Up or down? Not so clear cut anymore.

This is a post all about piss.   So if that offends you, or if you just think it is a stupid thing to write about, then leave now.  It is also about manners, and what constitutes good manners in our modern era.
 
For all of my life I have been taught that the polite thing, the courteous thing, was to leave the toilet seat down.  Lately I have come to believe that isn't the best idea.

I started thinking about that riding the ferry everyday.  On the boat there are no men's or women's restrooms.  Especially in the afternoon, it is common that when I use one, someone has pissed all over the seat.

On the floor, I am used to it.  You see that in men's rooms where a urinal can be two feet wide and there is still a puddle around it.  I don't think that is (mostly) intentional, especially places where alcohol is served.  But that's not what I am talking about.

As far as that goes, I work in a building that has men's and women's restrooms.  It isn't really a public place.  Our floor doesn't have lot of people on it, and the few visitors we do have are usually from one of the offices above or below us.  It is mostly professionals.  The men's room has a urinal and two stalls.  At least a couple of times a month I find piss all over the floor and all over the seat in one or both of the stalls in our bathroom.

If men are going to be too inconsiderate to bother lifting the seat, then I think that the alternative is for those of us who are considerate to leave it up, or lift it up when we are leaving if we were sitting down.
 So, at the very least in common bathrooms, used by all genders, I think the new normal should be to leave the seat up.

International Living

Remember a long time ago?  Back when the earth was still cooling, before the dinosaurs, before the Nigerian Scam,  back when the Internet was new?  You remember.

Every now and then you would find in your inbox an email telling you how to make money at home 'stuffing envelopes'.  Those sorts of emails still arrive.  They come in all sorts of different flavors now.  Penny stocks are still around, although I don't see them very often.  But I  digress.

I have traveled in Europe a bit.  I have been to Spain, Italy, France, and dabbled just a bit in a couple of other places.  And as I approach retirement, the thought occurred to me that I might enjoy retiring in France or Spain.  Not in a city, mind you, and not something way out in the country either.  Somewhere I could walk to do my daily shopping, enjoy a glass of wine on a warm summer evening in a local cafe.  Live at a slower pace.

So I looked at what it might cost to rent in the south of France, or outside of Barcelona, and I find that the cost for something I would need is considerably less than I get in income from a piece of rental property I own.  I could afford this, and it would be cheaper than staying in California!

As I meandered about the Internet, looking for ideas and sources of information, I came across a website and magazine called International Living.  A subscription was not expensive, an article I read seemed to have some helpful ideas, so  I subscribed.  I also signed up for a mailing list on the magazine's site that sounded promising.

Now we are getting back to the introduction to this post.

I am now getting at between 5 and 10 emails a day.  Maybe I am missing something in them, there are enough of them that I just scan and delete, but it seems like every one is a come-on to buy some book, attend some conference, or get this absolutely free great information if you will only subscribe to something else.  I am wondering now if International Living is anything more than a shell solely for the purpose of hawking shady money making schemes.

Now I know that up selling is a fact of life.  I have subscribed for years to Motley Fool, and they are constantly trying to up sell me.   But they deliver.  I have taken their advice, bought many of their recommendations, and I am satisfied that I have done much better than I would have on my own, and at much less cost than an advisor would have charged me.

So they can be forgiven for trying to squeeze out a few more bucks, they are a business after all.  And as far as I am concerned the up selling is a minor annoyance compared to the service I received.  With International Living I am not so sure that it is anything else.  I have begun to suspect that all the crap they are hocking is all they've got.

Recently they sent me at least 6 emails all hawking this great 'free' webinar, "Instant Income for English Speakers".  I knew it was going to crap but I decided to watch it on the off chance that there was some useful information in.  Also, I was wondering whether or not anywhere in the pitch would they mention that in order to be able to teach English (what they were hawking), you should probably know the language of the country you would be teaching in.   But no, they carefully avoided mentioning that.  They wanted you to buy their course, booklet, magic beans, something that would reveal all the secrets of turning your ability to speak English into money.

Perhaps there is some useful information yet to be gleaned from International Living.  But I am not holding out a whole lot of hope.

Makers and Takers

You heard it during the last few presidential elections.  You hear it bandied about by the soulless right all the time.  You know who I'm talking about, the ones who proclaim that anything the government might do to help anyone except the rich is socialism.

Well it really is true, there are makers and takers.  Except, the right has it backwards.

Over the past 50 years, the American worker has steadily increased productivity.  They are making more and more with less and less labor.  They are the makers.

The takers?  The CEO's who demand ever increasing salaries, bonuses that bear no relationship to their performance.  And let's not forget the 'investors' who drained the capital out of Sears before firing so many and declaring bankruptcy.

The new election cycle is just gearing up.  You can't sit this one out.

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Review: Mingling at the Market

I had a chance last week to spend a few hours walking around Paris, going into little shops and open air markets, trying meats and cheeses and bread and wine. And I was able to do this in the company of Natasha, a food writer, teacher of gastronomy, and a fun and knowledgeable hostess.

She only does this twice a week, and each group is limited to 6 people. We met on a street corner at 11 AM, introduced ourselves, and off we went. We learned about cheeses, how to identify the master butcher in a shop, and Natasha pointed out how the finest of their craft display the medallions won in competitions, indicating their superior products. At each stop was a lesson of some sort, and samples of the local fare.

 We spent three hours going to shops and marketplaces, listening, tasting. We ended up in this wine shop (not our first taste of wine on the excursion).

 I had the Côtes du Rhône, a personal favorite of mine, but everyone in our group was happy with their selection.  As we enjoyed our wine, members of the group were getting restaurant recommendations from Natasha.  She knows where to eat all over Paris.

For the rest of our trip, we more or less adopted the French model for our evening meals.  We were staying in a place with a full kitchen so we shopped for fresh food every evening.  And standing in line at our local boulangerie for a freshly baked baguette became part of our evening ritual.

So if you are bound for Paris, and would enjoy a wonderful introduction to French food with hints on how to shop, this is a great way to spend 3 hours.  You can find Mingling at the Market on AIRBNB.

Don't give them their 15 minutes of fame

Another mass shooting and a whole shitload of "thoughts and prayers" without any action. And as long as so much of government is beholden to the NRA, there will be no action. But I think there is something that can be done.

Let me be clear. This is not a substitute for sensible gun laws. It will not make the problem go away. But maybe, just maybe, we could be talking about this a little less often.

If news outlets stopped publishing the names and pictures of the perpetrators, telling us all about their family and upbringing, then I think at least a few people will find some other way to express their hatred and anger.

I am not saying that newspapers and television should ignore mass shooting. On the contrary, I think that we need to keep these in the public consciousness, to keep the pressure on our legislators. All I am suggesting is, don't show their pictures, don't name them. The victims deserve to have their stories told, the killer does not. And you know that part of the reason that they do these things is an "I'll show them" attitude. If you don't get your name and picture splattered all over, then you haven't really "showed" anyone.

When they go to trial, their names will probably come out. And if the victims are mostly black or brown then the alt right Nazi blogs will probably report it and praise the murderer's valiant defense of the white race. But that isn't the same thing as having your picture on the nightly news, and your pathetic story told over and over. It doesn't have the same payoff.

By not giving them that satisfaction, at least some people considering this may be dissuaded, because it won't have the same rush. Will they do something else horrible? Well, maybe. But I think it is worth a shot.

Getting off my ass to do something

I was introduced to Zaylore Stout, or Zee as we call him, by a mutual friend.  We were at the Soma Street Food Park and our conversation over lunch was mostly political.  I recognized that he is a bright and committed progressive.

Flash forward to the tragedy of last November, when the incoherent psychopath that is Donald Trump surprised so many of us by winning a majority of the electoral college.  In the days and weeks that followed, it became clear to me that sitting around and complaining isn't enough.  We need to do something.  But what?

Then I heard that Zee is running for a city council position in his adopted home of St. Louis Park Minnesota.  City council?  It is a starting point.  Ideas, movements, begin at the local level.  So do politicians.  And he is certainly young enough to begin at that level.

So I looked at my work schedule, I looked at my accrued vacation, and I decided that I could spare a week to knock on doors.  So that's where I am now.  I have been knocking on doors, and last night I was editing a video of the endorsement he received from the outgoing council member who's seat he is seeking.  That is now uploaded to his campaign Facebook and YouTube accounts.

It is time now to go out and knock on some more doors.  What are you doing to fight facism?
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Link the length of the patents to drug prices

First of all, we all know drug companies do not pour millions of dollars into developing new drugs out of the kindness of their cold, cold hearts.  They do it in order to make money.  And if they were not such assholes about it, that would be perfectly OK.

All of the stockholders deserve a return on their investment.   All of the employees deserve to be paid.  The millions of dollars the companies invest need to be recouped, as do the millions spent on drugs that are never successful.  Major advances are only made after many failures.  All that money has to come from somewhere, and the successes need to pay for that.

So my thought is this.  Let's start with a baseline 20 years for a patent.   That is the maximum number of years the company can have exclusive rights to their new drug, and it is 20 years after approval.  That can become a shorter period of time, based upon how much they charge for the drug.

Now I am not talking about what the price of the drug is, I am talking about the margin, the cost over the cost of manufacturing and the cost of amortizing all of the expenses incurred in developing it.  If you recover the cost in less that 10 years, then you lose a year off the patent life for each year before 10 that you pay off that cost.

And after the development costs have been amortized, you are allowed a markup over the cost of production and distribution (which may rise or fall) of 60 percent.  If you go over that for two consecutive quarters you lose another year, but you can only lose one year in any 4 quarters.  An exception might be if you go over 100 percent for 2 consecutive quarters some kind of tax kicks in.

In the cost that is being amortized, failed projects can be rolled in, but there are a few caveats.
1.  The company can split the cost of any failed development effort between more than one successful drug or pay for all of it from one drug.  But that total cost can only be assigned once.
2.  In order to write off the cost of a failed development effort, any patents on that drug go into public domain.
3.  Salaries of the 5 five highest paid employees are not included in those costs.  That means the shareholders pay for the CEO's 20 million dollar salary and plus stock options.

I know this isn't perfect and it isn't a complete plan.  But it is a new way of looking at things.  A patent is issued by the government granting exclusive rights to produce something.   Often the foundation of that something was paid for by government grants to basic research.   So you and I paid for some of the research and development that went into that drug.

Drug companies need to make a profit, and they need to be willing to fail.  They need to be willing to risk their shareholder's money on a possibility.   And when they do discover something that is worth bringing to market, they need to be able to recoup the losses of all the failures and somehow come out ahead.  The trick is to give them the incentive to do that and still make those drugs affordable.


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