Playing with Passion

This is Victor Borge, above. And Liberace, below. Both wonderful men, playing the piano. With passion. They don't do this because it's their job, or because they have to, or because someone else wants them to do it. They do it because they love it. They're passionate about playing. Their hours spent at the iano practising is not onerous, it's wonderful. It's play.

We can do this, too. We just have to find what we're passionate about.

I have growing passions, but it's this year that one of them -- writing -- is actually coming out. Why is it coming out? Because I'm doing it. I'm not waiting for the grand idea, for the entire plot, for everything to be perfect. I'm just writing. It's not necessarily all that good, but parts of it, yes, I can see progress.

This is how things get done. This is how a piano player turns from a player to a virtuoso. Practice and passion. I hope the passion I have for writing is showing through in the things I'm writing. I've started on a few projects. Haven't finished one yet. But my gosh, something's in the water this year. I can feel it coming out. I'm excited.

GET HER!

I got this message on Facebook today:

(Alan): Just ate lunch in the Ghostbuster's library.

Can I just say how jealous I am? I have two goals for when I visit New York City: I will see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which meant so much to my father when he came to the United States in 1950, and I will also see the all the buildings used in Ghostbusters: The New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, the firehouse, Ivor Shandorf's building, and Columbia University. That Alan had lunch there today just makes me insane with jealousy.

Why the Ghostbusters fixation? Probably because I think it's among the top ten best movies ever made, bar none.

I Am Not Irish; Do NOT Pinch Me

Ever since I was a little kid, I hated St. Patrick's Day.

Pinching those who did not wear green on March 17th was THE THING to do at Lincoln Elementary, I'm sure as it was at every damn elementary school everywhere in this country, then and now. Heaven protect the poor fool who forgot to wear green that day, he or she was literally -- I mean literally -- pinched black and blue by the time the day was over. Some teachers took pity on people and passed out paper shamrocks to pin to shirts, but nine times out of ten some creep would rip the shamrock off, shriek "He's NOT wearing green!" and pinch away.

I hated them.

Then, too, there was the lunchroom attendant/recess aid who loved St. Patrick's Day and, in addition, attended church with my mother. That meant I was pinched unmercifully, if tenderly, by a crasy woman not above chasing us through the playground. These were much more innocent times back then; today, you'd get on the news with this kind of shenanigans.

Worse than the pinches, though, were the smug little farts who wore concealed green and lived by the rule that said if you were pinched but had green on somewhere, you got to pinch the pincher ten times. Everyone hated the little creep whose mom bought him green underwear.

I stopped pinching in the third grade, though there was little I could do to avoid being pinched. "I'm not Irish, I'm half Dutch," I'd say to the owners of those stupid pinchy fingers. That is true, my father came from a land where they used their fingers fore more useful pursuits than pinching -- they stuck them in leaky dikes. Not that it did any good. Everybody got pinched, though I'm sure there was only one kid in the whole school who could claim direct Irish ancestry. I had a crush on her. I was too shy to go anywhere near her, let alone pinch her.

So now I'm a grumpy old man with kids of my own. They wear green to school on the 17th of March, simply because there's no getting out of it. I do not wear green to work. I tell people who want to pinch that it's a quaint old Dutch tradition to punch people who pinch. I tell them that with a smile on my face, of course. So far, no pinching. Or punching.

Wile E. Coyote, Super Grammar Nazi

At least the coyote, in his enunciation, pronounces genius correctly. And I’ll bet he can spell it right as well, though it’s got to be tempting to spell it with a Y instead of an I.

Phonics, I think, is killing the word “genius.” Or an odd penchant on the part of people to pronounce it with three syllables – gen/ee/ous – rather than the correct two – gen/yuss. Because no matter how many times you look at this word in the dictionary, it’s not spelled with an O, adding that third syllable, as in “genious.”

Albert Einstein was not a genious.

That YouTube trailer you saw for “Helvetica” is not genious. Nor is the font.

He may be a genius. And the trailer may be genius. I’m not going to quibble over the use of genius, a noun, as an adjective, describing either Einstein or the Helvetia trailer. Or describing anything else for that matter. The language does not control us; we control the language. So use it as an adjective all you want. Jut spell and pronounce it correctly. That our language changes with the times means we can find new uses for words, not that we should be sloppy in spelling and saying them.

Telling Us What We Want to Hear on Health Care

It’ll probably come as no surprise to find that I’m still confused by ObamaCare.

As far as I can tell, ObamaCare does little to control what health care costs. Yes, I can probably get tax credits to pay for insurance, but in order to qualify for the credits, I’d have to spend more on insurance than I’m already spending. And that does nothing to prevent private insurers from raising rates, or to prevent hospitals or pharmaceutical companies from charging the prices they do for what services they offer. We’d just be throwing more money into that hole.

How can I call it a hole when it’s insurance meant to pay for my family’s ills if, heaven forbid, we had an accident? Well, for the past two years I’ve paid into the insurance system. Have not filed a claim. Yet our premiums rise. Prices are going up, and even though I’ve done nothing but pay premiums, I’m still getting spanked by those rising prices.

Conversely, we haven’t had a claim on our auto insurance or homeowner’s insurance ever. Not in 13 years of marriage. And guess what? Those premiums are going down. Good job, our insurers say. You’re a good risk. We can reward that.

Not so the health insurance companies.

Robert Samuelson, writing for Newsweek, agrees (emphasis mine):

Though it seems compelling, covering the uninsured is not the health-care system's major problem. The big problem is uncontrolled spending, which prices people out of the market and burdens government budgets. Obama claims his proposal checks spending. Just the opposite. When people get insurance, they use more health services. Spending rises. By the government's latest forecast, health spending goes from 17 percent of the economy in 2009 to 19 percent in 2019. Health "reform" would probably increase that.

Unless we change the fee-for-service system, costs will remain hard to control because providers are paid more for doing more. Obama might have attempted that by proposing health-care vouchers (limited amounts to be spent on insurance), which would force a restructuring of delivery systems to compete on quality and cost. Doctors, hospitals and drug companies would have to reorganize care. Obama refrained from that fight and instead cast insurance companies as the villains.

I've read the stories in which Obama villifies the insurance companies. It's good public relations -- nobody likes health insurance companies -- but making them the villains isn't addressing the core issues, Samuelson says (again, emphasis mine).

He's telling people what they want to hear, not what they need to know. Whatever their sins, insurers are mainly intermediaries; they pass along the costs of the delivery system. In 2009, the largest 14 insurers had profits of roughly $9 billion; that approached 0.4 percent of total health spending of $2.472 trillion.

I’m not sure what he means by vouchers, or how such a system would “force a restructuring of delivery systems to compete on quality and cost,” but I’d like to think there’s something we could do to keep these costs under control. What’s currently being proposed, however, doesn’t do that. Why do Democrats think shoveling money at social problems is the way to fix them? And why do Republicans think that the private sector is the answer to everyone’s woes? The private sector is keeping those prices up and spiraling higher. And throwing money at the problem isn't going to make prices come down.

To those who don't believe we're being priced out, I challenge you to ask your employer how much they pay for your healt insurance (if you're lucky enough to have an employer who does pay for a portion or all of your health insurance; I am not one of those). You'll find out quickly that it's an expensive proposition. My wife and I pay out of pocket for a bare-bones plan that'll cover us if we're in an accident or get cancer (at least up to a point) and maybe that's good enough for now. But for later? I don't know. My in-laws, both retired, buy their own insurance, at a better level than ours. It's expensive, even with the Medicare supplements they get. And they travel to Mexico to buy their drugs. They pick up some for us, too.

Not having insurance isn’t the problem; the problem is as Samuelson says: We’re being priced out of the system. The private sector currently has no motivation to keep prices low. Most everyone, when the time comes, will plunge headfirst into the healthcare system, costs be damned, because either they’ve got insurance or they know the government will somewhere, somehow pick up the tab, or at least most of it. Yes, there are people, like my wife and I, who avoid going to the doctor because we know we can’t afford it, and know that we don’t qualify for any government handout. But our window of taking such an approach is closing. We’re both getting older. Our kids are getting more active and, frankly, more likely to get hurt.

An update: The last time I blogged on this topic, I mentioned that I'd e-mailed the White House health care e-mail box with a question on ObamaCare. I have not received a response.

I'm Happy, but it Makes No Sense

Why doesn't this make sense to me:

Ridgeline Energy and BP Wind Energy announced today their plans to build 83 wind turbines on a new wind power farm in Bonneville County -- the largest wind farm in the state of Idaho -- to provide electricity for about 37,000 homes in . . . Southern California. Do they not have wind or hills, or windy hills, or hilly wind, in California? I guess somehow it must be cheaper to build power plants inIdaho and ship the power to California than to build in California. Land prices being what they are there, I can understand. But still? That's a long way to ship electrons. Oh well, the windmills look picturesque in the country.

Attention Chemists

Any chemists out there, whether you're named Jarvis or not, I still need your help. Take pity on a washed up journalist now working as a technical writer but secretly wishing he'd gone and got a MA in creative writing like his sister. Read this. Then, toward the end, note where I left a hole in the story that's begging to be filled by a simple chemistry experiment.

Your contribution will be acknowledged. Thanking you in advance, I am but your humble servant.

I'm Speechless

Another Film I've got to See

I was introducted to Le Petit Nicolas while serving a mission in France. I love these stories, and now it looks like a movie's been made. I'd dearly love to see it. It came out in 2009, so it's recent. Hasn't seen the light of day in this neck of the woods, apparently. Not surprising. We only have one art theatre in the entire region, and it's not likely they'd bring a French film here. Maybe I can find it on DVD somewhere? Hm. Released in France just last month. They have it at fnac (another wonderful memory of France) but do they have it in the United States? Apparently not yet. Well, something to look foward to.

Hearts Gone Cold at the Consumerist

Over in Ohio, some creepy old man is in trouble for hitting kids at Wal Mart.

Not whiny kids. Not kids screaming or acting out in any way. Just random kids he could smack on the back of the head with his keys in his fist, just so he could get away with the “thrill” of it.

I don’t know what’s sicker: Smacking kids for the thrill, or the cheering section this man is evidently earning through his despicable act at The Consumerist.

OK, I do know what’s sicker. It’s the cheering section.

At least this creep is now in the justice system, thanks to a vigilant mother who caught him leaving the store after he smacked her two boys as they were with her at Wal Mart buying plums.

The Consumerist isn’t helping much. Ben Popken, who ordinarily writes good posts, seems to have phoned this one in. The kids were bopped, he writes, “as parents were entranced by Wal Mart bargains.” In other words, they were shopping, Ben. They were looking at something to buy (in this case, plums) when this creep hit their kids. They were not mindlessly consuming letting their kids run rampage. They were shopping. If this had occurred at a Whole Foods or some local New York grocery, would the shoppers also be “entranced,” Ben? For shame.

Anyone tries this with my kid, they get the same treatment this crumb gets from the gal in Ohio whose kids he bopped. He gets chased, hauled back into the store and questioned by the cops.