Luxury Pyramids

I ran across this interesting article a while back by Meagan Willet on the "Business Insider" website: Here's the Hierarchy of Luxury Brands Around the World. It cited a book by HSBC Bank managing director Erwan Rambourg titled The Bling Dynasty: Why the Reign of Chinese Luxury Shoppers Has Only Just Begun, in which Mr Rambourg created a pyramid of brands to show how major brand names range in accessibility from more-or-less affordable everyday luxuries like Starbucks coffee* and craft beers to extreme-high-end luxury items like top-of-the-line diamonds. Here's his pyramid:

The idea is that brands which become overly accessible to the Great Unwashed like you and I become less desirable and appealing to those higher up on the economic scale. If too many people are able to buy a particular item, it loses its appeal as a symbol of the wealth, power, and sophistication that allows the privileged to exist in the rarefied atmosphere of the social and economic elite.

I tried to do up a few versions of the Rambourg Pyramid** that would be a little more realistic when applied to the 99%, but wasn't really happy with any of them. Here's one version ...

In my pyramid, the first five levels represent the increasing levels of more realistic "luxury" (meaning that there's more disposable income to be able to dispose of at increasingly expensive stores). Most of us will never reach the peak of super-ultra-premium-high-end goods represented at the Bespoke*** level of Mr Rambourg's pyramid.

I spend most of my time in the first three levels of my pyramid and the first level of Mr Rambourg's, and at my age I'm not likely to move up much higher. So tell me ... what does your pyramid look like? Leave a comment and let the rest of us know.

Have a good day. Shop at the right places, and come back tomorrow when we reveal our Right Cheek Ass Clown of the Month for April.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* I'm not sure I agree that Starbucks Coffee is an "affordable everyday luxury" ... I sometimes think that each Starbucks location should have a collocated bank branch to handle short-term loans.

** My term, not Mr Rambourg's.

*** "Bespoke" means "custom-made," as opposed to off-the-rack.

The Age of America in Presidents' Lives and Other Thoughts on History

Those of you who are regular visitors to this space know that I am a history buff, endlessly fascinated by the study of all that happened in the past to shape the times in which we live. This, of course, made me sit up and take notice of this article that ran last month in the Washington Post: Amazing but True: America Is Only Four Presidents’ Lives Old.

Here’s how it works, in the first paragraph of the article:

“When President Obama was born (1961), President Herbert Hoover was still alive (1874-1964). When Hoover was born, President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) was still alive. When President Johnson was born, President John Adams (1735-1826) was still alive. And just like that, we've connected present day to the Founding Fathers.”

I don’t know about you, but I found that absolutely fascinating. Here's a chart from the article that shows how the lives of the Presidents overlap, from George Washington to Barack Obama (it's easier to read at the original location)* ...

I think most people don’t enjoy studying history because they think of it in terms of the need to remember lots of dry-as-dust names and dates that aren’t relevant to their daily lives. But I would argue that it is relevant, because everything that’s going on in the world today is a product of things that went on before … often hundreds of years ago. One could argue that the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 set the stage for World War I, which led to World War II, which gave us the Cold War that created the conditions for the Korean and Vietnamese Wars. World War II laid the groundwork for the never-appease-a-dictator-again mindset that led us, directly or indirectly, to war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the bitter fights over the nuclear treaty being laboriously hammered out with Iran.

Of course, it’s very easy to take a simplistic view of history and draw the wrong lessons from situations that are not equivalent. This was the message of Richard Neustadt and Ernest May’s wonderful 1988 book Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. Even so, the old adage that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it remains as true today as it ever was.

Have a good day. Enjoy the study of history, even if it's only the history of your family. You'll probably find it fascinating.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* I was born in 1951, and have lived through 13 Presidents ... Herbert Hoover was still alive when I was born.

Thinking About Sand

There are a lot of things in this world that we're running short of - clean water, various minerals, arable land, and common sense among them. But one thing it never occurred to me would be in short supply is - of all things - sand. Yesterday I ran across this extremely interesting (if a bit long) March 26th article by Vince Beiser from Wired Magazine: The Deadly Global War for Sand.

Now, sand isn't something I've thought very much about, other than to curse it while I sweep away piles of it from our streets and sidewalks after the recent miserable winter, but it turns out that common, ordinary sand is one of the most important commodities in the world. We need sand to make glass, cement, silicon chips, and all the other things that are built with them. Our civilization is, quite literally, built on sand. According to the article,

"Apart from water and air, humble sand is the natural resource most consumed by human beings. People use more than 40 billion tons of sand and gravel every year. There’s so much demand that riverbeds and beaches around the world are being stripped bare ... And the amount of sand being mined is increasing exponentially."

But how could there be a shortage of sand?, you ask, when there are vast tracts of sand in the world's deserts, and the Middle East has to be good for something besides oil and mindless violence. But as the article points out and I never realized,

"Desert sand generally doesn’t work for construction; shaped by wind rather than water, desert grains are too round to bind together well."

I think this is a fascinating article. It describes vast criminal networks devoted to mining, transporting, and selling common sand, a resource that may seem limitless but which is, in fact, in increasingly short supply. As the world's beaches and riverbeds are scraped free of sand, huge industries have sprung up to vacuum it up from the ocean floor. Uncontrolled sand mining causes beach erosion and pollutes the air and water.

It's political, too. China is dredging millions of tons of sand to build or enlarge islands that will reinforce its claims to vast sections of the South China Sea. Dubai's enormous land-reclamation projects like Palm Island (shown below) and constant building of huge skyscrapers have exhausted all the nearby sources of sand, leading to a worldwide trade - both legal and illegal - in plain old sand. The article points out that "Exporters in Australia are literally selling sand to Arabs."

Sadly, if you and I ever think about sand, it's in the context of sandbags to hold back flood waters and material to fill children's sandboxes. It's the beautiful white stuff we get in unfortunate orifices at the beach, or the abrasive substance glued to heavy paper to help with woodworking. And it appears in our songs as a symbol of impermanence, as in the song "Yesterday When I Was Young," written by Herbert Kretzmer and Charles Aznavour and sung memorably by Roy Clark:

"The thousand dreams I dreamed,

The splendid things I planned,

I always built to last on weak and shifting sand"

And yet, as we see, we depend on sand for the very permanence that we deny in song.

Sand. Don't build home without it.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The New Civil Service Exam

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, the ease of digitally submitting applications for government employment has led to a virtual tsunami of resumes and cover letters that make it very difficult for managers to identify and hire the best persons for government service*. As one way of fixing the situation, many government agencies are reinstating the Civil Service Examination, which was done away with more than 30 years ago over concerns about fairness and discrimination. According to the article, the updated test, which is administered online, evaluates job applicants' reasoning  and problem-solving skills by "us(ing) animated avatars and videos to simulate challenges" they might face on the job.

Now that's all well and good, and I applaud the government for trying to come up with a good way of identifying and hiring top people. Too bad the test doesn't apply to people running for Congress or the Presidency ... it might help weed out some of the losers that are coming out of the pre-2016 woodwork.

As it happens, I have some ideas on the sorts of questions that ought to be on a civil service exam**.

Because religious conflict is a serious problem in today's world, job applicants should be required to demonstrate knowledge of religious issues. Here's a sample question:

You are a public defender, assigned to defend Adam and Eve against the charge of eating the forbidden fruit. Explain your philosophical strategy to a Hassidic Rabbi, a Sunni Imam, a Buddhist monk, and an Ayatollah, and answer their arguments, using quotations from the Bhagavad Gita, the writings of Martin Luther, and the Book of Mormon to make your points. The response will be scored by an Anglican bishop.

A civil servant should have a firm grasp of economics as well. Here is a possible question to evaluate an applicant's knowledge of economic theory:

Develop a realistic plan for balancing the federal budget, including a detailed strategy for refinancing the national debt. Assuming that at least one of the major political parties will vehemently object to your approach, explain how you will convince them to lend their support. Your numbers need not balance or make sense.

Many civil servants must deal with lawyers representing businesses, special interest groups, and individual aggrieved citizens; therefore, a good aptitude test should evaluate this skill. Here is a possible question:

In Part 2 of Shakespeare's "Henry VI," Jack Cade, the leader of the Populist revolt, proposes that the first order of business following a successful coup d'etat should be to "kill all the lawyers." In light of the present populist mood in the United States, assess the utility and any potential impact of such a policy today.

Although persons applying to the State Department must take the Foreign Service Examination, it is important for persons in other federal departments and agencies to understand the intricacies of foreign affairs. Here is a possible question to evaluate candidates' understanding of foreign issues:

It has recently been suggested that only a foreign war can restore America's lost national consensus. Propose the ideal opponent(s) for the US in such a war, and how the conflict might be engineered so that US would seem not to be the aggressor in the situation.

Those are all good questions, but I think that in the end, the new Civil Service Exam will end up reflecting the philosophy of the party in power.  If the GOP were in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress***, and able to agree among themselves on a coherent program, I suspect that their version of the exam would look something like this :

Thank you for your interest in serving in the wasteful, bloated, and overreaching United States Government. Please indicate by circling "yes" or "no" whether you agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. The Constitution consists of the Second Amendment and some other stuff about government.
YES  NO

2. The Founders clearly stated that the United States would be a 100% Christian nation, and that all other false religions are causes of terrorism.
YES  NO

3. "Climate Change" has absolutely no scientific basis, and people who believe in it are un-American and probably terrorists.
YES  NO

4. The United States is the most exceptional nation ever founded, is a shining example for the rest of the world, is incapable of doing anything wrong, and anyone who says otherwise is a terrorist.
YES  NO

5. Taxes are bad under all circumstances, and could be completely eliminated if the government stopped wasteful spending on useless things like welfare, education, food safety, and environmental protection.
YES  NO

6. Those who disagree with the correct answers to questions 1 through 4 above are terrorists who hate America.
YES  NO

Thank you for taking the Civil Service Examination. If you answered "NO" to any of the questions above, please turn in your answer sheet, leave, and go to Canada or someplace else where your godless socialist ways will be appreciated.

So ...

Those are my thoughts on the Civil Service Exam. What questions would you ask? Inquiring minds want to know, so leave a comment.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Although why anyone would want to enter government service today - particularly if they are applying for a position requiring a Senate confirmation circus - is beyond me.

** You probably figured that out already, didn't you?

*** AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Poetry Sunday

We all daydream. We look at our lives and imagine what might have been and wonder if it would have been better or worse ... or more or less the same. This poem speaks to that bit of daydream ...

The Day You Looked Upon Me As A Stranger 

by Jeffrey Harrison 

I had left you at the gate to buy a newspaper
and on my way back stopped at a bank of monitors
to check the status of our flight to London.

That was when you noticed a middle-aged man
in a brown jacket and the green short-brimmed cap
I’d bought for the trip. It wasn’t until I turned
and walked toward you that you saw him as me.
What a nice-looking man, you told me you’d thought-
maybe European, with that unusual cap …
somebody, you said, you might want to meet.
We both laughed. And it aroused my vanity
that you had been attracted to me afresh,
with no baggage. A kind of affirmation.
But doubt seeped into that crevice of time
when you had looked upon me as a stranger,
and I wondered if you’d pictured him
as someone more intriguing than I could be
after decades of marriage, all my foibles known.
Did you have one of those under-the-radar daydreams
of meeting him, hitting it off, and getting
on a plane together? In those few moments,
did you imagine a whole life with him?
And were you disappointed, or glad, to find
it was only the life you already had?


Have a good day. Enjoy the life you have, whatever the shortcomings you imagine.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Well, the good news is that we finally made it out of March. The bad news is that April looks like it's going to suck, too.

Vicious thugs belonging to the al-Shabaab group murdered nearly 150 people in cold blood in an attack on Christian students attending Garissa University in Kenya; after years of arguing that the education of athletes is paramount, the NCAA now says it has no legal responsibility to make sure education is actually delivered*; more than 50 people are known dead and another 15 are missing after a Russian fishing trawler sank near the Kamchatka peninsula; at least 270 prisoners - many of them with links to al-Qaeda - escaped when Al Qaeda fighters attacked a prison in Yemen on Thursday; in California, Governor Jerry Brown implemented mandatory water restrictions in the face of the worst drought in the state's history.

We haven't looked at crash test dummies for a while, so let's start off with a collection of theme cartoons in honor of these most unfortunate of professionals ...

I'd probably have gone for something else in my benefits package ...

Gotta go now ...

Well, they need to learn their trade somehow ...

And they need to earn their licenses just like everyone else ...

The fortuneteller calls it ...

GPS is very accurate ...

Turning to other subjects, Agnes is the Queen of Photoshop, and does amazing things with the digital photos we shoot. But there is the occasional mishap, even for experts ...

As I suspected ...

Look closely ...

We've been dog-sitting Clara, our daughter's dog. She figured this one out right away ...

And so there you have it - the first Cartoon Saturday for the month of April. The way things are going, I hope it gets you through to next Saturday.

Clara has been driving poor Agnes bonkers all week, wanting to constantly sit in her lap** to the point where she (Agnes, not Clara) can't get anything done. When I'm done here, I'm going to take her (Clara, not Agnes) for a marathon walk so that Agnes can have some peace and quiet to work on her projects. I, of course, will come back with one arm significantly longer than the other and a fistful of plastic bags***.

Ah, weekends!

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when Poetry Sunday returns.

Bilbo

* I'm sure you're absolutely shocked at this.

** A solid, stocky, energetic pit bull is not the poster child for lap dogs.

*** The same stuff we get from Congress, except that I have to do my own packaging.

Great Moments in Editing

Today is the first Friday in April, last week was the Left Cheek Ass Clown award, and that means that today it's time once again to look at some more Great Moments in Editing. Fasten your mental seat belts and let's go ...

Say what?

I don't know about you, but my hearing is 20/20 ...

I think something may be missing here ...

Those New Yorkers are a lot ruder than I thought ...

It's just what they need ...

I think this is what we call a second-order effect ...

But they told me to label the plugs! ...

Possible waste of $200 ...

Maybe it's just me, but I always thought that a colonoscopy was done from the other end ...

I think I've found a way to recycle all those leaves come next fall ...

And there you have it - another selection of editorial and similar gems. Now go forth and commit no more editorial offenses.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday. See you then!

Bilbo

Graceful Degradation

Many years ago as a young and impressionable Air Force officer I was introduced to an interesting, if somewhat frightening concept – graceful degradation.

Graceful degradation is the ability of a computer, machine, electronic system or network to maintain the greatest possible degree of functionality even when a large portion of it has been destroyed or rendered inoperative. This may be done by reducing emphasis on less-important activities, or by turning off non-essential systems or functions to devote full system resources to more important areas.  The purpose of graceful degradation is to prevent catastrophic failure.

So this got me to thinking* about how we might employ the concept of graceful degradation to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure in various other areas …

Congress. It’s probably too late to prevent catastrophic failure, but we could probably ameliorate the damage by turning off such non-essential, resource-wasting subroutines as the Republican Study Committee and the Republican and the Democratic leadership of both houses.

The Legal System. Mandate trial by combat to the death between the opposing attorneys for any lawsuit over a certain dollar limit. $5.00 should do it. This would have the dual benefit of reducing both the case backlog and the lawyer infestation.

Elections. (1) Install flow regulators to adjust the speed and volume of cash flowing through the political system, similar to the systems used in aircraft to ensure that fuel is evenly distributed to improve weight and balance. (2) Require candidates for office to actually demonstrate a working knowledge of the Constitution**, basic economics, history, science, and logical thinking. (3) Dynamite the Washington, DC, headquarters of every second lobbying firm.

Tax Reform. Require every member of Congress to personally calculate his or her own taxes every year, with a penalty of ten years in prison and a fine of $50,000 for use of an accountant or tax lawyer. The tax code would be simplified in a matter of weeks, and we'd get rid of some useless elected reprehensives for a few years.

I'm quite sure there are other things we could do to gracefully degrade some of the problems we face and prevent catastrophic failure. What suggestions do you have? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. Degrade gracefully.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* And you know how dangerous that is.

** Knowing the Second Amendment by heart does not count. 

April Fools' Day

Today is Wednesday, April 1^st … the day commonly known as “April Fools’ Day.” It’s a day when people play practical jokes on each other and the media report bizarre, made-up stories with no factual basis*. April Fool’s Day has been a popular quasi-holiday since the 1800’s … it’s not an official national holiday anywhere, but it is well-known and widely observed in Canada, Europe, Australia, Brazil and – of course - the United States.

One of the best April Fool pranks ever was played by the Guardian newspaper on April 1, 1977, when it printed a seven-page supplement commemorating the tenth anniversary of the independence of the island nation of San Serriffe, complete with maps and themed advertisements from major companies. You can read the whole story in my April Fools’ Day post from last year.

Unfortunately, April Fools’ Day isn’t as much fun as it used to be, mostly because so many professional fools use the other 364 days (365 in leap years) to spread buffoonery far and wide, squeezing out the amateurs. It’s especially bad now, when we’re stumbling helplessly into the whirling maelstrom of foolishness of the 2016 presidential campaigns. You need only look at the presumptive candidates** to know that we’re in for an epic load of enormously expensive, world-class ass-clownery.

And it’s not just the politicians doing it.

Our stable of April Fools has expanded to include climate change deniers; people who reject proven science; anti-vaccination zealots; people who want the right to carry concealed weapons everywhere, no matter how inappropriate; and hyper-religious wingnuts (whether Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). And that’s just for starters.

It won’t be time to name April's Right Cheek Ass Clown for another week and a half, but today seems appropriate to give at least a sad acknowledgement to a man who would be a world-class contender for the award, and is a poster child for April Foolery – I refer, of course, to Indiana governor Mike Pence, who has twisted himself into knots trying to evade responsibility for his shameful “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which legitimizes bigotry by allowing anyone the right to use their religious beliefs as an excuse for denying rights to others.

Governor Pence gives the finger to those of whom he doesn't approve

Yes, Dear Readers, today is April Fools' Day. Perhaps it ought to be a national holiday, with parades, presidential statements, and non-binding Congressional resolutions. Heaven knows we have enough people to be recognized.

Have a good day. Pity the fools***. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Except for Fox News, which pretty much does that every day.

** Yes, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, I’m talking to you.

*** Where's Mr T when you need him?

Guest Post

Hi, there!

My name is Clara. For some reason, Bilbo hasn't gotten around to introducing us yet, so I've got to take matters into my own paws. Nice to meet you, and thanks for dropping by.

I usually live with Bilbo's grandchildren down in Manassas, but since they're on vacation with their Mom, I'm staying with Bilbo and Agnes for a few days. I've been here before, so I've already had the chance to scope things out and find the right places to get into trouble have fun. They have a nice sofa right in front of the windows in their living room, which is the perfect place for me to stand guard and protect them from mailmen, door-to-door salespeople, and traveling politicians. And no other dog is getting into this yard, let me tell you! They also have a really nice king-sized bed for me to sleep in. Well, they really would rather I slept somewhere else, but hey, that's a lot of space for just two people, right?

You may have noticed that I'm a Pit Bull. I hope that didn't turn you off, because I'm actually a very nice dog. I really like most people (especially children), but everybody's afraid of me because they think that we're all serial killers or something. I know that some of us have been trained to be nasty, but it's not how we really are ... it's just how someone made us. I ask you ... is this a picture of a vicious dog?

We need to hire the PR guy that those dumb Labrador Retrievers hired to polish their image.

Anyway, Bilbo's not here right now, and I know that he used to let Nessa post from time to time, so I thought I'd go ahead and give it a shot myself. It isn't that hard, and I guess I can do at least as good a job as some of the humans I've seen writing stuff on this Internet thing.

So tell me, what is it with comments that make you humans so crazy? It seems as if when one person writes something on the Internet, a bunch of other people have to jump in with a bunch of comments that are really nasty and insulting, most of which doesn't have anything to do with what was originally written. What's up with that? And who's this Hitler guy that everyone compares people who don't agree with them to*?

We dogs may bark at each other, but then we just sniff each other's butts and go off to chase each other and fetch sticks and roll in smelly stuff and have fun. All you do is bark at each other, and never move on to the fun stuff. You people really need to get lives.

Well, okay, that's it for now. I'm sure somebody will leave a comment about this. But just remember, my name is Clara ... not Hitler.

As Bilbo would say, have a good day. He'll be back tomorrow with more of his own thoughts, and I'll be back whenever I can sneak into his study.

Arf!

Clara

* I don't know who he is, but from how you all talk about him, he sounds like one of the few people I'd bite just on principle.