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What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish. -- Thomas Wolfe
The defendant in this case had to fight this in court, and while they won, it was oh so expensive. It cost them $83,000 in legal fees. They're asking to have the judge who brought the suit to cover those costs. No decision yet... but at the moment, just in terms of dollars, this business owner has lost more than what most people make in a year over a simple mistake. That doesn't at all factor in their time involved.
There ought to be a reasonable cap for this kind of thing. Like maybe two or three times the value of the damaged/lost article. Had Roy Pearson only been able to sue for $2,400 over his $800 pair of pants, he would have been able to recoup his money and easily buy a new pair, the owners of the dry cleaners would have spent no more than $3,000 on the whole affair, and the legal system wouldn't look so ridiculous to allow this sort of escapade.
Roy Pearson thought he had a right to this. In fact, he asked that the decision be reconsidered, and was told that there will be no reconsideration.
Pearson originally sought $67 million in his lawsuit, which was based on a strict interpretation of the city's consumer protection law. The suit also included damages for inconvenience, mental anguish and attorney's fees for representing himself.
But beyond just the value of the lost pants, we have the ambiguous and subjective valuations for inconvenience and mental anguish. And you would think that two or three times the value of the pants might cover that.
I'll keep on top of this. I want to know if the folks who own the dry cleaners get their money back. I also suspect that Roy Pearson, a judge who is apparently bereft of common sense and perspective, will keep plugging away at this. Which of course will cost more legal fees to the defendants...
A favorite blog of mine is Trust Matters by Charles H. Green, who wrote up a great post on apologies and forgiveness. He gives a list of what makes for a proper apology.
1. Full acknowledgement of the offense 2. An explanation 3. Genuine expresssion of remorse 4. Reparations for damage 5. The final gallant act of apology is to release your former victim from any expectation of forgiveness. No matter how noble you have been, he will forgive - or refuse to forgive - on his own terms. That is his right.
He elaborates further on this by saying:
Apologies should not be tainted by forgiving, or by seeking forgiveness. Those have their place, but it’s elsewhere.
A good apology tries to set aright something that you set awry by impinging on another's will. It's only appropriate that the apology itself refrain from further imposition of will. Hence the separation from forgiving or forgiveness.
In other words, an apology has no agenda. It's simply a statement of fact: I screwed up and I'm willing to make up for it.
That's tough stuff. How hard that is to do personally, but also professionally, whether it's to a co-worker, to a manager, or to a customer.
Tamara and I have driven across the country three times this year, and we have at least two more trips in front of us, and that's driving when fuel economy is most economical: on the highway. That's not to mention driving in town daily at lower MPG.
Given this expensive state of affairs, I wanted to learn more about why gas prices are as they are and where that money goes. Caveat: I'm no expert. I'm trying to piece it together from multiple sources... if you see an error, correct me where I'm wrong. But I'll give you what I can discern. Consider this learning out loud.
First, it's not easy to learn how the price of a gallon of gas breaks down.
So to translate, about 50 percent of the price of a gallon is the cost of crude oil, 20 percent is refining and production, 10 percent is infrastructure and 20 percent is taxes.
20% goes to taxes. That's 63¢ at $3.14 per gallon. And what exactly does the government do to produce gas? It doesn't.
Yes, some of that money goes toward road maintenance. But think about it. If you fill up two to three times in a month, for both vehicles, as my family does, that's about $75 a month in taxes, or close to $1,000 a year. (I need to do a post in the future on the multiple places we're taxed... I recently wanted to install a home phone, since we're all on cell phones now, and learned that there's a flat $15 a month tax on a home phone, plus usage tax. My $50 a month home phone became a $70 a month purchase because of taxes. I cancelled the order.)
So now you know about taxes at the pump. The next time politicians bemoan oil company profits ask them about taxes. At least oil companies actually do something to put gas in the pump. Politicians just skim. That pump price shown above would be $2.51 if it weren't for the "because I can" money grab by politicians.
Imagine a world without 20% gas taxes... let's halve it to 10%, which is still more than sales tax alone. We're down to $2.83 per gallon.
I hear a lot about refining capacity. What's that all about? An oil refinery takes oil crude - what comes straight from the earth - and turns it into usable gasoline. We need those.
Refining capacity is how well and how much we crank out gasoline at refineries. The more we put out, the greater supply of gas there is. You've heard of supply and demand? The more supply, the lower the price? Well, we have a problem here.
This report, from the Department of Energy, shows that in 1982 there were 263 refineries. In 2002, there were 159. And today, only 150. I hear from right-wing media all the time how it's the environmentalists who aren't allowing more refineries to be built. Um, okay... that might be true to some degree. But isn't it easier to simply maintain what you already have permission to have - an existing refinery - than to get permission to built from scratch? We've dropped 113 refineries in 25 years. That's a reduction of 43%. Environmentalists didn't do that. Each of those was a business decision by an oil company.
Now, if what I produce is in high demand and getting more in demand all the time, and I can restrict the supply to make my production more valuable, why, that's just good business. Each refinery becomes more profitable. "More with less." Sound familiar?
During this decline in the number of refineries, technology helped them get more efficient. The 263 operating refineries in 1982 distilled 17,618,872 barrels of oil per day. The 159 operating refineries in 2002 distilled 17,177,371 barrels of oil per day. While that's close to the same output, it's a half million barrels fewer. And yet, demand has gone up. I'll bet they're laughing all the way to the bank. Less expense, more profit. Right-wing media appear to be dupes who haven't done their homework when they blame it only on environmentalists. (I haven't looked at why they closed, but I seriously doubt these facilities closed due to environmentalist pressures.)
So I can see that refineries are about 40% more efficient than they once were. If all of these were still operating, and if supply were that much more efficient, gas prices would be reduced. This guy says without source that "refiner's margins have gone from $.40 a gallon to $.80 over the last year." Let's make that assumption.
Imagine a world without refinery shut downs... subtracting 40¢ from gas prices, we're down to $2.43 per gallon, and the oil companies still profit 40¢ a gallon. Sounds fair to me.
Ethanol is a problem. Because laws demand an additive to make gas that burns cleaner, ethanol is the only readily available additive now that MTBE is out of the picture. And ethanol might be responsible for giving oil industry execs an excuse to scale back refinery expansions.
Oil industry executives no longer believe there will be the demand for gasoline over the next decade to warrant the billions of dollars in refinery expansions - as much as 10 percent increase in new refining capacity - they anticipated as recently as a year ago.
We see that war in Iran or Iraq makes them spike and spike big.
Now I happen to believe that we did the right thing in going into Iraq. But the mismanagement of the war certainly made it last longer, and that keeps crude prices higher longer. Purposeful? Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Let's finish the fight and go home (link via Glenn Reynolds).
If crude is half the cost of gas at the pump, and if we can get prices back to even $35 a barrel, that's roughly a 75¢ reduction in gas prices.
All totalled, in my imaginary world, gas is then $1.68 at the pump. That's livable and easier to swallow.
Heaps of praise to Little Dog Tech for coming to my computer-crashing rescue.
Owned by a guy named Paul, I'm totally impressed with his come-to-my-door service, his ability to do what I can't with my hard-drive, and his willingness to help me after hours.
5 stars, two-thumbs way up, and a chorus of yee haws!
Now if I could only find my licenses for a few programs that like to manage legality to a specific hard-drive, such as IPSwitch's WS-FTP Pro. But this is a minor inconvenience for what was a panicked situation. Again, Paul at Little Dog Tech saved my bacon BIG TIME.
Over the last week, my computer has been randomly shutting itself off. Turns out it was my hard drive, dying a slow and, um, intermittent death. So today, I bid adieu to my formerly reliable Western Digital 240 Gb hard drive.
Now the hot question of the moment: will my new hard drive accept a bootable partition and let me run without purchasing a new copy of Windows? Same computer, but Microsoft might be richer for the hardware failure. Neato!
More reasons why a Mac just looks better all the time. If it wasn't for the software investment I have in a Windows environment, I'd jump ship pronto.
In this series on listening, I don't think I've really defined the word. What is it?
The American Heritage dictionary gives it as:
1. To make an effort to hear something: listen to the radio; listening for the bell. 2. To pay attention; heed: "She encouraged me to listen carefully to what country people called mother wit" (Maya Angelou).
"Make an effort." "Pay attention." Ears are implied, but not exclusive.
If I could, I'd like to give my own definition.
Listening is not an auditory function, but a focused act of receptivity by one's whole body and mind. You hear with your ears; you listen with your soul, open wide.
If a definition for conversation is that two people enter into it willing to emerge a slightly different person, then listening is the openness to become changed in response to what someone else communicates to us.
Tonight, I had the blessing of getting a better knowledge of what, I think, it is to be Southern. We attended the Stone Mountain laser show, shortly after Independence Day, and it was quite a show, and my first-ever laser show. Kinda cool...
But as I watched, they played songs of Georgia, patriotic songs, and songs of family. And it occurred to me that, almost without exception, those I know from the south are deeply proud of their heritage and family, their city and state, and their country. They are unabashedly loyal. They won't throw these things under the bus. It's a line you don't cross.
And so as I leaned against my southern belle wife watching the show, I felt yet again incredibly lucky to be a part of her family. They've come to know me and I am now woven into the fabric of their bonds. I'm one of those lines that won't be crossed. That's a safe place.
I also appreciate the South. Indeed, I am grateful for the South and those who herald from it. They're patriots and just really good people.
I'm from Iowa, and Iowa too has wonderful people. But there's something much deeper and more firm in the South than what I find in Iowa. Unless your family has a century farm, an Iowan isn't steeped in heritage like a Southerner is. The laser show was full of themes that echoed those emotional and historical ties.
It's good to be in Georgia at this moment. It's a great place to celebrate our nation and be surrounded by family.
This really wonderful piece of art (great use of color!) was in a McDonalds on the drive in to my in-laws. I think it was somewhere in northwest Georgia.
Tonight, I had the blessing of getting a better knowledge of what, I think, it is to be Southern. We attended the 
