No More Checks?

Walletpop.com this week includes a post about the end of checks at the supermarket.

Let me just say, I've never payed a grocery bill with a paper check. I know there are plenty of folks who do--and there are a few places I do use paper checks (tithes to church, bills where a company charges extra for some kind of electronic payment, certain personal services, the IRS, etc...), but for the most part, I'm a part of the "post-check" generation.

If your friendly local supermarket stopped accepting personal checks, would this cause you personal anxiety, make your life more difficult, or have vitually no impact on you?

Time for a North American Dollar zone?

I've wondered about NAFTA and the EuroZone for some time now, but I caught a bit of the North American Summit news reports this afternoon, and it got me thinking again. There are parallels, but significant differences as well.

The key difference (at least the most obvious, not to get into the EU parliament connected to the EuroZone), of course, is multiple currencies in the US, Canada, and Mexico. I'd argue that we need to move toward a single super-national North American community (that would include eliminating inernal boarder crossings between the three North American nations and simplify transnational residence), but that's a complex matter. Simpler, and perhaps more mannageable in the short run, is the creation of a single, North American Dollar zone. No, I'm not dissing the Peso, but with two Dollars already, it's the easier way to go. In fact, if we developed a "Dollar/Peso" zone, with total equivalency (essentially printing three currencies without exchange rates, so 1$US = 1$CAD = 1 Peso), we could all keep our familiar currencies in our wallets, but use whatever we happen to have while traveling between the three states. This would have immediate positive impact, especially in boarder communities.

Even better, now's the time. With virtual equivalence between the US and Canadian Dollars, only Mexico would have to reissue the Peso, which could be subsidized by the other two states to facilitate trade.

I know it's not likely, but hey, we could be smarter than we are! Why compete with one another in North America (with only 3 official languages), when we can cooperate to compete with Europe. If the polyglot EU can do it, why can't we?

Food Allergies

I was reading an online Slate article this morning, and it got me thinking. I've had a similar reaction to overcautious parents for quite some time now. Several years ago, while working in a coffee shop, the new "in" thing for parents with too much money to spend seemed to be reading all labels for any evidence of peanuts or treenuts. I guess we've gone farther, now hickory trees are apparently high enough risk for a kid with a nut allergy that a town sufficiently fears litigation to cut down several of them.

What has the world come to when a commentator has to ask:

Who is crazy here—the family that wants the trees felled or the residents who seem willing to put a child at risk? It's hard to tell. That's the dilemma of nut allergies. There are cases of real danger and real death. And then there's the huge circle of caution that often gets drawn around children when, rationally speaking, more modest precautions might do.

Sadly, that's the world we live in today -- a world where irrational parents can make normal life cease for fear of something that might happen to a child who has never evidenced risk before.

I understand food allergies -- I really do. My wife's best-friend is seriously allergic to peanuts, and moderately allergic to a host of other legumes. However, she's an adult, and has never evidenced airborne risk, so while she'd prefer you not eat a peanut-butter sandwich in front of her because she finds the smell unpleasant, she hasn't tried to ban all foods that might have made contact with peanuts from her worksite.

Some of you might be saying "so you know someone..." Well, I know several people, a shellfish (crustacea, not bivalves... yes, I know it's hard to imagine, but clams are not closely related to crabs) allergy in my family, a banana allergy in my wife's, a blueberry allergy in mine, and a serious cashew allergy in mine that leads to minor issues with other drupes (including mango and poison ivy).

The problem with too many parents is that they seem to assume, "my kid's friend is allergic to peanuts, so my kid must be allergic to peanuts too, and cashews because they look like peanuts, and probably all nuts -- we must make the world a NUT FREE ZONE!!!" Even without intensive allergy testing, parents should be able to do better -- when you find an allergy through contact, learn what's really closely related, and don't feed a kid with peanut allergies lentils without asking if it makes them itchy, but dry roasted almonds or chashews, not processed in a plant that processes peanuts, are probably alright. Better yet, make the kid go through the whole battery of tests, and then avoid what actually comes up -- not everything. Finally, try to find out how serious the allergy really is -- if it's airborne, freak out, you're one of the few with a hypersensitive case, otherwise, take reasonable and sensible precautions. If your child has a mild peanut allergy, don't quiz every potential playmate's parents to discover if there's peanut butter in the house and ban contact with all kids who might occasionally eat some, just inform your kid's friend's parents' and ask for reasonable support.

If more of us were treated as reasonable people, then perhaps we'll all be able to live in a more sane world again. If parents had done that while I worked at the cafe, I wouldn't have responded like I did a few times, telling one hypercautious mother who'd just told her friend that while her kid hadn't been tested "you can't be too cautious," not to bother with any of our food, because I couldn't give her a 100% guarantee of peanut/treenut-freeness about anything.