Rush's Law: Why You Can't Get Pepper Out of Pepper Shakers

One of my minor hobbies is swapping the caps on salt-and-pepper shakers in restaurants. Convention places the small holes on pepper shakers and the large on salt. This is backwards, of course.

Salt crystals are all about the same size. If any will fit through the holes, they all will. Ground pepper particles range from dust to chunks. If any of the particles of pepper are larger than the holes in the cap, the shaker will eventually be filled with particles to large for the holes.

Each time the restaurant workers fill the pepper shakers, the percentage of too-large particles increases. Eventually that percentage approaches 100. When it does, no one bothers to fill the shakers because they are always full. This is Rush's Law.

Letter to Cincinnati Enquirer

Cincinnati Enquirer asked readers to respond to questions relating to the rights of citizens with concealed weapons permits. One question was, "Should employers be allowed to prohibit employees from having guns locked in their vehicles in company parking lots?"

My response, as published on 16 February:

To allow employers to prohibit employees from keeping guns locked in vehicles on company parking lots is to allow employers to deny employees the right to carry. Employees would have to leave their guns at home. Prohibition against guns in parking lots does worse than nothing to protect the workplace from an employee bent on murder. It guarantees all other employees will not have ready access to defense. The best defense against a crazy person with a gun is a sane person with a gun.

--Eric Rush

Wilmington

WCPO in Cincinnati gives TV a worse name, if possible

Breaking news. Police arrest a man for a couple of rapes. Whoop-de-do. Hot news like that sure can't wait 'til 11 p.m. Hell no. WCPO has to break into Wheel of Fortune, the one and only TV program I like to watch, and present a live, rambling news conference of an officer giving all the boring details of the arrest.

But all was not lost! WCPO broke away from this really important news item and returned to Wheel just in time for the Bonus Round, and broke away from the program again a few seconds later, before the contestants had time to try to solve the bonus puzzle...Why, you ask? What was so important they couldn't have held off another ten seconds? They had to run all the commercials the didn't run in the normal spot because they were informing us of this hugely important arrest!

I fired up the computer to go to the WCPO web site to register my complaint, but the web site is even slower than the brains in the station management's collective skull.

Jerks.