The dog crap collection business goes way back. In Victorian times an army of "pure" gatherers picked up turds and delivered them to tanneries. The stuff was tossed in vats to create a furiously septic stew in which freshly scraped skins were immersed.

It is a shame we don't have an industry today that could use dog crap for something useful.

My dog Kira lays down two good sized dumps a day, which I concientiously pick up and toss -- enclosed in a plastic bag -- in one of the public trash cans along our walking route.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that dog crap and bags accounts for over half of the volume of the trash in these receptacles. The stuff has to be hauled somewhere and dumped. While the bags claim to be biodegradable, I can't imagine the process as being fast or environmentally friendly.

Stefan

A couple of years back, I read this nifty book:

Dogs : A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution by Raymond Coppinger, Lorna Coppinger (ISBN:0226115631 )

The Coppingers argue that wolves, rather than being directly domesticated by humans, first went through an intermediate stage as commensural animals. A branch of asian wolves evolved to take advantage of a new niche, neolithic villages. These had lots of garbage to eat, and their presence was tolerated by humans because besides cleaning up crap and offal they (the proto-dogs) made a fuss when wild animals intruded. It was these semi-domesticated creatures that humans eventually started culling and breeding.

Getting back to the article: It seems that coyotes are becoming commensural animals. They're still kind of new at it and rough around the edges, but they've evidentally learned how to fit into the city - niche. Over the centuries they might become a new branch of domestic dog.

I'm hoping they leapfrog canis domesticus, actually. It would be fun seeing them run Three Card Monte games, and hanging out in alleys selling Rollexes.

Stefan

Richard Gunderson wrote the letter I would have.

Thanks, Richard.

I'll add this: Most languages today are about *programming Windows* (or the Mac interface) rather than *programming a computer.* There are so many abstractions between you and the computer, so many "favors" done for you, that you never get in there and learn about the machine.

Getting interesting and useful things done in BASIC means going past the traditional, familiar commands and learning how to use peeks and pokes to interact with the hardware. It doesn't matter that the machine is obsolete or a toy. The process of learning is the goal.

I've been following Dr. Brin's quixotic battle for BASIC for a few years now. Every discussion on the topic I've seen, including this letters-thread, plays out the same way. Virtually every one in them manages to miss the point.

I applaud Ben Brin's solution to the problem. If he and Dr. Brin dig around in thrift stores they will find PILES of books on programming the C-64.

Stefan Jones

Great article, thought-provoking and cringe-inducing.

I'm in genuine awe of Ms. Tilsdale's tolerance and compassion; I personally couldn't stand to have any relationship with people who so consistently and blithely mismanage their lives. (Yes, that's harsh, but I want to be honest.)

I'm from a moderately dysfunctional family -- alchoholism and drugs -- but none of my siblings or I are credit junkies, feel we "deserve" luxuries we can't afford, or welsch on debts and obligations.

While at my undergraduate school, I ran into a lot of kids whose behavior appalled me. They had credit cards, and used them freely. They blew off classes, and courses, pleading for leniency and cynically citing family crisis when their GPA bottomed out. Their parents saved up and borrowed to get them into school and they _blew_ it for a few semesters of carefree dorm living, playing MUDs (the predecessor to today's MMORPGs) and easy-A classes. This immature, blithely self-indulgent behavior just set my teeth on edge. As I've moved up in the world, I've run into it less and less often, to my great relief.

That said: I believe in second chances. I'm in charge of the food drive and toy drives at work. I "seeded" the barrels with four bags of groceries and $100 worth of toys. The Oregon food bank, Second Harvest, Habitat for Humanity, a micro-loan outfit, and Heifer International got $100 each from me this year.

If there was a charity that taught responsibility and common sense, I'd donate to that to, but I fear that might be seen as an attack on the underpinnings of our consumer economy.

What gives me real hope are programs like Head Start, and other enrichment programs that other correspondents mention. Give kids decent meals, access to preventative health care, expose them to activities and ways of thought they might not otherwise experience, and show them adults who act like adults.