I have a confession to make. I have shopped at Wal Mart. In fact, I used to be a fairly regular customer. But I stopped several months ago, before Steelyard Commons became an issue.

One of the things I used to see in the store were little signs about Wal Mart’s support for various charities. Truth Out puts that in perspective, however, with this little gem about the kind of good citizens Sam Walton raised:

Greed is a theme with the Wal-Mart family. The family, worth a combined $95 billion, has given a stingy one percent of its wealth to charity. By comparison, Business Week, writing about Bill and Melinda Gates in a November cover story on the country’s philanthropists, observed that the Gates made “history this year by giving their estimated $3 billion Microsoft dividend to their foundation.

It’s one of the largest donations in history by a living donor. To put it into perspective, that one gift is three times bigger than the amount that America’s richest family, the descendants of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton, has given during their entire lifetimes.”

What kind of community member has Wal Mart been in Cuyahoga County?

My Soundtrack: Greatest Hits by Dan Fogelberg.

In My Backpack… A Pirate Of Exquisite Mind by Diana & Michael Preston; In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… The Messiah Of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick; On My Computer… Supermarket Scanner by Elise Partridge; On My Screen… Cobb (***) directed by Ron Shelton, written by Al Stump.

My Soundtrack: Waking Up With The House On Fire by Culture Club.

[Update: 1 June. The Smithsonian has issued the following statedment.

Statement by the Director, National Museum of Natural History

However, since Smithsonian policy states that all events held at any museum be “co-sponsored” by the director and the outside organization, and we have signed an agreement with this organization, we will honor the commitment made to provide space for the event.

In the spirit of other recent sticker use, I think the Smithsonian should place a sticker on each program distributed that night that would read:

Neither the Smithsonian Institution nor the National Museum of Natural History supports or endorses the Discovery Institute or the film The Privileged Planet.]

And rightly so. The Amazing Randi, one of my weekly must-reads, is livid that the scientific credibility of our nation’s greatest museum, The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. can be bought for a mere $16,000. According to John Schwartz’s Smithsonian to Screen a Movie That Makes a Case Against Evolution, that is the price the Discovery Institute, a front for the religious wrong and it’s creationism superstitions, had to pay to use the museum’s Baird Auditorium.

Here’s how the Discovery Institute has the announcement on its website.

The Director of the National Museum of Natural History and Discovery Institute are happy to announce the national premiere and private evening reception for The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe, 6pm Thursday June 23, 2005.

Museum officials are tap dancing as fast as they can. According to Schwartz:

…a museum spokesman, Randall Kremer, said the event should not be taken as support for the views expressed in the film. “It is incorrect for anyone to infer that we are somehow endorsing the video or the content of the video,” he said.

In a letter she sent to Kremer, Isabelle Vella Gregory, a student in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, wrote:

I do not think you could be more incorrect if you tried. You know perfectly well that a museum’s raison d’être is extremely apparent in the way it displays its material and the activities it organizes. That you would sell your integrity for $16,000 dollars is not merely incomprehensible but also shameful.

There are thousands of neutral sites that the Discovery Institute could have rented to hold it’s premier. but it didn’t. While it may be true that the Smithsonian had no intent to lend it’s approval for the video, can anyone doubt that the Discovery Institute carefully selected Baird Auditorium precisely because it hoped to steal some semblance of respectability from the Smithsonian?

I didn’t think so. Randi writes:

We need to be alarmed and militant about this situation. The “Discovery Institute” is the center of the Intelligent Design movement, which is only a semantically-disguised support group for creationism. By donating a mere $16,000, it has purchased the use of the Smithsonian facilities along with their implied co-sponsorship of the film, “The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose in the Universe.”

The Smithsonian Institution has a space-use policy that precludes certain forms of religious presentations, regardless of donations that might be offered. Yet it welcomes the opportunity to sponsor this blatant “Intelligent Design” propaganda? The disclaimer that Ms. Gregory cites above will do nothing to nullify the damage done by the Smithsonian.

In conclusion, Randi makes an appeal and an extraordinary offer:

Readers, do something about this. Please send an e-mail to giving@si.edu addressed to Mr. Randall Kremer, Public Affairs. Tell him of your concern over this situation. And, you might add that the JREF is willing to donate $20,000 to the Smithsonian Institution if they agree to give back the “Discovery Institute” $16,000 and decline to sponsor the showing of the film. And the JREF will not require the Smithsonian to run any films or propaganda that favor our point of view…

My email has already gone out. How about yours?

My Soundtrack: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.

Do you enjoy paying the Wal Mart tax? That’s the bite government takes out of the money you earn each year so that Wal Mart -and to be fair, other big-box retailers – can avoide paying benefits and a living wayge to its employees. Wisconsin’s tax payers will pay out $2.7 million to support the company’s employees this year. According to Wal Mart Watch:

Wal-Mart is No. 1 again! But this accolade isn”t something to celebrate. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports this week that Wal-Mart tops the list of companies with employees on Badger Care, the Wisconsin”s tax-supported health care program for the working poor.

Anybody know what the Wal Mart Tax is in Ohio?

My Soundtrack: Flush The Fashion by Alice Cooper.

In My Backpack… A Pirate Of Exquisite Mind by Diana & Michael Preston; In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… The Messiah Of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick; On My Computer… Having Children by Barbara Tanner Angell; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: The Alice Cooper Show by Alice Cooper.

Zen pops up when you need it. This tale of a farmer and his donkey arrived in my mail box this morning from one of the great Zen masters in my life: dad. His advice: free your heart from hatred, free your mind from worries, live simply, give more, expect less.

Thanks dad, as always you have perfect timing. I love you.

My Soundtrack: Billion Dollar Babies by Alice Cooper.

I’ve been talking to people at Phoenix, and elsewhere, about Wal Mart and Steelyard Commons. One of the underlying themes I keep hearing is:

Well, at least these people have jobs. And when I bring up information that people working for Wal Mart are a burden on a state’s social services in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, etc., the response quickly comes back: If they weren’t working at Wal Mart, they’d be an even greater burden. That’s true, kind of.

It has always galled me that the people in the food-service industry depend upon customers paying a voluntary tax in the form of tips in order for servers to take home a living wage. I know that some servers make really good money from tips. I had a girlfriend once who would regularly take home $100 a night, and this was in the mid ’70s. But, that’s the exception, not the rule. How many career servers do you know?

Imagine if the food-service industry just said the heck with it and automatically added 20 percent to every tab. To take the point further, imagine if it posted No Tipping signs, raised prices 20 percent and paid the difference to its serving staff.

Would there be a decrease in the quality of service? I doubt it. No employer is going to tolerate employee behavior that drives customers away. Would there be fewer customers? There might be a slight, and temporary drop as customers adjusted. But the real reason it doesn’t happen is inertia. It’s just the way things are done.

But imagine something very different. What if the food-industry decided that tipping cost it business and that customers would be more likely to patronize a restaurant where no tips were collected? Customers would save 20 percent on their meal. The serving staff, of course, would just have to deal with the pay cut.

There is that pesky little rule that, since tips are part of the culture, allows the food-service industry to pay servers less than the minimum wage. That would have to change. Employers would be hard pressed to find good servers willing to work for minimum wage and no tips. But not if you’re Wal Mart.

Every time you go to Wal Mart your taxes tip the employees. Every dollar you pull out of your wallet or purse is supplemented by government services to the tune of billions of dollars annually. This is Corporate Welfare, plain and simple.

How might you respond to a charge of $24 for $20 worth of merchandise? Not well, I imagine. But, while the 20 percent figure is not accurate in this case, you are paying a premium in tax money every time you shop at a Wal Mart, or any business that pays less than a living wage.

We tolerate these kinds of corporate welfare schemes because we think it’s other people’s money.

But remember what President George Bush said during the 3 Oct 00 election debate:

There is a difference of opinion. My opponent thinks the government — the surplus is the government’s money. That’s not what I think. I think it’s the hard-working people of America’s money and I want to share some of that money with you so you have more money to build and save and dream for your families. It’s a difference of opinion.

It’s a difference between government making decisions for you and you getting more of your money to make decisions for yourself.

Or, if you’ll allow a paraphrase: it’s not other people’s money, it’s your money.

Do we really want to pay it out so that Alice Walton can buy a $35 million painting?

My Soundtrack: Killer by Alice Cooper.

In My Backpack… A Pirate Of Exquisite Mind by Diana & Michael Preston; In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… The Messiah Of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick; On My Computer… Abandoned Farmhouse by Ted Kooser; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: Welcome To My Nightmare by Alice Cooper.

Jeff Jarvis asks the question today, and it’s one that has been bugging me for some time: is there an honest way to report blog traffic? If you glance at the lower righthand column of my blog you’ll see a counter. At this moment – at 2141, on 26 May – it reads: 24,907. But, as my esteemed and every knowledgable webgoddess informs me, that only records people who surf directly to the www.havecoffeewillwrite.com home page. If they are following a link to a specific post, then they bypass that counter.

With Word Press running I also have access to a number of statistic programs. One of them is Awstats. Looking at that program right now, I see that so far in May I have had:

3,193 unique visitors.

6,313 visits.

26,598 page views. And, my mouth just hit the desk,

107,145 hits sucking up 1.18 gigs of bandwidth.

Now those numbers seem impressive to me, but I have no frame of reference. They could just as easily be embarrassingly small. (Kind of like growing up with all sisters and then getting the shock of your life the first time you walk into a gang shower.)

But what does any of those numbers really mean? As Jeff Jarvis says:

If all this is only about bragging rights, it doesn’t matter. Brag away. Debate at will. Who cares? The power of blogs is not about the total or the biggest (that so old-media-think, so mass) but instead about the rising volume of individual conversations.

I agree with Jeff. And in the very next graph he comes to the crux of the matter:

BUT… if this is about advertising, then we do need to establish real numbers:

And then, so we can brag in Ad Age and get Carl Bialik to poke at the bragging, we will want to have some sense of the ad revenue and audience volume to this subset of blogs: namely, those that have a reason to be counted.

I’m with you Jeff. I would not be adverse to accepting advertising on Have Coffee Will Write. I enjoy what I do and I’ll keep doing it for free, but it would be nice to be paid a little hard cash now and then. I’ve always thought that Samuel Johnson had it right:

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

My Soundtrack: Love It To Death by Alice Cooper.

First I was endearing. I liked that one and still quote it to friends. Then I (by association, I’ll grant) was banal. That one ticked me a bit, but I got over it because I can get both Derf and Savage online. Now, I discover that I gush. Gush? Gush! Come on! I’ve been accused of many, many things in my life, but gushing is not one of them. It’s a good thing that the weekend is very close. Or who knows what I might do next.

My Soundtrack: National Lampoon’s Animal House by various, movie soundtrack.

No, I really don’t want to even open the door a little because the intelligence and brains of our next generation are too precious to play with. Having said that, however, David Morris’ idea of allowing Intelligent Design into the classroom just so that biology teachers could make The Case Of The Female Orgasm by Elisabeth A. Lloyd mandatory reading is hilarious. Here’s a taste of what Morris has to say in Having Fun With Intelligent Design:

Darwinians can explain the male orgasm. After all, the male ejaculation is necessary for the survival and perpetuation of the species, and if giving the male great pleasure while doing so promotes that, then natural selection would eventually endow the male orgasm with that characteristic.

Here the biology teacher might offer the class the alternative explanation of intelligent design. Is the intelligent power simply leveling the playing field between the sexes? Or is Professor Lloyd right that the female orgasm is “just for fun,” and the intelligent power is female?

I can just hear ID-driven brains grinding sprockets in futile attempts to downshift before crashing through the guardrail.

Thanks to Stephanie at It’s The End Of The World As We Know It… for the link.

My Soundtrack: Colors Of The Day by Judy Collins.

Hank Fox is my kinda guy. I found his blog via Help Hank Out by PZ Myers. Here’s the story. In I’m Working On An Atheist Flyer… Hank has posted his working draft of a flyer (I think these folks call them tracts, Hank) for use by Atheists when unwelcome Christians (or others, I presume) come calling. He wants to have the flyer because:

…there was a story in my local newspaper about a school here in Upstate New York which invited a group of Christian preachers to “tour” the classrooms, and just let the children know they cared, and were praying for them.

This is one small way to fight back. I figure if preachers can invade schools, I’m going to invade churches – if only with my words.

Hank does a damn good job and if you have any suggestions as to how he might tweak his prose, drop him a line. I’m planning to.

My Soundtrack: Greatest Hits: Volume II by Chicago.

American Pink Collar has joined the No Cleveland Wal Mart drum beat with a conversation held in a white Buick Regal traveling along old Highway 8 headed towards Green Bay, Wisconsin. Here’s a taste of what she has to say:

“You”re talking nostalgia there buddy, what is wrong about paying less for a product? People can have more money in their pockets. I don”t get it? They give the town jobs, their prices are low and they pay taxes.”

That is only one item! Imagine that this is repeated for each item sold in Wall Mart. They are the biggest company in the world, bigger than GM and Exxon and GE. They can command their suppliers because there is almost no competition left. We let the wolf in the hen house all by ourselves with the help of politicians and marketing whores.”

Hmmm… Isn’t marketing whores redundant?

My Soundtrack: Greatest Hits by Chearp Trick.

My Soundtrack: Barking At Airplanes by Kim Carnes.

In My Backpack… A Pirate Of Exquisite Mind by Diana & Michael Preston; In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… The Messiah Of Stockholm by Cynthia Ozick; On My Computer… At the Summer Estate, 1899 by Christopher Wiseman; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars by David Bowie.

When I was in high school I had a class mate whose faith in the direct word of god as revealed in the King James version of the Bible was unshakable. Any statement was weighed against this authority. If it did not agree perfectly with the text in his much-worn copy of scripture, then it was false, a lie, the spawn of satan.

Now, more than 30 years after we both graduated from Warren High School in Vincent, Ohio – he to attend seminary, I to go to Colorado State University – I can easily see him leading his wife and children through the Museum of Earth History.

The Guardian sent Paul Harris to Eureka, Arkansas, to visit the museum. In the lede to Would You Adam ‘n’ Eve It… Dinosaurs In Eden, Harris writes:

The razor-toothed Tyrannosaurus rex, jaws agape, loomed ominously over the gentle Thescelosaurus, looking for plants to eat. Admiring the museum diorama were old and young visitors, listening on headphones to a stentorian voice describing the primeval scene.

But the Museum of Earth History is a museum with a controversial difference. To one side, peering through the bushes, are Adam and Eve. The display is not an image of the Cretaceous. It is Paradise. ‘They lived together without fear, for there was no death yet,’ the voice intoned about Man and Dinosaur.

I stopped in at the Museum’s website for a peek and read this:

…the translators of Hebrew did not have an English word equal to tanniym (meaning “great lizard”), so they typically used the word dragon. Tanniym is found 25 times in the Old Testament…

Just as a quick checked I looked up tanniym (spelled in Hebrew Tav Nun Yod Num Yod Mem) in my Hebrew dictionary. In modern Hebrew it means alligator or crocodile. In my Jewish Publication Society copy of the Tanach (Hebrew Scriptures) it is translated variously as sea monsters, snakes and vipers.

There’s a big difference between a crocodile and a T-Rex.

The Museum is just another example of the work of our own load of useless bloody loonies. Anybody know how to build a B Ark?

My Soundtrack: The Best of… by Blondie.