Imagine this. You walk into a store and you want to buy a loaf of bread. The person in front of you has the same loaf of bread in her cart. When the cashier rings her bread, it’s $1.50 . When she rings yours, it’s $30. You’d be pretty furious, right? Or if you were on line for a movie, and the person in front of you was charged $11 for a ticket, while you were asked for $250. You’d find this crazy.
Then why don’t we find it crazy that the same blood test given by the same doctor in the same office can cost $30, $40, or $800 depending on the insurance plan or lack thereof?
My idea for a reform plan is the “one service/one price” plan. If a doctor is going to charge $40 for a blood test, he charges every patient, the insured and the uninsured $40 for that blood test. Just like the loaf of bread or the theater ticket. If the insurance company wants to pay $35 to its network of doctors, the doctor can either lower his price to $35 for everyone, or stay out of the network.
Who determines the price? Legally, each individual doctor or practice, but in reality, it’s determined by the market. There will be costs related to supply, real estate, and staff that will drive the price. There will be the need to compete with other doctors in the area that will drive the price. That blood test will cost more in New York than in Utah because the cost of doing business higher in NY than in Utah. If a doctor wants $800 for a test, but the doctor down the street wants $30 for that same test, the first doctor will have to lower his prices to remain competitive. In other words, let the free market do its thing and costs will drop.
I saw this video on YouTube, and one of the arguments and counter-arguments struck me as interesting.
What struck me, in the argument and counter-argument, was the ad hominum fallacy. The ad hominum fallacy is very common in modern political discourse, sadly. When Kirk says that the Origin of Species is wrong because Hitler had some involvement, he is committing this fallacy. When Cristina counters that Christianity must be wrong as Hitler claimed to practice it, she is committing that same fallacy. It’s a common trap to fall into, actually, and you’ll hear it frequently if you listen to political talk radio.
To show where this fails, let’s do a little thought experiment. Imagine you are in a room. Inside you find Mother Theresa, arguably the finest person in all humanith, and Adolf Hitler, equally arguably the worst. The following conversation ensues.
Theresa: You might do well to read Milton’s Inferno as a cautionary tale.
Adolf: That was Dante, not Milton.
Theresa: No, it was most definitely Milton.
By the logic governing the ad hominum argument we can prove that, as Hitler is trying to aver that Dante wrote the Inferno and Mother Theresa is arguing for it being written by Milton, and that clearly Mother Theresa is both smarter and worthier, that therefore the Inferno was written by Milton.
Except that it wasn’t.
In truth, it doesn’t matter who upholds a particular case, or how many people uphold it (I would love to explain the argumentum ad populam fallacy to the guy on NY1 who claims in one frequently run promo that the majority of New Yorkers “agree with me, not you” and then sits back looking smug having espoused such poor logic). What matters is the discernible facts and merits of the case at hand.
As to the evolution debate, I favor something Darwin alluded to and a rabbi whose name I still can’t recall expounded on. Which is more remarkable, for G-d to have hand crafted every species in a labor-intensive brute force method, or for G-d to have set into the world one single-celled organism and one natural law, and have such humble beginnings bloom into all we see around us?
I know a lot of guys who knit. I’m teaching a guy to knit. Invariably, at least one person who seem to have no problem with me knitting, finds it odd that a man does the same. Real men, so the thinking goes, don’t knit. Thankfully, no one bothered to tell that to Jacques Plante, Rosie Greere, or George Washington.
Most of this is ancient in origin. In the days before formula, pumps, and bottles, only women could feed the babies. So women had to stay home and take care of the children, while the men went out. Things done in the home (weaving, cooking, etc) became associated with women while things done outside the home (hunting, fighting, etc) became associated with men. This should have associated knitting with men. Knitting was first linked to making and repairing fishing nets, often by sailors (these would be men) while at sea.
The first knitting guild was the Guild of St. Fiacra, founded in Paris in 1527. This was a predominantly male guild, as were most of the guilds that followed for centuries. In Japan, during times of a declining need for a samurai’s services, various samurai supported themselves, and their families, by knitting gloves and tabi socks (those are the split toe socks worn with geta–Japanese sandals).
The Luddites who protested against the knitting machines and electric looms that they felt threatened their business in the early days of the Industrial revoltion were all knitting and weavers, and all men. It wasn’t until knitting fell from a necessity and an industry to a hobby that it fell primarly to women.
It seems to me, with all of the pleasure and benefits knitting has to offer, that we seem strangely determined to keep it away from the guys. It’s not needed. There’s yarn and needles enough for everyone. Male knitters FTW!
Back around the time that Gary Gygax passed on, a group of his fans took up a collection to make a donation to his favorite charity. Together they gathered $17,000, but when they tried to donate it, the charity refused them, ostensibly because of their “wicked” connection to Dungeons and Dragons. Here I can’t resist a snarky remark about how many crusades and inquisitions were launched over Player’s Handbook.
You can read the full details here, as well as the follow-up, and the questions of who said what to whom and why. This sort of thing happens all too frequently, to large donors and to individuals. Once, on a charity knitting group, a call went out to get preemie items for a women of faith who suddenly delivered a 3 pound baby prematurely. I had a few items that just came off my needles, and would have been the right size, but I was told that I was forbidden to donate them, because I’m Jewish.
Let’s play pretend here (gamers should be good at that) and pretend that D&D really was evil. Would it be a further evil to accept a donation associated wtih that kind of product, no strings attached, and use it to help starving children, or would it be a further evil to block an attempt at redemption by the people involved?
It’s not an easy answer. What if a charity meant to help starving children in Israel were offered a donation made in the name of Adolf Hitler? Should the charity accept or decline it? Does that give tacit approval of the donor?
Understand, I mean a donation made without conditions. I don’t mean what the health industry calls “blood money”, donations made by the tobacco industry to fund cancer research on condition that they don’t further implicate smoking as cancer risk, or that they downplay the risk. I don’t mean the small minority of Christian organizations who will only feed the starving people who are Christian, or who convert; the rest can just keep starving. This, by the way, is why a great many Christian organizations state in their literature that they help all people in need, regardless of faith. I mean a situation where someone is holding out a check saying, “This is made in the name of Satan. Please use it as you see fit.”I would say, even if it were in the name of Satan, it would be appropriate to take the money. Here are my reasons:
First, it keeps the organization from doing anything else with it, including promote their cause to new members.
Second, it would be impossible to know what the individual donors knew. Perhaps they went around asking for money “to feed starving children.” If a person responded to that by making a donation, it would be unfair to then block that person’s act of kindness.
Third, if the need is truly dire, then help is help is help. I can’t imagine any mother, watching her child starve, is going to be fussy about who paid for the food that keeps that child alive. The primary consideration should be the people the charity is trying to help.
Fourth, it looks bad for the charity, not only in a multi-cultural world, but from a financial perspective as well. If a charity can afford to turn up its nose at a donation, it loses credibility when it asks for money.
Fifth, it’s transformative. Perhaps the people are, at first, just trying to jerk someone’s chain. Any charity can tell you, that once someone gives once, and sees that they can do good in the world, they’re more likely to give again. Someone doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing, and that opens the door for G-d to come in and open hearts. If the act is met with rejection, that will lead to indignation and anger. How can that help? If it’s met with a form letter explaining what the charity does with the money and how it can really help people, that can instill compassion in a person’s heart.
It is our place to be tools for divine grace, not to put a stumbling block between a weak soul and the almighty.
I found this Harvey MacKay article on Terry Whalin’s blog (and it is a very good blog). His case is in favor of lifelong learning (Mr. MacKay, can I introduce you to The Teaching Company? I think you’ll like them.) He cites a variety of numbers, that I can’t find him backing up, such as “51 percent of the American population never reads a book more than 400 pages after they complete their formal education.”
This seems strange to me, since most publishers are asking for books 400 pages and up and most bookstores are shelved with books 400 pages and up. I’m glancing at the book on my desk and it is 459 pages long. Bookstores wouldn’t sell the long works if there was no market for them.
Be that as it may, I think I can satisfactorily dispute one claim he has made.
If you read five books on one subject, you are one of the world’s foremost leading authorities on that subject!
Really? Let’s look at some basic topics.
How about Judaism? If you wanted to make the most of your reading time, while gaining a respectable Jewish education, you would read: Torah, Talmud, Rashi, Maimonides, and the Zohar to start! Add Legends of the Jews, at least one book on Jewish history, the Hagaddah, and Tanya, and you’ve achieved a functional proficiency. Then go learn Hebrew if you want to be a scholar and start your road to becoming an authority.
If you want to be a “leading authority” on Christianity you’ll have a lot of books to add to that list, the first being the Christian bible, the various works of Church Fathers such as Origen, at least one book on the Reformation, one on Vatican I, one on Vatican II, a decent book on the history of the Church, and, oh by the way, go learn Greek and Latin too. I’m sure I’m missing some fundamental texts in this category.
Knitting? Five books would get you through the works of Elizabeth Zimmermann, which would be the best five to start with, but you’d know nothing of magic loop, or small diameter knitting with two circular needles, or Bohus knitting, or Estonian knitting. I haven’t even mentioned Ravelry, Knitty, or actually knitting. You’d be well-versed, but you wouldn’t be an authority.
Japanese history? Well, you could read one book on the Jomon era, one on the Yayoi era, one on the Kofun era, one on the Asuka era, and one on the Nara era. That would give you a great overview of Japanese history up to the eight century. Want to shrink that? How about the Meiji restoration? At the very least you’d need to read on Emperor Meiji, Commodore Perry, the Tokugawa Shogunate in general, Tokugawa Yoshinobu in particular, the Shinsengumi, the Bafku–oops, I hit six going for an overview. And this would give you one author’s view on each topic.
So no, while an average reader can finish five books a month with little problem, it’s not that easy to become a leading authority on anything.
A friend of mine is furious with Mayor Bloomberg for banning smoking in bars and restaurants. She wants him out of office so that she can won’t have to step outside for a cigarette. What she doesn’t realize is that he’s not the problem. She’s not fighting the most effective target. So to be fair, I will point out exactly whom to target and how.
My coworker died a few years ago from health problems brought about by second-hand cigarette smoke. He left behind a wife and a ten-year-old son. That woman is the target. That boy is the target. They just don’t get it. If you want the fight against smoking to stop, then help that child, and the thousands like him, to understand why having a cigarette in a bar is more important or more valuable than having a father at his graduation, or at his wedding, or just at his back when the world seems too big for him. Make him understand why it’s better that his father died than that smoking were banned altogether. If you can do that, you will win.
To a non-smoker that might sound a little vicious, but a smoker should understand; they make that decision consciously. When I was four, my father was told he could either smoke or live but not both. My mother and I begged him to quit, but we were not enough for him. He died with a two pack a day habit, and his funeral was held before my first day in kindergarten. For those keeping track, my mother remarried a few months later.
I don’t remember much about him, so I can’t tell you why he made that choice. I remember what he looked like, mostly from photos, but I can’t tell you what his voice sounded like. That’s strange for me, since I’m audile–I remember sound longer than anything else. But his voice was one of the first things to go; when he was bed-ridden he couldn’t call from room to room, but had to ring a bell to get someone to come help him.
Another coworker of mine has just been put in the same situation. His daughter is three. His choice is the same. I just saw him downstairs lighting up. I want to package what I know of him into some kind of bubble. I want to capture his smile, his modesty, his kindness and eagerness to help others, and his off-beat and fun sense of humor. I want to ball up his quick mind and his seemingly endless patience and put them in a capsule for her to open when she’s old enough, maybe 12, maybe 16. I want to give her all of my memories of her father for when she wonders what he was like, so that maybe she’ll have the answers I could never find. Maybe she’ll understand why, for her father, his having a cigarette was more important than her having a daddy.
Like most people, I’ve been following the whole bail-out thing a bit obsessively. I’m surprised the media isn’t pounding home the most obvious safe-guard for individuals: don’t keep more than $100,000 in any one account. That’s the limit covered by the FDIC. Instead, split it amongst several FDIC-insured accounts.
I’m also surprised that we’re not hearing a lot more from economists. We’ve heard a lot from politicians, but politicians know politics (a questionably useful skill), not economics. I want to see polls, not of the general public, but of economists. In this sort of situation, I don’t want a democracy, I want a meritocracy–rule by the most competant. That is the form of government where the people who know the most about a situation, and can make the most informed decision about a situation, get to say how that situation is handled.
If you look at history, the worst mistake Smoot, Hawley, and Hoover (conservative Republicans if that matters) made is that they acted in direct opposition to the informed advice of their economists. 1,028 economists wrote in asking that Smoot-Hawley not be enacted, but enacted it was, and this is considered one of the largest factors in worsening and prolonging the Great Depression.
Smoot-Hawley was a law that attempted to “protect” the American economy by levelling outrageous tarrifs on over 20,000 imported goods. The world responded, as expected, by levelling outrageous tarrifs on US goods, thus dragging international trade to a mere crawl. From the time of its enactment unemployment went from just over 6% to just over 25%. Rather than protect us, it crippled us, which is precisely what the experts had predicted.
The issue then as now is thus: If you want to make a smart decision, you don’t ask some random people on the street, you ask the people who know.
We who would like to count ourselves spiritually-oriented, regardless of faith, are constantly faced with the troubles of cleaning up after groups of people who also claim to be faithful, except they seem to want to make the rest of us look foolish to the rest of the world.
Usually this involves being outraged by pretty tame fictional characters.
We’ll start with Dr. Who. Apparently last year the good doctor went on an adventure to save a the people aboard the spaceship Titanic after it’s been damaged in a meteorite storm. To win the trust of the people he did some slight of hand tricks with a bunch of robotic angels. Christian groups went about protesting this, and not just because the plot was awful. It’s Dr. Who; we expect some awful plots. It’s the “ooh, look at me rising with the angels” imagery that got them up in arms.
People, it’s a TV show. It’s not real. Go find something useful to do with all that time and energy. Go join the guys over at St. Francis when they feed the homeless every day–you know the ones who aren’t featured on the news because they’re sane, sensible, and doing some good in the world. Get outraged about world hunger, or a system that lets people die because they can’t afford the medicine that would save them. The time traveling phone booth can take care of itself.
Oh, and the members of Christian Voice need to actually read the bible. They have issued the statement, “The Doctor would have to do a lot more than the usual prancing around to be a messiah. He has to save people from their sins.” That’s not exactly right.
Issiah 2:4 is perfectly clear on the criteria one would have to meet to be a messiah:
And he shall judge between the nations and reprove many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.
So for the good doctor to make a messianic claim he’d have to end all wars and disband all standing armies. Maybe he can try that this season.
Now we look at Islam, and lo, we find a fatwah against Mickey Mouse. Now I can get behind hating rodents. If I ever saw one, I would be more than delighted if one of my cats would kindly maul it, rip out its mousey throat and tear its body to pieces. No love of rodents here. But a cartoon? Okay, guys. Reality. Fiction. Reality. Fiction. If you’re trying to win over the respect of the world this isn’t the way to do it. Even conservative Islamic clerics have come out to say al-Lihedan needs to take a quick trip to the clue machine.
Please stop wasting everyone’s time making trouble about works of fiction, thereby turning faith into a laughing stock. Yes, I know it doesn’t even make sense and that The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings had as much magic as the Harry Potter series. I don’t want it to make sense. I want it to stop.
You can’t kill fictional characters, simply because they’re not really alive and never have been. You won’t find one walking to his car. You won’t get his home address. Don’t bother.
And with the book burning, unless you’re stealing the books, you’re buying them. Publishers don’t care what you do with them after you buy them; they just print more copies. If you buy out all the copies, guess what bookstores are going to do? Buy more. Lots more. And buy more of that author’s next book too, expecting the same sales numbers. On second though, the publishing industry could use the revenue. Okay, I retract that. But lots and lots and lots of books to burn. I have some friends with books in print and I’m sure they’d all love the sales jump. In fact, buy them from Amazon in quantity to drive the book up the charts. It’s…uh…more convenient for the event coordinator that way.
Mr. McCain stated that he holds that human rights begin at conception. This is a step up from life begins at conception, and while I agree with it, it holds some interesting consequences that I’d love to see addressed.
If by “conception” he means “sperm meets egg” we have a few issues. Every time a woman gets pregnant, it is a results of millions of sperm meeting the egg and one getting through. Has she then had millions of miscarriages and does she get bereavement leave for this? What if it’s too early in the cycle and the egg can’t implant? Or too late? Would she be entitled to bereavement leave for these? Let’s simplify and, as medical science holds and Arizona law has declared, say life begins when the fertilized egg impacts in the uterus.
If a person does something to willfully endanger the life of another, it is considered assault. For example, if I waft peanut butter under the nose of someone who has a serious nut allergy, or if I sneak sugar into a diabetic’s coffee, I would be arrested for assault.
If a fetus is accorded the full rights granted any human, then it makes sense to say that if a woman drinks or smokes while pregnant–willfully endangering the life of the child–she should be arrested for assault.
If a fetus is a full human being, should a pregnant woman be allowed (as some have argued) to count the baby as a person in the vehicle when deciding if she can use the HOV lane? Is the unborn child considered a dependent for tax purposes?
I’d love to see a consistent take on the issue of is an unborn person legally considered a person or not. I’m curious to see if McCain and his Republicans will think this through past the abortion issue. I can’t imagine it’s a stopping point. No one will turn from pro-life to pro-choice just because they want fewer cars in the HOV lane.
Incidentally, this doesn’t preclude abortion, even late term abortion, if the fetus endangers the life of the mother.
I found a nice audio program over at Mr. Achievement’s blog–it’s two files, one is subliminal messages and one is as a meditation tape with the words audible. They’re free. The music is nice. I’m laughing at the subliminal one now, because as I’m playing it, I can just about hear him speaking under the music, which I don’t think I’m supposed to be able to do.
The whole thing led me to run a few questions around in my head, the first of which was answered quickly. Is this worth it? Well, I like listening to this kind of music while I knit, so it’s worth it on the basis of just being nice music. Anything more is gravy anyway.
The next is, do subliminal messges like this actually work? I only know of one study, where a movie theater flashed an image of a cup of Coke for one flash and a rush of people went to the concession stand for soda. One study doesn’t proove much and I don’t have any others to judge by.
The third, which is the one that really interests me in all this, is for this type of application, for the day to day uses people put this sort of material to, is there a difference between actually efficacy and a placebo effect? Here’s what I mean. Let’s say a student wants to be more dilligent in his studies. So he buys a study tape that says, under the music, “I am a good student. I study every day. I am attentive in class. I finish my assignments on time.” Let’s say he beleives this will help him, and because of that beleif, he studies every day, pays attention in class, and finishes his assignments on time. Does that not accomplish the goal anyway, and if that is the case, doesn’t it work in a sort of roundabout way?