It's like being a vigilante, but with fewer bloodstains to wash out of your clothing

I've just been made aware of something called Baltimore John Watch and I think it's a great idea.  I'm personally pretty impressed that some people are willing to put themselves out there and identify the johns picking up prostitutes in their neighborhood.  It seems to be quite controversial (apparently the johns hate it, the prostitutes aren't big fans, the drug dealers hate it because the prostitutes have less money, and people who live nearby hate it because it's just causing the prostitutes to relocate).  In my opinion, it's great that someone is posting the license plate numbers and descriptions of people picking up known prostitutes while children are playing nearby.  I don't have a whole lot of pity for men paying $20 for a blow job from an addicted, diseased hooker.  More services for the prostitute themselves would be ideal, but it seems to me that compassion for the prostitutes and hate for the johns are not mutually exclusive.

Homeless Shelters for Muslim Women

This morning WYPR had a really interesting story about homeless shelters in Baltimore for Muslim women.  It sounds like a very under-served population, at least from the fact that they are always full and always have a waiting list.  I wanted to find out some more about the shelter (and the other two small shelters in Baltimore), but it seems like they don't have much of a web-presence.  I suppose that's not surprising considering that they have to sell food on the streets to make the monthly rent on their shelter.

I did find an older Washington Post article that mentions this shelter, an article from something called the Muslim Link from when the shelter opened in 2007, and a blog post that basically calls Muslims big whiners for feeling uncomfortable in Christian-run shelters.  The blog post does raise a valid question about the possible hypocrisy of a Muslim-based shelter.  Basically, the blogger's argument is that if the problem is that Christian-run shelters proselytize too much and make women of other faiths uncomfortable, the solution is not creating a different sort of faith-based shelter.  Well, that's the blogger's argument stated in a less frenzied and rational tone - overall they're very upset that a minority group wants to be treated differently.  Either way, I don't think it is very good criticism.

I would, instead, approach the problem as follows: you have devout Muslim women who feel that the policies and standards of most homeless shelters violate tenets of their faith.  These women have nowhere to go, they may not be legal residents, and there may be children involved.  I think that anyone can agree that the first priority should be to help these women get back on their feet, recover from the emotional trauma they've experienced, and become productive members of society.  Because, and here's the great part, anyone and everyone can become an American.  That's what's great about this place.  America is what you make it, literally.  Every generation we get to reinvent ourselves, every American has just as much right as any other American to contribute to the "American Culture."  

So these women are Americans who need help, I say you have to keep your eye on the ball here - help women get into a stable situation THEN you can worry about "freeing" them from what you judge to be an out-dated belief system and adopt fully "Western" values.  Don't get me wrong, I'm as big on blind religious faith being detrimental to society as the next east coast, liberal-leaning, over-educated blogger, but if these women only feel comfortable going to a shelter that is run by a mosque or Islamic organization, then I think we should encourage that.

Anyway, I'm thinking I might try to find a way to help out these shelters.  Yes, I know that Muslim organizations make a lot of people uncomfortable; worries about radicalization, trouble with integration into Western society, blah, blah, blah.  All the more reason for some mainstream American charities to get involved.  The more integrated into the larger charity structure these organizations are, the more transparent their leadership and financing must become.  Plus, I imagine that knowing that the shelter is supported by the larger society would make these women feel more accepted by society.  Or not.  I would still measure it a success if my donation helped a battered woman get out of an abusive situation.

Shakespeare in a Park

This is one of those "here's a great thing I found in Baltimore and I think they deserve a 'shout-out'" sort of posts:

The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival

Right now they are doing Twelfth Night at "the meadow at Evergreen house."  I'd never even been to Evergreen House, it's conveniently hidden between Loyola College and the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and inexplicably owned by JHU.  You should go catch this play or their next one (The Taming of the Shrew, July 18 - August).  The acting was fantastic and you couldn't ask for a more relaxing environment.  The play starts at 8 pm, as the sun is setting, you're far enough off the road that you can't hear any traffic, there's a small brook at the edge of the meadow, it's just awesome.  

We got there at 7:45 and were about the last people to show up.  Apparently everyone else knew that you're supposed to bring some wine and a picnic dinner... I'm totally doing that next time!  And, in case you forgot your wine or beer, it's available from the concession stand!

This is one definitely falls in the "Pro" category when you're considering living in Baltimore.

Supply Side Economics and the McNugget

The other night my friend and I pulled into a McDonalds' drive-thru at around 11:15 PM.  It was late, we'd just gotten out of ultimate frisbee practice, and we were pretty hungry.  I ask my friend what he wants, he says "Three 4-piece chicken McNuggets."  I think this is a good idea, so I decide to order my own 4-piece box of chicken McNuggets.

We get up to the ordering box:

Box:  "Hello, welcome McDonalds, may I take your order?  We are on our late-night menu."

Me:  "What?"

Box:  "We're on our late-night menu."

Me:  "Do you have Chicken McNuggets?"

Box: "Yeah."

Me:  "Ok, we'll take four 4-piece chicken McNuggets and ..."

Box: "We only have 6 and 10."

Me:  "Huh?"

Box: "We only have 6 and 10."

Me: "..."

My Friend:  "Can you tell them to put 4 McNuggets in a 6 McNugget box?"

Me: "That doesn't make any sense."

Box (helpfully):  "We don't serve anything on our Dollar Menu right now."

Me: "So you can give us a 6- or 10-piece Chicken McNugget box, but not a 4-piece?"

Box: "Yeah."

Me (to my friend):  "What do you want to do?"

My Friend:  "I don't want to pay more for McNuggets."

Me:  "Do you want something else?"

My Friend:  "Can we just go somewhere else?"

So we determined that yes, we could go somewhere else.  So we went to the Burger King across the street.

This just serves to highlight the fact that you should never, ever buy a 6- or 10-piece box of Chicken McNuggets.  What I don't understand is McDonald's insisting on not selling their 4-piece boxes at night.  I mean, it's not like they lock up the 4-piece boxes in a safe every night.  They definitely have McNuggets.  They just don't want you to be able to take advantage of the following (illogical) prices:

4-piece Chicken McNuggets - $1.00

6-piece Chicken McNuggets - $2.59

10-piece Chicken McNuggets - $3.39

20-piece Chicken McNuggets - $6.59

(prices from the McDonalds' in the Southside Shopping Center on Fort Ave.)

These prices imply the following graph of the marginal cost of Chicken McNuggets:

So why do McNuggets 5 and 6 cost so much?  Let's put on our supply-side economist hat.  We must assume that McDonalds has a constant profit margin on McNugget because of the competitive nature of fast-food chicken product market, so price differences in McNuggets must represent the underlying cost of producing those McNuggets.  (You think I'm an idiot for making these assumptions?  Check out this ludicrous discussion of the cost of tomatoes on the vine by an actual economist.)

Another interesting aspect of the Chicken McNugget market is that you can buy in multiple of 4 McNuggets at a constant cost, but if you add two more McNuggets to that box and sell it as a 6-piece box, your costs more than double!  The science of Chicken McNugget production is a bit opaque to me, but this leads me to believe that 4 is some sort of natural unit of McNugget and that it takes a great deal of energy to split this basic McNugget unit for boxing purposes.  I think there is a lot of evidence for this theory, considering that you can not buy an odd number of Chicken McNuggets (it must be prohibitively expensive to further split the McNugget units).

It's also possible that it is much more expensive to produce a 6-pc, 10-pc, or 20-pc box.  In this case, I would propose packing additional McNuggets in the 4-pc box.  Having recently purchased a 4-pc McNugget (during research for this blog post), I can tell you that there seemed to be room for additional McNuggets in the package.

Other theories that I have considered:

1)  McDonalds employees are very bad at counting.  It takes significantly longer to count to 6 than to count to 4.  This is somewhat supported by the fact that McNuggets 11-20 cost more than McNuggets 7-10.  However, McNuggets 7-10 are the cheapest in terms of marginal cost, far cheaper than McNuggets 5 and 6.  Perhaps this supports the theory that the most basic unit of McNuggets is 4; adding multiples of 4 McNuggets costs very little, but adding 2 McNuggets is very expensive.

2)  There are some non-linear properties to McNuggets that make them very hard to cook and transport in multiples of 6.  (This does not explain why three packages of 4-pc McNuggets are cheaper than one 10-piece box).  Perhaps there is some strange effect causes the 5th McNugget to be very difficult to cook, but it dissipates quickly once you reach 6 or more McNuggets in any one location?

None of these simple economic explanations tell me exactly why I couldn't order a 4-pc McNugget late at night.  Perhaps we should be searching for a different explanation.  Perhaps there is a McNugget specialist who has one, and only one, job all day long: the production of 4-pc Chicken McNugget orders.  This explains the extremely low price of 4-pc McNuggets during the day - there is someone very, very efficient is producing them.  The regular McDonalds employees produce the other quantities of McNuggets less efficiently (hence the high price of the 6-pc McNugget), but we do see some economies of scale in the larger orders (as you would expect).

Now why doesn't McDonalds employ the 4-pc specialist at night?  Simple - they only need a few employees at night because there is lower demand for meals at night.  They want to maintain as much variety on the menu as possible, so they are forced to use employees with general fast-food preparation skills.

Well, there you have it, what might otherwise seem like a mystery explained by the application of simple economic principles.  The uneducated might simply assume that McDonalds was making more profit on a 6-pc McNugget order than on a 4-pc McNugget order because of a combination of hard-to-read menus and the assumption that marginal costs always decrease with increasing quantity, but we know better.  We know McDonalds operates in a very competitive market; we know that they do not have monopoly pricing power; so we know that the price of McNuggets reflects the true cost to produce them; therefore we can reasonably surmise the existence of the single-shift 4-pc McNugget Specialist - it's the only possible explanation!

Open Letter to Google

It's been a long time since I made a blog post, but I have a good idea that I want people to listen to.  Specifically, I want Google to pay attention.  Like anyone that uses Gmail, I take it for granted that I will have the entire history of an email exchange on one screen.  But I have a problem.  At work we have a Microsoft Exchange Server and have to use Outlook.  As much as I love have 15 lines of my inbox taken up by one message chain, I would prefer to have it all collapsed down by conversation.  This would be especially key for my email archives I think.  It's a pain in the ass to try to find something in an email from last May from someone you worked a lot with last year.  I've got 1200 email from someone and I need to find one sentence - "Sort by Sender" just doesn't cut it.  At least cut that down to 400 or so conversations; better yet, give me Google search capabilities.

So Google, this is the product I want.  I want something that can read in MS Outlook *.pst archive folders, sort the messages into conversation, and allow me to use Google search on the messages in the archive.  Here's the catch, like many people, I work on very proprietary stuff - my company would NOT be cool with this being advertising-based and sending any sort of information about the emails to a central server.  It would have to be a stand-alone program.  But, I would pay for this program.  I think that if you could offer me this product for $20, I would buy it.  I would even fight my IT department to get a corporate implementation if I had to.

Even if you never really sell this product, could you just create a Beta version that people could download for free?  What I'm really looking for here is to force Microsoft to modernize their email client a little.  There are a few small variations, but MS Outlook's mailbox looks more or less like my AOL mailbox in 1998.