Coffee heat rising

Why you should become a teacher

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Here’s something that just came in from a student I taught a couple of years ago when I was doing a little “noonlighting” at the Great Desert University’s West campus—thought you might all get a smile from it.

I used to say that journalism is more immediately rewarding than teaching because you very quickly have something in your hand about which you can say “I did that!” It can take many years to see what effect, if any, you might have had on a student.

The project the student describes is a proposal. Classmates were asked to write a real-world proposal for a real, doable project, addressed to a living human being or group (not their instructor!) in a position to make it happen, and to argue convincingly why and how it can be done.

Every now and then we make a small difference in the world, eh?

—–Original Message—–
From: Stephanie Estudiante [mailto:hermail@gdu.edu]
Sent: Sun 9/20/2009 8:32 PM
To: Funny about Money
Subject: Proposal

Professor—

I was in your ENG301 class a few semesters ago. I thoroughly enjoyed your class and still work constantly to hone my writing skills. Just a couple of days ago I received a letter that the proposal we wrote (as a project in your class) was a success, and Discount Tire Co. made a very nice donation to the Foundation for Blind Children. While it certainly took some time to move through the system, I was very pleased with the result. I felt especially happy for the Foundation, as I know its needs are great. But I was also quite proud that my work produced a really worthwhile result. So, if ever a student questions whether the skills being taught in your class will be useful in the real world—I would say resoundingly—YES. I just wanted to let you know.

Thanks for a great class!

Stephanie Estudiante

The Foundation for Blind Children’s home page is here.

Would you like to congratulate Discount Tire for this excellent moment of corporate philanthropy? Write to them here:

Discount Tire
Corporate Headquarters
20225 N Scottsdale Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ 85255-6456

“New” car heaves into view

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Honda_Civic_SiM’hijito has been driving a decrepit wreck ever since some teenaged brat crashed into his parked Camry in San Francisco, totaling that beautiful car and two other vehicles. The amount her insurance company paid him came nowhere near enough to buy a comparable car, and so he ended up replacing it with a sporty-looking but aged four-banger convertible with a leaky roof and shredding plastic seat covers.

Although the car runs, we suspect that at any time it’s going to fall apart like the Minister’s One-Hoss Shay. Wind whistles in through the splits and cracks in the roof and around  nonfunctioning side windows, which is just as well, because the natural blow-dryer effect helps to dry out the rainwater that seeps in with every light sprinkle.

Recently one of his dad’s partners surfaced with a 2002 Honda Civic that he’d like to unload. It belonged to the man’s son, who has gone off to fight in the Middle East. Despite a a fender-bender in its past, it appears to be in good condition, and the guy is willing to sell it for $5,000. With only 64,000 miles on the odometer, that’s a bargain: the Kelly Blue Book private seller price is over $8,200. And it gets a cheering 30 miles per gallon!

In his heart of hearts, M’hijito craves a Toyota pick-up, the better to fulfill the labor-intensive role of the Happy Homeowner. These babies, however, are pretty pricey even in older models. And they are so beloved by their owners that a decent used Tacoma rarely comes on the market.

The little Civic is such a bargain and such an improvement on the clunk he’s driving around, he’s about decided to buy it. It seems like a smart move. He can always borrow my Sienna when he wants to tote things around or if he wants to go on a road trip or camping expedition. I’d love to drive a 30 m.p.g vehicle for a few days!

😉

Images:
Honda Civic, Public Domain, Wikipedia Commons
Toyota Tacoma, Public Domain, Wikipedia Commons

Tasty fig morsels

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At Costco last weekend, M’hijito and I came across some lovely ripe figs, packaged (as usual) in lifetime-supply quantities. He suggested we split a flat of the things. And then he described this wonderful little treat:

You need

Ripe whole figs
As many slices of bacon as figs
Honey
Feta or other goat cheese

Wrap each fig with a slice of bacon. Fry gently until the bacon is cooked to your taste. Arrange on a plate and drizzle with honey. Garnish with goat cheese.

I tried this for an after-church brunch Sunday morning. Awe-inspiringly delicious!

Because I had no toothpicks and the little metal skewers in the drawer seemed likely to scratch the pan’s nonstick surface, I used cotton string to tie the bacon onto the figs. If you use toothpicks, remember to remove them before serving, so no one gets poked!

Living within your means is good for the economy

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This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine ran a letter to the editor by Economics Professor John Lunn and Accountancy Assistant Professor Martha LaBarge, both of Hope College, Michigan. The letter comments on Paul Krugman’s article in the September 6, 2009 edition, “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?”

In their letter, they note that historically, some “bubbles” never led to recessions, and they add this interesting remark:

The market system works well most of the time. Perhaps a key factor affecting whether a shock to the system or even “irrational exuberance” leads to a serious recession is the level of buffer stocks held by households and firms. When savings exist and debt levels are not inordinately high, the economy adjusts to a shock. But when debt levels are high and savings low, the bursting of bubbles in houses and equities can turn into a severe recession. (My emphasis)

How much more dead on target can you get?

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to say for lo! these many months: living within your means, refraining from purchasing objects and services that you don’t really need, and staying out of debt not only do not harm the economy, as steady long-term habits they actually benefit the economy.

A major contributing factor to the late (we hope), great deprecession was that far too many Americans took on far more debt than they could repay. Innocent of the potential consequences of the many questionable loans that were offered, people were led to pay more than properties were worth through loans whose ballooning payments they couldn’t hope to cover even if they had not lost their jobs. Not only that, but they were up to their schnozzes in credit-card debt and car loans.

Had the average man and woman on the street taken a more realistic view of their lifestyles, had they been spending no more than they earned, had they restricted borrowing to instruments whose terms and balances they could reasonably handle and to lenders that do not charge usurious rates, had they been setting aside adequate funds in savings, even the run-up and collapse in housing prices might not have pushed the economy into a recession as profound as the one we’ve been experiencing.

This brings me back to my basic thesis: Frugal living is not just the responsible thing to do. Frugal living is patriotic.

Image: Public Domain. Wikipedia Commons.

You need to know about this one: Corporation harasses blogger

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An outfit called MonaVie, which markets exotic berry juice purported to fight aging, peel off pounds, and do wondrous unspecified things for your health, is suing Lazy Man and Money for daring to write a review questioning its product and its sales strategy. The claim the company makes is that merely typing the MonaVie company name and putting it in the post tags infringes MonaVie’s trademark.

This is clear and present intimidation and a blatant attempt on the part of a corporation, MonaVie, to harass an independent writer for exercising rights of free speech guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and, in the bargain, to cast a chill on every American’s right to comment honestly and frankly on products and on the marketing strategies used to promote them. It is not, by the way, against the law to mention a product’s name in a published work, and a strong argument can be made that placing a product name in a post’s metadata in no way infringes upon the trademark. In fact, the argument that it does so is laughable—we can be sure the first judge who sees this action will laugh it right out of court.

Here’s what we need to do, my friends, to protest this outrageous infringement on our rights as U.S. citizens and as writers.

First, please go here:

Lazy Man and Money, MonaVie Scam

then here:

Lazy Man: MonaVie Is Trying to Sue Me

and here:

Lazy Man: MonaVie Sends a Second Cease-and-Desist Order

and here:

Lazy Man: MonaVie Employee Calls Me an “Annoying Douche”

And finally, read this:

Consumerist: MonaVie Hits Blogger over Trademarks in Metadata

Then, assuming you have a blog or website, as Brip-Blap and The Consumerist suggest, fearlessly link to all of these articles. Let them sue us one and all!

Never fear: it is not illegal to utter a brand name. MonaVie is not G-d, and even if it were, it’s still not illegal to utter the word “God.” At least, not in America. If you’re concerned that the company’s absurd claim about metadata might, by some wild stretch of the imagination, have validity, simply refrain from using the name in your title, in your post tags, and in your SEO plug-in.

Feel free to copy and paste this entire post to your site. Funny about Money hereby relinquishes all copyright to this post (“You need to know about this one: Corporation harasses blogger”) and releases it to the public domain. Splog away, everyone!

{gasp!} Property tax bill

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The county finally got around to sending this year’s property tax bill, only a month or so late. They’re so close on the deadline that I’ll have to transfer the money out of savings instantly and ship off a check this weekend; otherwise I’ll be delinquent.

The tab: $2,058.86. Now…yes, I do realize that compared to property taxes in certain Midwestern and Eastern Seaboard states, this is as nothing. (But let’s remember: the educational system and other accouterments of a civil society are also as nothing here.) Compared to last year’s tab, it’s exactly $20 less.

That’s surprising. SDXB’s tax bill, which is rock bottom because his part of Sun City was never gerrymandered into a school district, rose by fifty bucks this year.

Everyone’s bill was jacked up, despite the large cut in property valuation occasioned by the busted real estate bubble, because our cash-strapped “no tax-and-spend” state legislators revived a defunct state property tax. So even though our valuations are in the sub-basement, where they belong, our taxes are just as high as they were at the height of the bubble.

We won’t comment on what they buy. Oh, what the heck…yes, we will: vast layoffs of state workers, grade school classes with 50 kids in them, reduced forces of emergency workers, closed museums, reduced library hours…all manifestations of a Killed Beast.

I’m grateful to get a bill that’s no higher than last year’s. Next year, it should drop considerably, because of various political promises to undo this, that, and the other device to raise funds. But by then, property values will have risen closer to normal, providing another reason to raise the tax bill.

Don’t mind paying taxes if we get some value received…but just now, that doesn’t seem to be happening. My two thousand bucks could keep a state worker on the payroll a good month (maybe more). Taken together, everyone on this block could keep her working a year or 18 months. So…let’s see that happen, boys!