6

May 9, 2006

I suspected as much! What the lady at Home Depot called the “sprinkler repair cult” is an emerging guild seeking privileges and regulations from the government. That means a supply restriction, high prices, or another do-it-yourself project. But there is a way around it.

I first began to smell a rat when the automatic irrigation system on my front yard needed work but I had unusual struggles in trying to find a repair guy.

7

April 17, 2003

Ah, Spring, the time when the landscape appears as if it were painted by a great artist, when the birds make music of symphonic quality, and when the very air we breath feels air conditioned. That last point is particularly important, because it is only true so long as we are outside.

If we are inside, it is a different matter altogether.

8

September 14, 2009

Driving in to work today, I saw garbage bins overflowing and city dumpsters spilling out with trash. It stinks. It’s disgusting. It’s uncivilized. It’s probably dangerous to some extent.

It’s a holiday, so of course the government workers charged with picking up this nasty refuse can’t work, even though construction workers in private firms are busy bees taking advantage of the extra time.

9

January 19, 2005

A death in the family is always hard, but three in three weeks is especially difficult for children, even though it only involved pets.

First it was the green tree frog discovered at the local car repair shop and taken home to be cared for. “Sticky” lived two months, long enough for the kids to become very attached. One day we found him dead in his cage.

10

August 12, 2008

You are uptown in a shopping district of a small community, and you pass by the meat shop, the wine shop, the coffee shop, two churches side by side, a coin shop, an antique store … and hold it right there.

A coin shop? This is irresistible, because, as implausible as this may sound, all political truth can be found in a coin shop. And not just political truth: you find in here the story of the whole of modern life on exhibit, and learn more from looking than you find in a multivolume history.

11

May 08, 2008

Let’s pull this sentence out of the civic pieties of our time and see what’s wrong with it: “We should all volunteer our time in charitable causes and give back to the community in a labor of love.”

We can’t argue with the instruction here, or the sentiment behind it. There is nothing wrong with giving and sacrifice. My argument is with the choice of language. It contains a word and three phrases the common usage of which can be highly misleading.

Voluntary

12

April 20, 2010

I’m on a Sunday walk and a nice boy tries to sell me lemonade. A budding entrepreneur! Still, I decline. So he strengthens his pitch:

“I’m donating the profits to stop child abuse.”

Still I decline, and more easily now that he has linked his praiseworthy commercial venture with a big social pathology that a 12-year-old boy can’t possibly solve — unless he is saving money to run away from home?

13

September 15, 2008

The events on Wall Street, the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the selling off of Merrill Lynch are magnificent and inspiring events. What we see here are examples of sweeping and fundamental change taking place, a huge upheaval that affects the whole of society, and toward the better, since what we have going on here is a massive reallocation of resources away from failing uses toward more productive uses.

14

June 27, 2008

The following attempts to explain the most important idea in the history of social analysis. The notion (actually, it’s a description of reality that is all around us but rarely noticed) has been around for centuries. It was first observed by ancients. It was first described with rigor by late-medieval monks working in Spain. It was given scientific precision in the classical period. It is the basis of advances in social theory in the 20th century.

15

July 30, 2007

Wired Magazine this month offers a few pointers on how to disguise on your resume the fact that you have been fired. The main point is to come up with a negotiated settlement that has you resigning from your job. Many employers will go along with these because they fear litigation. There will be no “wrongful termination” lawsuits if you are on record as having left voluntarily.