DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Jeffrey W. Runge, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administation, was an emergency room physician for 30 years. You can imagine how many how many auto-accident victims he treated there — but you don’t need to, because I found real numbers: “[Dr. Runge’s] passion for reducing injuries comes from being a clinician in North Carolina’s busiest trauma center, treating over 30,000 injuries yearly, 10,000 of which are motor vehicle related.” [Source: Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge Becomes 12th National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator]

In a speech in Dearborn, MI, heart of the SUV industry, Runge made surprising remarks about SUV safety. He reported statistics about rollover fatalities and about the risk to drivers of small cars when they get crushed by SUVs. That had to take courage, to deliver that message to a roomful of auto executives who have been raking in profits on the sale of such dangerous vehicles.

The NHTSA site contains Runge’s presentation materials and speaking notes. After reading his prepared speech I was confused, because it seemed somewhat dry and invective-free. But perhaps he embellished on the prepared notes, as implied by the Chron when they report that he “tack[ed] on his own outrage”, and by the Washington Post when they report that “he sharply criticized SUVs on safety grounds”.

Or perhaps the real fireworks weren’t in his speech, but in a followup interview with the Wall Street Journal. It’s the WSJ article that generated most of the coverage I could find. For example, Car & Driver reports on the WSJ article under the headline Safety Chief Warns Buyers Off SUVs:

Runge told the Wall Street Journal that sport-utility vehicles and pickup trucks aren’t safe enough and that consumers should think hard before buying one. Runge said that because of their high center of gravity, SUVs are prone to rollovers during sudden maneuvers, and warned that if automakers did not make design changes to make the vehicles safer, the government might step in to mandate changes.

More coverage of the WSJ article: Government’s Top Auto Safety Regulator Speaks Truth About SUV Dangers; It’s Time for Action

Still more: an editorial in the Chronicle includes this candid comment from Runge on the apparent safety of SUVs: “gut instinct is great for a lot of stuff, but it’s not very good for buying a safe automobile”.

So this seems like a big first step towards changes, whether they take the form of voluntary changes by manufacturers or mandated changes to comply with new federal regulation.

The next step is already in place: CNN reports that Senator McCain will ask Runge to testify this month about the possibility of issuing new safety regulations targeted at SUVs. McCain’s not in bed with big auto (or big oil), so he has the right kind of energy for an effort like this.

The refreshing thing about Runge’s comments is that they’re so not in line with what seems to be our current administration’s efforts to put an SUV (and a snowmobile) in every garage. (I’m referring to recent moves by Bush to provide huge tax breaks to small business owners that purchase SUVs, and to require only modest increases in fuel economy — so modest that Bush’s requirements are actually lower than the industry’s voluntary efforts.) I guess I should not be surprised to see CNN report that “the Bush administration has sought to downplay [Runge’s] comments, saying they didn’t amount to a blanket indictment of SUVs.” What a spin that is — for that’s exactly what Runge’s comments were!

Anyone who thinks being a vegan is no fun has never eaten one of my sandwiches.

“Is that a wholegrain bagel,” you might ask if you’re thinking about the pyramid. It is, although like my vegan tendencies, it’s not pure. 100%-wholegrain breads require a dedication I just don’t have — I’d rather skip the roll entirely than gnaw through a dessicated lump of underleavened wholegrain.

This is a sourdough bagel, made with about 60% unbleached white flour, 35% whole-wheat flour, and 5% “other” (in this case, organic golden flax meal and ground organic spelt berries).

“Since 1992 more and more research has shown that the USDA pyramid is grossly flawed.”

Here’s the “interactive” version of the USDA Food Pyramid.

Here is a deep analysis/dissection of it, from Scientific American: Rebuilding the Food Pyramid. The article includes the quote above.

And here’s SciAm’s new and improved pyramid. Most Americans won’t want to see it, because the bottom level calls for “daily exercise.” But what a relief that is, that the obvious and uncontested truth has been proposed as a recommendation by an authority. And get this — Scientific American is not selling cookbooks or processed-food bars.

Advice without an agenda! Whoa, I’d better sit down.

I’m sure the last thing on your mind when you move is telling the IRS your new address. I know this is true, because I moved last year, and I didn’t think of notifying the IRS until just now — when I opened yesterday’s mail and found that my annual “Social Security Statement” had been sent to my old address.

I’ll explain that connection: the SSA borrows the IRS’ address database.

Fortunately, the document found me at the new house, because I live in a small town and the mail carrier knows me. (We never filed the USPS change-of-address form because the USPS sells that database to direct marketers.) I say “fortunately” because the document contains a lot of very private information:

• my full name
• my birthdate
• my earnings history since 1983

The worst-case seems to be that the person who bought my house would discover how much money I’ve made (for every year for my life). But in fact the person who bought my house doesn’t live there… the house has been rented out. There’s no telling who could have gotten this data.

So, to preserve the privacy of your financial history, add this to your move-in checklist:

• File IRS form 8822, “Change of Address”

Last week, Frank (not his real name) took a job for minimum wage. A fortysomething Web engineer who has worked for some of the biggest dot-coms, Frank had come to expect that his nearly 100K-a-year income was assured. But now that he’s been out of work for a year, he simmers with suppressed energy… So he took the job with the teenage-level pay, even though he considers it a humiliation. An exploitation.

Well, life sucks all over, Frank. You bled the system as hard and fast as you could, changing jobs five times in as many years, demanding a $10,000 raise every time, ultimately tripling your salary over the boom years. You became an “impulse shopper” and traveled the world on your big dot-com paychecks. You bought a house in San Francisco?! And today you’re making $9/hr.

I don’t suppose you see the connection between overpriced employees and failing companies, do you?

I think a little loyalty might have helped out. It’s difficult to become indispensible when you’re still figuring out where the coffee machine is.

Before the crash, new hires were often paid more than senior employees — not because the new folks were more valuable to the company, but because the market forced adjustments to compensation packages. In other words, thanks to job-hopping mercenaries like Frank, companies had to pay more to get less-skilled employees, and the senior staff sometimes got cheated in this process.

Of course, lots of them still have jobs. “Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.”

In our parents’ generation, a typical career path spanned exactly one employer. Young and multiply-pierced dot-commers laughed at the notion of the gold watch, not only because it’s a pretty pitiful token for 50 years’ hard work, but at the base concept that anyone should have to work for 50 years in the first place. Personally, I feel the same way — I don’t plan to work for 50 years. But the retirement horizon is a lot farther away than it was three years ago, and although I could blame faceless entities like “the economy,” I’d rather blame people like Frank. If he and his ilk had stuck with one company, and built some products with value, maybe the crash wouldn’t have happened.

OK, wait, I take that back — we were doomed from the start. Too many people were trying to cash out for the industry to sustain itself. And I’m sure no big-city newspaper reporter would get suckered by a venture capitalist’s sob story, so Frank has to bear the brunt of my wrath. Honestly, I’m impressed he stuck with the industry after the bottom dropped out. I’d think most long-term-unemployed folks would bail out of this sinking ship, into different (and higher-paying) jobs in other sectors.