Heinz altered their flagship product under pressure from politicians, but not yet under force of law. Here is an oversimplified economical argument for reformulating ketchup with less salt.

Everyone who uses ketchup on food or in recipes uses it, to some degree, because it adds a desired saltiness. If you didn’t want salt, you wouldn’t add ketchup; Q.E.D. However, many people desire less salt now than they once did. Let’s set aside the reasons and just take it as a given that a lot of people are trying to consume less sodium.

The amount of salt desired is a variable so I will use it as one axis of a graph. For the other axis I will use the volume of ketchup applied to achieve the desired amount of salt. Then we can draw the amount of salt per volume of various ketchup as sloping lines; a saltier ketchup is represented by a steeper line. Here is the bare graph, to which I will add lines to illustrate my point:

Heinz ketchup formulas

Even without plotting lines on a graph, you certainly already understand that you can reduce the amount of salt in your food by using less ketchup. (That is, unless you don’t eat ketchup, in which case read this.) For the sake of completeness, here is a graph illustrating how to reduce salt consumption by using less ketchup:

How to eat less salt

If you own shares in Heinz (HNZ) you should have cringed three times while reading the previous paragraph. Nobody in the business of selling ketchup wants to sell less ketchup. When the market threatens to demand less salt, purveyors of salty goods try to find a way to protect their sales.

Forget about public service announcements reminding consumers that eating less ketchup [cringe] leads to eating less salt. To protect ketchup sales from falling due to reduced salt demand, manufacturers must reformulate. This graph shows how the volume of ketchup sales can be protected by putting less salt in the ketchup:

Ketchup needed to provide desired salt

Now the graph is getting crowded. Here are the same outcomes reduced to four boxes:

Low-sodium ketchup means more ketchup

Obviously there is more to ketchup than just salt but salt is a crucial ingredient. Heinz must have spent a lot of money developing and testing their new recipe. I found this narrative helped me to understand that it’s okay to change a 40-year-old recipe to follow the changing taste of the market. Even so, I reserve the right to sprinkle some Morton on my Heinz.

I think that feeling stems from the way my second grade teacher scolded me for my precocious objection to her rule that “you can’t subtract a bigger number from a smaller number.” I went in knowing about negative numbers and I came out embarrassed and confused and unable to trust teachers.

I vowed that I would quit school as soon as I could. Fortunately I forgot about my vow until my third year in college.

[The Congress shall have the power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

Regardless of our communication or trading across State borders, this clause does not refer to us. It refers to recognized bodies of government: Nations, States, and Indian tribes. We are not governments. We are private entities.

If the United States Congress has the power to regulate my Commerce then I’m a State and I demand my own Representative and two Senators.

Nowhere does the Constitution give Congress the power to regulate our transaction. To quote the Tenth Amendment, that power is “reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” If there exists a State law respecting our transaction then we must obey that law. No Federal law can apply to our transaction because we never gave Congress that power.

The only reason the State government should get involved is if one of the parties to a transaction (you or I) accuses the other of a wrong and seeks recourse. The Federal government has no power to regulate our private Commerce until one of us seeks recourse and there is a dispute among the States of jurisdiction, or until we seek recourse from the Federal government against the States.

I recognize that I have to share this great country with people who disagree with me. I’m just floating some ideas here. I am not a lawyer, a legislator, nor a legal scholar, but I sure disagree with a lot of Supreme Court decisions. At least a few Supreme Court justices have believed as I do. Sadly they were too few.

Omitted from this writing is any suggestion of how our Federal politicians could reform the current apparatus into one which operates correctly. That is a trick question because no politician would ever lift a finger to reduce their own power. Politicians are also incapable of that transgression against their brethren. And by “politicians” I mean the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. All branches are complicit in the tendency to accumulate powers.

The only way to trim the Federal powers is by amending the Constitution. Such reform would be contrary to the interests of the majority of Federal politicians. Adversarial action must be done by adversaries. It can’t be done through Congress; it must be done to Congress by the States. The Constitution lights the way in Article Five:

The Congress, [...] on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which [...] shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof…

This is the only lawful and peaceful way to compel Congress. Every other road is slick with blood.

I welcome your opinion.

Jeffrey just wants to chase a ball.
Nothing else matters except cars driving by.
That, and a shady place to drink and rest.

Nero wants to be fed.
After that he wants to clean his teeth in your hair.
He is gato loco.

Hazel is gata loca.
Usually she spies and hides.
When she comes around it’s a treat.

They want you to know
they will be enjoying their holidays this year
and so should you.

12 weeks

It kicks like a 6cm mule. Very good to watch on the big screen.

The real threat is more general, more widespread, and more dangerous than Islam. It took something as extreme as Islamic extremism to trigger a cultural awareness of it. Unfortunately, like the ringing of an alarm clock, the first thing to awaken consciousness is for a time the only piece of reality about which we are aware. Islamic extremism is the alarm clock.

The supporters of the minaret ban see the growth of the Muslim population as an aggressive cultural invasion. They don’t see an immigrant minority that deserves state protection. They see settlers from a destructive culture claiming their country. They feel vilified within their homeland by outsiders and they are afraid that their politicians will continue to insist on irrational “religious tolerance” despite the intolerant attitudes spread through Islam.

National Islamophobia is a phase whose time has come. It is extreme, prejudiced, and wrong, but it is the natural reaction against the wrong actions of extremists trying to universalize Islam. Two wrongs do make a right when everyone learns a lesson. The lesson here is that no protection for status, be it religion, race, sex, or what have you, is deserved when it is used for harm.

Religions have been invoked to excuse atrocious behavior since ages before the life of Muhammad. So have other statuses such as race, color, nationality, and sex. The world tends to absolve these harmful trends after a reform and some generations. And the human race eventually learns a lesson.

I see the minaret ban as a sign that the world is just beginning to reject religion as an excuse for bad behavior. Peaceful Muslims will work with non-Muslims to prevail over the radical perversion of Islam. This time will pass into history and be replaced by a time of rational discrimination and careful tolerance. I hope I’m right, the sooner the better.

We stayed around the corner from the Canal end of Bourbon Street. I’m a bourbon enthusiast. My current obsession is the Antique Collection, five small-batch whiskeys released once a year from the Buffalo Trace distillery. I already had bottles of all but the most difficult to find, the George T. Stagg bourbon. When Zoe and I toured that distillery this summer we found none for sale within 100 miles. When I tried to pre-order Stagg from my local store I learned that the distributor’s entire allotment was already allocated.

Bourbon hunting is a serious game. It’s like Pokemon. So when we sat down for a late dinner Friday night at Dickie Brennan’s Bourbon House I had to ask for Stagg. The waiter asked the bartender and was told they were out. I shrugged and had a Sazerac cocktail instead.

On the way to lunch the next day we stopped again at the Bourbon House for a drink. This time I sat at the bar and scanned the bottles myself. I saw antlers. I was going to get my drink!

The bartender picked up on my enthusiasm and we talked about this and other bourbons. She put the bottle on the bar for my inspection and handed me the distillery’s letter of pedigree. Then she gave us the name of a liquor store in the French Quarter that might carry it.

After lunch we found the store. They had three bottles of Stagg on the shelf. I asked whether they limited the sale of rare whiskeys. Nope, just buy what you want. So I got a case (three bottles) and walked straight back to the Bourbon House to thank the bartender. She made my day and then some.

I later found out via Google and Wikipedia that George T. Stagg is nicknamed “Hazmat” when it is more than 70% alcohol (140 proof) which is the maximum concentration allowed by the FAA on commercial flights. The 2009 proof is 141.4. Stop by for a taste but let’s not talk about how I got these bottles back home.