Friday, March 31, 2017

Entry 374: Double-Duty Dadding

S left the country for work on Sunday, so I've been double-duty dadding this week.  Well, not quite double, S's parents came up to help out, so it's more like 1.5-times-duty.  They are actually not much help with the boys because the boys don't let them help.  They aren't used to having them around, so they want me to do everything.  Here's a typical conversation:

Me: "Hey, Lil' S1, go put your shoes on, we gotta go."
Lil' S1: "I need your help to know what shoe goes on what foot."
Me: "Go ask Avva, she'll help you."
Lil' S1: "N-o-o-o," [whiny voice] "I want you to do it."
Me: *Sigh*

Lil' S2 is even worse.  If I'm around and not paying one-hundred percent attention to him, he starts crying and then runs over and clings to my pant leg.

So I'm doing the bulk of the work with the kids.  But S's mom really helps out in two ways: (1) she cooks all the meals; (2) she gets Lil' S2 when he wakes up.  That latter one is especially huge.  He typically wakes up sometime between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.  Then it's about 50-50 as to whether or not he will fall back asleep, and even if he does, it's usually after 25 minutes of rolling around and making noise.  More often than not when he first gets up, I get up for the day.  But with S's mom here, I can usually sleep in until 7:15 or so without distraction.  That extra bit of sleep makes such a big difference in how I feel and how I can function throughout the day.  So I'm extremely grateful that she comes up to help when S is away.  S's dad, on the other hand... well, let's just say he tries -- kinda.

Alright, I think I'll finish out this post with a lightning round.  I haven't done one in a while, so let's hit it.

-I won my office March Madness pool again.  It's my third time in five years.  Only one person has won it more than me (four times), and he's been playing since it started in 1999.  My first year was 2011.  And in the years I didn't win, I came in second twice and third once.  (Around 15 people play each year.)  I don't follow college basketball until the tournament, but I came up with a procedure to rank the teams based on FiveThrityEight's tournament odds.  It's a pretty simple process that doesn't require any knowledge beyond basic probability, but I haven't revealed the details to anybody, and I refer to it only as "my algorithm" to make it sound more sophisticated than it is.

It might seem silly to say this, but I actually think this helps my standing with the company in a legitimate way.  The vice president of the company has implied several times that he's impressed that I can use math to pick college basketball winners.  ("You might have to give a lunch-time talk about your technique.")  He has some say in how bonuses and salaries are allotted, so impressing him certainly can't hurt.


[My algorithm predicted a strong showing from South Carolina]

-We signed Lil' S1 up for soccer again this spring, and I'm already regretting it after one practice.  He just can't focus yet on a single activity for a 45 minute stretch.  Actually, none of the kids really can.  Four is just too young.  I didn't start organized sports until I was 7.  Also, a big part of the problem is his "coach" is absolutely abysmal at running the practice.  He doesn't keep the kids engaged, and he runs these drills that require the kids to stand in a line and wait for minutes at a time.  Of course they get distracted and start playing in the dirt and hanging on the equipment (Lil' S1 literally got his head stuck in the net), which is fine, they're little kids after all, but if that's the way it's going to be, then why don't we all keep our registration fees, save ourselves the headache of trying to constantly corral our kids and keep them on the field, and just meet up at the playground every Saturday.  It poured rain today, and I am so hoping the field will be in bad enough condition to cancel practice tomorrow morning.

By the way, I know what you are thinking, and the answer is I didn't volunteer to coach because I don't want to coach.  If either of my kids show a sustained interest in sports I'll get into it and volunteer, but for now, no thanks.


[This is, hands down, the greatest miss in soccer history.]

-Speaking of participating in sports, in doing Krav Maga, I've learned that I can kick really hard.  Punching, I'm not sure about, I can't tell if I have powerful punches, but I can definitely do some damage with my legs.  Last week one guy refused to hold the pad for me after the first set, because he said the jolts were hurting his arms too much.  And then after that, I kicked the pad clean out of a woman's hands.  So, if you were thinking about letting me kick you in the groin, I suggest you think again.





-I've been trying to find a new TV show to get into.  It's weird, we are in the golden age of TV, and yet I feel like there is nothing for me to watch.  Maybe it's the paradox of choice.  For one thing, there's so much out there, it can be overwhelming to sort through it.  For another thing, since I know there are so many good shows available, I'm overly worried about picking a show I won't like or will only kinda like and wasting my time.  So then I just don't pick anything at all.  Should I watch The Americans, The Crown, or Narcos?  Should I finally break down and watch Mad Men from start to finish?  Should I go with something lighter -- Bob's Burgers or Pitch?  Or should I rewatch a classic I haven't seen in years like The Sopranos or The Simpsons?  See what I mean?  It's maddening.  Well, Better Call Saul returns in a few weeks, so at least I have that to look forward to.

-Lil' S2 had gotten really into reading -- or at least being read to.  He toddles over to the bookshelf pulls out a book and then toddles over to you and starts whining until you put him on your lap and start reading to him.    Then when you finish, he does it again.  He's insatiable.  I hope this means that he will be really into reading later in life.  I would love to have a bookworm kid.  His brother is more of an iPadworm kid.

-Huge pet peeve of mine: When somebody asks you to do something, you say yes and ask them about the details, and then they don't respond to you in a timely fashion.  This happened to me twice recently.  In the first case, I was asked to give another kid a ride back from a group event Lil' S1 attended.  It was no problem; I just needed to know if I was taking him home or to our house where his parents would pick him up.  So I asked this in a reply email and then... crickets.  Several days went by, and then the night before the event I sent another email, and the person did respond, saying I should take him home.  Fine, but WTF?  Why am I the one emailing you a follow up about this?  I'm the one doing the favor, no?  Excuse me for bothering you.  But I just want to verify that it's still okay if I pick up your kid for you.  Then the kid got sick and didn't even go to the event.

The second case is still in progress.  Some friends are coming to town, so they emailed us about a week ago asking if we were available to hang out tomorrow.  I wrote back saying yes, giving the times at which we were available and some suggested activities, and asking them if this worked for them.  Nobody wrote back.  So are we hanging out tomorrow?  Your guess is as good as mine.

-I recently found out there is a second Trainspotting movie out and it's getting good reviews.  You dinnae ken how chuffed I am about this.



Until next time...

Friday, March 24, 2017

Entry 373: Healthcare Again

I don't want this blog to become dominated by politics, but I write what's on my mind and politics are on my mind a lot these days, so that's what I'm writing about.

As I begin this entry, Friday afternoon, March 24, 2017, the United States House of Representatives is a few hours away from voting on their healthcare bill, AHCA (aka Ryancare, aka Trumpcare, aka Pileofshitcare).  Alternatively, they are not a few hours from voting on AHCA.  There probably aren't enough votes to pass it, so they might pull it altogether.  But Trump, supposedly, for reasons only he knows, wants to hold a vote anyway, so maybe we will have a vote.  Maybe it will even pass.  Then again, maybe they will never vote on it at all.  Nobody knows!  But even if it does pass, it will surely die in the Senate where the margin for error is even slimmer (only two Reps could dissent).  That is, unless it passes there too.  Nobody knows this either!

The whole thing is a complete and utter farce that I would find hysterical if the farce wasn't being produced by my government.  The only thing that's good about this is that it's very gratifying to watch years of Republican lies about Obamacare catch up with them.  It's like that episode of Seinfeld where George lies to his future in-laws, and they call him on it, and he keeps on lying, and they keep calling him on it, and whole thing culminates with him driving them to a house in the Hamptons he doesn't have.  As many smart people have been pointing out for a long time, a good Republican replacement bill for Obamacare is as imaginary as George's vacation home.



To see why this is the case, you first have to understand how Obamacare works.  It is held up by what some call a "three-legged stool": 1.  Laws that prevent insurers from denying coverage to citizens for, say, preexisting conditions; 2.  Subsidies that allow poor people to buy insurance; 3. An individual mandate that compels healthy people to buy insurances.  In addition, the ACA gives states federal money to expand Medicaid (which some states accepted and some (cruelly) did not), which it pays for through tax increases.

Republicans in Congress are, to a person, ostensibly against Obamacare.  But the reasons they give are not consistent with a replacement bill or even with one other.  There is a strong contingent of Reps -- The Freedom Caucus -- who object to the ACA on almost purely ideological grounds.  They want the stool gone completely.  They don't believe the federal government should have any role in providing healthcare to its citizens whatsoever.

The problem the Freedom Caucus has is that not a whole lot of other Americans feel the way they do.  There are parts of Obamacare everyday people of all political stripes really like.  Sick people like Leg 1, and poor people like Leg 2 and the Medicaid expansion.  For this reason, other Republicans have been saying they want to keep these parts.  The problem with that, of course, is these parts rely on the unpopular parts -- Leg 3 and tax increases.  If people want insurance when they are sick, then they need to buy it when they are healthy too (hence the mandate), otherwise everybody could just wait until they are sick before buying insurance, and then the market would collapse because insurers would be paying out a lot without bringing enough in.  And if we want to provide health insurance to poor people who can't afford to pay for it themselves, then somebody has to pay for it somehow.  Hence the tax increases.

For these reasons, a large faction of Republicans, most of them, in fact, have been attacking Obamacare not on ideological grounds, but for practical reasons (or for no reasons; they just disparaged it without specifics; Trump, of course, is the master of this -- "it's a disaster").  They say it's premiums are too high, that it doesn't provide enough people with good coverage, and that it could be headed for total collapse (the dreaded "death spiral"). But these are problems any replacement bill Reps propose won't and can't solve -- in fact their bill would exacerbate them -- because they would need to strengthen Leg 3 and/or raise taxes to solve them, and those are the exact parts Republicans want to trash, not bolster.  In this way, Republicans have been incredibly dishonest about Obamacare since before the law even went into effect (or they are incredibly delusional and ignorant, I'm not sure which), which is why their entire approach is doomed.

As I've said before, part of me wants this bill to become law.  Republicans would surely say I'm wrong about all this, so let's see what happens.  Let's see whose right.  But ultimately the price -- millions of people losing their health insurance -- is to high to pay.  So I hope it fails -- spectacularly.

And it does, for now, at least.  Paul Ryan pulled the bill again.  In the words of Nelson Muntz,



Until next time...


Sunday, March 19, 2017

Entry 372: Where All the Women at?

On Tuesday, I had another crossword puzzle published in the New York Times.  I won't spoil it for you if you haven't done it yet and are planning on doing it.  (The NYT puzzle runs a few weeks behind in syndication in some local papers.)  I always write an entry on my other blog about my puzzles, and you can read it in full here (which will spoil it).  But I'm also going to copy a large portion of it here directly, because it's an interesting general topic, and because I don't have a lot of time this weekend.  (I also wrote a "guest entry" for a blog I read daily called Football Perspective.  It's supposed to run tomorrow, Monday, and I spent a lot of time recently working on it.)


[Chuck Berry: October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017]

What follows is my commentary on the dominance of males in field of crossword puzzle constructing.
If you keep up with the crossword blogosphere, you are certainly aware there is a push among many puzzle enthusiasts to make crossword puzzles more inclusive.  I think this is a good thing.  Constructing and competitive solving are dominated by men. In the former, there are a few prolific females (particularly C.C. Burnikel who I swear has a puzzle published somewhere every day) and then that's about it.  The big question: Why is this the case? 
It's something I've thought about quite a bit.  In a way, it's something I've been thinking about most my life, as I discovered at a relatively early age that most my major interests -- sports analytics, math, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, etc. -- are predominantly male pursuits.  After many hours thinking and rethinking about this, reading opinion pieces, scientific studies, and the occasional controversial "academic exploration of hypotheses," here's what I came up with as the reason: I have no fucking idea.  I haven't come across a single theory yet that I've found particularly convincing. 
The root cause I think is clearly sexism.  Back in the day, women were discouraged from doing these activities, and so we're seeing the residual effects of that today.  This makes sense, but the missing piece -- the thing I really don't understand -- is why aren't we seeing this male-female gap to the same extent in other fields.  Back in the day, women were discouraged from doing pretty much anything other than raising a family, right?  So why is it that today woman are much better represented in fields like law and medicine (though still not close to 50-50) than they are in fields like math and crossword puzzles? 
Like I said, I have no answers.  I do think however that if somehow we could get more women involved in underrepresented fields that it would self-perpetuate.  I remember hearing about a study, the author of which I can't remember on a podcast I can't remember (get sourcing, huh?), demonstrating that representation really matters a lot when people are in their formative years.  If a child sees somebody with whom they can identify doing something then they are much more likely to pursue that thing than they would be otherwise.  This is why diversity matters.  Even if you don't believe it's inherently good, without it you effectively block people, particularly young people, from pursuing things they might otherwise want to pursue (and might be very good at), and that's not the way things are supposed to work in the land of the free and the home of brave.  
So it seems to me the only solution I have for getting more women involved in something like crossword puzzle constructing is to get more women involved in crossword constructing.  And that's not actually a solution at all.  It's a tautology.
(And by the way, if there are any aspiring female constructors reading this right now, and you need some guidance, I'm available!  Actually, I'm available even if you're male or anywhere else on the gender spectrum.  I'll just be excited somebody is asking me for advice about something.) 
Anyway...
And with that we will call it an entry.  Until next time...

Friday, March 10, 2017

Entry 371: Healthcare and Climate Change

The Republicans roll-out of their Obamacare replacement bill has gone about as well as anybody remotely paying attention to healthcare policy over the last half decade could have predicted.  Nobody likes the bill.  The right sees it as Obamacare Lite, which they oppose because they don't want Obamacare at all; the left sees it as Obamacare Lite, which they oppose because it doesn't make much sense to replace a bill with a shittier version of the same bill.   You can read more about the bill at Vox or from Jonathan Chait or Paul Krugman, but my basic understanding of it is that it's a huge shift of the burden of the cost of healthcare from the young, rich, and healthy to the old, poor, and sick.  It's all shrouded in typical Republican nomenclature about "freedom" and "choice" and "small government."  (In one hilarious bit of theater that could honestly pass as an SNL sketch if Melissa McCarthy were in frame, Sean Spicer makes the case for the new bill based solely on how many sheets of paper it is.  Governance by word count!)  But it seems as if nobody, not even other conservatives, are falling for it.  There have already been many Republican members of both the House and the Senate who have adamantly come out in opposition to the bill, and most the major "conservative" think tanks are against it as well.

One part of me really wants it to become law.  The Dems have been saying one thing about healthcare; the Reps have been saying something else.  We got an idea of how the former's plan plays out in practice, so now let's all see how the latter's works.  It's a great chance to do an experiment.  Also, a lot of the people who are likely to be negatively affected by this new law are people who voted for Trump, so it's only fair they get what they voted for.  If their premiums skyrocket or their insurer's marketplace goes into a death spiral or they no longer qualify for the same subsidies they did under Obamacare, then they would have nobody to blame but themselves and the party for which they voted.

But a much bigger part of me doesn't want it to become law because there would be a lot of collateral damage if it did.  Many people who opposed Trump would also find healthcare unaffordable, and that's too big a price to pay for an experiment.  Plus, the Trump voters hurt by this law probably would not blame themselves or the GOP.  They would still find a way to blame Obama and the liber-tards.  Sure, the Republicans wrote the bill and they control the presidency and both chambers of Congress, but if you believe that millions (millions!) of people illegally voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election, if you believe that Trump won in an electoral landslide, if you believe that Obama illegally tapped the phones in Trump Towers based on nothing, then surely you will believe that liberals are somehow responsible for the Republicans' healthcare bill.  The truest thing Trump ever said is that he could shoot somebody on the street and his supporters still would not abandon him.  I now believe this literally, and it is quite scary.

Ultimately, what's going to happen with this bill?  Who can say?  Nothing would surprise me at this point.  The majority opinion is that this bill is "dead on arrival," which, given how the GOP has conducted its business over the last few years, means that we can all expect it to be voted into law very soon.

[Apropos of nothing, here are some desserts S and I got on date night last Saturday.  They were $35 because it was at some chichi bistro in downtown DC.  I can't really complain though.  We at dinner at Qdoba for about $15 combined.  Also, the desserts were f*cking amazing!  I felt like Vince Vaughn in "Pulp Fiction" drinking the $5 milkshake.  The best thing was the dish at the top right.  It was a mocha flavored mousse that was absolutely heavenly.]


That is, unless climate change doesn't get us first.  I'm only half joking.  In my last post of overrated and underrated things, I neglected to mention the most underrated thing of all: climate change.  Certainly it is an important topic to many people, and it is covered in the media (the New York Times recently ran this distressing article), but considering the permanent damage anthropogenic global warming could do to human life as we know it, we aren't talking about it nearly enough.  It was barely mentioned last year as a campaign topic, and people seem much more concerned with other horrific parts of Trump's presidency (the travel ban, healthcare, Russian ties) than they are with his steady dismantling of our environmental protections.  Even the head of the EPA, saying, in so many words, that climate change is bullshit garners much less attention than the Obamacare replacement.

In a way, it's tough to fault people for this, as the terrible things I mention above do deserve attention, and with Lyin' 45 at the helm, tweeting something absurd every other day, it's difficult to keep up with and sort through all the nonsense.  But without an environment that's suitable for human beings to live in, everything else becomes pretty much moot, don't ya think?

Recently I came across this interview of Bill Nye by Tucker "You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show" Carlson.



It's not a great segment content-wise but it does illustrate a few tactics that climate change skeptics frequently employ.  First, they pretend they're having a good-faith, science-based discussion, but the truth is they want to "get" the other side much more than they want to uncover the truth.  This is clear from the ominous, unflattering intro given to Nye.  Skeptics seem to be of belief that climate change is something that can be solved by sticking it to the other side.

Second, they simply don't understand the usefulness of science.  What science is good for is drawing empirical conclusions.  It's about using the available evidence to come up with the most reasonable explanations for phenomena on our planet and in our universe.  If you never draw any conclusions then science isn't of much use.  Of course, it's good to always have an open-mind and question these conclusions, but at some point you have to roll with what you got or else -- what's the point?  So when people say of climate change "we need more information" or "the science isn't settled," it's an indefinite stall tactic.  Because for these people there will never be enough evidence to convince them.  You can tell this is the case because they never offer what evidence could convince them.  Skeptics never say I'll believe you if x because there is no x that will make them believe.

Third, they effectively denounce all science because it's carried out by humans and humans are not omniscient and infallible.  This is the line Carlson mostly sticks to in the clip above.  He asks Nye "simple" questions that are actually things nobody could possibly answer exactly, and then uses that fact in an attempt to discredit anything else Nye has to say on the matter.  The true answer to the question, "What percentage of climate change is caused by humans?" is "We don't know."  Nye knows this, but he doesn't want to say it, because he (rightly) understands that it will immediately be (unfairly) throw in his face.

I applaud Nye for going into a very biased environment.  I think people need to use any forum they can to warn about the dangers of climate change.  It's true that the vast majority of people watching won't change their mind about anything, but with the country divided nearly 50-50 politically, any movement is good.  I don't think it was a great performance for Nye, but I don't think it was a terrible one either.  The thing I think people need to do with climate change is analogize it to sickness.  Here's how I would handle it.

Interviewer: So you think the science on climate change is settled, right?

Me: In the sense that humans are hurting the environment by putting too much carbon into the atmosphere and heating the planet, yes, I think that is settled.  If you mean that we know everything there is to know about climate change, and can answer every question on it with 100% accuracy, then of course not.  No science is every settled in that way.

Interviewer:  What percentage of climate change is caused by humans?

Me: It's impossible to say exactly.  But we do know that it's large enough that we would be very wise to do change our behavior.

Interviewer: So it sounds like it isn't settled science -- you can't answer a very simple question about climate change!

Me: Let me give you analogy.  Suppose a heavy-drinker goes to the doctor and is diagnosed with liver failure.  The doctor obviously would say, "stop drinking."  We all agree that that's good advice. Now, the doctor doesn't know exactly what percentage of this person's liver problems is caused by drinking; the doctor doesn't know exactly what would have happened if this person never drank; and the doctor doesn't know exactly what will happen in the future if this person does or doesn't stop drinking.  But what they do know is that the drinking causes liver problems, and so this person should stop.  That's where we are with climate change.  The scientists are the doctors telling us we're making the environment sick, and we're not listening to them.

Interviewer: Yeah, but that's medicine.  The difference is that climate change science is so political now.

Me: Not really.  The science is science.  It's just that people don't like the results so they say it's political to muddy the waters.  By the way, people do this on the left too with things like GMOs.  The difference is that the fallout from these things and the urgency doesn't remotely compare to climate change.

Interviewer: Okay, then.  We are out of time, but you've totally convinced me, and I'm going to donate $100 to Earthjustice after the show, and I'm going to vote against any climate change skeptics in the future elections.  Thank you!

Me: My pleasure.

Until next time...

Friday, March 3, 2017

Entry 370: Overrated, Underrated

Sometimes it's good to be introspective and evaluate yourself and the things over which you control.  Other times it's good to be extrospective (this is an actual word) and evaluate the things outside yourself over which you have no control.  Today I shall do the latter.  Below is an incomplete list of things I find overrated and underrated.

OVERRATED

Pajama Day: My oldest boy goes to a D.C. public elementary school.  Every so often they have "Free Dress Week" (in lieu of the usual uniform), and always one of the themes is "Pajama Day."  I do not like Pajama Day, because pajamas are specifically made to not be worn all day.  Pajamas are not durable, and they're super thin, so it's 35 degrees out (like yesterday), and you're sending your kid to school with a nanometer worth of cotton on.  And Lil' S1 always wants to do it up proper, so he insists on wearing his slippers, so now I have to bring an extra set footwear, which is just asking for something to get lost.

Actually, Pajama Day is just a synecdoche for all of Free Dress Week.  I don't really like any of it.  Some of the other days are "Twin Day" (just asking for kids to feel left out), "Book Character Day" (he went as Captain Barnacles from Octonauts -- sure, it's a show on Netflix, but they have books about it too), "Wild and Wacky Day" (I just put him in normal clothes -- wild and wacky are subjective terms), and "School Spirit Day" (you gotta get parents to buy school paraphernalia somehow).  How about normal pants and a sweatshirt day?  I could go for that one.



Alcohol: The older I get the less I feel like drinking.  I still very much enjoy a cold pilsner or a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon among friends.  Alcohol is still my social drug of choice.  But no matter how little I drink, I pay a price for it later.  Knock back a few beers and I go to sleep with a bloated stomach; have a glass of wine or two and I wake up in the middle of night with a mild headache and severe cotton mouth.  Maybe if I could sleep in regularly these things wouldn't bother me so much, but when you are waking up at 5:45 every morning to a crying kid (and then on the rare occasions I'm able to coax him back to sleep, his brother wakes up the whole house ten minutes later), you already feel like you're hung over.  Adding alcohol to the mix makes it that much worse.

One thing I almost never do now is drink at home by myself or with S (who almost never drinks herself).  It's a catch-22 -- if I can't sleep in, I don't want to drink, and if I can sleep in, I don't want to spoil it with alcohol.  I want pure, unadulterated slumber.  Actually, that's not really a catch-22; it's just prioritizing sleeping over drinking.  The joke is that having kids drives you to drink (It's not wine; it's "mommy juice!").  But for me it did the exact opposite.

Date night: I'm not anti-date night by any means.  I recognize the purpose it serves in a relationship.  It's just that I don't always have fun on date night.  I'm always worrying about the kids; I'm usually tired;  S is usually tired; I often don't feel like going out; I'm especially prone to get annoyed by trivial things (even more so than usual); it's usually super expensive; and I don't like the "date night" expectations hanging over my head.  Do you ever go on vacation and feel compelled to do the famous things wherever you are because you're there, even though you know you won't really enjoy them -- like you find yourself at a museum of something you don't care about, pretending to read the placards, secretly wishing you had just stayed at the hotel pool and read a book and napped?  That's how I often feel about date night.

Incidentally, we have a date night scheduled for tomorrow night.  We are going to see Moonlight, which I really want to see, and we got our favorite babysitter, so I won't be as anxious about the kids.  It's actually setting up to be a good date night.  We shall see.

Knowing how to sew buttons:  My sister recently shared an article on Facebook about preparing your teenager children to be functional, independent adults, and she included a list of things that she wants her two boys (who still have a few years before their teen years) to be able to do before they leave the house.  It was a good list, but one of them was "sew buttons."  She might have gotten this from my dad, as I remember him talking about what a useful skill this was to have in the navy.  Also the inability to sew buttons is a common synecdoche (apparently this is my word of the day, and I'm not even sure I'm using it correctly) for a lack of traditional life skills among today's youth.  "Kids can't even sew buttons anymore!"  But I'm going the other way with this.  To all the teenagers reading this right now: You don't have to learn how to sew buttons.

I'm sure once upon a time somewhere it was a valuable skill, like, say, in the navy in the '70s on an aircraft carrier floating by itself somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.  But today, in urban society, it's not really that useful a thing to know.  First off, I need a button sewn on something maybe once every few years.  Since men don't where button-up shirts and ties everyday like we used to, I suspect loose buttons are not the problem they once were.  Second off, when a button does pop off you can take it to a dry cleaner and get it reattached for -- what? -- five bucks?  If you consider the alternative -- putting in the time to learn how to sew and buying the supplies to keep on hand -- I contend it is actually more efficient to not learn how to sew buttons.

This is illustrates my main gripe with most "life hacks" and "common skills" in general.  There is often a pro-DIY bias to everything, often underplaying the fact that DIY activities usually take a lot of time and energy.  There are many, many things I would rather pay somebody to do than learn how to do myself (e.g., change the oil in my car or change a tire on my car or do just about anything on my car).  Even if I didn't put any monetary value on my leisure time (which I do), it would still be economically inefficient in many cases to spend time on so-called life skills stuff, because I can use that time making crossword puzzles instead.  I get at least $300 every time I publish a crossword, so... that's a lot of buttons.  Now, obviously not everybody has the exact same options as me, but I think you get my point.

The last thing I will say on this is that there is also a large degree of back-in-my-day-ism with life skills.  It's more about lamenting the changing times than it is about kids being ignorant.  I hate back-in-my-day-ism, because, by definition, we are no longer back in your day!  I remember when I was growing up there was a lot of tongue-clucking among adults about kids didn't know how to drive a stick shift anymore.  (I was one of these kids, and now I'm one of these adults; I still can't really drive a manual transmission car.)  Well, guess what, not only are we now at a point in time when driving stick is almost a completely obsolete skill, we might not be that far away from the day when driving period is almost a completely obsolete skill.



UNDERRATED

Podcasts:  Podcasts are certainly starting to get their due, but nowhere near what they should be getting.  I learned of a stunning statistic recently: Less than 100% of the population listens to a podcast on a regular basis.  I know, can you believe it?!  I, for one, was on the podcast train very early -- almost a decade ago, back when people didn't even know what they were.  But I'm no podcast hipster.  I'm a podcast evangelist.  I want to make everybody a convert.  Podcasts are amazing, and there are so many good ones that I literally can't keep up with them all.  I've had to make some tough cuts over the years.  I very famously unsubscribed from The Adam Carolla Show, but I more quietly also had to ditch a few others.  Sorry Terry Gross, sorry Sklar Brothers, sorry Jonah Keri, sorry Dan Patrick.

There are two great things about podcasts: (1) they're on-demand; (2) they don't require the same attention as something on paper or on a screen.  (2) is the true game-changer.  You can do menial tasks and listen to podcasts.  How did people do laundry or walk the dog or drive to work before the invention of podcasts?  Fifteen years ago were we all just bored all the time?

Anyway, since you asked, here is my current list of podcast subscriptions in no particular order:

Missing Richard Simmons
The Poscast
On the Grid
Playing with Science
The Political Gabfest
Hang Up and Listen
The Gist
The Ringer MLB Show
The Bill Barwell Show
Effective Wild
NPR Politics Podcast
Vox's The Weeds
StarTalk Radio
The Bill Simmons Podcast
Radiolab
This American Life
Real Time with Bill Maher
The Dave Dameshek Football Program
Savage Lovecast -- Magnum Feed

This puts me just about at podcast equilibrium.  I'm more or less at a steady state, where the amount of podcasts coming into my phone equals the amount of podcasts leaving my phone.  Some of the less time-sensitive ones build-up two or three episodes at a time and sit for a while, but then I'll have to go on a long drive or take a flight or something and binge-listen right through them.

Fighting for Sport:  I started taking Krav Maga classes a few months ago, and I love it so far.  It's great cardio; it teaches me some basic self-defense; and best of all it's something physically intense I can do with other people.  I wrestled in high school, and I found that it's something I really missed throughout the years.  It's not just the competition; it's also that physically cathartic feeling I got when I was getting my face ground into the mat (or better yet grinding somebody else's face into the mat).  Sometimes you just want to exhaustedly grapple with another human being in a pool of sweat (and possibly a little blood), while somebody (in the case of my Krav Maga class, it's a jittery 27-year-old with too many tattoos) stands over you and barks a mix of criticisms and platitudes in your direction.

It's good to do it in a classroom setting too because then you build a sense of camaraderie with the other participants.  After class you feel like you accomplished something together.  It's make believe, of course; you didn't actually do anything other beat up some pads.  But it feels like you did.  And it feels good.

In general, I really appreciate fighting for sport.  I'm a big fan of MMA.  I get why people don't like it.  It can be pretty violent, but it's consensual violence.  I've heard it called "human cock fighting" before, but that makes about as much sense as "clean coal."  Just as coal isn't clean due to the fact it's coal, humans aren't roosters due to the fact they are humans.  It two people want to get into an octagon and test their mettle against one another, while others watch it for entertainment, so be it.  Cuts heal and bruises go away.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches:  I've been on a huge PBJ kick of late... well, not even of late, it's been going on for like a year.  I don't eat them that often, because they aren't really that healthy, but there are few better ways to start your weekend than with a cup of coffee, a banana, and half a PBJ on toast.

The key, of course, is getting the right kind of peanut butter and jelly.  For the former, I try to find something "natural" that doesn't separate overnight into a rock-hard block of peanut butter concentrate underneath a pool of oil.  For the latter, I go purely for taste.  The best combination I've found to date is Field Day organic, smooth, and unsalted peanut butter, and Bonne Maman strawberry preserves.  Although I recently went to Trader Joe's, and they didn't have either of these brands, so I'm going to try something new.  Hopefully I won't be disappointed.



Pandora Radio:  I've heard these type of streaming service aren't great for artists, but they are great for people like me who don't have time to "get into" music anymore, but also don't want to listen to the same old albums over and over again.  I've been working on my main Pandora station, trying to get it to play the right mix of songs I know and songs I don't know, and I think I've gotten it down pretty well.

Here are a few great songs I learned through Pandora.














And with that, I bid you adieu.  Hey-y-y-y-y, I'm not a young man anymore...

Until next time...