The Crime Wave of the 1970s

Crime rates today are at an all-time low, but are edging up.  Nothing like the crime rates back in the 1970s, though!

When I took Criminal Law from Professor Starrs, he explained how crimes are prosecuted and why many crimes go unsolved and unpunished.  To begin with, we have to define what a crime is, by passing laws against certain acts.  Marijuana was once illegal in many States (and still is, at the Federal level) as was alcohol.  "Social" crimes like adultery, miscegenation, sodomy, gambling, and the like were once on the books, but have since been deemed unconstitutional or repealed.  So the first step is to determine what crime is.  And you'd be surprised as to what is and isn't a crime.

Next, we have to detect it.  If someone is victimized (burglary, robbery, assault, etc.) then they may report the crime.  But of course, many crimes go unreported, for many reasons.  If a crime it not reported or there is no immediate victim, police have to detect it, either by interrupting the crime in progress, or determining that a crime has occurred.  While we have so many Constitutional protections in our home, most of them don't apply once you are in your car.  Fail to signal a lane change, and you can get pulled over, at which point an officer can "detect" the presence of a secondary crime. So many criminal cases begin with a traffic stop.

But the police officer has discretion on who and when to charge - and this is where it gets tricky and allegations of discrimination kick in.  If you are a small-town cop and pull over the Mayor's son - who is drunk - you might decide to escort him home, rather than piss-off the guy who signs your paychecks. On the other hand, a poor kid from the other side of the tracks is likely to spend a night in jail.  Yea, the system is unfair.

It is a human thing.  And I've seen firsthand, how some lesser cops will make up their mind early-on as to who is guilty, if anybody.  Before he gets out of his car, the officer might have decided how things are going down - and arrest the victim, not the perpetrator, if anyone is arrested at all.  And like a dog with a bone, once they have decided, they are reluctant to give up on that notion.

Presuming what occurred is defined as a crime by the law, and presuming the police detect the crime, and presuming the perpetrator can be ascertained, and presuming the police decide to arrest the perpetrator, we are still far from over.

The prosecutor may decide ("prosecutorial discretion" or Nul Pros) not to bring charges, either because they are trivial (e.g., trumped-up "resisting arrest" charges) or because there is insufficient evidence to win at trial.  Prosecutors, like the police, have finite resources to bring to bear, and no prosecutor is going to waste much time on your stolen bicycle, particularly if it doesn't look like an easily winnable case.  The law of scarcity kicks in.

Assuming you've gotten by all those hurdles, it may turn out the perpetrator will work out a plea bargain and the perp will avoid jail time as a first offender or the like.  They might even have their record wiped clean.  Again, limited prosecutorial resources, so they punt when they can, and move on to the next case.

But let's assume that even that hurdle has been overcome and it actually goes to trial.  It may be months or even years before it is resolved.  And in many criminal cases, less than half of defendants are found guilty by a jury.  Of those found guilty, a certain percentage may have their conviction overturned on appeal.

So the odds of going to jail are somewhat long, and many criminals realize this. It ain't like Blue Bloods or Law and Order, where criminals are caught, tried, and convicted within an hour-long show. People like to believe that, and the "system" would like you to believe that - fear of being prosecuted is the only thing keeping many people on the straight and narrow.

As I noted before, my friends at the IRS explained that their two greatest weapons were withholding and the inordinate fear people have of the agency.  Without the former, no one would be able to pay their taxes come April 15th.  Without the latter, well, people would realize how unlikely it is to be audited and how unlikely it is you will end up owing more taxes (unless you are an outright tax cheat!).  Fear keeps us ordinary citizens in line.

The funny thing about these probabilities, though, is they don't stack.  If you commit crimes over and over again, the odds of getting caught go up with each crime.  Eventually, if you crime long enough, you will be caught. If you are a habitual speeder, you may not get caught every time, but eventually, you will blow through that speed trap and get busted.  Ask me how I know.  I drive the speed limit these days.  Then again, it ain't 55 MPH anymore.

That's the thing about criminals, though.  A young man may appear before a Judge and claim to be a first-time offender, but in reality, he is a first-time caught offender.  He may have committed numerous crimes, but was only caught for one.  People start to lose patience for criminals, particularly habitual criminals.

Historically, crime rates in the USA have decreased since the 1700's.  It sounds silly to go back that far, but you have to realize how lawless the United States was back in the "Frontier" days.  We romanticize the cowboy era where shootouts took place at the local saloon.  We even do re-enactments of these crimes for our amusement.   But murder is murder and it is never pretty.  We romanticize the shootout at the OK Corral, but not the slaughter of Sharon Tate and her friends by the Manson "family."  Give it time, it will be an attraction at Disney World, just like "Pirates of the Caribbean" - a ride that makes a joke of rape, robbery, and murder.

We took a trip down the Natchez Trace, a walking path that is now a parkway.  Back in the frontier days, traders would built rafts and float goods down the Mississippi to sell in New Orleans - and then sell the wood from their rafts.  Loaded up with their entire income for the year, they would walk back North along the Natchez Trace.  Robbers would await them, of course, and murder them and take their money - disposing of the corpse in whatever way they could.  There was not much of a police force back then, so such crimes were rarely detected or prosecuted.

Crime dropped off, year by year, decade by decade, century by century, as America became more "civilized" and police forces more organized.  Crime reached a nadir in the late 1950s and then inexplicably rose - nearly doubling - from the 1970s through the 1990s and then inexplicably dropping off again.  There has been a slight rise since the pandemic, but nothing like the old days. This hasn't stopped Fox News from sensationalizing crimes and claiming there is an epidemic of crime.

Like I said, fear of prosecution keeps a lot of citizens in line.  Remove that fear, and many people will commit crimes.  In the 1970's, it wasn't unusual to see cars stripped down to the chassis, sitting on their frames, on city streets of New York.  I recall driving under the UN building in the early 1980's and seeing a late model Ford LTD wagon, on its roof in the median. The thieves had no jack, I guess, and found it easier to just roll over the car to remove the wheels.

"Broken Window Policing" has its roots from back then. The city, on the brink of bankruptcy, had few resources to combat crime or tow away stolen and stripped cars.  So people got the idea you could get away with this - ordinary people.  I recall an article from New York magazine of that era, where they left a used car in a fairly middle-class neighborhood and planted a hidden camera to see what happened. It was stripped, of course, and what was surprising was that the criminals who looted the car were not gang-bangers from Harlem but ordinary folks from the neighborhood. One photo caught a businessman in a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase in one hand, and the rear seat cushion of the car in question, in the other.  Hey, everyone else is getting something out of this, why not me?

Some argue that the cumulative effects of tetra-ethyl lead in gasoline lead to the crime wave. Others, the burgeoning drug epidemic, particularly the crack epidemic, of the era.  Still others claim it was lax enforcement, over-burdened police and prosecutors and "soft on crime" judges.  New laws were passed, such as the "three strikes and you're out" law - which allowed prosecutors to get long sentences for habitual criminals.

And crime dropped.  Some say it was get-tough-on-crime laws that lead to the decrease in crime rates.  Others point to demographics - the aging of America.  Still others to the decrease in lead exposure, or decreased drug use among the young.  Frankly, I think it is a combination of all of these, to some extent.  But the bottom line is, a criminal in jail isn't committing crimes.  And if you lock up a young criminal until he is an old man, he isn't likely to commit crimes as an oldster.

Some have argued the "three strikes" laws are unfair, and some States have repealed them. Opponents argue that some poor slob who "just stole a loaf of bread to feed his family!" is unjustly incarcerated for decades.  But if you scratch the surface of these stories, the "loaf of bread" was a hijacked bread truck, and the perpetrator, while having a number of children by different women, hasn't visited any of them or provided as much as a slice of bread to them, either.  And bear in mind, that if he was convicted of three crimes, odds are, he is responsible for a dozen or more - perhaps dozens.  I don't lose any sleep over the three strikes law, mostly because I don't commit crimes - certainly not three felonies!

In some urban areas, certain types of crime have skyrocketed. In LA and San Francisco, people leave the trunks or tailgates of their cars open to deter smash-and-grab thieves, who will do hundreds of dollars of damage to a car, to steal tens of dollars of goods stored in the trunk.  The Police, hounded on all sides for various high-profile cases of abuse, are "quiet quitting" and doing the minimum to investigate and prosecute "mere property crimes" which are inevitably blamed on the victim (for having the audacity to have a job and try to own things).  Ditto for "porch pirates" who are rarely caught or prosecuted, even when caught on a doorbell camera.

In New York and some other cities, it is the "knockout game" which, unlike smash-and-grab crimes on the West Coast, provides no profit to the perpetrator.  Kids in gangs punch people on the back of the head (or the front) trying to "knock them out" which they often do, leading to head injuries and even death, as the victim hits the pavement.  Again, it seems people are getting away with this and thus it proliferates.  Steve Buscemi is the latest victim of this trend - a crime with no rhyme or reason.

It should be noted that many of these "knock-out" crimes are racially motivated - aimed against Asians, often perpetrated by crazy homeless people.  Homelessness, which is a drug and mental health problem - and not an economic one - is another reason for the uptick in crime in recent years.

While these crimes are horrific and concerning (and garnering a lot of press) they do no reflect an alarming increase in the crime rate as touted by the right-wing press.  Nevertheless, they should be vigorously prosecuted.  I believe that some police forces, feeling embattled by the "defund the police" (a nonsense slogan if there ever was one) movement, are taking hands-off approach to a lot of minor (and major) crimes as a means of rallying support from voters - who will vote for "get tough on crime" politicians as a result.  If so, this is a particularly evil thing to do.

The recent, albeit mild (compared to the past) rise in crime can't be attributed to lead in gasoline as we took that out in the early 1970s.  Demographics are not in play, either, as the nation has aged further and the younger generation is smaller than in the past.  It would seem that lack of enforcement and the "let everyone out of jail" movement may be to blame, instead.

Some on the left like to argue that crime is caused by economic conditions - that poverty breeds crime and people from disadvantaged backgrounds "can't help it" and should be treated leniently as a result.  The problem with this argument is that it is a slap in the face to those from the same or similar backgrounds, who don't commit crimes and work hard (and often suffer from the acts of criminals).  The young man accused of assault and battery is painted as the victim of a difficult childhood - and should be excused for his actions.  But what of his brother who experienced the same privation and yet declined the life of criminality and violence?  How is that fair to him?

The reality of crime is that the victims of crime are often from the same social class and neighborhood as the criminal.  Whites fear black-on-white crime, but the reality is, blacks victimize more blacks than anyone else.  I suspect the same is true for whites - particularly with financial crimes.  It is like violence against Muslims.  As a Muslim, you are far more likely to be killed by a fellow Muslim (from a different sect, e.g., Sunni versus Shi'ite) than by a US-made reaper drone.

All that being said, it is an election year, and I recently received a "survey" online asking me about my opinions about various local and national politicians as well as issues.  One of them was about "getting tough on crime" versus "addressing the root causes of crime" - you could see where they were going with this.

In other words, they've turned this into a political football.  Republicans welcome an increase in crime as a means of getting elected.  The "tough on crime" stance is what got both Nixon and Reagan into office (both of whom today would be called "RINOs" by the Maga-set).  It is a formula that works.  Like I said, it seems the police are complicit in this, particularly in larger cities, by taking a more laid-back approach.  But some prosecutors are making things a lot worse by trying out crackpot theories which result in revolving-door justice.  Criminals are released without bail (or much reduced bail) on the grounds it is more "fair" to the poor.  And maybe that is true, but it also means that a criminal need only plead poverty to be let out.  Time to put those crackpot theories to rest - the result in more crime.

And they lose elections as well.

College Bankruptcies - the Enrollment Cliff

Demographics are only part of the college bankruptcy crises.

More than a decade ago, I opined that the next wave of bankruptcies would be colleges and universities.  At the time, we were going through the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler's second bankruptcy as well.  The "Big-3" automakers had a storied history of offering the wrong products at the wrong time (big gas-guzzling cars and SUVs of low quality) as well as blowing billions on pie-in-the-sky ideas.

GM, for example, was reported to have spent as much on Saturn than they would have just buying a controlling interest in Toyota.  GM spent billions in a deal to acquire Fiat, then spent an equal amount to get out of the deal - money that Fiat used to buy GM's competition, Chrysler.

In the 1970s, the "big-3" couldn't compete with the Japanese, so they offered such "innovations" as opera windows, landau bars, and vinyl roofs, hoping that a plethora of tchotchke would bondo-over shoddy build quality and decades-old engineering.  It didn't work.   The bonus was, of course, they were horrifically expensive as well.

Today, the "pimp barges" of that era are just starting to become collectible in spite of themselves.  Those cars are sort of along the lines of the Edsel - not necessarily desirable, but more of "can you believe they built this?"

College educations were falling along similar lines, starting in the 1990s and accelerating into the 2000s.  I have no sympathy for anyone "struggling" with student loan debt if they took it out in the last decade or so.  The media has been rife since the early 2000's, with articles about how worthless some college degrees are and how overpriced they are - and how student loan debt is like a life-ring made of lead.  Young people today have no excuse for not knowing.

Like the 1976 Monte Carlo, a liberal arts education today looks attractive from a certain angle and distance, but up close, the cracks appear in the facade.  Kids are majoring in useless majors, such as "gender studies" or "African-American studies" or the like - toxic degrees in many cases that are best left off your resume, as they mark you as a potential troublemaker, not a productive employee.  They also show a lack of sound judgement.

And before you flame me, I will admit that there are one or two jobs out there for someone with those "credentials" - a company might want a "diversity training" officer with such a background.  But such jobs are few and far between and like a "communications" degree, the colleges are cranking out more graduates in one year than there are jobs in the industry overall.  No, you are not going to be the next Dan Rather by going to Newhouse School.

And to boost corporate profits, many companies are laying off their "diversity training" officers and eliminating other touchy-feely job titles, which were good for corporate PR, but not so much for the almighty share price.

Consider my hippie brother (update: no longer stinking!) who has a PhD in puppetry and miraculously .found the one job on the planet that requires that credential.  We are all happy for him that at age 50 he found this job.  Now, if he can just keep working until age 80, he can pay off those student loans.  I kid, but the thrust is true - there are jobs out there for some more obscure degrees, but there ain't many of 'em - and a ton of applicants.

It reminds me of my friend who was a bassoonist for the late Syracuse Symphony (which folded when they could not pay union wages and could not put butts in the seats in the audience or find corporate sponsors willing to throw money at it).  He told me they had an opening for a principle violinist for the orchestra.  They received thousands of resumes, of which hundreds were eminently qualified and of which they selected dozens of finalists.  One lucky person won the job, but even with union wages, it was not a great living.  At least back then, student loans were not a thing.  Today they are.

Time was, a liberal arts degree - or any degree - got you a job.  Back in the post-war era, you could graduate from college and get a salary job and "work your way up" from the mailroom to the executive suite.  You could succeed in business without really trying - or at least that was how it appeared.  And yes, companies had a lot of "dead weight" and indeed, they treated employees better, in some regards, and invested more in their human capital.

I went to school at General Motors Institute, a college started by the then-largest automaker in the world as a feeder for their engineering talent requirements.  Although many if not most graduates (or dropouts, like me) ended up working somewhere else, it was said that GM still benefited from increasing the pool of Engineers as a result.  They felt they were doing a public good.  Those days are over, although the school still exists (as Kettering Institute) and co-op programs exist at other colleges and universities as well.  I highly recommend checking them out, if you feel you can't "afford" college and also want some real-life work experience.

On the other hand, not many places are offering co-op programs for English Lit majors.  And this is a general trend.   College is so expensive today that students are forced to make hard choices.  Sure, there are always the rich kids who can afford to party for four years (and their parents gladly pay, to get them out of the house).  But the near-wealthy and middle-class can't afford to do that.  And I've seen middle-class kids try to emulate the lifestyle of their trust-fund frat brothers through the use of student loans.  It does not end well.  Bad grades and a useless degree - and a lifetime of crippling debt - are not a fair exchange for four years of binge-drinking.

Three small liberal arts colleges I am familiar with have gone bankrupt - with only one being saved so far. My sister's Alma Mater, Sweetbriar, went bust, but was saved at the last minute through donations from wealthy alumni.  The school had the money, but it was tied up in an endowment that limited the school to an all-girls college.  Fortunately, a judge threw that limitation out, and with alumni donations, they are back in business - for now.

Cazenovia College - in my old hometown - went bust when they borrowed millions of dollars to install a new equestrian center and other improvements.  They apparently didn't do the math on how to pay back that money.  It is akin to how many "brick and mortar" stores went belly-up in the last few years.  Pundits blamed the problem on Amazon, but the reality was these companies were often taken private, saddled with staggering debt, and then unable to pay it back.  Such was the case with Caz College.

Our lake house was in Aurora, New York - the one North of Ithaca, not near Buffalo.  It was a funky place, home to Makenzie-Childs pottery.  The founders, Richard and Victoria (or as we called them, "Dick & Vic") were our next door neighbors.  The town was host to Wells college, named after and founded by, one of the founders of Wells Fargo as a "seminary" school for his daughter to attend.  The town was also home to a motley collection of old hippies and colorful characters.

It was more than a decade ago when we lived there, but the school was struggling even then.  They went co-ed to try to attract more students and tied-in with Ithaca College and Cornell to allow students to attend classes there.  One wealthy Alumni, Pleasant Rowland (who sold her American Doll company to Mattel for nearly a billion dollars) pumped money into the school, keeping it afloat and paying to renovate school buildings, including the old hotel and restaurant.

As her reward, the locals hung her in effigy, claiming that making the hotel ADA compliant was "attracting too much tourism" and "ruining" the local vibe.  So Pleasant took her marbles and went home - and donated hundreds of millions to other places where people weren't so stupidly obstinate.

Wells just announced they are closing for good.  Maybe it would have closed anyway, with or without Ms. Rowland's millions.  On the other hand, pissing off your number one alumni surely was a stupid move.  What will happen to the school is anyone's guess.  No doubt the mansions along the lake (many used as school buildings) will become vacation homes for those awful "tourists" that the "locals" were trying to keep out.  Time will tell.

The big problem for the school was that they were offering liberal arts degrees, and as a small college, they had very high tuition costs.  In today's dog-eat-dog world, student-consumers are looking for bang-for-the-buck and a "meh" degree from an unknown institution isn't very valuable anymore.  And whether you like it or not, everything has a value, even (and especially) college degrees. So just get over that and stuff that "education for education's sake" nonsense in the toilet.  Ordinary people can't afford that. And no, neither can our government.

When you are in a job interview and the first thing you have to do is explain what your Alma Mater was all about, you are at a distinct disadvantage.  When I interviewed at Carrier and the USPTO, they understood what GMI was all about.  But at the law firm, it was "what the hell is that?"  Meanwhile, at many an interview, they would see "Syracuse University" on my resume and smile and say, "Let's go Orange!" and then want to spend the rest of the interview talking basketball and Coach Jim Boeheim - two topics I know little about and care less.

Sad but true - your college education will be judged by how notable your school's sports team was, regardless of your major.  Employers know "brand name" schools, even if it is only from watching sports on television.  When I entered The George Washington University (yes, "The" is part of the name) we had no real basketball team to speak of.  The new dean made it a goal to have a division-A team and succeeded.  When I interviewed with employers, it was the same deal, "How about those Colonials?   Made the playoffs!"  Less spoken about was the notoriety of the faculty of the law school, which was a shame as they had some notable professors there.

Fair?  Of course not.  But that's life - unfair.  Good-looking people are hired and promoted over less-attractive folks.  You will be discriminated against based on your race, religion, sexual orientation, appearance, or whatever - despite laws to the contrary.  And your education will be evaluated, in some situations, based on how well-known your school is.  A degree from Harvard still has panache even it the school itself has acquired a patina.

But again, this is just one factor and colleges are facing a perfect storm of a number of factors conspiring against them.  And the biggest factor is the so-called enrollment cliff, a demographic drop in the number of high school graduates in the coming years.  Compounding this problem is the drop in foreign students (thanks to xenophobic anti-immigrant politics) who were previously a cash-cow for many universities, as they generally came from wealthy families and paid full tuition without scholarships or government subsidies.

The vaunted "US education" is losing it shine in many countries overseas.  I am reading online stories from Indian students who came to America to get technical degrees at great expense, only to find employment difficult in the States and nearly impossible back home.  Many US students are questioning the value of a college education, seeing the $100,000 or more (sometimes per year!) as better spent on a down payment on a house or a nest egg for retirement.

The old adage that a college degree will earn you more money over time is based on statistics from the 1960's and 1970's and is far less true today.  Maybe this will turn around, but with so few people willing to get into the trades anymore and so many young people wanting "desk jobs" the labor rates have inverted.  I noted before the law business sort of cratered when everyone decided to go to law school and the medical profession seems similarly affected.  Once the ticket to an upper-middle-class living, a law degree or medical degree is today at best, a ticket to stay within the struggling middle-class.

Meanwhile, the heavy equipment operator is showing me photos of his vacation home and $100,000 pontoon boat, towed behind his pickup truck that cost as much.  Who's the idiot now?  And we wonder why "rednecks" are voting for candidates who promise to cut taxes for people making over $400,000 a year.  Those country folks are raking it in more than we suspect.  The new poor are the professional class living in the city.

There is, of course, one more factor and that is endowments.  Traditionally, colleges and universities had endowments which were big piles of money they had invested.  Often, they could survive just based on the income from the endowment. In fact, one famous school has no tuition as their endowment is large enough to cover all expenses.  In addition, wealthy alumni (who either came from money or made lots of money by dint of having a college education) would donate money or give huge sums to have a building constructed with their name on it.

Today?  Less so. Many schools are burning through their endowments, trying to hang on, hoping that "down the road" somehow things will turn around.  Meanwhile, the new generation of alumni are so broke they cannot afford to donate to their old school.  When you are still paying off student loans well into your 40's, you can't afford to answer the call of the Alumi association.  By charging such enormous tuition and encouraging students to take out loans, colleges, in effect, were borrowing from their future alumni donations.

So take all this and throw it in a blender.  Colleges and Universities are facing big problems.  But for the most part, the initial failures are limited to smaller liberal arts colleges, "women's" colleges, and historically black colleges.  These are small tragedies being played out in small towns and cities across America, making local headlines and then everyone forgets about it.

In the short-term, these closures are good news, ironically, for larger schools.  The few hundred students at Wells will no doubt transfer to some other school, and big universities like Syracuse or Cornell may benefit.  It is like a herd of gazelles - the lions take out the weak and infirm first, which allows the young and swift to escape.  Real shame about grandma, but hey, more grass for us to eat!

The crises will become more evident when a major university goes bust - or a university system, such as SUNY profiled in the article linked above.  Maybe then, college deans will sit up and take notice and maybe change will occur.  Sadly, this will likely lead to a call for more government bailouts or "free college" as they (used to) have in the UK and elsewhere.

Or maybe colleges will realize they need to make structural changes to make a college education a value proposition rather than a black hole to throw money into.

Maybe.

I am not sure I have any answers, only that college was a 14-year experience for me (1978-1992) and I worked the whole time.  I think I got a better education and had a better (and less expensive) experience as a result, too.   Maybe if more companies can be induced (through tax credits) into hiring co-op students and interns, college could be more attractive, more relevant, and more cost-effective than in the past.

That, or maybe we need a new student center named after a wealthy alumni who contributed 10% of the construction cost.  Make sure it has a rock-climbing wall!  Or maybe a bouncy house!

Should You Change Your Anode?

How is your day going?

Mark wakes me up at two in the morning and says, "I hear water running!"   I fall back asleep only to hear him say, "there's water on the bathroom floor!" to which I reply, "Well, I did take a shower before bed.."

"No, hot water!" he says.  I jump out of bed.

Years ago, we installed a point-of-use hot water heater - a 2.5 gallon Bosch heater under my bathroom sink.  We have two more, one under Mark's bathroom sink and another in his studio.  I had previously replaced the one under my sink as it rusted out and started leaking.  Now the new one was doing the same.

Fortunately, I had put a storage tub under the heater and it took the brunt of the water - tubes of toothpaste were floating in the tub.  We caught it before it did any major damage.  I suppose we should have put a drain pan, plumbed to the outside, underneath the heater.  The cabinet was damaged from the last go-around and I had to sand the swollen particleboard flat and then paint it with white enamel.  I put a white plastic liner on top of that.

The latest heater was only four years old!  I removed it and drained it and noticed a sticker on the side that said, "change anode every two years" and realized I had never done this.  With our RV we had gotten in the habit of changing the anode every year or so - it is common practice in the RV world.  But for some reason, it is not a habit in the household world.

The instructions recommend soaking the heating element in two tablespoons of vinegar to remove scale.  I think we are past the vinegar stage.  Notably missing: the entire anode!

Our current main hot water heater is over 18 years old and will no doubt rust through soon enough.  As soon as you see a dribble of rusty water, shut if off, drain it and buy a new one.  Maybe a good idea to do that even before you see rusty water.  They can make a mess when they blow their guts out.

A neighbor asks me if they should shut off their water while on vacation.  Their problem is their house has no main shutoff valve, and the Authority valve at the meter box is 50 years old and leaks if you even look at it.  I advised them to install a ball valve (bronze with teflon seals, preferred) near the house for their own use.  "Why do we need that?" she asked.  "Well, your house could fill up with water while you are gone and it is a real mess to clean up, insurance or not!" I replied.  But she was not convinced.

"Pipes don't just break for no reason!" she argued.  I gave up.  She didn't want to hear something that didn't jibe with her worldview.  Might as well try to explain things to a Trumper.  No doubt when they do have a pipe break (50+ year old steel, right?) I will be blamed for "not warning them!"

You can't win.  That's why I don't give advice.

Anyway, I looked online and found some articles and yes, even a video, from those evil "This Old House" people, with a helpful cutaway of a rusted hot water heater showing the damage (Although a well-written article with diagrams and photos would have gotten the idea across in less time!).  Most people don't change their anodes ever.  I know my parents never did - hell my Dad never even changed his oil!  Many hot water heaters (including ours) buries the anode under the sheetmetal cover on top.  To remove this cover, you just undo about six screws and then remove all the plumbing connections and the pressure relief valve.  Easy-peasy!  These types are not designed to be changed.

If we buy a new hot water heater, I will be sure to get one with an accessible anode!

But getting back to the undercabinet job, I removed it and connected the flex pipe directly to the faucet, which put an end to the leaking.  Yes, the shutoff valves under the sink were useless - they no longer shut off anything.  Most of these shutoff valves work this way after a few years.  So if you have a leak, you should know where your main shutoff is located because the under-the-sink or commode valve isn't going to stop the flow.

They make inline shutoff valves that you can add, so you don't have to mess with an old rusty shutoff valve and have to deal with the possibility of an old pipe that you break off behind the wall.  Our condo had about five of these valves, in a row, on the dishwasher, as each successive valve failed in the "open" position.  Owning a home, what's not to like?

I thought about buying a new Bosch (Ariston) under-cabinet heater, but after two have rusted through in ten years, I am a little gun-shy.  I found the anodes for the remaining two heaters we have and will try to replace those.  I also found a "Fogatti" heater that looks like the Bosch, but for a lot less ($100 or so).  At that price, it almost isn't worth changing the anodes!  Just throw the heater away when it rusts out.

While I am sure it is a cheap copy made in China, guess where the "real" ones are made?  Yea, same place.  I saw one cheaper but specifically refused it.  It had no built-on pressure relief valve but instead had the valve mounted to the water outlet.  There is such a thing as too cheap, but we'll see if the "Fogatti" fall under that category.  Oddly enough, Fogatti is big into RV water heaters, air conditioners, and cooktops.  Fascinating!

Throwing away heaters after five years is wasteful and maybe down the road we will get a tankless heater and mount it on the outside wall of the house next to the master bathroom.  Instant unlimited hot water!  And if it leaks, well, it's already outside.

If that wasn't excitement enough, our neighbor e-mails me this morning and informs us that one of his pine trees cracked in the storm and is now leaning over Mark's studio.  It is propped up by another tree and if it falls, it might be cushioned by a water oak below it.  Depending on luck it might miss the studio or just graze my attached shed where I keep yard equipment.  Some fun!

We'll have to wait for the winds to die down for the tree surgeon to come and remove it.  It will be tricky as it is heavy and precariously hanging.  The island arborist hasn't returned my neighbor's calls.  The island arborist is a nice guy, but a bit of a tree-hugger.  He hates to mow the lawn because he doesn't like to hear the grass screaming.  But hey, that's his job - right?

So, a flooded bathroom and a tree poised to fall and kill us.  How's your day going?

Coupon Codes & The Conundrum Of Internet Couponing

Do coupon codes generate sales or just cut into profits?

Whenever you buy something online, it seems, you are prompted to apply a "coupon code" to get a discount.  If you have bought from a merchant before and got on their mailing list, sometimes they will send you these codes.  "Buy again right now! Use coupon code SPRING15 to save 15%!"  And indeed, you may have consented to their mailing list previously in order to get some other coupon code discount.

There are also sites on the internet that claim to have coupon codes for you to use.  Most of these are bogus.  "Coupon code for garbageyoudontneed.com for 75% off!" one crows.  But of course, no merchant is offering 75% off - or if they are, they are a crummy merchant.

Most of these "Coupon code" sites tease you with the codes, and you have to click on them to reveal the code.  Clicking on the code opens a new tab for the merchant in question, and the coupon code site gets a small referral fee.  Not a few months ago, it seems, some of these coupon codes were valid, but today, most are bogus.  "Free shipping!" one coupon "code" reveals - but that is the default offer for everyone on that merchant site.

I also noticed a funny thing on some sites - while the coupon code of "SPRING15" saved 15% on my purchase, the code SPRING20 (which was not advertised) saved 20%.

But lately, I am finding that merchants are not using such obvious codes and moreover, most of the codes touted on coupon code aggregators are invalid, even if they claim "recent use" and "90% success rate" for a code. In short, most of these coupon code sites are trash.

And this is not unexpected.  If you can scrape a few pennies from a website referral (as these coupon code sites are doing) then you need not supply real codes but just have an AI bot gin up some fake ones.  If the customer buys through the tab the site opened, they get a referral fee.  Profit.

For the actual merchant, well, there is no point in letting people use coupon codes willy-nilly.  The problem with electronic couponing has always been the windfall effect.  You want to use coupons to alter consumer behavior - induce them to spend, induce brand loyalty, induce repeat purchases.  If a customer was going to buy anyway at full price and then gets 15% off by googling "coupon codes for garbageyoudontneed.com" then the merchant is missing out on maximized profits.

I wonder, sometimes, if a clever IT person has programmed the checkout to deny all coupon codes if the buyer tries to enter more than, say, two or three.  If a buyer tries a number of coupon codes, they are not seeking a discount they are entitled to, but merely fishing.

Getting a coupon discount is nice and all, but I prefer to shop based on everyday low prices.  When I see a merchant offering lower prices to other people but not to me, it makes me think two things.  First, their prices are way too high if they can offer 15% off without blinking.  Second, maybe I don't need to buy from that merchant, but should shop around.

Or just decide not to consume at all.

Because in the time I spent dicking around with coupon code sites, I realized that whatever it is I was going to buy, I really didn't need or want.  So maybe coupon codes serve a purpose after all!

Why "Star Wars" Isn't Science Fiction

Science Fiction has been degraded in recent years to mere spectacle, without purpose.

I wrote before about E.M. Forester's The Machine Stops, a real science-fiction story about a dystopian future where people huddle in their homes, connected to each other only by video screens and electronic communications, having their every need catered to by machines, while at the same times having no idea of how the machines work.  It could have been written last week, describing America today or in the near future, where we all "cocoon" in  our homes and have our meals pre-made and delivered, while we all watch YouTube videos and instant message each other.

It was written over 100 years ago.

What is interesting about the story is not the technical details, but the human ones.  The main character's Mother spends her days bloviating online to her thousands of online Facebook friends about "Music of the Australian Period."  Forester is hinting that her lecture is full of bullshit nonsense - anticipating the podcasts of the future - where everyone is an expert and facts are flexible.

He gets the human part right. But even the technical details are amazingly prescient - predicting indirect LED-style lighting, pad-type devices (round, not rectangular - there's a hint, Apple!) as well as a voice-activated control system like Siri.  Missing are any light sabers, exploding death stars, or evil empires.

Instead, Forester points out the evil empire is us - humanity - and our desire to wallow in our own crapulence.  And sadly, it seems Forester was right.  Corporations seem to look at these descriptions of a dystopian future as a roadmap for profitability.  Republicans subscribe to a "Club for Growth" as if packing as many humans onto the planet as physically possible is part of God's plan and the route to success, not misery.  Yet others have given up on planet Earth entirely and want to colonize desolate waterless planets bathed in radiation.  It makes no friggin' sense.

The problem with Star Wars is that it is all spectacle and no plot.  Oh sure, there is a plot, as much as any soap opera has a plot.  People connive against one another and two sides fight it out, with neither one ever winning.  It is Space Opera, not science fiction, based in part on Japanese Samurai films and in another part on the mindless Saturday morning matinee 13-chapter serials that kept children entertained before the era of television (e.g., Tom Mix, Flash Gordon).  Why do you think the first Star Wars was called Chapter IV?

A year or so ago, I signed up for Disney+ for a month, figuring I would see what the fuss was about in The Mandalorian.  I told Mark, "You probably won't like this, it is Star Wars crap!" as he wasn't really a SciFi fan.  Oddly enough, he liked it, I think in part because of Pedro Pascal's gravelly sexy voice, and in part because of all the action sequences.  Before anything gets too boring, a fight always breaks out. That's action-adventure, not SciFi.

Sadly, so much of SciFi today is this way - plotless spectacles that rely on CGI to keep us entertained. And while we all enjoyed watching the Titanic sink in 3-D, people have since become jaded by CGI spectacles.  Heck, you can create your own with an online AI-chatbot in a matter of minutes.  Just don't count the number of fingers on each hand.

So much has been lumped in with "SciFi" these days, including fantasy films (swords and elves and that sort of shit) as well as comic book heroes.  Each is the same as the other - CGI distractions, little in the way of plot, and nothing that really makes you think about greater issues confronting humanity.

The best SciFi stories are often allegories about humanity and life on Earth.  The best of the original Star Trek episodes weren't about shooting it up with Romulans or Klingons, but were thought-pieces about issues confronting humanity in 1968 - or indeed, any era.  And not surprisingly, those episodes were written by actual science fiction writers, such as Harlan Ellison, Theodore Sturgeon, D.C Fontana, as well as a host of others.

The Machine Stops isn't about battles between empires or sword fights between protagonists - indeed there are no fights involved.  It is a prescient warning about where humanity is headed with technology and is designed to make you think about what technology has wrought.  That it still is relevant a century later is evidence as to its real power.

Apple has licensed The Mandalorian to promote its new phone - telling people they can take snappy pictures and join-up with their fellow cosplayers via the machine.  In a way it is apt, as they are using a SciFi franchise that mindlessly glorified technology to promote mindless technology.  After all, you wouldn't want to have a phone that connects you with people who don't think as you do, right?  And we certainly don't want people thinking Apple is part of the problem and not the solution - right?

That is the weird thing about Star Wars - they posit a future (or a past, in a galaxy far, far away) where there is limitless energy, limitless natural resources, and yet what do people do?  Kill each other over control of resources.  Quite frankly, it makes no sense.  If you have that level of technology, you don't need to "restore order to the galaxy" or whatever (the weakest plot motivation ever devised) because the galaxy has, if not limitless, at least untold resources.  And there are always other galaxies, right?

(And please, don't get me started on Space Whales!).

But maybe that is the real corporate message here - no matter how much we have as a civilization, it is never enough, and we need to go to war and kill each other to maintain power and control of these resources.  It is a pretty sick message, if you think about it.

But hey, maybe Star Wars is a message movie after all!  Because if you think about what they are really saying, it is that humanity really sucks and that we are doomed to fight with one another, perpetually, to gather whatever scraps we can scrounge from the table, or to hoard resources and accumulate power.

Pretty sad message!