Should College Students Be Allowed To Bring Loaded Guns To Class?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Mark

I teach history one day a week at Orinda Intermediate School, and I come unarmed. Teachers in California are not allowed to bring guns into public schools, but teachers in Texas and several other states can bring loaded guns to class. And in some states, college students are also allowed to bring guns to class. A few weeks ago, Liberty University, the largest religious–affiliated school in the U.S., announced that students can now bring loaded guns into classrooms at the school’s Lynchburg, Virginia campus as long as they have an easy-to-obtain Virginia concealed weapons permit. University staff and visitors may also carry firearms on campus. Liberty joins 25 other colleges in Virginia, Colorado, Utah, and Michigan that allow staff and students to carry concealed firearms on campus. Liberty University is a Christian institution founded by television evangelist Jerry Falwell. Liberty University students are STILL prohibited from watching R-rated movies, listening to ‘un-Godly music’, dancing, kissing, or staying in a motel room with a member of the opposite sex, as outlined in the school’s student handbook. Doing any of these things can result in disciplinary action, including expulsion from the university.

The University of California does not allow students to bring guns to class, but Cal students are allowed to dance, kiss, and watch R-rated movies. Furthermore, I am reliably informed that Cal students have been known to stay in motel rooms with members of the opposite sex. Anyway, that’s the rumor.

Can You Be Evicted For Keeping A 500 Pound Bengal Tiger In Your Apartment?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Mark

Yes you can. A man was evicted from his apartment in a high-rise apartment house in New York City after the manager discovered that the tenant had a Bengal tiger in his apartment and called the police. The police were reluctant to enter the apartment through the front door, so a policeman with a rifle was lowered from the roof of the building on a rope. The policeman shot the tiger with a tranquilizing dart through a window.

When the tiger was sedated, animal control officers entered the apartment and removed the tiger. The tenant fought the eviction. He told the judge that his lease allowed him to have a cat, and a tiger is a cat. The judge agreed that a tiger is a cat but evicted the tenant anyway. The judge said that a reasonable person would know that a lease provision allowing a tenant to have a cat was not intended to apply to a 500 pound Bengal tiger. I think the judge was right, but I may be prejudiced because I do not allow Bengal tigers in my apartments. (I wonder how long it would take my insurance company to cancel my policies if they discovered that there were Bengal tigers in my buildings.)

220 Volts For Kitty Cat. I frequently advise other landlords to ask questions when an applicant for an apartment says that he has a cat. I do this myself. Many years ago, I got an application to rent a house on Shafter Avenue in Oakland from a man who told me that he had a cat named ‘Kitty Cat.’ Initially, I didn’t pay much attention to that. Later in the interview, the applicant asked me if the garage had a 220 volt electrical outlet. I said ‘No.’ He asked me if he could get a 220 volt outlet installed in the garage. He offered to pay for it himself. His question piqued my curiosity. I wanted to know why he wanted a 220 volt electrical outlet. I have been in this business for over 40 years, and I have never seen a 220 volt outlet in a garage. The man said that he had a 50 cubic foot commercial freezer, and it ran on 220 volts. I was astonished. That is a huge freezer. It’s the kind of freezer is made for restaurants and hotels, not home use. I asked him why he owned such a big freezer. He said: “Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for Kitty Cat.” I thought the guy was crazy! People don’t buy industrial freezers for their cats. Something was very wrong with this guy’s story. I asked the guy a series of questions about his freezer and his cat, but answers seemed deliberately evasive. Finally, I told the guy that I had to see this cat. I asked the applicant if he had a photograph of his cat with him. He said he did. He showed me a photo of ‘Kitty Cat’ that he kept in his wallet. That is how I found out that ‘Kitty Cat’ was actually a mountain lion. He told me that ‘Kitty Cat’ ate 10 pounds of horsemeat a day, which is why he owned a commercial freezer. The freezer held 500 pounds of horsemeat. I thanked the guy for his application and sent him on his way. I decided to rent the house to somebody else.

The woman that I wound up renting the house to also had a cat, but her cat weighed 6 pounds. Even though this all happened a long time ago, I still remember her cat. It was a cross-eyed white Siamese cat with black ears. The cat was friendly, but whenever I was in the house, the cat would sit on the kitchen countertop and stare at me intently and cross-eyed until I left. That cat’s stare was downright spooky! Well – now I ask questions about cats!

What is ‘Nectar’?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Mark

Fruit nectar looks like a healthy product. It looks like a natural product. Nearly every grocery and convenience store in Berkeley sells the stuff. But just what is nectar? Because nectar is usually thicker than regular fruit juice, many people assume that nectar is simply juice with extra pulp in it. Unfortunately, that is not what nectar is. Here is how the FDA defines nectar: “The term ‘nectar’ is generally accepted as the common or usual name in the U.S. and in international trade for a diluted juice beverage that contains fruit juice or puree, water, and may contain sweeteners.” Have your ever read the ingredients on a can of fruit nectar? Kern’s peach nectar lists high fructose corn syrup ahead of peach puree on the label. That means that there is more corn syrup than peach puree in the can, and high fructose corn syrup is neither natural nor healthy.

There are a lot of products on the market like nectar – products that look healthy, pure, and natural – but aren’t. Food processors are very clever and creative in coming up with product names designed to get you to buy them. When in doubt as to what a processed food really contains, read the ingredients label. Most of the time (but not always) they have to tell you what’s inside. Before Teddy Roosevelt became president, food processors were not required to reveal the ingredients in their products, and few did. After Roosevelt made food processors list their ingredients on the label, many companies, including some big ones, went out of business. People just stopped buying their products. This included bakeries that made bread out of sawdust, dairies that watered down their milk, and sausage makers that made hot dogs out of old horses and animal parts unfit for human consumption. The food processing industry challenged the law, arguing that requiring them to list their ingredients was an ‘attack on free enterprise’ (where have we heard that before?), but the Supreme Court backed up Roosevelt and the newly-created FDA.

Charlie the Tuna

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Mark

A cousin of mine just had a baby. The baby’s name is Charlie. Whenever I hear the name Charlie (as opposed to Charles), it always reminds me of Charlie the tuna. You must have seen TV commercials featuring Charlie the tuna. StarKist has been running Charlie the tuna commercials continuously for over 50 years. In these commercials, Charlie keeps trying to get caught by tuna fishermen, but he never succeeds. At the end of every commercial, a fishhook is lowered with a note from StarKist saying ‘Sorry Charlie.’

Charlie the tuna commercials always seemed somewhat bizarre to me. Why would a fish want to get caught, killed, gutted, chopped up, cooked, and packed in a tin can?? I’m not a vegetarian, but I have no illusions about the animals I eat. I know they didn’t volunteer to become my dinner. Cows don’t ask McDonalds to turn them into hamburgers. Chickens don’t plead with KFC to turn them into nuggets. Why would a fish spend 50 years trying to be killed, chopped up, and canned? (This is the kind of question that philosophy majors at Cal spend a lot of time thinking about.)

Smoke Alarms

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mark

All of my apartments now have 10 year smoke alarms. The batteries are sealed inside and cannot be removed without tearing the alarm apart and destroying it. If you find a smoke alarm in your unit that has a battery door and a removable 9-volt battery inside, let me know, and I will replace it with a 10 year smoke alarm. You should test all the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in your home regularly. If one of them fails to sound an alarm when your press and hold the test button, let me know, and I will replace it. I know that smoke alarms near kitchens have an unpleasant habit of going off when people are cooking. The smoke alarm in my hall goes off whenever I broil anything, and it is very annoying. If you remove a smoke alarm from your wall when if goes off while you are cooking, please remember to put it back in place as soon as you are done. Most of the time when a smoke alarm fails to sound during a fire, it turns out that the reason was that the tenant had disabled the alarm or removed the battery. A U.C. Berkeley student was killed in a fire precisely that way a few years ago. He was sleeping at a friend’s house after a party and died from smoke inhalation. The smoke alarm didn’t go off because a tenant had removed the battery.

Can You Be Evicted For Keeping 300 Rats In Your Apartment?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mark

The answer is Yes. Two months ago, in February, authorities in Wisconsin found that a woman had over 300 rats in her home at Birch Tree Estates. The woman bought some rats at pet stores. These rats reproduced with wild rats that the woman allowed into her home. Their numbers grew rapidly. The woman was evicted in March. Now – suppose your lease allows you to have pets. Can your landlord still evict you for keeping 300 rats in your home? Yes he can. All leases (including mine) prohibit tenants from creating or maintaining safety or health hazards on the premises and keeping 300 rats in your home is a public health hazard.

The French Frymobile. I once had a tenant in Oakland who I forced out because he had created a serious public safety hazard and refused to get rid of it. He owned a Mercedes diesel automobile that ran on used vegetable oil. He got the oil from the Burger King on Broadway. Fast food restaurants toss out a huge amount of used vegetable oil every day. My tenant stored this oil in the garage and in the yard in big plastic jugs. He had hundreds of gallons of used vegetable oil on my property. I told him that I support recycling, but public safety has to come first. I pointed out that his lease prohibited him from creating a safety hazard on the premises, and he had enough oil to burn up the whole neighborhood. I gave him an ultimatum. Either the oil had to go or he had to go. He moved out at the end of the month and took the oil with him. I remember that when his car was running, the exhaust fumes smelled just like french fries. You could really tell where the oil came from!

Mr. Booze. The vice mayor of Richmond, California is named Corky Booze. (No, I am not making this up. That really is his name.) Richmond is located 5 miles north of Berkeley and has a population of a little over 100,000. Mr. Booze has a problem. The City Attorney is charging that the Right Honorable Mr. Booze is maintaining a public safety and fire hazard on his property. The property is a vast unlicensed junkyard. It contains huge piles of discarded appliances, inoperable automobiles, furniture, storage tanks, and metal cylinders. The junk has been there for decades.

Does Santa Claus Have a Reindeer Named Donner? Or Is It Donder?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mark

A lot has been written about the names of Santa’s reindeer. A U.C. Berkeley grad student once wrote a dissertation about Santa’s reindeer, which I thought was a huge waste of time. Now you might not think that anyone would get hot under the collar about the names of Santa’s reindeer, but you would be wrong. Last Christmas, two men in a bar in Los Angeles got into an argument over the names of Santa’s reindeer. Other patrons in the bar gradually entered the argument and took sides. Things deteriorated until it became a general brawl. One man was stabbed. Many of the patrons in the bar were arrested. In order to minimize the violence, the men who believed that one of the reindeer is named ‘Donder’ were kept in separate cells at the jail from the men who believed it is ‘Donner’ – until they sobered up the next day.

Here’s the real story….Santa’s reindeer were first named in the poem: “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, which is more commonly known by the poem’s first line: “Twas the night before Christmas.” The poem first appeared in a newspaper in New York City in 1823. There is some debate as to who wrote it. In the poem, 2 of the reindeer were named Dunder and Blixem, which is Dutch for thunder and lightning. In the early 1800s, a lot of New Yorkers could speak Dutch. Remember, New York City was originally called New Amsterdam. Over the next 100 years, the name Dunder gradually changed to Donder in reprintings of the poem. Then in 1949, Gene Autry recorded the song ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’, which quickly became a huge hit and is still the world’s second most popular Christmas song, just behind ‘White Christmas.’ In ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’, 2 of the reindeer are named Donner and Blitzen, which is German for thunder and lightning. By 1949, very few Americans could speak Dutch, but a lot of Americans understood German. So now you know – and now you can find some other subject for your doctoral dissertation!

What Is That White Stuff That Sometimes Forms On Salmon When You Cook It?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mark

Have you ever been served a piece of broiled or baked salmon that had some mysterious white stuff on the surface? That white stuff is albumin. When salmon is cooked, the muscle fibers contract, pushing albumin to the surface. Once the albumin dries out, it congeals and turns white. Not only does this detract from the salmon’s appearance, it also indicates that the fish will taste dry. The solution? Take the salmon out of your refrigerator 30 minutes before you cook it and let it warm up to room temperature. Then cook the salmon at a low temperature. This will slow the contraction of the muscle fibers, keeping more moisture inside the fish, reducing or eliminating the formation of that ugly white stuff on the salmon’s surface. Haven’t you ever wondered what that white stuff is? Well, now you know!

It Is Still More Expensive to Live In New York City

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mark

Last month I said that San Francisco is now the most expensive rental housing market in the United States, beating even Manhattan; however, that doesn’t mean that it costs more to live in San Francisco than New York City. No, it is still more expensive to live in New York City than San Francisco. That is because even though rent is slightly higher in San Francisco, the cost of nearly everything else is higher in New York City. For example, a t-bone steak at D’Agostino’s, one of Manhattan’s biggest supermarket chains, costs $18 a pound. At Safeway in San Francisco, the same steak costs $10 a pound.

Most Bizarre Chocolate Poster Ever!

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Mark

Many years ago, a tenant gave me a Poulain chocolate poster. It’s a copy of a 19th century French lithograph. I have never hung the poster on the wall of my chocolate room because the clown in the poster looks like a creepy psychopath to me. I have shown the poster to a number of people. Some agree with me, but others think that I am reading too much into it. They say that the clown just looks like he is enjoying a nice cup of cocoa and that ‘kids love clowns.’ Well – yes – kids do love clowns, but I am not sure they would love this one. What do you think?