Buy Xanax Without Prescription Best Prices Guaranteed

Todd started the discussion with his post about reforming education in America and Tracy added her two cents. Tracy agreed with me about the less-than-impressive track record of charter schools, but both thought market-style competition were the solution.

I disagree that bringing up charter school problems is a pot shot, since charter schools are exactly what many reformers and proponents of privatizing public education want. My main point is not that I think privatization is morally wrong or doomed to failure, but that we should take a more scientific approach to charter schools, vouchers, and other forms of privatization.

Here are five slow, difficult steps for reforming education in America.

1) We should try more than one alternative model. A lot of people are big on for-profit companies running schools with public money—why not non-profit organizations instead? We have some evidence it works, since many private schools and colleges are non-profits. Looking at colleges, the non-profit model has apparently been more successful than the for-profit one. Why don't we try just privatizing some aspects of school systems, like facilities? Many large corporations outsource their maintenance work. How many advocates for “choice� and “freedom� are willing to try charter schools run directly by teacher's unions?

2) We should make reforms systematically such that results can be compared in some meaningful way. If we privatize the cafeteria in a middle-class suburb and costs go down, we cannot conclude that private charter schools will be effective and save taxpayers money. If we have a successful charter school in a wealthy suburb we cannot conclude the same model will work in the inner city. We need to be able to get comparable metrics in order to make comparisons.

3) When trying to reform school systems, raise test scores, or otherwise improve education, we should base our attempts on some kind of actual research, not just ideology. For example, are we even reforming in the right place? Let's see a cost/benefit analysis - where can changes make the largest difference? Programs like Raising a Reader and First Book have followed the numbers pointing to early childhood literacy intervention. From this FastCompnay profile of JumpStart:

By kindergarten, on average, a child from a middle-income background has received up to 1,700 hours of one-to-one reading time while a child from a low-income background has received only 25. As a result, at first grade, the middle income child will have a vocabulary that is four times greater than his low-income peers. Since a child's knowledge of the alphabet in kindergarten is the strongest predictor of reading ability in 10 grade, this discrepancy is telling.

4) We should learn some lessons from the current experiments with charter schools and other approaches and do better. I think it might be worth looking into increasing oversight of these schools and investigating the role political connections and campaign contributions play in how contracts are awarded. There's strong evidence that charter schools affiliated with a district are much better than completely independent schools. This is not just about finding bad news. What are some school doing right?

5) More pizza parties. I'm only half kidding here. How often have we heard that “throwing money at the problem� isn't a solution? Granted I haven't done a lot of research, but I don't think there have been many cases where too much money was given to a school system. Let's add this to our list of alternatives to try: spending a ton of money on a poor school district to improve the building, the materials, the library, the competitiveness of teacher salaries, the nutrition of the food, the before- and after-school programs and activities, etc.

It turns out electric lawn mowers are better for the environment and would take some hassle from my schedule.

I have a small yard, with a lot of shade – depending on the weather, I only really need to mow every two to three weeks. When I bought the house, it seemed silly to buy a new lawn mower for such a small yard, so I accepted a hand-me-down instead. The hand-me-down has always been hard to start, and now no amount of cord pulling seems to help.

What could be wrong? Simple. It could be bad gas, old gas, water in the gas tank, sediment in the fuel filter or the bottom of the tank, a gummed up carburetor, not enough air, too much air, a dirty (or just dead) spark plug, a problem in the ignition system, or it could need an oil change. Of course I should have done more regular oil changes, changed the filters, and drained the gas before last winter.

Add to all that the time I spend pushing this loud, heavy thing around and this does not sound like an appropriate amount of effort for my tiny, wimpy lawn. Buying a new gas-powered mower will only alleviate the immediate problem, not the gas, oil, filter, etc., hassles.

And guess what? Gas-powered lawn mowers are horrible polluters! Apparently cutting for one hour is about the same as driving for 100 miles! I have a hippy-treehugger hybrid, so I can probably drive two hundred miles on that emissions budget. There have been moves to add pollution controls to small engines, but they are often blocked by industry lobbyists, or valiant crusaders against evil regulatory expansionism, depending on your point of view. I'm always interested in living more efficiently, so I think it's worth considering.

Let's add this up:

Things I like/don't mind:

1. Being outside, even if it's cold.
2. Walking
3. Pushing things

Things I don't like:

1. Adding maintenance of some device to my already busy schedule
2. Polluting, apparently much more than I would have guessed
3. Pulling and pulling and pulling and goddamn you why won't you start!

As I see it, I have three options:

1. A manual push mower, just like grandpa used to have. Apparently modern reel mowers are not like grandpa's, since they are light and easy to use in many yards.
2. A corded electric mower, just like that one neighbor used to have in the 80s. Corded mowers are apparently about as good as gas mowers with the drawback being the cord.
3. A battery-powered mower. Although they don't last long enough for big lawns (not a problem for me), there are even robot models available.

I haven't had a chance to really look into manual reel mowers, but I did a little searching about electric mowers and came up with some ideas.

• As corded mowers go, the Black & Decker MM875 19" Lawn Hog Electric Mulching Mower seems to get mentioned a lot, and it has a number of good reviews on Amazon. It's about $220, which seems like a reasonable amount to spend.

• For cordless, battery-powered mowers, some recommend the Black & Decker Cordless CMM-1000 but it's pretty expensive – around $420. I would have a hard time justifying that expense for the amount of mowing I actually do.

• There's another cordless by Bully (their 16" Cordless Lawn Mower) that is comparable in price to the Black and Decker corded and has mixed, but overall good reviews on Amazon.

• Then, of course, there is the Friendly Robotics RL850 RoboMower. At well over $1000, it doesn't meet my budget, which is a shame because I'm very happy with my Roomba vacuum cleaner.

Anyone have first-hand experience with these, or other manual and electric mowers? I might even buy one just for the emissions savings, I'm that lame. But it sounds like any of the choices above would be more convenient, too. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

As you've probably heard, Google has bought Youtube.

There has been a lot of talk about this on the web over the past few days. Now that the deal is done, some people are just glad it's over. Om Malik still thinks it's not a good idea in the long run. others think that only Google has the advertising muscle to make Youtube profitable.

But I don't think it's just a matter of plastering YouTube with Adsense ads, at least I hope not for Google's sake.

Think about it this way: why didn't advertising on the Internet work before Google? Well, the banner ads were repetitive, uninteresting, and eventually became an animated, distracting annoyance. The popup ads were worse, and worse still were those disgusting Flash travesties that covered up what you were trying to read. I talk about these ads in the past tense as if they are gone, but they still lurk all over some sites.

The point is that Google took something that was a ubiquitous annoyance and turned it into something that created value for both users, site owners, and advertisers. They made ads that were:

1. Not hideous—basically they don't detract from the browsing experience.
2. Actually relevant to what a user is looking for. This is an important point, because it means that adding these ads to your site might actually provide value to your users. If they got to your page by searching for “how to get a good divorce lawyer,� they are in the market for a divorce lawyer and might find one through the ad.
3. Measurably effective for advertisers, without all sorts of “mindshare� vagueness.

Now, lets look at television advertising—is this a similar situation? If the number of TiVos and DVRs sold is any indication, people are sick of commercials. People are willing to pay money for a device that lets them skip ads. Part of the reason DVD box sets of entire seasons of television shows are so popular is that they have no ads.

Why do people hate commercials so much? They are repetitive—if you watch two hours of prime time TV you're bound to see the exact same thing 6 or 7 times. They are annoying, employing tactics to try to grab your attention, or played at a higher volume than the shows. And despite marketers best efforts, most commercials do not directly interest you.

So here's what Google can do:

Make deals with networks, studios and content producers. Google is already doing this, and it must be done to make the fun steps below possible without thousands of lawsuits.

Now, imagine you want to watch the Colbert Report. You go to YouTube, find today's episode, and watch it. At the end, there are a few commercials. They are:

1. Polite. The ads don't pop up over the video you want to see, they don't interrupt at inopportune moments of the plot, they don't jam up the volume, and they probably don't play before the video at all – most likely after, with a break or two in the middle of longer shows.

2. Relevant. It's not just a matter of targeting video ads toward keywords – like text ads, Google weighs better ads that get more responses more than crappy ads by deeper pocketed advertisers. Google might use their knowledge of your search patterns, but I doubt they will, just because they won't need to. They'll be able to mine enough from user discussions to make very good guesses about what you might be interested in seeing next or buying.

3. Measurable. Not only does YouTube have much better data on viewership than the Neilsen ratings could ever dream of, but the actual user response to the ads is trackable by clickthroughs and conversions.

If Google understands this, then they will make their 1.65 billion back and then some. If they don't understand this, I'd be more than happy to come explain it in person, just drop me a line.

News broke a couple days ago about California Attorney General Bill Lockyer suing what he calls "the Big Six" - GM, FoMoCo, DaimlerChrysler, Toyota, Nissan North America and Honda North America - for "contribut[ing] significantly to global warming, harm[ing] the resources, infrastructure and environmental health of California, and cost[ing] the state millions of dollars to address current and future effects." Pundits jumped on the news immediately, calling it the next Big Tobacco lawsuit. But I think that Lockyer, if he's so inclined to believe his state's fascination with wheeled transport is doing it some harm, could have found a better target. First off, while the lawsuit appears similar to Big Tobacco on first glance - industry creates product, product harms people on a national scale, industry becomes wealthy, hey-we-should-sue-somebody mentality sets in - anybody who read anything more than headlines over the last decade will be able to point out the differences. The companies that make up Big Tobacco conspired to keep their knowingly harmful and knowingly addictive products in the mouths of the public for decades solely for the gain of profit. Meanwhile, the companies that make up "the Big Six" (btw, Lockyer kinda made that up himself - the motoring press has so far refused to admit the foreign automakers into any Big category and have really dropped the term other than in jest since Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merged in 2000) can hardly conspire on anything. Only the most paranoid conspiracy theorist would argue that the heads of those six companies get together in a secret cabal meeting room and chuckle sadistically over their plan to put particulate matter into the skies above California. That theory follows gnomic philosophy - Step 1: Pollute the Golden State; Step 2: (nothing); Step 3: Profit!!! Also, any automotive manufacturer in the United States has to pass pretty severe emissions regulations, and has had to do so since 1968. Granted, the emisssions regulations today are much more strict than the 1968 rules, but the point is that they have abided by every effort the government has made since then to clean up the gasoline-fired internal combustion engine. And California, through its California Air Resources Board, has imposed even tougher emissions regulations since about that same time. So Lockyer can't argue that all of this has taken place in a vacuum. We'll skip the argument about California's nearly petulant refusal to offer comprehensive public transportation (San Fran's trolleys don't count). We'll skip the argument about Big Oil artifically keeping the cost of fuel in America down, feeding our addiction to wheeled transport, while Europeans with their high fuel costs have learned to find alternative means of transportation. We'll skip the argument that market forces - not GM - killed the elctric car and will continue to do so until a viable EV with the range and power of an internal combustion vehicle appears. We'll skip the questioning of why smaller manufacturers - Hyundai, BMW, Mitsubishi, VW/Audi among them - didn't make the list. While "the Big Six" make for an easy target, I'll argue that another industry - let's call them "the Big Five" (if Lockyer can make shit up, then so can I) - has contributed more to greenhouse emissions and has spent many more years in unregulated bliss than our major automotive manufacturers. If any industry were to profit from collaborating with Big Oil, it would be the trucking industry - Big Diesel. Over the last few decades, this country has shifted almost entirely away from hauling its goods by rail and toward shipping them via truck. I'll surmise that it's a direct result of our insistence on having our stuff ASAP. Trains take too long because the tracks don't go everywhere; roads go everywhere that consumers do, so let's just ship it all via truck. I've driven across this country twice; I ply the roads of the Northeast on a regular basis. And I see the preponderance of trucks on the road, belching emissions and tearing up highways with seeming impunity. I see really five major diesel brands on the road nowaday: International (a brand of Navistar), Freightliner (owned by DaimlerChrysler), Volvo, Mack (owned by Volvo) and Isuzu (partnered mostly with GM). Why not go after them? According to the EPA, "reducing emissions from diesel engines is one of the most important air quality challenges facing the country." Granted, federal emissions regulations have just recently started to take diesels to task, with members of "the Big Six" scrambling to meet 2007 calendar year diesel deadlines (GM's completely revamping its diesels; DaimlerChrysler's all-new BlueTec diesel couldn't pass muster in five states). But where have diesel regs been since 1968? It wasn't until 1998 that diesel particulate matter was identified as a toxic air contaminant and carcinogen, and CARB all of a sudden decided to reduce diesel emissions in California 75 percent by 2010 and 85 percent by 2020. It wasn't until June 1, 2006, that refiners had to start production of ultra-low sulfur diesel engines. Remember middle school health class, when they showed you pictures of a normal healthy lung, then pictures of a tobacco smoker's lung, then pictures of a marijuana user's lung? The relative cleanliness of a gasoline engine versus a diesel engine is kinda like that. So Lockyer's insistence on going after "the Big Six" rather than Big Diesel is like going after Big Tobacco (ignore my deconstruction of the faulty analogy above for a second) when Big Marijuana is just sitting around (if, of course, marijuana were legal and thus spawned a legitimate industry). Is Lockyer afraid to piss of Big Diesel and risk more price hikes in consumer goods if such a lawsuit were successful? (Incidentally, have consumer goods dropped in price since last year's $3-plus gas "forced" transportation companies to hike their rates, thus "forcing" consumer good manufacturers to up their prices?) Is Lockyer afraid of pissing off unionized truck drivers? Or does he just not realize what real damage is going on beyond the sensational headlines he's created? I should probably state somewhere here that, even though I'm a car guy and car guys generally despise regulation of their cars, all internal combustion engines do pollute. Heck, any mode of transportation aside from walking or riding a horse ultimately pollutes, considering the manufacturing processes that go into creating anything from a bicycle to an automobile. I'd like to see fewer greenhouse gases like anyone, so why not start with the biggest polluters?

You hear a lot about deregulation. Deregulation of electric utilities, deregulation of telecommunications, deregulation of the airline industry. Although the word may have lost it's luster for some, with all the companies, industries, and politicians constantly pining for deregulation, you might wonder – why should we have any regulations at all? After all, the United States is a capitalist, market-based society. Markets are very good at generating wealth. Why not let the market solve the problems?

If I were a libertarian, I would give a big 'hip-hip hooray' and finish the article right here. But I'm paid by the word, so I'll go on. Regulations are rules set up by the government that tell businesses what they can and cannot do. It sounds like an affront to freedom, democracy, and apple pie, so clearly we need a devils advocate.

We could look at examples of warm, fuzzy regulations like food safety inspections, environmental regulations, child labor laws and the like, or we look at cases where how deregulation has failed. Right now, though, I'd like to illustrate how a working, free market can lead to problems that only some kind of regulation can fix.

Let's say that scientists discover that the emission of particle X causes statistically significant increases in the cancer rate. Particle X spreads over a wide area so it's not a particularly local problem - the researchers say that decreasing emissions by 50% worldwide would reduce cancer in the U.S. by 20%.

For this illustration, particle X also happens to be a byproduct of many industrial processes. To make this an ideal example let's also say those same researchers have discovered that particle Y is a perfect substitute for X and causes no harm. particle X and Y are equal in price, abundance, availability, and all other attributes except X is harmful and Y is not.

How will the invisible hand guide firms toward replacing X with Y? By itself, Y does not present an immediate advantage to firms - there's no cost savings, so it does not provide a competitive advantage on that level. In fact, there will be some cost involved in switching machines and supply chains from X to Y.

This is a market, though, so there are both sellers and buyers. Rational customers will want to reduce their chance of getting cancer, so they might demand that firms start using Y.

Let's say there are three large firms in this case. A Ltd. decides the cost is too high, so it does not stop using X. B Co. decides to start using Y, and advertises this to consumers. At this point, the path seems clear - people will stop buying from A and switch to B, unless perhaps A lowers prices to cope with the lower demand. Unfortunately, there is a third firm, C Inc., which decides to forgo the cost of switching but advertise that they have switched.

What? That's not fair? Keep in mind this is a completely free market, so we won't have any laws to prevent this sort of thing. It's unethical? Keep in mind that the CEO of the C Inc. has signed a contract giving him a fiduciary duty to increase shareholder value - he could argue that passing this opportunity would be a violation of their trust.

In this situation it's clear C Inc. has the competitive advantage. Consumers will flock to B and C's products equally, until C lowers their price because of their lower cost structure.

The key here is that consumers have a lack of information. In any market, there's a good chance that the seller will have more information than the buyer - the seller already has the item and they know more abut how it's made. What's worse, many sellers are specialists with domain knowledge while many consumers will only have general ideas about any particular kind of product.

It gets worse if sellers are able to organize into large organizations. They gain additional economies of scale when it comes to information. Think of it this way - imagine it takes 8 hours of research to be knowledgeable enough about digital cameras to judge quality and price. If 100 people go to a store to buy a camera, they will each need to spend 8 hours. The store, however, can have 1 person ad headquarters with the knowledge and 12 sales people with 1 hour of training in cameras, enough to not sound stupid. The person at HQ sets prices and types up fact sheets, while the salespeople sell. In this scenario, each person will bear 8 hours of cost while the company only spends 12 minutes of study time per transaction.

So in this example, government regulation can help in two ways -

First, by laying ground rules for a marketplace. Laws that criminalize fraud or require truth in advertising will give C Inc. an incentive not to lie - avoiding fines and jail time. It is these ground rules which really make a market possible in the first place.

Second, by helping to bridge the information gap between buyers and sellers. Regulations like safety and quality inspections and reporting requirements give consumers the opportunity to have information in the first place. Once the information available to newspapers and consumer advocates the buyers can gain a bit of that economy of scale as well.

And by the way, deregulation makes Star Trek impossible.