Free - to eat a Quarter Pounder with cheese

I love this great opinion piece by Kerry J. Byrne, a food and drink writer of the Boston Herald.

The government is not going to get a nation of anorexics, vegans, or perfectly proportioned people any time soon - because the very first attempt to regulate eating will make the American Revolution look like a shoving match.  No nation but in America can someone select what they want to eat, how much they want to eat, and at what price point they want to pay for what they eat.  We don't follow the anorexic or

I like going to b. good, which is burger joint that sells much healthier burgers and so forth.  A full meal with fries and a shake costs about $12 - and often I can afford it.  However, I also like to go to Burger King for a bacon double cheeseburger for half of that cost.  I can either have a yogurt parfait at Au Bon Pain, a yogurt shake at b. good, or ice cream at Ben & Jerry's (or a local joint).

Now, if you have $3 and you can feed yourself pretty well on that, you're lucky.  It might be true that we have healthy food deserts (but you also notice there are plenty of lottery and liquor oases), but if there is food and it sates us until the next meal, then someone's telling a big fat lie.  Moreover, if you can buy that meal off the dollar menu at Wendy's and work all 800 calories off in a day, bless you.  No one's forcing a gun to your head to do jumping jacks and mountain climbers - just move around and keep active.

How about this neat idea from a mother with three children - you can still have junk food, but you gotta work for it.  If there's a McDonald's three miles away, the Happy Meal is yours if want to walk for it.  Or if you want to go to Sonic, we take the dog too and give it a run.  I think that's a marvelous idea - work for your junk food, make it slightly more difficult to access (no knee-jerk food fascism such as bake sale bans and getting into a lathering snit over 2800 calories shakes - unless you've had major dental work and can't eat solid foods), and get some exercise in the bargain - it'll make you at least hungrier for it!

Byrne is certainly right about one thing - we aren't active enough.  I'm not and I'm free to admit it - I work 8-9 hours a day at a desk, and the last thought on my mind on the way to work or on the way home on the bus is exercise.  I could get a bicycle, but I like to ride with my huge noggin al fresco - no helmet.  When we aren't active, even if we're on a strict macrobiotic hypervegan diet, we gain weight.  The worst thing we can do is nag people to death to lose the weight, but given an appropriate, non-obnoxious incentive to do so, and people will flock to it.

Take out the fear of getting injured or being a victim to violent and non-violent crimes, and all those poor people who are overweight will be healthier.  It'll certainly knock down the Potemkin food deserts and the fun out of marching lockstep in the streets, extolling the virtues of Puritanism gone amok.

How's that MegaMillions hangover coming along?

When I bought three MegaMillions tickets before everyone and his relatives gummed up the machines on Friday, I got more and more aggravated at people - not because of the size of the jackpot, but at the cavalier attitudes of people who had never played the lottery before, thinking they were going to be the ones with the winning ticket.

Outraged Liberal brings up a great question: why are people so willing to avoid taxes, but when a lottery offers a huge jackpot, people have no qualms in paying hundreds of dollars in tickets?

Purely for the entertainment value, lotteries are far easier and far less painless way to pay taxes (which lotteries really and truly are) than writing a check to either the IRS or the Massachusetts Department of Revenue every month - especially those who pay that 5.85% optional tax.  Conversely, the lure of winning the jackpot prize is designed by the states to extract as much money from the starry-eyed hopeful as possible, while certain taxes can be avoided by not doing the prescribed activity that activates those taxes.

That's also why some people blindly overpay their taxes intentionally - to get as big a refund as possible from the government.  That parallels when people pay the lottery so much without paying attention to the odds - to win the biggest jackpot they can.   A smarter thing to do is make sure the playing field is equal.  When people pay their taxes, the goal should be to have a refund as close to zero as possible, meaning your withholdings to the government is equal to what the government is expecting from you (you've had $2,000, they calculate you owe $2,010, you overpaid by $10).  The same thing applies to lotteries: forget the jackpot and try to break even.  If you play $10, winning $10 is optimal; anything extra is just gravy.

"[R]edistributing wealth — to the wealthy"

Somewhere, critics of the electric car are not merely smiling broadly, they're laughing out loud, because they know that a sucker with too much money and guilt on their hands will front $107,000 for a new "green" toy, that later on turns out to be a huge brick.

It's circular thinking once again - take high taxes from the rich with a wink and a nod, give to the poor through entitlements, retake the entitlements from the poor through high gasoline and food prices, and return that money to the rich through guilt-soothing gimmicks such as $100K+ electric cars, affirmation of wacky utopian theories, and the simple fact that these guilt-riddled aristocrats will have no problem donating to their favorite politician's re-election campaigns, all the while bleating like goats that they're the so-called "99%."

The serfs and commoners will be left to fend for themselves - they get ground by the millstones of de facto taxation and inflation.  That is, until the serfs and commoners discover what breaks millstones are chisels, mallets, and hammers - something that was done in 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down.

The GM Edsel? Not quite, but close

Jon Keller comes out with an interesting take on why the public - save some really die-hard greenies with some money to burn - won't buy a $40,000 electric plug-in automobile.

The Volt is not the modern-day Edsel by a longshot, but even though electricity is cheap and plentiful and we can plug in any other device to recharge without a second thought, the thoughts of getting stuck in the middle of nowhere without any power - say, a busy highway - scares people.  That's what also killed the GM EV-1 - not the fact that it didn't emit noxious fumes, but the prospect of finding a plug where there wasn't one and running out of battery power.

Furthermore, where there are far more fuel-efficient vehicles out there for a fraction of the price of a Volt, it's little wonder why, even with a $7,500 energy credit, why people are hesitant to buy them.  Sure, buying gas would be expensive, but it would certainly beat having to call AAA for a charge back home.  However, those that can afford the $32,500 are likely more affluent and can afford to buy a Volt (or a Leaf or even a Honda Prius).  The Volt is a niche car, a novelty for the smug, something you show your friends in the hopes they get jealous because they're driving around in their less fancy car.

It was the same thing with calculators in the '70s - even the most basic calculator cost $100, which in today's dollars would be around $600 - but now that calculators are mass produced, that same $100 can buy a calculator with far better power and functions - I had a TI-85 that I used for fifteen years - and a basic calculator can be had for under a dollar in some places, thanks to cheaper costs in technology and the ability to mass produce.  It also explains why when in the '90s, 2GB of flash memory cost over $100; now a thumb drive with the same amount can be had for less than $10 - again, thanks to mass production.

If the car companies can mass-produce electric vehicles, you will then see the price of an electric vehicle decrease appreciably.  Then you'll have the $15,000 electric car that can charge from no battery power to 100% in 2 hours, run 250 miles on a single charge, and have the MPG equivalent of 150.  It isn't here yet, but give it time and it will be.

Why BBC and PBS are "worlds apart"

Imagine for a moment that you could have the best show on American television.  It's critically acclaimed, has a giant fan following, and the network wants to have several spinoffs.

The catch?  You have to pay $600 a year for the privilege.  If you don't pay this $600 a year, the TV Enforcement Police will come and take you to jail.

Sounds silly, right?  Not if you're in Britain.  An "As You Were Saying" column in the Saturday Boston Herald breathlessly extols the "fresh and innovative" programming of the BBC over the "stuffy, predictable" PBS.  Britons pay $230 a year for a TV license, which is a mandatory tax which is paid to the British government and is considered a criminal offense to try to evade it.

Unlike Britain, however, Americans have the luxury of not paying a TV tax to fund PBS, as PBS is already funded by taxpayers - partly by the government and partly by viewer donations through fundraising drives.  The programming might be a little less than the BBC offers, but it's still good programming nonetheless.

Furthermore, the BBC has had its share of controversies and criticisms - thanks to its left-leaning political bias.  Britons may not mind forking over $8 billion a year for improved programming, but when that money is used to promote political agendas from its directors and viewers that some Britons don't believe in, then it's no wonder Britons are not too keen on paying an excise tax just to watch TV.

If PBS were to take the licensing tax route, The Corporation for Public Television - PBS's parent - could demand that everyone pay for their network programming through a TV tax.  In some respects the programming might improve, but at the expense of having the political opinions of the CPB overshadowing the next Office or Doctor Who.   It would also result in many viewers and non-viewers going up in arms against paying for something they don't need, want, or use - which is the reason why PBS doesn't have a big a budget as BBC and must engage in such tactics as selling $20 DVD's for $240 and to have Sesame Street characters plead that they'll be joining Mr. Hooper in Heaven if PBS doesn't get funding.

The commercial and cable networks self-sustain through advertising and cable fees; they can cancel shows when they are not bringing in viewers, even if they are "critically acclaimed" and are much better than the various permutations of lowest-common-denominator TV, designed to give people their 15 minutes of fame before disposing them.  PBS does broadcast commercials to a point, but even so, some upper-class viewers would immediately object to having McDonald's ads mixed in with Dora the Explorer, or ads for various drugs sponsoring This Old House.

If the intent of the writer was to promote a TV tax to fund PBS, he might want to read up on why the American Revolution got its roots - from the tax on tea.

Making memories - the last day in Hyde Park

I was going to "plead the Fifth" of why I left Hyde Park, but now that I'm here in West Roxbury, I feel that I should tell you why I (and my mother) left.

After thirty-six years, Hyde Park just wasn't the same anymore.  When people who lived here long ago remark that it looks like a ghost town, with hardly any vibrancy and reason to linger, it's time to go.  If residents (and the police) think you're more an interloper than a resident, you know the neighborhood you grew up in isn't yours anymore.  Hyde Park is still a bedroom community, but over the years there's a stark, unspoken line divided by the overcrowded, only-line-in-town Route 32 buses and the infrequent, expensive, yet designed-for-the-suburban-resident Commuter Rail.

After two days of moving back and forth between the old and new houses (I was tired, nay, exhausted, from hauling in boxes after boxes after boxes of stuff - and in significant pain), yesterday was the final day I would be at the old house, just to clean up the last things there.  My brother came to see the house for the last time before he went back to his apartment in Roslindale. 

While my mother cleaned out the house on Summer Street, I volunteered to walk to Central Hardware in Cleary Square to get new keys for the new house.  Mainly, the walk was a way to clear my head, escape from all the stress of the move and the leave, and have a moment to myself other than constantly load and unload things out of boxes.

During my youth, I had walked to Cleary Square to get food, pizza, sundries, etc.  All the old stores had gone, replaced by tacky stores and many empty storefronts.  Even the bus stop, which for many years had conveniently been placed in front of what had been Mama Mia's and Van's, had been moved to in front of Most Precious Blood, which is now a charter school.

I got my keys, and walked back to Tedeschi's for a New York Post and some lottery tickets.  I walked down Summer Street for the final time, like I had done many times late at night coming home from the Stoughton train.  I came up the stairs for the last time as my mother finally cleaned everything up so the new tenant could move in.

After I turned in my keys and we locked the door for the last time, we visited my grandfather, and by then I knew the end was coming.  When we had our last family Thanksgiving at Summer Street, I felt no emotion other than elation.  This time, I beginning to choke up.  Not cry like a banshee, but have that hefty, lump-in-the-throat feeling with stinging in the eyes.  I quickly walked back to the car once we were done.

We got in the car, drove through the potholes of Parrott St for the last time, and then we were gone.  Only the ghosts of memories past - good and bad - remained behind.

Student loans = wage slavery

Here's a story for Hub Blog in regard to student loans:

When I began paying off my undergraduate loans in 1995 (one year after I graduated from college and about six months after I dropped out of grad school), I paid about $355 a month.

Now, $355 doesn't seem like much, but when you're earning $8-$9 in temp jobs; get laid off (and disinvited from the company Christmas Party) on a job that paid $7.50 an hour, and have to live at your parents' home for several years - meaning no starting a family, no apartment, no discretionary money, no parties, no real vacations, no transportation, no 401(k) contributions - $355 is HUGE.

Thankfully for me, I was hired at a company (where I have celebrated my 15th anniversary), and I took advantage of that. $255 of that money was in MEFA loans, split up into four coupons.  The other $100 a month was Sallie Mae.  The MEFA loans were forgiven in 2005 thanks to the bonds being paid off; and then the Sallie Mae loans were paid off in February 2008.

I wholeheartedly agree: the student loan complex all but encourages wage slavery - where every single dime someone earns is endorsed to the loan company for decades.  When a student loan payment is the same amount as a rent payment (at least in Boston), and graduates are only making enough to have pocket change as discretionary income, it's time to thoroughly investigate who's making a mint off of graduates.

Quite an expensive keg party - one that might be paid off when you're ready to retire.