My Brain Hurts

Found an interesting article from the Boston Globe about how urban environments are bad for your cognitive processes and your temper. I'll have to try to spend some time at work at least looking out a window for a while when the going gets tough.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain

Scorekeeping

One of the major reasons that I'm not a big fan of Christmas is that many people treat others badly because of it. This happens a lot in the days leading up to Christmas (shoppers trampling others over a sale in a retail store, disputes over parking spaces, etc.), as well as on Christmas Day itself. Much of this conflict comes out of differing ideas regarding what others should be doing during the holidays.

Christmas is ideally about giving gifts to people you care about and spending time with them, which is a beautiful concept at the core. The trouble starts when people start keeping score. For example, family members might compare the relative value of gifts exchanged, or the amount of thoughtfulness that goes into the choice of gift. There may be allowances made for relative incomes (a college student isn't expected to spend as much on a gift as his 40 year old uncle in high level corporate management), but it's inevitable that Aunt Jane is going to start getting miffed after receiving monkey-related gifts for the last five years when she doesn't know how Uncle Joe got the idea that she liked monkeys in the first place.

Gift giving is a skill all its own. My wife is very good at it, which is extremely fortunate because I'm very bad at it. Family members often don't allow for that variance in ability, and sometimes get upset with the person who really tried and simply made a bad choice while being very happy with the person who put no thought into it at all and happened to throw a lot of money coincidentally at a lucky choice.

There's also the matter of how you spend your time around the holidays. In the push and pull of conflicting family schedules, things always seem to work out badly for someone, who obviously isn't very happy about it. There are frequent misperceptions (or worse yet, correct perceptions) that one part of the family is being favored over another, and as a result, what should be a happy occasion turns into a source of anger.

People who truly care about each other will generally allow a little slack in these holiday matters (not to mention everything else in life), and yet nearly every family seems to have at least one scorekeeper stirring up so much trouble that the holiday hardly seems worth the effort. As in most things, if someone seems to be slighting you, try to show some forgiveness and understanding, as it's a lot more likely that they've simply made a mistake than that they were trying to intentionally offend you. And if they are intentionally trying to offend you, there's no point in messing up your own karma in retaliation of some kind. There's almost certainly a more skillful way to deal with whatever the underlying problem is.

The Big Bailout

Are you angry about this? You should be. The simple sound bite version is that there is nothing about the government (and therefore the taxpayers) taking on a bad debt that makes it not a bad debt, which means that we are all going to be paying for a series of bad business decisions rather than the people who made those bad decisions. At the end of the day, the majority of the lawmakers decided that it was more important to keep powerful business interests happy than the people they ostensibly serve.

Before I continue, I'll admit that I'm a long way from being an expert. I was one course short of qualifying to graduate from college with a bachelor's degree in economics, so I do know something about the subject, but that was over twenty years ago. I do remember enough of the implications of large banks going under to understand the impact on the larger economic picture, but you can't tell me that there was no other way. I've done only the slightest bit of research and found several more workable suggestions as to how to address the problem without putting the burden on the taxpayers, and I'm certain that the gentlemen in Congress have better informational resources than I do.

The laws of economics, like the laws of nature, can only be bent so far before you have to pay the price. Karma can be a bitch. There is no magic solution here. Things will correct themselves in time; it's only a question of how long it will take, what the full extent of the damage will be, and who is damaged in the fallout. And the majority of the members of Congress has decided that the answer to the last question is the taxpayers. The answer is an old one: "Vote 'em out!" It's the only weapon we have, and we need to show that enough people still care about what is happening that they'll have to pay a price for not listening to the voters.

The Story of Stuff

This web site says it all: www.thestoryofstuff.com. This is very important, well, stuff, and very pertinent to our current economic mess.

"Thank You for Calling Big Honkin Corporation. I'm So Effin' Happy You Called that I Could Just Scream...

This call may be monitored or recorded for Bad Things to hold against me in my annual review. How may I help you?"

How does that sound to you? With a few alterations to protect the identity of my employer (and allow me to keep my job), this is the length of the new greeting I'm now required to use at work. You've probably heard similar greetings if you have any reason to call a sufficiently large company. I don't know about you, but hearing this lengthy run of drivel doesn't leave me feeling warm and fuzzy about the company I'm calling.

I knew this was coming because I'd had reason to call the Even Larger Corporation that owns the Very Large Corporation that I work for, and heard this sort of greeting when I called them. I figured it was only a matter of time before we shared the joy as well, and I was right.

So why do we have such a ridiculously long greeting? Well, the "monitored or recorded" part is supposed to be a legal requirement, even though there's supposed to be a pre-recorded message saying the same thing that callers hear before they get to us, so it sounds like duplication to me. My guess is that there was a committee talking about what to put in the greeting, and everybody felt they had to add something to show they were participating in the process. And I'd also guess that not one of them read it out loud even once.

Does anyone really think such a greeting sounds friendly or natural? And if not, why require it?

This is just the tip of a particularly goofy iceberg. More on that another time...

National Health Care Plans

We've been hearing a lot about the two Democratic candidates' national health care plans, with the Pennsylvania primary being hotly contested as I write this. I don't think anyone is going to argue that, in a country as relatively wealthy as ours, someone in desperate need of health care should have to go without medical care only because they can't afford it. But my primary question about health care has remained seemingly ignored by all of the candidates. My question is: what are you going to do to control rising health care costs? Any national health care plan that doesn't address that problem is only shifting costs when the real reason that a national health care plan is so desirable to so many people is that health care is increasingly unaffordable.

I suspect that there are several reasons for this, the main one being that nobody has an answer, and if they do have an answer, it'd be very unpopular with a lot of powerful people. A lot of people would like to blame the insurance industry, but that argument fails quickly. The insurance industry doesn't increase health care costs; it merely has to figure out ways to pay for whatever costs exist.

So what needs to change to stop spiraling health care costs? Some doctors point the finger toward insurance companies because of their rapidly increasing malpractice insurance costs (which means that the doctors in turn must charge more), but that's a short-sighted view. Malpractice costs are high because those dollars used to pay high malpractice suit settlements have got to come from somewhere (and yes, the insurance company will make their profit, as all businesses do). So what is generating those large malpractice suit amounts? Simply put, it's the juries that award them. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be large awards for cases that merit them, but I have to question how many of these large awards are truly justified. We've all heard the story of the elderly woman who won millions in a court settlement by taking McDonald's to court for hot coffee she spilled in her own lap in a drive-through. There are medical malpractice cases that are the equivalent of that.

Bringing medical care costs under control is going to require cooperation at every level of the process, and frankly, somebody's golden goose (and most likely several golden geese) is going to have to be cooked to do it. It's going to take someone with courage and power to accurately identify the real problems and address them, and I don't know what it's going to take to enable that person to step up.

I do know that the candidates aren't going to address the real problems during the primaries, because what the voters want to hear is that someone is going to pay their medical bills, and they don't care who it is as long as it doesn't sound as though it has to be them.

Chilly in Tibet

I watched the documentary "10 Questions for the Dalai Lama", then went to my yoga class tonight, which relaxed me and helped me get my perspective back. What does a financial hit I can weather matter when other people are dealing with much more serious problems? It's not as though it's keeping me from having the essentials I truly need. It really is only money, but when you've been raised in this culture it's easy to forget that from time to time.

Tibet

I'm sure there are a lot of people who know more about this than I do, but I'd be willing to bet that I know more than the average American would on the subject.

I think the tight Chinese control over the media pertaining to recent events in Tibet tells us everything we need to know. They want to get things in place to put as positive a spin on the situation as they can manage before any foreigners see anything firsthand. In one respect, I understand that they're trying to keep their image as positive as possible leading up the Olympics, but on the other hand, it makes their statements regarding what's happening in Tibet a lot less credible.

Another thing I think hurts the Chinese government's credibility is their statements regarding the Dalai Lama. They claim that he's actually the brains behind the violence, which doesn't square at all with everything I've ever read about him from anyone except the Chinese government. There was a representative from the Chinese government (can't remember his name or position) who said in one news story that he'd be willing to talk to the Dalai Lama regarding a peaceful resolution to the situation if the Dalai Lama would agree to two things up front, both of which the Dalai Lama has already publicly agreed to. And yet there's been no meeting, and it doesn't sound as though there will be one.

I'm hard pressed to think of a situation where rioting would be justified, especially on the part of Buddhist monks (if those were, in fact, Buddhist monks, which I have a hard time believing based on that behavior), so there may be blame to be laid on both sides of this equation, but I still think the Chinese are handling Tibet poorly and need to reconsider their actions. While you can rule people with force in the short term, it simply doesn't work in the long term. You've got to speak with them and get some level of cooperation. I think the rest of the world needs to step up and show them just how unacceptable the Chinese handling of this situation is in the eyes of the world community. The exact means will depend on the country, and how far they're willing to go.

Mohammed the Friendly Bear Revisited

I wanted to better understand the Muslim point of view of the apparent conflict between Islam and western countries, so I decided to find some Muslim websites to try to see things from another side. Most of the sites I found were, not surprisingly, based in England, where they have a fair sized Muslim population. I learned a lot from this, finding some of it enlightening and some of it disturbing.

On the historical/political side, I have a better understanding of how they see their past political conflicts with western countries. I'll just say that I can see how they feel they were interfered with in some respects, and I'll leave it at that without trying to argue the merits of either side.

One particularly interesting discussion on a Muslim message board involved a non-Muslim asking about apostasy, which is when a Muslim decides to convert to another religion. The non-Muslim raised the question as to whether or not it's true that apostasy is punishable by death according to Islam. The bottom line is that yes, it's true, but that while strict Muslims would enforce it, more moderate Muslims generally would not.

One of the more illuminating responses explained that there was a historical reason for that position. At the time the Koran was written, it was common practice for men to infiltrate the opposing army, find out their plans, then return to their own side. So men would turn up to join their army, proclaim themselves to be Muslims, then leave with information. The reason for this rule wasn't spiritual; it was military, and common sense! I have a serious problem with the notion of putting someone to death based on spiritual doctrine, but I can understand the reasons for executing a spy in the course of war. The main problem here is that what was once a practical matter has become spiritual doctrine of a destructive nature.

On a different subject, one of the major conflicts between western values and Islam is political. In the west, we have the separation of church and state as a key principle for various reasons. In Islamic thought, there is no boundary between church and state. In fact, it's unacceptable and inconceivable to them that there could be such a boundary. From their point of view, it's the equivalent of saying that we'll only allow a leader to be in charge if he explicitly rejects morality!

I found multiple Muslim-based websites that took the position that, while western nations allow Muslims to worship freely in their countries, that's simply not enough. Those writers explained that Islam is as much political as it is spiritual, and that anything less than eventual implementation of sharia law is unacceptable. At the very least, they feel that a democracy that includes Muslims in their population should take Muslim sensibilities into account, requiring women to dress more modestly as a matter of law, for example. In multiple cases, they pointed out that one of the key differences between western values and Islamic values is that the west emphasizes individual freedom, where Islam places greater weight on the good of the community as a whole, at the expense of the individual if necessary.

A moderate Muslim believes that everyone will eventually convert to Islam, perhaps over a period of centuries, while an extremist believes that everyone should convert now. My main issue here is that many religions profess to having all of the answers, but that becomes a problem when the people of that religion insist on implementing their practices for all on this side of the afterlife. I want to stress that I'm not speaking exclusively about Islam when I say that.

Compromise between the sets of values is difficult at best, because some of the differences are so pronounced. It seems to me as though the best we're going to do in terms of compromise is to leave them to run their countries according to their values and run our countries according to ours. Frankly, the core values of most human beings are not terribly far apart, and I can't see why we can't live side by side with our different belief sets if we're willing to show some tolerance for other views and reasonable consideration for other sensibilities, but it's a difficult stretch when one set is so unwilling to compromise in some respects.

At the end of the day, I think intent has to be the measuring stick. Innocently allowing a group of Muslim children to name a toy Mohammed is obviously nothing more than a cultural mistake, at worst. Drawing a stick figure on a piece of paper, labeling it Mohammed, and mailing it to a mosque just to upset people is another thing entirely, and it's important that all people on both sides understand the distinction and operate accordingly. I can't think of any circumstance under which violence is justified based on a mere insult, even of the most extreme kind. That said, if you're going to intentionally insult someone else's core values, you'd better expect some kind of backlash in return.

I remember Sinead O'Connor tearing up a photograph of the Pope on Saturday Night Live many years ago and finding out that she was very upset at the reaction of many Catholics to her "artistic statement". It's worth noting that no Catholics rioted or called for her death, but it certainly had an impact on the commercial success of her musical career. As for the spiritual impact of her action, I don't think any of us on the corporeal plane get to judge.

Religion and Politics

Is it just me, or are these two topics crossing over a whole lot more than usual in the past few years?

Why are some candidates for the presidency of the United States having to answer so many questions regarding their religious affiliation? What happened to the concept of a separation of church and state in this country?

When one is making moral decisions, your spiritual belief set is bound to come into that decision making process. I understand that. I also understand that if someone shares a religious affiliation with you, there's a pretty good chance you'll agree on the results of the decision making process, but that's no guarantee, contrary to what a lot of people seem to believe. I want to see what a person does, not what they say, or what labels they have stuck to them, before I'd consider voting for them.

It worries me that many people seem to be looking for an easy litmus test to decide their choice of candidate. The president has to make too many choices on various subjects for voters to support them on the basis of one issue. What good is it to make your choice based on one issue that's important to you if that candidate is against everything else you believe in? It's a more complex decision than that, and should be approached accordingly. A general agreement on religious affiliation is stronger than a one issue agreement, and so it would be a better basis for a choice of candidate, but I've seen enough people who claim a particular belief set without actually living their lives according to it to be a bit skeptical until I see the choices that person actually makes.

On the other side of the coin, if someone has a different religious affiliation than I do, but makes a lot of choices I agree with, I have no problem with voting for him/her.

To focus on one particular candidate for a moment, here are some reasons I could not support Huckabee for president. First, he spends $30k to make a commercial attacking the record of another candidate, then he decides not to use it. This does not demonstrate the fiscal responsibility I want to see from the president. Then, he brings the press in and shows them that commercial to demonstrate how he's taking the moral high ground by not using it. Except that he is using it, because the press is, by nature of what they do, going to publish information about the content of the not-being-used commercial, which means that he isn't truly taking the high ground at all. In fact, I trust him a good deal less now because these actions show that he's deluding himself or trying to delude others, and either way it doesn't give me confidence in him.

It also bothers me that he was quoted as saying that he wanted to take this country back for Christ. What about the many non-Christians who live here? Doesn't the president work for everybody in the United States? After eight years of George W. saying that God is on our side, I'm sure our Muslim friends who perceive the U.S. as being at war with Islam would appreciate it if we followed up with a new president who has publicly announced that he'd like to take the U.S. back for Christ.

It's a delicate time. I'm glad that so many people in the world seem to be getting more interested in spiritual issues, but it concerns me that that interest seems to be resulting in people choosing sides on which to fight when we should be focusing on what we have in common to resolve conflicts instead of making them worse. Are people looking for real spirituality or clear and easy answers in a confusing world?

Mohammed the Friendly Bear

For those who haven't heard about it, a British teacher working in the Sudan brought a teddy bear into a class of seven year old children and allowed the children to vote on what to name it. She intended to use the bear as the focus for a series of projects for the kids, asking them to do things like take it home for the day and write about what they did with it, for example. Some of the children were Christians, but as I understand it, most of them were Muslims. She asked the children for a selection of possible names for the bear, and they ultimately voted to name the bear Mohammed. It's a significant point that the Muslim children selected the name. The teacher didn't even choose the list of choices.

Some local Muslim adults protested when they heard about it, as using the name Mohammed for an animal could be perceived as insulting to the Muslim faith. The teacher has been charged with the crimes of insulting religion and inciting hatred. She could've been sentenced to 40 lashes, a year in prison, or a fine. She was sentenced to 15 days in prison and will be deported. Crowds of Muslims armed with clubs and knives reportedly showed up trying to find the prison in which she was being kept so they could kill her.

So let me make sure I've got this right. The teacher allowed a predominantly Muslim group of children to give a toy a potentially offensive name (assuming that she was even aware that naming an animal Mohammed could be offensive). The local people who went looking for her intended nothing less than premeditated murder. Who is insulting religion and inciting hatred?

I've tried to see this through Muslim eyes as best I can, and it still doesn't make sense to me. I understand that insulting Mohammed is one of the most blasphemous things that a person can do in the eyes of a Muslim, but isn't there any consideration of the intent of the person doing it? There's a world of difference between a person being accidentally offensive and a person intentionally insulting the local culture's most highly regarded values.

As I understand it, Muslim groups in various countries have come forward to show that not all Muslims believe this treatment of the teacher has been fair. Good! This shows us that most Muslims are decent, compassionate people, and those who were trying to kill this teacher are a misguided minority. When Muslims in Sudan are trying to kill someone over what appears to nothing more than an error made entirely in ignorance, is it any wonder that many people in the West have trouble seeing Muslims in a positive light?

When to Pull the Car Keys

This is a problem that most people have to face in some form, sooner or later. Dad (or Mom) is getting older, and you're not so sure it's safe for them to drive anymore. On one hand, you don't want to take away their dignity and independence, and you're certainly not crazy about taking on the task of driving them around wherever they need to go. On the other hand, you wouldn't want them to get injured (or injure somebody else) in a car accident because you didn't want to face the uncomfortable discussion regarding the fact that they can't drive as well as they once could and it's time to give it up. There's just no easy solution here.

My father-in-law is reaching the stage where this is becoming a question. He insists he's okay to drive, and we're not as sure. He's allowed us to do some driving for him here and there, under specific conditions and for specific reasons, but he continues to talk about when he'll be driving again. It's not as though his driving skills have evaporated overnight; it's just the usual slow deterioration we all face in the long run.

In my work as a claims adjuster, I see a disproportionate number of elderly and teen drivers in accidents. It's a fact of life. In some cases, the accident is the wake-up call that some of these elderly needed to show them that it's time to stop driving. In others, the elderly driver will argue with me about how they haven't had an accident in fifty years of driving, so damn it, this accident can't be their fault. One particular case I had recently was an elderly man who insisted that the teenage driver of the other car hadn't had her headlights on, because if she had, he would've seen her car and not pulled out in front of her from the stop sign. There were two independent witnesses and a police officer at the scene all saying that she did have her headlights on, and his response to that was that all of them clearly knew the teen driver and it was all a conspiracy against him. I'm not making this up; he was really in that much of a state of denial. The fact is, he simply didn't see her and made a mistake. You don't have to be elderly to make that mistake, but when your vision and reflexes aren't what they used to be, it's a lot more likely to happen.

I'd like to see mandatory driver's tests for the elderly, past a certain age. It's one thing for a son or daughter to have to explain to Dad or Mom that it's time to put away the car keys, and another thing entirely when the law says it's time. Too often, it takes an accident to decide the issue, and somebody gets hurt or killed. I realize that politicians are unlikely to take this stand, because they'd lose a lot of elderly votes by doing it, but I wish someone would do the right thing. I know it's easy enough for me to say this, as I'm nowhere near that age, and I'm going to be as reluctant as anyone to give up those keys and a measure of independence when the time comes, but I'd prefer it to being responsible for injuring or killing someone (or myself).

The Politics of Fear

For the last couple of months, I've been subjected to a steady bombardment of mail and phone calls (both live and automated) from both sides of the Jim Gerlach/Lois Murphy congressional election. Virtually all of it has involved the worst kind of mudslinging, and I had no idea at all about what either one of them really stood for until the local newspaper published an article about a debate between the two. The debate itself seemed to primarily involve mudslinging, but the newspaper conveniently summarized the two candidates' positions on the more significant issues at the end of the article, finally providing me with some real information.

At this point, I'm sick to death of both of them, and would vote for anyone who isn't one of them. If there's any third party candidate running against them, you can bet that's who is going to get my vote. It really doesn't matter, since one of them is going to be elected anyway, but I'm going to make my statement, for what it's worth. If either one of them had taken the higher road, that would most likely be the candidate who would've gotten my vote.

I have three separate points here. The first is that I'm tired of all the advertising done to tell us how evil the opposing candidate is. If any candidate is more focused on his/her opponent's flaws than on what they personally bring to the table, they've lost me already. I won't vote for candidates like that and I'd encourage you to do the same.

My second point is that there is no reason to spend millions on election campaigns. Wouldn't it be better to simply make a summary of each candidate's position on the key issues publicly available (the newspaper and a web site, perhaps) shortly before the election, and let the candidates stand or fall on the merits of their positions? Set a word limit for each of them (so they don't write a whole frickin' book) and let them focus their efforts on concisely and persuasively making their case. It would save a lot of time, effort, and cash, and not leave the candidates owing their souls to special interests just so they can have the money necessary to run for office. Maybe the way to go is to allow them three opportunities to do this. One could be a month before the election to make their initial case, another one week later to allow a rebuttal to what the opponents said the prior week, and one last time to say whatever else they feel needs to be said. Why do we need any more than that?

My third point is that I've had enough of the "two party system". There is no "two party system". There can be as many parties as there are opinions; it's just that two main parties have evolved, and I'm not happy with either one of them right now. There's a perception that you can't get elected in this country unless you sign up with one team or the other. There's a perception that voting for an independent is a wasted vote because they have no chance of being elected. Let's prove them wrong and elect more independents. I often vote for third party candidates just to make the point that I'm not happy with the existing parties. If enough of us do that, we'll get better choices. I don't want to vote for the lesser evil; I want to vote for the best candidate for the job. It would be a lot easier for good people to run for public office in the first place if they didn't need a party's support to do it, and it's only that expensive to do because we make it that way. I'd like to see that change.