The Think Tank

I don’t know about you, but I was a total Pac-Man kid:  When I was three my birthday cake was Pac-Man; The first game I ever played on my Atari 2600 was Pac-Man; I wiled away countless hours playing with my Pac-Man game watch; I tuned in every Saturday morning to watch the Pac-Man cartoon show.  The first really expensive thing I ever bought was a portable Pac-Man game which was vaguely Pac-Man shaped and cost $50 dollars.  At the time my allowance was $5 a week, so it took me a total of 10 weeks to save up for it.  I need not tell you that 10 whole weeks to a five or six year old is roughly equatable to two or three life times.

Today we celebrate because the the 1980 icon and childhood hero turns 30 years old.

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As we’ve all been seeing and hearing on the nightly news, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is a shocking calamity.  The original estimates of 5,000 gallons of oil gushing into the sea every day appear to have been greatly underestimated.  According to an article in The NY Times there may be as much as 200,000 gallons of oil freeflowing into the Gulf of Mexico per day,  and with an expected time-line of 90 days before a relief well can be drilled, this could and probably will become the worst environmental disaster this country – and perhaps the world – has ever seen.

Several different solutions have been tried, running the technological gambit: two different attempts at covering the break in the wellhead with large concrete “boxes” have both failed, a smaller pipe was inserted into the well to and staunch the flow which failed as well, and now they are trying something called a junkshot – litterally putting garbage in the pipe and hoping that it will fill the gaps and fissures in the ruptured concrete enough to allow the wellhead to be filled with mud and concrete.

Making matters worse we now have evidence that huge plumes of oil are building underwater instead of rising to the surface, some measuring as large as 10 miles long, three miles wide and 300 feet thick.  These plumes are having an unexpected consequence: the oil is consuming the oxygen in the surrounding water that isn’t contaminated with petroleum, which could very quickly leave large swatches of ocean uninhabitable for local sea life.  Naturally, this will have an even larger impact on the beleaguered seafood trade in Lousiana, not to mention the environmental impact on the whole Gulf Coast region.

For the oil that is reaching the surface and beaches, there is also some interesting and innovative techniques being used to contain and clean up the oil.  One very successful discovery from the infamous Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound was that human hair and bird feathers soak up petroleum better than almost anything else on earth.

To that end salons all over the country are donating hair to the recovery effort, lead by San Francisco’s Matter of Trust, a non-profit organization which is donating more than 400,000 pounds of hair to the clean up effort.  But you can’t just drop all those locks on the oily ocean and let it form one big, nasty matted mess.  You have to hold the hair in something… and that something apparently is pantyhose.

Hanesbrands, Inc. is donating more than 50,000 pairs of pantyhose to the clean-up efforts through various organizations.  As interesting and peculiar as that may be, here is the Tidbit: pantyhose production is drastically down from where is was 20 years ago when the Valdez spilled her toxic cargo in Alaska.  Women by and large do not wear them any more.

So wear – I mean where – were those 50,000 pairs that Hanesbrands is donating going to if most women in the country have given up hosiery?

San Francisco.

Apparently pantyhose is still quite popular in the City by the Bay.  Most of the reputable news sources I have found fail to offer a suggestion for why this may be, but there are of course many jokes and rumors flying around.  All we know for sure is that San Franciscans are going to be going bare-legged for the next little while.

With Cinco de Mayo right around the corner, I thought it was probably time to do a little research on the holiday.  I remember learning a very brief history of the what holiday was about when I was in grade school, but that was little more than a few paragraphs in a boring history book, which said that Cinco de Mayo was basically Mexican Independence Day.  I learned a few more details recently and thought I’d share them.

First, I’ll start with the tidbits:

• Cinco de Mayo is largely ignored in Mexico, only having real significance in the region near Pueblo, where the battle against French forces took place.
• The United States has celebrated Cinco de Mayo since 1863 or 1867 (depending on your source) when California sponsored the first celebration.
• In Canada there is an annual Cinco de Mayo Skydiving competition.
• In the island nation of Malta Cinco de Mayo is remembered with a Mexican beer drinking event.
• In the Cayman Islands there is an annual Cinco de Mayo air guitar competition.

I read the following synopsis of Cinco de Mayo by historian John Schmal and decided to post it verbatim, since I thought it would be difficult to improve upon.  (I particularly loved the part where the French are promised by the ousted Mexican Conservatives that they’re military forces would be met with open arms, the same lie that our own Conservatives told us when they said our troops would be met with “flowers and chocolates” if we invaded Iraq.)

In 1855, after two decades of Conservative administrations, the Liberal Party, advocating a system of government similar to that of the United States, came to power in Mexico. This change in government led to a period of significant political change and untold violence known as La Reforma (The Reform). In a series of sweeping decrees brought about by the Constitution of 1857, special privileges were abolished. These laws threatened the established order — the large landowners, the Catholic Church, and the army — all of which had occupied a privileged position during the colonial period and under the traditional Conservative governments.

The changes were so drastic that a three-year civil war broke out. After a great deal of bloodshed, the Conservatives were finally defeated. However, the war had been costly, not only in lives lost, but in regards to Mexico’s economic resources. Mexico’s agricultural and mining production, upon which the national economy had depended, ground to a halt, causing the Mexican government to incur a heavy foreign debt. President Benito Juarez became the leader of the economically prostrate republic in 1861. But the Conservative leadership, still determined not to let the Liberals stay in control, appealed to outside forces for help. The Conservatives had come to believe that the answer to the problems of Mexico lay in the establishment of a monarchy under a foreign prince. Their search brought them to France, then under the rule of Emperor Napoleon III.

Napoleon III had been eager to surpass the glories of the first Napoleon. During this time, Napoleon’s army was reputed to be the finest in Europe with the best weaponry and excellent training, leadership, and experience. Conservatives meeting with Napoleon in Paris assured him that a French invasion of Mexico was feasible and that French forces would be warmly welcomed by the Mexican people. In April 1861, the United States had become engulfed in its own Civil War and was not likely to offer much opposition to a French invasion.

In July 1861, the Juarez government declared a two-year moratorium on the payment of Mexico’s huge foreign debt. In those days, international law permitted the use of armed forces by creditor nations in such situations, so in October 1861, the chief creditors — Great Britain, France, and Spain — protested to Juarez and signed the Convention of London, by which they agreed on a joint occupation of the port of Veracruz to enforce their claims. The three powers proceeded with their joint military intervention, but, after a short operation, Britain and Spain withdrew. France, however, continued its occupation of Veracruz and started to march inland to occupy Mexico City and take control of the entire nation.

On April 19, 1862, 6,000 seasoned French troops under General Latrille set out to capture Mexico City, 400 miles inland. Informed by the Conservatives that the French would be welcomed with open arms, General Latrille marched toward the small village of Puebla. On May 4, the French camped in sight of Puebla on a plateau, approximately halfway between the coast and Mexico City. The next day, General Zaragoza, commanding the Mexican forces, decided to attack the French forces, hoping to cripple or slow their advance in order to give precious time to the Mexican army in the capital.

The decisive action of the day was carried out by young Brigadier General Porfirio Diaz, who repelled a determined but reckless assault by the French on Zaragoza’s right flank. The Mexican soldiers, lacking battlefield experience and armed with outdated artillery and muskets, attacked with determination and fervor. In a four-hour battle, the Mexicans suffered only 250 casualties, while inflicting heavy losses on the French. Losing nearly a thousand men, the French withdrew back to the coast to await reinforcements. The French waited for a year before they began to move back inland. However, this time, the French forces, numbering 30,000 troops, were able to take Mexico City, where they installed Maximilian of Hapsburg as the Emperor of Mexico. Juarez and his government were driven to the border of Texas.

As it turns out, Emperor Maximilian, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, was not what the Conservatives had hoped for. While refusing to rescind the liberal reforms of his predecessors, Maximilian also declared a free press and proclaimed a general amnesty for political prisoners. But he also signed a decree in October 1865, in which the death penalty was made mandatory for all captured Juaristas still bearing arms. In early 1867, Napoleon decided to withdraw his troops and Maximilian was left without support. Taking personal command of the Mexican Imperial Army, Maximilian found that he lacked the support of the people and was quickly surrounded by republican troops. On May 15, 1867, Maximilian surrendered to General Mariano Escobedo. A month later, Maximilian was executed, ending — once and for all — French influence in Mexico.

Fifty thousand Mexicans lost their lives fighting the French forces. But the experience, however tragic and costly, led to the beginning of a national self-esteem which began to grow perceptibly in the years to follow. Even during the French occupation, many of the Mexican people had celebrated Cinco de Mayo as a holiday in the areas not under French occupation. In time, Cinco de Mayo came to symbolize national pride and the triumph of the people over foreign occupation.

John Schmal is an historian, genealogist, and lecturer. With his friend Donna Morales, he coauthored “Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico” (Heritage Books, 2002). He has degrees in History (Loyola-Marymount University) and Geography (St. Cloud State University) and is a board member of the Society of Hispanic Historical Ancestral Research (SHHAR). He is an associate editor of SHHAR’s online monthly newsletter, www.somosprimos.com. John is presently collaborating with Eddie Martinez — a graphics illustrator — on a manuscript entitled “Indigenous Mexico: Past and Present.”

Joel sent me an interesting link today regarding the origins of April Fool’s Day, which set me off on a little internet search for Tid Bits about the day to celebrate jokes and hoaxes.

The exact origins of April Fools Day is not completely clear, although the most commonly accepted idea is that the tradition started in the 1500’s when the Gregorian calender was adopted.  Prior to that, on the Julian Calendar, the New Year started on March 25 (which makes perfect sense to me since that is my birthday) but, since March 25 is in the middle of Holy Week the actual celebration of the new year was held on April 1st.

Celebrating the new year at roughly the same time as the Spring Equinox makes perfect sense: everything is starting anew after a long, hard winter.  The weather is warming, the trees and flowers are blooming, and the rabbits are… well, they are doing what rabbits do.  For those reasons and many others, the new Gregorian date was met with resistance by many people and as such they continued to celebrate the New Year on April 1st.  This seemed very foolish for those who did get (and accept) the memo, and those enlightened folks gave the foolish oldschooler’s the lasting moniker of April Fools.

Since that time traditions have evolved somewhat from pure admonishment to general bafoonery and joke making.  Many individuals have fallen prey to these endeavors over the years, but in my reading today I found out about several  large-scale jokes which have been pulled on an unsuspecting populace.

Here are some of my favorites:

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Today at work Joel and I got into another Blatantly Ridiculous Argument.  We average two or so BRA’s a week, but so far this week we’ve already hit our quota.

Today’s BRA was over the relative costs of owning and operating a car versus using public transportation.  It started when Joel pointed out that Google Maps now includes a cost calculator with their public transit mapper, showing the difference in cost between mass transit and a private automobile.

As an example, here is a screen shot of the route between my house and Shannon’s.

I said that those numbers were clearly crazy, that is did not possibly cost $11.24 to drive to Wilsonville.  We looked it up and found that it was based on the amount per mile that the IRS allows you to deduct for business driving, which for 2010 is $.50 per mile.

Joel’s contention, or at least as far I was able to tell because the argument quickly degenerated into ridiculousness,  was that those numbers may be somewhat inflated but were probably generally accurate when you accounted for registration, insurance, repairs, tickets, and all the other expenses.

I said that those things were indeed an added expense, but that a three zone bus pass alone was $900 dollars (it is actually $946).  And of course, buses can’t take you everywhere you need to go.  You would need to augment that with taxi cabs, a bicycle (which has a surprisingly expensive maintenance schedule, more than $400 last year for me, not mention the cost of the bike itself), AmTrak/Greyhound tickets for longer journeys, or some combination of the above.  Joel said that you could hitch rides with friends to most places you needed to go when you couldn’t take the bus, but as I pointed out, if you want an accurate comparison of what it costs to transport someone from point A to point B, those trips would still need to be counted, at least partially.   Just because the person in question is not paying for the ride, it still costs somebody. It’s akin to arguing that your annual out-of-pocket vehicle operating costs are very low because your parents or spouse pay for your insurance and/or gasoline.  Whoever is paying for it, the money is still being spent.

For an accurate comparison, the question has to be “How much does it costs to transport 1 person 15, 000 miles per year?”   (15,000 miles per year is the number of miles that AAA, IRS and most everyone else uses for the annual average in the US).

So, I did a little reading.  It turns out that it is almost impossible to answer the overall question because there is no hard data for what the actual average expense of automotive ownership is: all of the data is based on new cars with an average price of $28,400, and factor in depreciation, annual interest rate on a car loan, full insurance, etc… which of course does not take into account anyone who, like myself, does not have a car loan, carries minimum insurance, drives a car which is worth less than $2,000 dollars, etc.  In fact, in a completely unscientific survey of the people that I regularly spend time with, I can only think of two people who currently have a car payment, and only one of those is for a new car.  And that car was not $28k dollars.

Personally I have never had a car payment because I have always paid cash for my vehicles.  The most expensive car I’ve ever owned cost me $5,000 and the least expensive car was $100.  The average price of the vehicles that myself or my family have owned is $2,550. (That excludes the $100 piece of garbage.  We had it for about a month while we were between “real” cars.)

I tried but I could not find the national average cost of using strictly public buses, AmTrak/Grayhound, taxi’s, etc.  Throwing a bicycle into the mix drastically reduces the expense of traveling, but for the purposes of this argument I wasn’t considering bicycles because Google did not estimate what it cost to ride a bike, only the supposed difference between operating a car and taking the bus.

I was able to find some interesting things, even if they do not really clear up the overall equation.  First, Google’s numbers are indeed questionable.  As I said, they used the $.50 cent per mile IRS rate for deducting business mileage, but even the IRS does not think that all mileage is worth $.50 a mile.  In fact, Medical expense is only deductible at $.34 cents per mile, and moving mileage is only worth $.19 cents per mile.  Personal mileage is not deductible, nor is commuting too and from work.

I’m not sure what all went into the IRS formula to come up with the $.50 per mile number, but I do know that in 2009 the number was $.55 cents per mile, and that average gasoline prices and average new car prices have not fallen in the same period, so I’m not sure that can be used as an accurate measure.  Especially when coupled with the sliding scale model that the IRS uses for different types of travel.

I consistently found numbers from the Automobile Association of America regarding average operating and ownership expenses for the US, so I went with those for the purposes of this task.  Those numbers were based on a new car, with full insurance, and factored in depreciation, etc.   The numbers were also focused only on the first 5 years of ownership, which skew them to the highside because of the yearly depreciation of the vehicle, which is very high for the first few years.

The numbers below show my actual expenses versus the national averages according to AAA.  Some of the numbers are hard to quantify, like the maintenance/repair expense for the Corsica.  I went back through my records and wrote down everything that I found, but those were mostly larger expenditures.  $1850 is what I came up with for maintenance expenses over the 9 years that I’ve owned my car, so I rounded up to $2500 to cover anything that I might have forgotten.  The major caveat there, of course, is that with very few exceptions I work on my own cars, so there is no labor in that number.  The few repairs that I have paid to have done, I did not to take a garage but instead used a mobile mechanic, who is very affordable.

One other thing to note is that I did not include the depreciation values in the numbers below, because they were very suspect to me.  According to AAA’s numbers, the national average for depreciation on a new car is $3,394 per mile.  That is clearly wrong.  However, even if you assume they meant that to be an annual number, it still doesn’t make sense: after 8.5 years a $28,000 dollar car would be virtually valueless.  While an 8 year old car is clearly not worth what it was when it was new, I think we can all agree that it is worth more than $0.  So, because of this problem I omitted depreciation completely.  This also made the comparison between the national averages and my own expenses easier to relate.  My car is very old and has very high mileage, so it is not worth hardly anything, but it is also not depreciating much any more, certainly not like it undoubtedly did in its first couple of years.  And I only paid $1,500 for it, so the Kelly Blue Book depreciation has been very little.  In reality I think I can easily get more than KBB for it because a car in good condition that runs is almost always worth $1000 bucks to someone, even if it has high miles.

One interesting thing was the cost of fuel per mile.  My math worked out to be higher than AAA’s number, even though the EPA’s estimated national average for MPG is lower than the 23.5 that I worked out for my car.  So I’m not sure what to think about that.

I assume that my information is probably on the low end, but the national averages that AAA have quoted here are, in my opinion, pretty high, and those numbers don’t include depreciation.  Adding AAA’s depreciation numbers in more than doubled the cost of ownership, but as I said, their numbers seemed whack.

I’m guessing that the real average is somewhere in the middle.  In any case, both of those numbers are lower than Google’s calculation, with my own numbers being about 80% higher than the bus fair, which is a far cry from the 388% that Google reported.  And again, that is 80% higher for one in-city trip.

By comparison, a one-way trip to Seattle costs me roughly 1/2 of a tank of gas, which is approximately $20 dollars, plus ~200 miles worth of wear and ownership expense.  That equals roughly $34 using the numbers shown above, adjusted for all highway driving (where my car gets significantly better mileage).

The same trip on AmTrak is $29-$48 dollars depending on the seat you chose, or $31 dollars on Grayhound ($37 for a refundable ticket).

The real kicker comes if you are traveling with more than one person in your car…  Two people traveling in the same car reduces the cost of transport-per-person by half (assuming they are not using shared funds), while the cost-per-person on the bus or train is still the same.  However, I will admit that is cheating, as everything else has been based on a single occupant.

The thing that surprised me the most from all of this is the AAA national average for insurance premiums: $955.  And more than $500 dollars for registration fees?  Who the hell pays that much?