Chez Chesler

Two alumni from different schools find themselves in the same men's room. The Princeton man notices that the Harvard man is about to leave without washing his hands, and tells him "At Princeton, we wash our hands after we use the bathroom." His rival replies "At Harvard, we don't piss on our hands."

Researchers from the American Society for Microbiology and the Soap and Detergent Association made headlines lately when they hung out in public restrooms ("No, we're not watching you wash your hands, we're hoping to have anonymous sex with a US Senator") and observed that only 57% of men at Turner Field washed their hands after using the bathroom, compared to 95% of women. The gender gap got big play, and also that many more people reported in a telephone survey that they wash after using the bathroom than actually did. The ASM even maintains Washup.org, a site dedicated to hand washing. Their fact sheet notes that the CDC says "the single most important thing we can do to keep from getting sick and spreading illness to others is to clean our hands." That's fine, but what is it about unzipping my fly, or touching my own penis, makes my hands particularly more unclean than they were before?

Biostatisticians love to count and do regression studies. Sowhere's the study that after controlling for people who wash their hands before eating or preparing food, and after contacting animals, feces, other people, and dirty surfaces, determins if men who wash their hands after urinating get sick any less often than those who don't piss on their hands?

Labels: germs, urine, wash

New Hampshire doesn't have a sales tax, except  8% on hotel rooms, restaurant meals, car rentals, and tobacco, electricity, communications and real estate transfers are also taxed.

New Hampshire doesn't have an income tax, except on income earned by deferring consumption and investing.

New Hampshire local property taxes go to local services, except $4.92 per thousand goes to a statewide education pool.

This dearth of tax revenue means that New Hampshire has to fund its roads with turnpike tolls.  Due to the locations of the toll booths, these tolls tend to hit folks traveling to and from Massachusetts, and within the town of Merrimack, particularly hard.

Formerly, New Hampshire sold tokens for 12.5 cents each ($5 for a roll of 40) that were good for 25 cents of toll.  In order to motivate people to use electronic transponders, which provide a discount of only 30%, New Hampshire stopped selling the tokens in 2005, and stopped honoring them on Janyary 1, 2006.

The NH State Senate approved a measure that would have allowed a partial redemption (the tokens would have been usable at 12.5 cents, no discount or interest)  in April 2006, but the NH House rejected the measure.

Praise is due to an elderly Braintree, Massachusetts man, Thomas Jensen, who showed more principle than the entire Granite State this week, choosing to spend 3 days in jail rather than pay $150 for allegedly stealing services by paying for his toll with the tokens New Hampshire had sold him with the promise that they could be used for that purpose.

There aren't that many tokens in circulation.  How much could it cost New Hampshire to accept them at tolls, as they come in, compared to the cost of holding a trial and keeping Jensen in jail for three days?

I had replenished my roll before they went off sale and I had less than a roll in each car.  I go through the Merrimack tolls to visit my parents about once or twice per month.  If I'd known New Hampshire wouldn't be keeping its promise I might have signed up for a transponder at the discount price of $5, or maybe not.  It certainly doesn't pay for me to buy one at $25 -- with its expected lifetime I'm better off paying full price ($5 per year for the transponder, versus $3.60 per year discount for one round trip per month), or taking the Burque and Daniel Webster Highways.  In any case, I don't like the loss of privacy.  (See this story about EZ Pass records being used by divorce attorneys.)

An earlier story in Fosters, on the trial, by Adam Krauss also illustrates the lying and lack of intelligence that is too rampant among police.  Trooper First Class James Downey testified that there was no contract involved in the sale of the token because "they're not signed ... If I go and buy a candy bar at the store, I don't have a contract with that store."  For a contract to be valid there must be offer, acceptance and consideration.  Senior Magazine's article specifically addresses contracts that exist in the selling of food.  (There was no argument that the sale of tokens was for real estate or couldn't be complete in a year or was otherwise subject to the statute of frauds.)$nbsp;But if Downey is right and there is no contract, why do we owe New Hampshire 50 cents as we exit the Everett Turnpike?

 

Labels: contracts, NewHampshire, NH, tokens, tolls

An article in the August 30 Boston Herald featured Cheung Chin, who claims to be 113 years old. She says her birth certificate, which lists her date of birth as August 10, 1896, is inaccurate. She isn't listed by the Gerontology Research Group at either age.

The article noted that she lives in Boston at South Cove Manor, "one of the nation's only all-Asian nursing facilities". That seems strange, but the web site for South Cove Manor proudly states "Serving the Chinese elderly is our sole mission," repeating that mission statement on the admissions page.

How do they get away with racial discrimination like this?

1. State Treasurer Tim Cahill

 

The Boston Herald reported on September 7 that Massachusetts State Treasurer Tim Cahill's daughter was busted at Logan Airport for trying to bring peaches home from Italy.  He had to pay a $300 fine for forgetting something was in a bag, and that seems a lot less than folks who forget there is a gun in their bags face.  (Here's a recent story about Kansas City Chiefs star Bill Maas who made that mistake, and facecs a $500 fine and 6 months in jail, plus a $10,000 TSA fine.)  A gun could be useful on a plane -- the heros of flight 93 had to make due with a serving cart.  But fruit from the Mediterranean?  There is a very real risk that it could harbor insect pests.  (That page from the USDA's APHIS site lists peaches first among the fruits that Medflies can attack.)  I don't leave the country very often, but I certainly know there's a restriction on agricultural products.

In any case what concerned me was Cahill's statement about the Customs agents: "It didn't appear to me that they knew who I was nor cared."  (He said he told the agents he was a government official but never identified himself as the treasurer -- and apparently he never asked "Do you know who I am?" -- maybe because that had just failed for Larry Craig in another airport.)

Why should Customs agents have cared?  Why does Cahill think state officials should be treated any differently than other people?

2. Law Enforcement

In early July (I'm way backed on stuff I want to blog about), Glen Johnson wrote a piece for the AP, "Vehicle stickers raise questions about police favoritism".   He describes a "thin blue line" sticker.  He quotes Kenneth Waters, "For what purpose does the spouse display the 'thin blue line' decal on their automobile? Why immunity from the law of course."

Johnson says the state police don't treat drivers who display the stickers any differently, but spokesman Eric Benson uses weasel words when he says "The State police does not officially recognize" them (emphasis added).

Over on Police World "La. Officer", also quoted by Johnson, in a thread from early 2004, tries to have it both ways. He writes "everyone that I stop has the same chance of getting a ticket or not" but he had just written "If I stop someone with one of these stickers, and they are not leo or direct family of leo, they are almost certain to get written for whatever I can write them for." He also wrote "I do know of officers stopping non leo with the thin blue line stickers and politely telling the suspects that if the sticker is gone by the time they get back to the unit to get the ticket book, then they will probably leave with only a verbal warning if there is no warrants out for them." -- which means that he is violating his own oath of office for allowing his brothers in blue to violate, under color of law, these drivers' constitutionally protected right to free expression.

Tpartrg310 on Police World explains that he puts the logo on his car "to identify [himself] as law enforcement officers. And that more than likely we were 'good guys' and probaly armed." I'm a good guy, and I might be armed -- I think I'm going to do my part for law enforcement and get one of those stickers.

Labels: Cahill, police, privilege, unequal_treatment

Mapping own DNA changes scientist's life - CNN.com

So J. Craig Venter has published his own human genome.  He used to run the Celera Genomics Group.  The CNN story says that when Celera satisfied the Human Genome Project in 2000 (or 2003 according to the project's link, above) what they published was a composite.

I remain confused.  What did HGP have?

HGP's site says there are between 20 and 25 thousand genes, but 3 billion base pairs.  There is no one human genome, because we're different.  And Venter has published 6 billion letters (is he counting each pair twice?  That would be like counting each letter in anything twice, once for the ink, and once for the negative space.)

I figure my readership (all one of you) is by definition interested in minutiae, so maybe you can explain the subtleties.

Labels: genetics