This is only palaver

White Fang

2010-03-09T22:26:00.003-06:00

This book about the harshness of the northern wilds by Jack London is shorter than I remembered, but just as excellent. The story follows White Fang, a part-dog, mostly-wolf, as he survives and finds his place in the Klondike during gold rush days. A main point of the book is how tough life is out in nature, and how one has to be pretty ruthless to thrive. When White Fang finds his true master, though, everyone learns the lesson that love conquers nature and its hunger pangs.White Fang, just like London's other books of the north, are really intense. This book starts with a couple of fellas trying to get to a settlement, but they are being tracked by wolves because food is scarce. Each night, the wolves surround their fire and the men have to wake up periodically to build up the flames and drive the wolves back a couple of yards. All the while, it's about thirty below zero.

I can't imagine voluntarily moving to the Yukon, but I guess the thought of gold was pretty enticing. That seems to be why Sam McGee went there:

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ‘round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

Toyota

2010-03-09T22:05:00.003-06:00

Toyota is still heavily featured in the news. This morning, NPR had a little story about a guy whose Prius was stuck accelerating, so he called a cop to drive in front of him as a buffer in case he crashed into anything. He was able to get the car to stop before any damage was done, but the obvious implication of the story was that Toyota cars are still sketchy.

The feds launched investigations and will likely create some new regulatory agency to help oversee car safety. But more regulation is probably not all that necessary. Customers are able to punish Toyota for its actions quite thoroughly: many Toyota lines have had sales drop as much as 20% from 2009 levels. And if consumers continue to perceive Toyota as a poor manufacturer, it will continue to falter. The market is fully capable of chastising bad producers.

That being said, Toyota is getting hit harder than is warranted. It is true that their cars have increased risk of accident due to manufacturing issues, but people need to keep perspective. The increased risk from Toyota is low:

"Replacing driving by walking really increases the risk of dying," Fischbeck said. "Walking a mile is 19 times or 1,900 percent more dangerous than driving a mile in a recalled Toyota. Driving while using a cell phone would increase risk much more than the chance of having a stuck accelerator."

Earthsea

2010-03-06T20:11:00.003-06:00

I have finished the first two Earthsea novels by Ursula LeGuin, so I'm combining them into a mega-post.

This book, The Wizard of Earthsea, is something of a fantasy classic, and it is indeed pretty good. The story follows Ged, a young kid who has an affinity for magic. He heads off to magic school (quite similar to Hogwarts) because he wants to become powerful in a hurry. While he does advance quickly, he gets too big for his britches and casts an overly advanced spell which unleashes some malevolent being. Most of the book involves Ged's dealing with the consequences of that spell.

The Tombs of Atuan follows in the series. Instead of focusing on Ged, it revolves around a girl who is sort of coerced into being a priestess at age 12, but she becomes disillusioned about her religion. Ged shows up after a while to first antagonize her, but later to help her figure things out.

Note to authors: if you've written an excellent book with a compelling main character, don't focus the sequel on someone entirely new and more boring. I was all excited to be getting back to Ged with Tombs, but he didn't appear until more than halfway through the novel. Because of this, I spent half of the book wishing things would move along and more excitement would happen. I'll probably keep going with this series, but Tombs has probably spoiled the rest of it for me.

Shopaholic and Baby

2010-03-01T19:53:00.004-06:00

Ever since I "tricked" Abbie into reading Atlas Shrugged, she has been wanting me to read one of these Shopaholic books by Sophie Kinsella. Now that she is commuting with me one day each week, listening to it on my drive sounded like a good idea. For one thing, I finally got to see what one of these books is like, and for another, she for some reason wasn't interested in my picks of For a New Liberty or The Wizard of Earthsea.

Shopaholic and Baby was, I'll admit, much better than I expected. Since I am neither into shopping nor fashion, I was skeptical. And yes, the main character irked me throughout the book (who spends $3,000 on prams for one baby?!), but it was comically interesting overall. If you can get past Becky's complete disregard for money and her poor planning skills, it's a pretty fun book. Now, Shopaholic and Baby is the fifth book in the series, so I can't vouch for the prequels.

Despite my liking this book more than I anticipated, I don't think I'll be adding this genre to my preferred reading list anytime soon.

Census

2010-02-24T10:56:00.000-06:00

As the Constitution requires, all of America is going to be censized this year, as the commercial below tells us.

The census is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, but it is bloody expensive. This year's census is expected to cost nearly $15 billion. The link above includes more detail about cost overruns and poor expense management and planning that have contributed to this high price.

The Census Bureau is blowing it big time, though. Their strategy is to send out a questionnaire, and send a field agent to any households that don't respond. But they could probably save a bundle on postage if people could simply fill out the questionnaire online. Seriously, in 2010 I can renew my license plates and pay personal property taxes online, but I can't tell the government how many people live in my house? The census website proclaims that they are "experimenting with Internet response options for the future." This seems like it should have been step 1 for the Census Bureau.

Prodigal

2010-02-23T20:49:00.004-06:00

After a brief lull, we are back for another post about The Divine Comedy. I am normally a slow reader, but my creeping pace through this book is almost laughable. Part of this is certainly because I mentally read the lines in their iambic pentameter form rather than as if they were just regular prose. I can't decide how best to absorb the book, though.

Pros of iambic pentameter:
1) The book was obviously written to be read in this form, so I'd be staying true to Dante's initial vision.
2) I don't read much epic poetry, so reading a book in verse is a fun change.

Pros of prose:
1) It is much faster.
2) Mentally ordering the syllables to match the verse sometimes distracts me from the actual text.

On to the actual book! The fourth circle of hell is home to the "Avaricious and Prodigal," or the greedy and the wasteful. They spend eternity pushing rocks in circles and making fun of each other, saying "Why do you hoard?!" and "Why do you squander?!", respectively. This doesn't seem too fun, but at least they are all probably in good shape.
Here is the strange part. Way down in the seventh circle are the violent against possessions. Dante's examples of this are members of the Spendthrift Club; the sole requirement for membership appears to have been an agreement to spend a ton of money on frivolous parties and gifts. (This is not to be confused with the ironically named Spendthrift Club of 600 years later, the members of which only spent about fourpence each evening. They probably made it up to Purgatorio.) These wasteful folk in the seventh circle are pursued by dogs. When a person is caught,

and, piece by piece, those dogs dismembered him
and carried off his miserable limbs. (Canto XIII, line 128)

This sounds way worse than the mere prodigal get. If I have any Dante experts among my readers, can you please explain the disparity?

Neat

2010-02-21T19:50:00.002-06:00

I am continually amazed by how inventive, um, inventors are. A potential type of headphones would let wearers start

controlling their phones or their music players. NTT DoCoMo has created headphones that sense eye movements. For instance, you can look from right to left to pause your music. Look right, then right again, to skip to the next track. Roll them clockwise to raise the volume....

The headphones look much like regular earbuds, connected by a cable to a phone. They sense the movements of the eyeballs by measuring tiny changes in electric charge. It turns out that the cornea, the outer surface of the eyes, has a positive charge. When you look left, the resulting shift in the electrical charge can be detected as far away as the ears. And no, this is not the source of the expression "electrifying gaze."

I would definitely like something like this for when I am running with my ipod in my pocket.

The Tale of Despereaux

2010-02-19T20:34:00.002-06:00

This book by Kate DiCamillo is ostensibly an adventure story about a mouse, but Despereaux is only in about a third of the book. The story is divided into quarters, with the first three quarters each told by a different character. Despereaux, one of these characters, is a misfit mouse who falls in love with a human princess, which seems unlikely. But due to his contact with humans, he is banished by the mouse community to the rat-infested dungeon, and conflict ensues.

The Tale of D. won the Newberry Award in 2003, and I think it is deserved. The book is pretty delightful throughout, and each of the leading characters' stories are interesting. I highly recommend it.

In 2008, the story was sort of made into a movie. I say "sort of" because (although I haven't actually seen the movie), the trailer below makes the film look appear to have only a couple of similarities with the book:

1) It has mice.
2) One of them is named Despereaux.

After reading this book, it occurs to me that there are a ton of books that revolve around mice.

1) The T of Despereaux (obviously)
2) Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (and the sequels, all excellent)
3) Poppy (decent)
4) Stuart Little
5) Ralph S. Mouse
6) The Rescuers
7) The Wind in the Willows (one of my personal favorite books (actually, this might just be rats, moles, and the like, but that's close enough))
8) The Redwall series (pretty good, for the most part)
9) Of Mice and Men (?)
10) Basil of Baker Street (also a movie which I remember enjoying)

And if we include TV, we can add Biker Mice from Mars, Chip and Dale, Mickey Mouse, Mighty Mouse, Speedy Gonzalez, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (almost!), and the list goes on.

Are these rodents disproportionately featured, or am I just thinking selectively? If this really is a large quantity of mouse fiction, what is the reason for all of it?

Tigers

2010-02-18T08:50:00.000-06:00

China has got it all. After visiting their awesome ice festivals, I would like to attend a New Year's celebration there. These photos (click them for a larger version) are from their New Year's Day on Sunday.This is the Year of the Tiger, which arrives every twelve years. The motto for the Y of the T is "I win," and people born during this year are supposedly unpredictable, daring, and restless.

Social Security

2010-02-17T21:57:00.002-06:00

Paul Ryan, a Congressman from Wisconsin, has been making a few waves with his recently released "Roadmap for America," which presents his suggestions for making our government solvent in the long term. One segment of this roadmap involves Social Security: Ryan proposes to provide the option for investing in personal savings accounts, and also phases out some benefits for people under age 55.

Some people are not too pleased with this idea:

His Roadmap would achieve a goal that conservative opponents of Social Security have cherished for decades: killing the program by undermining its broad base of popular support. It would sap Social Security's resources, increase its complexity and hammer a wedge between the currently retired or near-retired (who would be guaranteed their current statutory benefits) and younger workers and the future workforce (who would be increasingly on their own). The term for this is "divide and conquer."

The author doesn't mention that Social Security is incredibly unsustainable as it is. In fact, he says

Its "fragile condition"? Social Security runs an annual surplus and has done so since 1983; no other government program can make that claim.

By the way, even when the program starts paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll tax, that's not a "crisis."

In 2009, Social Security spending totaled nearly $700 billion, about 20% of all federal spending. The Congressional Budget Office states that

Even if other major categories of federal spending remained fixed as a share of GDP, the growth of those programs would push total federal spending well above the level that it has been throughout much of the post-World War II period. Left unchecked, such spending could cause major deficits to emerge, propelling the government's debt and interest expenditures to unprecedented levels.

The number of people in America between the ages of 65 and 75 will roughly double over the next twenty years, but the number of people paying SS taxes will not increase at the same rate. One doesn't need to be an actuary to recognize that something is amiss here. If nothing substantial is done to deal with this problem, eventually SS will have to be cut dramatically, leaving many people in a lurch come retirement. This is evidenced by the article's author (although his point is different than mine):

Social Security's value to the average American isn't "shrinking" -- it's expanding. In 1962, it accounted for 30% of the income of Americans aged 65 and older; in 2007 that figure was 36%. (These numbers come from the Social Security Administration.) Given what's happened to most families' financial assets since 2007, the percentage probably is even higher today.

This is not a good thing. As people become more and more dependent on this government program, they will prepare less themselves. And when the day of reckoning arrives, they probably won't be very happy.

Budapest!

2010-02-16T06:00:00.007-06:00

This is David here, guest blogging about my vacation to Budapest in response to Abbie's request.

My Budapest, Hungary trip took place back in the spring of 2008 with Abbie and my younger brother Peter. When we first arrived, the renter of our hostel told us to meet him at his hostel in the city. Upon arrival, we observed that this "hostel" looked suspiciously like a private apartment building, which was confirmed by the friendly local wondering why we kept trying to buzz our way into the building.

The guy finally showed up, though, and brought us to a private apartment around the corner, which was pretty upscale living! The apartment even had automatic checkout, he said. All we had to do when we left was to lock the door from the outside, and then chuck our keys in through a window.

Budapest, like many European cities, has gorgeous architecture. We spent most of our time just walking around the city and soaking in the beauty. Below is St. Stephen's Basilica, an example of this architecture. The main draw of this cathedral is not its splendor, though, but its sacred relic: the thousand-year-old mummified right hand of St. Stephen himself. This hand is worth a pilgrimage by itself.Budapest was initially two cities (Buda and Pest) separated by a river, with one of the cities up on a hill. We climbed the monstrous hill one afternoon, and the view from the top was gorgeous. This is the main government building/castle, seen from atop the mountain.

Speaking of hiking, we strolled through about a dozen different parks as well. Budapest really had a lot of well-landscaped parks that provided a calm retreat from the city. However, as you can see below, all of the walking was a little exhausting on our feet. Peter and I are enjoying a much-deserved rest.

My favorite part of this city was how slow-paced it was. Because it doesn't have dozens of museums and the like, we didn't feel pressured to dash around and see everything. Therefore, we were able to spend quite a bit of time hanging out at outdoor cafes, sampling the local potent potables, and watching the people stroll by. It was very relaxing and enjoyable, and is not something I have experienced as well in other European cities.

The most notable attraction of Budapest, however, are its public baths. Budapest boasts the largest European medicinal bath, which seemed to me like nothing so much as a warm swimming pool; I'm not sure how medicinal it was. There are other baths, as well, and they seem like a nice hang-out place for the local hip 80-year-olds. They all show up to watch each other play chess and swim laps, and it was a ton of fun swimming around with them. Budapest is an amazing vacation city. It is definitely my favorite European city, and I recommend heading to Hungary on your next vacation.

This is being cross-posted on my blog, Only Palaver.

Trade Deficits

2010-02-15T13:09:00.004-06:00

Update - fixed the readability of my quotes

Pretty regularly, folks lament that the U.S. is hemorrhaging jobs, as evidenced by the ballooning trade deficit. For example, this is from a Chicago Tribune article last week:

The U.S. trade deficit took an unexpectedly large turn for the worse in December, loading more foreign debt onto Americans...

While trade balance reports attract relatively little public attention -- and the country has run deficits every year since 1976 -- the long-term effect of buying more goods from other countries than those countries buy from the United States is having a significant effect on Main Street. And for most Americans, the effect is not positive.

The negative effect the article goes on to describe involves Americans buying cheap goods from abroad, so tons of capital flows out of America and there is not enough to start new or expand old business in the U.S. We finance these purchases by borrowing right back from these foreign countries, which supposedly puts us in an even worse position.

Let's consider two alternate scenarios.

In scenario 1, Don lives in an Oregon town where everybody buys all of their manufactured goods from a neighboring city. They buy domestic TVs, shoes, cars, toasters, everything they can to support Oregonian workers, all from the local merchant. When citizens need to expand businesses or buy a home, they visit the local bank for a loan. Things are pretty good.

In scenario 2, Don lives in the same town, but everyone buys goods from Target or Wal-Mart, which imports a lot of items from California. Because many of these things are cheaper, residents of this town can now afford to go out to dinner once a week. Soon, more restaurants are opening, financed by loans from the Bank of California. The manufacturers in the neighboring city may go out of business, or they may improve their products or design completely new products. Life may be less comfortable for the manufactures for a while, but for the Oregonians, things are really good.

Would anybody get upset that Oregon imports a lot of goods from California? Replace "California" in the preceding paragraph with "Japan" and the conclusions are exactly the same.

Trade is mutually beneficial; it makes everybody more rich. By buying things that can be made more cheaply abroad, we free up resources for other endeavors.

And really, can you even trust the reasoning of someone who lauds the recession for lowering the deficit, helping all Americans? This is the craziest argument ever:

Experts see some promising signs. For all of 2009, the Commerce Department said, the U.S. deficit in goods and services totaled $381 billion -- down dramatically from the $696-billion deficit in 2008 and half of the record $760-billion gap in 2006.

The sharply lower deficit last year mirrored the depth of the global recession and plunging demand in the U.S. American exports last year fell 15% from 2008 levels, but imports sank at a faster rate of 23%.

A Wrinkle in Time

2010-02-14T13:33:00.008-06:00

This sci-fi story was written in 1962 by Madeleine L'Engle, and is something of a classic children's book. I read it, and the other three books about the Murry family, in my youth; I remember liking it more then. This isn't a condemnation of the book...I remember thinking it was spectacular as a kid, and now it is merely pretty good.

This book follows 12ish-year-old Meg, her younger brother Charles, and another boy as she tries to rescue her father, who is trapped by a nebulous malevolence on another planet. They are helped by three old ladies with scientific understanding so advanced it borders on the magical (for example, they can sort of create a wormhole to travel really far in about 6 seconds, but it is just science at work, not magic!). These ladies represent the Holy Trinity of Christian religions,

and the evil father-captor seems to be Lucifer.

I was surprised by how much this book could be taken as having a libertarian theme in addition to religious. My main example is L'Engle's manifestation of the ultimate evil on this other planet: collective thought/action taken to an extreme. Everything is meticulously controlled by the central intelligence entity, and nobody is allowed/has any motivation to take personal initiative. Everybody is equal by virtue of nobody being happy or wealthy. This does sound pretty awful, but I would have pictured a world taken over by Prince of Darkness would have more...I don't know...pain and suffering?

Incidentally, the aforementioned wormhole is called a tesseract in the book, but a tesseract is a real geometrical concept of a cube in four dimensions (that is, it is to a cube what a cube is to a square.)

Limbo

2010-02-11T11:44:00.000-06:00

Dante and Virgil, his guide, have just reached the first circle of hell. This is where all the good people who lived before Jesus hang out now, as well as those virtuous folk who neglected to be baptized while alive. Since they didn't go through Jesus, they can't get into heaven, but since they weren't bad, they don't actually go to hell either.

I'm no biblical scholar, but I have in my mind that that was the standard view back in those days. These lines from Virgil, however, seem to me like Dante thought this was lame.

"They did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,
That's not enough, because they lacked baptism,
the portal of the faith that you embrace.
And if they lived before Christianity,
they did not worship God in fitting ways;
and of such spirits I myself am one.
For these defects, and for no other evil,
We now are lost and punished just with this:
We have no hpe and yet we live in longing."
Great sorrow seized my heart on hearing him,
For I had seen some estimable men
Among the souls suspended in the limbo.

Of course, Dante could just be lamenting that the accident of when they were born causes them to suffer for all of their days, but there's not much to be done about it. Also, since I am unable to read this in its original Italian, perhaps I am losing something in the translation.

More ice

2010-02-10T15:26:00.001-06:00

Ok, some of my readers scoffed at my interest in the ice hotel. But you can't look at these pictures from China's International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival and tell me that ice is not the construction material of the future.An ice slide: the ultimate method of transportation!
And they even have a Great Wall made of ice. I would like to see the Hun army try to get over that during an invasion...
This festival starts on January 5 each year and lasts about a month. It is now one of my life goals to attend this festival. If you're going to be in China next winter, kindly invite me to join you.

Inferno

2010-02-10T10:34:00.001-06:00

I recently began reading The Diving Comedy by Dante Alighieri, and it is excellent so far. It's been quite some time since I read an epic poem; my last one was probably The Odyssey, which I read in high school. My recollection of that book, and my experience with this one, is that each line has much more weight than in a typical book. The upshot of this is that I spend more time thinking as I read, so this story will likely take me a while to get through. On the other hand, it will probably provide me with fodder for several posts.

This is the book of the famous line, "Abandon every hope, who enter here," which is part of the inscription over the door to Hell. However, despite that line and the first lines of the inscription, which have something to do with a city of eternal pain, it doesn't sound too ominous there. Consider the middle of the inscription:

Justice urged on my high artificer;
My maker was Divine Authority,
The highest Wisdom, and the primal Love.
Before me nothing but eternal things
Were made, and I endure Eternally.
Abandon every hope, who enter here.

Perhaps people were more jittery back in the 1200s when this story was written, but that does not strike much fear into my heart.

The Gathering Storm

2010-02-09T21:16:00.003-06:00

This the it latest book in the Wheel of Time trilogy about which I have blogged before; this book is the first of the trilogy that will end the 14 book saga. Brandon Sanderson, the new author, did a fantastic job of taking over the series.

Readers have complained for years about the slow pacing of some of the latter books, but this one is not prone to that problem. One thing that helps keep the book moving is how frequently Sanderson switches viewpoints: he almost never stays with someone for more than one chapter at a time. With Jordan, it was common to go four or five chapters on a single character.

Also, two major, major conflicts were basically resolved, which also makes a book seem swift. It is very satisfying finally to see what happens to Egwene after following her struggle for six books!

I have one complaint, though. Being the juggernaut of the fantasy genre that it is, it seems to me that the book merits a better cover than this lame drawing. Seriously, is this picture going to inspire anybody to read the book?

Computers

2010-02-08T23:12:00.003-06:00

I remember when Toy Story came out back in 1995, and all the hullabaloo over its being the first full-length movie done entirely with computers. And really, it is a great movie and still looks good:

But now, it is just amazing what can be done. How long will it be before we don't even have actors or real shooting locations anymore? This movie doesn't have much actual exciting footage, but it is all created digitally, and it's almost impossible to tell!

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Gouged

2010-02-08T06:51:00.001-06:00

After Katrina hit the south, there was a lot of outrage against grocery stores for kicking people when they were down. During the disaster, many stores, gas stations, and hotels took advantage of the situation by jacking up their prices, making a bad situation worse for people who needed food, gas, and lodging. Luckily, many states have laws against price-gouging, so we can have more situations like this, which took place on the east coast during blizzards there last week:
Because prices are kept artificially low during an emergency, people who get there first can go to town and buy as much as they want. Obviously, because these people are nervous, they will buy way more than they need, leaving nothing for people who arrive late. Allowing stores to raise prices during times of extremely high demand ensures that people will not buy way more than they need. Sure, many people will have to pay more than they normally would, but at least they will still be able to buy what they need. And if they don't really need something and don't want to pay the higher prices, shoppers will leave things on the shelves for others who want them more.

Allowing stores to raise prices during times like these not only give them a higher profit, but it prevents future disasters from being as bad. If a store can make a fortune during a disaster, then the owners will recognize this and stock up a lot more when major storms look likely in the future. This means that even more people will be able to get what they need. When there is no incentive for stores to plan ahead and stock up more, they won't, and there will be huge shortages.

Mail

2010-02-07T19:25:00.002-06:00

A longtime reader commented on my I, Pencil post:

When we were driving in the mountains of Colorado I mentioned to your dad that if the government didn't force utilities to reach the people who live off the beaten path out there, they would just go to places where it is handier and cheaper to deliver power, and the people in the mountains would be out of luck. Wouldn't a private mail company do that?

She raises a good point: a utility or mail company probably wouldn't provide service in extreme locations without raising prices a lot. By requiring services to these areas (or, in the case of the Post Office, providing service itself), the government is effectively subsidizing living in whole swathes of the country.

If this subsidy were removed, then prices would rise and it would not be as affordable to live in the middle of nowhere. People unable or unwilling to pay these higher prices would move somewhere more easily reached, and therefore more affordable.

People should definitely be able to live out in the mountains if they want to, but they should recognize that there is a price to pay. The government's forced subsidy distorts the actual costs of living in a remote area, and therefore leads to inefficiency and wasted resources servicing these people. How much money and effort is spent running power lines throughout the Rockies that could be allocated more effectively in more populated areas? The answer: probably lots.

Football

2010-02-07T10:08:00.001-06:00

Even if you don't enjoy watching football, here is one way to make the Super Bowl interesting:

The Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art have a Super Bowl bet...the loser loans a significant piece of art to the winner for three months. The directors of the two museums trash talked back and forth via email and Twitter before agreeing on the paintings to be loaned.

"Max Anderson must not really believe the Colts can beat the Saints in the Super Bowl. Otherwise why would he bet such an insignificant work as the Ingrid Calame painting? Let's up the ante. The New Orleans Museum of Art will bet the three-month loan of its Renoir painting, Seamstress at Window, circa 1908, which is currently in the big Renoir exhibition in Paris. What will Max wager of equal importance? Go Saints!"

Here is the painting in question:

Blogging

2010-02-05T11:16:00.002-06:00

A blogger I follow recently posted some reasons why he blogs, and one in particular struck a chord with me.

i have a hard time coming up with topics of conversation. i am a total loser at parties. now i can slip away, break out my iPhone, go to the blog and remember what i blogged about last week. instant conversation topic. now i am even more of a loser at parties.

No, not that one. This one:

it sharpens my thinking all day long because i am always on the alert for interesting things to blog about.

This really applies to me as well. While listening to the radio or reading an article, I almost never just go "Hrm; that is kind of neat" anymore. I try to analyze things, see if I can connect them to another piece of news or event in my life, think about how they fit into a larger picture. This type of thinking is very rewarding, and is probably the main reason why I haven't given up on the blog again.

When I returned to blogging a few months ago, I worried about finding enough material. But now, each day I come across enough for three or four posts (if I were motivated enough to write them all), although you might not find them as interesting as I do.

Information

2010-02-04T17:30:00.000-06:00

In my opinion, consumers today are more powerful than at any other time in history. With the internet allowing anybody to publish his or her experiences with a company, businesses have high incentives to make customers happy. We are able to buy goods more cheaply, and also to allocate our time and money more efficiently because, with just a little trouble, we can figure out what is a good deal and what is a waste.

We also can protect ourselves from being hoodwinked (usually. In some complex areas, such as stock market investments, average consumers can't always easily figure out what is wise and foolish. But most of the time, we can easily avoid getting tricked). Consider the following, which is appropriate since I just returned from a snowboarding trip. A couple of economists

studied snow reports from 2004 to 2008 and compared them to area government weather stations. They found that ski resorts across the U.S. and Canada reported more fresh snow — 23 percent more, on average — on skier-coveted weekends than during the week.

Some might say that this practice (or any false advertising) is a travesty and should be illegal. But the authors noted that an iPhone app that made it easy for folks to post about ski conditions in real time dramatically decreased these exaggerations. As information is more easily disseminated, problems like this will fix themselves.

Don't be fooled by my stance in the picture below; I am not about to break into Irish dance.

Budgeting

2010-02-04T11:31:00.000-06:00

Obama released his proposed budget for 2011 on Monday. Here are just a few points from Keith Hennessey:

We can draw five important conclusions from this graph:
At 8.3% of GDP, the proposed budget deficit for 2011 is still extremely high.
President Obama is proposing larger budget deficits than he did last year.
For 2011, the most relevant year of this proposal, the President is proposing a budget deficit that is 2.3 percentage points higher than he did last year (8.3% vs. 6.0%).
Using his own numbers, the President’s proposed budget deficits will cause debt as a share of the economy to increase.
Under the President’s proposal, budget deficits begin to increase as a share of the economy beginning in 2018.

This does not sound too ideal...

Free Fallin'

2010-02-03T21:42:00.003-06:00

Many people have been blogging about this lately, but you may have missed it. Trying to figure out how to survive a fall from an airplane is something I think about occasionally, and this article provided lots of useful tips. E.g.:

Snow is good—soft, deep, drifted snow. Snow is lovely. Remember that you are the pilot and your body is the aircraft. By tilting forward and putting your hands at your side, you can modify your pitch and make progress not just vertically but horizontally as well. As you go down 15,000 feet, you can also go sideways two-thirds of that distance—that's two miles! Choose your landing zone. You be the boss.

If your search discloses no trees or snow, the parachutist's "five-point landing" is useful to remember even in the absence of a parachute. Meet the ground with your feet together, and fall sideways in such a way that five parts of your body successively absorb the shock, equally and in this order: feet, calf, thigh, buttock, and shoulder. 120 divided by 5 = 24. Not bad! 24 mph is only a bit faster than the speed at which experienced parachutists land. There will be some bruising and breakage but no loss of consciousness to delay your press conference. Just be sure to apportion the 120-mph blow in equal fifths. Concentrate!

Why do I think about this sort of thing? Chances are so slim that something like this would happen to me that I can practically discount it to zero; I would really do much better to maximize my safety by mastering the mosquito swat than learning how to survive a 7-mile fall. But where's the excitement in that?

The Natural

2010-01-30T20:18:00.003-06:00

This novel by Bernard Malamud focuses on Roy Hobbes, a spectacular baseball player. Due to an unlucky turn of events, Roy isn't able to enter professional baseball until his late 30s, but he still manages to have a great season. He single-handedly brings his team from last place to first place in the league. However, throughout the season, he is plagued by regrets of his past and other circumstances that conspire to bring him down.

The Natural was made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Glenn Close in 1984, and I much prefer the movie to this novel. In the book, Roy is a bit of an arrogant jerk who chases after the ladies all the time, whereas movie Roy is much more likable. Plus, I liked the ending of the movie more.

Here is a clip of Roy when he first starts batting practice, and nobody knows what he can do:

I don't really like watching sports on TV, perhaps for the following reason:

Actual football played in a 60-min NFL game: about 11 minutes.

So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps.

However, I enjoy a lot of sports movies, and there are quite a few great baseball movies. Here are a few of my favs (click on the title to watch the video trailer):

1) The Natural
2) Field of Dreams
3) The Sandlot
4) A League of Their Own

I, Pencil

2010-01-28T18:43:00.000-06:00

Continuing the theme of experts not knowing enough to get everything right, here is a mini-essay for your enjoyment. Written in 1958, I, Pencil is a classic among free market thinkers, and it tells of all the complexities that go into making something as simple as a pencil. It's an excellent essay, and I encourage you to read the whole thing:

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery —more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill’s power!

Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.

My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder—cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia] with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far-off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn’t a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

It has been said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree with this? Isn’t it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human masterminding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand— that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn’t know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation’s mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental “masterminding.”

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it’s all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person’s home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one’s range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

Anna Karenina

2010-01-27T21:39:00.004-06:00

I decided to read this book by Leo Tolstoy because it has frequently been ranked as the best novel ever. While I would not rate it that highly, Tolstoy does spin a good story. At over 800 pages, it understandably is slow at times, but overall it kept a good pace. I don't think I would rank Anna Karenina in the top ten of my favorite books ever, but it is in my top five best written books I have read.

The novel basically has two stories, one about Anna and one about Levin, both upperclassfolk. Anna runs off with a fellow who is not her husband and earns the scorn of society; her story is rather pitiable. Levin tries to follow his high-minded principles of peace with nature and happiness through hard work. I particularly liked Levin, especially his philosophies on society, government, and economics.

As I mentioned before, Anna Karenina dragged a bit around the three-quarter mark, which was really unfortunate. I went from enjoying the book thoroughly to ambivalence in short order, and subsequently couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the end, even though the final 150 pages were probably the best in the book.

Tolstoy's greatest skill, I think, is his ability to depict a person's stream of consciousness. I was frequently struck with how vivid and natural his characters' inner monologues were, and this really helped me identify with them.

Obviously, for a book to become a timeless classic, it needs a few themes. My main impression of Tolstoy's theme is that society is shallow and frivolous, and true happiness comes from living a simple life. The high society members, although living with all the comforts of a modern 19th century city and having many hours each day to gossip about their peers, never seem fully happy. Most of the rural farmers we meet, on the other hand, really appear to have it together and are content with their lives. Not a bad theme, I guess.

Experts

2010-01-27T11:35:00.000-06:00

During a health care discussion recently, my interlocutor mentioned her belief that if we had enough really smart (bipartisan) people focusing on the issue, with no outside interferences, they would be able to come up with a great solution. These hypothetical experts may be able to solve the problems in this case, although I am skeptical. A far-reaching plan has so many chances to go awry that it is a wonder any positive legislation ever occurs. Plus, the downside of having bad plans adversely affect so much of a country when a large plan fails is, in my opinion, too high.

Let's look at a few well known historical examples. Shortly after FDR became president during the Great Depression, he developed what is known as the Brain Trust:

he called together the people he regarded as the most powerful and important corporate, banking, and labor interests – together with a gaggle of professors from Columbia – and essentially asked them what they wanted to get the economy going again.

FDR, with the help of these experts, then implemented his New Deal, which most economists these days credit with prolonging the Great Depresh.

Next, we have JFK (how many presidents are known just by their initials?) with his group of the best and the brightest, fellows who '"carried with them an exciting sense of American elitism, a sense that the best men had been summoned forth from the country" to bring "a new, strong, dynamic spirit to our historic role in world affairs"'. Through pursuing its goal of stopping the spread of Communism, this group is mostly responsible for the disaster that was the Vietnam War.

OK, but maybe people have gotten a lot smarter in the last 40 years. But we need to remember all the experts, both in government and finance, who thought we had conquered economic cycles with our brilliant financial innovations. These same experts even now don't really know why we are in our current economic mess. Scott Sumner, a prominent economics blogger, laments that

in the last year my respect for authority, which was never very high, has fallen to a new low. As I read each interview in the Big Think, it becomes more and more obvious that the experts don’t have a clue as to what went wrong, nor how to fix the problem. Indeed they don’t even agree with each other, and none of them agree with me.

The point so far has been that, despite high hopes and good intentions, experts basically never have all of the knowledge they need in order to make perfect decisions. The upshot of this is that when they are given a lot of power and fail, bad things happen to a lot of people. And the nature of government is such that even when something is recognized as a bad policy, it is very difficult to change it (ethanol subsidies, anyone?)

Time to move on to health care. Health care spending made up around 17% of the economy last year; that is more than 1/6 of all the goods and services produced in America last year. Going into this spending are innumerable decisions made by innumerable agents: doctors, nurses, insurance companies, pharmacists, consumers (healthy and otherwise), bureaucrats, researchers, inventors, manufacturers, and many more.

What group of experts would be necessary to ensure that all the requisite information was considered in any health care legislation? How could such a team possibly be assembled? Especially today, with the Internet's making information so diffuse, the only way to build an effective team would be to include just about everybody.

Luckily, this team can actually be assembled pretty easily: don't give a small group of experts all the power. If more decision-making is left up to individuals, they will automatically use the best information they have on hand. If an individual makes a spectacularly bad decision, it doesn't harm the entire country. Most importantly, they will respond to the ever-changing health care environment more nimbly than any government agency could.

Turn out the lights

2010-01-27T07:52:00.002-06:00

From the NYT:

With no clear path forward on major health care legislation, Democratic
leaders in Congress effectively slammed the brakes on President Obama's top
domestic priority on Tuesday, saying they no longer felt pressure to move
quickly on a health bill after eight months of setting deadlines and missing
them.

With popularity of this legislation plummeting as time goes on, and November's interim elections steadily approaching, it looks like this is over.

Food

2010-01-24T17:39:00.002-06:00

There appears to be a food drive this month in Union Station, and I walk past the attractions every day on my stroll to and from the office. These are all made out of food packages (mostly cans), and are really neat.Above is, obviously, Mr. Potato Head, which was the first toy ever advertised on TV. Below is a tornado weaving a swath of devastation across the countryside.
This is a picture of Marilyn Monroe, who was recently featured in another exhibit at Union Station.
This guy is goofy.
A shoe...
There are many others, but these are my favs.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism

2010-01-20T21:00:00.003-06:00

This was an interesting primer on free-market economic thinking by Bob Murphy, an economics blogger whom I enjoy. It is not terribly intellectually rigorous; most of the arguments are just appeals to common sense. However, these appeals are quite sensical, and there is ample data to back up many of his points.

A lot of the book was standard stuff, like how minimum wage laws hurt poor workers, or how outsourcing benefits everyone in the long run, or how tariffs hurt Americans as much as they hurt anybody else. But there was one chapter about how the free market prevents racism.

Murphy's major examples of this free market anti-racism were related to slavery. Murphy himself can summarize his arguments better than I can:

If you think about it for a moment, slavery really makes no sense economically. If you're a slave, then your incentive is to produce the bare minimum to avoid a whipping. But if you're a free laborer, you have an incentive to produce more than the guy next to you, because you'll get paid more (or get promoted, etc.).

So in a truly free market -- even if it started out with some people classified as the "property" of other people -- there would be tremendous incentives for the slaves to buy their freedom from their masters. Don't get me wrong, that would be horribly unfair and they shouldn't have to do that in the first place, but nonetheless widespread slavery wouldn't persist if the rest of the economy were a free market.

Yet that's not what happened historically. Indeed, there were all sorts of government interventions that propped up the "peculiar institution." Just a few examples: (1) mandatory slave patrols, in which the local governments forced non-slave owners to defray the costs of the institution, (2) laws against educating slaves, and (3) laws curtailing manumission, i.e. the practice of freeing one's slaves (often in one's will).

Really, this book is pretty good if you are sort of interested in free market thinking, but don't really know much about it. It's an excellent, quick introduction to this type of thinking.

This guy's blog also has an interesting twist. Evidently, he used to be an atheist but has come back to Christianity, an every Sunday he has a long post about applying religion to our daily lives.

A Bear Called Paddington

2010-01-20T20:59:00.002-06:00

I just finished this charming, short book by Michael Bond. It revolves around a bear from darkest Peru who is adopted by a British family. I've got to say, every place sounds way cooler when preceded by "darkest." I grew up in the darkest Midwest, and attended college in darkest Kirksville. Doesn't my life already sound exciting?

Being from darkest Peru, Paddington doesn't know a lot about getting around in modern (1950s) Britain, so he is constantly getting into scrapes. For example, he's never owned a new coat before, so when the hood falls over his eyes, he thinks he's gone blind and gets lost.

The best part about this book is how everyone is so nonchalant about Paddington. He rides the subway and orders tea at a restaurant, and the most surprised thing anybody says is "You're rather small for a bear, aren't you?"

This is really a fabulous book for children. I can't believe I have never read it before, but I recommend it to anyway who has, is, or was a child.

Also, this is probably the best line to use before going on an outing: "I've got a funny feeling about today...as if things were going to happen."

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

2010-01-19T22:04:00.002-06:00

I recently polished off this book by Brandon Sanderson, and it was pretty good. Sanderson is a relatively new fantasy author who has written several fabulous books for adults. Evidently, he writes a new novel in this Alcatraz series, which is targeted for middle school youth, as a break from more serious books.

As you may be able to guess from the title, this series isn't terribly serious. Alcatraz, an angsty youth, finds out that he is an Oculator, a type of person who can perform magic with various magical eyeglass lenses. He uses this nifty skill to combat the Librarians, an insidious cult that pretty much controls the world as we know it through information hoarding and other manipulations.

It was really a light and funny book, and I will likely read the rest of the series as well. However, some of my readers (Mom) may not be very appreciative of the premise, so read at your own risk.

road trip?

2010-01-19T19:23:00.001-06:00

I would like to stay here. Canada evidently has a hotel made entirely from ice:

My plan, part 2

2010-01-19T10:34:00.002-06:00

I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger yesterday, and I'm sure you spent a sleepless night trying to figure out what comes next. Now I'll explain why putting more costs on the actual consumer will do the trick as far as health reform. Incidentally, I've been focusing on health care a lot lately, and I promise to try to find something else to cover for a little while.

One interesting aspect of health cost growth is that it's not constant throughout the country. Consider the following graph from a study on regional variation in health cost increases:

Clearly, Oregon has got it figured out. Miami is in trouble. But why these differences?

They can't be caused simply by new technology in certain areas, because that doesn't vary a ton from one major city to another. The researchers also controlled for health outcomes, so everyone in Oregon isn't walking around with pneumonia. This study's authors found that

Using clinical vignettes to present standardized patient carescenarios to physicians throughout the country, the researchersfound that physicians in high- and low-spending regions wereabout equally likely to recommend specific clinical interventionswhen the supporting evidence was strong. Those in higher-spendingregions, however, were much more likely than those in lower-spendingregions to recommend discretionary services, such as referralto a subspecialist for typical gastroesophageal reflux or stableangina or, in another vignette, hospital admission for an 85-year-oldpatient with an exacerbation of end-stage congestive heart failure.And they were three times as likely to admit the latter patientdirectly to an intensive care unit and 30% less likely to discusspalliative care with the patient and family. Differences inthe propensity to intervene in such gray areas of decision makingwere highly correlated with regional differences in per capitaspending.

Basically, getting more stuff makes things cost more. While the study's authors advocate for more doctor advocacy to solve this problem, I think it could be much more easily dealt with by making consumers pay for more procedures. This will make them much less likely to go for a procedure that will probably not do them much good.

If people are getting less health care, this doesn't mean that we'll all be much sicker. Many studies have found, for example, that "Medicare patients in regions with higher health care spending levels do not experience better health outcomes, nor do they gain better access to care or report greater satisfaction."

So now we've got more empowered consumers, less distortion of salaries and health insurance, more transparency, slower growth (and therefore, more affordability for everyone), and less waste. Everyone wins! And the best part is that, as costs are tamed, more people are able to afford the health care they need. Plus, with insurance not covering everything under the sun, just about everybody who wants it will be able to buy catastrophic coverage, which is what insurance should cover in the first place.

Impending legislation, unfortunately, further entrenches workers' dependency on their employers for coverage, requires more comprehensive and widespread insurance, and does little that will actual control cost growth. Everyone loses...

My plan

2010-01-18T15:41:00.005-06:00

I've been doing quite a bit of bashing of the current health legislation without providing anything productive. Well, this post is intended to remedy that by outlining my ideal health care reform.

It is pretty obvious that health care spending has been increasing at a pretty good clip:

This is really unsustainable (I think). Health expenditures increased by just over 6% in 2007, which is much higher than GDP growth. At current trends, we'll be directing one quarter of all of our country's expenditures to health care (we're currently spending around 16%). This represents a huge amount of money and resources that could be applied to things that provide us with more benefits.

Now, there are a lot of things driving this growth: new medical technology, increasing personal wealth, the aging population, and increasing third party payment (insurance) are generally cited. The aging population is a trick issue, and I'm not completely sure what to do with it. Earlier, I indicated I wasn't positive about the unsustainable health cost growth. This is because there is a chance that, as people live longer and longer, we really will just come to an equilibrium wherein a huge amount of our wealth is spent on health care. This is not my preferred alternative, but it is possible.

The other items, however, can be addressed. I think that getting rid of so much third party payment--that is, depending on health insurance to pay for just about everything--is the key. After all, we don't use our car insurance whenever we get an oil change, and car maintenance costs are not skyrocketing. But a dental cleaning or a routine doctor's visit are almost never paid entirely by the consumer. This is distorting expenditures because consumers don't know how much stuff really costs and, since they're not really paying, they elect to have more done than is necessary.

Currently, health insurance premiums provided by one's employer are tax deductible. This provides an incentive to beef up compensation packages by providing better health insurance to workers. Getting rid of this tax benefit would reduce the amount of companies that provide substantial health insurance. And since nearly 200 million people have insurance through an employer, this would push a ton of people out into the individual market.

This may sound like a no-win for workers, but employee salaries are currently reduced by however much a company spends on their health insurance. Getting rid of this cost would lead to higher salaries, and they could pay for the insurance they want rather than whatever their company offers. Or, if they just wanted to pay medical expenses out of pocket and keep the extra $2 million or so that their employers will pay for their health insurance over their career, they could do that too!

Under this scenario, many people will probably not elect the most comprehensive coverage. This means that, if they want or need some care, they will pay are larger portion of it themselves. This will force consumers to evaluate costs and benefits, and will lead to less wasteful spending. Perhaps consumers don't know enough about health care to evaluate these trade-offs, but I am absolutely positive that hospitals and doctors would make costs more transparent so this would be easier.

Another crucial step is to get rid of so many mandated insurance requirements. Throughout the states, there are nearly 1,000 mandated benefits, and they don't come cheap.

A new analysis prepared for the National Center for Policy Analysis by the actuarial firm Milliman & Robertson estimates the costs of 12 of the most common mandates and finds that, collectively, they can increase the cost of insurance by as much as 30 percent.

Mandating coverage of things people don't need or want covered is no good. People should have the freedom to sell and purchase what they want. If a person wants podiatry coverage (or not), that should be up to him.

Phew! This is super-long, so I will go into more detail of why I think this will work tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Calvin

2010-01-16T19:30:00.000-06:00

My earlier post was not too diverting, so here is something fun. In Calvin and Hobbes, my favorite comic strip, Calvin has a history of making unique snow scenes. In honor of all the snow we've gotten recently, here are a couple. Click the pictures for a larger version, and click here to see more.

More health care

2010-01-16T12:52:00.002-06:00

One of the initial goals of the health care writers was to allow people with pre-existing conditions to get insurance. This really is a big deal for a lot of people, and is a really thorny problem. Someone who has, say, a heart condition and loses insurance for whatever reason will be hard-pressed to get new insurance. The proposed legislation ostensibly will fix this problem by requiring that insurance companies not nix people for these conditions.

This leads to a lot of problems and certainly expands the scope of the bill dramatically. If you just change this one thing, then insurance companies will go out of business. Many people will simply dance through life with no insurance until they begin ailing, at which point they will run out and buy a nice, comprehensive policy. The insurance folks will forgo years of premium income and then have a bunch of expenses. Clearly, this will be bad for their solvency.

So how to solve this problem? Obviously, you could require that people buy insurance. This would eliminate the free rider problem and guarantee that insurance companies get the premium income they need in order to pay the bills when they come due.

But wait! If people are required to make this large purchase, the poor are going to be in a pickle. How can they justify buying expensive insurance if they don't already have many thousands of dollars per year in disposable income? This, of course, can be solved by providing subsidies to people below a certain income level.

And there we go: a triangle of solved problems. Only...here are some more problems. Adding subsidies to the poor really increases the cost (to the government) of the legislation. Maybe some of this cost can be recouped by the fines on people who don't get insurance. However, the Senate version of the bill makes the fine uselessly small, $95 in the first year. Not only will this not bring in a lot of dough, but it will not enforce the individual mandate very well. A young, healthy person might very rationally conclude that a $95 (or whatever it increases to over future years) is less than $8,500, which is the average cost of an individual policy per year.

Well, now we are back to just having insurance companies losing a lot of money. My prediction is that, if this health care legislation as I understand it passes, an actual public option will be inevitable in about 10 years.

The Mating Season

2010-01-13T20:04:00.003-06:00

I had better fill you in on this excellent book by P. G. Wodehouse before I forget. This is another installment in the Jeeves saga, of which I have read several. In this, Bertie is forced by a comical turn of events to pretend to be his friend Gussie Fink-Nottle. He then tries to (with success!) reunite six sundered hearts throughout the rest of the novel.

In order to give you an idea of how enjoyable this book was, consider the following.

Books which have induced tears, in chronological order (as far as I can remember):

1) The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood
2) Where the Red Fern Grows
3) The Outsiders
4) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
5) Where the Red Fern Grows
6) The Mating Season

Items 1-5 were tear-jerkers, as you can maybe guess, because sad things happen. Item six is a tad different; I literally had tears pouring down my cheeks from laughing so hard. Seriously, if you want a comical book, read P. G. Wodehouse. Even better, listen to an audio recording of one of his books, because the readers are spectacular.

What are some of the best books that have made you cry?

Ham-handed

2010-01-12T21:55:00.002-06:00

If you are following the health care leviathan as it wends its way to Obama, you are aware the the Senate and House are currently trying to resolve their two bills. One feature that Nancy Pelosi and others are pushing in the final bill is a provision to require insurance companies to spend no more than 15 (or 20) percent of their income on administration:

Additionally, House Democrats want to require insurers to spend a minimum amount of premium income on benefits, thereby limiting what is available for salaries, bonuses, advertising and other items. The House bill sets the floor at 85 percent; the Senate-passed measure lowers it to 80 percent for policies sold to small groups and individuals.

This sounds pretty reasonable, especially if an individual mandate gets through: why should insurance companies, with all their earnings potential, get to keep a ton of this money for themselves when it could do much more good actually paying medical bills?

For one thing, a private insurance company should remain...private, and should be allowed to spend its money how it pleases. If customers don't like how much is being spent on overhead at one company, they can switch to another. Perhaps requiring more transparency in this issue would be helpful so customers could evaluate more easily.

Another reason is that a lot of the money spent on "other items" is really contesting sketchy claims, a major component of keeping cost inflation down. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that a requirement like this would cause medical costs to go through the roof for this very reason. And insurance folk would have very little incentive to try to reduce costs further because bonuses and profits would be strictly capped, so why try to save money?

The CBO also, for some reason, thinks that requiring a firm to spend 15% or less of its income on overhead might send several insurance companies out of business...

The Diverting History of John Gilpin:

2010-01-11T21:16:00.003-06:00

Showing how he went farther than he intended, and came home safe again. I am having internet issues, so my thoughts on this story by William Cowper, with illustrations by Randolph Caldecott, will be brief. John Gilpin is a picture book in which the titular character has some issues with his recalcitrant horse.
The story is pretty silly, yet comical, and at only seven minutes for a full read-through, it's well worth it. Don't just take my word for it...you can read it on your own by clicking here.

You may recognize the Caldecott name from the Caldecott Medal, which is given to the most distinguished children's picture book each year. Clearly, this is named for old Randolph because of his efficiency with a pencil. Coincidentally, the Medal in question even has a scene from this story on it!

Palaver

2010-01-10T15:24:00.003-06:00

The word of the year ("tweet") and word of the decade ("google") have been named. But my favorite is the Most Creative word of the year:

the winner by a big margin was Dracula sneeze, defined as "covering one's mouth with the crook of one's elbow when sneezing, seen as similar to popular portrayals of the vampire Dracula, in which he hides the lower half of his face with a cape."

The purpose of this, as I understand it, is to keep sneeze germs off one's hands, and subsequently, everything those hands touch. But it seems as if one would have an opportunity to wash the hands much more quickly than the elbows...

Also, having consumed Dracula earlier this year, I don't recall his ever actually making that motion. Perhaps he would have been hiding his fangs, but his piercing, menacing eyes (see below) were always enough to tip people off to his identity anyway.

Success

2010-01-09T19:46:00.002-06:00

I have been on the edge of my seat for quite some time. On November 9, I sat for my fifth actuarial exam, and a brief two months later I finally found out that I passed! So my many grueling hours of study have paid off.

After this test, I am finally more than halfway finished, which seems like a huge milestone. In order to be a full-fledged actuary (that is, an FSA), I will still need to pass four more exams, but the end seems to be in sight.

Abbie and I are celebrating this weekend by relaxing and eating a lot of buffalo chicken nachos!

You might not know much about actuaries, so here's a quick description from Wikipedia:

Actuaries evaluate the likelihood of events and quantify the contingent outcomes in order to minimize losses, both emotional and financial, associated with uncertain undesirable events.

Before you conclude that that sounds exceedingly boring and useless, consider that the comic series Batman featured a villain named the Actuary, a mathematical genius who applies formulas to aid the Penguin in committing crimes. So, before mocking an actuary in the future, be aware that we are a force with which to be reckoned.

A Child's Garden of Verses

2010-01-07T21:53:00.003-06:00

I just re-perused this collection of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. I've got a copy of it on my computer, along with quite a few other literary gems (a subject for another post), and I like to go over them again when I run out of blogs to read.

Stevenson's Treasure Island is perhaps my favorite book, so I may be slightly biased in his favor, but he is pretty skilled with a pen. In addition to many excellent novels, he wrote several poetry collections, but this is my favorite of his. This stanza from "Winter-Time" is especially apposite today:

Black are my steps on silver sod;
Thick blows my frosty breath abroad;
And tree and house, and hill and lake,
Are frosted like a wedding-cake.

I am much more a fan of poetry for the youth than for adults. They just seem to be filled with such wonder or tell better stories. I would take Lewis Carroll over Ezra Pound any day. Probably to Abbie's annoyance, I frequently browse a poetry anthology we have at home and grace the family with random tidbits that strike my fancy.

One of my favorite activities that go down in Anne of Green Gables are the poetry concerts in which Anne participates. Once Abbie and I start raising the next generation, I intend to be an avid promoter of weekly household poetry concerts.

Unhealthy

2010-01-06T19:13:00.003-06:00

Keith Hennessey, one of my favorite economic policy bloggers, gives sweeping healthcare legislation a 90% chance of passing. This is unlucky for an abundance of reasons that will not be addressed now.

My main concern with heathcare is its roughly 8% annual growth rate, which as my mother could tell you, means that medical expenditures will double just about every nine years. To me, this is much more of a problem than people not having insurance because 1) eventually, even government/insurance will run out of money and 2) an overabundance of insurance is one of the roots of the problem.

How can people be conservative with their medical expenditures with this trend:

The article continues,

Because so many Americans rely on an insurance policy or a government program to
pay their health care bills, the internal governors that temper the rest of
their purchases are turned off. When a visit to the doctor's office or a
diagnostic test costs them a mere $10 or $20 co-payment out of pocket — or there
is no charge at all — cost has little impact on their decision to see a doctor.

A rising tide may raise all boats, but a dropping tide lowers just as many, and rising costs will lower the quality and abundance of healthcare. Even if the government is paying for it.

Skis

2010-01-05T21:48:00.002-06:00

You may have noticed a little facelift around this blog. This is to signify that I am now taking my blogging in an entirely new direction: instead of blogging about books I read, I will now blog about...books I read and economic tidbits! I may, on occasion, even combine the two and blog about the economics in books, but I'm thinking that one step at a time is in order.

So evidently after Obama slapped Chinese tires with a 35% import tariff several months ago, things have been becoming downright tense. China followed up with its own tariffs, and now everybody is trying to protect everything. Steel, chickens, and salt are just a few more disputed imports.

The whole thing is ridiculous because protectionism like this doesn't accomplish anything useful. Sure, some tiremen might go out of business, but there is no way they are the real target. The target in China would be some political leader who gave Obama the crook eye, and running tiremen out of business is an exceedingly roundabout way of evening the score. (Actually, the real goal is almost definitely to help out US manufacturers who are rather philanthropic to lawmakers).

Additionally, it makes things worse for everyone in the state doing the protecting. Now stuff we buy from China (that is, everything) is going to be more expensive, so we protected Americans are all having a little bit lower of a standard of living.

Knife of Dreams

2009-12-26T19:30:00.003-06:00

This was the last book written by Robert Jordan before his untimely death, and the 11th book in the aforementioned Wheel of Time series. I consumed several intervening books but did not mention them here, as I am pretty certain most of my readers aren't too into them. But this book is too excellent to be ignored.

The main accomplishment of this book is that Perrin's awful four-book quest to secure his wife's freedom was successful. Now we can hopefully get some worthwhile stories about him. Also excellent are Mat's adventures and ongoing courtship of Tuon. Mat has been my favorite character of the series since book 3, and he is especially awesome in the one.

Now I really want to move on to the latest book, but I am currently engrossed in the exceedingly lengthy Anna Karenina, which will take quite some time to wrap up. So you may not get another post for a little while....

The Maze Runner

2009-12-15T21:58:00.002-06:00

I had sort of forgotten about this book by James Dashner, which is unfortunate because it is excellent. The conflict here involves 50-odd teenage boys who have been placed with no memories in the middle of an unsolvable maze. And it turns out that the walls move every night, so they can't ever be sure exactly what the state of the maze is. Oh, and there are ravenous beasts who roam around at night and try to eat kids.

The maze is really an elaborate scheme to test the mettle of these folks. When the maze ups the ante after two years of no success, though, the kids do likewise and force a solution to the maze. The Maze Runner is an excellent book, filled with quality action and suspense. The only downside was that I had thought it was a standalone novel, but when I reached the last 15 pages with no real resolution in sight, I figured out that no real resolution is even planned for several more books!

There was one other downside: It may be a sign of good writing that effectively mimics how kids in stressful situations would actually act, but the constant flux of the narrator's emotions sort of got on my nerves. I felt the same way with Harry Potter, too. This probably is unreasonable of me.

Call It Courage

2009-11-30T21:28:00.003-06:00

I have been lax in my posting, so you are just now hearing about this Newberry-award winning novella by Armstrong Sperry. The bildungsroman is about Mafatu, a boy who is terrified of the sea among an island people who worship courage. Obviously, Mafatu does not thrive in this society.

In a moment of foolhardy courage, Mafatu sails alone into the sea and is almost killed in a storm before finally landing on a solitary island. Here, he has to fight for his survival and livelihood against sharks and octopi before returning home with enough courage to be elected mayor of the island.

This book is spectacular, and at less than 100 pages, one could churn it out in an evening. Definitely read this if you like adventure on the high seas or if you want to learn how to whittle a knife out of some spare whale bones.

Soup

2009-11-16T20:21:00.002-06:00

I have fallen behind a bit in posting, but this book by Robert Newton Peck definitely merits a post. The book is a collection of short stories about Rob Peck's adventurous youth with his best friend, Soup (a person, not a meal). I recollect reading several books in this series in my youth, and they are all pretty similarly adventurous.

A couple of examples: Soup convinces Rob to roll down the town hill in barrel that lacks structural integrity, which disintigrates just after crashing into a chicken coop. Rob ties his aunt to a tree just before a thunderstorm, and suffers some painful repercussions as a result. Rob and Soup fling apples from the end of sticks, and Soup breaks a window at the local Baptist church, but Rob unluckily takes the blame.

Andy read this book first and introduced it to me when he taught me to fling apples on a stick. He really enjoyed that activity and, since we had four apple trees in the front yard, it was a pretty easy hobby to pursue. Andy also rigged up a (more sturdy) barrel for us to roll around in down in the basement. I can still feel the thrill of tumbling head over heels in the barrel after letting out a wild "Tally-ho!" I don't think I every tied anybody to a tree, though...although Peter would have been a prime candidate.

Mutiny on the Bounty

2009-11-09T17:42:00.002-06:00

This adventure on the high seas (what is a high sea, anyway?) by Nordhoff and Hall recounts the true story of the mutiny on the Bounty. The book follows the experiences of Byam, a lowly midshipman: how he joins the boat, gets stuck with the mutineers, and eventually is falsely arrested as a mutineer. Oh, he also lives for four or five years in Tahiti.

I really like old school adventure stories (Treasure Island is among my top 3 favorite books), so I had pretty high hopes for this one. However, this book started out a little slow; I was all set to grant the book two and a half stars and move on, but then mutiny actually happened (almost a third of the way into the novel) and I really became engrossed. I don't think this is just because "Duh! A mutiny must be exciting..." because the mutiny itself is pretty brief. Perhaps Byam just really stood out as a compelling character during that one chapter, and I suddenly cared a lot about his future welfare. Watching Byam meet his Tahitian native wife and their subsequent courtship, and then following Byam as he is torn away from her to be clapped in irons for about two years, was quite moving.

Learning about the details of life at sea is always interesting because it sounds so bloody miserable that I can't believe anyone would want to become a sailor. Perhaps it is like joining the army today, but the mortality rate must have been way higher then, and the living conditions had to be worse. The sailors ate nothing but salted beef and yams for about two years. And then, when their main ship sank and they were castoff in small launches, they all had to survive on about six ounces of water and a bit of bread each day for two weeks. Yikes. Also, it took over a year and a half to sail from Tahiti back to England!

I ended up consuming Mutiny on the Bounty in a rather roundabout way. I always like going to the library to browse for about an hour, and come away with 13 books, only one of which I will actually consume. But being stymied on Library Day, I had to pick something from our personal library. This is probably a good thing because I have now decided to consume a bunch of books from our personal library before going back to the public library, since I am so proud of our collection. You'll hear more about those soon!

Incomplete

2009-11-02T21:17:00.002-06:00

Books I have not finished lately:

Eldest: The sequel to Eragon is, I think, pretty highly regarded in the fantasy realm, at least by not-fantasy-obsessed people I know. But this book just annoyed me for some reason I can't quite pin down. It took forever for any action actually to develop, but that's not the only problem. I think that the conversations all got on my nerves too much. The characters would engage in what I suppose was meant to be witty banter, but it did not appeal to me.

God Created the Integers: This book, by Stephen Hawking, looked really interesting based on the cover's inside flap. Hawking, the famous physicist and perhaps longest-surviving person with ALS, presented a brief biography of a groundbreaking mathematician, and then explained each mathlete's work. The main problem for me was that the book was quite technical, and I was in search of something lighter. It is probably a good book, and perhaps I will pick it up again later.

The Highwayman: R. A. Salvatore wrote the books about Drizzt Do'Urden, a spectacularly skilled sword-fighting dark elf. The Drizzt books have been consistently excellent and action-packed, so I had high hopes for this one, although it takes place with different characters in a different world. Unfortunately, it also started out too slowly for me really to get into it.

I think the reason that I quit two of these books because they started slowly is that I don't spend as much time reading as I used to or would like. Since I go through books more slowly, there is much more time for me to lose interest before getting hooked, so a book has to start out quite well. I wonder if this is mostly because of my commuting hours, or if this will be a new equilibrium state for me. Since I have become so interested in so many blogs and internet reading, have books permanently become my second-favorite source for entertainment? I don't really think so, but I will say that I haven't brought a book on my overnight stays in KC in about 3 months, while I use my laptop for a couple of hours on each of these trips. Hrm.

Peter Pan

2009-10-14T20:55:00.003-06:00

In case you are not riveted by my endorsements of the WoT, perhaps you will find this classic fantasy story more interesting. J. M. Barrie created Peter Pan back in 1902, and it took me 107 years finally to get around to reading it. It's a quite exciting adventure story, with pirates and mermaids and flying and swashbuckling and wild animals. Peter is an occasionally obnoxious kid, but overall he is pretty awesome. Plus, his supporting cast of the Lost Boys adds a lot of comic delight.

This book goes by quite quickly, so if you want a fun adventure in a hurry, this book is just the ticket. I haven't read anything else by Barrie, but I would imagine that it's worthwhile as well.

Plus, I've got a little actuarial treat for you. So Peter is ostensibly supposed to live forever, which seems a little farfetched. Lest you doubt it is possible, consider the following:

In 2005, American kids aged 5-14 had a death rate of 16.3 per 100,000. Here's one way to think about how incredibly low that is:Suppose a kid could keep that childhood mortality rate forever. What would be his expected lifespan? Answer: 6,135 years!

All he has to do is avoid being skewered by a cutlass.

The Dragon Reborn

2009-10-14T20:50:00.002-06:00

So I finished this third book in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, and it was spectacular. This is the book where Matt begins his 8-book streak of luck and becomes awesome in general. I fully recommend it.

History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

2009-10-07T20:57:00.002-06:00

I read this book by Henry Fielding several months ago, but it merits a spot on this humble blog. It chronicles the adventures of Tom Jones, an infant orphan who is adopted by the local rich guy. As he becomes an adult, he is both part of the upper class (because of his adopted father) and an outsider (because of his shady origins). Tom falls in love with the neighboring local rich guy's daughter, but his being an orphan prevents any easy wedding for them.

Tom eventually gets thrown out of the house, and has various adventures while trying to stay alive and fed. His lady love, Sophia, tries to find him but can't, then he tries to find her but can't, then they all find each other 400 pages later in London. The book was pretty good and quite funny, and even though it dragged in a few parts, I recommend it.

I enjoy reading classics such as this, although it is often difficult to evaluate them properly since I do not know all of the historical context. For example, I read in a review that this book had one of the three best novel plots of all time, but I don't think it's plot was as good as, e.g., The Life of Pi or The Master of Ballantrae. It is basically just a romantic intrigue that could be written by any number of writers these days. But then when I consider that it made "a crucial contribution to the development of the novel as a unified narrative structure held together by a coherent authorial vision," the book becomes much more impressive. It would be handy to have a class or Cliffs Notes to help give me some perspective, both in terms of the book's impact on writing as well as the roots of its biting social commentary.

There are a couple more interesting things to note about this book. 1) The women frequently amused me because of how quickly they forgave the fellas. At one point, Sophia finds out that Tom has been getting overly intimate with the area's most prominent lady of the evening, and is justifiably angry. After about 1.3 minutes of soothing and apologizing, though, she is ready to put it all in the past. 2) The presence of the aforementioned scarlet woman, and frequent depiction of sex and alcohol abuse, evidently caused quite an uproar when this book came out. According to Barnes and Noble, people thought that this book was so evil and inappropriate that it caused earthquakes and other natural disasters.

The Road to Serfdom

2009-10-04T19:25:00.002-06:00

This book by F. A. Hayek is quite a diverting read, if one gets carried away by abstract political and economic reasoning. Hayek, who is one of the most influential "free-market" economists and political thinkers of the last century, wrote this book during WWII when fascism and socialism seemed like the Next Big Thing(s). Hayek first exposes weaknesses in these systems and why they nevertheless gain prominence, and then lays out a more favorable system. That is to say, the entire book is about why libertarianism is pretty neat and other stuff is not quite as stellar.

Although my gushing previous paragraph makes the book sound rather dry, it was rife with great insights, many of them especially apposite in today's political climate. I marked about a dozen quotations to share with you (because I know that is what you were hoping for!), but I mistakenly returned the book already. So, I will paraphrase a bit: "don't be a socialist."

While I thought the book was excellent, I would not recommend it to anybody who is not seriously examining their political and economic stances. It is a little difficult to keep momentum while reading it, and if one did not have powerful motivations to do so, it would perhaps be difficult to finish.

Palaver

2009-09-29T20:06:00.002-06:00

Wikipedia is practically the coolest thing ever, and I stumbled across this page while perusing the site earlier. It was quite diverting trying to figure out all of the ambiguous sentences, and to see what sort of constructs people can, well, construct with language. Even foreign languages can make crazy sentences, such as "Fit fit fits fit ski?", which means "Which foot fits which ski?" (in Glasgow patter, a Scottish dialect).

Coming across sites such as these, and noticing how enjoyable I find them, really makes me regret some of the courses I took in college. I was just lamenting this evening that I majored in accounting, when clearly a linguistics major would have been much more interesting to me.

A List of Subjects I Wish I Had Studied Further:
1) Linguistics/English
2) Economics
3) Physics and chemistry
4) Computer science
5) Philosophy
6) Latin

However, all is not lost: I am still able to satisfy most of my intellectual curiousities relatively easily (thanks, internet!). My daily blog reading addresses four of those items. Computer science and Latin are not terribly prevalent in my daily life, but I hope to remedy that. I want to switch my computer from Windows to a Linux operating system, which will require substantial computer programming learning. Also, Abbie has kindly offered to tutor me in Latin after I finish my exams. So, despite my foolish college days, my intellectual pursuits are still incredibly rich.

I read an article recently that speculated that the polymath is disappearing from society these days, and I think that that is true. There is just so much information to learn about a single subject in order to be considered an expert that it seems nigh impossible. When calculus and medicine were first being developed, it was probably the work of a week or two to learn everything there was to know about them! Now, I have been reading about applying statistical methods to risk evaluation for several years, and I am still an actuarial neophyte. However, because information is so easily disseminated these days, I am able at least to be informed in many, many areas. One hundred years ago, I would have had to spend all my hours cooped up in a library to achieve that. Although, since libraries are my favorite places, perhaps that would not be so bad...

Palaver

2009-09-24T21:10:00.003-06:00

I hope you all enjoyed National Punctuation Day! It would be a much more diverting world if more people celebrated this holiday. Perhaps I should write to Claire McCaskill to see if she can get us another day off of work for it...

This homage to the semicolon is especially enjoyable:

“Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.”
— Lewis Thomas, “Notes on Punctuation,”
The Medusa and the Snail 1979 —

The Great Hunt

2009-09-21T20:32:00.002-06:00

This is the second book in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. The twelfth book in the series is coming out in a month or two, so I am refreshing my mem with my fourth or fifth re-read of this series. Now, I have read quite a bit of fantasy in my time, and I must say that this is my favorite overall fantasy series.

I can only think of three fantasy series off the top of my head that have been excellent over the course of more than five books (Death Gate Cycle, Harry Potter, and this), and The Wheel of Time is definitely my favorite. The character development, long-term story arc intricacy, world-building, action scenes, all are excellent.

One of Jordan's most impressive skills is his ability to hint at the future, sometimes seven or eight books in advance. There is a lot of prophecy in this series, and some prophecies that cropped up in this book still haven't been completely fulfilled as of book 11. Sometimes I wonder, though, how much of it was actually planned, and how much of it was Jordan just spouting off stuff in these early books, and then sort of molding future books to fit these foreshadowings. Either way, he does it so well that I am impressed.

Indeed, the lack of foreshadowing is one thing that really annoyed me about the Harry Potter books. True, Rowling had stuff about Voldemort and Harry sharing blood, etc., that lasted the course of the series. An example of poor foreshadowing (although "foreshadow" is not really the word I want here. Perhaps "world-building" is better? Or maybe just "foresight on Rowling's part") is that the last book, The Deathly Hallows, focuses on some spectacularly powerful objects that are never once alluded to throughout the rest of the series, even though Harry owns one of them.

Back to the subject at hand. Since there are nine more books for me to consume, some of my readers may become bored with the incessant fantasy. To reward them for their diligent reading, however, I will start a new feature wherein I discuss a non-fantasy book that I have consumed in the last year or two. So, look forward to that, dedicated readers!

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

2009-09-09T21:20:00.002-06:00

This novel by G. K. Chesterton was excellent. I decided to read it because somebody notable said that it is the "most thrilling book" he ever read. I don't think it was the most thrilling ever, but "delightfully adventurous" would not be inappropriate.

The book is about Syme, a new detective in Scotland Yard, who inadvertently becomes entangled in an international group of anarchists. His discoveries and attempts to foil the anarchists comprise the story. The point of the book, as it seems to me, is that we've got to undergo rough times to test our convictions before we can be sure of them or have any sort of moral authority. (Another reader of this book states that the message is that God lets bad things happen because they remind us of the importance of good things, which I can also see.) There are many twists throughout, but by about a third of the way through, I was able to predict most future twists. However, this didn't really detract from the story.

One thing that I realized while reading this is that, regardless of any ambitions I might have, I will never be a spectacular novelist because I can't create dialogue nearly as well as this guy. Dialogue seems like it must be about the hardest part of writing a book, and this one was full of diverting turns of phrase.

As I read the beginning of the book, I had all these ideas for a post analyzing the book's use of anarchy, and about how I dislike the lines about government and order being the source of all our prosperity, but they aren't really relevant after finishing the book. The "anarchy" merely symbolizes sin and evil, and it doesn't really make sense anymore to bash Chesterton's political views over this book, or even the misguided idea that the police force knows best and must be powerful enough to save us from ourselves.

One final note: the book closes on a fancy-dress ball, which is also something that appears in the Jeeves books on occasion. These sound like pretty fun times, so whither the fancy-dressing? We should have more of them (perhaps a theme for one's annual summer party...?)!

Pinocchio

2009-09-07T16:11:00.002-06:00

This classic by Carlo Collodi was not actually all that good. It's been quite some time since I saw the Disney movie of the same name, but my impression was that the titular character just unluckily got into scrapes mostly through fate. Therefore, I was unprepared for the unceasing foolishness of Pinocchio in this book. He essentially makes the same mistake (acting for instant gratification) about 20 times in a row. I think this book could have been cut in half and been just as good.

Interestingly, this book initially was only half its current length. It ended with Pinocchio being hanged to death because he crossed a band of robber-assassins. This was evidently too macabre for that age's youth, and instead of just having Pinocchio gnaw through the rope and learn his lesson upon escaping, Collodi wrote 20 more chapters to lighten the mood.

Another thing I found surprising is that, despite what Disney says, the talking cricket only speaks about three paragraphs and is only in two scenes. In fact, the clever Pinocchio becomes irate shortly after meeting the cricket and crushes him with a mallet.

Eragon

2009-09-01T21:41:00.002-06:00

This book by Christopher Paolini was published when he was only 19. It is the first in a fantasy series, and it was pretty entertaining. This book did not have the shortcomings from which Shadowmarch suffered. It was rife with action and adventure, and its final battle was pretty well done. I definitely intend to consume the rest of the series at some point.

The book starts off with Eragon, a simple country boy (some might say a cock-eyed optimist) who gets mixed up in the high-stakes game of world diplomacy and international intrigue when he finds a dragon egg. When the dragon hatches and Eragon becomes one of the fabled dragon riders, he gains all sorts of new abilities, such as augmented strength and the ability to use magic. Of course, the powers that be do not want him running around loose with a dragon, so conflict soon erupts.

A few (very minor) things about this book really irked me. 1) Frequently during swordfights, sparks erupt when the duelists clash. In reality (even fantasy generally follows our world's physics), this would not happen too often. First of all, the swords are not generally made with flint in them, and secondly, since they are so smooth and finely polished, sparks are even less likely. I'm not saying sparks will never appear, but for it to happen during every heated conflict is a bit much. 2) Eragon is trained in swordfighting by Brom, who has been a warrior for decades. By the midpoint of the novel, though, Eragon is able to disarm Brom. Even if he did nothing but study swordplay for several months, there is no way this could happen. 3) Hopefully this won't be too much of a spoiler, but Eragon gets a scar on his back at some point in the book during a skirmish in which several people die, and he complains about being "disfigured". Lame.

Palaver

2009-09-01T21:40:00.001-06:00

Since this blog is essentially about books now, this is not too much of a digression. However, this made me a little sad:

http://kottke.org/09/08/farewell-reading-rainbow

Shadowmarch

2009-08-25T19:31:00.004-06:00

This book by Tad Williams is the first in an epic fantasy series. It purports to have many things about fantasy that I love, such as medieval weaponry, magic, intrigue, and adventure. However, I felt like this book did not deliver as promised. In 500 pages of reading, I was probably only reallyinterested in 75 of them. This is disappointing to me because Williams has pretty good cover art, and also because I have been planning on reading another trilogy by him for quite some time. Perhaps his other writings are more exciting.

Because of my lackluster feelings for this book, I stopped consuming it two nights ago, when I was about 500 pages into the total 750 pages. This seems to be kind of a waste, because I felt like I might stop early after as few as 200 pages. Therefore, in order to combat this inefficient allocation of my free time, I hereby resolve to end consumption of any literature if I am not engrossed after consuming one third of its length.

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

2009-08-23T19:44:00.003-06:00

Here is another delightful installment by P. G. Wodehouse. This novel has Bertie endeavoring to keep one of his chums affianced. If his friend breaks off the marriage, Bertie is worried that he will be forced to step in and become engaged to the lady in question. Jeeves eventually solves the problem pretty handily.

It seems to me that most of the Bertie/Jeeves stories are pretty similar and involve Bertie trying to avoid becoming engaged, and Jeeves coming to the rescue at the end, to the delight of all interested parties. However, they are just so hilarious that it makes no difference that they are similar. I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions while consuming this book.

Readers of this blog may be interested to note that Jeeves was mistakenly referenced in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The narrator remarks that the pharoah's butler was "the Jeeves of his time", but Jeeves was not in fact a butler. He was a valet, a gentleman's personal gentleman, whereas a butler is merely the head of a number of servants.

not a book

2009-08-20T07:02:00.001-06:00

This article about health insurance in America is spectacular. Although it is quite long, I definitely recommend reading it if you have a spare 20 minutes. The author's recommendations are on the last page, if you really want to skip ahead.

A teaser (I'm not sure how to do block quotes in Blogger....):

"Let's say you're a 22-year-old single employee at my company today, starting out at a $30,000 annual salary. Let's assume you'll get married in six years, support two children for 20 years, retire at 65, and die at 80. Now let's make a crazy assumption: insurance premiums, Medicare taxes and premiums, and out-of-pocket costs will grow no faster than your earnings-say, 3 percent a year. By the end of your working days, your annual salary will be up to $107,000. And over your lifetime, you and your employer together will have paid $1.77 million for your family's health care. $1.77 million! And that's only after assuming the taming of costs! In recent years, health-care costs have actually grown 2 to 3 percent faster than the economy. If that continues, your 22-year-old self is looking at an additional $2 million or so in expenses over your lifetime-roughly $4 million in total."

Blade Runner

2009-08-19T19:14:00.004-06:00

This book is also called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip Dick, and a movie called Blade Runner was based on the book. It is set around 2020 after a nuclear war, and androids are prevalent and convincingly human. In fact, the main character's job is to track down androids masquerading as humans and kill them, ostensibly because they are a danger to society.

The book deals with the issue of what constitutes humanity, and was actually quite good. The bounty hunter had to go after these androids that look and act just like humans, except for the fact that they don't feel empathy. It really made me muse on artificial intelligence and how humanity will cope with it when it arrives. If humans are able to program a sort of empathy into machines, how will they be any different than humans? Would machines that actually feel emotions ever be able to get into heaven?

In thinking about it more, I'm not really sure what would distinguish humans from Really Good Robots. In Blade Runner, androids are discovered because they lack empathy. However, isn't it possible for a human not to be empathic? I have it in my mind that autistic people sometimes do not exhibit a ton of empathy. Are they sub-human? What do you think would be the line of separation between humans and robotic replicas?

I usually don't consume science fiction, even though it is often very similar to my chosen genre of fantasy; I'm not really sure why that is. Perhaps I just really like books that use medieval weaponry and therefore focus on physical prowess, which science fiction often does not feature. However, I can't imagine I would like a book about modern knife-fighters very much. For whatever reason, I consistently like science fiction less than fantasy. Even this book, which was pretty good, started dragging toward the end, and I couldn't wait for it to finish so I could start something else.

One, Two, Buckle my Shoe

2009-08-11T20:23:00.003-06:00

I just finished this mystery by Agatha Christie yesterday. It revolves around a dentist's death that is made to look like a suicide, but Hercule Poirot suspects something is up. The plot thickens when a fabulously wealthy, powerful, and force-for-good-and-stability-in-England-and-therefore-all-civilization banker becomes a target.

One thing that bothers me about many of Christie's novels that I have consumed (which, admittedly, is not a huge number) is that the stakes are so high. In this, the potential death of a banker could lead to a worldwide communist regime; in The Big Four, an international gang threatens to overthrow all governments; etc. I suppose that these high stakes may make things more dramatic, but I can't help looking at all of these premises as a little absurd. I would prefer more quotidian mysteries, such as a simple murder, theft, or parking infringement.

As far as Christie's mysteries go, I think this one is somewhere in the middle. Two pluses: this is the first Poirot mystery I have read that was not narrated by Captain Hastings, which I think works out well; also, Inspector Japp seems much less bumbling in this book, which adds some credibility to his character. Overall, this book was diverting, but I don't think I would consume it again.

Thank You, Jeeves

2009-08-04T21:54:00.002-06:00

This is another hilarious Jeeves installment by P. G. Wodehouse. I discovered him only a few months ago, and he is already one of my favorite authors. As my younger brother will agree, Wodehouse can turn a phrase in the most comical of manners.

As usual in the Jeeves books, Bertie Wooster gets himself into an imbroglio, this time regarding an unwanted fiancee, a drunken valet, and a bit of un-PC black shoe polish. Also as usual, Jeeves buttles above and beyond and saves the day.

I believe that "jolly" is the mot juste for this book.

Fancy meeting you here

2009-08-04T21:49:00.002-06:00

I am now feeling refreshed after my three-year hiatus, and am perhaps ready to reenter the world of blogging!

Actually, I have lately been thinking I should make a record of the books I read, for reference in future years. So this blog will be an experiment in that. I plan on giving a short entry after every book I finish, stating my thoughts on the book for all you readers in need of literary suggestions.

One caveat: by "read", I really mean "consume." Abbie is skeptical that listening to books counts as reading, but I think it basically does for most books. And since my listening time is much more abundant than my actual reading time, I'm counting the listening. If you are a purist, you can just skip most of my posts!

2006-12-04T10:02:00.000-06:00

Well, hey. I know that I said I would get back to this blogging business as soon as I finished my actuarial exam, but I guess I was mistaken.

Anyway, I took the first actuarial exam last week, after many many many hours of studying. I won't find out how I did for another six weeks or so, which is obnoxious. The testing was pretty interesting, though, because I got to wear orange earmuffs to block out the ambient sound.

Kville has gotten some winter weather over the past weekend. I have realized that my hotrod doesn't handle the blizzards too well. This was brought to my attention by the fact that my door does not even stay shut when it gets too chilly outside. I had to drive to school holding the door shut, and then tie it to my steering wheel with a shirt so it wouldn't flap open throughout the day!

This week is my last week of classes before finals. I don't see how this semester has flown by so quickly, but I am pretty pleased about the impending Christmas break. I may start up World of Warcraft again over break, since I've been missing it.

Finally, here is a little news from across the world. Fiji has been having some troubles lately, what with the military trying to take over the government. This news hits me pretty hard. I've had this long-term goal to spend a few years living in the Fijian islands with my lady love; we were planning on writing a book about our experiences of living off the land. This turn of events, though, will probably make it trickier for us to pull off that plan.

New way to shower

2006-11-07T11:41:00.000-06:00

Heya.

I attended my first ever baby shower this past weekend. A girl in my fraternity is having a kid in a few months, and a shower was thrown for her. It was somewhat of an odd experience because only four guys were in attendance. This means we got to gang up together for one of the games (crafting a diaper out of toilet paper), which we lost pretty badly. The rest of the afternoon was quite pleasant, though, and I even won an individual prize!

I'm starting to feel something resembling stress these days as I am coming closer to my first actuarial exam (November 28 is the big day). I have a little over three weeks left to prepare, and my goal is to study at least 2 hours a day. This means that I am cutting back my hours at Domino's, which thrills me to no end. What with this exam, formulating wedding plans, and classes, delivering pizzas is not my highest priority these days. I can't wait until November 29!

Simulation

2006-10-26T13:36:00.000-06:00

I had to give a presentation in my Cost Accounting class yesterday. My group had to demonstrate the Theory of Constraints, which, if you don't know what that is, is not very exciting. However, we really spiced it up by giving the class an activity to showcase what they had learned. The output of this simulation: Accounting-themed Christmas ornaments! I think that they will be a huge hit in the upcoming holiday season. Here, the lovely Abbie markets some of our product. The "MOH" is an acronym for "manufacturing overhead," and the "COGS" stands for "cost of goods sold." This project was especially useful because now I won't have to do any shopping for Christmas presents!

This week, we had a career fair at Truman, so I got to meet a ton of potential employers. I am feeling pretty excited about my actuarial opportunities after graduation.

So how 'bout it? How 'bout marryin' me?

2006-10-22T17:39:00.000-06:00

Seriously, who in his right mind would not want to marry this lady?
Let's consider a little list of pros and cons about Abbie.
Pros:
1) Perfect
2) Wonderful
3) Brilliant
4) Beautiful
5) etc.

Cons:
1) Not very confident at parallel parking
2) That's about it

Basically, everything is stacked in favor of my wanting to be with Abbie all the time. Which is why we decided to get engaged recently. Yep, that's right, we're gonna tie the knot.

In case, by some miracle, you are a reader of this blog who is not already intimately familiar with all my goings-on, here's some background. Abbie and I have been dating for nearly two years, and it has been basically wonderful. We had talked about marriage before, but had always agreed that it would be years before we ever decided anything. Then the travelling started.

Abbie spent last spring--four months!--in Prague, followed almost immediately by a month in Washington, D.C. During these times, we both missed each other so miserably that we realized how important we were in to each other. Upon being reunited, our love for each other grew exponentially, and we very quickly confirmed that we wanted to spend our lives together.
That's when I started concocting secret plans. This past Labor Day, Abbie and I went to her house to pick up some school supplies, and I put the first step of my plan into action: I talked to her father. This wasn't just any old conversation either. It was a real heart-to-heart about my wanting to marry his daughter. Now, in case you are unaware, Mr. Hesse (Abbie's father), is quite mean and sometimes has an unstable temper. He also has won awards in the past for bare-knuckle boxing.* Understandably, I think, I was ridiculously nervous. After all, it's not every day that a fella has to tell another fella that he wants to marry his daughter.
*not actually true

After that step, I moved on to planning the talk with Abbie herself. I decided to scratch my original plan for asking her to marry me on a gondola ride because gondolas are in short supply in Kirksville. So I mused to myself for a while about possible schemes, until finally putting one into action on a chilly Wednesday night, not too long ago.

So here's what I did. On the fateful Wednesday, I had to work at Domino's. I made sure that I would get off early, but I kept calling Abbie to tell her that I was going to be stuck there until late. Then, after getting to go home, I prepared everything and then went to Abbie's house. We had planned on going for a jog that evening, which was when I was going to ask her. Upon my arrival, Abbie began telling me about how it was so cold and icky outside, and how she had a bunch of homework to do still, and that we should just go jogging on a different night. After much discrete cajoling and teeth-grinding, I finally convinced her to take a quick jog.

We headed out toward the football field on campus, where I led her to the uprights. At this location, I had cleverly hidden a love note for her. I imagine she suspicioned what was up right away, but she didn't let on. So we continued on our way, until we discovered another note. You probably get the idea: I had hidden a bunch of notes all around campus and town that she had to find. It was like a little scavenger hunt. At one point, we walked by a local ice cream shop. I thought that some ice cream would really hit the spot, as well as make Abbie more inclined to grant me a favorable answer later. Unfortunately, I didn't have any money on me. Fortunately, I had stopped at this ice cream shop and pre-ordered and paid for a delicious concrete, which they handed over to us during the middle of our jog.

As we neared the end of the hunt, Abbie kept counting up the notes. "22, 22 notes. I wonder how many are left." Uh-oh. At this point in the stroll, Abbie was supposed to have 23 notes! I had skipped right over the note planted at the Farmer's Market site! I decided just to play it cool and hope she didn't notice.
Our last stop was a little playground near my house. This playground has been the site of much revelry for Abbie and me because we used to joust on the playground equipment there. Sadly, we can't do that anymore since they ripped up the jousting equipment, but the park still has a lot of sentimental value. When we arrived there, I led Abbie over to a small pile of flowers and the final love note: "If these reasons haven't been enough to show my love for you, then I will happily write 25, 50, or even 100 more. But if they get my message across..." At this point, I dropped to one knee and pulled out the ring while asking her to marry me. Luckily, she agreed!

Just this past weekend, we told all of our families. They were quite overjoyed about the good news. Now we are in a frenzy of wedding planning since we only have about 8 months until the big day! On June 29 or 30, we will look just like this couple here (except we will be in Vandalia instead of Rome):

You can read Abbie's account of the wonderful events here.

Passing the time

2006-10-10T12:38:00.000-06:00

Abbie and I were driving around this weekend for a while, and our conversations eventually dwindled and died. We then rode for a few minutes with an awkward silence until Abbie happened upon a perfect solution. "Let's see who can yell the loudest inside this car," she said. One minute later, our ears were bleeding and no longer functioned, which provided a perfect excuse not to keep trying to make a convo.

This weekend is midterm break (already!), which means I am going home for a few days. Hopefully, this will involve much table tennis and game-playing. I also will get to see my younger brother's football team, which is purported to be decent. We'll see if that's actually true.

An effecient study session

2006-10-02T18:36:00.000-06:00

Abbie and I are working on homework right now (at least, I was until I started writing this post). She's been having a stomach ache all day, and I joined her to help comfort her so hopefully she'll feel better.

Just now, Abbie decided to perform some diagnostic work to determine her illness. She started clearing her throat a bunch, and then began gagging. But instead of turning her head slightly to aim for the trash can, she just stuck her hand in front of her mouth. After a little dribble of saliva and stomach acid comes up, she just shrugs and wipes her hand on her jeans. I suppose this is normal behavior if one "just wanted to see if I could puke up some blood."

Edit for people who are foolish: puking up blood is a symptom of ulcers

Missing: shoes

2006-09-27T19:45:00.000-05:00

I just finished taking my very first test of the semester. I've gone about a month without a single test, and now I have 5 in just 6 days. I still consider myself lucky, though, when compared to many of my friends. Just about everyone I know is trying to get into grad school, and right about now is prime grad-school-entrance-exam taking time. Abbie will take the LSAT tomorrow, and I know that her one test is more important than the rest of mine. But I my easy weeks now will come back to haunt me when I have to take 8 actuary exams over the next several years.

About a week ago, my tennis shoes decided not to be in my closet. This baffled me, but I just assumed they'd turn up somewhere, and I wore my older shoes. Time went on, and my shoes still had not appeared. This means that I had been wearing my old tennis shoes with bloodstains (see below) on them for a whole week.
Every time someone has asked me what is covering my shoes, I have tried to make up a new story: I created some roadkill while walking down the sidewalk; I dropped a set of knives on my foot; I dropped some of my loot while robbing a blood bank. Little do these people know that the real story is much more gruesome: I spilled deck stainer on my shoes while staining a deck. Luckily, the deception can finally end, because Abbie's roommate Julie had my regular shoes hidden in her car.

Rome revisited

2006-09-26T23:47:00.000-05:00

Not many exciting happenings have been happening lately, so I'm gonna add one last post about my visit to Rome over last spring break.

On the second day in Rome, Abbie and I mostly walked through the ruins and then toured the rest of the city on foot. During one memorable moment, Abbie and I heard music wafting through the city. Looking into the distance, we discovered that a parade was taking place about a mile away. Abbie quickly told me of a parade she had seen in Europe in which ordinary people could walk; they just hopped in line and strolled down the street along with the marching band and the Shriners in their go-karts. Excited about our chance to take part in a parade, we raced through the streets and alleys, always running toward the music.

When we finally arrived on the scene, we exuberantly sprinted out into the street to join the hoi polloi in the parade. About two seconds later, we looked at our co-paraders, listened to the speeches being said, and swiftly exited the street. We had stumbled upon a monstrous Italian Communism parade which was rallying the comrades for the upcoming elections.

Later that night, we wandered through half the city looking for interesting sites. We found one that struck our fancy.
Legend has it that telling a lie while sticking one's hand in the mouth of this Mouth of Truth will cause your hand to be bitten off. Abbie decided to risk it anyway, and you can see that picture here. I was not quite so lucky.

If I already posted about either of these things, then I apologize. I will try harder the next time.

coincidences

2006-09-18T23:29:00.000-05:00

I hope that the title of this post doesn't trick you; I only have one coincidence about which to blog. Today as I was walking out of the bank, I walked into a fella I know named Andrew. I said "Hey" and went on my way. On my bike trip home from the bank, I next encountered a guy in my fraternity named Peter. Again, we exchanged greetings and proceeded on. Next, I arrived at home, only to be welcomed by my roommate Sara. Coincidence? Certainly, after you consider that my three siblings are named Andy, Peter, and Sarah. As an aspiring actuary, I have calculated the odds of this happening, and they are 1 in 231893254.

I guess that I can think of another coincidence. I have had the song "Count It Higher" by Chris and the Alphabeats stuck in my head for the last two days after watching this video four times in a row. I also calculated the odds of this coincidence, and they are "pretty good." For your enjoyment, here is the video. For best results, watch only three times in a row.

In which I try for some sympathy

2006-09-12T22:34:00.000-05:00

I was gonna post a pic of my bloody, gash-ridden feet, but Abbie beat me to the punch, so I stole this from her blog. Zoom in to observe the gore that coats my foot anew with every step.
Update: Chlorine water burns a little on bloody, blistery feet.

In which Abbie and I are beasts

2006-09-10T22:58:00.000-05:00

6 a.m. - Wake up
6:17 - Force myself to open my eyes and actually get out of bed
6:30 - Drive to 1000 Hills for the race
6:52 - Drive back home for a forgotten bike helmet
7:18 - Return to race course
7:19 - Realize I have no socks
7:40 - Ride shuttle to beach before the swimming portion of the race; scare Abbie with my competitive intensity
7:53 - Work up the nerve to enter the 74 degree water
8:03 - Begin swimming8:43 and 1200 meters later - Exit the lake to a crowd of cheering fans and a trio of bagpipers; force Abbie to run with me to the bike corral
8:44 - Worry briefly about the sand coating my feet compounding the lack of socks; begin lengthy bike race with nobody in sight
9:24 - Realize that Abbie and I aren't actually in last place; we are totally smoking a 74-year-old woman
10:01 and 18 miles later - Amid more wild cheering, begin running portion, observe people already finishing the running portion10:04 - Notice that sand in my shoes has begun to chafe
10:22 - Stop to clean out my shoes to absolutely no effect; notice that my feet are bleeding in several places
10:31 - Pass old guy who is barely walking yet still cheers us on
10:35 - Struggle through a wall of exhaustion to hear Abbie ask, "David, do my eyebrows look all right? I don't want them to look bad on the pictures."
10:35:02 - Pretend that I am hallucinating from the tiredness
10:39 - Pass second old guy on lengthy downhill
10:51 - Cross the finish line at a blistering sprint amid much more wild cheering and many photographers

I must say that this triathloning business brought back a lot of fond memories of my racing days. I absolutely love the communal racing atmosphere, and how everyone is so encouraging throughout the day. Another triathlon probably won't be too far distant, I hope. Or maybe a marathon. I feel like I could tackle just about any competition after our performance this morning.

Not as exciting as I had anticipated

2006-09-07T23:35:00.000-05:00

Remember that hidden cavern beneath my house? The one housing escaped prisoners and a slew of other vagrants? Apparently they all skipped town before we actually looked around inside, because the only thing in there was a pair of lamps. There were no bloody fights against pirates over buried treasure, not even any large rats. Hopefully my next adventure will be more adventuresome.

Tonight Abbie and I hit up the pool again. This brings our number of swimming practices up to three. Some might say that this is a sure sign of disaster on race day, but I actually am not all that worried about the swim anymore. I discovered tonight that if I get tired, and if I don't mind water in my nose every 15 seconds, I can just coast along on the backstroke.

This week and next week both of my fraternities are having their fall rush. This means that I have multiple mandatory events just about every night on top of my work and homework schedule. Plus, I am planning on joining another fraternity in the next week or two. I don't rightly know when I'm gonna find time even to sleep these days, much less play World of Warcraft, but I'll have to make do.

something scary enough to drive me back to blogging again

2006-09-05T00:16:00.000-05:00

Hello, all. Nice to see you again.

We just had a bloody adventure at my house. I got home from Abbie's, walked in the door, and encountered all of my roommates standing in the kitchen in a serious manner. My "something's amiss" detector went off immediately. My roommate Josh led me over to the water heater in an obscure corner of the kitchen to show me some mysterious light shining through two holes in the floor. Everybody is bewildered by this, and some chalked it to homeless folks, meth dealers, and even the neighbors' running of an underground theater between our house and theirs. I considered these rather unlikely, as I had never heard any sounds emanating from the floorboards before, but the rest of the roommates were still concerned. We decided to investigate. By "we," I mean everyone except Amy (another roommate), who stayed inside with a broom for defense and shouted to us to give her updates through the windows.

I grabbed a knife and a flashlight, Josh picked up a short sword thingy, Sara (the last roommate) armed herself with a cigarette, and we set out to explore the base of the house outside. What did we find? Nothing, at first. Further inspection led us to a door in the side of the house, one which has always been firmly secured to the house so that it doesn't open despite very persistent urging. It looks sort of like this, only much lower quality and less obvious looking. As far as we knew at this point, it led nowhere. Josh and I decided to double check this conclusion, which was quickly disproved by my lifting the door completely away from the house, after which it promptly fell to the ground.

At this point, I'm getting a tad concerned, because these are freaky goings-on. The door's absence didn't reveal a hole in the house, though; a large block of styrofoam-like material was still blocking the doorway. Josh snuck up and shoved his sword into the foam and yanked it out of the doorway, revealing a little hideaway under our house. It's entrance is underneath the stairway that leads to the upstairs of the house. We perused the crawlspace from a safe distance, observing a light shining from some unknown source, several cinderblocks, two new-looking extension cords, and a dirty towel. Sara convinced us that, despite the mace that Amy was offering us through the kitchen window, further exploration would not be in our best interests at present, so we promptly resealed the hole.

Another diagnostic exploration is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Amy suggested a slumber party in her room tonight because it is the most defensible, but I think we are just contenting ourselves with locking the doors. Hopefully tomorrow's searchings will be more fruitful.

I suppose that'll do it for me for now. Perhaps more awaits as this mystery unfolds.

2006-06-19T16:26:00.000-05:00

I'm finished with two weeks of class and work and living alone in Kirksville. Finally. Just last night, my roommate Josh moved into the house, so now I will have some human interaction outside of the Domino's crew. Now don't get me wrong, I like some of my coworkers, but there are only so many times I can make fun of a person for having Hootie and the Blowfish as a favorite band, and only so many conversations I can hear about pimping out a car so it will drive 135 miles per hour before I get bored.

My two classes are going pretty well so far. I have a test already this coming Thursday, so much of my free time this week will actually become slave-over-marketing-book time.

I will have a pretty nice reward after that, though, because I am going home this weekend. As a Christmas present, my parents decided to take my brother and me to see Phantom of the Opera at the Fox Theater, so I get to see that this weekend! I absolutely love this musical, but have never before seen it performed live. As a surprise bonus, my dad's chorus is giving a concert this weekend that I am getting to attend. I will get to stay at home for four or five days, so that will be a nice change of scenery.

In just 12 days, I will be heading back to St. Louis again to pick up my lady friend!

2006-06-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

I guess the summer has finally fully started for me. I am in the middle of my first week of class, and it's going pretty well so far. That is to say, nothing much really happens during the first week. I'll let you know how things go when I actually start getting real homework.

I've been working a lot since I got to Kirksville, trying to fill up my empty hours as well as bolster the bank account. Unfortunately, the latter goal may be a bit counterproductive. When I work more, I drive more, which causes one's tires to go flat and one's engine to start making funny noises. I'm having the noises checked out tomorrow, and hopefully it will only be a minor problem.

I hit a bird with my car the other day. Has this ever actually happened to anybody? They are usually so nimble at getting out of the way, but this one apparently was not as talented as its brethren.

living on my own

2006-06-04T00:17:00.000-05:00

I am now back in Kirksville, where I am living all by my lonesome. Where I will be living all by my lonesome for the next two weeks. Where I will not be washing any dishes or cleaning for the next two weeks.

Today, my first full day here, I actually lived like a normal person. At least, as far as waking up while the sun is still climbing. This morning I went to the farmer's market for some groceries before heading to the local table tennis tournament. Now this tournament was no walk in the park. I wasn't too nervous going in, but I certainly was after I noticed that everybody else in my bracket was Asian (how many names on this list are NOT Asian?). But I decided not to drop out immediately, and I played pretty well, and I ended up in very first place! That's right, I beat out two opponents.

I also started up my running tonight. I felt like I was in pretty good shape for a while, but that was before my legs started getting all tingly after about 70 feet. I guess that will go away with some more practice. If not, it's gonna be pretty painful when I start running marathons.

Hey there

2006-06-01T17:01:00.000-05:00

It has come to my attention that folks miss my updates, so I will do my best to oblige in the future. I haven't blogged much over the past few weeks because I've been so caught up in doing nothing that blogging just hasn't made it to the top of my list.

So here's what's been going on in my life. I've spent the last three weeks at home, mostly relaxing, and doing some visiting. I spent several days visiting with the lady friend; this time with her was somewhat bittersweet. The sweetness came from the fact that she is rather wonderful, and I can't think of a more fun activity than making up songs for a musical together while jousting on playground equipment, or teaching her to climb trees, or even riding around in a car with her old Uncle Ralph. The bitterness derived from our knowledge that our time together was all-too-brief.

Last week, Abbie left for Washington, D.C., for a 5 week long internship. She's trying to fiddle with the constitution, which makes my proposed summer of delivering pizza to Kirksville's high society seem somewhat mundane. Hopefully, after she returns in July, she won't take off for another long-term vacation again.

Tomorrow I must head back to Kirksville to rejoin the rat race. My duties will involve classes for 6 hours a week, working for 30 hours a week, sleeping for 35 hours a week, and playing WoW for 97 hours a week. Actually, I'm planning on taking up running again as a summer activity, so hopefully I won't waste away in front of a computer the whole time.

insomnia

2006-05-23T01:22:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading a book that was so exciting that I can't go to sleep now. So here's a quick update on my life.

My parents finally arrived home from England where my dad's barbershop chorus sang some songs. To prepare for their arrival, I had to do all the jobs this morning that I was supposed to be doing all week. Washing dishes for two hours straight is not much of a blast. Also, my sister and her adoring niece visited today, and I have misplaced my glasses.

Soon World of Warcraft will release an update which will completely redefine how I play my mage. Instead of primarily casting fire-based spells with some arcane spells thrown in, I will start using frost-based spells to complement my fire ones. It should make for a pretty exciting time.

All in all, this is a completely worthless post.

In which I am attacked

2006-05-22T00:20:00.000-05:00

I visited Abbie in Farber this weekend. The first thing I did was stop by the Van-Far high school where her mother was cleaning out her classroom. A few minutes later, a visitor arrived to meet me. After a few seconds of introduction and small talk, another visitor arrived. Followed by another, and another, and six more! These people surrounded me and all pounced at once! Not only are were about 10 women staring at me, none of whose names I could recollect, they all knew everything about me: my college major, my present job, my current address, my checking account balance... Apparently, shortly after my arrival, Abbie's mother had rushed down the hall alerting everyone in the school that I had arrived. They must not get much excitement in Farber.

Today I went golfing with Abbie and her brother Ryan. That is, Ryan golfed while Abbie and I tried to golf. The only other time I had been golfing I went with my brother Andy, and we only had time to finish four holes before I had to leave. So I wasn't all that good to begin with, obviously. But add in the fact that I golf left-handed, and Ryan only had right-handed clubs for me to use, and you come up with a complete disaster. My main problem was consistency: I had a ton of success driving the cart and putting the ball on the tees, but not much talent at hitting the ball every time I swung at it. Over nine holes, I wound up with a score of 70, which is abysmal. Ryan completely smoked me. I don't know how Abbie would have ended up because, due to time constraints, we were forced to stop her after about a hole and a half.

test

2006-05-18T03:14:00.000-05:00

So my previous post was apparently a completely unsuccessful and unintelligible experiment. Feel free to disregard it. I have learned the hard way not to push the limits of the blogging world.

busy

2006-05-17T11:55:00.000-05:00

This has bin a pretty rough weak four me. What with playing World of Warcraft awl the thyme, and sleeping fore ten ours a knight, Eye have knot had thyme even two think about blogging. Butt I am taking a brake from my hectic schedule to regale ewe with a tail of adventure.

Aye took a walk last knight to get a breath of fresh err. I had bin pent up inside all day, sew being outside was quite a relief. This peaceful atmosphere wasn't too last, unfortunately. While strolling along, Aye herd a clamor behind a house. I piqued around the corner to assess the situation, but I couldn't sea anything because of all the landscaping. I stole into the yard two get a better look, with howling and screeching awl around.

Suddenly, I was hit! A small dog flying threw the ere maid me its landing pad. Before I could even adjust to this knew development, some shadowy figures chasing the dog pummelled strait into my leg, knocking me to the ground. I rolled away, the dog still clutched in my arms, and stumbled to my feat. The attackers were two apparently bloodthirsty raccoons. I kicked at won, but struck only a glancing blow. The second raccoon took this opportunity to try clawing it's weigh up my leg. I took careful aim and slugged it across the snout, sending it flying. This seemed to weaken there resolve because they broke ranks and fled. The dog also ran away at this point without so much as a "Thank you very much for saving my life. I thought I was a goner." Animals are pretty rude these days.

Oh weight. Did this really happen? No, I'm pretty sure I made this all up. But I'm lichen it more--and it is more exciting--than my alternate adventure story: Making a Burrito in the Microwave.

Well readers,

2006-05-13T22:57:00.000-05:00

It appears that I have neglected you for some time. I had a pretty rough week and was unable to devote much time to the blogging. But you may be pleased to learn that my semester is finally over, and I will be hopelessly devoted to you for at least a few days.

Abbie finally came home on Thursday! In case you were somehow unaware, I haven't seen her in about 2 months, so it was quite nice to see her again. Despite my trepidation, conversation luckily flowed like...something, so it appears that we are still in love.

I visited Abbie's house for the last two days. Today, her brother ran the hurdles in his district track meet, so we got to see that. I haven't been to a high school track meet since my own high school days, and all the memories flooded back. The atmosphere at track and cross country meets can't be duplicated anywhere.

Now I am back at home again. I will be here for a relaxing three weeks or so before heading back to grueling Kirksville. Goals for these coming weeks: none.

This post is dedicated to Andre the Giant, because I'm watching him in "The Princess Bride" right now.Andre, you will always be an all-star.

rough

2006-05-09T00:28:00.000-05:00

Finals are starting this week. Ugh. Today I only had one, but tomorrow I have two more, and my last two are on Thursday. And the worst part about this is that I am having quite a bit of trouble motivating myself to do anything worthwhile, like, oh, studying perhaps. That's a bad combination, I reckon.

The good news is that this week is ending spectacularly. Abbie is finally returning from gallivanting abroad! She is arriving on Thursday and visiting Kirksville on Thursday night! It will be glorious having her back in the country.

And now I must continue cramming for accounting. I will try my utmost to post again on the morrow, but don't hold your breath.

Blurbs

2006-05-05T17:10:00.000-05:00

So Kirksville isn't really catching on to this whole "summer weather" fad. El Salvador is going to have 100+ temperatures in the next few days, and our temperature here dipped into the frigid 40s last night. I don't know why this town is so behind the times. It may be time for some more of that global warming stuff.

We finally cut our grass yesterday. Here are some before and after shots. This is before:
And this is after (we also planted some trees and built a fence; we were feeling ambitious yesterday):
Last night at Domino's, my coworker Chris kept talking about his impending participation in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It really brought back memories from my younger, harsher days. But I've promised not to go back down that path. I've left too many broken men in my trail.

2006-05-03T11:37:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are the final flameball pictures. As you can see, it is intense action that the whole family can enjoy. As you can also see, my shorts are way too big in this picture. Last night while I was delivering pizzas, I encountered people in walking in the road about 23 times. What is it about Kirksville that makes people see a car and say, "Hey, I'm gonna try to kill myself right now, or at least create an inconvenience and increase this guy's delivery time"?

weekend

2006-05-02T12:19:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was pretty much amazing. Phi Sigma Pi had family day on Saturday, so my parents made a visit to town. The trip was fraught with vocabulary and grammar discussions. Even better, I played boggle and sudokus for over four hours on Saturday! How huge of losers are we? The folks stayed until Sunday morning, and left after brunch. It was a very relaxing visit.

On Friday night, the real excitement took place. Some friends and I played....FLAMEBALL! If you are worried that this game is as dangerous as it sounds, you are completely justified. Flameball involves soaking a tennis ball in gas, like so:
Then, somebody lights it on fire.The final step is playing catch with the flameball. I have a couple more pictures I want to add about this step, but I can't because blogger is being crazy right now. I'll put them up later this afternoon, hopefully.

But really, flameball is not all that risky. Apart from all the hair that has been burned off from my forearm, I suffered no ill effects. Our high-quality homemade gloves protect us from harm.

Cheap

2006-04-29T11:11:00.000-06:00

For only 8 euros, you can taste croutons in Rome.There really was no purpose to this post.

trouble

2006-04-26T19:33:00.000-06:00

My roommate Laura is in a sign language class. For this class, she has to sign the lyrics to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" tomorrow, so here I am watching her practice and listening to the song, when suddenly my other roommate Sara bursts through the door.

"We're being attacked!" she cries out. Startled and wary, we follow her into the kitchen where a heart-stopping sight met our eyes. A two-inch-long Bumblebee is buzzing around in our ceiling light (please note that "Bumblebee" is capitalized to denote its power and ferocity). So Laura and I suit up for battle, developing a strategy for defense and finding makeshift flyswatters to combat this freak of nature, with Neil Diamond's egging us on in the background.

It turns out, though, that Bumblebees are not very adept at escaping from light fixtures. After poking the light for a few minutes to coax the Bumblebee out, we gave up. So now this insect on steroids is hanging out in our kitchen. Well fortified. Just waiting to pounce. If I don't blog again in the next few days, you can assume that the Bumblebee has struck again.

Pulling teeth

2006-04-24T16:17:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, I read some children's books to kids at the local library. When I say "kids," I mean one girl who clearly had been forced at gunpoint to go to the library, which is, of course, the most boring place for a 10-year-old to visit in all of Kirksville. This girl was so uninterested The Amazing Bone that, despite the tension in the story (knife-wielding highwaymen!) and my brilliant storytelling abilities, she never once changed her blank stare; I didn't even get so much as an eyebrow raised in anticipation.

At the height of the excitement, I asked her what she thought would happen next. "I think the pig is going to be pushed into the oven" was the merriest response I could get out of her.

Everyone should read The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

Speaking of mysteries, this is the kind of email I get from my loving sister.