Scott Bain's Blog

Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T11:42:00.001-08:00

Christopher Hitchens died yesterday of esophageal cancer. I just wanted to say that this loss is enormous to me, as he represented the kind of critical thinking and rational courage that is missing in most of our discourse these days. We will miss him.

My favorite moment for Hitch: When debating Mos Def, her referred to his opponent as "Mr. Definately"

What shall we do without him? The world is a lesser place.

That's all I have to say about that.

Fear of Death

2011-09-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

Cheery topic, huh?

The thing is, I don't really feel it. Fear of death, that is. I have not for a long, long time. I think I started questioning things like God and religion and the afterlife and so forth right around the time my parents divorced and I was uprooted from my life. I was 13.

I draw no line of causality here, I just note that this was the time when I went from being fairly religious (christian) to firmly agnostic; I do not know if there is a God or not, nor do I believe it is ultimately knowable. I certainly do not believe in organized religion as the arbiter of any truth on the subject. I feel as Christopher Hitchens does; I don't know if there is a God or not, and I don't think the Pope does either.

As part of this shift I confronted the notion of death, and what I felt about it. Even though I was quite young, the line of reasoning I will offer here was one I quickly developed, and it has remained largely unchanged ever since.

When we die, there are two possibilities, only two. Either we cease to exist entirely, or we do not. I cannot think of a middle ground.

If we cease to exist, I see nothing to fear in that. How can I fear a thing that I will never experience? It is like worrying about theoretical volcanoes on another planet. I will never see, feel, or in any other way experience "not existing", so to me this is a purely abstract thing. In fact, prior to October 27th, 1959 (or up to nine months before that, depending on your point of view) I did not exist as far as I know, and I did not suffer at the time. "Scott Bain does not exist" is actually the normal state of affairs; it has been true for most of history. My life span is the incredibly brief exception.

If we do not cease to exist, then we must continue in some other way. In other words, death is simply change. Change can be scary, I suppose, but it's nothing new to me. That 13-year-old Scott Bain changed into something else, then something else, and so on until he became me. My infant son is long gone, having changed many times over the years. Change happens all the time, to everyone, and sometimes we don't like it but it evokes no terrifying, primal fear. Life is change, after all.

Some people say they do not fear death, but dieing: that it will be unpleasant, painfull, and horrifying. First of all, this is not certain; some people die in their sleep, or are killed in a sudden way with no opportunity to suffer or even know about it. But even if a prolonged death is to be my fate, here again it is nothing particularly new. I have had terrible illnesses and painful injuries before, times when I was so sick I thought it might be better to die. Most people have. I know this could happen again, and I certainly do not look forward to having the flu I had in 2010 ever again... but once more, this is not a deep-seated, Nietzschian fear. It's just something I don't look forward to.

The fear of death is to me, therefore, an irrational fear; which does not mean it is not real. Irrational feelings are real feelings, and should not be discounted as somehow less important. But because it is irrational you cannot reason someone else out of it, and I have no intention of trying. It is a phobia, like fear of heights, and you either have it or you don't. I don't.

My mother died when I was 29, just as we discovered that I was about to become a father. My son never got to know his paternal grandmother, nor she him. Her death, to me, was a terrible loss. That is what I fear; not my own death, but my own life continuing after losing friends and family, and even beloved pets that are so important to me. The prospect of life in loss is frightening to me, and for good reason; I've felt that before, too, and it was far worse than any illness, injury, pain, or painful change in myself.

My mother is either gone entirely, which I am sure does not trouble her, or she is somewhere else in some other form. Either notion is acceptable, as far as my own fate is concerned, to me. When people talk about wanting to live to be 100 years old or more, I greet that concept with the idea that this would likely afford me the opportunity to watch most of my friends suffer and die, and then having to deal with the loss as I went on. That someone would want this simply baffles me.

I also wonder why so few people point out the obvious about extending human life. If we could change ourselves so that we lived 150 or 200 years, the over-population of this planet, already a huge problem, would become massively worse. I feel that I am taking my turn on this world, and that when my turn is over I have to bow out and make a space for someone else. Otherwise we will simply extend our time living in a human nightmare, making our earth into the hell that the religious groups fear may be their fate if they do not follow the rules set down by their priests. I would prefer almost anything to that.

-Scott Bain-
September 2011

Short films made by now-famous directors

2011-07-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

Found on Reddit r/Movies and elsewhere.

La Lettre by Michel Gondry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3Bm_nAajO4

Vincent by Tim Burton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxQcBKUPm8o

Stalk of the Celery Monster by Tim Burton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn6S_jfbgVI

Frankenweeine by Tim Burton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34yz-xC4xQ

My Best Friends Birthday by Quentin Tarantino http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6MUbRZSg80

Cigarettes and Coffee by Paul Thomas Anderson (precursor to Hard 8) http://vimeo.com/2447683

Dirk Diggler Story by Paul Thomas Anderson (p/c to Boogie Nights) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nPorghWyCk

World Cinema by Joel and Ethan Coen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMYAtgapMro

Comedians by Seth MacFarlane http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1eanPn2q74

Larry and Steve by Seth MacFarlane (precursor to Family Guy) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzoy1bgAfys

Gulp by Jason Reitman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXnOMrGwjoo

In God We Trust by Jason Reitman http://vimeo.com/25008515

Consent by Jason Reitman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B5NMN7GBA4

I'm Here by Spike Jonze (w/ making of) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OY1EXZt4ok

(making of I'm Here) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qtpX0u6U1M&feature=related

How They Get There by Spike Jonze http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ3DyxhoJR0

Bottle Rocket Short by Wes Anderson (pre-feature film) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_X7Gkn7T-A&feature=related

Hotel Chevalier by Wes Anderson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lamWhA7j8gY

Doodlebug by Christopher Nolan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhKt_CkXD0&feature=player_embedded

Day of the Fight by Stanley Kubrick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgv7oAjhfbw&feature=player_embedded

Flying Padre by Stanley Kubrick http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7f1MlY8Jyw

Escape to Nowhere by Steven Spielberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI3431fetiM

Xenogenesis by James Cameron http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_L8HkK1zA0

Alive in Joburg by Neill Blomkamp (p/c to District 9) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy0cCn7F7mw&feature=player_embedded

The Adventures of André and Wally B. by John Lasseter (p/c to Pixar) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Taq9LFbcvxE

Within the Woods by Sam Raimi (p/c to Evil Dead w/ Bruce Campbell) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrZVxtqOk7w&feature=related

It's Murder! Directed by Sam Raimi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuaBZ4e8BBI

Six Men Getting Sick by David Lynch http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1909e_six-men-getting-sick_music

The Alphabet by David Lynch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he0tw0tOUCg

The Grandmother by David Lynch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoDnsR7TCiY

The Amputee by David Lynch http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8228930212756018337

The Big Shave by Martin Scorsese http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otxlzSMcBTo

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? by Martin Scorsese http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWs1SM0xYiI&feature=related

It's Not Just You Murray! by Martin Scorsese http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onXHGZtAT4g

Crimes of the Future by David Cronenberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--Wm6ivB8WY

From the Drain by David Cronenberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6yOSYkN6tQ

Bedhead by Robert Rodriguez http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3PLF3SQZmk

Last Year in Viet Nam by Oliver Stone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5p9y8HHPsk

Geometria by Guillermo Del Toro http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-kXjzssBaI

Freiheit by George Lucas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx330bGmxIk

Discipline of Do Easy by Gus Van Sant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ochyO45Jb0g

The Junky's Christmas by Francis Ford Copploa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxw64o84Zvo

Boy and Bicycle by Ridley Scott http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGt402DKwzc

Foutaises by Jean-Pierre Jeunet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AspmmjBl1LU

Rubber Johnny by Chris Cunningham http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtBa5SS33JI

Rozbijemy Zabawe by Roman Polanski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcKPbei8Tg&feature=related

Lampa The Lamp by Roman Polanski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LroUEMhyEwA

Morderstwo by Roman Polanski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQLoEmhY3jk

Teeth Smile by Roman Polanski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf3okr5wPzg&NR=1

This is John by The Duplass Brothers http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/this_is_john/

Scrapple by The Duplass Brothers http://www.atom.com/funny_videos/scrapple/

Protozoa, by Darren Aronofsky http://aronofksy.tripod.com/protozoa.html

Sofia Coppola Lick the Star pt1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn6W65Nq5FQ
Sofia Coppola Lick the Star pt2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2jjIyweXE4&feature=related

The Goodbye Place by Richard Kelly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC6t0Ik1MFU

George Lucas The Electronic Laryrinth (THX1138) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PAePOxImiM

GPS, take me to the Frankfurt Airport!

2011-07-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

I recently taught a course for a client of mine in Kaiserslautern, Germany, which is about an hour and a half southwest of Frankfurt. Naturally I flew into Frankfurt, rented a car, and drove to the course location. Being new to Germany and concerned that I might have trouble reading the road-signs, it seemed obvious that I should rent a car with a GPS navigation system.

In fact, when I'd emailed my course contact for "good directions from the airport to Kaiserslautern" her advice was "rent a car with a GPS." Ha! Okay, sounds good.

I am not a fan of jet-lag, and so I flew in a couple of days early to allow my biorhythms or circadian rhythms or whatever rhythms are involved to sort things out and, like, let me sleep in the nighttime and stay awake in the daytime. This is especially important when one is planning to deliver 3 full days of stand-up training. Having the GPS was nice because it helped me explore the area without any concern that I might get lost and not find my way back to the hotel. I like GPS. When Andrea and I took a trip up the California coast for our 25th wedding anniversary it was great to be able to type in "seafood", let's say, or "Golden Gate Park" and have it find our way for us. I'm a fan.

When the course was over it was time to fly home and, unfortunately, I had a 9:35am flight out of Frankfurt. Given the drive time and the vicissitudes of international travel security, I knew I had to leave very, very early in the morning. It seemed like 6am should do it, but I am paranoid about being late. I left at 5:30am.

I got everything into the car, fired up the GPS, selected "airports" and looked at the selections. It started off with "Terminal 1, Frankfurt Hahn", then "Terminal 2, Frankfurt Hahn", then just "Frankfurt Hahn". Following these it listed airports located in cities other than Frankfurt, and given that all three "Hahn"s were exactly the same distance away I assumed it didn't matter which one I picked. I picked the general one, "Frankfurt Hahn". I figured once I got close I'd be following signs to "rental car return" anyway.

As I traveled along things seemed okay, at first. But then, after a while, it seemed like I was being directed to smaller and smaller roads, and away from the main "A" roads (the Autobahns, as you may know). I was momentarily concerned that I'd somehow goofed up the GPS settings, but a little sign would routinely confirm that I was indeed on my way to the airport; with an airplane symbol, the word "Hahn", and and arrow pointing me to continue. So I did. The road got down to a one-lane-each-way affair, and in more than one case I had to slow down for farm equipment. And a cow. Still, little brown signs with airplanes on them beckoned me onward.

As I approached the airport I really began to wonder. It just didn't look like the airport I'd flown in to. "Oh well," I thought, "maybe we're approaching from the other side". Sometimes GPS takes you on the scenic route, but it gets you there. I saw a car-rental-return sign for "Sixt", which was the right company, and so I pulled into the lot and parked.

Nobody was there. Nobody anywhere, really. No signs telling me what to do. No clearly-marked doors. Crickets with German accents. Sauerkraut tumbleweeds.

I saw a workman off in the distance, wearing a plastic green-neon-colored vest, enter a small portable office. He was the only person I could see anywhere so I walked the 200 yards or so, knocked on the door, and asked if he could help me. He was very cordial, and began to tell me where the entrance to the airport was and how to get there, and how to turn in my rental car keys... when I just thought to ask him "this is the Frankfurt airport, right?"

"Yes," he said, and then after a moment, "Frankfurt Hahn".

"Is there another one?" I asked. His eyes got big.

"Oh, no, you want the main Frankfurt airport? That's Frankfurt Mainz! This is the little one, just for local, private planes!"

Ah. The "little" one. "How far away is the big one?" I asked, but before he could answer the look on his face told me everything I needed to know. Far. Quite far. Frankfurt is a large city and I was on the wrong side of it, with the rush hour just beginning.

"What time is your flight?" he asked. I told him. He slowly shook his head. I think he was about to offer me somewhere to spend the night.

You may have heard that the autobahn has no speed limits. This is, for the most part, true. I capitalized on this fact at this point, big time. I'd rather not go into details, except to say that I think I experienced a slight degree of Einsteinian time-dilation on the A4.

I made it (barely, OJ-ing my way through the airport and running up to the gate at the last minute, just like in a rom-com but without Jennifer Aniston), but you may be wondering... what went wrong with the GPS? It was simple: nothing. The average GPS, when displaying a list of locations, orders them by distance - nearest to farthest. Had I scrolled down I would have found more entries for Frankfurt, including Frankfurt Mainz, and I probably would have stopped to ask someone before getting too far down the road which was the right airport for me. Perhaps my car rental agreement would have made this clear... had it not been, you know, in German.

This was just another in a long line of examples illustrating the dangers of relying too much on technology. In years past I would have figured out my route on a map, and in so doing would have educated myself about the city of Frankfurt. With the GPS I didn't have to, so I didn't, and then my ignorance reared its head when I misused the GPS.

And darn near got stranded in Germany.

People who know me well often point out that I am overly concerned about allowing enough time for things. I always show up early to places, often sitting in my car and listening to music until my appointed time arrives. I wanted to write this blog so I could just give them the URL to it whenever this particular criticism is offered...

Tweetin' Weiner

2011-06-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

I actually have some sympathy for the congressman, but the fit was too good to resist...

(sung to the tune of Rockin' Robin)

He works in the congress all day long
Ev'ry now and then he snaps a pic of his dong
They want his resignation, short and sweet
For tweetin' his junk to chicks he don't meet

Tweetin' Weiner
Tweetin' Weiner

They call him tweetin' Weiner 'cause his weiner's what he likes to tweet

Ev'ry TV pundit showed that thang
Weiner half-insisted that it wasn't his wang
He finally admitted that he had lied
You'd think a guy that's packin' that would have more pride

Tweetin' Weiner
Tweetin' Weiner
They call him tweetin' Weiner 'cause his weiner's what he likes to tweet

He never had the nookie, nor spent a dime
He iddn't like Vitter, he committed no crime
He wasn't in the men's room tappin' his feet
All he did was snap his crotch and tweet tweet tweet

Tweetin' Weiner
Tweetin' Weiner

They call him tweetin' Weiner 'cause his weiner's what he likes to tweet

-Scott Bain-

A Singular Flight Experience

2011-06-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

My recent return from Des Moines was a two-leg journey. One flight from Des Moines to Phoenix, then a second flight from Phoenix to Seattle (why one would fly such a stupid route is a topic for another time). Although I try very hard to ensure that I have at least 2-hour layovers when making connections, I had been unable to do so on this one; I knew once I landed in Phoenix that I would have a mere hour to make my flight back home to SeaTac. Does that seem like a long time? You obviously have not been flying recently.

The first flight of this adventure was... well, if not the worst experience of my flying life, it was certainly the strangest. Maybe both, and I fly a lot.

The whole thing began after I had checked out from The Wildwood Hotel in Des Moines, and stopped by the computer in the lobby to check in for my flights and print both of my boarding passes. The US-Air site was up and working (unusual) and I was able to get exit-row-window seats on both legs of the flight. I am over 6'2" tall, so this is rather critical to me. I'd never been able to get extra legroom on two flights in a row like that. I felt incredibly blessed...

...until the browser crashed without saving my changes. I logged back in, and it crashed again. And again. The hotel had Internet Exploder installed, a rather old version that barfed on Flash code. I thought "I could try to fix this, or I could just download and install Firefox". The latter was faster, frankly.

Firefox installed, I tried again, but the seat map would not display due to the lack of the Flash plug-in, and the plug-in would not install due to my lack of admin privileges. I could install Firefox, but not a Firefox plugin. Right. I noticed that one could simply enter the selected seats into a little text box, and amazingly I remembered both seat numbers. Bam, it went in and I printed both boarding passes.

"Our glitch for the mission," I thought, like Lovell on Apollo 13 after the CECO failure. Actually, just like that as it turned out.

When I arrived at DSM, there were no lines at security and I sailed through. Once in, however, I looked at the "Big Board" (only about 10 lines long in this tiny airport) to find my gate. All flights had been assigned a gate except mine. I was pretty early, so I sat down to wait for the gate assignment. After some time had passed with no gate listed, I noticed there was another US-Air flight to Phoenix, 10 minutes before mine, but with a different flight number. There were two flights from Des Moines to Phoenix, on the same airline, 10 minutes apart? Weird. Anyway, it had a gate assignment so I went there to ask about the situation.

When I arrived, the gate agent informed me that yes, this was my flight. The "Big Board" was wrong. The other flight number was the Monday-Friday flight, and was a different number and time on weekends, and they had neglected to change it. So, there was only one flight, and it was mine, and they listed two because... well, just how important could that be? Only that I would have missed the flight if I had not asked. Nah, we don't have to be all that accurate when it comes to airport information-radiators.

So I boarded. Waiting in line at the door to the aircraft I heard a flight attendant on the plane say over the PA system that this flight was quite empty, that everyone should be able to have a row to themselves, and that people should feel free to move to any seats they liked. Keep in mind that most of us were not yet on the plane when she said this.

I got to my choice, hand-picked, window-exit-row seat with all that lovely legroom and, of course, someone had taken it. I showed this guy my boarding pass and said he had my seat.

"They said take any seat you want," he said gruffly.

"I'm pretty sure that means any unclaimed seat. I have this one assigned to me," I replied.

He stared straight ahead and ignored me. After a minute or two I waved down a flight attendant who came over and told the guy he'd have to move. He did. To the seat right next to me.

So now I was sitting next to this giant, seething twerp, fighting for the armrest and noticing that the air inside the plane was getting extremely hot. They had the main door open (on a crude jetway without much of a seal), and the 90+-degree Des Moines air was pouring in. I twisted the little airjet over my head and... nothing came out.

The (same) flight attendant came on the PA again and explained that the US-Air ground crew in Des Moines had changed to a new company, one that was inexperienced and had failed to connect the plane's external power umbilical, and so until the engines were started we would have no air conditioning. I glanced out the window and noted that the baggage handlers were not using the powered loading belt, but were putting the luggage on one bag at a time. Three handlers moving one bag at a time, slowly. "Inexperienced" indeed.

The heat continued to rise, as did the CO2 content and general human-humidity. My bulbous seatmate was getting particularly ripe as the temperature rose well above 100 degrees. Three mothers with infants, obviously concerned about the lack of actual oxygen content in our atmosphere, had walked up to the front of the plane with their babies and were holding them, at arm's length, out the cabin door into the sunny jetway, so the little ones could breathe as they screamed. That single image was probably the strangest thing I'd even seen on an aircraft.

Until a few minutes later. It was obvious to all of us that the "nearly empty plane" was, in fact, completely full. The gate agent, or someone, had gotten that wrong (probably because they thought there were two flights as well). So our favorite flight attendant got back on the horn and, with vague apologies, said that we could not "take any seat" but would have to move to our actual assigned seats. Now.

Watching an entire planefull of people, in 100-degree, oxygen-free, BO-reeking air attempting to reshuffle their positions using the tiny little aisle between the seats was a visual I cannot adequately describe. People climbing over seats and one another, hauling out their carry-on luggage from the overheads (while the flight attendant told them "don't move your overhead bags"), snaking moistly past one another's typical American obesity, some actually crawling under and over others, sweat dripping from one person's head onto another's face, people being bashed with roller bag wheels... well, it was like the most unpleasant orgy scene imaginable. I silently thanked providence that I was already in my correct seat, that I had no carry-on luggage, and that my hostile neighbor had to make his way through that sweating knot of humanity to some other place, far away from me.

The flight attendant sternly admonished us that we could not take off until people were in their seats. This was the same idiot who had told people to take "any old seat," long before most of us were on the plane. Now I began to think about that 1-hour layover I supposedly had in Phoenix shrinking away as people desperately tried to claw their way to their official seats. I glanced out the window and watched the Remedial Baggage Handling School for the Mentally Impaired as they slooooowly placed each bag into a carefully-selected nook, discussing each selection with ultimate care.

Finally the pilot, who seemingly had a brain cell or two functioning, decided to fire up the engines on one side of the plane, the side opposite the baggage handlers, so we would at least have some air. He announced this, and we could hear the hiss of the airjets functioning. But it did not really get much cooler because, for reasons unknown to me, they still had the cabin door open (even though the moms were back in their seats with their gasping, grey little babies). I mentioned this to the flight attendant, and she joined the other crew members near the door so they could all discuss this for, oh, 10 minutes. Finally they figured out the difference between "open" and "closed" and with a whump, the air started to cool.

Time crawled by, but eventually we were in the air. And really, really thirsty.

The beverage cart came down the aisle, everyone begging pitifully, poignantly for something to drink, and when they got to my row I asked for a club soda with lime as I usually do. I was rummaging around in my bag for my book so I didn't notice until well after the cart had moved on that everyone in my row was given something to drink... except me. I tried to get her (yeah, same chick) attention but could not. Sincerely, I was about as thirsty as I can remember being in a good long time, so I rang the bell for the attendant. But, of course, the aisle was blocked with the cart so it was another 15 minutes before I could get something to drink. Note to self; always bring a bottle of water along. Other note to self; they take them away from you at security anyway.

I was also starving. They had announced they had "food for purchase" and so I took out my credit card and waited. The food cart simply never arrived, no explanation.

When we landed in Phoenix I knew we were quite late (and even moreso since, when we got to the gate there was another plane there and we had to wait for it to pull back first), but my FlightView android app said the gate we were arriving at was #4, and that my departure gate was also #4. Same plane? Perhaps. Maybe my problems were over. Flightview had never (not once) given me bad info, so I relaxed a bit. The flight attendant (yeah, same one again) announced that everyone had to get off, even if they were continuing on the same plane, because they were changing crews. Why one thing meant the other thing eluded me, but then again I was working with a lightly-poached, dessicated brain at that point. We all slogged our way off the plane into the 99-degree Phoenix jetway, which took forever because of all the people in the forward part of the plane who had luggage in the overheads of the rear part of the plane. Collisions, climbing, snaking again as I desperately tried to get to the door.

Upon exiting the plane I found we were actually at gate B5. B? So "#4" didn't even make sense in the Phoenix airport. Bad info in the same system had mislead Flightview, but again, how important could that be? I checked the PHX flight board and found that my flight to Seattle was not at this gate, not on this plane, but rather on another flight currently boarding at A25. A concourse, next to B, right? Not that far, right?

Wrong. Other side of the freaking airport. So I began to run.

They have people-movers everywhere in the Phoenix airport. Running on those moving belts can really speed you up if other people really do "stand to the right" as 100 signs and a constant announcer tells them to, but they don't. Also, more than half these motorized belts were not working anyway. Of course not. So I ran down the main corridor, dodging the beeping carts full of overweight people and knots of teenagers stopping randomly and unpredictably to tweet.

I saw the gate up ahead, the door still open, and I realized I was going to make my flight! I also realized that my bag, not understanding the situation very well, probably was not running from one gate to the other. That's the real reason for long layovers, gang, to give your luggage a fighting chance to make your next flight.

I made it home without further incident, and my bag actually made the connection as well (a fact that proves the existence of a power greater than our own, at least to me), which was good because I noticed, while waiting at the assigned carousel, that the US-Air luggage office, right next to the escalator, was closed, dark and unmanned. I have no idea what I was supposed to have done if my bag had missed my flight.

I just booked my next trip, to Philly. As you might have guessed, I insisted on a direct flight... the only one available being on US-Air.

-Scott Bain-

Inbox Zero, one year later

2011-05-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

One year ago this month I began the practice of "inbox zero", and I can report that this simple technique is, for me, a complete success.

Inbox zero is a so-called "life hack", a simple and perhaps non-obvious practice that has a significantly positive effect on daily life. For those who are unfamiliar...

How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? More?

Consider: how often do you go to your physical mailbox (the one outside your house), take the mail out, read some of it, and then put most of it back into the mailbox? For most of us the answer is "never", and yet this is what you do with your virtual (e)mailbox all the time.

Inbox zero is simple. I don't do that. Ever.

When I check my email, after deleting all the obvious spam, I open each email and do one or more of these five things things with it:

1) Reply to it
2) Take the action it requests me to take
3) Forward it to someone else to take the action
4) Put it in my "follow-up" folder
5) File it away into an appropriate folder for archiving

...and then I remove it from my inbox. My inbox is either empty, or I have yet to check it. I never, and I do mean never, leave my inbox with even a single email in it. I only check my "follow up" folder when I have the time to take on a task.

This sounds difficult, but it is not. I thought, when I started, that it would be hard to start this procedure because I had so many emails in my inbox at that time that it would take forever to go through it. So I didn't... I put it all into a folder called "old inbox", knowing I could get to it if I needed any of those old emails later.

Interestingly, I never did. I still have it, but I've never gone back to it.

Modern life is extremely inter-connected. So many things can demand our attention, and we have a kind of "queue" in our brain of all the things we are doing, just did, and are about to do. The size of this queue produces stress, stress that we often fail to even feel anymore because it is so ubiquitous. Since adopting inbox zero, I have found many positive effects:

1) Less stress in general
2) I am much more responsive to people, without more time spent on email. In fact, I spend less
3) I am more organized, non only about communication but about most things
4) I don't check my email as frequently as I used to
5) I don't lose information as often as I used to (this is remarkably different)

Also, I've had no problems sticking with it. Once you do inbox zero for a couple of weeks, you find yourself wondering that you ever handled your email any other way. I heartily recommend it.

-Scott Bain-

What Money Does

2011-04-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

We're in the midst of a very contentious fight over the right way to close the budget deficit; one the one side, it is believed that simply reducing taxes on the rich will eventually accomplish the feat.

This is the belief of the conservatives, and I understand what it is based on. It is based on the nature of an industrial economy. Unfortunately, we are no longer an industrial economy.

In 1952 (to pick a year at random) if you gave a tax break to a wealthy person (which means, essentially, giving them extra money to spend) and given that they would obviously want to find a way to make more money from this windfall, they would invest it in something that was likely to grow. They would expand their business, or build a new one, or invest in the expansion of someone else's business. This would create jobs that, ultimately, would expand the tax base and contribute to the shared coffers that pay for our social programs.

In other words, putting money in "at the top" would mean growing the economy. In 1952.

Today if you give a wealthy person "extra money", what are they likely to do with it? Their goal would be the same; grow the money into more money. This is only natural, you or I would probably do the same. But is the best way to do that still investing in a business? Probably not.

In most cases the windfall will be invested in complex, "innovative" financial instruments: CDO's, credit-default swaps and the like. It will be invested in the financial sector itself. Or, it will be invested in overseas endeavors where the economies are emerging (like China, India, and the like). It will rarely create jobs here at home.

The Bush era proved this. The Bush tax cuts invested massively in the upper end of our economy and we lost jobs, lost tax revenue, and exploded the deficit. It did not work because it cannot work in an economy such as ours.

So, it is not that the conservative "trickle down" theory is baseless, it is that it is obsolete. Put money in at the top of an economy based on the financial sector, and you grow the financial sector. Into a bubble. Eventually the bubble pops, and all that wealth simply disappears, or gets recycled back into financial products.

Prior to 1985 the financial sector had never represented more than 16% of the US economy (in 1947 it was 2.5%). In the current decade it represents more than 40%, and is growing steadily.*

We are a consumer based economy, like it or not. Jobs are created by consumption of goods. The only way to grow the job base, and thus the tax base, and thus the economy itself is to inject money into consumption.

In other words, the middle class is where the tax breaks should go, and the only way to make that workable is to shift the burden upward. This does not have to constitute class warfare, it's just a realization of how the modern US economy works, and making policy based on reality.

The problem, of course, is that rich people own our politicians, and they naturally don't want to be burdened with higher taxes. The problem, of course, is money distorting our political process. What we should do about that is another subject.

-Scott Bain-

*Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/the-dominance-of-the-fina_b_317310.html

Rules and Exceptions

2011-03-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing to note:

If one believes, as I do, that there is an exception to every rule, then this has two implications.

First, the notion that every rule has an exception means that if one believes something to be in fact a rule, then among other things one must provide, as proof, the exception to it. This is simple logic: if all mules are sired by horses, then to prove that something is a mule one (at least) must find the horse that sired it. Finding an exception to a rule does not prove that it is a rule (other things have exceptions too), but failing to find an exception means that it cannot, in fact, be a rule.

Second, if one believes that there is an exception to every rule, then this belief itself is being proposed as a rule. Therefore it must have an exception. Failing this, by its own standard, it cannot be held to be a rule. So does the rule "there is an exception to every rule" itself have an exception?

If so, then there must be at least one rule that has no exception.

There is. It is this:

There is an exception to every rule.

Dropping Anchors

2010-08-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

Many on the right are currently pushing two agendas that contradict one another. How do I know this? I read, and one of my closest friends is the smartest man in the universe.

Agenda #1: Re-jigger the 14th Amendment so that people who are born in this country do not automatically become citizens, if their parents are not already citizens. The idea is that illegal immigrants are crossing the border to drop so-called "anchor babies" who, as citizens, can enable their parents to stay in the U.S. Leaving aside the notion that it's really not at all that simple, we can examine in the context of another agenda item...

Agenda #2: Social Security is insolvent, and the only way to save it is to ___________. Some fill the blank with extending the retirement age, some with privatization, some with means testing, etc...

TSMITU* pointed out to me that the problem with Social Security is not, as many claim, that the population is aging. It is, but the system is one where young people support old people with their current contributions. So the real problem is that the demographics of our country are shifting. In the 40's, there were 8 people in the workforce for every person in retirement. This balance has been shifting steadily over the decades since, and we are rapidly approaching a ratio of 2 people working for every retiree. In other words, the problem is not too many old people, it is too many old people for the number of young ones.

Illegal immigrants tend to be on the young side. Elderly people don't cross the border in the back of Coyote trucks, and older (let's say it) Mexican citizens tend to be better-established in their own country, and have less reason to seek work in the states. Still, the average age of an un-documented worker is 39, which, statistically means that they shift our national average age by only 4 months in the young direction (Source: Center for Immigration Studies) . Their babies, of course are another matter.

Whatever your view on immigration is, whether you want undocumented workers in this country or not, if you want to save Social Security you want their babies, and you want them to be citizens paying into the system.

Thank you F.T.

--

*The aforementioned Smartest Man in The Universe, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Dr. Frank Tamburine.

Lost, and Won

2010-05-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

I've been reflecting on the end of Lost, and I thought I'd share some of my thoughts.

First of all, I think the ending was both a success and a failure, depending on what you wanted from the show, and what you thought it was.

As science fiction, it was a failure. We never find out the mechanics of the smoke monster, the light, the electromagnetic "properties" of the island, etc... Why Tunisia? What caused the time travel? What was going on with Faraday's rocket? If one was looking for rational explanations of these phenomenon, one would not find them. Personally, I came to realize that the show was not science fiction at least a season ago, maybe even earlier than that. I'm okay with that... I don't know why the One Ring makes you invisible, and I don't care. It's fantasy, and fantasy can be done well.

As character drama, one could argue that it was a success. Jack comes to a resolution with his need to make things right ("fix" them) and he has his denouement with his father. Sawyer finds his way to justice and redemption, and reunites with Juliette (having already resolved his need for family by joining the Dharma Initiative and playing house with her). Sun and Jin get to have the baby together, Kate gets to save a mother (not her own, but Claire), and so forth. Hurley gets to help, Ben gets to serve, all that. Fans who were caught up in these aspects of the story are well satisfied, and so, I believe, are the writers who have long said that they wanted to solve the mysteries that the characters cared about more than the ones the fans may care about. Fair enough. But there is a third aspect, which is where the ending falls short for me.

It is the big-picture narrative, the critical motivations that drive the plot overall.

For example: What does Charles Widmore want? What would be a "win" for him? Why did he send Martin Keamy and the mercenaries? To kill Ben? To capture Ben? To kill everyone but Ben? Does he want to destroy the island, save the island, control the island, or... what? The Mother says that men want more of the light, but is that what Widmore is, simply the greed of men? Why does he bring Desmond back to the island; Desmond being the only one who can pull the magic stopper and... destroy the island? Save the Island? Why does he fake the crashed underwater plane with all the dead bodies? I don't know, and I wanted to know.
For example: What was the Dharma Initiative doing, and why? I know they were doing "research", but into what, and in what way? Why have people sit and punch numbers into a console every 108 minutes? Was it "faith", that is, they wanted to see if people would do it? That would explain the notebooks that go nowhere. But no, it turns out that something really bad does happen when you don't push the button, so is it "science"? If so, why have people type the numbers in like that? Seems pretty dangerous. You have a computer system, why not just automate the whole thing? Why the fake quarantine? What's the thing about the babies? Why these particular stations? Why do the "Dharma drops" keep coming after the employees are all killed and "the initiative was deemed a failure?" Who is sending them? Why?
For example: What is Eloise Hawking trying to do? She knows that she killed her own son accidentally in the past, which must be her greatest tragedy... so she makes sure he becomes a physicist, makes sure the oceanic six go back to the island... to make sure it happens? Why? What's her goal? She seems exceedingly determined, but I'm not clear what she's determined to do.

The ending is lacking, for me, because it fails to address the key motivations and actions that constitute most of what actually happens in the narrative. We never really know why the man in black wants off the island. We're told that "everyone will die" if he succeeds, but why is that? Is it even true? I have no idea.

I think the writers realized at some point that they had written themselves into an impossible situation. They determined, I think in season 5 if not earlier, that they needed to get the audience to "let go" and "move on" when the show was over, and that this final season was essentially a 12-step program to get us weaned off the show. Unfortunately, this ends up in an emotionally-manipulative ending that is satisfying only to those who wanted that kind of thing; the lovers reunited, all that.

For me, it was disappointing. I still really enjoyed the show, and I'm glad I watched it. But I'm not sure I'm strongly motivated to watch it again, now that I know that so many of my questions will be essentially abandoned as unimportant, and that the climax of the drama will be totally about love, children, and the inevitability of death. Interesting topics, but not the show I thought I was watching.

So, a little bummed here.

The Purpose of Terrorism

2010-05-07T12:33:00.000-07:00

Why do terrorist organizations target innocent people with their violence? What do they hope to achieve by doing this? This is a critical question because we know that people do things that they believe produce a benefit for themselves, even if that benefit is short-sighted or misinformed. If the terrorists believe they are achieving what they intend, they will continue to attack.

The actual suicide bomber who detonates himself in a crowd of people likely has motivations that are too complex and strange for anyone not of that mind to truly understand, but it is not the bomber I am considering here, it is the people who planned the attack, recruited the bomber, and made the bomb.

Al Qaeda did not kill 3,000 Americans in the World Trade Center out of any expectation that they could significantly impact U.S. population, obviously. They did not do this to gain territory, capture resources, or to in any way materially effect their lot in life. They did this to effect behavior, to make people around the world change what they are doing, and thus to prove to themselves and others that they can.

I suspect the nature of this change is less important to them than the existence of the change, any change, that they can foment through their violence. I think it's no accident that terrorism grows in parts of the world that are relatively powerless to actually effect the rest of the world. They feel powerless because they are, and when they see an event like the recent scare in midtown Manhattan, even though it was a completely failed attack in every sense of the word (nobody got hurt, the attacker was arrested quickly, and he spilled his guts immediately to the authorities), dominating the airwaves and capturing the attention of legislators in the halls of real political power, they feel satisfied. And encouraged to do more.

I'm sure there are other motivations. Revenge for predator attacks, religious fervor, internal power struggled within these organizations, etc... But it seems to me the major goal of any terrorist attack is to show the world that these powerless people can force others to change what they are doing, in any way. They make us endure invasive body scans, give up our mouthwash and nail clippers, and wait in long lines. They force powerful governments to pass new laws, change policies, and withdraw (or send) troops.

It's understandable that our social and political leaders want to respond (or at least appear to respond) to terrorist attacks by making new rules, instituting restrictions, etc... but this will simply not have any effect. It will not make us any safer: the terrorists will do the unexpected, as they always have, and in showing a response they give the terrorists exactly what they want. We won't see more planes flown into buildings... the next significant attack will be something we are not talking about right now. As a casual observer, I can think of a dozen ways to kill a lot of people quickly. I am sure the people who are focusing their entire attention to this question can as well.

Imagine a bomb going off in a Miami shopping center, killing hundreds, and for some reason nobody anywhere said anything about it. No news stories, no congressional investigation, nobody talking about it over the water-cooler the next day. The terrorist would feel that they had failed, because they would have. Dead bodies get them nothing, getting attention and altering behavior is the entire point of such an attack.

That will never happen, of course. It's unreasonable to suggest that it could. But, I say every time we mitigate our response to these attacks in any way, we're moving in the right direction. Let's ignore them as much as we can, and perhaps they will engage in this behavior less and less until, perhaps, one day they will realize these attacks are not an effective way to prove their existence to the world.

The popular wisdom about dealing with terrorists seems to be split between two camps: those who want to punish them, and those who want to remove their motivation. The former send troops, the latter say "why do they hate us?" and seek to fix whatever they think is the cause. Sending troops plays into their hands, but so does "reaching out".

Living our lives normally and ignoring them entirely would be the only defeat for them. If only.

My Interview with Scott Roeder...

2010-04-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

...will never happen, of course. But, if I had a chance to cross-examine the man who shot George Tiller to death in his church, I know what I'd ask. And, given his willingness to speak at length on his views and ethics, I think I can guess what his responses might reasonably be.

Bain: My Roeder, you admit that you killed Dr. Tiller by shooting him in broad daylight, and in a public place, his church. Is this true?

Roeder: Yes. He was guilty of murdering innocent children, and deserved death.

Bain: Do other people, similarly, deserve to die?

Roeder: Yes.

Bain: Given that you have not killed everyone who deserves to die, I have to assume you had some specific goal in mind when you killed Dr. Tiller. Why did you decide to shoot him to death? What did you believe this would accomplish?

Roeder: It was the only way to stop him from ripping infants limb from limb. That's what he did, you know. So-called partial-term abortion is basically taking a viable baby and cutting it into pieces. It's pure murder, and by killing him I stopped him from doing it anymore.

Bain: I'll agree that a dead person cannot do anything, so you did indeed prevent him from taking any actions whatsoever from this point forward, including performing abortions. But, could you not have accomplished the same thing by kidnapping him and imprisoning him in some dungeon?

Roeder: I don't have the resources to do that. Only the government can put someone in jail for life, and they refused to do their job. It was left to people like me to deal with this murderer.

Bain: Could you not simply have crippled his hands, or even removed them? He could no longer perform abortions if you did that, but he'd be alive.

Roeder: He got what he deserved. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the Bible teaches us. He killed, and so he deserved to be killed.

Bain: So, preventing him from performing abortions was not your only motivation. You were also seeking justice for the abortions he had already performed.

Roeder: Yes. Again, dispensing justice is the government's job, but since they refused to do their job, it was left to those who do God's will to punish the wicked.

Bain: So, to summarize, you killed Dr. Tiller to punish him for his past acts aborting the unborn, and to prevent him from doing so in the future.

Roeder: Yes, that's right.

Bain: Then why do it in public? You could have kidnapped him, or confronted him in his home, and killed him just as easily. Also, you might have been able to escape capture and reamined free to deal with some of those others who equally deserve, in your view, to die. Why did you kill Dr. Tiller in a public place?

Roeder: People need to know what happens when you ignore God's law, and when you victimize the innocent. I was willing to give up my own life for this, to make sure that the public sees the harvest of such sin. If you kill the innocent, you yourself will be killed. If I did this in private it would have been far less visible.

Bain: You feel that this will deter others from performing these abortions?

Roeder: It already has. The planned parenthood-types are already complaining that women are having trouble getting access to what they obscenely call "reproductive health". Most doctors won't do abortions, especially in the heartland of this country. Hopefully there will everntually be none at all.

Bain: So, in truth you had three motivations in killing Dr. Tiller. To punish him for past acts, to prevent future abortions, and to deter others from performing abortions as well. Correct?

Roeder: Yes. All three things are important.

Bain: Which is the largest issue, in your view?

Roeder: The last one. Stopping one abortionist murderer is important, but if the example I set, that we will kill you if you kill innocent children, if that stops large numbers of other doctors from doing the same then the good I will have done is much larger.

Bain: By killing doctor Tiller, you put the fear of death into others who might otherwise support abortion rights in this country?

Roeder: I certainly hope so.

Bain: In what way, Mr. Roeder, does this not constitute terrorism?

I don't know what Roeder would say about this. Maybe he would say terrorists kill innocent people to make their points... but I'd point out that terrorists do not consider the people they kill to be innocent any more than Roeder would consider the fact that Dr. Tiller's acts were lawful (they were) makes him innocent.

Terrorists always feel that they are doing the right, moral thing. Whether they quote the Quoran, the Bible, whatever, they feel justified by moral ascendence to commit acts that take the lives of others.

"I think I know what's right" is in the mind of every truly dangerous person; people who kill their spouses for infidelity believe that this punishment fits the crime. People that kill for money obviously feel their gain is more important than the loss of life on their victim's part.

I know. I'm right. My view is more important. These attitudes are at the center of most represensible behavior. You may feel abortion is okay, or wrong, or murder, but a firm belief that you are right and others are wrong, to a moral certainty, and your willingness to act based on the certainty, is what makes for a terrorist.

Let's question ourselves, practice humility, and work to persuade.

Why don't the Roeders of the world work to repeal the laws they hate, work to register voters who believe as they do, do the hard work of systemic change? The left recently got a black man with the middle name "Hussein" elected president, mostly by creative use of the internet to organize and findraise. No easy task, but they did it.

It's a lot easier to pull a trigger, I guess.

Health Care Insurance and the Profit Motive

2010-02-26T10:12:00.000-08:00

Rachel Maddow said, on her show a few nights ago (Feb 23-ish), that the real problem at the core of our health care crisis is that the system is set up in a way that pretty much ensures the problem will exist.

The progressives on the hill, and in the media/blogshpere, have basically demonized the health insurance industry and for seemingly good reason. Insurers keep raising their rates, reducing the procedures and drugs they will pay for, and dropping people entirely when they get sick (and therefore expensive). Each year we hear of obscenely high profits for these companies and the huge bonuses they pay themselves, and it is infuriating... especially to those who are sick, alone, hopeless, and afraid.

Rachel, a progressive if there ever was one, pointed out that we cannot blame a for-profit corporation for trying to maxmize its profits. As a health-insurance provider of course they will prefer to keep rates as high as the market will bear, and to insure the healthiest (cheapest) people possible. Maximize income, minimize expenses. That's basic business.

Complaining about health insurance profits and cost-cutting measures reminds me of those people who insist on bringing wild animals into their homes as "pets", and then cry foul when one of them turns on a family member. I grew up in rural Northern California where my father was the local fish and game warden. It was (and is) illegal to keep deer as pets, but people do it, usually because they find an abandonned fawn. Barely a year would go by before we'd hear another story of how the "cute fawn" that had grown into the family pet doe had, for no reason anyone could explain, attacked and killed one of the children. A very tragic thing but let's face it: if you bring a wild animal into your home, you are foolish to expect it not to follow its own nature.

For-profit corporations are considered citizens in this country; they have rights, they pay taxes, etc... but they are not people. They are collectives, and the people hired to run them have a clear and unequivocal fiduciary responsibilty to maximize profits and thus benefit their stockholders. Those who do not are quickly gotten rid of. If you have a 401K or a mutual fund, I guarantee the companies you own stock in are corporations you expect to generate a profit, and would vote the current leadership out of power if your stock value is consistently decreased.

It is, therefore, natural selection at work. The corporate big-wigs who have remained in power are those who have generated maximum profits, and are therefore still in the job. The "nice guys" who tried to look out for others failed to generate such profits, and thus are gone.

This can work. An automobile company can only attract buyers if its cars are better and cheaper than the competition. This pressure gets us, generally-speaking, better and cheaper cars. Same for electronics, fast-food, tanning salons, etc...

The problem is that health care is different. You do not control when you need it (you can decide not to replace your car this year; you canot decide not to have a health issue). Also, the incentive for a car company is to sell you a car which they hope you will use (and wear out, and thus need another one). The incentive for the health insurance industry is to sell you an insurance policy that they hope you will never use.

Cars, DVD players, hot tubs, vacations, tie-die neckties, etc... are nice things to have, but if we are not satisfied by the quality and the price we are offered we can elect to forego them. You need health care and, given how expensive it is, you need insurance unless you are very wealthy. If you don't like the price and the quality of what you are offered by the health insurance industry you have to buy it anyway.

The incentive of a car company is to figure out how to make a car you will find desireable at a price you will accept.
The incentive of a health insurance company is to sell you the most expensive policy, and then do the least for you.

This is nobody's evil intent here, it is inherent in the system. So... what do we do about it? The only way to fix this is to change the system, and thus change the incentives and what they lead reasonable people within the system toward doing.

One way would be to remove the profit motive entirely (not from the health care providers, but from those that pay, the insurers). "Single Payer" is often mistaken for socialized medicine, but it is not; it is eliminating for-profit health insurance, while maintaining a for-profit health care industry. Replacing them both with government programs would be a "takeover" by the government, and nobody I know is seriously suggesting this. Single payer is not on the table now, unfortunately, though it should have been... had it been explained properly, I think people would have supported it.

Think of it this way: I think the proper job of the government is to do those things which we cannot reasonably do for ourselves, but must do collectively (I think it was Thomas Jefferson that said that originally). National defense, protecting the environment, international treaties, things like that. If we agree that most people cannot pay for their own health care when things get really bad, then this seems like such a thing. We all pool some of our tax money, and when one of us gets seriously sick then this person draws on the fund. It is, of course, what insurance is based upon... but a public fund would not be permitted to make a profit. In fact, the accountability here would require managers to keep down costs while maximizing access to and the quality of care, or be replaced. Pretty much the opposite of what we have now.

The other way, we are told, is to let market forces pressure the for-profit health insurers to lower rates and improve coverage. Unfortunately this requires competition, and given that health insurance companies are exempted from anti-trust laws (believe it or not... they, and major league baseball are the only ones), then they can collude with each other so as not to compete. They carve up the country into non-competitve business zones, and then charge whatever they want. Of course they do, because they can, and this makes them more money (which is, again, what they are supposed to do)...

The proposed "public option" in health care reform is really just a way to re-insert competition into the system by giving people a government-run option to turn to if the for-profit industry refuses to act competitvely... but that looks to be circling the drain. Thank the astro-turfing teabaggers for that one. Of course, they were funded by the for-profit insurance industry, no suprise.

I am personally in favor of single payer, because I think health care is like clean water, something that we all need and that should not be a privilege. That said, I think the conversation should be about how the system incentivizes the people who run it, and how we can create incentives that lead to the health care system we want.

What we have now will not do it. We've invited a wild animal into our homes and are expecting it to act like a tame one. This is fundamentaly foolish. We must either increase the competition in the health care insurance business, in such a way that lowering our rates and improving the coverage makes them more money, or we need to eliminate the profit motive entirely.

What is being proposed now is "regulation". It is probably the worst way to go; the only thing worse would be to do nothing at all. Regulation depends on the wisdom of regulators to make rules that will force these for-profit corporations to forego profits... like trying to tame that wild deer by rapping its nose when it flashes its hooves. This will be a constant struggle and will fail at times. Given the inherent corruptability of regulators and the enormous sums of money involved in a large country, I don't see this as realistic... but again, better than nothing.

What I hope is that this is a step along the way toward real reform, but we'll see.

Heat, Part 2.

2010-02-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

We need heat.

Heat makes us warm, produces energy and, oh by the way we make our food using energy and heat (trust me). If we can get ourselves a nice, constant, renewable, clean source of heat then the problems are all gone, and we can all just sing and dance ourselves into a stupor.

Really, if we didn't need oil... would we be in the middle east at all? Of course not. Its all sand, it's really hot, and figs are disgusting. It seems to me our quest for heat via oil has led to an awful lot of the horrors of the past, and present. Like Iraq...

So, I left off last time with a question... what if there was a source of heat that was nearby, did not require consuming fuel, produced no waste, and would never end?

There is. Right here on earth. It's the earth.

The earth is actually quite hot. We don't think so, because we live on a very thin crust of skin that is quiet livable, but just under that crust the earth is really one big ball of hot. Every once it a while it reminds us of this by burning our faces off with a geyser or destroying the occasional Pompeii with a volcano, but most of the time we forget that this planet is smokin' hot inside.

This is not a new idea, of course. It's called geothermal energy and they've been using it in places like Iceland for a long time. Iceland, I guess, has a thinner crust. Lucky them. At least we don't have to eat Puffins.

But why are we not, like, totally focused on figuring out how to get and use geothermal heat? Dig holes down into the hot stuff, transfer the heat up to the surface, boil a liquid, and spin a turbine? No fuel, no waste, dig the hole wherever you want (maybe some places are easier, but the magma is everywhere). We're talking steam technology, here, not magnetic bottles and cold fusion.

Okay, I don't know anything about this... but the experts can bring it on. It's farther down that you think, Scott. It's really hard to deal with those pressures, and transferring the heat is very tricky, Scott. We probably will need a whole new thermocouple technology, Scott. It'll cost way more than you think. It's really, really, really hard. You're an idiot, shut up, Scott.

I don't care. Really, I don't care. Whatever it takes to make it work, once it does we have free energy forever. Amortize any cost, any effort over "forever" and it's worth it.

Besides, do you mean to tell me that we split the atom in the 40's, flew to the friggin moon in the 60's, created plasma in the 90's, but here in the 21st century it's too hard to dig a really deep hole? I don't buy it. I think this is a failure of imagination.

Really, think about it. Let's say it takes some Manhattan-Project-Multiplied-By-The-Moon-Program type effort to do this... but once you do, the energy problem is solved. We can make all the electricity we want, forever (or as long as the Earth is hot inside, heh). Cars can run on it, trains can, we can festoon ourselves with pants made out of flat screen TV’s or whatever... and no pollution, no fighting over fuel sources. Nothing. Done. (Okay, the earth's heat does pollute now and again, but even Al Gore can't blame humans for volcanos, and we get them anyway).

Ah, but the big bad corporations won't allow it, you say. They want to hold us by the short and curlies and make us buy their oil, rubbing their hands and cackling like Montgomery Burns, all that.

But... I thought we decided it was way hard, way expensive, to build a geothermal plant, right? Gonna take an Exxon-Mobile, or General Electric, or Mondo Corpromonstro corporation with deep, evil pockets to build it, right? Then, once they do, they are in the "sell electricity to all the suckers while paying for no fuel and no pollution" business. Who does not want to be in that business? Once you get it going, to get to own the richest corporation in the history of everything. Yeah, they'd hate that.

I understand why solar has failed. They fear that we'll all put cheap plastic waffles on the tops of our houses, get off the grid, put them out of business and all turn into folk singers. Fine. I don't think we're about to build our own geothermal wells anytime soon. The big corps get to keep control, just as they always have.

Sincerely, someone explain to me why this is not the answer, and please do so without pointing out how difficult it would be. We do difficult and expensive things all the time. I'll bet with just the cost of *one* of the countless wars we've fought and are fighting over oil, we could be lousy with GT plants. Someone tell me no, and why.

Heat, Part 1.

2010-02-23T08:54:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of arguing going on lately about whether or not we are messing up the climate by dumping greenhouse gasses into it. The argument goes sort of like this:
1: The climate is changing because of our actions, and we'd better do something about it.
2: No, the climate is changing because it always changes, always has. We cannot influence something as major as the weather.
1: But we are! Ice caps are melting, glaciers are receding, the ocean level is rising, the whole planet is warming in some places and cooling in others. We're shifting the balance, and it could be catastrophic.
2: Our data are too recent to know that, the sea level is not rising, and caps and glaciers are always cyclic. This is bad science done by bad scientists.
1: Do you really want to risk that? Ever since we've been burning fossil fuels the data have changed. Whole landscapes are changing. The pine beetles are wearing earmuffs. It's bad.

...and so on. Al Gore says this, Glenn Beck says that. I don't know. I don't think it's really the right question.

(Okay, maybe it is. Maybe we on the verge of a global cataclysm, and pretty soon the only people left will be John Cusack and Jake Gyllenhaal. If so, it probably does not matter what I write into my blog and whether you continue reading it, so let's assume the opposite)

So, here's the real question. What do we need?

We need food (so we don't starve), warmth (so we don't freeze in the winter), and energy (so we can run our machines that make for a civilization).

Food we'll leave aside for the moment.

Warmth is, well, warmth, but energy is also, when all is said and done, a matter of heat.

You move your car by expanding gasses that push pistons... heat. Electricity is generated by spinning turbines, which are spun mechanically. Heat. "But wait!" I hear you cry, "What about hydroelectric power, and wind turbines! Water and air don't seem so hot to me..."

True, but:

Hydroelectric power works because the water is pulled down by gravity. How did it get "up" in the first place? The sun evaporated it from the ocean, turned it into water vapor which cooled over the mountains and rained. It was heat that put the water up there, and without heat, you have no hydroelectric plants.

And the wind? The wind is moving air. Why does it move? Heat. The sun heats the air in one place, which rises, and air from other places rushes in to fill the void. The "rushing in" is the wind that moves our big pretty white propellers. No heat, no wind.

Nuclear power is heat. Fossil fuels are heat. The sun is heat. Heat is what we need.

(There may be a wonk out there or two who will point out that there is a non-heat alternative... tidal energy, caused by the moon's gravity, which can be used to turn propellers. Gravity is not heat... I guess not, I don't really understand gravity, but if anyone has a way of powering our civilization from the moon's gravity, I am willing to listen)

So, the real question, if what we need is heat how do we get it?

The answers fall into two categories: Use heat that is already there, or make it.

The sun is heat that is already there, and it does produce a lot of our energy. Heck, you could say that fossil fuels have their origin in plant matter that was made through photosynthesis, and thus all energy is solar, but that's probably a bit too arcane. The sun shines its heat upon us, costs us nothing, and produces no waste.

The problem with the sun is two-fold. First, the sun is really far away (93 million miles, on average), and therefore a lot of its heat is lost along the way. Also, half the time we are facing the other way 'round, so, you know, there's night to deal with. Maybe we could make it work anyway. I dunno. People argue over this one.

The other way to get heat it to make it, and here again we have two basic choices: Nuclear and Chemical energy.

Nuclear, today, is fission. Unfortunately it requires fuels that are dangerous and tend to get turned by self-important crazy-ass dictators into bombs, and it produces really nasty waste. What do we do with the waste? I guess we're going to put it all into a hollowed-out mountain in Nevada or something. Is that bad? Not for me, I live in Washington state. But, frankly, I'd like to think we can come up with something better than "stick it in a hollowed out mountain in a fairly ugly state". Also, sometimes the reactors melt down and kill many people at once.

Fusion... I don't know. Maybe, we'll see. Sounds nice.

What's left is chemical energy, which basically means burning stuff.

The problem with burning stuff is that when you burn the stuff you don't have it anymore, and then you have burnt stuff to deal with.

Coal, gas, oil, these things will eventually run out. I know, I know, we have "vast reserves" of coal, and natural gas is everywhere, and as far as oil, well, drill baby drill!

"Vast" is not "infinite". We will run out, and long before we do these things will become scarce. When there is scarcity, people really tend to misbehave, invade each others' countries, blow themselves up, all manner of horrors. Scarcity is something we'd do best to avoid.

Also, we end up with burnt stuff... carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, I dunno, Baddy Maloxide, and we have to put it somewhere. Apparently it won't fit in a hollowed-out mountain, so we pump it into the air.

Is that a bad idea? Some say yes, it's going to destroy everything and some say no, Mother Nature can handle it. I really don't know if we can just poop into the air we breathe and everything will be fine, or if the whole of mankind will end up as John and Jake on Brokeback Mountain. It just seems that, if we could avoid it, we should.

So, it would seem we're screwed. The sun is too far away and is gone half the day, nuclear is a political mess and a dangerous source of radioactive yuck, and fossil fuels are finite, and messy, and might just destroy the plant though well, probably not, we're not sure, could be maybe.

But.

What if there was a source of heat which, like the sun, consumed no fuel (okay, the sun is consuming fuel, but come on) and produced no waste but, unlike the sun, was close by and always available? What if it was safe, here, constant, would never (essentially) run out, and clean? We'd want that, right? Seems like the best of all worlds.

There is. Stay tuned. :)

Inbox Zero

2010-02-08T11:11:00.000-08:00

For about the past year, I've been dealing with my incoming stream of email in a new way (at least for me). I heard Andy Hunt ("The Pragmatic Programmer") talk about this at the IEEE conference last year, and I decided to try it. It's called "inbox zero".

The idea is very simple. Think about your postal mailbox at home... how many of you would go to the mailbox, take the contents out, look at them, open some of them, and put most of them back in again? Not many, I would submit. And yet, people do this same thing all the time with the "inbox" of their email system.

Andy asked how many people had over 100 emails in their inbox. Just about every hand in the (rather large) room went up. Then he said how about 200, 500, 1000... it was sobering how many people just left tons of email in their inbox.

Inbox zero basically says this: my inbox is empty. When I check it, I empty it.

The specific process to accomplish this is (and should be) different for different people, but here is mine. Whan I open an email, I then do one of the following things to it:

1. Delete it (spam, or just "okay, see you then" messages).
2. Act on it, and delete it ("send me the file", or "call me" messages).
3. Foward it to someone else (delegate) and delete it.
4. Put it in my "to followup" folder for later action (big, important things).
5. Archive it (I use folders in Outlook or labels in Gmail).

What I *never* do is close it and leave it in the inbox. Yeah, I do mean never. The only email that will ever be in my inbox is email that I have not yet opened, and that's because I have not checked the inbox since it arrived. When I check my inbox, I open every email and do one of those 5 things with it.

What is the point of this?

It's hard to explain, really. Part of the value is stress reduction. I think the idea of this big pile of email sitting there all the time creates a general feeling of "wow, I have a lot to do" and being overwhelmed by the notion of ever getting it all done.

Part of it is efficiency. I deal with each email once, or if it's something substantive (placed into the followup folder) then I treat that as special. Jokes I want to save, interesting links, stuff I want to prove later, I file away. Gmail labels are better for this because a message can have more than one label (with Outlook folders, you have to decide "the" folder it belongs in).

But there's more to it than this. Honestly, this has had a very positive effect on the way I think. I'm more focused, more purposive, and I seem to remember things better. Perhaps a cognitive scientest could explain the details, but my experience is that this yields far more than I ever expected, especially from such a simple thing.

Give it a try! (BTW, if you're worried about "step one", just take your existing inbox and move everything into "old inbox", and start fresh. That way you won't lose anything, and 99% of that "old inbox" folder is junk anyway).

My Email to Keith Olberman

2009-10-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

From slbain9000@gmail.com
To: countdown@msnbc.com
Subj: Another selling point of Medicare Part E that no one is mentioning... and Keith should

I've been a fan of this idea for a while (since Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo mentioned it), but I think many who are promoting this as "Medicare for everyone" are missing a massively powerful selling point that could push the debate and get us over the finish line.

It's this: it could save medicare.

Everyone loves medicare, or has to pretend to (if they are on the right). The only negative with medicare is that it's running out of money. Why?

Basically because it only allows those over 65 to participate. This is actually a bad idea; ask any private insurance company if they'd like to limit their customers only to those most likely to get sick. As an actuarial issue, it's pretty bad business.

By allowing younger people to "buy in" to medicare, we would fund the program via people who, statistically, are less likely to have expensive medical issues.

Save medicare! There's a selling point for ya. Why aren't Pelosi and her caucus promoting this aspect of medicare part e?

I guess because Keith has not mentioned it on Countdown yet. :) I think he should.
--
Scott L. Bain
slbain9000@gmail.com
skype: slbain9000

The Dividing Line

2009-10-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

How big should the goverment be, and how deeply should it reach into our lives?

The extremes are, on the one hand, a goverment "so small you could drown it in a bathtub" (Grover Norquist) which is, was, and will likely be the goal of the neo-cons that dominated the Bush era. In Thomas Franks' recent book The Wrecking Crew, he took this notion to the nth degree, and makes a fairly decent argument along these lines: The Bush administration was not a failure, it was a success in that its real goal was to destroy the federal government.

On the other hand, we are told, the progressives believe that the answer to every problem is more taxation and centralized spending, and that this will inexorably lead to the socialist state with an enormous central government controlling the economy, health, commerce, travel, education and basically everything else.

It's been suggested by many (Thomas Jefferson among them) that the goverment should do for the people exactly those things (and only those things) that the people cannot do for themselves. Whereas I agree that this is a seemingly reasonable dividing line between public and private concerns, what is often left out of the equation is that this measurement must be re-evaluated in the light of modern life.

For example, the widespread access to sophisitcated digital technology has certainly made people able to do certain things for themselves that they could never have done in the past. On the other hand, there are problems now that individuals can do little to ameliorate on their own, which in the past didn't even exist: Global Warming comes to mind.

Also, we can share the burden on a problem without placing it in the hands of the government. Fraternal organizations, mutual insurance, and organized religion are but a few examples.

I think the real question is separate from the government itself. The government, after all, is a creation, not a natural force. So, I'd say the evaluation we need to make, and remake as each age changes the forces in our lives, is what things we think we can do alone, and what things we must come together to accomplish.

To place this in the context of the current debate, where do we think Health Care fits?

The Right to Health

2009-10-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

There is much to be said for "the public option" in healthcare reform, though I suppose nobody has said it better or more convincingly than Paul Krugman recently did in the New York Times.

Still, I wonder if the real argument is not being made openly here. Perhaps the real question is... should corporations be making a profit on people's health in the first place?

The notion of a mandated system, where you have to buy in whether you like it or not, is analagous to the system of car insurance. Want to drive? Be responsible and insure yourself and your car. Don't want insurance? Take public transportation.

If we take note that this really only works because there *is* public transportation, we get the point. You can opt out because there is an option here.

You cannot decide not to "have health" or heath problems. Well, I guess you can, but suicide is still illegal. Since you have to deal with your health, then one cannot treat this like a personal choice (like, say, smoking). The need for a "public transportation" option in order to mandate car insurance is even more sharply needed for health care if we're going to mandate health insurance.

"...and that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"... includes life. Nobody is able to hold me up to their profit motive to ensure my liberty, why should they be able to in order for me to keep my life?

If life is a right, then health is a right. Let's get the profit motive out of it entirely. Let doctors and nurses and medical techs make a good living, certainly, but no market participation in this, the most basic human need.

People will say that the public option is just a step toward single payer. Maybe. Maybe a needed step.

Healthcare: Two Birds With One Speech

2009-09-06T17:50:00.000-07:00

On talkingpointsmemo.org, Josh Marshall made a very good point: Obama needs to attach "the public option" to medicare, because no politician in his or her right mind would attack medicare.

The easiest way to do that? Make medicare the public option.

It's a deceptively simple idea. Tell those who are under 65 that they can, if they wish (no mandate here), buy into the medicare system. Once they reach 65 they would be covered as seniors are now. They can buy private insurance if they want, but entering medicare early would be an option too.

Why is this a good idea?

It's easy to sell. Everyone loves medicare, or at least is unwilling to admit that they don't.
It's not "creating a new program", it is extending an existing one.
Medicare is a great success with one exception: it is in real financial danger. Could this also save medicare?

Ask any public insurance executive what one does when there are money problems. He'll tell you, you must raise rates, or cut benefits, or expand the number of people insured (spread the risk more broadly).

Medicare, as currently configured, only admits those over 65. I think it is safe to assume that older folks are more prone to illness. Allowing younger people in would increase the pool, bring in funds (remember, the young have to pay for medicare), and change the actuarial balance to include those who are less likely to become ill. That's how you run an insurance company.

There are some moving parts and details to deal with, such as letting the poor in for a a reduced cost (or even free), reforming aspects of insurance that are a problem in and of themselves (pre-existing conditions, portability, etc...) but these reforms would simply apply to medicare exactly as they apply to private insurance.

The right will argue that employers will move their employees to medicare due to the cost saving, and this will drive private insurance out of business. True, unless private insurers provide a better service for less. Are we saying they cannot, that private enterprise cannot compete with a government-run program? Hm. That does not sound very capitalist at all, does it?

Extended medicare by making it a volutary buy-in for those who want it would seem to be easier to explain, defend, and implement than either a separate public option, or the establishing of "co-ops". I think Marshall may be right; that this is what Obama should propose.

The Filibuster

2009-09-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was a child, and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" was on T.V. one evening. I liked Jimmy Stewart (because I liked "Harvey") and so I watched it. They got to the scene where he conducts a filibuster, and I didn't understand what was going on. He just talked and talked for hours on end, losing his voice, getting tired... it was dramatic, but weird.

My mother explained it. Senators can, if they want to, simply keep talking forever and keep other people from voting on things. They do this when they would otherwise lose the vote.

I remember how amazed I was. It seemed like something schoolkids would do... "I'm gonna hold my breath 'til I turn blue" sort of thing. I could not believe adults did this, especially adults in the government.

I recently read that, in 1975, the Senate decided to allow for filibusters without anyone actually doing the continuous-talking thing. A senator just says he wants to filibuster, and the issue is set aside so the senate can get to other things. It's a filibuster without a filibuster.

It feels like the schoolyard again. "Hey gang, let's pretend that I talked forever. You be the other guys..." How in the world did this ever get started?

Looking around the internet, the argument seems to be threefold:

The Senate is meant to be a collegial, deliberative body, where everyone acts in the best interest of the body overall.
The process is meant to be open-ended, to ensure that legislation is adequately thought-out before it is presented to the president.
The filibuster is one tool to prevent "the tyranny of the majority", to ensure that minority points of view are represented and not steam-rolled by the majority.

I think point #1 has been essentially destroyed by our polarized political system, and also by the fact that political campaigns are so expensive now (courting big money into the process). Senators now represent monied interests, or they don't get reelected very often.

Point #2 was always meant to be "within reasonable limits" which is why the rest of the senate can vote to end debate (called a "cloture motion") with a 60-vote supermajority. I really do not believe that "open-ended" was ever meant to be used as "forever, until you submit to my point".

Point #3 makes me wonder where the judicial branch fits in. If the minority feels that the majority is forcing their will in an inappropriate way, they have the courts to argue this. If they simply feel they've been outvoted, well... welcome to democracy and sit down.

Can the filibuster be destroyed? Yes, it turns out. With a procedural vote of 51, the senate can vote to make it illegal. Why don't they do this?

First, the party in power is afraid they won't be able to do it when they are out of power. That seems obvious. What's less obvious is that the party in power wants to be able to continue to use the "we need 60 votes, really" idea as a fund-raising tool, even after they have achieved a majority.

This is absurd. We need to pressure our senators to get rid of the filibuster.

Also, senators should not be allowed to cut in line, put gum under their desks, or draw comics in the margins of their legislature. Those who do should have to wear the pointy hat and sit in the corner, or write "I will conduct myself as an actual statesman" 100 times on the blackboard.

"Socialized Medicine"

2009-09-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

Part of the health care debate we're embroiled in right now centers around whether and to what degree we should have the government involved in our health care. There are many who would (and do) connect the notion of government involvement with "socialized medicine", which, of course, is a bad word in our country.

Let's redefine the term a bit. I think the term "socialized medicine" should mean any form of medical care that is paid for and furnished by the society one is a member of. Government is one form of this, but insurance is another.

The notion of insurance comes from the concept of shared risk. I may or may not get sick, you may or may not get sick, let's create a pool of money to cover whichever one of us gets sick. I agree that I'll help you, you agree that you'll help me. The money will go to the one that needs it. This seems inherently socialistic to me.

From those that have, to those that need. Kind of the definition of the thing.

The main concern that conservatives have about the notion of a socialistic approach (to anything) is the inherent tyranny of the bureaucracy that social systems depend upon. The government, they say, will muck it up, create inefficiency, waste money, cause rationing, create arbitrary restrictions, etc...

Seems likely. Unfortunately, we have all those problems already. Insurance companies can deny coverage for whatever reasons they decide, and you have no voice (and in most markets, very little option to go to another provider). The insurance companies spend vast amounts of money on advertising, lobbying, etc... which does not help me, as the insured, to be more healthy... this is waste, from my POV.

Rationing? Any time you have a limited resource and an uncontrollable need (there are only so many health resources, we cannot control how many people get sick), the resource will be rationed, in some way. Right now it is rationed by the fact that some people cannot afford health insurance.

So... I think the "socialized medicine" boogeyman is bogus (or, I guess Boogus) because we have socialized medicine now. It's just a question of who controls it.

So, now we get to the notion of "the public option". The right wing says two things about it:

1) The government is terrible at running things. It will mess up any public program.
2) It will create competition that will drive private insurance out of business.

You cannot have it both ways. Either the public option will be terrible (in which case people will not take it) or it will be good (in which case it will provide competition for the private options). Are we saying competition is a bad thing? That seems rather un-American to me.

The truth is, the private insurance companies don't want competition, and they have paid for many a senator to fight this fight for them. It has nothing to do with socialized medicine, it has to do with money. Lots and lots and lots of money.