Saturday, October 26, 2013

Entry 205: Boo At the Zoo

We took Lil' S to a Halloween event at the National Zoo last night -- Boo At the Zoo.  It was really fun.  You get a bag when you go in, and then there are a bunch of sponsored booths, with people giving out various goodies.  We went with two other couples who each have a kid between two and three, so Lil' S was the young 'un of the bunch.  He's right on the borderline for events like this.  He had fun, even though he doesn't really get the whole trick-or-treat concept yet.  I ate almost all his candy.  And by the way, my taste in candy could not be any different than it was as a kid.  I used to love Skittles and Mike & Ike and Starbust as a kid, and now I think it's pretty gross.  Might as well just eat spoonfuls of granulated sugar.  That's what it taste like to me.  In general, I don't really get candy as an adult.  If I'm going to eat something sweet and ingest those empty calories, I want it to be something good -- ice cream or pie (or ice cream and pie) -- that's what I want, not gelatinous corn syrup pellets.  I don't care what Marshawn Lynch has to say about the matter. 



But if I am going to eat Halloween candy, I want the mini Snickers bars.  At the Mars booth I used my, S's, and Lil' S's bags to get three of them.  Or so I thought.  They were actually Milky Ways, which I might enjoy, if not for the existence of Snickers.  Every time I eat a Milky Way, I just think to myself, "Where's the peanut?!"  I still ate 2.9 of them, though.  (I may not understand candy as an adult, but I definitely understand lack of willpower.)  I gave Lil' S a small piece of one, which he seemed to enjoy. 

He was dressed as Kermit the Frog, and he was just adorable.  The kids of the other couples were dressed as Curious George and a dog.  I took a really great picture of the three of them (well, it's great by kids standards -- one smile, one deadpan, and one not looking at the camera -- Lil' S is the smile, which is why I say it's great), which I will hopefully post to Facebook soon.  I forgot to ask the other parents if they're OK with having their kids' pics posted online.  Most people don't mind, but just in case.  I think it's good to ask even with adults.  The other day, a friend of mine took a picture of me at a bar making a stupid face, and then posted it on Facebook without telling me with some sort of caption implying that I was drinking heavily (which I wasn't, I was drinking moderately).  I don't care enough to actually say anything to her about it, but I did think it was slightly inconsiderate.  It's not like she put up a picture of us together hanging out.  It's just me being goofy.  What's the Facebook etiquette here?  I'm not really sure.



In other news, I watched a really interesting 30 for 30 documentary last night called Big Shot.  It's about this guy named John Spano who bought the New York Islanders in the mid-'90s for $165 million, despite the fact he had maybe a couple hundred thou to his name.  He conned everybody into thinking he was a billionaire and actually closed on a deal to buy the Islanders -- an NHL team was his for several months -- before shit hit the fan.  I love conman stories (see this post).  I realized that being a good con artist isn't about being a good liar; it's about picking the right things to lie about.  If you find lies that people want to believe, they will believe them no matter how outlandish they are (ahem... Fox News).  In the case of John Spano, everybody was desperate to find a new owner who would keep the team on Long Island.  When Spano came along and said that he would do that, it didn't matter what he said next, people were going to believe it.  Anyway, I don't want to spoil the film too much, in case you want to watch it, which you should.

[J. Spano]

In other, other news, the Obamacare website continues to a debacle.  Supposedly the plan is in place to fix it by the end of November.  We shall see.  The powers-that-be fucked this one up royally.  There's no two ways about it.  They bit off more than they could chew, and you can't do that with complex computer programs.  It sounds to me like it wasn't a time crunch that fucked them per se; it's more that the time crunch forced them to go about things in a way in which fucking things up royally was almost a guarantee.

I don't know anything about the code behind Obamacare specifically, but I do know about computer programming in general.  And the way you build complex programs is to build a bunch of small individually tested component modules, which are themselves composed of smaller modules, which are made of even smaller modules, etc.  It sounds like they didn't do a good job of this with Obamacare.  They tried to do everything in one fell swoop, which has predictably been a nightmare.

In my (admittedly ignorant) opinion, they should have built three separate modules: 1) The browser module, where the user shops for plans.  All the prices would be based off user input and insurance catalogs.  This module wouldn't link to any outside sites, so everything would be estimates and would be contingent on the user providing accurate data. 2) The verifier module, in which all the info from Step 1 would be verified by linking to the various agencies and a final price and plan would be determined. 3) The provider module, in which the plan in Step 2 would be sent to the healthcare provider and the transaction would be completed.  Initially, the modules would not be linked, so the user would have to bridge the gaps between the three steps himself or herself, nothing would be automatic.  (Like they'd get an electronic output form in Step 1 and then be responsible for submitting it online for Step 2.)  And the user might have to iterate back and forth a few times between steps to get it right.  It might be annoying, but then once they're all working independently, you could link them automatically, for one-stop shopping.  And if one module crashes you could isolate it quickly and put in temporary work-arounds just for that one module until you fix it.  It might be a grueling, user-unfriendly process at first.  But it'd get better, and look at the alternative.

As you can probably tell, I've spent too much time thinking and reading about this.  I've been having daydreams where I'm the guy who somehow single-handedly fixes Obamacare.  It's similar to the fantasy, where you're in attendance at the big football game, and the home team's last quarterback goes down with an injury, so the coach picks you out of the crowd to come in and lead the team to victory.  Only replace "football game" with "computer program" and "coach" with "president".  What?  When you spend a large portion of your day debugging software, these are the types of things you dream about.


[One of the best Homer clips ever!]

One last thing about Obamacare.  Mike Konczal has a good article about how the problems with it are precisely those that were needed to make it less "liberal" and thus more politically viable.  This is an excellent illustration of the broader plight of rational-thinking non-Republican these days.  You end up defending a lot of not very good ideas, because "not very good" is a huge step up from "nothing" or "completely terrible", which are the only alternatives Republicans are offering right now.  It all comes back to our two-party government monopoly.  It always does.

Until next time ...

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Entry 204: Scattershot Thoughts

It's 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday, and S wants to watch an episode of Downton Abbey before she goes to sleep.  (And she has an early bedtime.  She might try to tell you it's because the kid, but she's gone to bed early as long as I've known her.  She's one of those head-hits-the-pillow types of sleepers too.  I am so jealous of those people.)  I've little time for a flowery intro or seamless segues, but I have some thoughts.  So let's get to it, bullet point style.

  • I've found myself checking Facebook a lot more now than I used to.  I figured out it's because while watching the little guy, I only get breaks of 45 seconds or so, while he's preoccupied with other things.  Facebook is something I can check in under a minute.  One of my friends posted a link to this article ("7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook"), which I thought was funny and mostly accurate.  One thing I do disagree with though is the open brag.  If it's not couched in an obviously fake self-effacing shell ("guess i have everybody at worked fooled.  i got the promotion!!"), and it's reserved for big life events that are actually accomplishments, I don't find it insufferable.  Everybody should be allowed to crow at bit.  

    One thought I had: Would Facebook be better if their was an anonymous "dislike" button?  Maybe with different types of dislike -- "trivial", "boring", "braggadocious", etc.?  As the author points out, almost all the reinforcement on Facebook is positive.  If there was a non-confrontational, easy way to indicate to somebody that their posts are stupid, would that be a good thing? 
  • Speaking of watching the little guy.  He's so demanding right now.  He's at that age, where he's old enough to get into things he shouldn't, but he's not old enough to really understand reason or consequence (unfortunately for boys "that age" doesn't end until about 25).  And he's learned how to pout, to make things worse.  So it's just constant supervision and attention wherever we go.  And when you thwart one escapade, he just goes on to the next.  It's like if you surveyed a room and ranked all the things in it from least to most suitable for a child.  And then you brought Lil' S in, he'd just right down the list in order.  He'd start with the scissors that somebody forgot to put away and then move on from there.  If we're lucky, we can eventually get him down to just chewing on cell phone wires.  I'm really hoping Kid No. 2 (which is in our plans at some point) is a girl.  I don't care if it's a baseless, gender-normative stereotype, little girls are easier than little boys... until they're 14.
     
  • I have an acquaintance who's really heavy, like gasping-for-air-walking-up-a-few-stairs heavy.  She's a really nice woman, and her hobby is baking.  This got me thinking about obese people.  On one hand, they are severely stigmatized by society.  Slender people (especially slender, good-looking people) just have it easier in many ways -- socially, romantically, logistically (think airplanes), etc.  But in another way, they aren't stigmatized enough.  I'm not trying to sound overly harsh, bear with me.  This woman bakes a lot and then partakes in her goodies, and nobody says anything to her or openly looks down on her for it.  Imagine if this was some other unhealthy activity, like drinking or smoking.  If somebody was an alcoholic and his hobby was brewing and drinking beer that wouldn't be okay with people, right?  Or if somebody had emphysema and loved to hand-roll and smoke cigarettes, they'd get a lot of dirty looks, wouldn't they?  But when it comes to being unhealthy with food it's just not the same.  We have it backward with really overweight people.  We should be much less judgmental with the social aspect and more judgmental with the health aspect.
  • We had a handyman come over today to get estimates on some odd jobs.  Small stuff -- fixing sticky doors, tightening a shower knob, removing a wall-mounted TV that came with the house that we've never used -- all things that I could probably do, if I would take the time to learn how to do it (which would probably be easy, everything is on Youtube now).  But I won't.  I feel a bit guilty, like it's wasting money to pay for these things.  But on the other hand, you have to put some monetary value on your time.  Working full-time means my free time comes at a premium.  It also means I can afford to pay somebody to do odd jobs.  If I lost my job then I couldn't do this.  But then I'd have the cheap free time to do it.  It's a reverse catch-22.  At least that's how I justify it.
  • The government shutdown is over.  What a colossal, idiotic, pointless embarrassment of a farce of a sham.  And it was entirely on the Republicans.  If, after all this, you come across somebody who still tries to feed you the both-sides-are-just-as-bad line, kick them in the nuts.  Or if it's a woman, tell her she has a really bizarre-looking asymmetrical head, stare at it for a few beats, shake your head in a puzzled manner, and walk away.  Trust me.  It will spoil her day.
 Until next time...



Saturday, October 12, 2013

Entry 203: Strategy

So the government shutdown and the debt ceiling brinksmanship roll on.  It looked like a deal might be brokered last night, but it didn't happen.  Obama seems to be quite serious about his requirement of a "clean bill" before he engages in good faith* spending negotiations, and the Republicans seem quite serious about their requirement of getting something -- anything at all -- that doesn't make it look like they "lost" (even if they don't know what that is).  These two positions seem to be mutually exclusive, so ... here we are.


There's really nothing to like about the situation, but if you had to find a silver lining, it would be watching the Republicans completely bungle things over and over again.  What this whole foofaraw really hammers home is the unmitigated, collective delusion of the GOP (especially the Tea Party wing) -- the "Republican Bubble" as Bill Maher calls it -- an insulated little pocket that neither fact nor logic can penetrate.  The reason this is so obvious now is because the Reps' delusion is largely hurting themselves.  That's when you know it's legit.  By contrast, last year, for instance, when the GOP ignored reality (and basic statistics) and insisted that Mitt Romney was going to win the election, they weren't hurting themselves all that much, other than just looking stupid, which obviously they aren't too bothered by***.  This time it's been a different story.  They're getting the bulk of the blame.

And let's look at why they're getting most the blame, and what a masterful job they've done bungling everything.

For starters, they completely misjudged Obama's resoluteness on not allowing them to use a government shutdown or the debt ceiling as leverage in negotiations.  They thought he'd cave for some reason, and then they had no contingency plan for a graceful exit when he didn't.  This was especially absurd at the beginning when their demands were the defunding of Obamacare.  Could anything possibly be more delusional than thinking the POTUS is going to agree -- under any circumstances -- to wipe away his only signature piece of legislation, especially one that's been legitimize by all three branches of government?  (Well, maybe thinking the End Times are upon us, but that's more flat out nuts than it is delusional.)


And, by the way, herein lies the sweetest bit of, I'll say, irony, for lack of a better word.  The initial roll out of Obamacare has been the figurative train wreck its opponents said it would be.  The complexity of linking to all the various agencies that are needed to confirm all the appropriate qualifications has made the online exchanges incredibly glitchy, causing many people to not be able to use them.  This should be an incredibly embarrassing time for the White House. If the Reps had a modicum -- just the tiniest iota -- of realism in them, they would have known trying to defund Obamacare was a fruitless endeavor, and they could've used its calamitous beginning to their advantage in a major way.  Instead Obamacare's failings have been a relatively minor story, completely overshadowed by the Reps' decisions to shutter the government and get everybody in a lather over the debt ceiling.  Strategically they couldn't have given the Democrats a bigger PR gift.

Which brings me to my next example of delusion.  No matter what the polls say**, no matter how many elections they lose, no matter by how many votes, the Republicans always think they're the true voice of the American people.  Any notion to the contrary is deemed illegitimate in some way.  It's funny, isn't it, that a group who ostensibly prides itself on being the party of personal responsibility blames everybody else for its (and the nation's) failings -- the liberal media, moochers, immigrants, academics, gays, minorities, young people, single moms, Hollywood -- instead of pointing the finger where it really belongs.  The Reps would be wise to heed the message of a creepy dead pop singer.



But they won't.  And so their retreaded ideological war will continue -- a war they can't admit they're losing and that unfortunately we all get to be pawns in.  Maybe it will hurt them in the midterms next year, maybe it won't.  In the long run it probably hurts their brand, but that's the problem with the long run -- it's the long run.   I'd prefer things get settled by Thursday.

Until next time...

 *I love that this term always gets slapped in there when talking about negotiations, as if it actually means anything.  "I'll agree to negotiate, but only in normal faith."

**The "boomerang effect" discussed in the linked story is very applicable to me.  As anybody who has known me for at least the last six years knows, I was not an Obama fan in the early going.  Now, I'm a supporter, completely by contrast.  The craziness of the GOP has made me an Obama supporter.  This is another amazing gift the Reps have given the Dems.  Just look at Obamacare: the Reps somehow managed to turn a very conservative, free-market, for-profit healthcare system into a coalescing of liberal cause.

***One subtle thing I find hilarious about this clip is that, ignoring his "legitimate rape" comments, his position on abortion in rape cases is to punish the rapist.  How controversial!  And here all this time I thought the solution to the whole rape/abortion quagmire was to let rapists proceed with impunity.  Thanks Todd, for finding such a great and relevant solution.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Entry 202: May You Live In Interesting Times

The title of this entry is a proverb* of unknown origin, and it perfectly sums up my feelings right now.  If I was a resident of some far away land, monitoring the U.S. from afar, I'd find this whole government shutdown fascinating and humorous, and I'd be genuinely intrigued by where it was headed next.  Instead I'm in the U.S., in the nation's capital, as it is, and I find it only frustrating and sad.  OK, and a bit humorous, but mostly those other two.


[A minor effect of the shutdown in our neighborhood]

I had a masterful political rant chambered in my brain, and the plan was to lay it all out in this entry, but for reasons not related to a shutdown of any sort, government or otherwise (they're more of the work and parenting variety), I'm short on time and energy this weekend.  I'll just give you the gist:

SCREW THE REPUBLICANS!
SCREW THE TEA PARTY! 

This is entirely their doing.  They can try to spin it as "Obama won't negotiate" (a line of bullshit their "fans" are all too happy to gobble up, and worse, that many independents use to justify an "it's both parties' fault" cop-out stance), but it's obvious to any objective observer with a half dozen active brain cells that the Reps don't want to "negotiate".  What they want is to use a government shutdown and default (much worse than a shutdown, they say) as leverage to extract things that they cannot get through proper government processes.  This is the antithesis of democracy, and it's what President Obama and the Senate Democrats aren't budging on.  Rightfully so.  But now we all suffer.  Awesome. 

[The whole Willy Wonka thing was tired about 20 memes ago, but this is too spot on to not post.]

Anyway...

I'm going to wrap up this post now, but I'll give you a few links I found interesting/helpful.

Ezra Klein: The Shutdown is a Republican Civil War (My fear is that it's not a civil war and what's really going on is that the Republicans are in the incipient stages of morphing completely into the Tea Party.)

Jonathan Chait: Why the Shutdown Is Leading to Debt Default; or, What Happens When You Take Hostages Without a Plan (A good account of how the Reps convinced themselves Obama would cave if they held the government hostage.  Remember these are the same people who legitimately thought the polls said Romeny would win the election.  Also, many of them aren't too big on science.)

Paul Krugman: What They Say Versus What They Mean (Paul Krugman on the real -- and really transparent -- motives of the Republicans.)

John Ydstie: Part-Time Workers Search New Exchanges For Health Insurance  (Short article, or audio story, on the likely effect of Obamacare on some part-time workers.)

Elizabeth Warren: A video of her speaking on the senate floor (Forget Hillary.  If you want a badass chick in the 2016 presidential race, you should go for Senator Warren.)

Until next time...

*Thanks to my friend RT for bringing it to my attention in a text.