Our Majority Leader

Today, Dr. Bill Frist took time to get in front of cameras and refer to the Democratic (and PS democratically elected representatives of United States Citizens) opposition as having "no conviction, no principles, and no ideas."

Pretty rough stuff from someone at that moment demonstrating his conviction by maligning his congressional colleagues, demonstrating his principles by playing loose with financial disclosure rules, and who's biggest idea in the public view to date was to diagnose a permanently, mentally crippled woman as healthy after seeing her on television.

Mr. Frist, Dr. Frist, Senator Frist, please, a little decorum.

You know damn well they have ideas. They are just not your ideas.

You know damn well they have principles. They are just not your principles.

You know damn well they have conviction. If I were you I would be more worried that I might be immanently facing a conviction.

The majority leader of the United States Senate ought not to be a mud slinger. Its undignified. You aren't writing a blog, you are representing each and every one of us. Shape up, or ship out and hit the "get your own blog" button.

Lazy

Darn Steelers had to make it interesting. Well, could have been worse.

You Should Learn Japanese

You're cutting edge, and you are ready to delve into wacky Japanese culture. From Engrish to eating contests, you're born to be a crazy gaijin. Saiko!

What Language Should You Learn?

Well, I know a couple people that will like that.

Show Me the Money

Something that has been bugging me for a while turned up on 60 Minutes tonight. They ran a story about people who were fired from their job because they wouldn't quit smoking. Not because they were smoking at their desks, or because a co-worker or a customer had complained, not even because they were smoking at work. Just because they wouldn't quit, period.

It turns out to have nothing to do with job performance and everything to do with the bottom line. Companies that provide health insurance for their employees pay a higher premium if they have employees who smoke.

The story went on to show several other companies that had put in place "wellness programs" designed to modify the behavior of employees toward the end of reducing health care costs. These programs were not just about smoking, but also about diet, exercise, and sexual behavior. The programs require participants to fill out a lifestyle questionnaire and then have follow up drug tests, polygraph tests, and even a "lifestyle nagger" who calls people up to ask them what they've been eating and whatnot.

The way things are going, it would seem inevitable that nearly every employer with a substantive number of employees will put such a program in place. My employer this year radically restructured our benefits. I wonder how long it will be until someone calls me to ask me when the last time I went to McDonald's was, or how long I am sleeping.

Never mind that my lifestyle is 90% a manifestation of my job and job stress. Perhaps they ought to ask that in their questionnaire.

One employer on the show was lamenting how much it sucks that he can't extend a mandatory smoking ban to spouses of people that work for him.

Here's the problem for me. I think these employers are within their purview to enforce such plans. Medical costs for employees are a business expense for them, and just like they would try to save money anyplace else, why should the benefits program be off limits if there are savings to be made.

Curiously, they are able to make a societal change here that doctors, schools, insurers, or government can't. They are able to say "you must change." All the other mentioned bodies can't drop someone for poor behavior in any kind of a final way. Public institutions can't do that. Private ones can.

Naturally, the terminations have been litigated. It turns out that in most states it is completely legal behavior to fire someone over completely legal behavior. So not only is it good business sense, but it is also within the law. For the moment.

Because of course now that politicians have seen the problem, and since this is a great case for the little guy, there is talk about trying to make this kind of practice illegal. I have a better idea.

Let's divorce health insurance from work.

Why it seemed like a good idea to have health benefits at your job is beyond me. It leads to all kinds of privacy breaches. It makes people hate their employers when they otherwise love their jobs. It makes people that hate their jobs stay with their employers long after the thrill is gone. It places an undo stress on small businesses to provide an insurance plan - even when the owner of the business feels like the plan is trash - just to say they have a plan.

I recently heard a statistic that said that basically GM loses money on each vehicle it sells because of the amount of money they spend in employee health benefits.

Why are our employers involved in this at all?

Supposedly there is an advantage to creating large networks of patients to spread the costs and minimize the risks. But all things being equal, most companies are really joining federations of federations. Why not just let individual people join groups on their own. You know, like for homeowner's insurance, auto insurance, renter's insurance... Why is health insurance so different that we approach it in a totally different way?

For that matter, why is you employer the only entity that can aggregate stakeholders? I play frisbee, and belong to the Ultimate Players Association. Why can't they run a health plan? I am a professional theatre artisan and belong to the United States Institute of Theatre Technology. Why not have a plan there? We associate in many many ways that we could utilize for averaging health care costs (some might even say we could aggregate as a nation - perish the thought). Why are we passing this on to employers as a business expense?

Maybe it would make sense if the employer owned a hospital. When I worked at Yale, I was a member of the Yale Health Plan, and I went to a Yale Doctor at a Yale facility. Maybe that makes sense. But really, in situations where the employer is not in the doctor business, why do I want to count on them to make reasonable health decisions for me - especially within the context of their making reasonable business decisions for them (and by transference to me, because on at least some level what's good for the business ought to be good for the employees).

And really, what possible interest should my employer have in mucking around in my off the clock behavior? Do we want employers telling people they can skydive or scuba? How about getting fired for getting a speeding ticket?

This doesn't even begin to touch the idea that employers should do pre-hiring health screenings. Want to lose a chance at a job because your grandparents both had cancer?

This really is a better idea. Lets let employers take that individual premium and turn it into salary, and lets let people work on their own to shop for the best insurance. Let's moot this problem rather than regulating it.

Rampant Consumerism

Went to the store today. After getting a couple of tracks from iTunes I decided that there were a few albums I wanted to have as CDs. Strangely it did not occur to me to buy the entire albums from iTunes and then burn them as audio CDs. I guess in my head once something is an mp3 it is somehow tainted. So buying it as an mp3 and then burning an audio disc feels wrong. The music should start as CD quality audio. Having it as an mp3 is simply a convenience.

So, while downloading "I Run for Life" from Melissa and "They Sure Don't Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore" from Kinky Friedman I suddenly found myself really needing to go to the store to pick up new CDs from Liz Phair and Sheryl Crow.

Normally when I go into a store it is in a circumstance where I have no intent of buying anything. For me, shopping is more like retail hiking. It must be a star wars generation thing, growing up with shopping malls. They are like consumer museums. I can go to Best Buy week after week and never buy anything. I go to PetSmart to visit the kittens. So the occasion of going to the store when I really do want to buy something is well, rare.

And apparently its a little dangerous. I bought the new Sheryl Crow and the new Liz Phair. I also bought an older Peter Gabriel that I lost ages ago and have wanted to replace ever since. Then there was a new REM album the missus wanted and she also picked out a disc by The Killers.

Keeping track?

Then, well, they had this song on the PA. Someone had covered Comfortably Numb from "The Wall." Who would cover that?

So I bought that too. We only narrowly escaped without also buying the new issue of "Jagged Little Pill"and the Melissa greatest hits album plus maybe the first season of Lost on DVD.

So, my advice, just like "don't go for groceries when you are hungry" well, don't go to the store when you are really ready to buy something.

By the way, the cover: Dar Williams.

Ellipses...

Good news this morning on the High Court front... Maybe Tuesday wasn't all that bad... You shouldn't open the Halloween candy until Halloween... Sometimes putting a very complex process in place will only reveal that you've been doing it right all along... Trump fired four tonight, bet you weren't expecting that... I am going to have to rake the leaves sooner or later... I was meetinged out as of the end of the day Tuesday, that was 11 hours of meetings ago... The Air America people are certainly looking forward to indictments this week... I got some very nice birthday gifts this year... They let me keep my old license when I got my new one, what's up with that... As a lifelong Cub's fan, I just can't be excited for the White Sox... Just what are "sox" anyway... I am thinking of having a pledge drive for the blog... The oil companies are all reporting record profits, why can't political leaders connect that with prices at the pump as easily as things like weather, trading, and global demand... I wonder if Basketball will be worth watching this year... Audiences seem to be liking "In My Life" more than the reviewers have... Circ saws made to cut steel are kinda loud... Install starts Monday, I wonder if the set is finished... I threw away my post-its with potential blog topics, I wonder what I will write about...

Presents, woohoo!

Marisa powers up my birthday - cordless style!

Do you think she has home projects on her list for me?

All Things Being Equal

I'd rather be in Cleveland.

That kind of day.

And it snowed. A little. Is it possible I did that?

Probably not.

Mid-Fall Honor Roll

As of mid-semester fall of 2005, the semester is looking very positive for the interim All Dave Honor Roll listees:

Jake DeGroot
Joel Krause
Bob Moczydlowsky

Congrats. Keep up the good work.

All Together Now

The biggest problem with assigning work...

...Is that you then have to grade the work.

Mid semester grades are due tomorrow, so I finally had to ratchet down and grade the work that had been piling up on my desk. Hard to give people an idea of how they are doing in your class when really you have no idea of how they are doing in your class.

Well, now I know.

I had mid-term exams to grade along with homework projects. In an effort to make exam grading less gloomy I watch the scores in real time, sort of like a race. Reading 30 papers which ideally ought to have at least comparable if not identical answers gets to be a little mind numbing. I go 5 questions at a time, doing five from one test and then the same five from the next, working my way through the entire stack. It is chipping away at the mountain a little rather than trying to do the whole thing at once. Plus it, I think, helps me be more consistent with partial credit - doing all of one question in close proximity timewise. I think it makes for more consistent grading across all the papers.

It also lets me enter the scoring five questions at a time. I can also sort the columns by score after each group of five, so I can see who is "in the lead." "Will it be a grad or an undergrad? Will it be a dramat or an out of department student? Ooh, such and such started strong, but they are really fading at the end." It doesn't effect individual scores, because I don't look at the name until after I score the answers.

I know it must sound dorky, but it is kind of interesting. Watching someone put on a hard charge at the end to make an A, seeing someone get out of the gate quick only to fade, watching the top score in the class see-saw between a tiny group as their page scores dither from one to the other. It's like a little story to go with the grading.

Perhaps just to be filed under "whatever gets you through the day."

Who Cares What They Say - You Look Marvelous!

my new desktop...



and the rest...