Shampoo Conservation

Probably a lot of other people do this little trick too, but I am sure that plenty do not.

Whenever a shampoo bottle is "empty" my wife will put it on top of the shower enclosure so that she will see it later and throw it into the recycle bin. What I do in the couple of days before she actually removes it, is use it some more. I take the cap off and fill it with about half a cup of water, then I swirl it around to dissolve the remaining product. This method will usually give me a couple of hair washings.

The fact that I can do this is proof that she does not do it and she is pretty smart*--Masters in Biochemistry after all. In fairness, she has much more hair on her head than I do and so it takes much more shampoo to wash. The remainders are plenty for me but probably wouldn't make a dent in what she needs.

This "shampoo conservation" as I call it may seem insignificant, but it all adds up: If it saved one bottle of shampoo over a lifetime (and it probably saves more than that), it would save 300 million bottles of shampoo in the United States alone. Prices are pretty variable, but this could represent a billion dollars. This is a drop in the bucket for an economy well-north of 10 trillion. On the other hand, I could live quite well for the rest of my life on 1% of a billion (10 million dollars).

Spread-out over a lifetime it shouldn't make a dent in profits for makers. So hopefully, nobody from this secret society

will come and break my kneecaps. Heck, nobody reads this thing anyway!

*She is also pretty conservation-minded: She will extract the last molecule of toothpaste out of the tube before throwing it out. It is almost a contest with us, who can get one last use out of a tube. She wins this pretty often given that my hands are much stronger than hers.

Typical Dinner Conversation, while watching the food channel...

Wife: Someday I want to go to culinary institute and become a chef.

Husband: Someday you should go to a mental institute and become a patient.

Wife: You think I'm crazy?

Husband: No. Just too good a setup to leave alone.

Post of the day at "The Corner" and it is only 7:30

Hilarious [Jonah Goldberg]

Michael Graham forwarded me this.

From CBS MarketWatch:

How Obama Can Win Over The Media

Next in the series: "How Obama Can Win Over Blacks, Upscale White Liberals and Chicago Activists."

11/08 07:35 AM

Not Happy, Not Happy At All...

So, Mamma gave me a bath today. Now I have to wear this humiliating get-up to go for a walk, just because the ground is still wet?

A dog's life: One assault on my dignity after another...

HOPE?

From a little distance Hope and the initials for High Density Polyethelyne look a lot alike. Up close you can tell the difference.

Looking on the bright side...

1. It is great for our nation that we finally got a black president. It is a shame it had to be one who (on paper at least) seems to have little relevant experience and is far to the left of most Americans.

2. All of the traditional marriage issues around the country passed. I don't have a huge interest in the issue, but it is surely a sign that we are still a center/right land.

3. If McCain had won, then it would be 12 years of Republican rule in the White House. There is no way a Republican could have won in 2012, now it will mostly depend on how well Obama does.

4. Obama may be an inexperienced lefty, but he is a quick study. He is very bright and should be able to get up to speed quickly. Either way, January 20th the training wheels come off.

Very Funny

Obama supporters of two types

To those on the left-hand side of the Democratic party, a vote for Senator Obama is totally rational. He is as liberal a candidate as his party has run in recent history. This article is not for you, if you fit into the above category. This is for a class of Obama supporter which can be represented by Christopher Buckley:

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

I think these people are mistaken when they think Obama will be pragmatic: Here are two reasons why.

1. In the April 16th Democratic debate, Charles Gibson pointed-out that when cap gains tax rates are lowered, the government takes in more revenue. Obama responded (to the effect) that it was a matter of "fairness". This is not the mind of a pragmatic person.

2. History: Back when Bill Clinton was first elected President, he too had a Democratic Congress. He tried to finesse a progressive agenda. It didn't work. The things he got done were not all that radical, but they were radical enough to loose him both houses of Congress. The only significant legislative accomplishments from then on were moderate/conservative in nature (Nafta and Welfare Reform). He never got another chance to push-forward anything remotely progressive.

Obama is smart enough to realize that if he does what Clinton did, he will have no legacy. If he rams-through big stuff in the first two years it won't matter if Congress goes Republican. The Republicans will not get veto-proof majorities and will thus not be able to reverse any of what he does in the first two years.

The pragmatic camp will regret their hope that Obama doesn't mean to do what he has promised to do.

ADDED: Yes, I know that Obama's 180 on taking public financing argue that he is indeed pragmatic. Yes, if pragmatic=dishonest. This only benefited him personally, as I have argued above; he will not gain anything from being pragmatic once in office.

new longish run

I hate to run out and back; I much prefer loops, so I had to look at a number of options when running down toward Concord. As it was, I wish I had gone a little further South since I had plenty of energy left at the end of this run.

This is the eternal problem with long runs: You need to develop long range endurance and so it is the last 6 miles of a 20 mile run that are doing you good. So, it is a total pain to do the first 14 since they are basically just prep-work. They don't feel like prep work, just work! I could feel at the end of this run that I was just getting to glycogen depletion and switching over to fatty-acid metabolism. It is not an on-off switch, "the wall" notwithstanding.

Practical matters intervened in that my wife needed to be out of the house by 11:45 and I didn't want the kids left unattended any longer than necessary, but still, an extra 40 minutes would have put me into the 20 mile range and would have done me a lot of good.