Told Ya So.

Back around the beginning of the year, I told you that if you wanted to lose weight, you were going to have to cut refined sugar out of your diet. And I mean all of it: sugar, sucrose, dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup; all of it. In fact, I think you should think twice about products with “alcohol sugars” like malitol and sorbitol in them. Such products are added to certain low-carb foods to make them appear lower in carbohydrates than they really are. Frankly, if a product needs alcohol sugars, it is probably something with more calories than a person trying to lose weight should be eating. I realize this point of view is mildly controversial and strictly my personal opinion.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that a third of the American diet is junk food, the vast majority of it sugary stuff. As much as 7.1% of the calories was soda alone — by extension these people could reduce caloric intake by 7% just by switching to diet soda, or better yet water. A researcher was quoted as saying “It’s no wonder there’s an obesity epidemic in this country.”

Meanwhile, a school principal in Georgia was so inspired by her own experience cutting sweets out of her diet — not a low-carb diet, merely cutting out sweets — that she made her campus sugar free. She made Coke put only Dasani water in the vending machines. She reworked the school lunch menus. She made the bus drivers keep the kids from eating sugary snacks on the way to and from school. She invited the skeptical parents to nutrition seminars.

A year later she found out that not only had many students lost weight, but there were almost a third fewer visits to the school nurse, substantially fewer disciplinary problems, and higher test scores. She accidentally found a cheap way to improver her school. Of course I bet there’s a positive impact on the community as a whole, too. Here’s another school trying to go junk food free.

The bottom line is that cutting sugar works, and it has unexpected benefits.

Why it wouldn’t work

I know a thing or two about apartments.

You can’t just walk into the office of a big apartment building, say “I’ll take 2 please. I’m not in a hurry, the weekend will do.”

Apparently, nobody in the Justice Department has rented an apartment since that room over Mrs. MacPherson’s garage in college. They would like you to believe that Jose Padilla and some unnamed colleague (who is still on the loose so Look Out!) planned to rent multiple apartments in multiple high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas fittings. They furthermore planned to seal all the vents — perhaps where Tom Ridge got his plastic sheeting and duct tape idea — open the gas and set timers to blow the place up. Oh yeah, and maybe work radiation into the blast somehow. Although it is possible to blow up an apartment with natural gas, it doesn’t work like in the movies. Padilla having lived in the Chicago area, he probably remembers a few years back when some poor soul blew up several apartments and a member of management staff who had gone to check on him in a suicide attempt. Sorry, no luck finding a link to that, folks.

Remember, we are talking about big apartment complexes. This is not a duplex, or a quad that the owner lives in one unit, but a multi-million dollar piece of real estate. Let us begin with the basic premise that the people who own such apartment buildings want to make money. Radical thinking, I know. So how do they make money? The two major ways an apartment building owner makes rent are as follows: collect enough rent money each month to cover and exceed the expenses; or sell the place at a profit. Both of these plans are predicated on the idea that the property remains in good condition.

Sticklers for detail will point out that you can also make money through vending deals, tax breaks, kickbacks, and insurance settlements. All but the last item still assume the property is rentable or salable at the end of the day. And maybe you’d better ask Larry Silverman about collecting insurance settlements. It’s a really tough way to make money. It’s much easier to just rent the property for more than it costs to run it.

So, keeping in mind that because the management wants to keep the property in good condition, and because a number of the management staff of such a property may well be paid at least in part with a rental unit, they want to do a good job of screening possible residents. They don’t want drug dealers as neighbors, let alone terrorists.

So, if you were to go look for an apartment at a reputable complex, you should expect to show your driver’s license, have it copied, answer a lot of questions about where you live now and where you lived before, answer some questions about your job (including your salary — they want to make sure you can afford rent and food), and sign an application which allows the apartment management to verify your application. As part of that process, they will run a credit check. They will call your current landlord, specifically asking if you have given proper notice that you are moving, and they will call your previous landlord. They will call your office and talk to the HR manager. They will probably even do a criminal background check.

In short, I am willing to believe Padilla and his unnamed coconspirator could have rented units in one large apartment complex. I am not willing to believe they could repeat the process in other complexes without somebody saying “How strange! This guy was just approved for an apartment across town last week!”

This is to say nothing of the merits or lack thereof of the case against Mr. Padilla. The most telling part of this is in the transcript of the Justice Department Press Conference (see CNN link above): the first question is as follows:

QUESTION: Why don’t you bring criminal charges against him now?

COMEY: Well, what we’re going to do is use all legal tools available to protect the American people from Jose Padilla. I’m not ruling out that criminal charges might not be an option some day. We, obviously, can’t use any of the statements he’s made in military custody, which will make that option challenging.

Why aren’t there criminal charges? Why weren’t there criminal charges 2 years ago, when the man was arrested? They admit that they have trampled this man’s rights under the Constitution. I’m terribly sorry, but “He’s a really bad man, trust us” doesn’t make this okay. At the time, they said Brandon Mayfield was a really bad man, trust us, too. The only thing that will prove Mr. Padilla’s “bad man” status is a clean, open trial, where all the evidence is clearly and convincingly laid out and cross-examined.

Sure, maybe he is a bad man. Prove it in court. Good luck finding an unbiased jury.

Marie Antoinette? Meet Alfonso Jackson

Everyone knows the somewhat embellished story of Marie Antoinette proposing that if the peasants had no bread and were therefore starving, then “Let them eat cake!” This level of being out of touch with everyday people and their needs did not die with the French monarchy.

This week the Berkshire Eagle of Pittsfield, MA reports that Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alfonso Jackson told a congressional committee he doesn’t talk about housing the poor because “being poor is a state of mind, not a condition.” The irony of such a comment is the fact that HUD’s mission specifically includes that they will “increase access to affordable housing.”

Lest you think this is made up, here are comments by one of the Congressional Representatives that was present. Nor are such comments out of character for Mr. Jackson. If you’d like to know more about Mr. Jackson, try the official HUD biography, but don’t look too hard for the part about growing up and overcoming poverty.

It seems obvious that Mr. Jackson meant to invoke the famous saying “Broke is a state of wallet; poor is a state of mind,” and it’s inevitable baggage that being “broke” can be fixed with good old fashioned work. Under this logic, if you are continually broke, it is your own darn fault. No bread? Let them eat cake. No jobs? Let them start their own businesses. Nowhere to live? Let them… uh, well, apply for a grant to build low income housing? The Berkshire Eagle put it best: “as a personal philosophy, it’s admirable. But as public policy, it stinks.”

They go on to point out that “This newspaper has observed before that liberal government doesn’t give away tax money for love of poor people, but out of the enlightened view that a modicum of economic justice is an insurance policy against social unrest.” Housing is not the only area where this expectation that the poor — I mean the “broke” — should pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The number of people whose healthcare plan is “hoping we don’t get sick” has grown to 43 million. Next time you are in a crowd of people, think about the fact that one in 6 does not have health insurance.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe that health insurance drives up the cost of healthcare. But, we live in a country where health insurance is just short of a prerequisite for getting care outside community clinic or emergency room. It should be patently obvious that working and paying the bills and not coming out “broke” on a regular basis is predicated on a certain level of health. Most jobs are almost impossible to do from a hospital bed. And since ignoring little health problems until they become big health problems is a way of life for way too many people in this country, health insurance will remain a need rather than a luxury for the foreseeable future. Oh, and before you start on how you aren’t one of those people, let me point out that some of those people are sick with communicable diseases. Have a nice day.

The Bush Administration seems to have a very shortsighted view of what this Marie Antoinette philosophy will do — or as Paul Krugman prefers to interpret it, Dooh Nibor economics (reverse Robin Hood). Yes, the nobles were terribly rich and powerful. But in the end, some of them really lost their heads.

Oh, and if you really must eat cake? Alton Brown’s book on baking comes out in September.

Bitter Lemonade

I’d like to tell you about a very unusual company today. Their prospects are looking up. Granted, they had some troubles after 9/11 — they did lose people and facilities — but their finances are in good order. Core management has been reduced by about half since then, and the remaining middle managers have successfully implemented a decentralized management plan, allowing them to quickly move on a regional or local basis without having to get the CEO to sign off on every small detail. They have 18,000 employees and contractors, and recruiting for open positions is going exceptionally well.

Unfortunately, this “company” is Al Qaeda.

Let’s face it, pictures like this are not helping the War on Terror™, and they are not helping America. The idea that the commander who allowed this to occur is shocked, just shocked I tell you that she is being sent elsewhere is, well, just shocking. Alright, I grant you that she should not have found out on the evening news.

But back to the topic of Al Qaeda. We invaded Afghanistan to get them, if you will recall. Then we left the job half finished. Then we got distracted by Iraq, and managed to mess up everything we could think of to mess up in the process. Even our plan for returning Iraqis to self-rule is flawed.

And that brings us to this week’s missive, brought to us jointly from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice: Look Out. Al Qaeda might be planning to attack. They won’t tell us what they plan to do, they won’t tell us where, they won’t tell us when except to say “summer,” but they will at least tell us who might be involved. Maybe they can get these guys to help out. Oh yeah, it’s credible or they wouldn’t bother to mention it. But it isn’t a big enough deal to be worth raising the alert level. If you are skeptical of the whole deal, you aren’t alone.

The War On Terror™ was supposed to make us safer. Instead, it has made the terrorists stronger.

Haitus, the Sequel!

I do not anticipate being able to post again before next week.

Special thanks to Dean Paxton, Jerry Kindall (check out the awesome photos!), Arcanis (whose LiveJournal I will politely not flood with strangers), KWCom (who actually puts me on the same page as InstaPundit!), Elisa Camahort, GroundMeat, LeaderLog, and all the other referrers.

Oh, and if you are really desperate for my so-called wisdom, you might look at this idea, which frankly makes more sense than ever in a world of absurd gas prices.

Son of Webvan

I’ve been quoted before as saying that if there were money to be made delivering groceries, Hooper’s Store would still do it. But, believe it or not there’s a second wave of online grocers. And there is actually a chance they are not all doomed.

From the ashes of the Webvan bankruptcy rises several breeds of internet based food delivery systems. On one hand, you have online divisions of the grocery stores you may already shop at: Albertson’s; Safeway. They have the distinct advantage of not needing big warehouses with lots of employees: regular employees can just take product off the shelves and put it on a truck. Then you have companies like Peapod, who in addition to their own internet grocery business do product distribution for several traditional grocers. Finally, you have the specialists. Companies like FreshDirect appear to be the boutique shopping option for groceries.

So, what do these companies have to do to avoid Webvan’s ignoble fate?

Do it right from day one. Too obvious, huh? If you let the customer’s first experience be a bad one, you can just forget ever serving them again. So find out what the customers are going to want first and determine whether you can — literally — deliver.

Make lots of information available online. There are lots of people who read labels before they buy things. If you want to make them internet shoppers, you have to get them that label information, whether it’s in the form of a big database or links to manufacturers. Likewise, alert customers to things like label changes and availability of seasonal produce. While you are at it, take a cue from Home Depot’s “don’t forget to buy this for your project” lists. If your system can see that a customer has all but one ingredient for a common recipe, suggest it. Or use an Amazonian model of “people who bought these products also selected these items.”

Advertise, but don’t over-do it. I still have a collection of assorted Webvan magnets. I have no idea how many postcards they sent me that I threw away. By contrast, I occasionally hear an ad for Albertson’s online service, and I see the truck sitting out front. I know they are there if I need them. Really.

Service, service, service. Toilet paper and boxes of cereal are one thing, but most people just aren’t sure they want fruits, vegetables, and meat picked out by a complete stranger. To counteract that, an online grocer must develop an absolutely impeccable reputation for quality and freshness. Oh, and now that it’s picked out, it needs to arrive on time, every time, when I need it. If that means delivery at 7 PM when everybody is home from work, so be it. If that means before 7 AM so things are there by breakfast time, so be it. If your customer had time to go to the grocery store during banker’s hours, they probably would.

Grow conservatively. It’s best to do one region well than 4 regions poorly. Attempted (and failed) hypergrowth is one of the reasons Webvan failed. For that matter, be willing to write off failures as soon as they are obviously failures. Food Lion wasn’t afraid to walk away from its failed stores in Texas.

Be realistic. Not everybody is willing to pay $10 to have groceries delivered. That’s just the way it is.

Oil’s Well That Ends Well

For the benefit of those of you who may indeed be reading this from under a rock, I will point out that the prices of both gasoline and oil are at highs, with more highs coming. I will not be shocked if Trilby Lundberg continues to announce record high gas prices at least once a month until Labor Day. On the West Coast and many other places, you can expect to pay at least $2 per gallon, even at Bad Neighborhood No Name Gas Co. Quickie Mart. Some analysts are predicting a full blown 70s style oil crisis. Any readers from elsewhere in the country who might be able to shed light on whether gas prices are really higher in Red States than Blue States, please feel free to comment.

Some of you are wondering when these kinds of things are going to have an impact on the economy at large. The answer is right about now. The world’s biggest retailer, WalMart, figures the current price of gas costs its customers an addditional $7 per week. This of course means about $45 less they can spend each month on other necessities, let alone desires. This is a big deal to the typical WalMart shopper. This is almost certain to effect all but the highest end retailers.

The fact that almost every product you can have in your home spent part of its supply chain in a truck means that rising gas prices very quickly translate into general inflation. It’s happening now. The Europeans are worried about us. Well, more precisely, they are worried that inflation will effect earnings, and they are worried about the standard prescription for inflation, interest rate hikes. Oh, make no mistake, they know it’s coming. They are concerned about the timing and dosage. After all, the Fed Funds rate has been sitting at 1% for a while. A modest sounding 25 basis point hike (0.25%) would be a rise of 25%! As if that isn’t enough, there is some evidence to suggest that spikes in oil prices come before recessions.

Want to know who else is worried about oil prices? The Airlines. All those planes use a lot of fuel. It should be no surprise that when you can’t control your costs, you can’t predict how much money you will have at the end of the quarter. Frankly, the airlines have enough to worry about. Consumers just don’t like what’s happened to traveling by air. Even the TSA realizes there is a problem.

Alas, it isn’t as simple as just pumping more oil. Here’s Paul Krugman’s take on the situation. In short, however much the Saudis would like to control crude oil prices, they can’t. The oil they are able to bring online in a timely fashion has too much sulphur in it. And OPEC is already pumping over its targets. Bringing new sources online is a long term answer to an emergency problem. In Alaska, they are not counting on these high prices lasting for long. Seriously, new sources of oil can take 5 to 10 years to yield marketable quantities. And that’s assuming there is oil to be found, that permits can be obtained, that the area is accessible, that the oil can be transported away….

Of course there are some winners in this oily mess. The Globe and Mail has a nice well thought out list, but really, the only one you need to know is this: Oil Companies.

Yeah, they are making millions on the additional $7 per week that WalMart estimates each customer is spending at the pump.

Sincerely, Insulted Female Voter

The following is the draft of a letter I will be sending to the editorial staff of Alternet.

To Whom It May Concern:

As a regular reader of Alternet, I find myself insulted by the blatant sexist subtext of Lakshmi Chaudhry’s essay, “What John Kerry Needs: The Estrogen Factor.” I am not sure what I find more outrageous: the insinuation that the woman who pasted her head over Mrs. Edward’s picture is in any way “typical” of female voters; the description of women as “those creatures with breasts”; or pointing out that “the fact that Edwards ‘looks seriously hot’ while he’s making his pitch doesn’t hurt either.” Even John Edwards should be insulted by this message of “He’s more than just a pretty face.”

If your point is that Senator Edwards is able to effectively deliver a message of importance to female voters, please make that point and move on. Frankly, this article smacks of “Oh yes! Kerry should run with Edwards because he’s so dreeeeeamy!”

Don’t get me wrong, being charismatic is a huge asset to someone running for office. Dennis Kucinich can attest to this. He has great ideas but, well, looks so unpresidential. Senator Kerry would be wise to get some of Kucinich’s ideas on board, and perhaps even get the man himself on board helping make policy. However, if the Presidential race comes down to looks and charisma, perhaps we should completely sell out and consider Brad Pitt. Or maybe Harrison Ford — he has at least played the President in a movie. Don’t you think that would spice up the Vice-Presidential debates this fall?

If Senator Kerry wants women’s votes this fall, the key is not his Vice-Presidential candidate, but the issues. Talk to us about things that matter to us. Strangely enough, most of the things the female half of our population cares about effect the rest of the country too.

For example, everybody needs healthcare. And at this point, I think we can all agree it is expensive. Furthermore, I think anybody who has honestly looked at the issues understands that nothing President Bush has done has improved things.

How about food safety? We all eat food, don’t we? And choosy moms would like to know they aren’t feeding their kids mad-cow burgers, or otherwise dangerous food.

Don’t forget education. Education is a critical issue not only to moms, but to anybody who has employees, and anybody who wants to make sure America has a stable, productive economy in the future.

Oh, and don’t forget the price of oil and gas. Frankly, it is vitally important to everyone. It’s important to everyone who uses a vehicle to get to work or school. It’s important to small businesses. It’s important to big businesses. It’s important to the economy. It’s important to global security.

This is to say nothing of civil liberties (which we all have), the environment (which we all live in), inflation (it’s back!), and even the 40 hour work week (which still might be in danger).

John Edwards may well be the right man to be John Kerry’s running mate. However, it that is the case it is because of his stance on the issues, not “The Estrogen Factor.”

Happy Mother’s Day! Look what I made you!

The teenager who apparently wrote the Sasser and Netsky worms may have been trying to help drum up business for his mom’s computer repair shop. Sven J. has been arrested, but not before he unleashed what was supposed to have been some kind of damage limiting version of the worm. Indeed, according to the young hacker, Netsky was originally intended as an anti-viral virus to combat MyDoom and Bagle. Oh yeah, except for that whole attacking the local educational server thing. He may, however, avoid jail-time because he just turned 18.

Another worm was apparently written and released by an acquaintance of Sven J. The second young man was also arrested last week. Phatbot is the latest in a line of viruses begun in 2002. It is a spambot, and if you think you have gotten more than your fair share of spam in the last week or so, Phatbot might have something to do with it.

No idea what I’m talking about? How Stuff Works has a good explanation. Go ahead, there’s no harm in admitting you don’t know stuff.

Victims of Sasser, which has only been in circulation since April 30, include Westpac Bank, the Northern Territory Government, British Airways, Delta Airlines and the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency. These are not home users with neither firewall nor clue; they are large organizations with large Information Technology departments. These are people who have the expertise to make networks secure, even when the official solution is the problem. It costs businesses a lot of money to keep up with this stuff, and even more to combat actual outbreaks. And guess what? Those businesses turn around and pass the costs on to their customers. You.

And that is to say nothing of the time and money you may spend should you be the victim of such a virus.

Microsoft is going to need to do more than give out bounties to stop the virus problem. The idea that a high school student — who his computer teacher described as “not show[ing] early signs of genius in the technological world” — and his college aged buddy could write viruses that can infiltrate a variety of allegedly secure networks is absurd. The fact that one young man has been writing related malicious code that exploits one, single Windows vulnerability for 2 years is absolutely outrageous.

You deserve a virus free computer. Really.

If you only have time to read two important things today, they should be these. First, check out what Security Guru Bruce Schneier has to say about surveillance and search warrants. Then try this piece about hiring trends, inflation, and balancing the economy.

Respect

We interrupt this post to point out the obvious. Torturing, humiliating, and murdering prisoners is a bad thing. Even the President of the United States says so. It isn’t even acceptable when it happens in American prisons. Don’t dare excuse it by saying these were all “bad” people. The bottom line is they are all people. Maybe they don’t deserve deluxe accommodations and gourmet meals, but they surely don’t deserve what has happened either. Enough said.

We now return you to your previously scheduled commentary.

When I took English 1302 in college, they took great pains to remind us that when writing an essay, we must consider our audience: who will be reading it; what will they be expecting to see; what do we want to say to them. There was the tacit understanding that through most of our collegiate career, our primary audience would be our professors, who would among other things expect to see good grammar and spelling, and an adequate understanding of the things you were supposed to have learned in class. Depending on the professor — and this was something you might hear in passing or something you might experience first hand — you might be expected to adhere to a certain party line, and at least pretend to espouse liberalism, conservatism, feminism, chauvanism, capitalism, socialism, Protestantism, Darwinism, or the theory of the day. Failure to adhere to this unwritten rule is failure to consider and cater to your audience.

This principle can be applied to business too. In fact, I like to summarize it as follows: Do not annoy your customers. This includes both people who use your product/service, and those who might do so someday. This may come as a shock, but people don’t like to do business with companies that annoy them. There are some exceptions to this rule of thumb, for example if you are fortunate enough to have a monopoly (telephone, cable, computer operating system). Or perhaps if you are in a situation where the people who pay the bills are different from the people who actually use your services (any business that depends on insurance companies for reimbursement).

The bottom line is that I will avoid giving you money if you annoy me. That being the case, don’t stuff flyers under my windshield wiper. Don’t stick them in my front door. Don’t send me spam, don’t call me, don’t send me junk faxes (who the heck are these people buying OTC penny stocks on the basis of a fax tip anyway? And when I want a new mortgage, I’ll call a mortgage broker rather than check my fax machine). Think about it for a minute: do you do business with companies that advertise this way? No? Then why on earth would you waste time and money doing it? I don’t really mind junk mail, because most of it recycles. Besides which, every once in a while I actually find a company to do business with from junk mail. Just the same, how many AOL CDs do I really need?

Make it easy to get ahold of you. I shouldn’t have to play tag just to find a valid phone number for you. When I do call, I do not want to navigate an arcane voice-mail system, I want to talk to you and arrange service or solve a problem. And if you have a web site, it should be simple, fast loading, and easy to navigate. Oh, and it should definitely include a way to reach you someplace.

I’m already your customer? Then return my phone calls promptly. Show up when you say you will, and have all the equipment you need to do the job. Do what I need done, and do it right the first time. I will not be happy if you have to come back to my property to fix things you messed up, missed, or just plain didn’t do correctly. Be responsible. Don’t tell me how reliable and professional you are, show me. Gee, another business rule you could have learned in English class.

Don’t talk down to me, don’t try to sell me goods and services I don’t need, and for goodness sake don’t you dare call me “dear” or “honey.” You can darn well call your customers by their title and last name: Mr. Jones, Miss Smith, Dr. Stewart; your customer is not your buddy. If you have a customer who feels this is too formal, he or she will correct you. Smile and comply with his or her wishes. The “topic sentence” of this paragraph — and this essay — is treat people with respect.