They're fast--like Greyhounds

The headline "Six Arrested in Alleged Brothel Bus" pretty much says it all.

This redefines the whole concept of "Pimp My Ride."

On the other hand, it could get more people to ride mass transit. And I do mean ride.

And I'm not going to read anything else into the closing paragraph's line, "The three-day initiative led to the ultimate arrest of 69 other people..." just that it's an interesting number of arrests.

License to promote government websites

Today was the day for the trip down to the tax collector's office to get a new license plate for the Camry.

I would note: I live in Florida. I do not live in myflorida.com; that's not even a state. If the State of Florida is going to promote their website on license plates, they ought to pay car owners for the advertising; the $37 check that changed hands did not go from the county to me.

As long as I'm griping, two other points. First, what genius decided that Floridians need a new license plate every five years? Is the aluminum lobby in Tallahassee that strong? I mean--it's not like the old plate wore out. Second, I note that Florida's website is a .com. The .com domain was intended for PRIVATE companies. Florida is a state; it should have a .fl.us domain.

Snowy and death

Snowy passed away today. It wasn't unexpected--the vet said back in January that he probably had less than six months less to live. Last weekend, he stopped eating, and was clearly had trouble walking. When I took him to the vet today, she said what I had feared--his death was imminent, and euthanasia was the most human choice.

I believe in an afterlife, and I believe that animals--at least animals as evolved as cats--go there. One of my main reasons is a story where Snowy was the center. Since I've been recounting it today, I thought I'd offer it here, also.

In 2002, Mrs. Heinlein went into the nursing home. Snowy came out to live with us. He was aloof. This didn't surprise me, he had always been aloof, at least to me. My main contact with him before he came to live with us was things like hurricane evacuations and computer repairs--which I'm sure he regarded as disruptions in his life.

In any case, on the night Mrs. Heinlein passed away, I was up late on my computer. (BTW--as an aside, the cat pictured with Mrs. Heinlein in the above link is Snowy.) At about 4:30 that night/morning, Snowy started yowling. Peabrain yowls randomly--but that was always uncharacteristic for Snowy. For a couple of minutes, he was yelling his head off mournfully. Then he settled down. Sometime around 5:30 or 6 that morning, the nursing home called--Mrs. Heinlein passed away in her sleep. The following evening, Snowy jumped up on my lap. He had barely approached me before then. After then, he was a habitual lap cat.

Somehow, Snowy knew Mrs. Heinlein passed away--and before we did, probably exactly when she passed away. The only explanation that makes sense is that he sensed her soul leaving her body.

My belief in the afterlife presents me with a philosophic quandary. I prefer reason to faith, and I don't like to believe in things I don't understand and/or can't prove. While the episode with Snowy is a compelling anecdote in my mind, I didn't have the presence of mind to even haul out a tape recorder when Snowy was acting up--I have no evidence to prove it happened. (Not that a tape recording of a cat meowing would prove anything metaphysical.) I also have to admit, I also want to believe something of our minds live on after death, beyond what's shown in our works and our progeny--and that desire could color my judgment. At the same time, I don't have a hypothesis of HOW the soul could separate from the body and live on. Nor do I have a great deal of confidence in any particular traditional description of the afterlife. But I don't have a better explanation for what could have set him off. A "psychic bond" is just as tenuous as an "immortal soul"--that explanation also has scant proof and involves the mind reaching beyond the body; in the sense that both involve the cat sensing her soul, it's essentially the same explanation. Could he have heard something, or could something have set off that magnetic sense cats are supposed to have? Atlantic Beach is more than 30 miles away, with the city of Jacksonville in between--I'd think that would drown out any sensory information.

In any event, today was Snowy's turn to find out the real story about the afterlife. Believing that something of him lives on out there somehow, doesn't make his death any easier. Rest in peace, Snow Cat.

Chef's plans are hard to stomach.

According to a recent Reuters story, chef Gordon Ramsay is advocating fining restaurants that serve out-of-season produce. I don't know anything else significant about Ramsay's business plan or political views (I've seen ads for "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" which is/was hosted by him--that's all); so this could be a sarcastic comment, or a proposal suggesting a law where he doesn't really want the law, but does want to push people into eating only in-season fruits and vegetables. However, the report from Reuters seemed to indicate this was a serious proposal, I'm taking it as such, and on that basis, using it as a perfect example of someone wanting to misuse the law for personal benefit.

Ramsay is perfectly entitled to not want imported, out-of-season produce for any reason he may want. I'm sure he has his reasons to choose not to eat such fruits and vegetables: he may feel the energy used to import those products is wasteful and bad for the environment; he may feel that foreign agricultural workers are mistreated; he may feel it undermines traditional culture in some way. He is free to refrain from eating, buying, or serving that food he finds offensive for those reasons. No one should stop him from advocating the same course to others, either.

What is distressing about his desire to impose new laws and fines is that it goes beyond those choices. Everything I mentioned in the previous paragraph is something he is within his rights to do, but others are within their rights to do differently. Ramsay is trying to take away the choice. His reasons may be aesthetic--i.e., he simply finds it distasteful that people are eating foods in ways he doesn't like. Or they could be economic--i.e., his restaurants are losing business to other establishments because he won't serve foods that others will and that the public wants. Or they could be a combination of those reasons, or others I'm not thinking of. However, whichever of those motivations is behind his position is irrelevant. Others should be as free to make their culinary choices as Ramsay is to make his, but if the law he is advocating ever went into effect, the British public would have Ramsay's choices imposed upon them.

The bottom line is this: freedom requires tolerance. Other people will certainly do things that we think are stupid, wasteful, annoying, distasteful, or otherwise wrong. However, if those poor choices don't hurt us or others, then the proper course is to try and dissuade people from making such poor choices, but accept it and move on if they do anyway. Just because you or I don't like something doesn't mean it should be illegal.

Bubbles in the oil?

While I was watching the news tonight, I caught a comment that intrigued me. George Soros testified before the Senate last Tuesday that part of the run-up in oil prices was due to a speculative bubble.

I had always accepted what seemed to be the conventional wisdom about the high prices: that strong demand (economic growth in China, India, etc., Americans' refusal to drive more fuel efficient vehicles), and tight and uncertain supplies (instability/tension/war in Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Columbia, etc.; price manipulation by places like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, etc.; our own government's ridiculous refusal to drill in ANWR and offshore despite the presence of known oil reserves) lead to high prices just due to the laws of supply and demand. Since oil is relatively inelastic--people can't stop going to work, heating their homes in winter, buying food grown using diesel-powered machinery and petrochemical-based fertilizer and pesticides, etc.--the price was destined to rise until something gave; i.e., supply increased because the price was too high to resist entering the market, and/or demand dropped because the gas or whatever was simply unaffordable.

However, if part of the equation is pure speculation, then it suggests three things: first, it means that prices could go much higher than they otherwise might--in part because it's not rational forces controlling the market, but rather simple greed. Second, it suggests that at least prices won't stabilize anywhere higher than they are now--if part of the price now is due to speculation, and the speculators give up, then prices should drop. Third, it means it's going to be a lot harder to predict where prices are going, since it'll be hard to tell when when the bubble will burst.

I'm not sure Soros is right about this, but I'm not sure he's wrong, either. We'll see what happens in the future. It is something to think about, either way.