My Favorite Books of 2015
9 years ago
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Change I believe in
I recently contacted two of my friends, some of the fiercest and smartest debaters I know, and challenged them to debate me on health care and a topic of their choice. I wrote the following starting essay as a beginning of our debate, but life has gotten hectic and I'm not sure if the whole debate will ever take place. If they finish a complete rebuttal, or if any of you have any thoughts, I will be glad to post them on this blog or have a public debate on things you feel strongly about. In case they never get back to me with a full rebuttal, however, I wanted my thoughts to be public as soon as possible, so that we, as Americans, can start to have the national discussion about what, if anything, needs to be done with health care.
I believe that we should pass the health care reforms that President Obama outlined in his address to Congress.
Although there are many things that could be written for or against this plan (and I have conscripted a friend to help me elucidate the other side to my arguments), I will show that overall, passing the plan advocated by President Obama would bring about substantially more benefits than costs.
When proposing a plan (or a debate platitude), the most important first step is showing that there is a problem with the status quo.
The second most insidious lie surrounding health care (behind the whole 'death panels' thing) is that “we have the best medical system in the world.” This is a pretty standard deflection in debate, make a verifiably true, but also totally unrelated point in order to support your claim. It is true that America leads the world in medical advances, new drug developments, and quality of top-tier doctors, the problem that needs addressing, however, is that a significant portion of Americans are outside the medical care system. Warren Buffett and rich foreign nationals may be able to get the best medical care in the world here in America, but their good fortune is poor reason to continue with a horribly flawed medical system, in which 46 million people have no insurance.
This leads to the question: are the 46 million uninsured going completely without health care? In point of fact, many of the uninsured in America are still getting health care when they need it. The 46 million number, although fun and effective to throw around (as I myself do all the time), does not tell the whole story. When an uninsured person gets critically sick and needs to go to the hospital they do so. Very few people, it seems, are willing to endure a gunshot wound or broken arm, simply because they don’t have the money to pay a doctor. If we were living in a purely capitalistic society, the sick poor would be kicked to the curb, made to soothe their lacerations only with the knowledge that capitalism has justly condemned them. Surely only a few generations will go by before the poor wise up, recognize that they have incentive to escape the soul-crushing poverty which they so enjoy, and get a good job which gives them health insurance.
As with any externalities, this free health care that we’re dispensing in emergency rooms all over the country needs to be paid by someone. It shouldn’t take a PhD in economics to realize that we are all paying that cost, either directly through the government, who needs to bail out failing hospitals, or in the form of higher hospital and insurance costs; just like retailers needs to raise their prices to compensate for losses to shoplifters, we are already paying for the uninsured in the status quo.
The real losers in the current system are not the uninsured poor, who can fairly easily get access to free clinics or Medicaid, or who can simply discharge their debts through bankruptcy (my plan, should I ever get seriously ill while I don’t have insurance), but the under-insured members of the middle class and those who can no longer get insurance in the market. When a middle class person gets in a serious accident or comes down with a life-threatening illness, their assets are in danger. A significant portion of bankruptcies are a direct consequence of medical bills.
We’re in the worst possible middle-ground with American health care. We’re socialist enough that there is very little incentive for people to take care of themselves or avoid expensive medical costs, since society will pay them one way or another. This is at least partially why there are so many uninsured in America. On the other hand, we’re capitalist enough to have private insurance companies in the marketplace as well. Those companies provide a service to their customers, but are free to pick and choose whom they want to cover (even sometimes utilizing recision to retroactively revoke the health care policies of customers who should have been covered), sucking the marrow from the bones, as it were, but leaving the ill to be covered by public moneys. There is a good argument to be made that we’d be better off either competing for the fees from the healthy to subsidize the risks of the poor (this is the purpose of insurance, I would point out) in a government program, or dropping government involvement in health care at all, leaving the market to solve our problems if it can make a profit, allowing the sick and aged to die off and “reduce the surplus population.”
For those of you who believe that there are better tweaks to Obama’s plan in the vapor or in the hands of the Republicans, I would ask where those ideas have been for the last decade. During the whole time that the Republicans had control of the congress and the White House, the changes made to the American health care system probably did more harm than good, funneling public money to private insurance companies without really giving benefits to their consumers. It is time to acknowledge that the market system is not only failing to fix the problems in our health care system, they are likely the very root of the problems.
I believe that we should pass the health care reforms that President Obama outlined in his address to Congress.
Although there are many things that could be written for or against this plan (and I have conscripted a friend to help me elucidate the other side to my arguments), I will show that overall, passing the plan advocated by President Obama would bring about substantially more benefits than costs.
When proposing a plan (or a debate platitude), the most important first step is showing that there is a problem with the status quo.
The second most insidious lie surrounding health care (behind the whole 'death panels' thing) is that “we have the best medical system in the world.” This is a pretty standard deflection in debate, make a verifiably true, but also totally unrelated point in order to support your claim. It is true that America leads the world in medical advances, new drug developments, and quality of top-tier doctors, the problem that needs addressing, however, is that a significant portion of Americans are outside the medical care system. Warren Buffett and rich foreign nationals may be able to get the best medical care in the world here in America, but their good fortune is poor reason to continue with a horribly flawed medical system, in which 46 million people have no insurance.
This leads to the question: are the 46 million uninsured going completely without health care? In point of fact, many of the uninsured in America are still getting health care when they need it. The 46 million number, although fun and effective to throw around (as I myself do all the time), does not tell the whole story. When an uninsured person gets critically sick and needs to go to the hospital they do so. Very few people, it seems, are willing to endure a gunshot wound or broken arm, simply because they don’t have the money to pay a doctor. If we were living in a purely capitalistic society, the sick poor would be kicked to the curb, made to soothe their lacerations only with the knowledge that capitalism has justly condemned them. Surely only a few generations will go by before the poor wise up, recognize that they have incentive to escape the soul-crushing poverty which they so enjoy, and get a good job which gives them health insurance.
As with any externalities, this free health care that we’re dispensing in emergency rooms all over the country needs to be paid by someone. It shouldn’t take a PhD in economics to realize that we are all paying that cost, either directly through the government, who needs to bail out failing hospitals, or in the form of higher hospital and insurance costs; just like retailers needs to raise their prices to compensate for losses to shoplifters, we are already paying for the uninsured in the status quo.
The real losers in the current system are not the uninsured poor, who can fairly easily get access to free clinics or Medicaid, or who can simply discharge their debts through bankruptcy (my plan, should I ever get seriously ill while I don’t have insurance), but the under-insured members of the middle class and those who can no longer get insurance in the market. When a middle class person gets in a serious accident or comes down with a life-threatening illness, their assets are in danger. A significant portion of bankruptcies are a direct consequence of medical bills.
We’re in the worst possible middle-ground with American health care. We’re socialist enough that there is very little incentive for people to take care of themselves or avoid expensive medical costs, since society will pay them one way or another. This is at least partially why there are so many uninsured in America. On the other hand, we’re capitalist enough to have private insurance companies in the marketplace as well. Those companies provide a service to their customers, but are free to pick and choose whom they want to cover (even sometimes utilizing recision to retroactively revoke the health care policies of customers who should have been covered), sucking the marrow from the bones, as it were, but leaving the ill to be covered by public moneys. There is a good argument to be made that we’d be better off either competing for the fees from the healthy to subsidize the risks of the poor (this is the purpose of insurance, I would point out) in a government program, or dropping government involvement in health care at all, leaving the market to solve our problems if it can make a profit, allowing the sick and aged to die off and “reduce the surplus population.”
For those of you who believe that there are better tweaks to Obama’s plan in the vapor or in the hands of the Republicans, I would ask where those ideas have been for the last decade. During the whole time that the Republicans had control of the congress and the White House, the changes made to the American health care system probably did more harm than good, funneling public money to private insurance companies without really giving benefits to their consumers. It is time to acknowledge that the market system is not only failing to fix the problems in our health care system, they are likely the very root of the problems.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The audacity of hope, the inevitability of angry old white people
This week I listened to an interview of Orley Taitz, spearhead of the “birther” movement and noted Obama detractor. Although I don’t buy her “proof” that Obama’s a bi-sexual or that he played a part in having someone killed, I really enjoyed listening to her crazy ideas, mostly because listening filled me with a guilty schadenfreude. Ms. Taitz seems to me to be a walking, talking straw-man; she says and believes things that most normal, grounded people would reject without a second thought. Given that the crazies have been dominating the news lately, however, and that unfounded rage can be contagious, I thought it might be fun to address this blog post to beating up on the right-wing extremists (I think of them as the American Taliban) and disrespect-mongers.
The news is very fun to listen to these days. As I listened to the Sotomayor confirmation hearings and the associated media blitz that the Republicans made over Ms. Sotomayor’s reverse-racist statements I had a smile on my face the whole time; Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck calling Obama and Sotomayor racists in the subtle and intelligent manors that they are known for had all the wit and persuasion that I have come to expect from such gentlemen scholars.
Now that we’re in the midst of a debate on health care policy in America I was eager to start having debates with people about the proper role of government, the ethics of medical coverage, the marginal costs of insurance, or externalities inherent in various health care plans. Instead of giving arguments, however, militant right-wingers have come out in droves to interfere with actual conversations and town halls. When persuasion and democracy failed them and delivered the congress and white house to the Democrats, some bitter Republicans have found solace in all they have left—volume. Although their plans may work and reform may indeed fail, I have to smile when a debate devolves into screaming like it has. Whenever I had arguments in high school, I would consider myself the winner as soon as the other person swore at me or threatened me with physical violence (I’m amazed that I never actually got punched). When a war of words is clearly lost and the moral high ground is ceded, there’s nowhere else to go than insulting the other person’s mother or beating them into submission.
To you screaming, angry town-hall crashers or conspiracy theorists hell-bent on getting Obama disqualified, I have some advice for the future:
Dear Ms. Taitz and co.,
First, although I’m sure you’re already aware, bringing about chaos and destruction is always easier than order and construction are, so you absolutely have the advantage right now. Although it costs billions of dollars and thousands of brilliant people to build things like the World Trade Center towers or Boeing 767s, it only took a few angry Saudi Arabians with box cutters to reduce such things to smoldering pits of carnage. Democracy, consensus, compromise, rational law, and peaceful order take a lot of patience, debate, and shared values to bring about. If you feel that you’re being left out of the conversations entirely, or that your place at the table has been unfairly taken away from you, a proportionately small wrench can destroy a complex machine when used in the right way. I don’t support your methods, even if I agreed with your cause, but I’m not so idealistic that I can’t see the elegance and wisdom of your idea.
The lurch you find yourself in, however, would have been much easier to avoid in the first place than digging yourself out is likely to be.
Contrary to what you might have heard, the world is not exclusively divided between the absolutely righteous and the pure evil, Olbermann fans and O’Reilly fans, or even jocks and geeks. In fact, most of the country and even the world is full of pretty moderate, apolitical people (just look at how many people don’t even vote). There’s a pretty significant constituency who will always vote for Republicans and another constituency who will only ever vote for Democrats no matter what. The rest of the voting public, however, is open to persuasion and decides based on their circumstances and impressions. Although I have my beefs with how and why this population sometimes decides, there really isn’t much point in arguing or complaining about the decisions they make; the swing voters, independents, and occasional voters play the largest role in tipping the balance of power in both Congress and the Executive branches. Furthermore, this group probably gives more intelligent thought to political matters than the people on the extreme poles of the spectrum, who largely only indulge in media and spin which reinforces their extant world views (this is where O’Reilly and Olbermann come in). Sure, sometimes this swing group sometimes decides based on things as asinine as which politician has the better tie, but neither political party is the exclusive victim of such flippant behavior, so neither really has much reason to complain.
In case you didn’t notice, dear Ms. Taitz, most of the moderate people in the country have decided that your brand of reality is simply not worth having. Right or wrong, these people—not some socialist conspiracy or the illuminati—simply stopped buying what you are selling. We can debate later whether they were right to do so, but priority number one should be to take a deep breath, acknowledge that something is wrong with your brand, and take steps to correct the perceptions that people have of you. It only took you one election cycle to get over Nixon, so don’t give yourself heart attacks or high blood-pressure just because you lost your power for now.
The thing to keep in mind is that most Americans support market capitalism, not because they’ve read Adam Smith or Ayn Rand, but simply because they know that America is a mostly capitalist country and they are pretty well-off, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The paradigm that most people actually use is one of subtle negative-feedback. When their house feels too warm they crack a window or turn their A/C up a little; most people don’t have strong moral arguments about how hot or cold their house should be. The implication of this is that the Democrats picked up the seats that they did and have gotten the political mandate to try Keynesian economic fixes of the economy exclusively because Bush was considered such a disaster. After the economy utterly tanked last year under the seemingly incompetent hand of the Republicans, a good chunk of moderate and independent voters decided that maybe the Democrats might do a better job. Throwing T.E.A. parties or raging against socialist doctrines is likely a waste of time, since people don’t support Obama because they necessarily believe in his philosophy, but because the G.O.P. screwed up; the problem is not creeping socialism, but visibly failing capitalism.
It probably shows what I horrible person I am that I so revel when people I have no respect for—Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck—are so profoundly angry and scared about Obama and the democrats having power. Even though I have my own conflicts with some things the Obama government is doing or will do, I think that the tone and style that these pundits bring to the world (and have taught to the town-hall crashers) makes it an actively worse place and uniquely harms democracy. My only consolation to the anger I feel when Obama is called a racist or when medicare benefits for talking about end-of-life issues is called a “death tribunal” (which I feel is a measured, purposeful lie, told by unethical people to fool stupid people) is the knowledge that the propagators of these half-truths are decidedly out of power. I do not need to rant against or even argue with such insidious and half-baked arguments primarily because they are not working.
My parting advice to the jilted Republicans is to keep in mind that it’s probably easier to discredit your opponent than it is to actually rule well. Since few people are actually focusing on what, if anything, this crisis says about capitalism in general, there’s a good chance that all they’ll care about in 2012 is whether or not the economy has improved or if the Democrats have passed health care reform. So, even though I do think that the current financial crisis is proof that there is a critical flaw in the philosophies that the Bush government practices, you might just be more likely to win more voters in the 2010 and 2012 election with unbridled rage and incoherent screaming; if this is indeed your strategy, Limbaugh and Beck are absolutely the right people for the job.
The news is very fun to listen to these days. As I listened to the Sotomayor confirmation hearings and the associated media blitz that the Republicans made over Ms. Sotomayor’s reverse-racist statements I had a smile on my face the whole time; Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck calling Obama and Sotomayor racists in the subtle and intelligent manors that they are known for had all the wit and persuasion that I have come to expect from such gentlemen scholars.
Now that we’re in the midst of a debate on health care policy in America I was eager to start having debates with people about the proper role of government, the ethics of medical coverage, the marginal costs of insurance, or externalities inherent in various health care plans. Instead of giving arguments, however, militant right-wingers have come out in droves to interfere with actual conversations and town halls. When persuasion and democracy failed them and delivered the congress and white house to the Democrats, some bitter Republicans have found solace in all they have left—volume. Although their plans may work and reform may indeed fail, I have to smile when a debate devolves into screaming like it has. Whenever I had arguments in high school, I would consider myself the winner as soon as the other person swore at me or threatened me with physical violence (I’m amazed that I never actually got punched). When a war of words is clearly lost and the moral high ground is ceded, there’s nowhere else to go than insulting the other person’s mother or beating them into submission.
To you screaming, angry town-hall crashers or conspiracy theorists hell-bent on getting Obama disqualified, I have some advice for the future:
Dear Ms. Taitz and co.,
First, although I’m sure you’re already aware, bringing about chaos and destruction is always easier than order and construction are, so you absolutely have the advantage right now. Although it costs billions of dollars and thousands of brilliant people to build things like the World Trade Center towers or Boeing 767s, it only took a few angry Saudi Arabians with box cutters to reduce such things to smoldering pits of carnage. Democracy, consensus, compromise, rational law, and peaceful order take a lot of patience, debate, and shared values to bring about. If you feel that you’re being left out of the conversations entirely, or that your place at the table has been unfairly taken away from you, a proportionately small wrench can destroy a complex machine when used in the right way. I don’t support your methods, even if I agreed with your cause, but I’m not so idealistic that I can’t see the elegance and wisdom of your idea.
The lurch you find yourself in, however, would have been much easier to avoid in the first place than digging yourself out is likely to be.
Contrary to what you might have heard, the world is not exclusively divided between the absolutely righteous and the pure evil, Olbermann fans and O’Reilly fans, or even jocks and geeks. In fact, most of the country and even the world is full of pretty moderate, apolitical people (just look at how many people don’t even vote). There’s a pretty significant constituency who will always vote for Republicans and another constituency who will only ever vote for Democrats no matter what. The rest of the voting public, however, is open to persuasion and decides based on their circumstances and impressions. Although I have my beefs with how and why this population sometimes decides, there really isn’t much point in arguing or complaining about the decisions they make; the swing voters, independents, and occasional voters play the largest role in tipping the balance of power in both Congress and the Executive branches. Furthermore, this group probably gives more intelligent thought to political matters than the people on the extreme poles of the spectrum, who largely only indulge in media and spin which reinforces their extant world views (this is where O’Reilly and Olbermann come in). Sure, sometimes this swing group sometimes decides based on things as asinine as which politician has the better tie, but neither political party is the exclusive victim of such flippant behavior, so neither really has much reason to complain.
In case you didn’t notice, dear Ms. Taitz, most of the moderate people in the country have decided that your brand of reality is simply not worth having. Right or wrong, these people—not some socialist conspiracy or the illuminati—simply stopped buying what you are selling. We can debate later whether they were right to do so, but priority number one should be to take a deep breath, acknowledge that something is wrong with your brand, and take steps to correct the perceptions that people have of you. It only took you one election cycle to get over Nixon, so don’t give yourself heart attacks or high blood-pressure just because you lost your power for now.
The thing to keep in mind is that most Americans support market capitalism, not because they’ve read Adam Smith or Ayn Rand, but simply because they know that America is a mostly capitalist country and they are pretty well-off, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The paradigm that most people actually use is one of subtle negative-feedback. When their house feels too warm they crack a window or turn their A/C up a little; most people don’t have strong moral arguments about how hot or cold their house should be. The implication of this is that the Democrats picked up the seats that they did and have gotten the political mandate to try Keynesian economic fixes of the economy exclusively because Bush was considered such a disaster. After the economy utterly tanked last year under the seemingly incompetent hand of the Republicans, a good chunk of moderate and independent voters decided that maybe the Democrats might do a better job. Throwing T.E.A. parties or raging against socialist doctrines is likely a waste of time, since people don’t support Obama because they necessarily believe in his philosophy, but because the G.O.P. screwed up; the problem is not creeping socialism, but visibly failing capitalism.
It probably shows what I horrible person I am that I so revel when people I have no respect for—Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck—are so profoundly angry and scared about Obama and the democrats having power. Even though I have my own conflicts with some things the Obama government is doing or will do, I think that the tone and style that these pundits bring to the world (and have taught to the town-hall crashers) makes it an actively worse place and uniquely harms democracy. My only consolation to the anger I feel when Obama is called a racist or when medicare benefits for talking about end-of-life issues is called a “death tribunal” (which I feel is a measured, purposeful lie, told by unethical people to fool stupid people) is the knowledge that the propagators of these half-truths are decidedly out of power. I do not need to rant against or even argue with such insidious and half-baked arguments primarily because they are not working.
My parting advice to the jilted Republicans is to keep in mind that it’s probably easier to discredit your opponent than it is to actually rule well. Since few people are actually focusing on what, if anything, this crisis says about capitalism in general, there’s a good chance that all they’ll care about in 2012 is whether or not the economy has improved or if the Democrats have passed health care reform. So, even though I do think that the current financial crisis is proof that there is a critical flaw in the philosophies that the Bush government practices, you might just be more likely to win more voters in the 2010 and 2012 election with unbridled rage and incoherent screaming; if this is indeed your strategy, Limbaugh and Beck are absolutely the right people for the job.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Open Letters
Dear friends,
I’ve been applying to medical schools again lately. After getting rebuffed in my attempts at getting into med school for the past 2 years, I think I’ve been subliminally trying to sabotage my chances at getting in. I spun my wheels on my letter of intent for weeks, hiding in my other work and doing everything other than my med school application. In order to get the application in, I’ve been hiding from everything else, not answering e-mails, not reading or commenting on blogs, not even taking time to cook. Things are a little less crazy for me now that the application is done so If you’ve written me an e-mail lately I’ll get back to you when I start to empty out my account.
Dear Lina,
Thanks a ton for all the help writing my letter of intent. There’s a metric ton of pie that will be waiting for you next time you visit Chicago.
Dear Oasis,
Your song Wonderwall has been my favorite song since it first came out. Recently, however, I have decided that Lali Puna’s Faking the Books is my new favorite song. I’m not sure if I love it so much because I learned to appreciate European techno dance beats while in Germany, because of her charming pronunciation of the word “books,” or because I like the rest of Lali Puna’s music so much that it’s biasing my opinion of my favorite of her songs. By the way, with few exceptions, I think most of your other music is mediocre at best. In any case, the song makes me want to smile and cry at the same time. Give it a listen (it’s better with headphones than speakers).
Dear St. Vincent,
Amanda and I caught your concert last month at the Metro and it was fabulous. Although my favorite songs of yours are on your first album, Actor is very solid as an album, and well worth the good reviews it’s been getting. By the way, I think Amanda might like you more than me because of your music video, but I will be rather upset if you seduce her away from me. In fact, if Amanda leaves me for you, I will make an active effort to not recommend your music anymore. You’ve been warned.
Dear absentee landlord of my new apartment,
First off let me say how much I love the place; I particularly love the kitchen and Amanda is thrilled with the wood floors. That being said, your policy against dogs is absurd so I’ve decided not to follow it. Amanda and I recently bought a mini-poodle puppy and named it Gob (in honor of Will Arnett’s character from Arrested Development, although I love the homophonic parallel to the Biblical Job). Amanda’s been teaching him tricks and he’s also already litter trained, so your floors are safe. On a side note, Amanda gave him a haircut but spared the hair on his legs so that we can dye it. For now, it looks like he’s wearing a pair of really baggy pants. A-freaking-dorable if I do say so myself. If you ever decide to enforce your no dog rule—despite Gob’s adorableness—we’ll have to loan our dog to family or friends, which would be very sad for us and for Gob. If you do crack down, however, we’re pretty sure that someone on the third floor has a dog too, and it’s likely that any stray dog poop came from that dog, not Gob.
Dear messers Ensign and Sanford,
I’ll say the same thing I said while you were vehemently calling for President Clinton to step down: your sex life is none of my business and has zero determination on whether you can or should be a politician. Even still, I find irony rather funny and giggled inside when you were caught. I still feel sorry for Mrs. Ensign.
Dear Mrs. Sanford,
You are supremely ridiculous. I won’t even dignify your argument by refuting it. (Evan has pointed out that this was satire. Sorry Ms. Sanford).
Dear Ms. Palin,
I actually rather like you as a person. I think your opinions on abortion are medieval (or Italian) and your notions on science are damaging and ridiculous, but my ire for you only extends to your ability to use your crazy notions to make policy. Now that there’s no chance of you having access to a red button or the chance to slash science funding, I wish you all the best in writing books or working for FOX news. If you run for the presidency in 2012, however, we’re no longer friends.
Dear squirrel that keeps eating the tomatoes we’re growing on our back porch,
If you insist on stealing my tomatoes, is it too much to ask that you eat the whole thing, rather than just half? I have enough tomatoes on my plant that I probably won’t notice if you take a few, but I’d swear you’re taunting me by leaving an uneaten half right in front of my door. There are starving squirrels in China who would love those tomatoes, young man.
Dear Harry Potter movies,
I’m going to have to ask you to scale back the tween romance a lot. I know you might be tempted to cash in on the Twilight craze that has the kids shelling out good money to lust after rather awkward-looking heartthrobs,
but Rupert Grint is actively hard to look at; ask J.K. if you couldn’t just write him out of the next few movies as much as possible. On your latest installment: although there were some things that could have been done better, the cave scene was excellent, as was Alan Rickman. I do have to say, however, that all of your movies end approximately 30 seconds too late. Please make an effort not to end on awkward anti-climaxes or freeze-frames in the future.
Dear President Obama,
Please focus; Professor Gates should not be on your radar right now. Health care is broken, nobody else is going to bother even trying to fix it, and it will not bode well for you if congress can’t get its crap together and pass a bill. Even a broken plan would probably be better than what we have got now and there will always be time to tweak later what you pass right now. Perhaps I’ll write more on the health debate later.
Dear Hyde Park Ward,
Thank you for not celebrating Pioneer Day or assigning the sacrament speakers to talk about pioneers. If I have to listen to one more person tell me that their great great grandparents were more righteous than mine because theirs were driven at gunpoint to Utah and mine weren’t I think I’m going to pitch a fit.
Dear clutch from my 2002 Hyundai Accent,
I thought we were tight. You’d been going strong for almost 100,000 miles and then you decided to try and strand me in rural Kansas, rather than lasting another 150 miles until I got to Wichita? Luckily for me I have really cool in-laws who have AAA and were able to bail us out and foil your scheme. I have a new clutch that’s apparently worth $800, so I don’t need you anymore. You’re dead to me. I hope they melt you down and turn you into something really awful and degrading like parts for public toilets or limited edition Jonas Brothers wrist watches.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Food blog
Amanda and I have decided to start a separate blog for our cooking. You can read that at amandaanddaine.wordpress.com.
Don't you love the double a and then the double d in that address? Maybe I'm just easily entertained.
Don't you love the double a and then the double d in that address? Maybe I'm just easily entertained.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
-est
So I normally won't even consider posting unless I've been able to read and re-read what I've written for cohesiveness and style; I'm not so much concerned with documenting or saying anything with this blog as I am about writing and exploring my own thoughts. My life and mind have been full enough with superlatives of late, however, and I thought it might be appropriate to run through them in a blog, even though the inevitable product will be yet another superlative--the worst, least polished post that I've blogged.
Depending on which of my friends you ask, they will either tell you that I am illiterate (in the sense that I don't read, not that I can't), or that I actually rather enjoy reading and do it frequently. Since so many of my friends are fantastically brilliant and literary--my friend Lina just got into the Iowa Writer's Workshop and my friend Ryan has an agent and is working on publishing his first novel (which I will promote here further when it's out, btw), for example--I generally err on the side of telling people that I essentially don't read; I read more than most Americans do, sure, but I'm still by far the least well-read person in my circle of friends (by virtue of who they are, not because of me). I mostly dabble in literature, reading the high points of authors who come recommended to me. I re-read the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander every year or two, and I generally try to avoid reading things which are "classics," but which aren't particularly beautiful, uplifting, or engaging (can I have the time I spent on the unabridged Les Miserables back, please?). So when I saw that Atonement was being made into a movie a few years ago, and one that received middling reviews from the people I trusted, I assumed it would be a fun, Divinci Code-esque piece of fiction that I could wait to borrow from a friend or find in a paperback blow-out bin at some point in the distant future. With such low expectations for it, I was blown away when Alea--one of my hyper-literate friends and most trusted recommenders of books--told me that it was his favorite book ever (or did he say he thought it was the best? I can't remember any more). I bought it a few weeks ago, put it into my queue of books to read, and finally finished reading it through yesterday. I want to avoid giving an in-depth review of it right now because I would not do it justice under such time constraints. I will say, however, that in the past two days, totally unrelated trains of thought have been interrupted by the overwhelming feeling of amazement at how fantastically good that book was. When Alea claimed that Atonement was his favorite book he set the bar and my expectations pretty high. I'd still say he understated his case.
A surprisingly large number of you remembered that it was my birthday last week and sent me your best wishes. Although such thing always makes me feel a little bad since I don't know the birth dates of even my closest friends, it was very nice of so many of you to inquire how I am doing and wish me well on my birthday. I gave different answers to different people depending on how willing I was to share my disappointment at once again failing to get into medical school this year (there is still technically the chance that I'll hear back, but the fact that only one school has even given me an answer is a pretty clear indication that I'm being received with a resounding "meh" from the universe). The past week has given a little more perspective on my lot in life, however, so I'd like to upgrade my answers from last week from "I'm ok" to "quite well, thank you."
My other parents--not in a Coraline sense, but in the sense that I married in to their family--sent me a gift certificate to Amazon.com. Although Amanda and I do most of our non-food shopping on Amazon, and generally have a long list of things we want to buy from Amazon when extra money shows up, I have actually been somewhat stumped as to what I should get with my birthday money. Since Christmas, I have been given a series of the best and most thoughtful gifts I have ever gotten in my life: a bread maker, a cuisinart food processor, the most amazing thermoses ever, a fabulous cookbook, some kitchen items I use every day, a winter coat, and dozens of other really useful and cool things. It's not that I won't be able to find something fabulous to buy on Amazon with my gift certificate, but my moments of being stumped helped remind me just how well I'm doing and how content I am right now. And so, even though I'm still a bit upset that I've spent another thousand dollars we don't really have applying in vain to medical schools, I'm terribly excited that I might be able to teach science to middle- or high-schoolers next year. My absolute back up will be to work as a CNA in a hospital or nursing home, which has become something I truly love doing.
As always, there are dozens of things I could bring up that have happened to me in the past weeks or months that have been awesome or annoying. Right now, however, I'm sitting on my couch next to Amanda, eating some delicious corn bread I just baked, listening to Vince Guiraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas music. And so to answer your inquiries into how I'm doing, I guess my answer is that, as always, I'm sure things could be better. The fact that I'd have to think about how they could be better, however, is probably the most articulate answer I could give.
Depending on which of my friends you ask, they will either tell you that I am illiterate (in the sense that I don't read, not that I can't), or that I actually rather enjoy reading and do it frequently. Since so many of my friends are fantastically brilliant and literary--my friend Lina just got into the Iowa Writer's Workshop and my friend Ryan has an agent and is working on publishing his first novel (which I will promote here further when it's out, btw), for example--I generally err on the side of telling people that I essentially don't read; I read more than most Americans do, sure, but I'm still by far the least well-read person in my circle of friends (by virtue of who they are, not because of me). I mostly dabble in literature, reading the high points of authors who come recommended to me. I re-read the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander every year or two, and I generally try to avoid reading things which are "classics," but which aren't particularly beautiful, uplifting, or engaging (can I have the time I spent on the unabridged Les Miserables back, please?). So when I saw that Atonement was being made into a movie a few years ago, and one that received middling reviews from the people I trusted, I assumed it would be a fun, Divinci Code-esque piece of fiction that I could wait to borrow from a friend or find in a paperback blow-out bin at some point in the distant future. With such low expectations for it, I was blown away when Alea--one of my hyper-literate friends and most trusted recommenders of books--told me that it was his favorite book ever (or did he say he thought it was the best? I can't remember any more). I bought it a few weeks ago, put it into my queue of books to read, and finally finished reading it through yesterday. I want to avoid giving an in-depth review of it right now because I would not do it justice under such time constraints. I will say, however, that in the past two days, totally unrelated trains of thought have been interrupted by the overwhelming feeling of amazement at how fantastically good that book was. When Alea claimed that Atonement was his favorite book he set the bar and my expectations pretty high. I'd still say he understated his case.
A surprisingly large number of you remembered that it was my birthday last week and sent me your best wishes. Although such thing always makes me feel a little bad since I don't know the birth dates of even my closest friends, it was very nice of so many of you to inquire how I am doing and wish me well on my birthday. I gave different answers to different people depending on how willing I was to share my disappointment at once again failing to get into medical school this year (there is still technically the chance that I'll hear back, but the fact that only one school has even given me an answer is a pretty clear indication that I'm being received with a resounding "meh" from the universe). The past week has given a little more perspective on my lot in life, however, so I'd like to upgrade my answers from last week from "I'm ok" to "quite well, thank you."
My other parents--not in a Coraline sense, but in the sense that I married in to their family--sent me a gift certificate to Amazon.com. Although Amanda and I do most of our non-food shopping on Amazon, and generally have a long list of things we want to buy from Amazon when extra money shows up, I have actually been somewhat stumped as to what I should get with my birthday money. Since Christmas, I have been given a series of the best and most thoughtful gifts I have ever gotten in my life: a bread maker, a cuisinart food processor, the most amazing thermoses ever, a fabulous cookbook, some kitchen items I use every day, a winter coat, and dozens of other really useful and cool things. It's not that I won't be able to find something fabulous to buy on Amazon with my gift certificate, but my moments of being stumped helped remind me just how well I'm doing and how content I am right now. And so, even though I'm still a bit upset that I've spent another thousand dollars we don't really have applying in vain to medical schools, I'm terribly excited that I might be able to teach science to middle- or high-schoolers next year. My absolute back up will be to work as a CNA in a hospital or nursing home, which has become something I truly love doing.
As always, there are dozens of things I could bring up that have happened to me in the past weeks or months that have been awesome or annoying. Right now, however, I'm sitting on my couch next to Amanda, eating some delicious corn bread I just baked, listening to Vince Guiraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas music. And so to answer your inquiries into how I'm doing, I guess my answer is that, as always, I'm sure things could be better. The fact that I'd have to think about how they could be better, however, is probably the most articulate answer I could give.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
with his learner's permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a large tree.
As a child, my family went camping at Pioneer Park on the shore of Lake Michigan. I remember once spending the better part of a day building a sand castle. When I went back the next day, eager to continue adding on to my fantastic creation, I found that someone had wantonly destroyed it. Although I had realized from the start that building sand castles is a very transient pleasure, and that weather would undo my labors very quickly, I was nonetheless very disappointed that my work had been purposely and needlessly wasted.
I learned this week that BYU has once again decided to kick down my sand castle.
There are few things that I am as unabashedly proud and excited about as the things I did for BYU Speech and Debate. When I joined the team in January of 2004, there were only a handful of people coming to the meetings. Clinton and Lee, the founders of the group, told me that the team was only quasi-official, that permission had been granted to form the club and debate on weekends, but that traveling or officially representing BYU was expressly forbidden; BYU had had an official CEDA-style team in the 80's that had been caught cheating before the team was disbanded. Of course, we did travel to tournaments and officially represent BYU, but we drove there in our own cars, paid our own admission fees, and rented just one hotel room for each sex, regardless of fire-code prohibitions or questions of comfort. With so much work to go around, I was given responsibilities from day one, whether it was to register the teams, find new fund-raising methods, or teach lessons on a current event that I had studied the previous week. I loved debate and spent hundreds of hours preparing, practicing, and discussing it.
After a few years, I had become the most senior person on the team. I had gone to every tournament twice, I had phone numbers for bishops in Wyoming that would let us sleep on couches while we were there for tournaments, and the improvements we had made to our fund-raising high-school debate tournament had made the venture profitable, which made it much less expensive to be on the team. All in all, I think I did a pretty good job of running the debate team and training the next group of kids how to debate well; we regularly won tournaments against teams with full-time debate coaches and school-funded transportation.
Despite my advice to the following generation of debaters to keep the team on the down low and to keep our rituals hidden from the BYU administrators, however, the team applied for and got funding through the political science department, started renting BYU vans to drive to tournaments, and published their successes in the Daily Universe for all to see. Then, after a BYU baseball player sued the school because he had hurt himself while driving to an away game, BYU cracked down and canceled all traveling clubs. The debate team's official status became the weapon that BYU used to dismantle it.
Although someone might someday reconstitute a traveling team or even successfully lobby the powers that be for permission to travel to tournaments, their labors will be their own. My contributions, and the sense of pride I felt in passing on a better-organized, more prestigious team is now gone. Someone was foolish enough to trust that BYU would let something beautiful, educational, and totally harmless survive. I only wish I could muster a sense of surprise.
And so I will admit my public defeat. I am not ashamed to pay maudlin tribute to something that shaped me so profoundly, and that I loved so much. I'm not going to moralize, nor will there be an afternoon-special-style lesson that will put this into a greater context. I knew that someone down the line would drop the ball and BYU Speech and Debate would die. Debate was mine. It still is. Maybe now even more than ever.
I learned this week that BYU has once again decided to kick down my sand castle.
There are few things that I am as unabashedly proud and excited about as the things I did for BYU Speech and Debate. When I joined the team in January of 2004, there were only a handful of people coming to the meetings. Clinton and Lee, the founders of the group, told me that the team was only quasi-official, that permission had been granted to form the club and debate on weekends, but that traveling or officially representing BYU was expressly forbidden; BYU had had an official CEDA-style team in the 80's that had been caught cheating before the team was disbanded. Of course, we did travel to tournaments and officially represent BYU, but we drove there in our own cars, paid our own admission fees, and rented just one hotel room for each sex, regardless of fire-code prohibitions or questions of comfort. With so much work to go around, I was given responsibilities from day one, whether it was to register the teams, find new fund-raising methods, or teach lessons on a current event that I had studied the previous week. I loved debate and spent hundreds of hours preparing, practicing, and discussing it.
After a few years, I had become the most senior person on the team. I had gone to every tournament twice, I had phone numbers for bishops in Wyoming that would let us sleep on couches while we were there for tournaments, and the improvements we had made to our fund-raising high-school debate tournament had made the venture profitable, which made it much less expensive to be on the team. All in all, I think I did a pretty good job of running the debate team and training the next group of kids how to debate well; we regularly won tournaments against teams with full-time debate coaches and school-funded transportation.
Despite my advice to the following generation of debaters to keep the team on the down low and to keep our rituals hidden from the BYU administrators, however, the team applied for and got funding through the political science department, started renting BYU vans to drive to tournaments, and published their successes in the Daily Universe for all to see. Then, after a BYU baseball player sued the school because he had hurt himself while driving to an away game, BYU cracked down and canceled all traveling clubs. The debate team's official status became the weapon that BYU used to dismantle it.
Although someone might someday reconstitute a traveling team or even successfully lobby the powers that be for permission to travel to tournaments, their labors will be their own. My contributions, and the sense of pride I felt in passing on a better-organized, more prestigious team is now gone. Someone was foolish enough to trust that BYU would let something beautiful, educational, and totally harmless survive. I only wish I could muster a sense of surprise.
And so I will admit my public defeat. I am not ashamed to pay maudlin tribute to something that shaped me so profoundly, and that I loved so much. I'm not going to moralize, nor will there be an afternoon-special-style lesson that will put this into a greater context. I knew that someone down the line would drop the ball and BYU Speech and Debate would die. Debate was mine. It still is. Maybe now even more than ever.
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