will forever keep you off the blogging A-list. He could be right, but I can’t spare a moment to think about it now. I have to go outside and throw the frisbee for the dogs.

4. Don’t go off on tangents. For example, while trying to put together some coherent advice on RPod blogging, I somehow vectored off into “leprosy.” As it happens, POD is not only shorthand for a nifty little recreational camping thingee, it also stands for “Prevention of Disability.”

5. Buy a lottery ticket. Fran Lebowitz is of course correct when she observes that your chances of winning are the same whether or not you buy the ticket, but if you don’t buy then you can’t dream. You have to buy the ticket to take that ride.

6. Know when to quit. If you’re making up a list of crap in order to churn out a blog post because without that constant churning you don’t stand a chance of striking it rich, and if you were looking for seven salient factoids to buttress some obscure point or whatever, and if you’ve only got six, then for gods sake just change the title of the post and fuhgeddaboutit.

7. Use proper punctuation and always wear clean underwear. This should go without saying, but a survey of ambulance attendants revealed that many people, bloggers included, tend to overuse the exclamation point!

Food Safety

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That damn FDA, founded a hundred years ago, just to make sure the milk bottles you got were full of milk and not white paint and rat shit.
– Jon Stewart

Corporate shills and Senatorial obstructionists have taken a last whack at the Food Safety bill. Filthy conditions in food plants will continue unabated if the bill isn’t separated from the moribund omnibus spending bill. That bill became a grab bag for end of year business, and then, faced with obstructionist challenges, it was quietly killed. The Food Safety bill may have died with it.

Not everybody in these parts thought that the legislation was a good idea. Small organic operations reacted warily, as did the guys who recently shipped a billion eggs contaminated with salmonella. An amendment that addressed the organic local producers’ concerns was added to the bill and it passed. People were generally satisfied that locavore and small farm concerns had been addressed. Then came the oopsie. The Senate bill required a return trip to the House because of some spending provision. Back it went. The House worked their magic and sent it back to the Senate. The Senate, now requiring one more kick at it because the House had touched it, bundled it into the omnibus spending bill and there it remains.

What I liked about the bill was its nod to the role of government in our society. When you sell Gordon Gekko a meat packing plant, you know that there will be some overhead issues. This bill was designed to reduce the number of people poisoned by the greedy, rapacious whackos in charge of corporate food. Tom Harkin currently has the bill on life support in the Senate cloak room. It’s anybody’s guess whether his resuscitative efforts will succeed before the lame duck session of congress expires.

Transcript of Al Franken Speech re Network Neutrality and NBC Comcast merger

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Al Franken spoke today with clarity and vision regarding the role of the FCC and his hopes that the cable industry will not be able to exercise vertical control of the net, from the bandwidth to the content. Long story short… the Comcast/NBC merger must not be allowed to happen!! The following transcript is choppy, but the video of the speech at the preceding link is very powerful. I hope people can watch it and share it. I hope someone can put it on Youtube!

SENATOR FRANKEN:
MR. PRESIDENT, I RISE TODAY TO TALK ABOUT THE GROWING THREAT OF IT CORPORATE CONTROL ON THE FLOW OF INFORMATION IN THIS COUNTRY.
07:40:07 RIGHT NOW, TODAY, WE’VE BEEN DEBATING INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ISSUES AND I DON’T MEAN TO DETRACT FROM ANY OF THEM.
07:40:13 WE NEED TO BE DOING ANYTHING WE CAN TO PROTECT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY AND REDUCE THE THREAT FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
07:40:22 WHILE WE DEBATE THESE ISSUES IN FRONT OF THE PUBLIC, BEHIND THE SCENES AWAY FROM PUBLIC SCRUTINY, THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION IS ABOUT TO DECIDE TWO DISTINCT BUT VERY CLOSELY RELATED ISSUES THAT HAVE THE POTENTIAL TO CHANGE DRAMATICALLY THE WAY WE GET OUR ENTERTAINMENT, THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE WITH ONE ANOTHER, AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, THE WAY WE USE THE INTERNET.
07:40:48 THE FIRST MATTER BEFORE THE F.C.C. IS THE PROPOSED MERGER OF COMCAST AND NBC UNIVERSAL.
07:40:57 THERE IS NO QUESTION IN MY MIND THAT REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU HEAR FROM INDUSTRY, THIS MERGER WILL BE BAD FOR CONSUMERS AND ON MANY LEVELS SMS IT WILL ALLOW COMCAST TO EXPLOIT NBC UNIVERSAL’S CONTENT, CHARGE OTHER CABLE NETWORKS MORE FOR ACCESS TO NBC SHOWS AND MOVIES.
07:41:18 DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WILL DO?
07:41:23 IT WILL RAISE YOUR CABLE BILLS.
07:41:25 AND NBC UNIVERSAL, WHICH ACTUALLY OWNS 37 BROADCAST OR CABLE NETWORKS, WILL BE FAVORED BY COMCAST TO THE EXCLUSION OF NETWORKS.
07:41:35 OTHER INDEPENDENT OR COMPETING THIS MEANS THAT COMCAST WILL PAY LESS TO CARRY CHANNELS LIKE THE DISCOVERY NETWORK, THE FOOD CHANNEL, BLOOMBERG, OR THE TENNIS CHANNEL, THREATENING THEIR FINANCIAL VIABILITY, OR THESE CHANNELS WILL BE RELEGATED TO THE GRAVEYARD AROUND CHANNEL 690 OR 691.
07:41:59 OR 692.
07:42:01 OR CUSTOMERS WILL HAVE TO PAY EVEN MORE EACH MONTH TO BUY ACCESS TO THESE CHANNELS.
07:42:08 THIS IS BAD FOR CONSUMERS BECAUSE IT’S GOING TO PUT MANY BUSINESS.
07:42:12 OF THESE NETWORKS OUT OF THAT MEANS LESS CHOICE AND MORE COMCAST/NBC PROGRAMMING.
07:42:21 BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE.
07:42:22 COMCAST ALSO HAPPENS TO BE THE NATION’S LEADING WIRELINE BROADBAND INTERNET PROVIDER WHICH MEANS THIS SINGLE COMPANY WILL BOTH OWN THE PROGRAMMING AND RUN THE PIPES THAT BRING US THAT PROGRAMMING.
07:42:34 HERE AGAIN COMCAST WILL BE ABLE TO USE ITS OVERWHELMING MARKET SHARE AND IN MANY MARKETS IT’S NEAR NONE MONOPOLY IN THE INTERNET BUSINESS TO FAVOR ITS OWN VIDEO SERVICES.
07:42:48 SAY, ITS ON-DEMAND SERVICES OVER COMPANIES LIKE NET FEDERALISM THEIR — NETFLIX THAT WERE CHEAPER AND WOULD OTHERWISE WIN UPON AN OVERALL PLAYING FIELD.
07:43:01 THESE ARE OWL ALL PROBLEMS WITH THE OVERALL DEAL BUT IT MAY BE HARD TO UNDERSTAND SO LET ME TAKE A MINUTE OR TWO TO MAKE THIS MORE CONCRETE.
07:43:11 I ASK THE PEOPLE SITTING IN THE GALLERY, THE SENATE STAFF WATCHING THIS SPEERCHTION AND EVERYONE AT HOME IN MINNESOTA — THIS SPEECH, AND EVERYONE AT HOME IN MINNESOTA, HOW MANY OF YOU LIKE YOUR CABLE AND INTERNET PROVIDER?
07:43:24 WHEN YOU CALL COMCAST OR VERIZON OR AT&T ABOUT A PROBLEM, HOW MANY OF YOU GET GOOD SERVICE?
07:43:31 HOW MANY OF YOU LIKE THE PRICES YOU PAY?
07:43:35 WHEN YOU DECIDE YOU WANT TO SIGN UP FOR BROADBAND AND COMCAST TELLS YOU THAT THEY AREN’T SURE WHEN THEY CAN COME TO INSTALL YOUR SERVICE AND THEN FINALLY YOU GET AN APPOINTMENT AND YOU HAVE TO TAKE A DAY OFF FROM WORK TO WAIT BETWEEN 9:00 A.M. AND 2:00 P.M. FOR A REPAIRMAN TO COME AND THEN HE DOESN’T COME, IS THAT HOW YOU FEEL YOU DESERVE TO BE TREATED?
07:44:00 ARE YOU GETTING GOOD SERVICE?
07:44:03 WHEN YOU CALL VERIZON AND SPEND SO 10 MINUTES LISTENING TO AUTOMATED MESSAGES AND PRESSING NUMBERS TO DIRECT YOU TO MORE AUTOMATED MESSAGES AND THEN FINALLY, FINALLY YOU GET A HUMAN BEING ON THE LINE, BUT THAT PERSON TELLS YOU THAT HE OR SHE CAN’T HELP YOU AND YOU GET PUT ON HOLD AGAIN; IS THAT HOW YOU DESERVE TO BE TREATED?
07:44:28 SERVICE?
07:44:30 WHO WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH WITH BAD SERVICE AND RAPIDLY RISING BILLS ANTS YOU DECIDE YOU WANT TO SWITCH TO ANOTHER COMPANY, HOW MANY OF YOU HAVE FOUND THAT YOU DON’T HAVE ANOTHER CHOICE, THAT THERE IS NO OTHER CABLE PROVIDER IN YOUR AREA?
07:44:47 WELL, I CAN TELL YOU THAT RIGHT NOW COMCAST HAS ABOUT 23 MILLION CABLE SUBSCRIBERS AND ABOUT 16 MILLION INTERNET SUBSCRIBERS.
07:44:56 THEY ARE ALREADY THE LARGEST PROVIDER OF CABLE SERVICE TO AMERICANS BY A VERY LARGE MARGIN, AND IN SOME AREAS THEY HAVE A TOTAL MONOPOLY.
07:45:06 THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN IS WHAT CABLE AND INTERNET CUSTOMER SERVICE IS LIKE TODAY.
07:45:13 DO YOU THINK THAT MERGING THE SINGLE-LARGEST CABLE PROVIDER, WHICH IS ALSO THE LARGEST WIRELINE INTERNET PROVIDER, WITH ONE OF THE BIGGEST TV AND MOVIE STUDIOS IN THE COUNTRY WILL MAKE ANY OF THIS BETTER?
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New START

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The U.S. is far better off with this treaty than without it. It strengthens the security of the U.S. and our allies and promotes strategic stability between the world’s two major nuclear powers.
– Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense

The US Senate is considering ratification of the new START treaty with Russia. The deliberations, broadcast on C-Span, provide an opportunity to see Senators at their best and worst. A two-thirds majority will be needed to ratify the treaty, and the obstructionists are out in force attempting to deny the Obama administration any progress on any program, regardless of how much sense it makes. Ratification of START makes sense simply because the old treaty lapsed last December and without a treaty in effect, there is no mechanism to monitor the two countries’ progress toward the modest disarmament they’ve agreed upon. Sadly, ratification would be a concrete accomplishment of the administration. The take-no-prisoners competitive posture of the right-wing in America seeks to deny Obama any progress toward any goal. So, although a bi-partisan roll call of defense experts, military leadership, past and present Secretaries of State and Defense and countless others favor ratification, all it takes is thirty-four obstructionist Senators to draw down the curtain on any disarmament progress for the next four or five years.

Jeff Sessions of Alabama is a piece of work. C-Span, dry and formalistic though much of the content may be, provides an opportunity to see Sessions and his ilk at work ripping apart the fabric of the United States of America.

Coretta Scott King, Albert Schweitzer, and Benjamin Spock famously brought public attention to the horror of nuclear war when they founded The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE) in 1957. At that time, the US and the Soviet Union had entered an arms race with the common strategic goal of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). They were building bombs and bombers and missiles as fast as possible in order to make sure that no one on the planet would survive a nuclear war. The MADness continues to this day, albeit somewhat less dramatically. As of mid-2009 fewer than 5000 strategic atomic warheads are deployed by the combined forces of the United States and the Russian Federation (Russian MADness, US MADness). There are oodles of tactical nukes deployed of course, but these weapons are small potatoes, their yields about the same as the modest devices that ended World War II with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tactical nukes don’t count in the Strategic Arms book keeping biz.

Besides the US and Russia, at least seven other countries have nuclear arsenals, but none have tied their defense strategies to the craziness of mutually assured destruction. Here’s a link to an article in support of the START treaty by Robert Gates, former Bush and now Obama Secretary of Defense.