Killer App

Everyone's always trying to figure out what the next killer app is going to be: the iPhone, the iPad, Facebook, YouTube, whatever. I've come to realize those things aren't it.

I am.

I probably couldn't go back and show you much from my childhood or young adult days, because those things aren't there any more. Every once in a while I take a particular shine to something that I am willing to go out of my way to enjoy. This is almost certainly the kiss of death; it is soon to be outmoded, outdated, out of print, acquired, canceled, or recycled.

I've been present for the death of six professional companies, four restaurants, three food lines, two bands, and a partridge in a pear tree. Ok, maybe not the partridge. Got a favorite book series? Sorry that's now out of print. Like that podcast? They're off the Net. Cool TV series? Canceled. Getting into that band with the great sound? They've broken up.

Some people say that Milton was a genre killer; any style he wrote in dried up after he published his work. Maybe that's my superpower: I can kill popularity at a distance.

On the other hand, if something new comes out (mouse scroll wheels, social networking apps, Harry Potter, Dan Brown novels, wireless networking, Survivor) and I hate it -- it's gonna be big .

Bank on it.

No Respect For Big Families

Thought I might take a train trip up north and decided to check the fares. Putting in 2 adults and 5 Nodlings brought up this error from their Web site: Problem with too many children.


I find that kind of rude. I understand the need for a business to make a buck, and children's fares are discounted from adult fares, but still! Boo on Amtrak!

"Please correct the error(s) shown"? How would they like me to do that -- "selective reduction"? It's not like I'm trying to take the entire fifth grade to Concord.

It kind of illustrates a problem that our entire society has with "too many children". Five children isn't large. The Duggar Family, now that's large. Five kids just fills a minivan; I don't need special transportation to get them to and from places.

How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers. --Mother Teresa

It used to be that people respected the family; a man with many children had his "quiver full". Justice demands that a man be paid a living wage.

[Wikipedia] The living wage is a concept central to the Catholic social teaching tradition beginning with the foundational document, Rerum Novarum, a papal encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, issued in 1891 to combat the excesses of both laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and communism on the other. In this letter, Pope Leo affirms the right to private property while insisting on the role of the state to require a living wage. The means of production were considered by the pope to be both private property requiring state protection and a dimension of the common good requiring state regulation.

Pope Leo first described a living wage in such terms as could be generalized for application in nations throughout the world. Rerum Novarum touched off legislative reform movements throughout the world eliminating child labor, reducing the work week, and establishing minimum wages.

• "If a worker receives a wage sufficiently large to enable him to provide comfortably for himself, his wife and his children, he will, if prudent, gladly strive to practice thrift; and the result will be, as nature itself seems to counsel, that after expenditures are deducted there will remain something over and above through which he can come into the possession of a little wealth. We have seen, in fact, that the whole question under consideration cannot be settled effectually unless it is assumed and established as a principle, that the right of private property must be regarded as sacred. Wherefore, the law ought to favor this right and, so far as it can, see that the largest possible number among the masses of the population prefer to own property." (#65)

It may not be fashionable to have large families, but let me just quote Paul's Law: If you want your values to survive into the future, there is no substitute for fertility.