Oh, good! Our Celebrating Women Through Islamic Caligraphy calendar arrived!

If we’re being precise about it, we never technically ordered a Celebrating Women Through Islamic Caligraphy calendar, but here one is anyway, courtesy of a kindly charity. This will help us remember all the important Islamic dates in 2013. Sorry, I mean 1434-1435.

Our New Calendar?

There’s the beginning of Safar and of Rabi’ al-awwal… “Columbus Day /  Day of Arafat”… the birth of Jesus…

Wait, go back to that last one. Christmas? And Christmas Eve? Is it possible that Christmas has become some kind of secular holiday, available to people of all faiths? Unthinkable!

I’m also a little confused about the quote on the cover. The calendar is titled Celebrating Women Through Islamic Caligraphy, so each page features an inspirational quote about women. For example, March features this quote: “The best of Life’s enjoyment is when one is blessed with a righteous wife.” And a righteous wife I have!

But the cover’s quotation reads “اتقوا الله في النساء” which they’ve translated as “Fear Allah in all dealings with women.” The “all dealings” translation seems a little loose from what I’ve read. But more importantly, that quote comes from a passage of Sahih Muslim #2803 that’s historically been used to justify beating women. One translation of the full passage reads (emphasis mine):

Fear Allah concerning women! Verily you have taken them on the security of Allah, and intercourse with them has been made lawful unto you by words of Allah. You too have right over them, and that they should not allow anyone to sit on your bed whom you do not like. But if they do that, you can chastise them but not severely. Their rights upon you are that you should provide them with food and clothing in a fitting manner.

But in other sources, “chastise” has been translated more harshly to various synonyms of “hit” or “beat”.

I certainly don’t mean to imply that the calendar’s authors intended to convey that message — nor, for that matter, does it seem Imam Muslim did. But the choice still strikes me as peculiar for the cover of a calendar specifically celebrating women.

The moral here, if there is one at all, is to avoid sending these calendars to non-believers with a Google account and a couple hours to spend on research. In related news, I imagine I can expect Google’s advertising for me to be a little off-target for a while.

Business owner Ray Gaster of Savannah, Georgia made headlines recently with a highly visible response to President Obama’s recent remarks about how government helps make commerce possible. Obama had remarked, “Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Gaster’s response: signs hung prominently outside his three storefronts declaring that he built the business without any help from the government.

Government No Help

It’s a valid and powerful message… that completely misses the point. I like this annotated version itemizing some aspects of his business that Gaster clearly didn’t build himself:

Government Help

Obama isn’t saying that everyone needs direct and explicit government help to start a business (e.g., with borrowed government funding), but rather that surrounding every business is a system of infrastructure, laws, and commerce that makes the endeavor possible.

The government built the roads carrying customers and merchandise, laid the wires that carry electricity and communications, established the police and fire departments that protect the building and its occupants from theft and disaster, and developed the civil justice system that provides recourse against fraud.

Critics of this image suggest the fallacy is that these things are all funded with taxpayer dollars, so it’s ultimately still the business owner paying for all of it. The trouble is that no one person’s tax dollars could fully fund all the services from street lights to sewer lines the government currently provides. Just hiring enough police officers to provide protection around the clock would use up every dollar I’ve paid in the past several years.

But private police forces are at least theoretically possible. (We could have a system where only people who have paid for police protection receive it.) Other government-run services are impossible to separate in that way. I could, for example, pay for the construction and maintenance of the roadway in front of my house, but that road is only valuable to me when it’s linked to other roads leading elsewhere in the city. If my neighbors don’t care about roads, how could I get across town?

Two years ago, Colorado Springs turned off its street lights, inviting residents who wanted the lamps relit to write a check to cover the cost of their lamp’s electricity. And while I’d be happy to pay for the electricity to the lamp outside my house, I like that when I go running in my neighborhood at night, every lamp is lit.

Ultimately the disconnect here is understanding the difference between what our government officials do and what government does. Maybe your roads are crumbling, your mayor is a crook, and your governor has been embezzling tax dollars for years — and there’s no excusing any of that. But their failures don’t eliminate the need to have a government of some kind. There are some things we just can’t do on our own: like building a business.

The Boy Scouts of America supposedly spent the past two years reevaluating whether to allow gay Scouts and volunteers to participate in their organization. They decided against it.

“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting,” said Bob Mazzuca, chief scout executive of Boy Scouts of America.

This logic is baffling mostly because it necessarily implies that gay people cannot be in a room with children without talking about sex. Granting unequivocally that parents want to discuss sex and adult relationships privately with their own children at home, shouldn’t these protesters also be worried about the conversations your straight leaders are having?

Perhaps more importantly, though, this rationale assumes that absent direct contact with an actual, “real life” gay person, children will never hear about homosexuality outside their home. My daughter wasn’t in Kindergarten more than three months before she came home asking if two boys could ever get married. That’s what Kindergartners do!

In Kindergarten Cop, on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first day in a Kindergarten classroom, a boy stands up and proudly proclaims, “Boys have a penis; girls have a vagina,” to giggles from the rest of the class. In my daughter’s actual classroom I heard similar assertions about death, politics, mathematics, religion, spelling, clothing, pets, and family relationships. And apparently, one day, someone took ten seconds at recess to announce that sometimes two boys will marry each other.

Sometimes sheltering children from the complexities of reality is useful and warranted, but attempting to shelter children from the diversity of other people they’ll inevitably encounter in adulthood is both futile and harmful. However much good the Boy Scouts might do (and they do some considerable good), our society cannot tolerate any group that teaches children to discriminate and to exclude.

Not coincidentally, while the Boy Scouts spent the last two years deciding gay people are worthy of their group, I’ve spent the last two years refusing to participate in their organization in any way. Let’s watch the Boy Scouts decline into obsolescence as more tolerant groups rise to take their place. Perhaps the more tolerant Baden-Powell Service Association is our first step?

As Sophie gets older we’re naturally expecting her to do more chores. She already cleans her own room and now also makes her own bed, does homework every night, and helps out around the house with tasks appropriate for her age. We’ve started seeing “Job Chart” or “Chore Chart” systems to help organize and reward these responsibilities, and so far they’re shockingly harmful ideas.

My Job Chart is the ultimate example, using high technology to solve the problem. Parents assign tasks via a website and award points for each task completed successfully. Children can then redeem those points through the website for parent-approved Amazon purchases, in-home treats, or family activities. This is a particularly advanced approach, but is structurally similar to what’s been done on paper for years: list the chores to be completed and list the rewards available for a job well done.

The entire idea (whether on paper or online) is fundamentally flawed.

First, individually rewarding specific behaviors encourages children to seek a reward for every behavior. Why help put away the Christmas decorations if the job doesn’t pay well enough? Plus, if each chore carries a reward, they all seem optional (“I don’t want a new toy this week so I won’t clean my room.”)

Second, much good behavior that deserves a reward doesn’t belong on a checklist. I recently saw a child Sophie’s age throw himself to the sidewalk screaming that he couldn’t get dinner from his favorite restaurant. I’m glad my daughter doesn’t behave that way (and told her so), but I would never have put “don’t throw a tantrum” on a checklist.

Finally, material rewards are… well, materialistic. Many systems encourage using “family rewards” instead — “spend time with Dad” and “read a bedtime story together” are popular suggestions — but that idea should be downright horrifying. We’re suggesting bedtime stories are conditional? If the child doesn’t finish her homework she doesn’t get time with Dad? “Sorry, honey; I can’t love you today. But if you clean your room tomorrow I’ll be able to love you for 30 whole minutes!” Worst of all, if both monetary and non-monetary rewards are available, the child can put a price on priceless activities. When twenty “points” buys either a $5 toy or a fun day with Dad, could she also buy an extra Dad day with $5 of her allowance? Would I have to charge extra for hugs?

These limitations do not translate to adulthood. We get rewards constantly (paychecks not least among them) but never with an itemized receipt for our behaviors. If I fail to vacuum the living room my wife will not automatically refuse to put away the dishes. If I do only the tasks assigned to me at work and never offer my own ideas I will be passed up for promotions and may even lose my job to a more “motivated” employee. Why would we create an artificial environment for our children that teaches them skills they can’t use as they mature?

Adults’ responsibilities are mandatory. We suffer consequences (e.g., unemployment or spousal fights) when we disregard them. Moreover, though, we expect the rewards we get. I did not earn the privilege of my wife cooking dinner yesterday, or any particular dollar of my paycheck last month.

We should offer the same expectations to our children for their own responsibilities. Sophie must clean her room; if she doesn’t, we’ll dispose of the mess. If she doesn’t eat a healthy dinner her supply of treats will run dry in a hurry. But bedtime stories are an every night event, and she gets “time with Dad” whenever either of us asks for it (not to mention “time with Mom” which doesn’t even make the cut for recommended Chore Chart rewards).

Let’s do our kids a favor and eliminate “Chore Charts” from the world.

The economics of school portraits are entirely nonsensical.

When I was a student I’d bring home a sample portrait (stamped “SAMPLE” to ruin its usability) and an order form for procuring prints in various sizes. Now what comes home is a complete portrait package with five sheets of fully finished prints. Parents send back any they don’t want along with payment for the ones they’ve kept and an order form for any more they still need.

So parents already have the product in hand and are just paying to keep it. And since there’s no resale value for a specific child’s prints, parents are really paying to not destroy the prints they already have.

Most of the apparent illogic here is surely the result of phenomenal economies of scale. Once the photographer is on site and has setup all his equipment, taking one more child’s picture adds almost no expense. Once the expensive photo printers are up and running, printing five more sheets is similarly inexpensive. The possibility that having all those pictures of their children in hand will incentivize some parents to pay justifies the small up-front expense.

What’s less easy to explain is this: I own a scanner. So when a beautiful, glossy 8×10 photograph comes home in my daughter’s backpack, I am not motivated to pay for it. I’m motivated to scan it in high resolution, and then return it for free.

That would probably violate either an implicit contract with the photographer or copyright law, but the very nature of the product makes its duplication impossible to police. I’m never going to be caught selling illegal copies of my daughter’s school picture on eBay, for example. Virtually the entire worldwide market for this particular item lives in my house.

Is this business model founded on trust in parents not to just make copies? Or on an assumption nobody’s smart enough to try it? Or are there just so many new parents buying prints now that losing a few to scanning technology is justifiable?

Whatever the reason, I’m not sure I want to discourage the practice. It looks like I may be able to get twelve years of free portraits out of it.

I’ve found myself with little need for a cell phone now that I’m working from home — I just use it for occasional solo errand runs and as security against freak roadside emergencies. So I’ve switched to Boost Mobile’s “pay as you go” plan.

The plan is designed for this situation. There’s no monthly fee or contract; I just bought the phone outright (paying all of $30 for a basic “makes calls, sends texts” phone) and I pay 10¢ a minute any time I make or take a call.

Here’s what’s not in their marketing: credit on your account expires in just 90 days. The actual policy reads:

Note: You must add money to your account at least once every 90 days.If not, any unused credits in your Boost™ Prepaid Account Balance will expire and your account will go to zero, but don’t worry because your account will be automatically recharged with Auto Re-Boost.

“Don’t worry” — it’s okay that we’ll throw away your money if you haven’t paid us in a while, ’cause then we’ll immediately come take more money automatically! Since the smallest automated payment they’ll take is $15, that’s a guaranteed minimum expense of $5 / month, even if the phone was turned off the entire time.

That’s called a monthly fee. Let’s not kid ourselves.

Yes, I could turn off “Auto Re-Boost” (their automatic payment plan), but that doesn’t stop credit from expiring; it only stops it getting replenished automatically. I’d still have to pay them every three months, but with the added risk that I might forget and render my phone unusable. On the other hand, manual payments can go as low as $10, making the monthly cost a lower $3.33.

I’ve had the phone for three weeks now, and in that time I’ve rung up $1.90 in calls, with 90¢ of that on initial setup (e.g., validating Google Voice and trying to disable voicemail).

(For the record, the “pay as you go” plan does not support conditional call forwarding, but you can disable voicemail entirely. You just have to call Boost until you get someone who knows what you’re talking about.)

It’s a lot better than $50 / month, but we’ve got a long way to go before this is quite the service it’s made out to be.