The SoapBoxers

A friend offered to host my blog on his server space. That means that I will be jumping ship from blogger and landing on my own domain at www.ObservingCasually.com Note: I have posted the same article in the old and new locations. If you are currently reading this, you are in the NEW location.

Please update your bookmarks/favorites accordingly. If you are currently subscribing via RSS (and very few of you are), you will have to resubscribe from the new site.

I have also decided on a schedule for the blog:

Monday: Sports
Tuesday: News
Wednesday: Wildcard (anything goes)
Thursday: People, places, historical events
Friday: Fiction Friday
Weekend: Wildcard

I will certainly miss a few days along the way, but this should give you a better idea of what to expect.

I do appreciate Blogger getting me off the ground with this blog. Blogger has a pretty easy learning curve, and it is definitely a good tool for beginners.

This is a 2-fer Thursday – 2 posts for the price of one. We won’t have these every week, but every now and then, I’ll do one. After you read this article, scroll down to read the Sporting News post.

I was startled the other night when I realized that my box of corn dogs contained only five dogs. In the past, it had always contained six. Since I am in the habit of eating three corn dogs at once, this was a traumatic turn of events.

All across the consumer landscape, changes are afoot. The manufacturers are in a difficult position. On one hand, many of them are seeing steep increases in costs. On the other hand, they are hesitant to raise prices in this economy and lose customers to competitors who don’t change prices.

Caught in this bind, the companies have gotten creative. Many companies are retaining the same physical dimensions of the package, but reducing the quantity of the product. It’s not just corn dogs, either. Grab your jar of peanut better and flip it upside down. See that – the bottom is concave! Fun size candy bars? They have gotten even smaller – many of them are narrower than they have been in the past.

Even the Girl Scouts have are going this – you’re getting one less ounce in your box of cookies. Pay attention to the food you’re buying and you’ll see other examples of content downsizing.

Some people might shrug this off and see it as an effective involuntary weight loss program. Not me – I’m a thin person and I need my food to make sure I don’t blow away in the wind.

Companies – if you need to raise the price, raise the price. An extra fifty cents in the grocery store will be a lot less annoying to me that noticing one fewer corn dog when I open the box.

I started subscribing to the Sporting News a few months ago. The subscription rate was cheap, so I figured I would give it a shot.

I have been pretty disappointed. It doesn’t seem to stack up very well against other sports publications and web sites. In particular, its analysis of statistics can be rather poor at times.

The March 30th edition is a case in point. There is an article related to the shortness of a running back’s career. An inset box titled “built for the short run” shows the average years of service for the starters at various positions in week 1 of the NFL season.

I assume that we were to take these numbers and draw a conclusion about the average length of an NFL career for those positions – but I would be really hesitant to do that, since that would be a poor use of the data. It completely ignores bench players and the stage of a player’s career – maybe this year’s draft class just had a great crop of running backs.

Take this example: let’s say that every NFL team had a 10 year veteran at running back in week 1. Then, in week 2, they yanked the veterans and plugged in rookies.

If we run the Sporting News stat, the average years of service would be 10 years for the starters in week 1 and would then slide dramatically to an average of 1 year of service for the starters in week 2. Yet, the cast of players didn’t change, nor did the expected career length.

The model is simply a poor fit – it does not measure what the Sporting News is trying to make it measure. It would be like taking the three members of my family, calculating the average age, and declaring this to be the average life span.

(Note: this article was originally truncated. I apologize for the confusion)

Today’s guest post is from Phil Ossifer (not his real name), writer of the blog Chunga goes wild. Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Soap Boxers.

Phil works in IT, but his journey to the world of Information Technology was interrupted by a jaunt as a chef that involved training at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and a successful career as a chef / ice sculptor. After mastering the world of food, Phil turned his talents to computers. In the process, he logged classroom time toward his Bachelor’s degree in four different decades. Last year, he gave the university an ultimatum – grant him tenure or give him his degree.

Without further ado … “Stop the auto bailout” by Phil Ossifer.

The U.S. Government is making a big mistake by providing additional $billions in another attempt to bail out major players in our failing automotive industry.

Why do we think a few more $billion will help? These companies were losing money even during the economic boom (GM and Chrysler are over $100 billion in debt at the end of 2008, and it has gotten much worse). All of this after already supplying them with $15 billion in 2008.

We should not continue to throw good money after bad in attempts to keep the industry afloat longer, since this will ultimately make our situation worse. It adds billions to our debt, extending the depth and length of the current recession/depression. Hey! National debt is not limitless – eventually, other countries would be unwilling to buy our debt. There are indications that China is already shying away from taking on new U.S. debt. Played out, this is similar to a large auto company failing – only this time it’s a nation.

I realize that there is much pain and gnashing of teeth that will result from a failure of GM or Chrysler, but unfortunately, I think our automakers are destined to fail in the face of superior competition. That’s not an anti-American slam; it’s my objective assessment.

This is not the first time we’ve had a painful parting with a traditional industry that we needed at one time. Over the decades, we’ve had many changes (e.g. outsourcing of manufacturing, toy-making, etc) that have led to job loss and other trickle-down effects. Example: The Japanese beat us at consumer electronics manufacturing and we ended up turning away from that industry. It would have been foolish to try to keep it afloat by adding to taxpayer debt. We had to change, and we have to continue to change to compete in the global economy.

What the U.S. is good at – and has to keep doing to survive – is innovation. We invent something new, lead the pack, then inevitably a competing country beats us at our game, and we re-invent again. Doing this starts with solid education. This process is not something to be feared, because 1) it is inescapable, as more developing countries get in the game, and 2) there is a lot of good in this process – quality improves, choices improve, and prices drop.

I realize that this does not provide any help for the many autoworkers, supporting sub-industries – and trickle-down effects like adding to the mortgage default rate, reduced spending, etc, etc.and I do not have an answer for that.

But let’s not delay the inevitable. The loss of our automakers is pain that we must go through, because our alternatives are either 1) go through the pain now, or 2) go through the pain a little later, but with of billions in new debt. These continued bailouts can hasten the pace towards financial insolvency, and I for one don’t feel like learning the Mandarin language just yet.

I admit that this may be easier for me to say this since I’m more removed from the direct effects of the failing auto industry. I don’t like it, but I think that it is our reality.