America's Best

Newsweek came out with their list of "America's Best High Schools" again recently.  I'm proud of the good reputation my high school has so I like to check out the list, but again, my school didn't make the cut.  To find my school, you have to click around their site until you find this list.  Their reason it's not one of the "best"?

NEWSWEEK’s Challenge Index is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students. These top-performing schools, listed below in alphabetical order, were excluded from the list of top high schools because, despite their exceptional quality, their sky-high SAT and ACT scores indicate they have few or no average students.

So, apparently it's a list of "America's Best Average High Schools".  Study hard, average kids, someday you might get left off the list too!

We're back

We got back from our trip Sunday afternoon.  I will post more soon, after I finish sorting through the 1400+ pictures  Don't worry, I won't post all of them here.

So while you wait for that, I have an addendum to a previous blog post about the origin of the word chicken.  Another alternative is that it follows the pattern of kitty cat and puppy dog and was originally chick hen.  Ok, maybe not, but coincidences are still fun.

Also, I think there should be a new rule for computers that prohibits the blinking insertion cursor from appearing unless that window actually has input focus.  I have two monitors at work and I'm always switching between applications and I can't tell you how many times I've started typing while looking at one blinking cursor, only to realize, for example, that I've just typed my password for a website as plain text in my code window.  Oh, and an application should never be able to steal focus if I'm currently typing.  Not cool.

What happened to Jennifer?

Apparently Google has updated the "Next Blog" feature on Blogger blogs to match content.  I started on a blog of a young couple with two kids, and it sent me on a seemingly endless tour of generic young couples with one or two kids.  It was only mildly voyeuristically interesting until I started noticing the names these people were giving to their children -- actually, let me be more specific -- giving to their girls.  Most of the boys had standard names.

When I started to notice it, I went back in my browser and wrote down the names of all the female children I ran into.  Some of them were pretty normal:

• Kaitlin
• Ava
• Emma
• Abby
• Julia
• Madeline
• Nadia

Some were uncommon, but not unheard of:

• Adelaide
• Talia
• Shana
• Regan
• Maddox

And then there were the people who thought it would be a good idea to name their daughters these names (the last two are siblings):

• Avalon
• Finley
• Seven
• Iza
• Buzzy
• Paisley
• Soluna
• Averyana
• Chantilly
• Soleil
• Forest

How would you like to be a kindergarten teacher when all these babies/toddlers start coming to class?  Is there a correlation between blogging and naming girls weird things, or is this a valid sampling of the rising generation?

Insurance vs. Care

So in the current kerfuffle over health care, one thing that pets my peeve is the seeming confusion over what insurance is. When you buy car insurance, you pay small amounts of money to ensure that in the event of damage to the car, the insurer will cover the larger repair cost. (I know there are deductibles and other extra details, but that's the basic idea.) This works because of statistics and actuarial tables and so forth that allow many people who aren't crashing their cars to pay small amounts and the insurer to use that money to repair the cars of the fewer people who crash them. It works the same for home insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, and any other insurance you can think of.

Currently I keep hearing about how health insurance companies are "discriminating" by denying insurance to people with preexisting health conditions. To me that is no more discrimination than an insurance company who refuses to pay for repairs to a car that was crashed before coverage was bought. It's like burning down your house, then buying a home-owner's policy and expecting the insurance company to rebuild it. Insurance insures against a future event. People with preexisting conditions are no longer looking for health insurance, they are looking for health care, i.e. treatment.

Health insurance provides health care when the need arises. The other option is to pay the full cost up front. Barring "discrimination" based on preexisting conditions would only encourage people to not have actual insurance, and instead apply for health "insurance" only when a condition arises to receive expensive treatment without the monetary investment. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the business model of insurance would be shot. Yet, mandating health insurance to provide that monetary base grates against American ideas of freedom.

The underlying problem, unfortunately, is that health insurance and health care deal with people's lives. You can either repair a car, or you junk it and replace it, or you live without. Repairing people sometimes requires life-long treatment during which insurance/care may be lost. It's hard to say, "Well, your insurance doesn't cover that, so adios!", or "You could live until you're 100 with this drug, but because you lost coverage for a month, you'll die at 60", or "You were too arrogant or dumb to get insurance so you deserve to die."

I don't know what the best solution is (although I have some ideas), but I do know that there is a distinct difference between health insurance and health care, and blurring the line between them in political rhetoric will do nothing to change reality. Somebody's got to pay for it.

Museum of "Art"

From today's Daily Universe:

Lambson said he wants students
to take the opportunity
to see the contemporary exhibits
as they are created with
students in mind.

...

He said he hopes it resonates
with students and that
it speaks to them because
[the art] is meaningful...

...

He said he is particularly
excited for Andrew Sexton’s
“Self-Portrait,” a nearly 6-foot
wide mustache that will be set
on fire for five minutes every 15
minutes.

This is why I'm a computer programmer and not an art curator.

List<CondensedThought> condensedThoughts = new List<CondensedThought>();

Sorry, the title is from too much C# programming. I've had a bunch of fragmented thoughts on the back burner (in draft form) for a while now, but the more I try to make a full post out of them, the more I feel like a windbag, so here they are in a list of condensed thoughts:

• The two major economic/political theories of the day differ in how they view the "forest" of people. One side would like to rain on the forest equally and let some trees grow big and other trees wither and die to make room for new trees, while the other side would like to water each tree individually to ensure even the weak trees contribute to the forest. The first is idealistically fair, the second idealistically compassionate (and neither idealistically practical). Almost any divisive issue boils down to this idea.
• The traditional broadcast network TV evening news is mind-numbingly stale and formulaic. It seems unfathomable to me that one network could not gain a considerable market share by hiring non-traditional anchors, allowing non-canned dialogue, and reporting on the news in more innovative ways.
• In a related thought, radio commercials should be 5-10 seconds long and interspersed between each song. I would gladly deal with the loss of "continuous" in order to lose 5-minute-long commercial breaks. I always change the station. Is no radio station brave enough to force their advertisers to break from the traditional 30-sec spot? You don't need 30 seconds, people, your ads are boring!
• It bugs me when I hear of "lost government revenue" due to tax breaks, as if the original tax is correct and right and the government is rightfully entitled to that money in the first place and it's unthinkable that the tax is too high to begin with.

OK, back to my regularly scheduled programming... ba-dum ching!

Blast!

Pet peeve: Overuse of the word "blasts" in news headlines.

Denounces? Excoriates? Condemns? Censures? Um... [consulting thesaurus] Denunciates? Rebukes? Reprimands? Reproves? Castigates? Chastises?

Men's Team Wins Competition

It's pet peeve time (yay!). It is a major pet peeve of mine when news articles about sports from organizations that sponsor multiple sports fail to mention which sport they're actually talking about. BYU's Daily Universe is expert at this. There are a couple dozen teams in different sports, yet they churn out headlines like "Cougars' Road Woes Continue". Women's tennis? Football? There's a difference! I realize headline space is limited, but throw us a bone.

With the Olympics coming up in a few weeks, I've been trying to get up to speed with all those sports we ignore 47/48 of the time. I subscribed to some news feeds from NBCOlympics.com, only to get headlines like "Johnson, Zur prepare for Games" (women's canoe/kayak flatwater team (duh!)) and "Rodriguez lifts U.S. over Brazil" (women's soccer). This is especially peevy when you have to read 3 or 4 paragraphs into the article to find out. I was treated to this useful summary in an NBCOlympics.com feed today:

Gomez still the one to beat

Javier Gomez and Andrea Whitcombe won the World Cup event in Hungary, a final tune-up for many just over a month before the August 18-19 events at the Beijing Games.

Gee thanks. This, of course, is referring to the World Cup triathlon. Or how about this gem:

Rogers, Dalhausser get best of fellow Olympians

Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser found out last week who would join them in Beijing: Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal. And not a week passed before the fellow Olympians got to square off against each other.

Clicking the link to the full article is no help either. With the exception of the acronyms AVP, FIVB, and scores ("took the first game 21-15"), there is no indication of what sport they play. The word volleyball is not mentioned at all in the article. You have to check the side menu to see that the article is in the volleyball section.

Grrr.

It's not my responsibility

FEMA recently announced that they are closing all the FEMA trailers used by victims of hurricane Katrina. They are taking away these emergency, temporary trailers after 3 years. And of course, FEMA is the bad guy because these people have no place to go.

You could see it coming, but it still annoys me. Put unaspiring people into free trailer homes, and they'll take the easiest course -- stay until kicked out. Granted, many didn't get the trailers until up to a year after the storm, but you can get an associates degree in 2 years. I can't believe that these people, barring the elderly and disabled, couldn't have improved their situation, through hard work, enough to move out, regardless of intelligence, race, or previous condition. This quotation sums up the problem:

I didn't ask to be in this situation. I'm a citizen. I'm a native of this city. And it's part of their responsibility to take care of us as taxpayers. And they're not doing that.

Ultimately, of course, it is an individual's responsibility to take care of himself and people would be better off for realizing this. We can look to others for help, but in the end it's up to us. As government has continued to bloat and expand its role, we pay more and more in taxes and understandably expect something in return. The Founding Fathers did a remarkable job constructing a government that protects against consolidated power, but unfortunately did not plan a way to limit the overall size and power of government. The more we pay in taxes, the more we expect, and the more we expect, the more we have to pay, both literally and figuratively, to actually get it.

It's a vicious cycle and it's transferring individual responsibility to the collective. We all pay into the same big pot and everybody gets treated fairly. Fair has been tried before in many socialist forms. It doesn't work. It saps the energy out of a people by giving them nothing to strive for, and it produces mediocre goods and inefficient services. Ironically, it becomes unfair to those who could have achieved more.

We have strayed so far from our original, limited government that it's almost unrecognizable. I understand the desire to help those that can't or won't help themselves, but doles only create dependence. If the government wants to save us from ourselves, require us to pay into a health or retirement plan, like we're required to have auto insurance. Take it out of our paychecks like Social Security if you have to, but let the individual pay for himself and choose where the money goes. The government could even sponsor one of these plans, although chances are slim it could compete against free-market competition.

This is unfair to the poor people, you say, who will get shoddy treatment for their meager contributions. In answer to this, yes, it is. And life will always be unfair to everyone in different ways, but forcing fairness only creates animosity. If people are forced to take responsibility for themselves and choose their own services, the free market will provide much more efficient, higher-quality, low-cost services than the government ever could. And if the money we are wasting now on government services were used in an incentive-based way to allow people to improve themselves, they could fish for themselves instead of eating for a day. Give people incentive to improve and they will improve. Give them a way to be lazy, and they will be lazy.

It's sad to see that the conservative movement has lost sight of this and that the voters have accepted it. Our choices are Democrats with big government and liberal ideals, Libertarians with small government and liberal ideals, and Republicans, who have kept their conservative ideals but become big government. Somebody, whether a reprioritized Republican party or someone new, needs to turn on the light bulb for the American people. Instill in them a sense of pride for running their own life instead of submitting to government ineptitude. Give them back their tax dollars to use as they decide. Show them that their life is their responsibility, and that they could actually do really well for themselves if they put in a little effort and limited the government to regulating instead of implementing.

I doubt it will happen -- once you've given the lollipop, it's hard to take it away -- but I can always hope.

Annoying, no?

I have never in my life heard anyone except a Frenchman tack "no?" onto the end of a sentence, yet for some reason this is becoming acceptable in written form. Example: That blogger sounds like she's trying be trendy, no?

I'm telling you, this trend is growing and it will no doubt get out of control. Are people too lazy to type "isn't she?" or "doesn't it?" or the other appropriate forms? I would even be ok with "eh?" or "huh?" or anything else remotely close to what people actually say.

In decreasing order of annoyance I would also like to decry "dood" as a trendy alternative to "dude" and fake Engrish such as Please to be not doing these things. The last one was actually kind of cool for a while, but like any successful Indie band its popularity has made it stale.

Sigh.

Pet Peeve: Name Calling

In the process of moving to a new apartment I've had to call the electric, gas, and phone companies to have services canceled or transferred. This is not my pet peeve. Making these calls is an inevitable consequence of moving and these companies actually made the process quite painless. My pet peeve is that all customer service representatives are trained to learn your name and repeat it incessantly. I'm quite aware that my name is Steven, yet each of these representatives took it upon themselves to remind me of that fact approximately every other sentence.

If you know me, and you probably do if you're reading this blog, you know that I rarely, to the point of never, use the name of the person to whom I am speaking directly. Something in my hard wiring defines this as an inefficiency, seeing as how the person is already aware I am speaking to them, and it is eliminated. This causes me to be especially aware of it when others do, but it doesn't bother me when used in moderation.

My pet peeve is that these customer service representatives are being trained, against their natural tendency, to overuse my name to the point of creeping me out, all in an effort to make me feel like a valued customer. Honestly, I would prefer it if they didn't use my name at all, or perhaps only when coming back from putting me on hold. That would be natural. Instead they sound like one of those people who say "Father" at every pause in a prayer to remind themselves who they're praying to (sub pet peeve).

I realize it's not their fault, I just wish their employers would give them the leeway to actually come across as personable, instead of trained automatons. Grr.

Pat-down protests

"It's like we have no rights anymore." This, from an attorney... What an outrage that someone would inconvenience her while trying to exercise her God-given right to fly on airplanes.

Forgotten Friends

So I just got a FW from my boss that is some touching poem of a girl describing her father who was killed on 9/11 during Bring Daddy to Work day, which is completely fictional and takes credit away from the original author (Snopes Report). Now since I assume automatically that all forwarded messages are frauds, this didn't surprise me. What bugged me, however, was the last paragraph:

"If you don't send it to anyone, it means you're in a hurry and that you've forgotten your friends."

I can deal with the bad luck, or hating America, or whatever punishment comes from not forwarding fraudulent emails, but being accused of forgetting my friends because I don't want to forward them a plagiarized, manipulated, coersive poem? If that's what forgetting friends means, I hope all my friends forget about me.

What's your name?

OK, this is a rant more than anything, but with the new semester starting and having to introduce myself to dozens of people it's an issue that has resurfaced and is again high on my list of peeves.

Whenever people ask me "What's your name?", I respond "Steven". Invariably, the the next words out of the mouths are "Do you go by Steve or Steven." [Dramatic pause] Um, if I went by Steve, don't you think I would have said my name is Steve??

Now don't get me wrong, I honestly don't care if people call me Steve. People have all my life and I'm totally used to it. Just don't ask me after I've already told you what my name is. If somebody said his name was Richard, would you ask, "Do you go by Richard, Rich, Richie or Dick?"? If you met a girl who's name was Jennifer, would you ask if she went by Jenny, or Jen?

Perhaps it's too much to expect people to utter two syllables when addressing me. Perhaps it's my fault because I feel uncomfortable making an issue out of it when I know it will be impossible for people to restrain from calling me Steve. In any case, my free advice for the day: If someone tells you their name, just use the one they give you.

The "Texan"...

I've been following Lance Armstrong lately, who is poised to win an unprecedented 6th straight Tour de France victory.  He's simply dominating this year's race and it's been a pleasure to read about, except for one thing:  Nearly every article has to make at least one reference to Armstrong as the "Texan".  If this was common practice with every state it wouldn't be so annoying, but if I was a world-famous cyclist, I doubt the articles would read, "The 24 year-old Virginian has a 4 minute lead."  If Armstrong hailed from the state just to the north, I'm sure journalists would be rushing to add in the catchy phrase, "Oklahoman" to spice up a bland cycling article.  Same goes for "Rhode-Islander", "Vermontian", "Washingtonian", "North-Carolinian", "Michiganite" and all those other states that aren't recognized as their own pseudo-country.  I suppose Texas will always hold some sort of mystical old-west allure, but please, let's not be partial.