This morning on Fox News a reporter in their series on legalizing pot made a statement to Bill Hemmer that “The Netherlands has closed down thousands of pot dispensaries because of crime and illegal activity.”

Really? Thousands closed?

In 1997 there were a total of 1180 in the entire country. In 2004 there were 740. This decline, btw, attributed to a slight decline in demand, a natural consolidation similar to what happens with restaurants, and a push by border cities for shops not to sell to tourists. Today there are an estimated 820, down from 2008’s 852.

Amsterdam police records indicate 1 shop was closed in 2003 because of crime or illegal activity. Yes, the number is one. Not two, not ten, not one-hundred, and not ‘thousands’, but one. Maastricht also closed 1 shop – in 2007.

In 2008 some local councils, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam, passed laws limiting where a coffeeshop (where pot in sold in The Netherlands) can be in proximity to a school. Mostly they said that they had to be greater than 250 meters away. This resulted in approx 85 coffeeshops throughout The Netherlands either closing or moving.

Thousands closed?

The biggest problem with the coffeeshops, according to Dutch police, is with German and Belgian tourists crossing the border and thus some local cities push for their coffeeshops to sell only to Dutch residents. Unlike the average patron elsewhere in The Netherlands, both Dutch citizens and tourists from further away, these cross border tourists tend to be a rowdier and more transient crowd with less respect for the local populace.

More to come…

More… The FoxNews reporter who made these comments was Dan Springer. He also posted similar comments in his blog post on this topic. Thousands closed? Really?

Well, back from a well undeserved vacation in Hilton Head, SC.

There was a lot of news and discussion there about Alvin Greene’s primary win. After his win the South Carolina Democratic Party asked him to pull out. Interestingly not a single media outlet that I saw criticized the Democrats for this by accusing them of being racist. Not a single one said that the only reason they asked him to pull out was because he’s black.

Had Mr. Greene run in and won the Republican primary and then been asked by the Republican Party to pull out, I can assure you that media outlets all over would have criticized the Republicans for being racist.

Yesterday, referring to the oil spill President Obama said “Plug the damn hole!” I agree. And it sounds like they’re getting there. The ‘top kill’ they’ve been planning for several weeks seems to be working.

Obama seems to get it when it comes to the oil pouring forth from the ocean floor. He gets that the most important priority is to plug the damn hole. Stop the leak. Once that’s done we can move our focus to what to do about all the oil that’s there. If we don’t plug the damn hole first we’ll be overwhelmed.

Obama doesn’t seem to get it when it comes to the illegal immigrants pouring forth from the border. He doesn’t get that the most important priority is to plug the damn hole. Stop the leak. Once that’s done we can move our focus to what to do about all the illegals who are already here. If we don’t plug the damn hole first we’ll be overwhelmed.

It’s only after we plug the damn hole that things differ. The illicit oil we don’t want. We’ll want to get rid of every last bit of it. The illicit immigrants we mostly want. A few bad apples we’ll want to throw in jail or send back from where they came. We need immigrants. Immigrants are important to our country. And we are obviously extremely important to them.

A cop being killed in the line of duty, just like soldiers in our armed forces, has always given me serious pause. Their death was very likely a result of their doing something to protect me, and all of us, and to make where we live a better and safer place.

The newspaper articles and TV news coverage always talk about what a great cop they were, how many people they helped, how well liked they were, and multitudes of other platitudes.

What I wonder though, and what is ignored by the media, is how corrupt was he. Did he make a little money on the side letting the local drug dealer know when a sting was coming up? Did she over-reach with forfeiture of ‘criminal’ assets and take a few nice things home for herself? Was he a drug dealer himself? Did she sometimes smoke some of the pot confiscated in a drug bust?

Or did he not do any of these things himself but held to the blue code of silence and watched as others did?

An estimated 30% of cops are in the first group and nearly all of the rest are in the blue code of silence group. Only an estimated 1/10 of 1 % aren’t in either group.

When a cop is killed in our state I often see the funeral parade. The coffee café I spend many of my mornings in is not far from our state capital and the parades start in front of here. As I write this there’s a parade of an estimated 800 police cars lining up to honor a cop killed this past weekend.

What group was this cop in? Was he part of the 30%? The 69.9% who kept silent? Or was he part of the 1/10 of 1%, the 1 in 1,000 who didn’t keep silent?

Very likely we’ll never know.

A former prostitute I interviewed told me about a cop she knew. I remember his funeral about 8 or 9 years ago. Like the cop being honored today he was killed in the line of duty and the accolades of what a great cop he was filled all of the local media. There was a story of his saving someone’s life and another of his finding a young child who’d wandered away from home. He had put in considerable time coaching a softball team for underprivileged kids. There were pictures of his wife and kids at his funeral on the front page of the paper. The following May he was inducted into the police memorial in Washington DC.

Her experience with him wasn’t so good though. He and some other cops had setup a sting in a local hotel and busted 4 girls for prostitution. As best she could tell she was number 5, but they made her an offer. If she’d give them each a freebie, they’d let her go. Compared to having an arrest for prostitution on her record and paying a fine that would have required servicing the same number of clients anyway, this was an OK deal from her standpoint.

But that wasn’t the end. Occasionally he or one of the others would stop by her apartment with the same ‘offer’.

She said all of the media attention he got and everyone talking about what a great cop and person and husband and father he was made her ill. “If he’d paid me like any other client I would have liked him, but he didn’t. He raped me.” She said. Several months after his funeral she found out that another girl had a similar relationship with him from a different sting and apparently a different group of other cops.

Interestingly she said that after his death neither one of them ever heard from any of the other cops again.

A couple of weeks ago, on April 22, I posted about the coming world of TV that will unshackle us from the cable TV and Satellite companies. Well, one of my favorite companies in this brave new world, Universal Sports, almost let me down.

I wanted to watch the Giro d’Italia which Universal Sports has the U.S. rights to. Universal had other ideas. Despite Universal Sports best efforts to keep me from giving them revenue, in the end, I won.

The first battle was figuring out that for the first time Universal was indeed charging for what had always been free in years past. Clicking on their ‘Live Now!’ tab, where we’ve always previously clicked to watch video, produced… Nothing. They thought this would throw me off and I would think they were simply having technical problems or perhaps weren’t really broadcasting this year. Not me. I pressed on.

I am not at all against Universal Sports charging for this btw. I just wish they’d be a bit more clear about it.

Battle the second, now that I’d determined that they were charging for their programming this year, was figuring out how to pay them revenue. Nothing I could find on any of the cycling pages led me to anywhere that would take my credit card. I did though find a couple of pages that confirmed that they were charging. One offered me Stage 15 for 99 cents. Well, that’s fine, but stage 15 is over 2 weeks away. (Cycling stage races like this or the Tour de France are usually comprised of multiple individual races or ‘stages’, usually 1 per day.) But I persisted and to the persistent often goes the battle. Then it happened. I noticed a tab on their home page for ‘Premium’. And there I found the elusive prize I was looking for. I forced my credit card number on Universal and was rewarded with a receipt for my purchase.

But for Universal, the war wasn’t over. They may have my revenue, but someone there thought that if they could simply thwart my efforts to find what it was I’d thought I’d purchased then I would call and cancel my subscription leaving them the winner.

They tried the ‘buttons that lead nowhere’ trick again, but I’d seen that tactic before and wasn’t fooled. Like the voice menu systems with 132 levels of choices, Universal Sports led me through page after page of anything but the live broadcast I thought I’d purchased. I still persisted. Persistence had paid off once, it would again. Finally I clicked on a button labeled ‘Watch Live’ or something to that effect on a page with a bunch of Giro stuff on it and was pleasantly greeted with video of people racing bikes and pretty decent English commentary!

Universal Sports doesn’t give up easy though. I wasn’t fooled for long. I know the difference in what I was expecting for Sunday’s Stage 2, a mass start road race, and what I was seeing on my screen. They labeled it ‘Live’ but gave me a replay of the previous day’s Stage 1 Time Trial through the streets of Amsterdam. I quickly realized what it was since on Saturday I had watched Stage 1 live online in Dutch, thanks to a Belgian TV broadcaster. Universal Sports won this day’s battle since I had to leave for church before I could find what I thought I’d bought. You don’t fool around with being late to church on Mother’s Day.

The fourth and final battle commenced this morning. Stage 3 was a road race from Amsterdam to Middleburg. I clicked around a bit sure I’d find the secret passage to the actual live broadcast Universal had so reluctantly sold me. I found a screen that listed stages 15, 14, and 4. Was there a code hidden in these seemingly unrelated stages I was given an option of? Was this kind of like the TV show where the guy saw future newspapers every morning? Could I click on these and see future results? Not. Clicking on them led to a description of the race, nothing more. I did though notice that below the big buttons for this 3 stages was some small text that simply said ‘more…’. I clicked, and behold I now had numerous buttons for a number of stages. They were in random order but scanning brought be to one that said ‘Stage 3’. The moment had arrived. I’d be able to watch Stage 3 live with commentary in English instead of Dutch, Italian, or Russian. Not. Nothing. Nada. Universal made a final valiant try by giving me a video player with nothing in it.

I backed up and tried again. I held my breath. The video player came up. I heard what certainly sounded like English commentary suddenly pour forth from my speakers. Then I saw it. Video. Live video of the Giro! Success! I’d won! There it was, the Giro d’Italia bike race, live from The Netherlands. I’d given them revenue and managed to find what they sold me so I could avoid demanding my money back. I’ll savor this victory for the remainder of the 3 week race.

BTW, this broadcast in Dutch is available free and generally runs from about 6am – 11am EDT. http://bvls2.yolasite.com/ch-39.php
Thanks to the-pedal-pusher.com for the images,

Caribou Coffee recently made a big deal out of ‘major improvements’ to their chain of coffee cafés. They changed their logo and introduced new paper cups with all kinds of slogans on them. Well, I have to say, the reason I go to a café is for the logo and slogans on the cups so I’ll certainly be sure to stop by Caribou.

NOT.

What should they do? They can start by teaching their barista’s how to make a proper cappuccino. A proper cappuccino has froth with a bit of espresso in the froth. A Caribou cappuccino has milk suds with no espresso. Good smooth froth with a bit of espresso is a delight. Your first sips of a Caribou cappuccino are of plain white milk suds. Yuk.

A proper Cappuccino is served in a warmed ceramic mug. Caribou uses paper cups. Paper cups allow the cappuccino to cool too fast, a proper ceramic keeps it warmer longer making for a much more pleasant experience.

The typical Caribou has nothing to absorb sound – namely the two people out of the 18 in the café who are intent on sharing their conversation with everyone else. Sound absorbing materials in the ceiling, on the walls, and perhaps a rug or two on the floor would help immensely.

Many people like to use laptops in cafés. Bright light isn’t good for being able to see laptop screens. Reducing the number of windows (especially in all of the Burger Kings and Carl’s Jr’s that have been converted to Caribou’s) would help. Tinting the windows and putting in blinds could help as well.

Speaking of converted fast-food places. A few walls here and there could help. They’d reduce noise and provide laptop users with darker places with more privacy that are more conducive to working.

Finally, the barista’s. A barista is kind of like a bartender. You don’t want an obnoxious bartender who doesn’t know how to make drinks and you don’t want an obnoxious barista who talks too loud and doesn’t know how to make cappuccino’s.

On the plus side the pseudo fresh baked pastries is an improvement. Healthier and lower calorie options would be better. Fresh natural ingredients, no processed sugars, sized to be maybe 150 calories instead of 500, etc.

In a survey I asked a bunch of former drug addicts which they believe more difficult to give up; drugs or sex. Female respondents largely said drugs. Male respondents overwhelmingly said sex.

I wish I’d asked the same question about giving up drugs vs giving up high calorie diets.

Obesity is a major problem in our society and is only getting worse. It is one of the key factors in increased healthcare costs. It is becoming a significant issue for airline flyers who find the rolls of fat of the person next to them flowing over in to their already tight space. The Army recently noted that recruitment efforts are becoming more difficult because many who want to join are too obese to even start training and the numbers who begin training and then are kicked out because they can’t attain a minimum level of fitness is increasing.

A doctor I heard speak once said something to the effect of this: It used to be that we couldn’t avoid physical labor and that calories were difficult to come by. Today we can’t avoid calories but physical labor is difficult to come by.

I understand where he’s coming from, and agree that things have changed, but not to the extent that he espouses. Stop by any major construction site and you’ll see a number of obese people doing physical labor. It’s not just a lack of labor among the general population. Exercise is critical to good health, but almost no amount of exercise can overcome a high calorie diet. A 490 calorie scone from Panera Bread will require about 3 hours of brisk walking (8 miles in 2 hours, 35 minutes) to work off.

Calories are certainly more prevalent today than in the past, but just because they’re available doesn’t mean we have to partake. We can choose to eat healthier. We don’t have to eat Big Mac’s or Alice Springs Chicken (a menu item at Outback Steakhouse that alone has as many calories as many people need in an entire day.)

I’ve done it so I know how difficult it is. Over about a 10 or 15 year period I’d very slowly put on 3 or 4 extra pounds a year until I was noticeably pudgy. I reduced my calorie intake to about 1,800/day to lose the extra 35 lbs and now generally stick to about 2,100 to maintain it. I eat out over 90% of my meals, travel a good bit, and eat at formal dinners and other events. It’s not even remotely impossible to choose to do it and then do so.

This does pose a question. Is every person capable of the self-control and self-discipline necessary to limit their diet to something appropriate like 1,600 – 2,200 calories per day?
How many of the obese people around us are or are not capable of controlling what they eat. Is it different for men and women?

How would you rank sex, drugs, and high calorie food on the self-discipline scale?

This blog was originally created for a small group of friends and associates. Looking at the traffic stats it appears there are a number of others who’ve stumbled upon it and even continue to read. So, to all those who suffer through my often hastily and poorly written posts – Thank You! It’s always very gratifying when anyone takes their valuable time to read something I’ve written, whether it be in a national magazine or a simple anonymous blog.

The one thing in Obama’s healthcare bill that I have been supportive of is the requirement that restaurants post calorie information on menu’s. Panera Bread cafés began doing this recently of their own initiative. Does it work?

My wife and I ate in Panera for dinner last night. Based on the calories posted I chose a half Cuban chicken sandwich and half cobb salad. 680 calories was within my 900 calorie dinner allowance. So far so good. They also have a promotion for a bakery item for 99 cents. That 490 calorie orange scone (my future daughter-in-law makes real (and very good) scones, Panera’s are not real but more like scone shaped muffins) sure was good.

Based on this study, posting calories is of little benefit 

FitBit

While we’re talking about calories… I read an article recently about a device called a fitbit. It measures your activity throughout the day and tells you how many calories you’ve burned. Sounds like a good thing.

This morning I heard a group of POS (persons of size) talking about something similar that they all have. They were all excited because their devices showed that they burned 250 calories going on a 40 minute walk. “I can eat a candybar.” one said.

There’s a danger in this. Thanks to our metabolism we naturally burn a bunch of calories throughout the day, usually between about 1500 and 2500. I burn about 60 calories per hour when I’m sleeping, about 80/hr for the approximately 12 hours I’m fairly sedentary sitting at my desk, and about 190/hr for the 4 hours I’m somewhat active which includes things like taking a shower, grocery shopping, or cutting the grass. For all of this I can eat about 2200 calories a day and not gain weight. Eating anything more than my base metabolic rate will destroy my svelte figure.

If, for one of my ‘active’ hours, I go for a long walk that burns 250 calories, I haven’t burned an extra 250, but only an extra 60 or so. I’d actually have to walk a 250 calorie per hour pace for a bit over 4 hours to burn off that candybar. I do a lot of bike riding and burn about 1000 calories per hour (approx 20mph pace). That doesn’t mean that I can eat an extra 1000 calories though. Realistically I’ve only burned about an extra 800 calories. In reality though I find that for that 1000 calorie ride I can only eat about 600 calories over my 2200 calorie metabolic rate or similarly 1200 calories on a day I’ve supposedly burned 2000 calories on my bike. I’m not sure if my computer and various charts give high calorie burn information or if it just takes more than a calorie to burn a calorie.

Moral of the story – be careful how many calories you think you’ve burned.

At the middle of last century AT&T, colloquially known as Ma Bell, controlled all phone service to homes and businesses. If you wanted phone service they were your only choice. You had no options with AT&T. You got what they decided they wanted to offer and that was that. They were regulated by the government but that didn’t seem to be doing much to improve service or lower costs.

Enter Bill McGowan. He decided it was time to undo Ma Bell’s monopoly and give them some competition. They didn’t like the idea. He started a phone company to compete with Ma Bell and then filed a lawsuit to end their monopoly. During this tumultuous time his company, Microwave Communications Inc., later known as MCI, was fondly referred to as a law firm with a microwave dish on it’s roof (it employed more lawyers than telephone people.)

Well, Ma Bell didn’t like competition. They said that they had a legal and regulated monopoly and all was fine, thank you very much. Bill said all wasn’t fine, that they were extremely slow in introducing newer technologies and that their rates were much higher than they needed to be. Ma Bell said that undoing their carefully structured monopoly would put the entire phone system at risk, that there would be tremendous problems and that people wouldn’t be able to make phone calls if Bill won.

Fortunately for all of us, Bill won. MCI began implementing newer technologies and offering services at a fraction of what AT&T had been charging. To their credit, AT&T became a much more efficient, competitive, and technologically advanced company within just a few years instead of the 10 or more many expected.

Today’s cable companies are not much different than AT&T of yesteryear. We are living in an ancient world held down by a paradigm largely developed decades before Al Gore decided he invented the Internet*.

We can only get the channels that our monopoly cable carrier or satellite service decides to offer. I’d like Universal Sports Channel, but my cable company doesn’t offer it so I’m out of luck. And even for channels they do offer we often have to purchase those we don’t want in order to get one we do, just because of the way the cable carriers decide to bundle channels.

My PC isn’t handcuffed like my antiquated cable service. I’m not prevented from viewing tripadvisor.com because Comcast hasn’t negotiated a contract with them. Can you imagine if your internet service provider told you that you could only access the websites they choose to offer?

Likewise we’re limited in options for Al’s internet service. Many people have no alternative for internet but their monopoly cable company. A few have a low-speed DSL option from their local phone company (likely a descendent of Ma Bell), but if they want higher speed, cable is it. Some have no reasonable option at all.

Well, there’s sunshine on the horizon and it won’t even require lawsuits.

Part I of sunshine is that we are beginning to see the unbundling of cable channels from carrier service. Many ‘channels’ are now streaming their programming on their websites. So, while Comcast doesn’t offer Universal Sports, I can just go to Universal Sports website and watch their stream of the Milan – San Remo bike race. I’m no longer locked in to only what Comcast chooses to offer and only at the price Comcast chooses.

In time we’ll see more and more of this and ultimately it will no longer be necessary to subscribe to any ‘channels’ through our cable or satellite company. All we’ll need is internet service and then we’ll ‘tune in’ to whatever ‘channels’ we want to watch via their websites.

One slight cloud though. Just as traditional land-line phone companies are seeing a precipitous decline in customers as more and more of us forego a traditional phone for a cell phone, cable companies will see a decline in people purchasing traditional cable service as we choose to get the channels we want directly via the internet. The cable carriers will want to raise their internet rates to make up for the lost revenue from cable TV subscriptions, but they’ll find a problem. Competition.

Part II of sunshine is 4G. Today you may get the internet at your home through your cable company, DSL from the phone company, or maybe WiFi from your municipality **. Tomorrow you may very well get the internet in your home from your cell phone company. We think of cell service as ‘mobile’, but if it can do mobile cost effectively, it can certainly do stationary even more cost effectively. 4G promises data performance comparable to what cable provides today or greater. DSL has provided little real competition to the cable companies, but 4G and similar wireless technologies will. Just replace your current cable modem with a 4G modem and you’ll be set.

Verizon is leading the charge with a faster rollout (30 cities in Q3 of 2010) and greater speed promises of 5 – 12 Mbps. Sprint is just behind though they say that they will only offer 6 mbps initially. And even our old friend AT&T is there with rollouts (12 mbps rumor) planned for 2011. The 4G spec though includes up to 1 gigabit per second (gbps) for stationary applications.

Today I pay $148/mo for cable and another $62/mo for internet so a total of $208 to Comcast. I pay another $67/mo to my cell company for voice+data. My guess is that the new 4G will come in around $99 for voice+data so for another $32 I can drop my $62/mo cable internet and soon the $148 cable altogether.

The one remaining piece of the puzzle will be for TV’s to include web browsers and media players similar to those we have on our PC’s. LCD and Plasma displays are really just computers built into very large computer displays. Today they have proprietary media players for Netflix and Youtube, tomorrow we’ll see open applications like we have on our PC’s including web browsers and good media players.

* Note: The Internet was actually invented by a guy name Vinton Cerf. I worked for Vint. At MCI.

** 4G data service from cell providers has been a known technology for some time. Despite this, several municipalities around the country have moved forward with installation of WiFi (and low power WiMax) networks, often paid for with tax dollars. It remains to be seen if these will be able to compete with 4G (which includes a higher power version of WiMax). My guess is that these, along with ‘wifi hotspots’, won’t be long for this world either.