Safetogototown

  Presently in Texas there is a movement towards school vouchers.  As it stands a bill (SB 1) has passed the Texas Senate but is having trouble moving past the Texas House.  According to this  recent article  house Democrats and rural Republicans are holding up the bill.  Governor Abbott has vowed to continually call special legislative sessions until a voucher program has passed.  Many Texas house representatives however are a hard line "no" when it comes to school vouchers.  The basic push back from the hard line no's is that vouchers will destroy the public school system.  as Texas Democratic party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa states; "Public dollars belong in public schools. Period". Before I get to the main element of this post I do have to impose some of my general thoughts on education.  These are thoughts and musings and are only based on my experiences and observations.  None of this is based on any factual analysis.  Ju...

The simplistic view on tipping as it is expressed in North America is that it is an incentive.  Service staff desire higher wages so they provide good service in exchange for better tips.  Simply stated; "the better the service the better the tips".  Is this reality?  I googled "tipping incentive" and this is what was returned: Tips are supposed to be an incentive/reward for good service. However, tipping is a complex behavior motivated by the desires to conform with social norms, compensate for poor service wages, display power/status, avoid the servers' envy and ill will, and express interpersonal attraction. There is quite a lot to unpack here.  This quip was returned directly from google and there was not references given for it.  I tried to find out how these responses are generated but I was unable to find this out.  Here is a image of the google search results: I am assuming that this snippet of information is generated by some AI engine in resp...

  Back from vacation and ready to get back to writing this blog.  As much as I enjoy this I must say it was very nice to get away for a couple of weeks and chill.  Although I did keep an eye out for things to write about upon my return.  We actually got back last Wednesday afternoon.  However after a 10 hour flight and 8 loads of laundry I was pretty much exhausted.  Add in jet lag and a ton of emails to go through and this post was best left for this week. As I said I was always keeping an eye open for something to write about.  The first topic came almost immediately.  It was sudden and prevalent.  That topic was tipping.  Our first expenditure after landing in Paris was the taxi ride to the hotel.  I had researched this part of the trip and felt that after the long plane ride and our unfamiliarity with the city that a taxi would be our best option.  Bus and train were cheaper options but were a little more complicated and no...