Welcome To Josh's Blog O' Thoughts: July 2007

In a recent story, it was reported that some employers are going to begin implementing programs which will charge overweight employees a higher insurance premium. This move is hopefully an inventive for these people to lose weight and lead a healthier life thereby reducing health care costs in the long run. Other companies are going to use programs which give incentives to healthy people.

I doubt that this will have much effect, unless the penalties are VERY steep. One thing I learned in the book Freakonomics is that incentives or disincentives have to be very high in order to cause change in behavior. Without this, people will likely continue their behavior and pay the fine, because the cost of the fine is outweighed by their enjoyment of their current lifestyle.

Anyway, it's an interesting idea. We'll see how much people complain about the companies infringing upon their rights.

See my first post on this topic to get all the details. I just wanted to post an update on my method to get rid of the unwanted Japanese Beetle, and invasive species of insect that can ravage a plant.

My method to protect your plants is to use a bird feeder in the immediate area. For me, I put a bird feeder directly in my tree that was being attacked. In theory, this brings birds to the area, some of which are natural predators of the beetles, while the others may at least scare the beetles off. I tried this last year and it appeared to work, although I couldn't tell if it had just been a coincidence that the beetles had left. So this year, after noticing beetles munching on my tree's leaves, I decided to try the same method. I hung a bird feeder in the tree, and since then, I have not seen a single beetle. I think it's pretty safe to say that this method does work.

I know I see a lot of people using those beetle traps. Those might not necessarily be a good idea if you think about it. Those traps use a scent (or pheromone) to attract the beetles to the bag. Hopefully, the beetles will fall into the bag and become trapped but some will not. Now let's say that you put a beetle trap in your yard. You are probably attracting beetles to your yard that were not initially there. Maybe your neighbor's beetles are coming to check out the trap. If you caught ALL of them, it wouldn't be an issue, but there are those that you will not catch. So, you have effectively brought more beetles to your yard. A better idea would be to get your neighbor to use a beetle bag to attract your beetles to his yard. Finally, there is the cost of the beetle bags. They are outrageous for what you get.

Anyway, my preferred method of ridding myself of these nasty buggers is to get something else to eat them or scare them away. I don't want to attract more of them.

This this map today, over at CNN.com. It is really cool to see the distribution of obesity across the country. From the map, it's obvious that obesity has risen steeply over the past 20 years. However, what was kind of surprising was the distribution of obesity in the South. Many of the Southern states have the highest incidence of obese people. I wonder what the reason for that is.

If you have any theories, let me know.

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you probably noticed my post on why I think Chris Dodd should give up his presidential campaign. Now, I want you to also be aware that I am not affiliated with any political part nor have I been involved in rallies, caucuses, etc.

The interesting thing is that last night I got a call from the Chris Dodd for President Campaign. They asked specifically for me and wanted to know if I had any specific issues that I was most concerned about for the upcoming election. I, of course, responded with the environment. The lady then asked if she could send me some information about Chris Dodd's stance on environmental policy. I declined stating that I would prefer to save paper and look it up myself online.

Now then, is it just coincidence that I got this call from the Chris Dodd campaign? I have not gotten calls from any other campaigns, and I am not affiliated with Chris Dodd in anyway. Or is it more likely that someone in his crew is doing web searches for any information about his campaign and they are then calling the people to try to get their support? That would be my guess.

At any rate, I tried to tell this story to people I work with and everyone's response was "Who's Chris Dodd?" So my opinion still stands: Chris should stop wasting time, money, paper, electricity, and all other resources and drop out of the race. The same should is true for most other candidates as well. Of course that's just my opinion.

Anyway, if you work for the Chris Dodd campaign and you are checking out this blog post, leave a comment so we know you're out there.

Japanese Beetles are an invasive species that are thought to have been introduced to the US via flower bulb shipments from Japan. They have infested most of the US from the East Coast to the Midwest, and their territory is spreading.

These bugs love to destroy plants by eating away at the leaves. Last year, I noticed that many of the leaves on our birch tree were dying. I walked out and found Japanese Beetles all over the thing. They were chewing holes in the leaves and leaving just the leaf's veins. Being the concerned tree-owner that I am, I decided I had better put a stop to this before they buggers killed my tree. I found several home remedies online and the one I tried appeared to work.

This year, I have been watching closely. Up until last week, I saw no evidence of these beetles in my tree, but then last night, I checked and found several of them.



As you can see, they are attacking the leaves on my tree pretty good.

Now, how can we get rid of them? Some remedies included gathering some of the bugs, blending them into bug gut paste, and squirting it on the tree. That sounded like a lot of work to me. I decided to try and bring more birds to the tree in the hopes that they would eat (or at least scare off) the beetles. So I hung a bird feeder just inside the tree.



After I did this last year, the bugs seemed to disappear. Hopefully, it was because I attracted birds to the area. I am attempting the same thing this year. I just hung the feeder last night. If the bugs go away again this year, I will consider this a good remedy. I hope to report back later with my results.

If you have other rememdies or ideas, please leave a comment.

I just finished reading a very good book called Freakonomics. The authors shed some light on some unknown correlations between everyday information. This is all done through the perspective of economics, but is written in a easily understood, yet informative way. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

Among the correlations and conclusions drawn is the apparent cheating of school teachers for pay incentives, the correlation between legalized abortion and lower crime rates, nature versus nurture in regards to a child's school test scores, and the importance of having the 'right' name. These topics bring to light some interesting correlations while putting others to rest as myths. For instance, children who watch more television do NOT do worse in school than children who do not watch a lot of television. There is no correlation between the two.

Now then, I'd like to relate some of this to my own blog entries. If you've been here before, you know that I have taken issue with the rising price of gas. So a good economic question to ask is "Are gas prices too high?". The answer, surprisingly, is No. From an economic stand point, price points are set based on the balance of supply and demand. Since the price point of gasoline has been increasing with no major change in demand, it can be said that gas prices are not too high, and that gas was, in fact, under priced before. If people are able and willing to pay $3.00 a gallon, the laws of economics would say that this is an appropriate price point.

This, however, contradicts posts that I have made griping about these rising costs. But, in my view, just because the laws of economics say that these are fair price points, doesn't mean I can't complain about them.

One of my biggest pet peeves is a business that doesn't have a website. If I had my own business, I'd be putting as much information on the web as I possibly could. The expense of having a website for your small business is extremely low, especially when compared to other forms of advertising. More often than not, one or two sales will easily provide you with your Return On Investment (ROI). Granted, that is for simpler sites. Highly complex sites like Walmart.com or Amazon.com would cost MUCH more to build. But then, those are usually the companies that have a lot of money to start with.

Anyway, for businesses that DO have a website, there is generally an email address listed that can be used to contact the company. My questions is, if you are going to go through the trouble of creating this line of communication, then why would you not capitalize on it and respond to the messages you get from prospective customers? I have had this happen on several occasions. I generally prefer to use email because I can be very precise in the information I am sending/requesting. Unlike a phone conversation, there is nothing that gets 'lost in translation'. Additionally, you have a documented record of the communication.

So, all you business owners out there, please respond to your customers when they contact you via email. Email contacts are just as important as phone contacts.

PS - If you are a small business owner and need a website, I can be contracted. ;-)

I have noticed a pricing trend at the local Road Ranger gas stations. When there is an across the board hike in gas prices (especially if it is a bigger one), the Road Ranger gas stations will not raise the first day of the hike. Instead, the Road Ranger will bring their prices down approximately 2 cents for the first day making them cheaper than the other gas stations. The NEXT day, however, they will SPIKE their prices up to 30-35 cents which puts them much higher than . Finally, on the third day of the increase, the Road Ranger stations will bring prices down 10-15 cents which will once again put them in proximity to their competitors.

I'm not sure who is in charge of the pricing at these stations, but I think this is absolutely ridiculous. I'm not a fan of Road Ranger at all. The local Road Rangers all used to be QuickTrips. I liked the QuickTrip. They were consistently 1-2 cents cheaper than the competition (about the same as Wal-Mart), and they never had such wildly variable fluctuations.

So, if you have a Road Ranger gas station near you and you see their price dip 1-2 cents, you might want to fill up. Definitely don't fill up the next day. By the third day, it doesn't really matter as they will be similarly priced to other stations.

I got a flyer in the mail today for Chris Dodd for President. Dodd, a Democrat, showed me with his flyer that he really, really doesn't want to win this election. The flyer DID have one good feature, a big picture of John F. Kennedy on the front side. This picture is at least likely to get peoples' attention when they see it. However, the back side, which was information about his the platform he is running with was far from inspiring.

Apparently, Chris Dodd was in the Peace Corps when he was younger. (Look anywhere you see his name and you're bound to see this fact). His platform appears to be based on "a call to service". He's interested in increasing the number of participants in the Peace Corps and Americorps, but the method which he suggest to do this is the best part. He wants to require ALL high school students to perform MANDATORY service work. Has he ever met a high school student before? Most of them don't have desire to perform service work, and anytime you make something mandatory, people like the idea even less (especially teenagers who hate being ruled). Having people forced into service work might actually be more of a hassle for these organizations as the kids won't be very motivated.

Anyway, to me, this seems like a disaster campaign. Why is he not focusing on the issues currently in the spotlight such as war, energy prices, the environment, and health care? These are the issues that will get you noticed and elected.

Perhaps he understands that since he is not Hillary or Obama, he has no shot anyway so he might as well try some goofy platform. Perhaps he just wants to waste some money. Or maybe he's actually delusional and thinks that this will win voters.

Whatever the case, he (and most other candidates) should take a cue from former Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack, and drop out before they waste too much time and money.

Well another Fourth of July has come and gone, and for those of us that reside in Iowa, it was another year of basically no consumer fireworks. Many years ago (I believe in the 1930's) there were a couple fires started by fireworks which caused some serious property damage. These incidents led Iowa to create one of the first restrictive state fireworks laws.

To date, the only fireworks that are legal in Iowa are gold sparklers, snakes, and caps. Not only does this restrict the use of common consumer fireworks such as rockets, firecrackers, and fountains, but it also PROHIBITS the use of other very tame fireworks. Among those prohibited are popular items such as party poppers, morning glories (wooden sparklers that crackle and produce non-gold sparks), and snaps. These are common items that you can even find for sale at some Iowa stores.

This is a little bit insane. For one, party poppers and snaps contain such a small charge that there is relatively little chance of fire or injury. Additionally, metal sparklers (which are allowed) are, in my opinion, one of the most dangerous fireworks out there. Why? Because we assume they are safe for kids to play with when, in fact, they can get as hot as 1000 degrees. We then give these to little kids to wave and run around with. This is a recipe for a serious burn if ever I saw one. The wooden sparklers are much tamer. The wooden stick burns away so you are not left with a nearly-molten piece of metal in your hand. At least with items such as rockets and firecrackers, which we assume come with some risk, we (usually) behave in a safer manner.

Now, what about the financial aspect of all of this? Iowa has prohibited the sale of fireworks in the state, but several neighboring states allow fireworks sales. You then have fireworks stores popping up right across the state border that will sell to Iowa residents and charge them a hefty price in the process. Low supply means high prices. All the sales tax revenue then goes to the neighboring states even though the goods are intended to be used in Iowa.

So the bottom line is that many Iowans are still purchasing and using fireworks despite the laws against it. I live in a fairly heavily populated little neighborhood, and I have neighbors launching rockets, and shells every year. Granted, I think this is a little bit too close quarters for this type of activity. The one that gets me the most aggravated, however, is when you go to the city's fireworks and you have moron amateurs lighting roman candles and rockets in the vicinity of a parking lot crammed with 50,000 people. Yet I've never once seen a cop enforcing the "no tolerance" rule.

My suggestion is to make consumer fireworks (rockets, fountains, shells, candles, etc) a legal, but regulated activity. Make people get a license or even take a safety class. I seriously doubt that fireworks would cause more damage than other allowable items like cars, guns, candles, cigarettes, etc.