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.

news and whatnot

nothing big really.. this weekend i made Indian food. i made Saag with lamb, saffron basmati, naan, and two other things i won't take credit for. it was really surprising how... possible it was. i've always just assumed that Indian food was outside the realm of possiblity.. that it was just too much to ask. anyway, it turns out that it's not too hard to make. the saag took about 2 hours, but it was so good. the lamb chunks melted in your mouth inside, and the spinach didn't make Cat's teeth all funky. so i considered it a success. the dishes are still almost done, but not quite. and on friday a bird shat on my shirt, so i've been trying to get the stain out all weekend. from now on i'll most likely think twice about walking under a tree full of birds.

i also think i bit the inside of my cheek. or perhaps it's just turned into hamburger magically.

woob

i'm in kenturkey.. i mean kentucky. our t-giving dinner was awesome and started at 9:30 pm. it was totally awesome. we went bowling, and checked several stores for the first two seasons of it's always sunny in philadelphia. we never found it. however, we did discover the british version of gordon ramsay's kitchen nightmares. it's rad and awesome. other than that i'm enjoying my week off. tremendously enjoying it. there's nothing like making no plans to unwind. anyway. i'm not interested in writing .. so i'll go now.

rock rock on

or something like that. i got a(n) ukulele for myself because i have had a rough month and decided it was an appropriate thing to do. it was very inexpensive which was cool, except it had two significant problems. one was a dead fret, which sucks. the other was a re-entrant G string. that sounds funny. anyway, that's when the low-toned strings are raised up an octave, which was weird. at first i though it could get past that re-entrant string, but i decided it wasn't cool. so i got a lower string at the music store and tried to put it on, with Tony's help. we discovered that it wouldn't fit, but tried to file it. Tony gave up after a long while trying to get it to work, and said i should take it back. the dead fret was reason enough, and that it wasn't really what i wanted (because of the re-entrant string). everything else about it i did like though, a whole lot. so i spent a few more minutes filing down the notch that holds the bottom of the string and a few more minutes on that fret and got the string in. the fret hasn't been a problem for me all day either, so i think i got it to a reasonable height. it wasn't much work today, and now i have exactly the uke i wanted. so i'm happy. it's good. then i made gumbo, and it's one of the best batches ever. i have enough for lunches for several days. mmmm.. gumbo. except Cat looked up gumbo on wikipedia or something and it said you weren't supposed to thicken with file, roux, and okra... i use all three. what's so wrong with using all three? it's not like pudding... i don't get it.

more or less exactly

i listened to the hitch hiker's guide to the galaxy book on cd recently. a couple of times in the book the phrase "more or less exactly" appears. one of them is right at the beginning, the phrase appears in the sentence "the house more or less exactly fails to please the eye." i think this sentence sums up the reason i like Douglas Adams writing. when you use 11 words to say 'the house is ugly' with 4 of those words adding absolutely nothing to the meaning it can't be bad. i just had to share that with the group.

zlub.

procrastinating

i must really not feel like going to sleep if i'm to the point where i'll write something for my blog. i took a whole bunch of surveys about cars. it was actually kind of funny the way they write questions. one of the surveys was clearly about saturn, the car company, not the planet. they spent several questions asking what i knew about who was the parent company of all kinds of different makes of car.. i don't think i did well.. i had some ideas on those questions but i mostly checked the box that said "i don't know".. didn't realize jaguar was owned by ford, or infinity was owned by nissan, or GM owned saab... i mean, i thought saabs were still from sweden.. maybe they still are, but GM owns the factory... i don't know. anyway.. that was interesting. i should really get to sleep though. alright.. goodnight.