topic for your discussion

i was thinking as i drove home tonight about language and how people come to have a particular repertoire of words and phrases and it's as identifiable to them as say... the clothes they wear or more perhaps.. maybe like your voice itself. so anyway, the point: does your language inform your personality or does your personality inform your language? if you think about the words used when you were small and acquiring your first language, your parents' influence could be very potent in the development of your vocabulary and how you use it. unless you believe that the personality came first, and that defines how you acquire and add your style to the way you speak. i'm sure you will have many interesting thoughts, and i'd like to read them. so post.

Analogy

Read this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

...

got that?

offended?

Here's an analogy from Cat:
a home-cooked meal competes with a dinner in a restaurant. Thereby hampering [interstate] commerce. This is done on a massive scale every night of the year, depriving millions of potential restaurant proprietors the chance at a tip and some mark-up. Just think of the potential for lost revenue... so it should follow that Congress has the power to regulate the number of times you eat dinner at home otherwise the entire food service industry would collapse. right?

the analogy i came up with was a service not a commodity:
free sex competes with the sex you should be paying for at a legal [or illegal] brothel. so congress should prevent that sex in whatever capacity they can - perhaps they can outlaw gay marriage on authority of the commerce clause?

WTF?!

atheists in foxholes...

i was listening to that thing i like to listen to - on the media... you know.. the podcast of it... and they had a bit about atheism that got me thinking about spirituality and non-theistic beliefs..
i think i've said on here that what goes on in the body physically is not all there is to health... traditional medicine in China refers to the health of the body, the mind AND the spirit, which are different but interconnected and interdependent. these relationships can be seen in our understandings of patterns that surround behavioral symptoms that correlate to physical symptoms and vice versa, and what is less easy to see is the "spiritual" bit as it relates to behavioral/mental or physical health.. i think i should define what i would consider a spiritual problem and differentiate it from the mind and mental realm of problems because i think in our culture we lump the two together.
in CM there are 5 (and occasionally 6, but really 5) spirits and they correspond to organs in the body: the Shen, the Po, the Hun, the Zhi, and the Yi. They are each different aspects of what makes you alive instead of just a sack of meat... starting with the most basic, the Po, is the spirit that comes into your lungs with your first breath and leaves with your last. it doesn't last forever like other ones.. i'm not familiar with writing about what consistutes treatable disease of the Po, so i'll move on. the Hun is the ethereal soul, it comes from "heaven"- the divine if you want. It wanders around at night while you sleep doing things that souls do.. like a ghost.. it is in fact left behind when you die and becomes your ghost, should you need one. diseases of the Hun can manifest as terrible nightmares or the feelings you get after you wake up from them.. some of the symptoms of PTSD remind me of disease of the Hun... next is the Yi, which is the intellect... disease of this spirit manifests like anxiety disorder or obsessive thinking that you can't let go of. the Zhi is the spirit that is your will to live. when it gets out of balance you wind up with no drive, or unrelenting drive... maybe manic behavior or suicidal tendencies.. the last one is the Shen, it is the spirit that connects you with the divine.. kind of like the Jiminy Cricket that tells you right from wrong.... when your heart is telling you what to do, that's your Shen. a messed up Shen could manifest like sociopathy i suppose..
let me say at this point that i am not an expert by any means on spiritual medicine in the Chinese system. i guess i'm thinking in public here..
so where was i going here?... oh yeah.. so i think much of what we consider mental/behavioral health would be classified in the CM system as spritual, because the human psyche is not a single entity, but several aspects working in concert.
i think people need some amount of spirituality to keep these parts of their non-physical being in balance... if you defy the voice in your heart, your Shen, you will cause yourself conflict. if you do what it says is right, you'll feel good.. we all kind of know that and I think it's part of what makes us human, and whatever name you have to put on it is fine by me.. however, at the point where someone decides there's nothing out there but molecules floating in soup i have to suspect there will be some dissonance between these aspects of thier health... and their spiritual deficits will manifest in the physical realm....
sometimes i talk about religions arising from peoples' needs for spiritual health.. to cope with the environmental and social stresses they encounter... if you look at all religions and what they do for the people they ..um... i don't know the right word here.. but i'll say interact with - it seems like they outcomes are very similar.. either they perpetuate customs and rituals to calm people about the unknown or they make people less afraid of the unknown itself with ideas like divine plans or fate and so on.. so yeah. i should really go to sleep..

reduce

so i either packed or gave away most of my clothes in the process of getting the house ready to sell and i discovered some really cool consequences of that today. I noticed a couple of days ago that i was just about of underpants and socks. i ran completely out of white socks and not quite out of work socks.. and all my white under shirts are dirty.. anyway.. i am leaving for spokane tomorrow so i had to pack, which means i had to do laundry, and so i had to dig around in the dirty clothes pile (which is not big by our standards of a big urgent pile of laundry)...

so anyway.. i dug around and found my clothes and discovered that i had only about two medium loads of clothes to wash in order to have my underclothes refreshed completely plus two pairs of work pants and a couple of work shirts.. so what's so cool about it is now we won't have all the backed up laundry pile that we used to and i'll be able to tell it's time to do laundry because i'm out of clothes by the end of the week. if it were work i'd say i reduced my work in process or WIP, and i would mention that it reduces the lead time between when i run out of clothes (which is good because if i don't run out of clothes i don't do laundry).. anyway.. it's good. i can put two medium loads of laundry away.. way more laundry would be a pain to put away.. anyway.. less stuff is good. i'm goin gto remember this when we move.

oopdate

so today is sunday. and i'm thinking very hard about going to sleep early because i'm having trouble keeping my eyes open. Work is going to be kind of stressful tomorrow morning, but perhaps the rest of the week will be not so bad. I don't know. I'm supposed to facilitate a workshop about something i know very little. I should try to see it as an opportunity to do something out of the ordinary, but for some reason i think this thing will be a mess. mostly because of the other people involved.

Then after work I'm meeting some awesome people who encouraged me to go to see Sarah Vowell at Elliot Bay Bookstore.. we'll see. i suspect that will be awesome.. i like when SV has books out. they're generally really fun AND informative. plus she played the baritone in school. that's awesome.

I think i will stay awake for a little bit longer.. oh.. i should eat some icemacream.
but just a little. ok...

Indictment for the unregulated free market

this financial mess is very very tired. and i would like for the ones who sold us on deregulation to pay a steep price for getting it wrong. about the price they just asked congress for. this wouldn't have been the problem it was if we weren't under such a crushing amount of debt, every one of us. the idea that you should finance college, that you should finance your homes, and cars, that businesses should borrow money to pay their staff? what's that? you say; financing education helps the lower classes rise to the upper classes.. no, it doesn't. it entraps those who needed to borrow for college in debt slavery. they owe their carreer to sallie mae, and they have to pay for years and years.. only because college costs too much.. way too much... houses now? ok, so 40 years ago houses cost about 2 years salary for the average person. that meant that you could actually save up a significant amount to pay for your house.... you might not have more than a few thousand dollars financed and it wouldn't require 30 years to pay off.. now houses are 7 or more times the average salary, and it's inconceivable to spend the amount of time saving you would need.... when did that become normal? why did that become normal? because they want to keep the middle class where it is. tempt us with a comfortable consumeristic life and we'll keep paying into the system... this system is slavery. so what is the answer? live without debt? i don't know... none of these past few weeks would have happened if we actually had the money we think we have.... i say hamilton was wrong.. you don't want the govenrnment to owe everyone money for it's entire existence. an insolvent bank would be shut down, why not an insolvent government?

zmm

ok. so i'm taking a break because i just mowed the lawn and did some weeding in the front yard and some scratching around with the rake in the back yard that kind of but doesn't really count as weeding back there... partly because it's not just weeds back there.. it's roots and grass and rocks and such.. anyway, this afternoon we're laying landscaping fabric down and pouring bark around the place.. exactly the way the back yard was when we bought it 4 years ago.. it seems weird that this summer, wait, 5 years ago, the guy we bought the house from was doind exactly what we are doing now to get this place ready to go. i remember the old neighbors telling me once that somewhere during the summer before it went up for sale the guy just started clearning out overgrown plants and stuff and cleaning up the yard so that it'd look reasonable and then before they knew it he had a for sale sign out. i'm gonna be tired today. i can tell already that this is going to be not that fun for me.. which is getting me thinking about the kind of yard i'll want in our new house.. i love the walls of green around our yard that i can see out virtually all of our windows, it's really great. but on the other hand, it'd be better if i didn't have to do anything to keep it the way it's supposed to be. i like plants that take care of themselves. meh. i dont' know.. this is not a time with a lot of options for buyers, just good prices.. but as a seller, i won't have that much to spend for the same reason...

house

so this weekend has been awesome for making progress on the house. we got all the problem areas resolved, even the basement that was a mess is now only half a mess and it's the easy half... the kind of mess that's only a mess because we're always in it.. and the kitchen is still prooty clean despite making beefy saag for dinner tonight. i likes it. the two bedrooms we don't sleep in are empty and the garage is pretty good. so we only have a few things left; bark, professional cleaning and a couple of ornaments on the kitchen cabinets. i'm really happy about how little is left, and so it'll be nice to wrap the rest of it up this next week and a half, and see how it goes. it feels good to have made this progress. really good. that's all i have for this week.

yeah

i'm going to talk about something different:

the modern jackass -
This American Life last weekend has an episode about what happens when you know just a little about something, but feel qualified to extrapolate an explanation to the questioner.

i'm going to be looking out for this from now on... whether it be me being a modern jackass or someone else.. and when i spot it i'll enjoy myself. in the meanwhile i am expected up on the roof to continue some scraping of moss off the roof.

while i'm gone feel free to discuss.

Fair enough

a little prodding will cause me to post.

i only have 6 minutes right now, but if i don't do it now it'll be awhile.

here's my topic: i got a comment today at work that made me think. the context was this:
I was explaining to a couple of team leaders tasked with running a workshop how we set targets and that they don't have to be afraid of not having everything figured out all the way by the time of the workshop. that they should not be afraid to report that what they thought they were going to look at didn't exist, but it will now that we know we should be looking at it...
i was interrupted in my ramble that it appeared to one of them that the vast majority of my job seemed to be making people in their situation feel better about it.

at the time i just said something along the lines of "yes, i suppose it does seem that way..." and resumed my stream of reassurances and guidance.

however.. now that i've driven home and had some time to think about it.. i'm not sure what to think about it. does it sound to anyone like i come off as... well, what do i sound like?

the year of the rat has not been kind to my health

shame is an important cause of death by colon cancer.

i do not have colon cancer that i know of, but i noticed this week when i was having a partial bowel obstruction that it is generally not ok to tell people about your bowel health until you're geriatric and among peers. i found myself wanting to explain to my coworkers that i was in some distress and would appreciate a few breaks but i couldn't fully explain why, and i felt like it warranted at least some detail. i was not trying to tell everyone exactly what was or was not flowing out of my butt, but i felt like telling people that i was in the midst of an uncomfortable bowel event.

anyway... everyone poops.. and it's time to let go of the taboos about talking about colon's circumstances. until we do i think people will continue to not catch serious intestinal issues (like colon cancer) because they can't talk about it. or worse, they're so ashamed of the fact that they defecated they completely ignore any details about it like mucous or blood in the stool, or other early warning signs of various problems.

anyway... good times.

i sick

i hate getting sick. this one was bad.. it's been going around my team at work.. 18 hours of fever (that's way long for me) and another day of sinus crap.. and as that is easing now i'm just weak and sweaty. i hate being sweaty. it's just a sign of how depleted i am from fighting that thing, but i would like it to go away. i pretty much haven't moved more than to get more water and to go to the urinatorium since friday.. and worst of all, it completely obliterated any chance i had of a relaxing weekend.. being sick was more stressful than work for a week.. at least i'll be better tomorrow.. blerwour.

And another thing...

so i got mad again about something again when something awesome came to my email box from a Lean production list to which i subscribe. I will share it with you here and then i'll add some thoughts below.

The notion that waste is good for the economy is strange indeed, even if
it is supported by such measures of economic activity as the GDP. If you
pollute the environment, what is spent to clean up your mess contributes
to the GDP, which, as a consequence is bigger than if you didn't pollute.
If you eat at a restaurant, what you pay for food preparation goes into the
GDP, but if the same meal is cooked at home, it doesn't.

The truth is that eliminating waste is good for society as a whole. It
directly improves the quality of life and frees up resources to address
genuine unmet needs.

So this is just one part of it, it's followed by a quote from the economist who developed GDP and also some inspiring words from RFK. But the point i wanted to make was this: Supply side (trickle down) economics are complete and utter bullshit and here is why....

i should probably ask if anyone disagrees with me here? and assuming someone gives me a counter argument i will refute it directly. ...but really though.. it just doesn't make any sense that intentionally wasting resources because of the potential source of revenue it provides is a reasonable way to either do business or govern. how is it that a group of grotesquely greedy people have convinced a large portion (anyone at all for that matter) of the population that this makes good sense? did anyone see that delightful and entertaining supply side jesus cartoon from that al franken book? i loved that cartoon. it summed up the thing nicely you can find it if you search. how many years did we go on thinking this would encourage the economy? is this a big part of our digging of our environmental grave? because if it is i might be relieved that it's this easy to fix.

ironically, my job is created by this attitude perhaps.. i clean up waste after all, but i don't just mop up a puddle that will be back tomorrow, i fix the leak that causes the puddle day after day. but i always seem to have more waste to fix... and i wonder if that doesn't arise from the very industry itself. we spend a lot of time talking about the health care transaction, a patient and a provider who for some reason can't exchange currency directly. as one of those providers i know i didn't care for asking people to pay... i still don't. i would pay for someone else to do it.. but it's waste. it delays the exchange, and takes some of the money i need away. if insurance wasn't in the picture how much cheaper would a visit to a doctor be? i don't know.... i would be interested to know if a doctor could work exclusively on medicare patients and still pay for the overhead (especially malpractice)... someone should look that up for me.... maybe i can ask an actuary.

rantin' time again

wooo! it's been awhile since i was coherent enough AND interested in ranting about something i heard. i suppose that's a good sign that i'm feeling pretty good... back from my cold.

ok so today i heard a little half-cliche on the radio and it got me really angry. sometimes i think people should think before they say (except me. ... i'd never say anything awesome if i had time to think twice).

so this was some sort of campaign message from someone-or-other and they said the words: "Everyone has the right to [good] health."

take a second and think about that....

WTF?????? who precisely dispenses a right like that? your government? your god? your parents? your elementary school bus driver? what does it even mean? what can that mean?

no government guarantees good health, nor religion (maybe scientology does), and no parents have ultimate control over the health of their child - if they did, logically, no child would ever die of illness. neither would a believer, nor a patriot, but those ideas are absurd.

i think they meant health care... that we have a right to health care ... big difference. health care doesn't equal health. health care can but may not lead to good health, lack of health care does not deny health.. the relationship between the two is not concrete or predictable. actually people who have good health frequently avoid health care because it's unnecessary to them.

health education is a right we all should have, and since health is part of our public education system we have access to it, but what we choose to do with it is where i tie this back to health care and rights. we don't actually have a right to have health care solve our problems. We have a right to seek out health care, but health care may not be able to help us so what are we entitled to then? - i am speaking now as a health care professional (and an opinionated bastard) - we have the choice to live as we like. we can choose to seek out health knowledge we have the responsibility to be informed about our health, but all of us have to work for good health, no one just opens a box or bottle and eats good health. we have to be responsible for our health and the choices that impact our health... and when our choices' consequence is something that health care can do nothing about you are entitled to feel about it however you choose, but i can't be held responsible for making your "right" a reality. and neither can anyone else.

so remember... your local health professional is there as a guide.. .they teach you how to live to improve your situation (the word doctor after all comes from the original docere - to teach).... it is ultimately your responsibility to make the most of your health and if that isn't your priority then that's fine. but no one can guarantee your health will be someone else's priority or responsibility.

so that's my rant tonight. now it's time for sleep.