The big question

Why do we have a branch of the federal government dedicated solely to keeping secrets in the first place?

Letting the genie -- or the ketchup, at least -- out of the bottle

The New York Times reports on the ground-breaking story that the Heinz Ketchup bottle is good design.  And I can certainly imagine the scene in the Style editor's office when the ace design reporter burst in the door and said "Stop the presses, chief, I got a story's gonna set this town on its ear!"  The searing nature of this revelation was probably pushed off the front page so as to not rattle cages too large for the Times to deal with.

(/snark)

But in a real sense, my concern is: The Heinz Ketchup bottle is good design -- for the Heinz corporation.  For the rest of us, for the people, not so much.  How many man-hours of our GNP have been lost to our collective attempts to dislodge ketchup from a Heinz bottle?  If I eat a hamburger a week (or, in my case, a soyburger), and I spend an average of 90 seconds trying to get the ketchup out of the Heinz bottle, and you multiply that by the number of Americans who eat hamburgers every day (due to the beef lobby's abilities to control America's eating habits) the time squandered in this pursuit is incalculable.  Why must the American working-class (and, let's face it, it is the workers who consume the fast majority of hamburgers, I'm not telling tales out of school here) be forced to labor harder to garnish their meals simply so that the Heinz corporation can continue to reap obscene profits? Isn't this what government oversight is all about?

And I say this with full awareness of John Kerry's role in all this.

What is the point of the FDA, if not to protect American workers from the predations of the food lobbyists?  Food manufacturers will do anything they feel they must in order to maintain high profit margins, whether it's putting ground glass into our food or putting ketchup into an inefficient bottle because it's "popular."  Who cares if it's "popular," the worker needs to be protected or else what is the point of a federal government at all?

The White House goes to the dog -- or is it the other way around?

So, a particular dog is having its day -- specifically, the Obamas' new dog, the Portuguese Water Dog named Bo (after 10 actress Bo Derek).  And this is, of course, a good thing for the two little girls who wanted a dog.  However, I cringe at the thought of the impact Bo's arrival will have on the pet world.

A few years ago, Finding Nemo created a world-wide demand for clownfish as the worlds' children clamored to their parents to get them their very own living, breathing Nemo for their home fish tank.  As a result, the gentle, colorful clownfish was desperately pursued by an army -- or navy, rather -- of greedy, amoral tropical-fish hunters, their eyes only on profit.  The clownfish was fished to the brink of extinction, and the coral reefs they live in were irrevocably damaged by the rampaging hoardes of fishmongers.  (Coral is a living thing, and a vital component of the reef ecosystem.)

Now we have a similar problem looming with the Portuguese Water Dog.  Just as, last November, millions of American babies (and Kenyan, no doubt) were christened "Obama," the pet world must now gird its loins for the impending demand of millions of Portuguese Water Dogs.  The business of the breeding of dogs is as cutthroat and short-sighted as the business of fishing, and the over-breeding of a dog often leads to the breed's demise.  Who can forget the Akita distaster of the 1980s?  Akitas were sold by corrupt breeders to nouveau riche New Yorkers as "the perfect Yuppie Puppy," and the subsequent demand for the animal corrupted the breed almost to its extinction.

President Obama promised at one point to obtain a shelter dog for his new home, and a mutt at that, as a symbolic gesture to his heritage and to the bright beacon of hope he brought to tens of millions of Americans.  How I dearly wish he had remembered and kept that promise -- it would have saved millions of mongrels from our nations' shelters.  This was one of our new President's earliest challenges, and in this instance it appears he has failed his principles.