Just in time to rebuild my deck

I do a lot of woodworking projects and sometimes they are outside. Pressure-treated lumber has been my friend but the chemical cocktails used to treat them are pretty nasty.

Then along comes TimberSIL. This is a cool new sodium silicate and soda ash preserved wood with a non-poisonous preservative.

Like most materials meant to last a long time, the truth will only be known many years from now, but this is very promising. Looks like it's comparably priced with traditional PT lumber.

Too bad I have to drive to St. Louis to get it.

Latest Bumper sticker idea

In the fine tradition of the judicial process as defined by religion.

When junk food is outlawed, only outlaws will have Twinkies.

What's the new pot heroine cocaine crack ?

Burger King. (Perhaps this explains the weird dude in their commercials.)

NPR ran a story by Jennifer Obakhume on Morning Edition today. Obakhume is a senior at Inglewood High School in Los Angeles.

The school has stopped serving fast food, and took out all but one soda machine. Obakhume says that school officials "couldn't have planned for what happened next - a black market for junk food."

She describes the lines at the soda machine reminiscent of Soviet-era bread shortages, the network of cellular calls placing clandestine pizza orders, and students with more gastrointestinal freedom literally "throwing fast food over campus gates to friends."

Evidently Inglewood High School has neither a history nor an economics teacher, because they could have predicted exactly what would have happened. The free market simply asserted its power in the form of a black market when commerce was overly restricted. It's another reason why sin taxes are such a fraud. At the point where consumers are unduly burdened going through legitimate supply channels, instead of stopping consumption they move outside of legitimate channels. (Which has the effect of making "sin" a crime -- another subject altogether.)

How many times does this issue need to be revisited?

Does anyone think that Prohibition was not an abysmal failure? What about the "War on Drugs"?

Need a contemporary example? New York increased cigarette taxes to absurd levels, and "Black Market Cigarette Sales are Booming" in the Big Apple

This audio report is extremely well written and details things like students buying bulk candy and chips, smuggling them in to school, and selling them in the hallway behind the backs of teachers.

Inglewood isn't teaching students to eat better, it's teaching them that black markets are lucrative for those willing to take the risk.

Why is this not a gateway learning experience to drug dealing? When presented with opportunities to sell drugs later, won't students remember their profitable fast food days? This is the worst way to teach kids about the profit motive in black markets, because the consequences of dealing in this particular market are so inconsequential compared to "real world".

Extremely Bad Form

There are some really bad electronic forms on the internet. So bad that I wish we could harness "bad form power" and power the planet.

Occasionally, a form comes along that is so poorly implemented it's funny.

Take a look at this "free razor" form from Supermax (pic of form). They are obviously gathering demographic data, but they won't get accurate data, and I know that for certain.

You can see that certain portions of the form are required and some are not. (Indicated by red stars).

However, several of the non-required fields are pre-populated. That is, the have default values that get filled in if the user doesn't change them.

If the problem with this isn't immediately obvious, ask how do you tell the difference between a person who is single or who just didn't answer the question?

The icing on the cake is the form doesn't call certain fields "required", it calls them "compulsory"! People don't like to be compelled or coerced into giving away information, and calling a form compulsory certainly gives that impression.

I opted to not get a free razor.

Gotta Get Me Some Santa's Butt

When neoprohibitionists and nannystatists create a perfect storm, this is what you get.

(CBS4) BELCHERTOWN, MA The state of Connecticut is banning sales of a couple holiday beers with Santa on the label.

Link (which explains the butt reference)

This is, of course, because the beer might appeal to children.

I guess St Pauli Girl isn't sold in Connecticut because the buxom beer gal would appeal to adolescents?

Isn't Molson's mascot a big teddy bear?

props Balko