DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

The Chronicle reports on the complicated birthing story of what would be the nation’s toughest consumer privacy law: High drama as privacy measure advances

The story, in a nutshell, is that California Senator Jackie Speier introduced strong pro-privacy legislation last year, but the bill was defeated in the wake of the Trade Center attacks by Democrats protecting business interests from “expected economic fallout.” Read it here: Landmark privacy bill killed in Assembly; Assembly kills consumer privacy bill

With some revision, Speier has re-introduced the bill, which would prohibit insurance companies and banks from selling or trading their customers’ private data without first getting permission from the customer. Read the full text of SB773. See also the less-jargony summary within this editorial: Restore the privacy bill

For a change, today’s news is good — as the Chron reports, Assemblyman Lou Papan’s attempts to eviscerate the bill earned him a public rebuke from Senate President Pro Tem John Burton and a private one from Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson. None of today’s articles give Papan an opportunity to explain his actions, so I’ll refrain from speculation as to his intentions. Still, I find it curious that Papan plans to leave office at the end of this month. Would I feel cheated if he went to work for one of the financial institutions that benefits from his gutting of this privacy bill? You bet I would. Let’s hope that does not happen.

Assuming the bill passes the Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing today, it will still have to win in a meeting of the full Assemibly — as near is I can make out. So I guess the best way to help ensure this bill passes is to contact your Assembly person and request support for SB773. You can find your California Assembly representatives via the ZIP-code search at leginfo.ca.gov.

One year ago today I published a list of the “do not call” registries across America. It became one of the most popular articles on this site, thanks to inbound links from all over the place.

Today I received an email from reader Stewart Vardaman that contained some very happy news: CO resident David Hakala sued a telemarketer for violating the state’s “no call” law, and settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of cash.

Share the joy! County’s 1st no-call list suit settled; Telemarketing suit pays off

At least 19 US states have set up “do not call” lists, and more are in the legislative pipeline. For more information see my summary, Stop Telemarketing.

(Thanks for the tip, Stewart!)

In case you hadn’t already heard, an obese diabetic named Caesar Barber has filed a lawsuit against the fast food industry for not warning customers that the food they serve is unhealthy.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I believe the fast food industry is guilty of a great many sins, and I believe the world would be a better place without them. Regular readers will have to forgive me for mentioning it again, but I guarantee Barber’s lawyer will have a copy on the prosecution table during the trial: Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation details the ways in which fast food is abusing agriculture, ranching, and its own employees, and although Schlosser doesn’t blame McDonald’s for making customers obese, he makes a strong case that McDonald’s engenders fast-food addictions in children.

Also: There is shit in the meat.

On the other hand, I believe in personal responsibility. Many of the editorials about Caesar Barber’s lawsuit rightly point out that overeating leads to weight gain, and further that oversalted, fried convenience foods are unhealthy. This is common sense, not a Burger King trade secret. Barber didn’t grow to 270 pounds overnight… it took years of self-abuse (and a lack of self-control) for him to become huge and diabetic.

So, it’s hard to be sympathetic. And yet, wouldn’t it be great if the fast food industry got a little payback for the damage they’ve been doing?

I found an editorial that beautifully captures my ambivalence. It’s too rude for print, by which I mean, it’s a lot more fun to read that a typical op-ed piece: Mark Morford asks, Should America Sue McDonald’s?

A septic tank is a multi-hundred-gallon container that temporarily stores all the liquid waste produced by the property’s inhabitants. By “liquid waste” I mean “everything that goes down the drain”, and that does include toilets, so yes, there is solid waste in there too.

In fact it’s the solid waste that causes the problem. The liquids run out into the leach field and dissipate into the ground, but the solids collect in the tank. Some portion of this muck gets digested by the bacteria and microflora naturally present in such an environment, but the rest sits there stinking until it’s removed. Experts recommend that tanks be pumped out every five years or so, depending how heavily they’ve been used.

Our system has not been heavily used. Just two of us live here, and we’ve been more or less vegan for the past year, which I’ve heard makes a difference. But when the inspector popped the top on the tank, he confirmed that it was due to be pumped. This was his official diagnosis: “It looks pretty cakey in there.”

Then I remembered all the little lumps and dregs of sourdough starter and dough that I’ve washed down the kitchen sink over the past five years. A sourdough culture might not flourish anaerobically, without fresh starch to feed on, but then again, who am I to say what might evolve in that awesome biomass buried in my yard? They say there are alligators in the NYC sewers after all.

So I had to laugh when the inspector said that the contents of our septic tank looked “cakey.” Actually I thought “bready” would be a more accurate term, but I didn’t want to argue. I didn’t even want to breathe, at least not until he screwed the lid back down.

The hotel clerk was a diminutive Indian woman — young, perhaps 5'2'' and extremely slender. If I’d thought about it, I’d have expected her to be a vegetarian, based on her age, her size, and the fact that we were standing in California. Plus, given her ethnic background, she’d probably have a thing about cows.

So I asked her for restaurant recommendations. She reeled off a list of places that shared a common menu: cattle. She named grills, burger places, steakhouses. She became an animated Zagat’s Guide to local stockyards, so much so that she even realized it and apologized, then appended breathlessly, “… but I don’t know what kind of food you like, I like STEAK!” When she said “STEAK!” she actually growled. Her eyes bulged, her lips pulled back to reveal too many teeth, and I swear, I could see the cords in her neck go taut.