Coyote Blog

US Airways has chosen to try to cover rising fuel prices by unbundling their ticket price and charging for services that were here-to-fore free, or built into the base ticket price.  They now charge $15 for the first piece of checked baggage ($25 for the second), and charge for most in-cabin services, including for soft drinks.

I'm not going to argue with them about this.  Airline pricing is a wickedly complex topic, and folks who know more than I do think this is the best way to get incremental revenue.  Really, these charges don't affect me (I almost never check bags, except when on vacation with my family).  In fact, as I write this, it strikes me that the baggage charge is really a price hike mostly on non-business travelers, which is interesting as it bucks the trend of having increasing price spreads over the years between business/last-minute and tourist pricing.

Anyway, the net effect has been to absolutely jam the security screening station this morning.  Every passenger seems to be carrying every bag he or she can on board to avoid the $15 charge.  What a mess.  I can't wait to see what the boarding process is going to be like.  Glad I don't have any bags today.

By the way, a few weeks ago I shipped a 60 pound trunk to my kids' camp for about $16 via UPS.  If these airline bag charges stick, it might be time for UPS to start soliciting the send-your-luggage-ahead business in earnest.  Next time we go skiing or some such place, I am going to seriously consider sending a couple of duffle bags ahead by UPS.

Update: The luggage bins were completely full before the fourth group out of six were called.  There was a fairly long line down the jetway of people gate-checking their bags.  Apparently, the airline is not set up to charge the $15 when they gate-check the bags, so everyone is hauling all of their bags to the gate and either bringing them on the plane or checking them at the gate for free.

The Anti-Planner links an article by a Federal Reserve Bank economist on the housing market in Houston and how it is affected by zoning:

"Given that Houstonians had access to the same new types of
mortgages as the rest of the country and that Houston has had greater
population growth than other large metros, we might expect price
appreciation to be stronger in Houston than elsewhere," says the
article. "However, the opposite has been true."

The reason? Houston's lack of zoning and its large supply of land
available for development allowed builders to respond to easy credit by
increasing the pace of construction. Slow and unpredictable permitting
processes prevented builders in many other regions, including Florida
and the Pacific Coast states, from similarly stepping up production.

While some cities and regions have further delayed construction by imposing adequate public facilities or concurrency ordinances, Houston allows developers to create their own municipal utility districts.
Through these districts, the developers install the sewer, water, and
other facilities needed by their developments and charge the property
owners over time.

The result is that housing prices did not bubble, and they are not
significantly declining today. As of the fourth quarter of 2007, in
fact, they were still increasing. Anecdotal evidence from local
realtors and developers indicates that the tightening credit market has
soften the demand for homes under $200,000, but homes above that price
are still selling well.

Whatever correction Houston faces, says the article, "takes place in
the context of prices that are squarely in line with local construction
costs and without the painful supply-induced downturn under way in many
other markets." This leaves Houston relatively immune to the ups and
downs of housing prices experienced in regions with planning-induced
housing shortages.

I need to think a bit about how that relates to this.

I haven't really blogged about the Chinese toy recalls, not knowing much about them.  However, my first thought on hearing the problems described was, "aren't those design defects, not manufacturing issues?"  I had a strong sense that populist distrust of trade with China was being used as a fig leaf to cover Mattel's screw-ups.  Several of the recalls were for parts such as magnets that were small and could be swallowed.  There was no implication that the magnets fell off because they were attached or manufactured poorly, they were just a bad design.

I have worked in a number of large manufacturing companies that have plants and suppliers in China.  It was out responsibility to make sure the product that got to the customer was correct.  There is no way we would source a product from an independent foreign company, and have the product delivered straight to stores without inspection, unless we were absolutely damn certain about the company's processes, up to and including having full-time manufacturing people at their plant.

Well, I might have been on to something (WSJ$)

Toymaker Mattel
issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of
Chinese-made toys, saying most of the items were defective because of
Mattel's design flaws rather than faulty manufacturing. The company
added that it had recalled more lead-tainted Chinese toys than was
justified....

Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer
of millions of Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories and
toy cars, because of concerns about lead paint and tiny magnets that
could be swallowed. The "vast majority of those products that were
recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not
through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers," Mr. Debrowski
said. Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all
toys recalled, he said. "We understand and appreciate deeply the issues
that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers," he
said.

Mattel said in a statement its lead-related recalls
were "overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in
paint in excess of the U.S. standards. The follow-up inspections also
confirmed that part of the recalled toys complied with the U.S.
standards."

The other interesting thing here is just how important Mattel's relationship with China is, to have even issued this apology at all.  For such a massive and high-profile recall, Mattel came off very well through the succesful strategy of blaming China.  I know that parents I have heard talk about the recall blame China and have increased fear of Chinese products.  So it is interesting to see that Mattel feels the need to abandon this so far winning PR strategy.

Cyd Malone shares a historical story with which I was not familiar, Eleanor Roosevelt's attempt to create a government-supported back-to-the-earth commune in West Virginia.  It's quite a fascinating tale, with several elements that seem stolen right out of an Ayn Rand novel.  Her goal seems to have been to reverse the division of labor:

As projected, Arthurdale was to be immune from the ups and downs of the
business cycle, with its citizens farming their five-acre plots part
time and working part time in a local factory; a perfect combination of
town and country floating through life as just the happiest little
autarkic bubble you ever did see.

I will let you read the whole story if you are interested, which is pretty interesting.  I suppose you can guess how it all turned out:

Sadly, despite all the money, tough love, removal of their "mental
and physical impediments," and grafting on of "the things that help,"
the people of Arthurdale weren't displaying the attributes of the New
American Man, or at least not the type the planners planned for.
Instead, they behaved like dirt-poor coal miners and part-time farmers
who had become accustomed to living off of other peoples' money.

They displayed what we now call "dependency." Nancy Hoffman writes
that "there were times they depended too much on her [Mrs. Roosevelt's]
help and not enough on their own resources," leading Eleanor to lament
that "they seemed to feel that the solution to all their problems was
to turn to government" (Hoffman 2001, p. 85). In one defining moment,
the town's school bus broke down and the good people of Arthurdale,
rather than fixing it themselves, had it towed over two hundred miles
to the White House garage for repairs.[16]

Blogging has been light, as I have been working on the publication of my new novel called "BMOC".  We're a number of weeks from getting it through Ingram and onto Amazon, etc. but it is available today at my Lulu storefront.  If you order the printed version from Lulu, be careful!  The Lulu UPS shipping options are really overpriced.  Only the regular US mail delivery is a very good deal.  For those of you who have the version with the old purple cover, this is an updated version.

Once it gets some broader distribution, I'll be running a special event on this site.  Details later.

Update: Web site for BMOC book by Warren Meyer

Happy Birthday to the greatestn nation on earth.  I spend a lot of time criticizing our leaders and their policies, but there is no place else I would live.  The US Constitution is still, over two-hundred years after its creation, the greatest single document ever written.  Many other countries since have written constitutions and spilled tons of ink pontificating on theories of government, but none have had similar success in protecting individual rights while creating an environment where every individual can focus their productive energies in whatever direction they choose with generally minimal interference.

A while back I wrote about how wealth was created, and I pointed out that the great leaps we have made in human well-being over the last two hundred or so years stem from two effects:

Sure, our leaders, our military, and sometimes the nation as a whole screws up.  I and others are quick to point these screw-ups out and sometimes we find ourselves wallowing in them.  But at the end of the day, unlike in the majority of countries in the world, these screw-ups are treated as such, talked about and debated, and dealt with rather than treated as the norm. 

Take the US military in an occupying role in Iraq.  Out of 100,000 or so people, you are going to have some criminals who commit criminal acts, even in the military.  The US army, unlike nearly every occupying army in history, generally treats its soldiers' crimes as crimes, and not as the inherent right of victors to rape and pillage.  US soldiers who have committed crimes in Iraq will generally go to jail, while worse malefactors in most armies, even the holier-than-thou UN peacekeepers who seem to be engaging in rape and white slavery around the world, generally go unpunished.  For all the crap the US military takes around the world, I bet you that if you took an honest vote on the question of "Which world army would you choose to occupy your country if you lost a war" most people would answer the US.  If for no other reason because, despite all the charges of imperialism, our armies eventually leave rather than remain on as lingering masters.

So tomorrow, I will start dealing out more crap to our leaders, to the administration, to Congress, to the SCOTUS, and most especially to most every bureaucrat who thinks they can better manage my business or my property.  But today I will step back and see the forest rather than the trees, and observe I am dang lucky to be an American.

For further thoughts, I refer you to .  They tend to celebrate first the "right to vote", when in fact many people get to vote but few enjoy the freedoms we do.  The greatness of our country is in our protection of individual liberties and the rule of law.  And the great insight our country was founded with is that rights flow from the very fact of our humanity -- they are not granted to us by kings or Congress.  This last is perhaps most important, as I wrote:

At the end of the day, our freedoms in this country will only last so
long as we as a nation continue to hold to the principle that our
rights as individuals are our own, and the government's job is to
protect them, not to ration them.  Without this common belief, all the
other institutions we have discussed, from voting to the rule of law to
the Constitution, can be subverted in time

Now I am off to see Buckingham Palace.  If I see the Queen, would it be in bad taste to wish her a happy Fourth of July?

As the Enron trial lumbers towards the end of its second week, Tom Kirkendall continues to have good analysis (keep scrolling).  While the Enron bankruptcy has spawned a number of books, it is likely that the Enron prosecution may spawn a few of its own.  Already, the prosecution has botched trials thought to be lay-ups and has demonstrated a new level of presecutorial abuse.  I know that most people have little sympathy for the defendants, but one has to be concerned with the tactics being used in these cases.  From reading his posts, while its early in the game, the defense may be ahead on points, as the prosecution made another tactical error in leading with and spending far too long with a weak witness, indicating that they are ready to commit on the same mistakes they made in the failed broadband trial.

By the way, this snippet is very funny - the indictment against Skilling and Lay is apparently so unclear and confusing and poorly written that the prosecution, who wrote it, is asking that the judge not allow it to be mentioned or quoted in the trial.  LOL - they are asking that no one mention the charges against the defendants in front of the jury.  Which is actually pretty appropriate, since in effect the prosecution is going to try to get Skilling and Lay convicted of being rich and unlikable rather than convicted of any specific charges.

By the way, we in Phoenix have been watching the revelations about gambling surrounding our Coyotes coaching staff.  The leaks by the police of as-yet unproven charges against prominent people is yet another abuse that happens all-too-often.  Beyond my own questions as to why gambling of this sort is even illegal in this day and age, it is crystal clear to me that the NJ police are going out of their way to leak insinuations of Gretsky involvement, which I don't think they can prove, merely to get press and attention for themselves.

Up until the last month, I have been very happy with Amazon Prime, the service where you pay $80(?) for a year of free 2-day delivery.  I am sure I have ordered more stuff from Amazon because of it, and I know I order it faster because I don't wait weeks with things in the shopping cart to group shipments.   

However, in the last month, I have had not one but two orders show up in 7-8 days instead of two.  The first was a Batman Begins DVD, pre-ordered to ship on its release date (which it apparently did).  It was shipped USPS, so there was obviously no hope that it would arrive in 2 days.  The second was a new Nikon D50, which was back-ordered for about a week.

I never really got an explanation for the DVD shipment (maybe they don't apply Amazon Prime to pre-orders?), but I did get some explanation for the Nikon D50.  After writing Amazon, asking them why my item shipped UPS Ground with a 7-8 day delivery time instead of 2-day, which I had paid for with Amazon Prime and was listed as the shipment method on the order page, I got this response  (greetings, apologies, etc. omitted):

After your order leaves our fulfillment center, we may use any
appropriate ground or air shipping service necessary to ensure that
your order is delivered within one or two days, depending on the
delivery option you selected.  These delivery options do not
directly correspond to any carrier-branded shipping services.

I have researched the order in question, and it appears your package
will arrive on time.

We understand that customers who select Two-Day or One-Day delivery
want to receive their orders faster, and we will only use an
alternative shipping method when we know your order will arrive by
the estimated delivery date. 

This is obviously not very clear, but here is what I infer:  When the item was back-ordered, they gave me an updated delivery date range, something like "estimated delivery Nov 2-10".  What I infer from this email is that once they give you an estimated delivery date range, they feel like their obligation to ship 2-day is voided.  The only obligation they now feel they have is to hit that date range.  So, despite the fact that my camera shipped on Nov 2 and I paid for 2-day shipping, they feel they are meeting their obligations if it gets to me by Nov 10, the back end of their estimated range.

The conclusion is not to feel sorry for me that I have to wait to play with my new toy, but that this may be the first sign of a program that is being gutted under profit pressure.  When lawyers looking for loopholes take over the customer service and fulfillment department, things can go downhill pretty quickly.  Note that the "est. delivery date" dodge really gives them carte blanche to get out of the 2-day obligation any time they want, since they set the estimates. 

As a note, I tried to confirm my interpretation with Amazon and have been unsuccessful.  In the tradition of making itself one of the hardest companies in America to actually contact, one can't reply to their customer service email so I can't get an easy confirmation or clarification.  I actually got and called their customer service phone number, which you will never find on their site (write this down:  1-800-201-7575).  The person on the other end of the line was useless, not understanding that I wanted a clarification of the Amazon Prime rules rather than some resolution of a particular order.  She couldn't access the emails I had sent to customer service or had received from them, and didn't seem to understand Amazon Prime rules, so she was no help.  The only funny part was that as I kept trying to clarify what I wanted from her, she kept upping the gift certificate amount she offered me as compensation, despite the fact that I kept saying "I don't want money I want to know what the rules are".  I think I ended up with $20 without even wanting it.

Which makes me wonder why I can't reply to Amazon's customer service emails.  I don't have a problem getting customer support via email rather than the phone, but to make this work I really need to keep working through to resolution with the same person, and the Amazon process makes this impossible.

This morning, as I drove to work and stopped to get gas, I noticed that they were sold out of two of their three grades (only premium was left).  The manager told me that several folks had come in today saying that this was the fourth or fifth place they looked for gas, though I will say the next two stations down the street seemed to have gas and I did not see lines anywhere.

Phoenix is one of those funny gas markets, where due to government regulations, we have a unique gas blend that can only be made in one place by left handed Eskimos, or whatever.  Several companies have tried for years to get a refinery permitted to serve this market, but the Arizona state government has consistently blocked it.  As a result, we get some strange ups and downs here, including gas lines last year when the only pipeline into town from the only refinery that makes gas that can be sold here broke.

Its a bit too early for Katrina to be actually affecting wholesale gasoline supplies (update:  or maybe not), but it is not too early for Katrina-led expectations to be draining gasoline inventories.  I explained previously about how an expectation among consumers that gas will be short can become a self-fulfilling prophecy:

Take
the example of 1972, and we will use typical numbers of that era.  Lets
say there were 100 million cars each with an average 20 gallon tank.
Lets say normally, people refill their tank when it is ¼ full, so on
average their tank is 5/8 full.  Doing the math, there are 5/8 times 20
times 100 million gallons actually in cars or about 1,250 million
gallons.  That's right - one of the largest single inventories of gas
in this country is in people's tanks.

Now,
lets say due to supply panic, everyone suddenly refills at ¾ full. No
one wants to be caught short (I remember in the 1970's, people would
wait in line to put a gallon or two in their tanks -- it was nuts).  In
this case, on average they are 7/8 full or there are a total of 1750
Million gallons in cars' tanks.  So, in the space of what might be two
or three days, people suddenly demand 500 million gallons above and
beyond their normal usage to increase their tank's inventory.  Boom,
stations are out of gas, which causes people to feel even less secure
without a full tank, so they inventory more (many in spare gas cans)
and the problem gets worse.

Here is my previous post on why I am hoping for gas price gouging.

Katrina News at Technorati

This is the time of year that we get both good and bad reports about graduation speakers.  I think we had Maurice Sendak at my graduation, which was OK.  I also remember that the student body got to vote for one person to receive an honorary degree (rather than the usual criteria for giving the other honorary degrees, which seemed to involve donating a building).  We voted for our UPS driver, who really was one of the most important people in our lives at the time, being our main link to home and the outside world.

Anyway, Ace of Spades has some crude but funny advice for graduation speakers.

For years, women at Harvard argued there needed to be more women on the faculty to support "diversity".  I have always thought that diversity meant that you had a lot of difference - in this case different kinds of people with different skills.  Now, Larry Summers is getting attacked by the female faculty for implying that women are, uhh, perhaps different from men.  Women are insisting that there is no justification for even studying the question of whether women are different than men.  They maintain that women are the same, no argument allowed.  But if they are the same, how is hiring more women contributing to diversity?

My guess is that the comeback of those involved is that women don't have a genetic difference from men, but they have a difference in perspective (political, philosophical, etc).  There are two obvious problems with this:

• If what universities are really trying to achieve is a diversity of background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints then why don't they hire for and measure diversity based on background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints, rather than the imperfect proxy of black/white, man/woman, etc.
• And, If what universities are really trying to achieve is a diversity of
  background, perspective, and political/philosophical viewpoints -- they are doing a really crappy job, because universities are pretty dang homogeneous, at least in political viewpoint as compared to the population.

By the way, I was initially negative to Summer's comments myself here.  I still support my criticism that as a leader of a leading, in fact uniquely influential, educational institution, he has an obligation to his institution to be careful what he says.  A CEO today who speaks his mind on political issues is not only ill-advised, but may actually be violating his/her fiduciary responsibility by bringing public censure on the company's shareholders.

However, that said, the degree of hysteria over Summer's comments is mind-boggling, especially when you read what he actually said in context rather than just accept the media summary (basically, he did not say that men were better at math on average than women, he said that men MAY have a higher standard deviation in their skills, leading to a disproportionate number of men being both dolts and geniuses at math and science).  To some extent, the women driving this hysteria actually seem to be publicly reinforcing stereotypes of women being delicate (some silly woman actually said she almost fainted at Summer's remarks)  overly emotional (given their hysterical reaction) and, ironically enough, non-scientific (given the fact that no one has thought to take on Summers scientific query with facts rather than political intimidation).

In my experience, a confident mature woman can make the average man feel bumbling and childish, and have an ability to rise above the fray to bring sanity to a confused situation.  Why can't the grown-ups among the female gender be heard in such arguments? Never mind, the first sentence answers the second.  Besides, I think most confident intelligent women are giving up on woman's organizations anyway.

I have not asked my wife yet, but she certainly must be proud today to be a Harvard (B-school) alumna today, given recent comments by Harvard President Larry Sommers:

The president of Harvard University prompted criticism for suggesting that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

My gut feel, though, without having talked to her, is that the annual giving check is probably not in the mail.

By the way, I do think there are innate differences in the sexes - it is almost impossible not to see this having raised kids of both genders.  It is also fun to joke about women and math skills - I joke with my wife all the time.  However, I am not speaking as the representative of the leading university in the country.  Mr. Sommer's remark is pure supposition, without any real research behind it (he admits as much).  That said, given that he is in charge of an educational institution whose job is to push people of both sexes up to and beyond their potential, it was a stupid statement from the wrong person.

Is this hypocritical on my part - criticizing Mr. Sommers for something I have done myself?  No.  Here is an analogy:  Its may be fun for all of us to joke about French military prowess, or lack thereof (Q:  Why are the streets of Paris lined with trees?  A: Because the Germans like to march in the shade) but it would be absolutely wrong for the president or the state department to do so in any public venue, because they are representing our country in an official capacity.  Mr Sommers is representing Harvard University, and to suggest publicly that half his student body is biologically incapable of being successful in a substantial part of his University's course work is stupid and irresponsible.

UPDATE:

Virginia Postrel comes to Sommers defense here and here.  She argues that Sommers did indeed have quite a bit of good analysis behind him, and that those of us who criticize him are being politically correct and hindering academic inquisitiveness.    Hmmm, maybe.  I have a lot of respect for Ms. Postrel, so if she says I am missing something, I am willing to think about it some more.  However, I will say that all I saw in the write-ups was data that women are underrepresented in math and science related careers (duh) and speculation but no evidence that this may go beyond socialization to biology. 

I still have trouble buying the biology thing.  For two reasons:

• The distribution of careers data is loaded with social factors that are really, really hard to control for.  Based on the same data, you might come to the conclusion that blacks are biologically less suited to be corporate CEO's or that men are less suited to being nurses or flight attendants.
• We are in the middle of a radical change with women and education.  A wave of women more comfortable with educational and intellectual achievement in general is moving through the system.  It is therefore dangerous to read data ahead of the wave - say with 30 and 40 year olds, since everything will change when the wave rolls through. 

How do I know there is such a wave?  If you graduated high school 20 or more years ago, look at the picture of the honor society in the yearbook.  Likely as not, the picture will be mostly boys.  Now go to just about any high school and look on the wall.  Taking my kids to chess tournaments and the like, I have been in a lot of high schools lately, and it is not at all unusual that the pictures of the honor society are ALL girls - not more girls than before, but all girls.  Then, take a look at college enrollment and the huge influx of women there.  Yes, for various reasons, these women may still not be choosing careers in the sciences, but you can't tell me that they are somehow biologically less prepared to do math.

UPDATE#2:  I really did not intend for this to be such a long post, but there is another good defense of Sommers here at Asymmetrical Information.  Apparently most of the left is explaining the "gap" with bias rather than biology.  Which is funny, because I thought much less about bias but rather personal choice - that for a variety of reasons women were not choosing math/science careers.  Anyway, the post from McCardle had this humorous observation:

Interesting, isn't it, how many of the liberals proclaiming that it's utterly ridiculous to think that a department running 95% leftists might be, consciously or unconsciously, discriminating against those of a more right wing persuasion, find it completely obvious that if a physics department is 80% male, that must be because they're discriminating

lol, anyway, no more.  I have decided to cut Sommers some slack, in part because I obviously don't have all the facts, and in part because I am sympathetic to him since I know for a fact that Harvard University is somewhat less governable than, say, Haiti. 

It seems like a huge percentage of the people we fire for cause, even after warnings and write-ups, etc, immediately threaten to sue us or report us to the Department of Labor or both.  Several times a year, I get contacted by an employee's lawyer, though generally nothing comes of it except wasting a lot of my time.  Ditto the Department of Labor.  According to George's Employment Blawg, we are not alone:

In many Federal district courts, employment-related litigation represents 50% or more of all court filings, and approximately 98% of lawsuits are resolved outside of court.

Small businesses (i.e., businesses with fewer than 50 employees) are not exempt either. This newsletter notes that it is not uncommon for such businesses to have 3 or 4 claims of employment discrimination annually!

In many cases, I think the need to do this is psychological - a kind of face saving to convince themselves that their job failure was due to someone else's shortcomings rather than their own.  This article has some more advice on terminations to help cut down on suits.

Beyond this explanation, there are also people out there who want to deal with all problems through litigation.  I have had people send lawyers after the company when they never once brought their concerns to a manager -- they just went straight to a lawyer, either because that is the modern way or because they are looking for an opportunity for an easy pay-off.

Something I would love to see, but will never happen, is a list of "serial litigators" to avoid.  I know a couple of people tried this but got shut down.  Too bad.  We had one such person seek employment at one of our establishments.  This is all this person does for a "living" - seek employment, show up at the job interview limping with a cane, and then suing people for discrimination if he is not hired.  Apparently this person has nearly a hundred different lawsuits going.