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I’ve heard the response before for people complaining that they’re stuck in traffic: no, you’re not stuck in traffic – you are traffic.

My response to that response is something like this: But I’m not the slow traffic – it’s the slow guy in front that’s backing everyone up.

But I suppose the main point holds – people who are in traffic are also the traffic.

I was reminded about that the other day when I read some complaint about capitalism. The person was treating capitalism as if it were behaving badly, but that person was actually part of capitalism. If people don’t like what a company is doing, they don’t have to buy from that company. If people don’t like what capitalism is doing, they really have a problem with the general population.

And I don’t see that going away. Really any system put in place for any country or region will have problems because there are people involved. The problem is that people are naturally not good, and I think people who complain about the system are assuming that people are good and therefore the badness must come from the system.

With the way technology is progressing, someone might be tempted to setup a financial/governmental/societal system run by machines not people. But I don’t want that as the solution either – that setting is always the start of a dystopian novel or movie.

So what is the solution? I think there isn’t one that people can devise. Nothing is going to be perfect until God replaces this world.

I don’t plan on moving anytime soon, much less building a new house, much less designing the kitchen for a new house. But if I did, I know what I’d want to do: two dishwashers.

We seem to have the problem of slowly-moving kids who don’t necessarily get the dishwasher emptied before the next meal. So the dirty dishes from that meal ended up piled in or next to the sink, to be loaded into the dishwasher when it is next available.

This could be solved by having two dishwashers – they’d take turns holding either the clean or dirty dishes. Think about it – you could set the table from the clean dishwasher and put them into the dirty dishwasher after the meal. Then when the dirty dishwasher is full you run it. And in theory the clean dishwasher would be empty at the same time so then it becomes the dirty dishwasher.

Now someone’s objection could be that having two dishwashers would cut out significant cabinet space. But since one dishwasher is storing clean dishes, you would need less cabinet space. It is, in effect, a cabinet with plumbing.

So the benefits to this arrangement are that kids don’t have an excuse not to put things in the dishwasher and fewer transactions are needed (dishes go from dishwasher to table and back without needing the middleman of the cabinets).

The drawbacks are increased cost and I was going to say having to track which one is clean/dirty but that’s already being done with one dishwasher so that’s not anything different.

The traditional rule is that you are not allowed to end a sentence in a preposition. No, not just you. No one is allowed to end a sentence in a preposition.

But people don’t care as much as they used to. Oops… People don’t care as much as they used to care.

There must be a compromise – a way to let people write the way they speak and still obey the rules of grammar.

I think I found the compromise: the postposition.

The postposition is a new part of speech that I am introducing.

It contains the same words as the preposition does, but its only use is to appear at the ends of sentences.

Thus, a person can end a sentence with whatever word he wants. If others complain about that sentence ending in a preposition, the speaker can defend himself by claiming the word he used did sound like a preposition but was actually a postposition. Therefore, he is allowed to end a sentence with it. Game over.

I took the family to watch a local theater production of Fiddler on the Roof. We also happened to be discussing basic math around the same time, so I came up with the following song. I didn’t bother to put it into sheet music form – if you don’t know the song well enough to sing it in your head with these new words, then you wouldn’t appreciate it anyway.

Who, day and night, must add up numbers quickly,
Scaling up summation, by a common term?
And who has the right, as dear Aunt Sally says, to go first in the operations?

The product, the product!
Multiplication!
The product, the product!
Multiplication!

Who must know the way to split the numbers up, in equal parts, in kosher parts?
Who must use long form to get the answer right, to get remainders to cooperate?

The quotient, the quotient!
Division!
The quotient, the quotient!
Division!

If you want to combine numbers but don’t want to count up,
Just use the plus sign in your math; it makes things easy.

The sum, the sum!
Addition!
The sum, the sum!
Addition!

And who does the equation ask to count backwards,
Comparing the two numbers, to find the space between?

The difference, the difference!
Subtraction!
The difference, the difference!
Subtraction!

It mostly fits, except that tradition is three syllables and multiplication is five. It works great with division, addition, and subtraction. If you know of any 3-syllable word that means “multiplication” and rhymes with tradition, please put that in a comment.

I wasn’t trying to put the 4 terms in the order of operations, but it worked out nicely that way. What I did was tried to fit the math term with the closest-sounding original word. I think I started with “the sum” matching up with “the son” and then I matched “the product” with “the papa”, then “the difference” with “the daughter” because they both start with D. That paired “the quotient” with “the mama”, which doesn’t really match but there was not much of a choice left.

Since graduation season is just around the corner, there may be commencement speakers who are starting to write their speeches. I expect that most of those speakers were chosen because of some skill or accomplishment, which indicates they have the capacity to plan ahead and write well.

But for those commencement speakers who like to fly by the seat of their pants and are looking for some last-minute help, here is a handy guide.

The go-to phrase for graduation speeches is something about how the wish is for the students to not just survive, but thrive.

Don’t use that phrase.

I’m sure it wasn’t so bad the first dozen times, but now everyone has tired of hearing it.

My suggestion: find a different word from thrive.

That will throw off the audience. Start with the “not just survive” bit, but change it. Here are some other words that rhyme with survive.

• strive
• drive
• chive
• jive
• dive
• five
• hive
• alive

These words might or might not make any sense for your graduating class. But at least the audience won’t tune out the rest of the speech like they would with “thrive”.

Any other suggestions?

There are some inefficiencies with the process of obtaining items from the deli department of the grocery store. I highlighted one of them in a previous post, and I’m sure many of you could provide other examples.

But today, we are going to solve many of them. With an improvement to the ubiquitous Take-A-Number system.

Today, I propose to you the deli Take-An-Order system.

It’s actually my wife’s idea, which is odd because she’s the one who doesn’t mind talking to people and she doesn’t avoid confrontation, both opposite of me. But I wholeheartedly endorse her idea here.

The Take-An-Order system is a combination of take-a-number and self-check-out. Except that instead of checking out your order, you are putting it in. The deli would have a kiosk or two with a touchscreen, very familiar to most deli customers these days. Enter your order and the system would give you a number, like some fast-food restaurants do. Plus they could give you an estimated time of fulfillment. Or, even better, you could enter your cell phone # and the system could text you when your order is ready, leaving you free to do the rest of your shopping in the meantime.

What about hooligans who would try to mess things up by entering a bunch of bogus orders, causing confusion and unnecessary work? Simple, require a swipe of a loyalty card or credit card before letting the user input the order.

What about people who pay cash and don’t have a loyalty card? Simple, there will still be deli workers behind the counters, so they could take in-person orders too. That will help those people who want personal interaction from their deli.

Other benefits of this system include increased efficiency of the workers. Think about how many times they go back and forth from the customer to the food supply to the slicing machines back to the customer. And that customer has 3 or 4 items he wants, so the deli worker has to make those rounds multiple times per customer. How much quicker would things get done if the worker had the whole order at once, could line up all the items, and make one trip to the slicing machine?

Even further, how many times does the worker get a style of meat, cut off some slices, and put it back – only to have another customer order the same thing and have to get it back out again? The Take-An-Order system could aggregate the orders, so all the honey ham orders from all customers within a 15-minute window could be cut at the same time, then all the roast beefs, etc.

For customer satisfaction, the thickness of the cut would be consistent. The order interface would have objective thickness options, such as 1/8″, instead of vague “thin” or “medium”.

And for our family, I know we get approximately the same items every week or so. How much more convenient would it be if I swiped my loyalty card and my most recent orders were displayed and I could just tap on them to order them again?

Imagine that scenario: I walk up to a deli kiosk with no wait. I swipe my card, tap a couple of things, and go on my way. I walk around the store, usefully shopping while my order is filled, and receive a text that my order is complete and I can pick it up at my convenience. Deli utopia, I say!

Overachieving grocery stores could have the completed deli orders routed to the check-out aisles, so customers don’t even have to go back to the deli. As they swipe their loyalty cards during checkout, their deli items are rung up and placed in their bags.

The current system, in the words of Sir Topham Hatt, causes confusion and delay. It could be so much better.

Here’s my latest idea: skeeball plus bowling.

It’s perfect for people like me, who never got the hang of spinning the bowling ball to make it curve.

I’m not going to get around to making this, so someone else can give it a try.