They Shouldn't Be Flushed with Pride Over This

The Comcast Center, a building which will be the city's tallest skyscraper, is under construction in Philadelphia. The developers are also hoping to make it the nation's tallest environmentally-friendly building, and, to that end, they are planning to install 116 waterless, no-flush urinals, which would save 1.6 million gallons of water a year. Sounds great, right? Who could possibly object to that?

Well...the plumbers' union, that's who. After all, fewer pipes could cut into their profit.

The mayor's office has stepped in to try to save the urinals, which use a cartridge at the base to trap odors and sediment as waste passes through.

It is telling the plumbers that the city's building boom will provide plenty of work for them and that even waterless urinal systems need some plumbing connections, said Stephanie Naidoff, city commerce director.

Philadelphia's unions have periodically put the city in a difficult spot.

For years, convention groups were canceling bookings at the Pennsylvania Convention Center because of difficulties working with six unions. New rules were established in 2003 to allow convention groups to deal instead with a middleman, a labor supplier. A few months later, the electricians union temporarily shut off power and picketed the center in a dispute with the supplier.

As you may know from previous posts, I'm no fan of unions. Everything I've ever heard about them seems to indicate that they're all about the greed of the workers, sometimes even at the expense of the company itself, and almost always at the expense of actually helping the customer. Incidents like this don't exactly endear them to the public at large, now, do they?

She was sued for dog-scrimination: A Swedish court fined a woman who refused to sell a puppy to a lesbian.

Weird psychosis of the week (and, as Dave Barry pointed out, a good name for a rock band): Fear of Peas.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I haven't rememberized my B-flat scale yet."--Another sixth-grader in a lesson this morning; kids are saying the darnedest things on a daily basis.