The problem with current furniture

It used to be that furniture was made locally by skilled craftsmen.  Then came automation which allowed furniture to be mass produced lowering the cost, but they were still locally produced and designed by skilled craftsmen who used classic woodworking techniques such as dovetails joints, tongue and groove, mortise and tenon, and many others that hold wood furniture together with little more than a few drops of glue if that.  Unfortunately with most furniture being produced in Asian countries such as China, the priority has changed from making quality furniture to making it as cheep as possible.  Therefore rather than using techniques that can sometimes require some skill to assemble, everything must fold flat into a box and be easy to assemble by people with no wood working skills with only screws holding it together.  On top of that as old growth forests are now hard to find or protected so the wood used tends to be from fast growing varieties that are not as solid and easily split and splinter.  Even the finish applied to the wood is poor quality with usually only a single coat which is easily nicked and provides little protection to the wood allowing it to dry out and become even more brittle.

Shrinking Thanksgiving

A little over five years ago I ranted about stores being open for thanksgiving.  Unfortunately since then things have only gotten worse.  Not only are stores like K-mart open today, but Black Friday, which has started earlier and earlier every year is now starting at midnight for most stores.  This means that the employees of these stores, instead of being able to enjoy a brief Thanksgiving diner with their family, now don't even get that.  Many employees have been complaining in order to work the midnight shift they must go to sleep around 2pm and completely miss out on Thanksgiving dinner.  With on-line shopping available 24/7 is it really necessary to have the stores open at midnight?  Are stores really going to make huge profits from those customers that are at the store at 1am to buy that one item on sale?  Are they really going to spend time in the store buying things that they could buy at a normal time for the same price?  It's time to let people enjoy a truly American holiday with their families and not force them to miss out just because they're not fortunate enough to have a job that allows them to sleep in.  If you must go shopping on Black Friday, do it from the comfort of your own home on-line and skip the stores.  If enough people avoid this ridiculousness maybe the stores will open later next year and let their staff enjoy the holiday the way it was meant to be enjoyed.

Are you a reporter or a doer?

I don't know about you, but I found this article about Bill Nye collapsing during a presentation at the University of Southern California a little disturbing.  Bill passes out and the only action by his audience is to tweet about it?  Sounds to me like he was lecturing to a bunch of twits.  If I were in the audience, I know posting something about it would be the last thing on my mind.  The first thing I would want to do is find out if he was OK and call for help.  What would you do if you were in this situation?  Do you want to be making news or reporting news?  If the behavior of these students doesn't change the last thing you may hear is, "You're choking?  I'll give you the Heimlich just as soon as I finish this tweet."