[James] Fallows supports the notion of a kind of trade-in program, where loud, old leaf blowers are exchanged for the less offensive kind.
Rueter, in fact, facilitated one such scheme. In the heat of his front lawn dispute with his neighbor, he offered a solution.
“If you agree to use them, I will buy you two new leaf blowers,” he told his neighbor. The offer was accepted and the noise level in his front yard was restored to a peaceful level. When it comes to the balancing act of protecting landscaping jobs while reducing noise and emissions, it helps that someone was willing to pay for progress.
The article is interesting throughout, and I thank the excellent Brian Slesinsky for the pointer.
The food cities list is a good list, or at least it accords with my impressions.
One my caveat is that Portland is the one of the ten I have the least familiarity with (never been there, never have heard it praised for its restaurant scene). Its either an inspired pick or a very bad pick. I suspect it shouldn’t be in the top five. Chicago should be in the top five. Philadelphia should switch places with Houston in the ranking, but they are ranked right next to each other and I am less familiar with Houston.
He could have left New York off the list and been fine. What New York gets you these days is a large variety of very expensive restaurants.
To be annoyingly nitpicky, the best food cities in “America” are almost certainly outside the U.S.
To be not so annoyingly nitpicky you are in the wrong thread.
If the issue is noise pollution vs. protecting landscaping jobs, why not solve both problems by using rakes? Or are these sissy girlie-boys afraid of getting blisters?
File this under “Technologies We Should Unlearn”.
No way. I’ll reinvent it. I love my leaf blower.
I actually mentioned it there few days ago.
One of the neighbor’s paid-landscaper uses a trailer-mounted machine that produces damaging noise levels. The commercial guys time it so It happens once a year.
I rake. It takes much longer than the machine. We have a gas blower/vacuum that works very well. The wife uses it. Also, I prefer to shovel (light weight plastic) snow than to run the self-propelled blower the children gave us. I’m 65 y. o. I need the work.
I’d rake over blowing, but snow? I’ll take the blower.
Of course, then I’d go pay someone to tell me to exercise.
A dopey article. James Fallows says: ” It’s not good for anybody to have some culture war.” Yeah, he writes for the Atlantic.
A perpetually ignored issue here is where the leaves come from. My yard is full of oak leaves every fall. There are no oak trees on my property. Why should I have to blow or rake my neighbors’ leaves from my property? Neighbors walking their dogs carry plastic bags to carry away pooch manure, how is that different? On the other hand, what’s wrong with leaves all over the lawn? Isn’t that what ultimately creates soil, the decomposition of leaves? Home owners that rake or blow leaves are fighting Mommy Nature.
Well, oak leaves don’t decompose very quickly if they’re intact, and if you like a green lawn… But you could run a mulching mower over the yard a couple times in the autumn and forget about the raking/blowing. Or so I hear.
When leaves cover your lawn it prevents the grass from getting light and could stifle its air intake too…that’s bad for the grass I think.
Here are some differences between dogs pooping on your lawn and oak leaves falling on it:
1) a dog poops on your lawn AT MOST what, twice a day?
2) dog poop takes up maybe half a square foot;
3) when the dog poops there’s usually the owner right there, ready with a bag as you said–his opportunity cost to clean up the poop is low;
4) your neighbor’s dog’s poop doesn’t get all mixed up with your own dog’s poop, thereby making it pretty simple whose responsibility it should be to remove it;
5) dog poop smells really bad and sticks to your shoe;
6) You may get some pleasure from the fact that there are cute puppies around the neighborhood, but the sight of oak trees, and the shade they provide, are really enjoyable even from a distance.
Basically my point is that you have a good reason to complain about dogs pooping on your lawn and should expect their owners to clean it up, but the same complaints don’t apply to your neighbor’s oak trees’ leaves that fall on your lawn. You should rake those up and consider it part of the cost of living in a nice wooded neighborhood.
If somebody wanted to “stifle your air intake”, closely related to suffocating you, they’d probably cover you with leaves, don’t you think? What would it take, a few tons?
More likely it has to do with blocking sunlight. I imagine enough air can get through.
You’re just thinking of dry crisp leaves. If the leaves stay on your lawn throughout the fall, rain and frost and thawing and snow and all that stuff will eventually make a muck of them. This muck could stifle air getting to the roots of the grass, or throw off the soil’s pH balance or who knows what. (Just a guess, I’m not a grass scientist. But people who really care about their lawns seem to make a big to-do out of getting the leaves off before winter.)
>Why should I have to blow or rake my neighbors’ leaves from my property?
That’s a great point.
Maybe the Government should require everyone to climb their trees and label all of their leaves with a unique seven-digit number to identify the property owner. IDs can be posted on a town website. If you find a leaf on your land, you can require the owner to come get it, or seek redress via court order.
Hey, it’s no stupider than Obamacare.
If you like your gardener, you can keep your gardener.
Don’t overcomplicate things. DNA analysis will do the job.
I had Prof. Rueter at UCLA quite a few years ago. Funny, nice guy who I mostly remember for hitting on a cheerleader in the class and complaining about the noise outside his office.
OK, how do I get my neighbor to trade-in his loud barking dog for a non-annoying alternative?
The issue is probably lack of proper training, not the dog itself. A well-trained dog shouldn’t bark unless he’s been commanded to or there’s a threat. And, contrary to the cliche, even older dogs can be trained. In support of another cliche though, dog training is really about training the dog owner.
Dogs bark for one of 4 reasons:
1. Someone is at the door.
2. Nobody is at the door.
3. Somewhere in the universe, another dog is barking.
4. None of the above.
Offer him two brand-new cats?
The classic solution is rat poison.
As Coase would say,
The Solution is obvious.
Buy your neighbor a $20 plastic earmuff sound protector.
Available at Amazon as a Christmas present for the Holidays.
My favorite buying off the neighbor / Coase bargaining story…
Sophomore year, first day in the dorm, guy walks down to go shower with his towel over his shoulder…. wearing nothing else and pops into my room (right across from the bathroom) and begins to strike up a conversation. I immediately offer him $5 if he never does that again. (walk into my room naked – to clarify, I’m a straight guy) I never had the problem again.
However,everyone else was afflicted for the rest of the year by his naked obliviousness and complained greatly. I told them to just buy him off like I did, but they refused.
In line at the local latte lair, behind a customer who needed to torment the barista over some detail of how her drink had been prepared: after waiting too long for the drama to end, I called out “Will $2 fix it?” She looked at me confused, then seemed to agree. I handed the money over and started ordering. She launched into another attack on the barista. I said “I paid, you agreed, done.” A customer behind me made supportive sounds. I still remember the look of rage she gave me as she left.
Gotta love the cash nexus
The straight man would be indifferent to this behavior. The priest or GOP congressman or aggressively “straight” man, though, is another story.
A boor is a boor, whether naked, dressed in medieval armor or corporate casual.
Another misuse of economic theory—while “efficiency” may be independent of prior allocation of resources, it does matter whether we decide to force people to pay their neighbors if they want quiet or decide that making a certain amount of noise is a reasonable way to enjoy ones home.
If you are annoyed by your neighbor’s leaf blower, get them one of the giant ones on wheels. Then the noise will only last a few minutes. I think their sound is less annoying as well since it is a low roar rather than a high-pitched whine.
The comments are the linked story are just full of delightful smugness…..
I like my solution – a leaf shredder – essentially a leafblower in reverse – it sucks them up and shreds them so they’re easier to compost.
Still delightfully noisy – but no one complains because of the killer compost I give out.