Culture: March 2004 Archives

It's that time of the year again: the time for all the Randoids and Libertarians to bitch about having to pay income taxes. "Just think what I could do with this money if I got to keep it all!" Well, the first thing you'd do is pay at least twice as much as you were paying in taxes for all the services you get for free.

Even if we were magically able to maintain services without funding them, if everybody's income went up by the amount they pay in taxes, you'd have exactly the same buying power as you do now. Money is like that. It's an artificial system for moving energy around. It doesn't have intrinsic value. I wish somebody would take the Randoids and the Libertarians and teach them some basic economic principles. Like that economic systems are complex things, not the simplistic devices that idealists like to imagine them to be.

If I put Randian economics in terms of physics, every problem would involve massless, frictionless pulleys and point masses. Real physics doesn't work that way, and you can't do much of anything with a world like that. It's a handy way to learn the concepts, but eventually you have to move on to dealing with complex systems or you are not going to be designing a 100-floor skyscraper. So when I see e-mails about how awful it is that we have to pay taxes at all in a FREE COUNTRY, all I can see is that failure of public schooling. I would willingly pay twice as much in taxes if it meant a better education in economic principles.

Personally, I don't mind paying taxes. We don't pay all that much, and now that we own the house we get a nice large writeoff on the interest, which meant a substantial refund this year (yes, I know that means we lent the government money interest-free; we're still working out withholding). We do our taxes when we get the paperwork in, then if we're getting refunds we send them in right away, and if we have to pay we send them in on April 15. In either case we're done with the process in early February.

As for the money, I would happily pay more in taxes if if meant better schooling for kids, reasonable public transit options all over the place, and universal health care. Services cost money, and I know that it makes more sense for the government to act as a consumer aggregator for some services. I've also seen damned little good come out of privatizing utilities. Phone service has not gotten better and has not gotten cheaper, nor has electricity. We have to stop pretending that everything works better when it's making a profit. (I could go off on a tear about local governments that want mass transit to be self-supporting, but I will restrain myself.)

For the next two weeks, the complaints about taxes will be unending. I, for one, plan on leaving the country to get away from it all.

I've never understood Furries, but I guess this is the sort of thing they'd be into, huh?

Since I got married and started wearing a wedding ring around, I've noticed that I'm the object of a certain amount of extra flirting from the folks around me. Mostly from men; women see the ring and ask me whether my partner and I went down to City Hall. I wondered whether it was just men who think somehow married women are more attractive (as in, "well, clearly somebody thought she was good enough to marry"; like a wedding ring is a Seal of Approval or something), then I saw this:

Best Dog-Park Pickup Line Ever

I don't know whether it's good or bad that I feel so much better now that I know that married men get hit on, too.

Out of fairness, in response to my last post about shopping online, here's a list of reasons why I shop in stores. Again in no particular order.

1. I don't have to rely on some clerk's data entry skills
   Products have names, but those names are not always what they are called. Take "Rooster Sauce": its real name is Sriracha. Shopping for it online, I find it referred to as "Sriracha," "Sriracha (Rooster) sauce," and "Huy Fong Sriracha Garlic Hot Sauce" -- and that's just at the first three listings on a Google search. Let's ignore all the misspellings; just determining how the name is entered is a feat.
2. I can touch the item I am shopping for
   Touch can tell you a lot of things: quality, texture, weight. It's really valuable to be able to touch and hold things like tools or electronic gadgets before you commit to buying them.

   ...and play with the user interface
   An online review can only take you so far. Online simulators tend to show a product at its best. What you want to know is, what happens when I press this button? The best way to learn that is by playing with the item in person. Nothing online has been able to replace that experience.

   ...and try it on
   I actually do buy clothing online, but not nice things. Sizes are not regular enough to make that possible. Even with virtual dressing rooms, the clothing buying experience online is mostly for the few of us who are standard sizes and average height.

   ...and sniff it
   I don't like to buy shampoo without knowing what it will smell like. Most versions of lavender scent are too sweet for my tastes. Smell is critical for some items, so if I haven't already bought something in a store, I'm sure not going to take a risk buying it online.

   ...and read the packaging
   If I'm buying a device, I want to be able to read all the packaging. Sometimes, there's a vital piece of information that's just not listed on a web page about it.

   ...and see the real colour
   What kind of red is poppy red? I have three shirts, all listed as poppy red in a catalog, and all slightly different shades. When colour names get weirder ("acid"), it's probably not worth buying it online.

3. I don't have to know exactly what I'm looking for
   If I'm trying to buy somebody a gift, it's often more helpful for me to go to a store and browse around until something catches my eye. I probably didn't leave the house thinking, "I want to get Jenny a giant ceramic bear," but if I see a giant ceramic bear, the first thing that pops into my head will probably be, "That's perfect!" Those moments are different online.

   ...and I can look for similar items without knowing what they are
   In a store, I don't need to know that the matching creamer for the giant ceramic bear (which turns out to be a teapot) is a creamer. All I need to do is see it nearby, and add it to my basket.

4. I can bring a friend along for a second opinion
   It's hard to shop online with another person. I know this well because Noel and I buy flowers for Mother's Day online, and it's not a terribly fun experience. One person "driving" the mouse, the other person trying to point to things, two people huddled over a keyboard. Not the best shopping experience. But going out shopping for clothes with my homies is loads of fun, even if it is exhausting.
5. I can have it NOW
   A MAJOR plus to store shopping is that I don't need to wait for it to get packaged up and shipped. This weekend I bought some soda online. I'd love to be kicking back and drinking some now, but I won't get it until next week. If I'd bought it in the store, I could have started drinking it as soon as I walked out the door.
6. I can see other products I might have forgotten I need to restock
   I'm pretty bad at making shopping lists, but that's OK when I go to the store, because I'll inevitably walk by the other things I need to get and think, "Oh, yeah, we're out of pickles, too."

   ...and I can see unrelated items that may be on sale
   I don't ever put sardines on my grocery list. But if they're on sale, I buy them. Shopping online, you never get reminded to check that sort of thing -- if you're not shopping for sardines, you don't see the price of sardines.

7. I can pay with cash
   It doesn't sound like much of a benefit, but we have a shared credit card. At Christmas and birthdays, I either shop with cash in a store or just tell Noel not to look at the credit card bill until after the event. Because nothing ruins a surprise like seeing "Sheet Music Superstore" on the credit card statement.
8. It gets me out of the house/studio
   While it's great that I can shop without leaving my desk, it is also a good thing for me to get off my butt and move once in a while. Shopping gives me a reason to get up and out of the house.

I've been reading Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill and thinking about shopping, and last night I came up with this list of reasons why I usually shop online rather than in real-life stores, whether they be chain stores or locally-owned businesses:

(In no particular order)

1. They are where I am
   I don't need to get in the car, deal with traffic, and park to get to the store. I just open a browser window and I can be there. This also means I can shop in stolen bits of time, when I'm working on something else and need a quick break. There's no way I could leave in the middle of the day, go to the mall, find four shirts, and get back to work, but online? No problem.
2. I don't have to deal with salespeople
   I may be in a minority, but in my opinion, a shopping experience where you don't need to deal with salespeople is a good shopping experience indeed.

   ...who think they know what I want better than I do
   This only seems to happen with salesmen, and it really offends me. First of all, it doesn't take a whole lot of self-control to treat every customer as if they know what they're talking about even if they appear not to. This is especially true in areas where there's a lot of leeway for right or wrong, like art supplies. If I want hot press paper, I do not want a lecture about how cold press paper has a superior grain for watercolour, because I'm not buying it for watercolour.

   ...who assume I'm stupid (or just aren't listening)
   Here's a scenario: I am looking for twine for cooking. I ask a salesperson if the store sells it. I tell him I have looked in X, Y, and Z aisles, and he tells me it's in aisle X. I tell him it is not there, and he walks with me to aisle X, where he is, naturally, unable to find the twine. He then wants me to accompany him around the store to aisles Y and Z, so we can go through this same charade.

   ...who talk to my husband instead of me
   Let's just say that this offends me like nothing else and there is never an excuse for it.

   ...who just don't care
   OK, I get that it sucks to work at a discount store. I worked at one when I was in college, and yeah, it sucked. But I don't need to deal with attitude about how your job sucks when your job is waiting on me. If the job sucks, get an education and get yourself out of there.

   ...who clearly indulge too heavily in their off-hours
   We all know this guy. He's sitting there behind the counter staring at you for three, now four minutes. You have put your purchases in front of him. He is doing nothing. Is he going to start ringing things up? Is this line closed? No, he's just really stupid from the aftereffects of smoking too much dope with too little brain to spare. Look, people, if you barely function on the brain you're born with, maybe you shouldn't be wantonly destroying it in your free time.

3. I don't have to deal with other customers who have had a bad day and are taking it out on everybody around them
   If your day was so bad that the only way you can deal with it is to ram your grocery cart into somebody, then you need therapy.
4. They stock what I want to buy
   This is especially true of books. I rarely find exactly what I'm looking for at a mainstream real-life book store. Oh, I find books there, but only new releases, or cookbooks, or the occasional technical book. For almost everything else I go online if I need it reasonably fast. OK, I have some odd preferences, but when my local drugstore stopped carrying my preferred shampoo, I had to start buying that online, too.
5. It's easy to find things with text search
   Do you know where mustard is stocked in your grocery store? In mine, it's in at least three places: deli, ethnic foods, and condiments. And not the same mustard, but different ones. So if I want to compare mustards, I have to walk all over the store (literally, because the deli is on the opposite side of the store from condiments). Yes, shelf space is limited, but why spread something all over the store, making it less likely that people will be able to find it?
6. They don't actively make it harder to shop
   Speaking of finding things, stores do this thing where they make it hard to get out, so you'll spend more time there and spend more money there. Not only do I find that offensive to my intelligence, but it works against them. My local drugstore only has baskets in the front, outside of the security gates. So when I go there I never buy more than I can carry in my hands. Online, I can put as much stuff in my shopping cart as I want and not have to have known how much I wanted to buy when I opened up the browser.
7. I can shop at five stores at once, if I want to
   It's easy to do price comparisons (and service comparisions) online. I don't always buy the cheapest item -- sometimes it makes more sense to buy it for a bit more from a place that has other things I need and offers free shipping for orders over a certain price. I just don't have the time to make detailed price comparisons for shampoo in real-life stores.
8. Somebody else shleps it all home for me
   I'm not totally lazy, but mall shopping would be a lot easier if, when you were done at a particular store, you could put your bags somewhere safe where you could pick them up right before you leave, instead of carrying them around with you. Especially if you've been shopping at places like Crate and Barrel, or for breakable things. This is the sort of stuff I find it easier to order online.
9. The store is open 24/7
   I'd love to shop at local businesses. But they all seem to be open only between 10am and 6pm. Those hours are prime time for me, and while I could go on Saturday, those hours are also prime time for everybody else, and Saturday is also their only possible day for shopping at that store. See comments above about other customers.

   ...and the shopping experience is the same
   In real-life 24/7 stores, after 11pm the aisles are crowded with things being stocked. Which is an inconvenience you put up with, for the privilege of shopping outside of "normal" hours.

If Bush's disgusting display of tastelessness in using images of the collapsing towers was not enough, now we find out that Donald Rumsfeld is a grave robber:

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Friday night that Rumsfeld has a shard of metal from the jetliner that struck the Pentagon on a table in his office and shows it to people as a reminder of the tragedy Pentagon workers shared on Sept. 11, 2001.

"He doesn't consider it his own," Di Rita said, adding the piece is on display for the Pentagon. "We are mindful of the fact that if somebody has an evidentiary requirement to have this shard of metal, we will provide it to them."

How about being mindful of the fact that people died there, and it's in incredibly poor taste to take souvenirs from the site? I somehow manage to remember the events regularly enough that I have to make an effort not to remember, all without a physical reminder, so you'd think that the guy whose job it is to remember it would be able to do so.

In other campaign news, apparently Bush doesn't believe that people have the right to free speech in his presence. At last noting, they were still struggling to come up with a charge against the snowplow driver who exercised his First Amendment rights:

Gerstenslager is suspended with pay while the department investigates, Hummer said. She said she could not identify potential violations or penalties until the investigation is complete.

I wonder how many Americans were required to memorize the Bill of Rights in grammar school. Maybe not enough.

It seems that in the recent election, Orange County poll workers gave 7,000 people bad ballots.

In 21 precincts where the problem was most acute, there were more ballots cast than registered voters.

Wide margins in most races seem likely to spare the county the need for a costly revote. But the problems, which county officials have blamed on insufficient training for poll workers, are a strong indication of the pitfalls facing officials as they try to bring new election technology online statewide.

The problem is not insufficient training. Every time they say that I think of my one time as a poll worker, when it took all of five minutes for me to learn how to hand out ballots and get it right, but everybody else needed to have it repeated a hundred times. The problem is that most people are just too stupid to work at the polls without constant supervision.

I've been thinking about this this semester, taking three art classes as I am. It seems to me that the way art classes should work is that the teacher expains how to do something, shows you how to do it, and you try it out yourself. But the way it really work is that the teacher explains how to do something, five people ask questions he obviously just answered ("You pour the plaster into the water" "Do you put the plaster in the bucket first?" "No, you put the water in first" "When does the water go in?" "The water goes in first" and so on forever), then when everybody sits down to do the work, they can't remember half of it and they change things around without knowing what they're doing, then they wonder why it didn't come out right.

Some of art is skill, learned with time, but some of it is just paying attention when the teacher explains something. We had two weeks in ceramics to make plaster molds for the latest project. In that time I made three (actually four, but one was so messed up that I re-made it), and most of my classmates haven't finished their first mold yet. And they need to ask every few minutes how I did X, Y, or Z because they are rightly embarrassed about asking the teacher YET AGAIN.

So more training for poll workers is not going to help.

If you're at work, don't click on this link. Unless you work somewhere that's really open-minded about singing carrots.

And from the same people, a whole singing vegetable patch.

I really don't want to get in the habit of commenting on the election, but this makes me sick. It was bad enough that right after the attacks, corporations were using the footage to advertise themselves (in the name of condolences; how disgusting). But for the president to use the tragedy as a campaign issue? Ew.

"September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It's a defining event for the future of our country," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser, told "The Early Show" on CBS on Thursday. "Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11 fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it's vital that the next president recognize that."

I think we can all agree that there are few adults in this country who do not recognize the significance of September 11 only two and a half years after it happened. Especially a candidate who served in a combat zone in Viet Nam.

Someday, the civil rights movement will look back on Gavin Newsom as a hero. His one small action, giving equal rights to all citizens, has started a landslide. Seeing people say this sort of thing:

In Washington, D.C., lawmakers debated same-sex marriages, with Republican senators such as Majority Leader Bill Frist asking Congress to embrace a constitutional amendment banning them.

means that the movement must be gaining ground. There would not be such panic if it were not a viable threat.