family

Procrastination has its Virtues

Posted on by Will Cox

I’m presently working on remodeling the upstairs bathroom, and have been for some time. In order to do this on the cheap, I planned to replace the doors and trim on the existing cabinets. However, the cabinets were not symmetrical. In order to fix that glaring flaw, I removed the cabinets, disassembled them, cut them to match, and then reassembled them. I waited until that was done before ordering the counter and the doors.

That procrastination seems to have paid off. When we went to place the order for the doors at Home Depot, we ran across vanity and top sets which cost less than ordering the doors and top, and would give us better-looking cabinets.

Now we just need to agree on which one.

General

Benefits

Posted on by Will Cox

Health care as an employer-provided benefit arose in response to salary caps and payroll taxes [citation needed]. It was a way to compete for employees by increasing the employee’s effective salary without having to pay all of the cost. Employee benefits, as part of the total compensation package, are still used to compete for quality workers. Compare, for example, the descriptions of the benefits offered to work for these three companies. Two are fast-rising stars. Two are publicly-traded. One ranks seventh among the most profitable companies in America.

For which would you wish to work?

Books

Dear Diary

Posted on by Will Cox

I’m reading George Orwell’s diary and Samuel Pepys’s diary one day at a time in Google Reader, as the entries are published. The two diaries are a study in contrasts. Pepys’s is detailed, run-on, and full of name-dropping, politics, and plague. Orwell’s is about gardening and the weather, spiced with observations of Morocco. Lately though it has taken on a different character, as he has included clippings from newspapers with his comments.

70 years ago in August, Europe was fast approaching war.

communication

Parrots

Posted on by Will Cox

The differences between American media and the BBC World Service in treatment of the financial situation with the automotive industry, or anything really, are just striking. I’ve been listening to WNYC on my drive to the office, so hear NPR‘s Morning Edition, followed by Marketplace Morning Report and then the BBC World Service Newshour. I noticed earlier in the year — after NPR had a short discussion with Barney Frank where they asked him no questions, and he told them no lies — that the interviews on the BBC had more of the nature of a debate. Two guests of presumed opposing viewpoints are invited to discuss the issue of the day, and the host engages with them in a somewhat antagonistic fashion. If a claim is made, he asks for support of the claim.

This tool of the British government is less like a brain-dead parrot than our ostensibly independent media. What purpose does it serve for the media to regurgitate the latest press release?

economics

Electronic Medical Records

Posted on by Will Cox

On Marketplace this morning, they mentioned that Obama wants electronic medical records.

  1. Why is it any of Obama’s damn business?
  2. I haven’t noticed a reduction in paperwork as a result of computing.
  3. There are normal computing issues magnified by the sensitivity of the data.

Earlier some doctor interviewed on another NPR program said he would love medical records, and that they would save him money — and that the government should pay for them because the tools are too expensive.

Excuse me?

If they are too expensive for you to buy in order to reduce your costs then they are not saving you money. The only way the cost-benefit analysis comes out in your favor is if you don’t have to pay for it.

And so I view this, like many other things, as simply yet another power grab.

communication/rant

DirecTiVo, your return can not be too soon

Posted on by Will Cox

Our DirecTiVo was dying. Every now and again, frequently at times, it stopped, hung. Maybe it waiting on a bad block on disk. Maybe it was just the heat. But the only option offered by DirecTV was a replacement with their dreaded DVR.

My first impression was positive. The guide responded quickly. The on-screen display is unobtrusive.

But on closer inspection, this was designed by a committee of retarded monkeys with no sense for how the ability to control the television changes how we use it.

The remote is cluttered. Do I really need three power buttons?

Why are you starting from sleep at the Game Lobby? I have never willingly selected that, so don’t even bother showing it to me.

Speaking of sleep, what’s the deal with the screen saver? Trying to keep my cathode ray tube from burning in the Game Lobby?

But now that I have a chance to sit down and completely reprogram all of the shows I’ve chosen to record over the past eight years when there is absolutely no reason why I should have to do that, I wonder WHY THE FUCK DirecTV can’t make a searchable version of the TV guide so that I can find the shows I want to record you fucking incompetent pieces of shit.

How about making one that displays the show that’s actually playing on my TV?

This is why all efforts at interactive television have failed miserably.

General

Grandmother’s Fruit Cobbler

Posted on by Will Cox
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1 c. flour
  • 1 c. milk
  • 1 stick butter
  • 3 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 qt. fruit, sweetened

Heat sweetened fruit in saucepan. Melt butter in deep baking dish (at least a 2 qt. size). Mix sugar, flour, milk and baking powder. Pour batter into hot, melted butter, then add hot fruit.

Bake at 375° for 25 minutes.

Serve from the oven, topped with ice cream.

recipe from Leta Bell Cox, published in the Beverly Presbyterian Church Cookbook (2002)

communication/politics

Pointless Distinctions: barriers to entry to Real Journalism

Posted on by Will Cox

Journalists can obtain a copy of this publication via the Password-protected Web site for accredited journalists or from the OECD’s Media Relations Division (tel. + 33 1 45 24 97 00).

Non-journalists can download the raw data underlying each indicator and find out how to obtain a copy of this publication here.

For further information, journalists are invited to contact Simon Chapple (tel. + 33 1 45 24 85 45) in the OECD’s Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Directorate.

Have to keep those filters in place. We certainly wouldn’t want the people to see what kind of analysis is being done without the unbiased intervention of the media.

Books/humor

Of the Character of one Mr. Brownlow

Posted on by Will Cox

From There’s Pippins And Cheese To Come, by Charles S. Brooks (Yale University Press, 1917)

By some slim chance, reader, you may be the kind of person who, on a visit to a strange city, makes for a bookshop.

…

But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book, the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. “To Paul’s Church Yard,” he writes, “and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read.” Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand.

So our dear Mr. Brownlow, respectable gentleman and thief.

‘The prosecutor was reading, was he?’ inquired Fang, after another pause.

‘Yes,’ replied the man. ‘The very book he has in his hand.’

‘Oh, that book, eh?’ said Fang. ‘Is it paid for?’

‘No, it is not,’ replied the man, with a smile.

‘Dear me, I forgot all about it!’ exclaimed the absent old gentleman, innocently.

‘A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!’ said Fang, with a comical effort to look humane. ‘I consider, sir, that you have obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious and disreputable circumstances; and you may think yourself very fortunate that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy is discharged. Clear the office!’

liberty/rhetoric/sadness

Speaking of Hate

Posted on by Will Cox

I really hate that the rhetoric of liberty is perverted in the service of illiberal causes. And I hate this not just because of the hypocrisy of it. I hate this because now that the language of liberty is indeliably associated with those wishing to deny liberty to others, it is relatively simple for all who wish to deny liberty to others to argue that it is in fact those who wish to defend liberty who are in reality attempting to suppress it.

For example, it is well-known that the Ku Klux Klan would deny liberty to blacks, Jews, and Catholics, among others. Yet in rallying people to their cause, they speak of defending their freedoms. Now any who would defend liberty can be discounted as fellow travelers, tarred by association.

This rhetorical identification allows those who would expand their power at the expense of liberty greater discretion. You don’t really want to be like them, do you?

sadness

Bobby Dunbar

Posted on by Will Cox

I’m listening again to This American Life‘s story “The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar.” The story is remarkably affecting, sad, and hard to imagine.

[This paragraph intentionally left blank in a moment of silence.]

But didn’t the DNA test simply demonstrate that Bobby Dunbar, Jr., and Alfonso Dunbar did not have the same male ancestor?

liberty/politics

What, Me Worry? I’ve Done Nothing Wrong.

Posted on by Will Cox

One thing I’ve never quite understood is how advocates for expansive government power never quite seem able to imagine themselves as being on the unpleasant receiving end of that power.

Take, for example, Michelle Malkin, who has been a vocal and enthusiastic proponent of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act but is now, finally, concerned that her liberty might be at risk. I’m not alone in seeing the irony in this.

It would, however, be a crying shame if the people whose party was until recently the token opposition conveniently forgot their defense of liberty now that they are in power.

General

Footprint per Capita

Posted on by Will Cox

The newspaper had a map of each country’s carbon footprint per person. Something like this one from Wikipedia.

carbon dioxide emissions per capita per country

This is one of those graphics that misleads with statistics. The U.S. seems top of the charts here, but one has to recall that the ranking is per person. Compare, for example, China or India, which have many more people than the U.S. In the ranking of emissions per capita, the United States comes in 10th, behind Qatar and other well-known polluters such as Aruba. China is 91st, while India is 133rd. However, considering emissions alone, without dividing by the population, we’re #1, followed closely by China, with Russia and India lagging behind in 3rd and 4th place, respectively.

carbon dioxide emissions by country