Hedonism

Hedonism is a school of philosophy which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. I'm a believer in the form of altruistic hedonism which places the ideal of the society above the selfishness of the individual. In other words, don't do something that causes pain to others.

To this end, consider the role of pain in human development. Pain is a defense mechanism that teaches people how to avoid harmful situations. As a corollary, pleasure begets healthy situations.

I'd like to posit a question, "What is the role of marriage within these discussions?" Marriages contain pleasure, both of the selfish variety as well as the altruistic type, and pain. High divorce rates prove that pain oftentimes overwhelms the pleasure involved within a marriage. Then again, the pleasure of having a partner exceeds the pain associated with loneliness. It's worth discussion in a separate context why it's become socially acceptable to choose only one partner rather than two or more. My guess would be that differences of opinion within a polygamous relationship arise more frequently and with more ferocity than during traditional monogamous relationships. Also, the likelihood for jealousy to occur seems (to me) to be increased with polygamy.

In any case, marriages between two individuals serve to advance the pleasure of each. However, I think there's a more fundamental reason why making a lifelong commitment to another person has been integrated into our religious and political systems of law. Two people, when entrusted with the life of a newborn member of the species, behave completely altruistically towards that miniature person. And that's where the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure has led to a triumph of the human spirit.

Then another question is raised, "What happens to children who are forsaken by their parents in a way that causes them more pain than pleasure?" I'm not sure, but I'd figure that people like that either promise themselves that they'll do better with their own kids than their parents did with them, or they decide never to have kids of their own. I suppose the common sense follows pretty easily that nobody would set out to do a worse job than their parents did at raising their kids. In any case, either self-motivated, determined parents or dissuaded non-parents seem like a step in the right direction for me to continue the species.

I mean, it's a helluva lot more complicated than that but this simplistic view of marriage is somewhat enlightening. Unanswered questions remain including why certain animals (for example, a pride of lions) have their own traditions regarding their lifelong partners? Also, how does hedonism within society apply outside the covenant of marriage? These questions for another time. That's all I have for today.

Exuberance

Wiktionary defines "exuberance" as "cheerful or vigorous enthusiasm". It's this latter definition that I'd like to think about a little bit more. Vigorous means physically strong or active while enthusiasm entails intensity of feeling.

Thus, exuberance is a "physically strong and intense feeling". This definition is awesome by itself, but it yearns to be paired with a different modifier. A certain Federal Reserve Bank Chairperson of the Board choose the word "Irrational" to accompany his "Exuberance".

For myself I choose the word "Youthful" as the preferred modifier for the word in question, thus "a physically strong and intense feeling of being young". Thus... "Youthful Exuberance". And fuck all y'all who don't agree.

Off the Grid

I'm going to try something new for the next year or two. We ditched Co*cast two weeks ago and signed up for RCN Broadband Internet (Hooray for 10Mbps download speeds) for about $24.99/month. There's absolutely no free/cheap option for cable television available from RCN, so we decided to "Rabbit Ears" it.

Last time I had to use an antenna to get television reception was while I was living in Cambridge *before* I was dating Jen. Also, this was while I wasn't even subscribed to any Internet provider (so it was truly like living in the dark ages). As you may or may not know, during the last two years the government has regulated the Over-the-Air television industry to only broadcast "digital" signals. This was done because so-called "analog" signals waste huge amounts of the broadcast frequency spectrum, so ultimately it's a good thing that the country has upgraded.

Unfortunately, I don't have a "digital" television. Saturday morning I went to Best Buy to get a "digital" antenna. I got home and tried to set it up and learned that printing "digital" on the box doesn't mean anything. Eventually, I figured out that I had bought a second UHF/VHF antenna (meaning that there was a good possibility that I'd be able to return what I had just bought (thank goodness, because I had paid $70 for it)). I did some very brief Internet research and made the determination that all I needed was a digital tuner (i.e. Digital to Analog converter).

Long story short, Best Buy has three different types of these converters on their website, but they don't seem to carry them in their store. We tried the local Radio Shack, but they had "just sold their last one to somebody else". I assume that other people in the area are also engaging in a mass-exodus from the evil Co*cast Corporation. Eventually we dropped by the Radio Shack in Central Square where we were able to buy the converter we needed for about $60.

We set it up with my old set of rabbit ears (glad I held onto that after moving out of the Cambridge apartment) and everything works GREAT. All the normal channels comes in really nicely. It appears as though broadcasting digital signals has the added bonus of not having to point the antenna in a different direction in order to watch Fox or ABC (which is greatly appreciated). I was also successful in my quest to return my extra antenna back to Best Buy this morning, so bonus for not needing to spend that money. =)

In a semi-related note... I'm ready to return the Cable Modem that RCN has been renting to us for the past two weeks since I finally got around to giving them a call to get the Cable Modem that I own setup within their system. I do enjoy being able to save $5/month because I own the equipment that they would otherwise rent to me.

World Cup

The World Cup is finally over for the US. We're the second team to be eliminated during the Round of Sixteen (the first was South Korea). I guess this means we finished in Fifteenth place, which is comparable to our Fourteenth place global ranking going into the competition.

I must say, the media needs to figure out how to blackout these games so that people in each home country can gather to watch the games during prime time. To hell with "Live" coverage of a sports match occurring halfway around the world. Force our country to wait until it's 7pm local time before any information about the game can be broadcast. In lots of ways, I blame the Internet for this for making information so easy to access.

For what it's worth, though, I've enjoyed being able to semi-cheer for the US Team without being able to watch a single minute of competition on television due to being at work or otherwise being busy and incapable of accessing a television during the matches.

Oh well... maybe they'll do better in four years during the 2014 Brazil World Cup which will at least be in a near-local time zone so odd times like 10am games are unlikely to become an issue.

Design Flaw

Many document editors (from Microsoft Word to GNU Emacs) create "Scratchpad" copies of files as a way to enable a software feature which automatically saves your changes periodically to make a recovery possible in the event that something happens that causes the document editor to crash. My complaint today is about sticking these "Scratchpad" copies in the same directory where the originals are being stored.

When I'm forced to endure using a Windows-machine, I use the "Desktop" as a repository for all non-revision controlled work. This typically includes various "throwaway spreadsheets" and other types of work products that don't have a rightful place in any revision control repository. Thus, what happens is anytime I edit these Microsoft Office documents from my Desktop it *consumes* an additional location by creating its "Scratchpad" Tilda-Buck file (i.e. ~$Filename.docx). I don't want it to keep this file on my Desktop.

The same thing applies on Linux, though. For example, I use VIM (Vi IMproved 5.6) to edit test scripts at work and it creates Dot-Swap files (i.e. .Filename.sh.swp) for each file I open.

Would it be so hard to have a "Scratchpad" directory to relegate these temporary working copies into? I understand that logic would need to be added for when I open "SRS.docx" from an e-mail while I've got a copy of "SRS.docx" open from my Desktop. My thought is that software engineers are capable of handling this and thinking of all the other use cases where related issues may occur. But my overall point is that my end user experience would be improved by not storing "Scratchpad" copies into the same directory as the original file.

Healthy Caring

Shawn Tully (shawn_tully@fortune.com) has authored a terribly-biased article for Fortune Magazine entitled 5 painful health-care lessons from Massachusetts.

Shawn begins by saying, "The Massachusetts plan does not control costs". Shawn's analysis takes it as a foregone conclusion that the answer is "No". The reality is that by making health care easier to get in Massachusetts people are more likely to seek treatment when symptoms first appear rather than waiting until pain becomes unbearable. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I would suspect that any spikes in program costs come from people who newly gained the ability to treat their chronic issues. I also surmise that Shawn would believe that dying an early, painful death while on an extremely expensive life-support machine is preferable to extending life through early treatment of unhealthy conditions. Obviously the former option is cheaper in the short-term.

Shawn then argues, "Community rating, guaranteed issue and mandated benefits swell costs." What he's saying is that "healthy" participants will choose NOT to sign-up for coverage until they actually need an operation. Shawn goes on to say that since the new state health care plan has gone into effect, 75% of the previously uninsured have signed up for service. My feeling is that his statistics are enough to disprove his point here. However, assuming that the remaining 25% are "gaming the system", I'd like to point out that these people have lots of risk of sudden, unexpected conditions developing. If somebody wants to *choose* to live a life where they'll risk paying out of pocket for the costs of a broken leg, then power to them. I'd prefer to live in a world where people can get affordable health insurance by paying a few hundred dollars per month so that those unexpected things in life end up being much closer to "free" to handle.

Shawn points out, "Huge subsidies for low-to-medium earners could prove extremely expensive." The only thing I have to say to this argument is that medium-to-high earners ought to be subsidizing the less fortune in a civialized society. Clearly, Shawn would probably be happier living in an uncivilized caveman era.

Shawn's fourth observation is that, "The exchanges reward people for working less and earning less." Yes, earning $28k and keeping all leads to an overall lower marginal rate of costs than earning $40k and giving away $3k of that for compulsory payments. However, living on $28k is certainly not better than living on $37k. Give me a break. Shawn seems to be out of touch with the trouble that lower income people have prioritizing where they should be spending their money month-to-month.

Shawn concludes, "The generous plans and added mandates give employers an incentive to drop health insurance." I'm not sure what he's thinking. I'm well aware that my employer pays 90% of my health insurance each month and that would be heavily factored in if I ever wanted to jump ship and go work somewhere else. All else being equal, I'd require a pretty large salary bump in order to jump ship into a company that doesn't offer health insurance, and I'd immediately begin looking to find a new job if my employer decided to stop offering this benefit. No, the argument that companies will drop health insurance benefits to save a buck doesn't resonate with reality, unless driving out your most talented employees is a new business strategy that I'm unaware of which is sweeping its way throughout MBA programs throughout the country. The saying goes that people are a companies most valuable asset. I dare any company to defy that saying and tell their employees that their health is NOT important by dropping their health care plans. It wouldn't be a mass-exodus, but over the years the company will eventually start a precipitous decline.

In conclusion, biased one-sided ways of looking at health care as a broken industry are not productive to the overall conversation of what is better, or worse for society.