KOFF

Still coming out from under the B1 Bug. My voice is all shot from all the coughing I'd been doing. But am gradually getting better.

Koff Koff Hack

I definitely caught B1's bug. The congestion just warehouses itself in the lungs, and you can't cough it out, but the irritation in there compels the coughing, despite taking meds. My voice has dropped about an octave from all the coughing I've done. Bleah.

Flu?

I think I'm catching B1's flu. There's a certain character to an influenza sore throat that is different from rhinovirus sore throats -- the way they present is different. And B1 definitely had the real flu -- it bugs me that one has to distinguish that -- flu (influenza) from "stomach flu" (aka, gastroenteritis, aka [most likely] norovirus), just because people get confused. Not the same diseases, people.

Anyway, I'm definitely coming down with something. We'll see whether it fully presents this weekend or what. I hope my body fights it off. We'll see. Absolutely everybody's been sneezing around work, and that's one of the key ways flu gets spread. *ACHOO*

Right now, it's sore throat, drainage, headache (I never get headaches), and zero appetite. No fever, yet, but we'll see if that creeps in -- B1 had a fever of 100.8, which isn't a super-bad fever, but it was bad enough to wear him down, for sure. It's easy to spot when he's got a fever, as his ears and cheeks flush red, and the general lassitude he shows. For me, it's usually a combination of actually getting the chills -- since I never get cold; and/or loss of appetite and libido (it's true -- my libido checks out when I get sick; that's a sure sign of me being on the mend, as my libido comes right back when I'm on the upswing).

Chicago's definitely back into classic March weather. That heat wave we had passed, and now it's back to the spring chill.

Oh, before I forget! This is super-cool! I told B1 about this, and he was intrigued. I'd already known about that, but it was nice to see some new stuff about it come out. I love the idea that there could be billions of habitable planets even just in our own galaxy. That's fabulous!

Supreme Fallacies

As ever, Paul Krugman gets it right...

Is requiring that people pay a tax that finances health coverage O.K., while requiring that they purchase insurance is unconstitutional? It’s hard to see why — and it’s not just those of us without legal training who find the distinction strange. Here’s what Charles Fried — who was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general — said in a recent interview with The Washington Post: “I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them.”

Indeed, conservatives used to like the idea of required purchases as an alternative to taxes, which is why the idea for the mandate originally came not from liberals but from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. (By the way, another pet conservative project — private accounts to replace Social Security — relies on, yes, mandatory contributions from individuals.)
So has there been a real change in legal thinking here? Mr. Fried thinks that it’s just politics — and other discussions in the hearings strongly support that perception.

I was struck, in particular, by the argument over whether requiring that state governments participate in an expansion of Medicaid — an expansion, by the way, for which they would foot only a small fraction of the bill — constituted unacceptable “coercion.” One would have thought that this claim was self-evidently absurd. After all, states are free to opt out of Medicaid if they choose; Medicaid’s “coercive” power comes only from the fact that the federal government provides aid to states that are willing to follow the program’s guidelines. If you offer to give me a lot of money, but only if I perform certain tasks, is that servitude?

Yet several of the conservative justices seemed to defend the proposition that a federally funded expansion of a program in which states choose to participate because they receive federal aid represents an abuse of power, merely because states have become dependent on that aid. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed boggled by this claim: “We’re going to say to the federal government, the bigger the problem, the less your powers are. Because once you give that much money, you can’t structure the program the way you want.” And she was right: It’s a claim that makes no sense — not unless your goal is to kill health reform using any argument at hand.

Reactionary Ideology Trumps Science

This is an appalling study. Basically, it shows that among "conservatives" (I'd call them "reactionaries" in truth), there's been a 28-point drop in their trust in science since the mid-1970s. While liberals and moderates have maintained their same level of trust in science, conservatives went from 63% in around 1974, to around 35% today.

What that says to me is that ideology has eclipsed science within the ranks of conservatives. This is a disastrous turn for them, and reflects the triumph of Know-Nothingism among their ranks. Such a steep decline can't be attributed to the general dumbfuckery of their ranks, either; this is occurring at the elite end of the conservative spectrum, and that means the culprit must be ideology.

The secular religion of ideology has supplanted science among the ranks of conservatives. I've grimly joked that the Right is the American equivalent of the Taliban, but this is puts data behind that idea. It's like Galileo being forced to recant his ideas before the Pope, because they didn't mesh with Church doctrine. And this is where the GOP is? Lordy, it's embarrassing.

And what's more, these ideologues are actually framing public policy -- not based on actual science, but on fucking ideology? So, the rest of the country (and, by extension, the world) is forced to suffer the consequences of their hidebound ideology?

Science and empiricism are about as close to sacred as I get, honestly -- I respect them because they are data-driven, methodological, and they work. Ideology is creepy, it's the snake eating its own tail, and has, at its heart, only "Because I said so" as its justification. Pathetic. Horrific.

For a group to be so blinded by ideology that they turn their backs on something with such a proven track record of success as science? Holy shit. I'd be hugely embarrassed if I were a thinking conservative, honestly. This "brain drain" within their ranks is dreadful, and accounts for the absence of actual ideas from the supposed "Party of Ideas." Another few years of this ideological winnowing of reason and the idea of a "conservative intellectual" will be oxymoronic!

If reality doesn't fit their theories, they throw out reality. *golf applause* What this brain drain points to is that objective science wasn't buttressing their ideological views, so they have stopped trusting it, rather than changing or adapting their views to reflect extant reality. Insanity. Idiocy.

And for what? An ideology. The Way Thinks SHOULD Be(tm) is not the same as The Way Things Actually Are, conservatives! Reality is going to bite you on the ass, whether you acknowledge it or not. That's what's cool about science, why it will always (eventually) beat out ideology.  "Why? Because I said so, that's why." Sorry, but that doesn't pass the intellectual sniff test. You want to embarrass yourselves that way, that's fine; just don't inflict that kind of militant ignorance on the rest of society, please. And what's worse, don't expect the rest of us, those who haven't drunk the Kool-Aid, to go along with your bullshit.

Supremely Irritating

If the Supreme Court were capable of irony, they'd realize it's ironic in the extreme that these individuals, who themselves benefit from single-payer healthcare (like their peers in Congress), are all set to strike down Obama's tepid quasi-reform. Safely and effectively insured in the manner that the rest of the First World is insured, they can pontificate about healthcare knowing that their own coverage is assured. Marvelous, yes?

I'd love for somebody to actually call them out on this -- again, not that Obamacare is single payer; it's not, unfortunately -- but I guarantee the reactionary justices are all hostile to the idea of single-payer, even as they use it for their own health needs. Ever wonder why the justices tend to live a LONG TIME? Single-payer healthcare -- if their health was entrusted to the free market, they'd not live nearly so long. I mean, they're well-compensated for the work they do, so they could afford to pay for their own healthcare if they had to, but thanks to single-payer, they don't have to, and they enjoy robust health, without having to fear the price tag for it -- just like every citizen in the First World outside of America.

I also wish activists and protesters would call bullshit on Congress for that; the same guys who strenuously oppose healthcare reform as the very ones who enjoy exactly the same kind of healthcare they would deny the rest of the country. At least I'd like to see them refuse that socialistic single payer every Congressman enjoys and pay out of pocket for their healthcare -- or, at the very least, for these supposed representatives to have the same healthcare of their constituents, just to highlight the disparities and inequities of for-profit healthcare.

This issue's not going away; as the Baby Boomers slide ever closer to their mass grave on a banana peel, healthcare is going to loom ever larger. It remains one of the most common causes of personal bankruptcy. The civilized nations have all recognized this and gone the single-payer route, recognizing that safeguarding their people's health is a national security issue. Our country remains the stubborn outlier. Here, you get the care you can afford, and if you can't afford it, tough for you.

The insurance lobby is going to have to go down, one way or another, for reform to actually come about. It needs to be done. So, once Obama's weak-tea, pro-insurance industry, Romneycare-derived plan gets lit up by the Supremes, the problem will continue to loom, and, indeed, to grow ever larger.

(Health)Careless

Looks like the Supremes are gong to scuttle Obamacare, which should be a surprise to exactly no one. The problem I always had with Obamacare is that it was a false solution to an actual problem. The US is the lone outlier in the First World in that it doesn't have national healthcare. Indeed, many Second World and even some Third World nations are going to national healthcare, too. It gets at a fundamental aspect of healthcare: that good health, in a civilized society, is neither a commodity nor a privilege, but is a human right.

Obamacare, for all of the howling of the reactionaries, was a reform that was so business-friendly that Eisenhower's administration could have put it forward. It wasn't socialism, but was, instead, a sloppy kiss to the private insurance industry. And therein was the problem -- the individual mandate, which forces people to buy private health insurance, is, fundamentally, unconstitutional.

By trying to cater to the private insurance industry, Obama sowed the seeds of the ruin of Romneycare...err...Obamacare. Since he was going to encounter rabid, shrill hostility from the Right regardless of what he did, Obama should have been bold and gone for Medicare for All -- single-payer for all Americans. Medicare remains a popular program (even among the rank-and-file of the Right, who seem not to understand that Medicare is from the government when they protest "Keep the government out of my Medicare"). The Right's leadership wants to do away with Medicare, but their rank-and-file enjoy its benefits.

So, strategically, Obama should have made that his program, so the Right's leadership would have to be at odds with their own supporters' preferences as they tried to stop it. And it would have granted healthcare access to all Americans, would've reduced costs, ensured Medicare's solvency, and would have brought tangible benefit to millions. It would've been a bold move, a courageous one, and a just one. He needed to be bold, not timid, because the opposition was going to go after him regardless of what he'd offered.

Instead, Obama dusted off Romney's plan, put his name on it, and foisted that on Americans, hoping it wouldn't step on any of the power players' toes. The result is what we have right now, and it's looking like Obamacare is dead on arrival at the Roberts Supreme Court.

*golf applause*

Cookie

I picked up a few boxes of Thin Mints, it being Girl Scout Cookie season and all. Popped'em in the freezer, for maximum deliciousness. Lordy, they are good. Overpriced and undersupplied (there used to be far more of said cookies in a box), but damned good.

I had the boys most of the weekend, as Exene was doing one of her umpteen races, and wanted to be able to party afterward, apparently. I'd rather have that much more quality time with the boys, although with the weather realizing it was March again, dropping us back to typically chilly temperatures, we didn't do anything summery this weekend.

I did set up things for the summer trip I'm taking the boys on; we're going to Yellowstone. Road trip! They are totally excited for it -- B1 in particular, since he loves anything with volcanoes. He's been looking forward to this for some time. B2 will enjoy it just on general principles; he is keen for me to get a van as our wheels of choice, and was suggesting stuff we could/should bring. He'll likely love the scenery and what-not, and any wildlife we might see. I'm bringing my camera and plenty of rechargeable batteries, as there'll be plenty to see.

Mean Streets?

This is an interesting study.

Psychologist Dr. Harold Takooshian sees strong evidence of the Bystander Effect in Neistat’s bike-theft experiment. “When it comes to this fellow with the bike,” he says, “there are several reasons the people don’t intervene.”
“The first is that they don’t notice what’s going on — many people in the video simply don’t seem to see him. We call that stimulus overload. People in cities are surrounded by much more stimuli, so they filter things out. The second is that they notice him, but what’s happening is ambiguous, so they actively ignore it.” In other words: Why would someone so brazenly steal a bike? There must be an innocent explanation. “The third is that people notice it, but they don’t know what to do. And the fourth is fear — they know they should do something, but they’re afraid to challenge someone with a hacksaw.”
“Apathy,” concludes Dr. Takooshian, “is only a minor factor.”
The first two possibilities, stimulus overload and ambiguity, are both influenced by density, a key indicator of whether people are likely to intervene. It’s easy to understand why urban density leads to stimulus overload and might cause a passerby to miss something. But density — specifically, a space dense with people — heightens ambiguity too, in a very particular way.
“Say you’re in a city, and it looks like someone is about to steal a bicycle,” says Ervin Staub, author of “Overcoming Evil” and a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. “It’s already a somewhat ambiguous situation. Maybe the person is trying to get their own bicycle. But it’s made even more ambiguous because there are many other people around, all these potential helpers, and no one is taking action. That communicates something to you.”
In short: If you see people acting like something is no big deal, you assume the same. It’s the same reason comedy clubs hire professional laughers — we act like the people around us. Staub describes an experiment he once conducted in which two people sit in a room, one of them secretly working for the psychologist. Suddenly there are shouts of distress from a neighboring room. If the psychologist’s helper worries aloud that something is wrong, the subject goes to investigate “100 percent of the time.” But if the helper says he thinks everything is probably fine, three out of four subjects will stay put.

Although, having lived in Chicago for, what, 17 years, I think Chicagoans are far nicer on the whole than people I've encountered in far smaller towns (like where I grew up, for example -- I remember when I first moved to Chicago, being surprised at how much friendlier and talkative Chicagoans were, relative to my experience in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And while the advent of cell phones has probably zoned out a lot of people, relative to what's around them, I still find Chicagoans to be a generally friendly, helpful, and affable lot -- I've seen it said enough times that Chicago is like a giant small town, if that makes any sense. People come and are surprised at the friendly reception they get.

Obviously, there are exceptions -- you throw millions of people together and you will invariably encounter your share of assholes, but they are rarities. At least in my experience.

I always give up my seat on the bus for old people and pregnant women -- I remember back in the 90s, some heavy old lady keeled over on the sidewalk, and Exene and I and two other Chicagoans rushed to help her. Admittedly, I've been on plenty of buses when nobody but me gives up their seat. That does piss me off, but I don't chalk it up to people living in the city that makes this happen, versus people simply not paying attention to their surroundings and/or being jerks.

In all of my years here, I only had one attempt to steal my bike (some kid tried to steal my bike seat -- he'd been trying to jam the seat on his own bike, having forgotten to toggle the quick release on his own bike, because he was nervous. I'd run out and confronted him, said "Kid. Give me back my seat." and he did, then slunk his skinny, ratlike teen self the hell away from there, riding away on his own seatless bike). So, in 17 years, I've had exactly one attempt to steal (part) of my bike. Whereas, when in a small town in Ohio, my college town, I had a bike get almost completely stolen (they took everything but the frame) within a year. Just saying.

I think the necessity of interaction and the cosmopolitan nature of city living requires at least some measure of civility (I'm applying this to Chicago; New Yorkers are a different breed -- bigger city, different rules). Chicagoans are, by and large, a fairly outgoing and affable group of people (I'm resisting da urge ta start tacking in a Chicahgo accent, here!) The essence of suburban living is seclusion and sequestration -- you are surrounded by folks who are, at least superficially, just like you -- the same race, the same socioeconomic class. You don't have to interact with anybody you don't want to. You don't have to give up a seat on the bus for anybody, because, of course, you're not on a bus. You're likely commuting. Alone (of course, because only socialists would carpool). The suburbs are where you don't want surprises; the whole reason you live there is to avoid surprises, to avoid anything you don't like or understand. That certainty of experience is integral to suburban living -- it's why the houses look the same, have the same lawn configuration, people drive the same cars, and even have the same stores and restaurants at the same malls (and it's trippy to me -- you can see that, too -- all the same store chains are representing at every suburb I've ever seen.)

Obviously, I live in one of Chicago's best neighborhoods, but there is still a huge diversity of people I deal with daily -- blacks, Latinos, Asians, Africans (like blacks directly from Africa), Russians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Polish, French, Middle Easterners, Indians, gays, goths, punks, preps, etc. Every day. There are still restaurants and places around that aren't chains, are local, and the city is in constant flux. The Chicago of 1993, when I first moved here, is not the same as the Chicago of 2012! Even the skyline has changed.

So, while I understand what the researchers are studying, I don't think it applies equally to all cities, honestly. They should probably do a study like that in the suburbs -- have a white person with a stalled SUV, see if they get helped, and how quickly, versus having a minority person with a stalled SUV, and see how long it takes for them to get help and/or arrested in the suburbs. Better still to have the person trying to break into their own vehicle, see what happens. Is it any wonder that the suburbs has spawned some of the most mean-spirited politics our country has ever seen (which embodies the GOP these days, a party that has curdled itself into a terrible place, to the point that Reagan himself would be drummed from its ranks as a communist)? It's hard to pretend to be "good people" when you're busy kicking everybody who's not Just Like You(tm) in the teeth. I'm drawing from my folks' 90s experience in Columbus, too, which epitomized homogenized upper- and upper middle class suburban living, when I think of how these suburbs tend to be.

Remember White Flight? That was the historical root of the explosion of suburbanism -- white folks feared integration with black folks, and fled the inner cities for safe, white, wealthy suburbs. Chicago has its "collar counties" -- DuPage, Will, Kane, McHenry -- all Republican bastions, all very white, very wealthy, and other things (see demographics below). Every city has its equivalent suburbs.

Anyway, no matter how suburbanites want to slice it, the founding ideal of their experience was rooted in fear of The Other, and we know exactly the color of The Other. How can any community rooted in racism be just, kind, and compassionate? Not possible, anymore than apartheid South Africa could be a bastion of justice and human decency...

Chicago: 42% white, 36% black
DuPage County: 77.9% white, 4% black
Will County: 81% white, 10% black (Will County must be going socialist)
Kane County: 79% white, 5% black
McHenry County: 93% white, .5% black

White people moved to the collar counties to get away from minorities, particularly poor ones. In fact, these people are willing to commute at length just so they don't have to run into anybody they don't want to run into.   So, again, it's easy to be gracious and helpful toward your fellow white man (or woman) if you're in the suburbs (and even then, does that happen so often? How often do you interact with your fellow suburbanites, really?) It's more challenging to be gracious and helpful toward someone who is very different from you. But I still see people do that in Chicago (although I would say that, even though Chicago is more cosmopolitan and diverse than any of its suburbs, Chicago still remains very segregated between North Side and South Side experiences). White or black or Latino or Asian, living in the North Side of Chicago is a very different city experience than living in the South Side.

Enough on that. I'll wager that if somebody's in trouble in Chicago, they're far likelier to get help here than they would in other big cities.

Game On

I'm amused when playing video games with my boys -- their competitive instincts come out, both with each other, and with me. While I don't play whole-hog versus my boys, I also definitely never just let them win to pad their egos. I play with them as a friendly competitor. I did that the other day, when I was showing B1 how to play basketball, was telling him "Now, this is what you'll be up against, what your opponents will try to do, so you have to be ready for it, and not be surprised or thrown off by it." I wasn't playing Detroit-style rules, mind you, but I was giving him the basics of mindful play, of offense and defense.

Same with the video games -- B1 in particular gets furious when he loses (B2 does, too, but only with his brother -- and, because he's 6, I play easier against him than against his 10-year-old big brother, so I guess there are less opportunities to earn his ire). But, oh, man, does B1 ever get mad when I beat him. He cries and rages, and gets more determined to play again to try to beat me. He hates if I get a high score that knocks his score down a notch.

I gently point out to him that this is the nature of competition, that, to win, you have to work hard for it, and even when you win, it's not like you'll always win; that records are made to be broken, that when you're on top, there's always (eventually) going to be someone better who comes along and knocks you off your perch, so it's important to have some humility along with your satisfaction of a well-earned win, and not to lose your head, one way or another.

Watching B1 rage, I'm reminded of endless chess games with my stepdad, who would beat me again and again and again and again (that's what I get for going up against an Ivy Leaguer!) But, eventually, I was able to beat him -- and I knew he wasn't cutting me any slack when we played, and it forced me to up my game.

So, on a smaller scale, I'm doing that with my boys -- teaching them the nature of competition, and how to win with humility and honor, and to respect themselves and their opponents, and to not lose their heads when somebody's beating them, and how to lose with grace.

It still amuses me -- B1 fumes and rages; B2 actually will get physical with his brother when he gets beaten. He will put down the controller and tackle his brother, and then I have to pry them apart, joking about penalty boxes and unsportsmanlike conduct.

I also tell them, when I'm playing, that while I know it's frustrating to lose, that when they're up against another player, they can't bank on that person ever throwing a game -- they certainly can't depend on that. That they have to play fairly, and play well, if they want to win. And sometimes, even that's not enough -- that they may be unlucky. But the way to minimize the role of luck is through skill and practice.

Of course, the video games are really just a petri dish for competition proper -- but baby steps.

Spin Cycle

Doing laundry this morning, after putting it off for a few days. I don't mind doing laundry; for me, the folding of the laundry is the most annoying part, going from the pure chaos of the laundry basket to orderly piles. Urk.

Can't believe the boys' school year is nearly over. B1 will be in 5th grade next year, and B2 will be in 1st grade. Amazing how quickly it all goes (cliché, I know). When B2 was still in preschool, that seemed to stretch out time more (since he'd been to young to be in Kindergarten the other year, falling just under the age cutoff, it meant an extra year of preschool for him). But now, he's hopping, skipping, and jumping his way to 1st grade. When your youngest is going from 6 to 7 this year, where does the time go?

The boys are completely stoked for the trip I'm taking them on after school is out. I'm busy planning the logistics of that; or I will be, this week. Just have to get it all sorted out. I've long ago gotten the time request from work, so that's covered. I just have to organize the rest of it. Road trip! The boys are psyched, want me to get a van.

Hoops

I took the boys out yesterday, took advantage of the ongoing unseasonably warm weather we've been having (strange, it's like being in a...hmmm...greenhouse). Taught B1 the rudiments of basketball; since he's so clearly going to be even taller than I am, I figure he should at least learn about it.

It's supposed to be this hot all week. I've been taking advantage of that to bike to work; as I may have said already, I never ride this early in the season, but with these temps in this whole Year Without a Winter, I might as well.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Bitches

I'm taking the boys downtown for the St. Patrick's Day Parade, which is always a good time. They love all the throws that people toss and it's fun to see the river run green. B1 is fascinated by that, the plumber's dye they use to transform the river.