Somehow that seems a little wrong? A barbershop is something that relies on routine customers and a base and loyalty and all these things that take years to establish.
If that's the case then the shopkeeper can just set up somewhere else and take all the customer base and loyalty with him.
Except that the old barber can't even put a sign in the window telling his new address because the competition now owns the window.
He can put the sign up before the lease runs out, and contact all his regulars to let them know the new address. And if the building owner decides to try to poach them by, eg, calling his business "ROY THE BARBER" when the old place was "RON THE BARBER" then he can sue for passing off.
Yeah, but that kind of thing only works marginally well. "We're changing locations! A few miles away! Write it down! See you there!"
"Don't give the same location a try, to see if it's similar enough that you'll feel like you're not breaking your stride!"
"Definitely, if you only come in for a haircut once every few months, be sure to turn around and walk out when you realize your regular staff isn't here, and track us down!"
my friend who teaches in a HeadStart classroom has 22 four year olds, and splits one teacher's assistant with another classroom. I cannot imagine how exhausting that job must be.
One of the teachers in Zardoz's day care classroom was previously a head start teacher in a poor city in Western Mass. I think it woiuld be fair to say that our painfully overpriced, well-located day care chock-a-block with engaged parents, teachers and administrators makes for a more pleasant work environment.
engaged parents
I'm thinking that can be a plus or a minus.
I do think the old barber will win in the end, but it could be a while before he gets the old volume of business back. The woman who cuts my son's hair, who we still take him to out of gratitude from when he was younger and she was the only person who could cut his hair without murder-death-kill screaming, was originally working in a shop run by someone else. The old shop had expensive space in a nice strip mall, advertising, thousands of dollars worth of fittings (e.g. barber chairs that looked like little airplanes), and a full-time person at the phone/cash register. They went broke and our stylist took nearly all the customers and most of the other cutters to a new shop with shitty space and cheaper haircuts.
Anyway, I think the old owners were providing nothing but capital (and, possibly in their own mind, business management skills). That's not what's going to keep a hair place going.
I also doubt they had very much capital, given how quickly it went under.
"Don't give the same location a try, to see if it's similar enough that you'll feel like you're not breaking your stride!"
"Definitely, if you only come in for a haircut once every few months, be sure to turn around and walk out when you realize your regular staff isn't here, and track us down!"
Well, but if you're one of those then surely you're not one of the loyal routine customer base that barbershops rely on.
7: no doubt, no doubt. I recently got the backstory on the huge blowup before we arrived that resulted in many of the teachers, the director, and all of the parents who started the whole thing (forcing the director to quit) leaving.
You're right, Ajay. What a loving, generous building owner after all.
The whole "we won't renew your lease, but we will steal your business!" thing happened in our neighborhood with an art/performance space. How you make enough money with an art/performance space for this to make any sense at all I have no idea, but the usurpers definitely seem to have succeeded. (The old proprietors got another, shittier, smaller space around the way, but the original space is pretty hoppin' for reasons that evade me and now even serves beer.)
Seems unlikely that the landlord's better off in the long run losing the rent and taking on the risk of being a barber while losing the existing barber's goodwill, as opposed to just negotiating a higher rent. I'd guess that someone in the landlord's family wants to be a barber and this is dad/mom/sexual partner landlord's way of helping out.
but the original space is pretty hoppin' for reasons that evade me and now even serves beer
With no actual knowlege, it appears obvious that you are mistaking cause for effect.
People overwhelmingly prefer cultural experiences that include beer.
I only go to cultural experiences that have beer.
But I'd avoid Halford's Barbershop of Incest even if drunk.
15: it was reasonably hoppin' before they served beer. The shitty weekly jazz shows bring 'em out.
It is not as inexplicable as the GIANT jazz club on the other side of the square that somehow remains in business despite never being full and chargin a twenty-five dollar cover for crappy salsa dancing events. (I mean, obviously it's full enough to cover costs, but the real mystery is who the hell goes there?)
Even if a barbershop were not something that relied in any way on loyalty, and were simply a location which people associated with a service, the landlord's behavior should not be encouraged as it damages the incentive to start and maintain small businesses. A small entrepreneur without an enormous amount of start-up capital is going to have to pay rent for whatever space is required to run the business. If the business is service-related, that is going to be a space which its customers associate with the service. A large part of the value of the business is going to be the association of place and service. Of course, the lessee here is providing that service entirely. The landlord owns the space and extracts rent.
If the landlord can subsequently extract a substantial part of the value of the business, what is the incentive to start a small service business?
Perhaps that is why we see less independent small businesses.
One with which you can shoot other philosophers while, at the same time, desiring it to be generally the case that philosophers (including oneself) be shot thus.
Column A: philosopher.
Column B: most appropriate weapon to be used in a violent dispute over their philosophy.
Kant: small non-lethal pistol.
Nietzsche: enormous club made from torn-off branch of tree.
Bentham: cruise missile.
Bishop Berkeley: rock.
Isaiah Berlin: trained killer hedgehog.
Thomas Aquinas: unarmed combat.
Leibniz: heat-seeking monad.
It's very hard to train a hedgehog to kill. They only know one thing.
26: true. If a hedgehog ever gets into a fight, they just call the big Thing in, and it lumbers over and smashes the hedgehog's opponent.
Unless it's fighting a fox, which, of course, knows lots of Things.
Especially since he was allied with a bloke called Kierkegaard who just sits there biting the heads off ferrets.
Historically, at least, Marx: 7.65mm bullets to base of skull.
Now you see the violence inherent in dialectical materialism.
William of Ockham: IUDs. (To prevent the multiplication of entities beyond necessity.)
The simpler choice would be: Razor.
Ockham the Razor: Sword of Justice got weird when he raped Hildegard of Bingen to interrogate her after railing against corruption by the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Spinoza: silica dust, or perhaps a GIANT lens to set him afire.
Descartes: sword-cane, blindfold.
26: You just have to find a hedgehog whose one thing is killing.
Socrates: A public trial followed by suicide.
Peter Singer: Tim Tebow
Nozick: Charlie Sheen
St Augustine: trained killer hippo
Socrates: Hemlock
Hegel: Fusion bomb
Heidegger: [sorry, this one was in poor taste]
Plato: a regular solid
Rousseau: an orangutan?
Alternately, one could use a torpedo fish or tazer in a dispute about Socrates.
David Chalmers: a zombie horde
John Searle: A trap door into a Chinese Room
Heidegger: [sorry, this one was in poor taste]
Yeah let's stick with the Wehrmacht-issue Ruger, there, Godwin.
55: Thanks for making that slightly less implicit.
Also, not a flamethrower for Plato?
sorry, this one was in poor taste
Wait. When did we start to worry about that?
|| Hot from the presses, here is the long-awaited UN report on Chemical Weapons in Syria
|>
Popper/Wittgenstein: a fireplace poker
Russel/Whitehead: a massively, heavy tome
Goedel: himself
Democritus of Abdera: atomic warheads.
Typical for this blog to make jokes about philosophers while poor children suffer in overcrowded HeadStart classrooms.
Goedel: himself
Nice one JP.
Francis Bacon: frozen chicken.
Voltaire: didgeridoos (thank you Wikipedia).
Sartre: other people
Nietzsche: hammer
Wittgenstein: flytrap
Dennett: crane or skyhook
Zeno: tortoise attached to an arrow
Parmenides: anything as long as it's moving
Democritus: particle accelerator
63: It looks like sarin was delivered via rockets. It's not clear that it was Assad's sarin (or his rockets), but I guess that when we examine all of Assad's existing chemical weapons we might be able to tell.
Heraclitus: Varies
Fire, surely. Alternatively, drowning in river(s).
You can drown in the same river twice, if somebody around knows CPR.
Mill: Not sure, maybe something involving fucking mice.
82: Ok, now you've got to tell us, or at least give us a hint.
Zyklon B, or something like that, I assume.
especially poor taste.
Yep, now I need a shower.
||
Only in the USA can you have three people conduct a mass shooting and have the mayor say there's no reason to believe it's an act of terrorism.
Because there's nothing intrinsically terroristic about a coordinated mass shooting when it happens in the US. It might just be regular folks, and not terrorists, shooting the hell out of people.
|
Also:
Scalia: semi-automatic weapon.
It could be an assault on a legitimate military target, no? Or it could be white guys. Best not rush to judgment.
No, I think there are plenty of countries where "terrorism" by definition is limited to a certain ethnicity or ideology.
55 wasn't enough of a hint?
Some people can't take a hint. I, apparently, am one of them.
If only the people who worked at the Navy Yard were armed, all this could have been prevented.
More seriously, I'm not sure how I'm going to get home. Apparently they've closed a street I bike by.
94 to 87/89, of course. Although I'm sure there must be some philosopher who died at a naval facility.
94 -- it's a sign that I've spent way too much time on the internet that this joke was literally the first thing that I thought of when I heard about the shooting.
They're already on it: "Navy Yard Shooting Another Gun Free Zone Failure."
Or it could be white guys.
Jokes on you, racist!
On the OP, yeah, it does seem a bit wrong.
Then, when the barbershop owner was getting ready to move out, the building owner asked if he could purchase all the equipment.
What did the barbershop owner say?? No, I hope. God knows, if the barber intended to close down the business at that point, it'd be sorely tempting to agree to sell the fixtures (the equipment and counters and mirrors and whatnot) as is, but it sure would be rewarding to say, "Nah. I've got another buyer."*
20: the landlord's behavior should not be encouraged as it damages the incentive to start and maintain small businesses.
Actually, I think it reflects what many small businesses learn, if they didn't know it already: own your own building. Being at the mercy of a landlord becomes problematic once the business is established.
* It actually occurs to me that it might be conceivable that the barbershop owner could agree to sell the equipment/fixtures as is, in that location, for not just an agreed-upon price, but also a certain percentage of, say, the next year's income of the landlord's new shop. The idea being that he's selling not just the equipment but also the customer base he's built up over time. Hah, yes, I think that's it.
Actually, I think it reflects what many small businesses learn, if they didn't know it already: own your own building.
Lesson 1 of successful entrepreneurship: already be rich. It would be nice if that weren't exactly what you wrote as I would feel cleverer in pointing it out.
I'm guessing that the landlord wouldn't agree to buy the equipment for anything exceeding its actual market value. He could just elect not to renew the lease and, if the tenant didn't move out within the statutory period, obtain an unlawful detainer.
Further on the OP:
my friend who teaches in a HeadStart classroom has 22 four year olds, and splits one teacher's assistant with another classroom.
This is extending to regular public schools, not just HeadStart. A result of sequestration.
My friend the public school teacher finds himself this year suddenly assigned another science class -- of 6th graders. He's been doing 4th and 5th grade science for years, and admittedly these 6th graders are his former students, so that's at least helpful, but he finds that *there is no curriculum*.
He's to focus on astronomy with the 6th graders. How shall he teach this to them? Back in the old days, a teacher might could, and would, develop his or her own lesson plans and curriculum, but it hasn't worked that way for quite a while now: these days, you're supposed to adhere to an approved curriculum, provide proof that you're doing so, and show results in the form of successful student testing.
He's spoken to the people upstairs -- school system administrators -- but they've got nothing by way of curriculum.
So. He was visiting last night: this week he intends to teach the 6th graders the doppler effect, and the visible light spectrum (ROYGBV). Actually not just visible light, but from infrared to ultraviolet. He'd like to have an actual prism in hand to show the visible light spectrum, so the students *see* that this is real and true, but that may not be possible.
This becomes a bleg: anyone in that level of teaching familiar with what a curriculum and approach might be for teaching this kind of material?
101: My wife teaches 8th grade science, but she mentioned the state has the core standards online complete with example lesson plans and links. Looks like our 6th grade is similar to what you're mentioning. Specifically, Standard 6, Objective 2 has a bunch of the material he wants to do.
This is extending to regular public schools, not just HeadStart. A result of sequestration.
To what extent is this dependent on the state? In my district when I was a kid, it wasn't super unusual to have a class with 32 kids.
State caps for class size vary (and schools can apply for waivers), but it looks like they dropped significantly in the past 20 years. A quick glance says a low-20s cap seems pretty common for elementary school. Most of my classes were about 30 students, too.
Head Start should definitely have smaller class sizes, since much of the point is getting individualized attention to the children, plus I'll bet many of them still need bathroom help.
Mara's kindergarten class is 18-20 students to one teacher and one aide. Nia's first grade is more like 22 with one teacher and some paraprofessionals who do math and reading intervention work at specific times.
At Fancykids Private Kindergarten, we have 24 kids in a class with one assistant. Plus afternoon yoga.
Is there a special teacher for yoga?
I remember class sizes ~30 students, but what Thorn said. HeadStart students are going to be overpopulated with high needs children from poverty backgrounds, and they're younger, too.
A lot of potty-training, but also things like having to safely restrain a kid throwing a violent tantrum (albeit with 25 lbs of body mass). (She described one kid in particular, that is. Basically you sit criss-cross applesauce with your legs crossed around the kid and your arms folded over him.)
I have no idea what you do with the other 21 four year olds while you're doing this.
109.last: Yeah, I don't even know what you do with your other two kids while in that situation, or what you can do that works. It would be way touger as a teacher, I'm sure.
Yes, it was Nina from Sprout. She asked me to ask you what you're wearing right now.
When I was at primary school, we had a little under 40 in most classes. The limit these days, by law, is I think around 30. Average is a little less, around 26 or 27.
you sit criss-cross applesauce
What? You wear your pants backwards and... are a pork chop?
The hippie-crunchy charter school my little ones go to does a quarter of yoga, a quarter of dance, a quarter of aikido, and a quarter of PE games.
114: You do your best not to infuse the new generation with Native American racism until they watch Peter Pan and internalize all of the worst stereotypes in 75 short minutes.
I miss Nina now that my kids are too old for Sprout.
all of the worst stereotypes in 75 short minutes
Heck, they manage to pack them all into just one 10-minute segment.
118: so it's the same as sitting cross-legged?
When we were kids, we used to call it sitting Gangnam Style.
121: But calling it cross-legged is part of the War Against Christians.
It's actually called Criss-crossfit Applesaucefit.
re: 116
Aikido? For kids? Wonders will never cease. I suppose it's basically still dancing,* but it's dancing with the possibility of injury.
* fuck it. No need to spare the feelings of the sensitive aikidoka community.
OT: Holy. Fucking. Shit. Check out the note I just got from my kids' school:
The note is addressed to my wife and I, and copied on the note are my kid's teacher, the administrative director of the school, the faculty director at the school, the special behavioral issues counselor at the school. For the record, the kid is in first grade.
Please see the attached report for [urplespawn] dated 9-17-13. If you have any questions please contact [redacted] or [redacted].
Behavior Reports: When children have persistent or extreme trouble with expected behavior, the parents and the faculty are notified through the use of a Behavior Report. A series of Behavior Reports may be cause to enter the child into the concerns process. Behavior reports are then directed to the Pedagogical Council for review. If parental intervention is requested, the parent will be contacted directly.
BEHAVIOR: [urplespawn] called another child a "baby".
The end.
It's a nice note, but it could use more jargon.
Holy moly. You should request a conference.
"Urplespawn, did you call otherchild a baby?"
"Yes."
"And did he cry like a little wuss?"
"No."
"Okay, well, that's still against the rules, so try not to be such an asshole so these dickwipes won't send home any more behavior reports."
"Okay, dad."
"Are we done here, Mr. Principal?"
Good heavens. I suppose you call the teacher and ask what the real problem is, because obviously just calling another kid a baby wouldn't have triggered a 'report' like that.
Anyway, I got an email about head lice. Though not specifically direct at my kid, I have to squint at his hair because of it.
133: I think you're forgetting this took place in urpleworld.
"And did he cry like a little wuss?"
"No."
The answer was actually "Yes", which as best as I can tell is why a BEHAVIOR REPORT was generated.
136 to 134 as well. I didn't talk to the teacher, but talked to the administrative director, who said he thinks that, although it wasn't a kind thing to say, we shouldn't be too concerned about the behavior.
"And did he cry like a little wuss?"
"No."
The answer was actually "Yes",
It's probably even fair to say he cried like a baby.
130 is truly awesome. Pic in the flickr pool? You should tell the Pedagogical Council that urplespawn deserves praise for opting for ''baby" over "cunt".
Re 134, what is other people's experience with schools and lice? When I was a kid, the school nurse would come into the classroom and inspect every kid's head, which was potentially humiliating but seems like an effective approach, public health-wise. At my daughters' school, we had several infestations a couple of years ago, and when I suggested to the nurse that more aggressive, school-wide intervention might be helpful, she gave me some bullshit line about studies showing that kids don't spread lice at school. Dealing with lice is a fucking nightmare.
139: I think we're going to need to generate a BEHAVIOR REPORT on you too, now.
At my son's school, they check every kid on the first day. He passed, because we'd been combing nits out for the previous two weeks (as recently posted in the flickr pool). A fucking nightmare, indeed. He was also kind enough to give them to me, but I discovered it basically immediately and didn't have major issues getting rid of my own.
Has anybody just gone with a waxed head for their child?
So far, it's never been our kid with the nits.
143: When he got tired of the combing, I suggested shaving his head. He decided instead that perhaps he didn't need to complain quite so much about it.
I should maybe clarify that the nurse's response communicated unmistakably, "take your kids home and deal with it, because we're not going to." Which would be maybe understandable if dealing with it involved unbearable costs to an underfunded school, but a simple regimen of thorough examination and education could have prevented successive epidemics and saved a lot of people a lot of money. That lice treatment shit is expensive. On the plus side, we were able to eliminate the problem four times without buzz cuts.
I think last year they checked the whole school for lice all at once, but only after the third kid showed up with them. Once is bad luck, twice is rec sports leagues, and three times is "Aaaah, they're here."
My most awkward conversation with my advisor involved him (I hope) mistaking lice for scabies. "Oh, scabies? Everyone with kids goes through a few rounds of that. No big deal."
We never got them from school; just the once from little league. I kind of enjoyed nitpicking, just for the sake of having a literal experience of the metaphor.
149: Totes. The word is very vivid to me now.
gswift at 102:
Thank you! Perfect! Duly passed along to my friend.
Please thank your wife for me.