Thanksgiving weekend was fun. I got to see all of my family and most of my Cleveland friends. I'm not a huge turkey fan, but I ate a lot over the weekend anyway due to eating out. Although I didn't get to visit Cleveland favorites like Max's Deli and Weia Teia (now apparently renamed to the Wild Mango) I did hit up bw-3 for wings. I definitely feel the lack of bw's or Quaker Steak in DC.

I didn't get as much rest as I had hoped, since days were mostly family leaving nights to go out with friends, but I did lounge and play the piano and alter a top I bought awhile ago. (It's hard to sew at home because Max pounces on the needle.)

Speaking of bad kittens, they trashed my apartment while I was gone. I left a roll of paper towels for them (so they'd shred that instead of the sofa), which they thoroughly enjoyed. They also broke into the trash! They can open the cabinet doors! So when I was vacuuming last night, I found cat food cans hidden behind furniture. And an empty package of lunch meat that I threw away before the weekend because it smelled funny. I guess it must not have been that bad, because they didn't get sick.

I'm excited that it's Christmastime now. I'm planning to get a real tree (despite kittens), and next weekend I'm having a truffle-making party. Mmm, chocolate.

# : 11:20 AM : :

I left my apartment at 2 today to catch a 7:00 flight out of BWI. I figured I should allow 2 hours for traffic and 2 for security, with a little extra padding in there as well.

The drive there took over two and a half hours, THREE TIMES as long as normal. Then long-term parking was full. However, once I entered the airport, things were great! Security took about five minutes, so I got to my gate around 5, lamenting the fact that I'd have to hang out there for two hours.

I soon wished it were only two hours. My flight was delayed by THREE HOURS. (For those counting, that's 2.5 hours driving, 0.5 from the lot to the gate, and 5 sitting at the gate. I could have driven home during that time.)

So now I'm thinking I should cancel my flight home and just ride back with my roommate. The problem with that plan is that my car is sitting in a BWI parking lot. I should have ridden the train up to BWI.

But the good news is, I'm in Cleveland now (Clevelanders - let's get together!). Also, the book I bought to occupy my time turned out to be (unintentionally) hilarious so you can expect a post about that at some point.

# : 11:47 PM : :

November's crop of kitten pictures is up. Highlights:


Tess goes for the mouse-on-a-stick.


Max is lazy.


Hangers are fun!


Max appears to do the "Downward Dog" yoga pose.

# : 10:37 PM : :

Awhile back I pushed a site about a motorcycle ride through Chernobyl. If you missed it the first time, you absolutely must check it out.

I was reminded of that today when I found Urban Exploration Files, a collection of photos of abandoned sites in NYC. There is something so haunting about these places.

# : 4:00 PM : :

Since I've been on the medical school interview circuit, I've been trying to educate myself on the health insurance issue. I'm impressed with a lot of what I've heard (from those who were willing to talk to me, anyway - several gunner fellow interviewees refused to share their opinions). As I've learned more, I've come up with some thoughts, but haven't talked about most of them in interviews because I feel like my positions are pretty out of the mainstream. So I was happy to read this editorial in the Washington Post today. I don't agree with all of what Mallaby says, but there's a lot that coincides with what I've been thinking.

The cost of providing health coverage has exploded along with medical inflation; between 2000 and 2003, the percentage of Americans covered by employment-based health benefits fell from 63.6 percent to 60.4 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. With a little extra push, this slow attrition could become a stampede for the exit. And, according to an article Thursday by my colleagues Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, the Bush administration is mulling the idea of eliminating the tax incentive for companies to provide health coverage.

Would this be an error? The answer is complicated. But tax-sheltered corporate health care is unfair and wasteful. People at small companies and temporary or unskilled workers often get no coverage. Meanwhile, privileged workers get coverage that's over-fancy because it is subsidized by taxpayers and doubly wasteful because it separates the decision to spend money from the responsibility for paying. So long as the bill is on the company, the doctors and patients who make medical choices have no incentive to constrain spending.

Individual purchasing of health coverage would create an incentive to shop wisely for insurance, especially if the shoppers used after-tax dollars.

I think this is pretty accurate.

There are a lot of things wrong with the state of health insurance today, but there are two issues that I think get overlooked. First of all, employer-provided health insurance causes more problems than it solves. As Mallaby mentions, people who don't work for big companies get screwed. Also, people who work for companies that make goofy decisions about what to pay for are out of luck, and people who lose their jobs are in big trouble. Tying health insurance to employment just doesn't seem like a good idea.

Secondly, health insurance covers too much. Can you imagine what it would be like if your car insurance covered oil changes and wiper blades? It would be astronomically priced, Jiffy Lube would have an incentive to collude with State Farm, and consumers would have no incentive to seek out reasonably priced oil changes.

The analogy with health insurance is clear, I think, as far as it goes: prices are driven up because regular costs are hidden in premiums, there's price-fixing, and consumers don't look for good prices. But there's another way in which insurance drives up health care costs: it costs a lot of money to file those claims! Insurance companies are notoriously unhelpful, so doctors have to pay office staff to learn insurance codes and wander through phone menu mazes in order to get reimbursement. If people paid directly for regular office visits, physicians wouldn't have to process nearly as many forms, and they wouldn't need so much support staff.

Anything that encourages the decoupling of insurance with employment should be a step in the right direction. If everyone is on equal footing regardless of employment, availability of coverage should be distributed more fairly. And if people see the true costs of their health insurance (rather than having a large portion paid by their employers and the rest taken by paycheck deduction) they'll not only start shopping for good prices, but start choosing more sensible coverage plans. For most relatively healthy people, a plan focused on catastrophic coverage would be a better deal, even before it starts driving down costs by making armies of insurance coders unnecessary. (It definitely would be for me, and I'm less healthy than is probably average for my age.) [*]

Obviously, this brings us to the question of fairness for people who aren't relatively healthy, or who can't pay out of pocket for a checkup. The free-market solution begins to break down here. Health care isn't a commodity; we can't just refuse to treat people who can't pay.

Here, again, I look to car insurance for an analogy. If car insurance were optional, a lot of people who drive crappy cars or don't think the cost/benefit ratio is favorable wouldn't get it. (In fact, I know a lot of people who'd fall into this category; if you're a safe driver, live in a safe neighborhood, and don't have an expensive car, insurance isn't really a good deal for you.) Then only rich people would be able to afford it, because they'd have to bear the costs of all the uninsured people running around getting into accidents. To prevent this, we require everyone to carry collision insurance.

So I suggest mandating health insurance. (Catastrophic coverage only; if you want your annual checkup covered that's up to you.) When we force the young and healthy to get coverage, the risk pool is spread out and coverage becomes more affordable. Granted, underwriting is still in play, so high-risk people (as well as poor people) will probably not be able to afford insurance. Mallaby thinks we should regulate what risk factors insurance companies are allowed to consider, but I'm not sure that's a great idea. I'd lean toward either providing vouchers or establishing a state high-risk pool, something like the state hurricane insurance in coastal areas. This would have to be subsidized, but I think that's an acceptable societal expense. Certainly we pay one way or the other.

Obviously, I'm far from being an expert in this field, but it's something I'm very interested in, so I welcome any responses. I'm sure there's a lot I haven't taken into account.

[*]One criticism I always see of this sort of plan is that if preventive care (e.g. an annual physical) isn't covered, people won't take advantage of it and thus will end up with worse problems in the future. First of all, people clearly don't take full advantage of preventive care as is. Secondly, I think this ignores basic economics: insurance companies have an interest in not paying out for expensive illnesses, so if preventive care is in fact worthwhile, they'll provide incentives for patients to use it, just as car insurance companies give discounts for taking defensive-driving classes.

# : 1:50 PM : :

My interview on Friday went well. I actually ended up much more impressed with the school than I expected to be, mostly because of their focus on learning clinical skills through standardized patients and mentoring. There was a presentation with a standardized patient, during which I volunteered and got to learn how to use a reflex hammer. And my interviewer gave me tips on encouraging patients to open up! It was very cool. Basically, I feel like no matter where I go, I'm going to learn the science that I need, but I think the art is what makes the difference between a good doctor and a great one.

Saturday morning I taught physics: periodic motion and E&M. I brought in a Slinky to demonstrate a bunch of spring and wave concepts, and that was a lot of fun - the students were definitely drawn in. The rest of the class didn't go quite as well; I think you lose a lot by going with algebra- rather than calculus-based physics. And I just couldn't teach that much, that fast. I have a bunch of stuff I promised to look up and email my students. I started on that list last night, and all these things make so much more sense in my college physics textbook.

Sunday's class was chemistry, and that went well. Granted, it was because the students already knew pretty much all the concepts (periodic trends and dipole moments just aren't that hard) but it felt good to teach a solid class and finish early!

Saturday evening I saw The Grudge, and man was that scary. Just like The Ring, except this one actually gave me nightmares. (Well, one nightmare.) I think I've gotten my scary-movie fix for awhile.

I cooked a pretty good soup this weekend. It was like Italian wedding soup, with Italian sausage, white beans, acini di pepe, and escarole in chicken broth. Very yummy. Unfortunately, while it was in the refrigerator, the pasta soaked up ALL the broth, so now I have to make extra broth to store separately. I also made garlic bread, which I'd never done before - I'm not sure why, because it was awesome! Softened butter and garlic, covered with romano cheese, toasted under the broiler. So yummy. I think I can eat all the rest of the bread like that.

What I didn't do this weekend was work at my real job, so I have a lot to do before Thanksgiving. Lounging at my parents' all weekend is sounding really good.

# : 9:10 AM : :

It doesn't get any better than this: intrepid kitten explorers.

# : 3:27 PM : :

I went to New York City yesterday for an interview - Amtrak'd up early in the morning and back late at night. And I successfully navigated the subway system, which was neither difficult nor scary, despite dire warnings. On the way back, I did a little West Side subway tour, stopping at Columbia's undergrad campus, Central Park, and Times Square. Fun, but really tiring. We're spoiled in DC with escalators in our subway stations! And doing the Superinterviewee quick-change in the ladies' room twice in one day was two times too many.

The interview went well, and I really liked New York. I am, however, grumpy that I spent a whole day there and ate no good food. (The box lunch was mediocre, and I had Pizza Hut at the train station for dinner.) Clearly, I must go back and try again.

Tonight I'm driving down to Norfolk for another interview tomorrow. The interview process is kind of giving me a taste of what I'm in for - can I look at cut-up cadavers? Get up crazy early? Function on half as much sleep as normal? Be interested in an hour-long lecture on radiology? So far, yes to all of the above. Too bad I won't have much opportunity to apply my new skill of putting on pantyhose in a bathroom stall, though.

# : 11:26 AM : :

I noticed some things over the weekend that I wanted to blog about, but I had trouble collecting my thoughts yesterday so I took an easy target instead. (Or maybe not so easy; I didn't know it would generate so much discussion!) So here's what I meant to talk about yesterday.

This weekend I did quite a lot of people-watching, as I always do when socializing in public places. Friday night I went to a dance club in some yuppified neighborhood of the District, and was struck by the fact that everyone there looked like me! Not in the sense of being small and blonde, but they were all relatively well-off twentysomethings, pretty conservatively dressed (considering that it was a club). Everyone looked like someone I'd run into at work or at a friend's party. In my extremely limited clubbing experience, this has never happened before - normally I'm surrounded by skanky girls and guys with baggy pants barely hanging onto their hips.

On Saturday, first I went to a gathering of coworkers at a pool hall in BFE, Maryland. I was one of the first people there, and it was very easy to check out the crowd to find my group: doing a quick mental sort for people who fit into the young, upper-middle-class group described above gave me only two bunches of people that I had to check to see if I recognized anyone. After that, I went to meet friends for dinner at a Salvadoran restaurant in Mount Pleasant. Scanning that crowd was much harder, because although I could skip over people who looked Hispanic, everyone else was pretty yuppified.

At first, I thought this was pretty cool - since I didn't really fit in during my pre-college years, I'm still excited when I find groups of people that seem promising for making friends. DC, since it attracts smart people and is big enough to allow for a lot of subcommunities, is like a mother lode for me in that respect. But after I thought about it more, I was kind of disturbed. For one thing, it's weird to hang out with only people your own age; at this point I'm embarrassingly excited to see babies. But it also seems somewhat artificial. The real world, the family and community where I grew up, is far from homogenous. Although it seems comfortable to surround oneself with similar people, I don't think it's healthy or productive to do it all the time.

Julian touches on this in a recent post:

Self-segregation into communties of consensus, whether geographically or in media space, has the same effect. The caricature of the smug, complacent urban elite is based on this kernel of truth: The less we encounter people with radically different worldviews, the less accustomed we become to making the case for our own in a compelling way.

I think that is a large part of what was bothering me. I don't want to be insular; I want to relate to a wide variety of people, and I think one has to make a conscious effort to avoid the temptation of clustering with like minds. No matter how grateful I am for places like Case and yuppie-DC that allow me to make friends!

# : 3:23 PM : :

Via The Lingual Nerve, a good article by Virginia Postrel on the problems with giving learning-disabled medical school applicants (or doctors in training) extra accommodations. Essentially, if someone is learning-disabled enough that they can't come close to completing the MCAT in the time allotted, there's very little chance they're going to make it through medical school. As Postrel says:

The lawsuit ignores the nature of medical training, which is notoriously grueling for a reason. Patients’ lives depend on physicians’ ability to perform under pressure. If learning-disabled students can’t do well on a timed test, maybe they aren’t suited to be doctors.

Allen agrees:

If taking the MCAT is gruelling for these applicants, it’ll take them about 30 years to get through medical school, which is non-stop high-volume education. It’s hard as heck if you read and test well, and would be impossible for those with significant learning disabilities.

Postrel's article ends by pointing out that we discriminate based on another genetic attribute -- intelligence -- all the time:

Besides, the disability rights people have no objection to the most blatant form of educational discrimination: the prejudice against people who, thanks to the genetic lottery, aren’t exceptionally bright.

For an aspiring doctor, average intelligence is a far greater handicap than dyslexia or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Why do some brain attributes matter more than others? Why, to use the trendy jargon, should we “privilege” intelligence?

“Wow,” says Tollafield. “That’s a big policy question. I don’t know that I’m capable of answering it.”

How can you not be capable of answering that question? Clearly, we privilege intelligence because smart people make better doctors. If you don't have above-average intelligence, you are not going to succeed as a physician. That's the way the world works. I really do feel bad for people who weren't genetically blessed with the intelligence necessary to do what they would like to, just as I feel sorry for my friend who wanted to be a fighter jet pilot but is too tall to fit in the cockpit, or scrawny and asthmatic little kids who want to be football stars. It sucks to be dealt crappy numbers in the genetic lottery.

I'm all for giving people opportunities to succeed, and of course no one is going to get anywhere in medicine without working pretty damn hard. But let's be realistic. Contrary to parental rhetoric, it is simply not true that you can be whatever you want to be if you just work hard enough. No matter how hard I train, I will never play pro basketball. And there are some people who will never succeed in medicine, whether it's because they're too uncoordinated to be surgeons, too dyslexic to read journal articles, or just not intelligent enough to grasp the material. The disability rights people might not have noticed that "disabled" means "not able to do some things." Let's not pretend that ability to actually do the work doesn't matter.

# : 4:28 PM : :

In honor of the holiday, I'm going to tell a story that one of my favorite veterans told me.

My grandpa joined the Army partway through World War II. He had finished high school and worked for a year before being drafted. The Army noticed that he was a pretty smart guy, and they decided he'd be more useful as a radar tech than an infantryman. So he was shipped off to Kansas for a year of radar school, then they put him on a boat to some Pacific island.

Thanks to some lucky accident of genes that was most emphatically not passed on to me, my grandpa doesn't get seasick. So he was living it up on the ship. At one point they had to sail through a typhoon, and the seas got really rough. Everyone was either sick in their bunks or trying to tie down any possible projectiles. They didn't get to the mess hall chairs in time, and one flew across the room and smashed into the freezer, causing the doors to fly open and refuse to shut.

Grandpa happened to see that there was a stockpile of ice cream in there. It was going to melt anyway, so he grabbed a spoon and ate it by the gallon. I believe he took his ice cream belowdecks to taunt his friends, who were far too seasick to join in.

Japan surrendered a few weeks before they got where they were going. From his stories, I have the impression that he spent most of his time lounging on the beach before the ship turned around and went back. They sailed under the Golden Gate bridge and rode a train back to Ohio, where my grandpa got a new job and married my grandma. Every spring, he takes a steamboat cruise down the Mississippi, but I am pretty sure it doesn't come with huge amounts of ice cream.

[I heard this story years ago, so some of the details are hazy, and it's way too late at night to call Grandpa and ask him to tell it again. I'll have to get more stories at Thanksgiving.]

# : 9:59 PM : :

The New Birth Control Ban

Lacey's pharmacist and Kelley's doctors are among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of physicians and pharmacists who now adhere to a controversial belief that birth control pills and other forms of hormonal contraception--including the skin patch, the vaginal ring, and progesterone injections--cause tens of thousands of "silent" abortions every year. Consequently, they are refusing to prescribe or dispense them.

A brief background: oral contraceptives primarily work by suppressing ovulation. There's a secondary mechanism, thickening of cervical mucus, which helps to prevent fertilization (the sperm can't enter the uterus). Some birth control manufacturers and the folks profiled in the article claim that there is a third mechanism, prevention of implantation.

But while mainstream experts say ovulation happens only 2 to 3 percent of the time and fertilization is rare, anti-Pill groups claim both happen frequently.
[...]
Surprisingly, there's no science to back the theory that birth control pills really do discourage implantation. This claim, made by contraceptive manufacturers for decades, has never been proven, Grimes says. Even the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists agrees that it's just speculation.

Every woman I've talked to who's read this article (or similar ones; apparently it's a new trend - whether real or journalistic I don't know) has been fairly appalled. Personally, I'm not too concerned - contraception is pretty popular in this country (the article claims that 95% of women use some form at some point, so I don't think it's going away) and mail-order pharmacies are better anyway. But I would certainly be upset if denied a prescription, and I don't agree with these pharmacists. First of all, I don't see any reason to think that OCs do prevent implantation, and secondly, if that did happen on occasion, I wouldn't see it as a problem.

Those two areas of disagreement, however, are very different. The first is factual - OCs either are or aren't abortifacient. There is no science saying that they are (to my knowledge - if I find a credible study saying otherwise, I'll retract), so apparently these people just decided that their opinions mattered. I have a serious problem with people making unfounded scientific claims.

The second difference, though, is a matter of morals - is prevention of implantation equivalent to abortion? (The medical definition says no, since pregnancy is defined as implantation. But that's a semantic issue.) I don't think so, but I recognize and respect that other people disagree.

So while I reserve the right to mock people for having goofy opinions based on no evidence, I also support their moral decisions. I don't think that people should be forced to help others do something they believe is wrong - concerned women's cries of "there oughta be a law" notwithstanding.

Of course, I also don't think they should expect to keep their jobs for long if they refuse to dispense one of the most common prescription drugs. Imagine a vegetarian who takes a waitressing job despite believing it's immoral to serve meat. If the restaurant needed a bartender anyway, it would be nice of them to let her take that job, but if they need all of their staff to wait tables, she shouldn't be surprised when she's replaced with someone who's willing to do the entire job.

Meta note: it occurs to me that three of my last four substantive posts have discussed gays, marriage, birth control, and abortion. You can tell I was raised in the Religious Right! Maybe I'll blog about pornography next.

# : 3:49 PM : :

...two of my favorite things. (If you just want to read the technology rant, skip over the part about clothing store return policies.)

There was an article in Sunday's Washington Post about a new trend in retail of tracking customers' returns and using the database to deny some attempted returns.

As the holiday shopping season gets into full swing, a number of major retailers -- including KB Toys and Sports Authority, according to store personnel -- are rolling out electronic systems that weigh the number of returns and exchanges a person has made, the dollar value of the items, and the dates of the transactions to decide whether a consumer should be granted another. The systems are designed to catch shoplifters and those who "wardrobe," wearing clothes and then returning them for a full refund.

An acquaintance of mine was denied a return at Express a few weeks ago, as was the woman profiled in the article. Both were understandably upset, as they're neither shoplifters nor "wardrobers", just people who needed to see items at home before deciding whether to keep them or not.

In theory, a system like this could be great. Shoplifters drive prices up for everyone else, so taking measures to reduce shrink is a fine idea.

However, I don't see how this system is supposed to work. There are many legitimate customers who buy a lot and return a lot. For example, when I was shopping for an interview suit, I bought three and returned two (to different stores). My mom often buys Christmas presents in two sizes and returns the wrong one on December 26. We're not doing anything wrong; we don't wear the clothes until we've decided to keep them. Stores do lose a bit of money here, but it's generally balanced out by the fact that I'd rather shop at a store where I know I can return something if it turns out to be wrong. (Nordstrom gets a lot of my shoe business for this reason, even though it's more expensive than some other options.) And if stores want to cut their expenses on returns, they could be like computer stores and charge a restocking fee.

So I think the article is accurate, and these stores are trying to catch thieves rather than just people who take advantage of return policies. But I'm not optimistic about how well they're going to do. The big problem is that they track what you return (they run your driver's license so you can't just write down a fake name) but not what you buy. They can't distinguish between someone who buys $500 worth of merchandise and returns the $50 pants that don't fit, and someone who buys the pants, wears them, and returns them later. They're going to drive away people who actually spend a lot of money at the store. Also, it's not hard to get around the system; my friend who was denied a return just had her husband go in and return the things. He had no track record at Express, so they didn't cause him any problems.

The system might be more effective if they tracked all purchases and ran some heuristics on behavior: maybe allow the first few returns, disallow them from someone who returns more than 50% of what they buy, etc. Although this system wouldn't be perfect, I imagine that it would end up doing about as well as your average spam filter.

Another thing that occurs to me is that Express can already track my purchases; since I shop there a lot I have their store credit card. They could run the more sophisticated analysis on people with their card, and make returns harder for people without it. This would have the added benefit, for them, of getting more people to use their 27% APR credit card.

Naturally, these tactics would raise complaints about intrusiveness, though if they worked well enough to bring down prices I'd be all for it. (Amazon tracks my purchases and I like that since they suggest new books for me! Maybe Express could tell me when the shirts that fit me are on sale.) I think most people like the ability to buy anonymously more than they like easy returns, so it probably wouldn't fly. Basically, this system is pretty sucky, but the alternatives aren't great either. We'll see whether enough people stop shopping at Express to get them to stop with the return profiling.


What I really wanted to talk about, though, was not so much the return system but the reaction to the fact that it's automated. For example:

"Technology has made it cheap to do all kinds of surveillance and watch over people and make sure they obey the rules. But when a system makes a mistake, what can you do?" said Richard Smith, an Internet security and privacy consultant.

I've also heard people complaining about the idea that a computer could "decide" who gets to return things.

What people are missing here is the fact that the computer system doesn't make decisions or mistakes (at least not in the sense that most people use those words). The computer does what it's told; it's not some black box that evilly or randomly plots against people. If you don't like the return policies at Express, don't blame the computer - blame the executives who thought it was a good idea to deny returns on these particular criteria. The computers haven't taken over the world (yet!) so Smith's "what can you do?" is disingenuous. The people who are in charge of the system are responsible; if it makes a mistake they can fix it. You'll be more effective protesting business practices than complaining about the fact that they're implemented via technology.

# : 9:38 AM : :

I am contributing to the commercialization of Christmas. When I stopped at Target to buy stuff in preparation for this weekend's North Carolina road trip, they had all sorts of Christmas stuff out, and I bought two Christmas music CDs. And I listened to them both on my road trip. So, next time you wonder why they start bringing out the holiday stuff right after Halloween? It's all my fault.

# : 10:05 AM : :

Although I'm upset with Ohio (see last post), I'm not surprised, and I'm maybe more upset at the gay marriage activists who decided the past few years was a good time to push the issue.

Gay people have made huge strides in acceptance over the past 30-odd years. In many places, no one bats an eye; in most places, outright bigotry is frowned upon. But it's really only been since AIDS forced a lot of people out of the closet that gay people have been very visible, and people had to get past thinking that they could get AIDS from touching a gay person, or that gays were being punished by God, before they could start seeing gays as just other people.

As I said, we've come a long way. But our society is still not ready to fully accept gay people, and anyone who thinks it is is deluded. Pushing people to go farther than they're ready to is guaranteed to backfire. I'm reminded of people I've dated who would push to take big steps before I was ready. If they'd waited another week or two to let things proceed naturally, everything would have gone swimmingly, but as it was I freaked out and backed off big-time. And this, I think, is what's happening here.

Every year, more and more people are accepting of gay people. All we have to do to keep this going is what we've been doing. Just live life. Be out there - let people see that gay people are just like everyone else. It's easy to vote against "those gays" but it's harder to say that that nice family down the street doesn't deserve the same protections just because their names are Jane and Lisa.

I do advocate one form of activism. I think gay people should get married. Not by convincing a publicity-hungry mayor to issue licenses, not by suing the state, but like everybody else does, before family and friends. Screw this "commitment ceremony" and "partner" bullshit. You're married, call him your husband; call her your wife. Don't be obnoxious, just gently insistent: This is our reality. We are married, whether the government recognizes it or not.

Eventually, our neighbors are going to start asking why these marriages aren't recognized. And that is when these amendments are going to be overturned. But it would have been easier if we hadn't pushed it and gotten the amendments passed in the first place.

ADDENDUM: Oh yeah, and I'm convinced that if it weren't for the gay marriage thing, Kerry would be president-elect right now. I was predicting Ohio for Bush for this reason: the amendment got out the conservative vote. If that hadn't been on the ballot, I think Ohio would have gone the other way.

# : 6:16 PM : :

Watching the returns last night alternated between boring and depressing. I really thought Kerry had a chance, even though I've been predicting for weeks that Ohio would go to Bush. Normally, being right feels better.

There's always a lot of hand-wringing in Ohio newspapers about why all the bright young people leave. When my friends and I left after graduation, it was because we couldn't get jobs there. I didn't blame them for their economy; it's not their fault that steel isn't big anymore. I don't blame them for going to Bush in the last two elections; it was close, and reasonable people disagree. I DO blame them for passing a freaking Bigot Amendment 60/40. (Not only does it ban gay marriage, it also bans local governments from recognizing unmarried couples of either sex. Good try, Cleveland Heights. You got smacked down.)

Um, Ohio? I hope you like your old people and high school graduates. Because if you really want to attract educated young people, discriminating against our friends isn't the way to get us.

# : 5:43 PM : :

I finally got around to uploading a bunch of pictures.

Here are the Thailand photos I was able to get on my camera. I'll put up the ones from my coworker's camera once I get around to connecting a CD drive to my computer.

They're all from a temple we visited. In this picture of me, note the sweater and goofy shoes: you couldn't show your shoulders, and couldn't wear backless sandals. So I had to wear a sweater and rent socks and cheap Teva-like sandals. They were comfortable, at least, but it was extremely hot.



Then we have a whole bunch of pictures from Lake Hope.

Me (on the left) and my sisters:


I tried to get a lot of good landscape photos. The sun kept going behind the clouds, so there are some interesting lighting effects. This is a pretty representative picture:



This one came out dark, but I kind of really like it:



There was a Japanese beetle infestation, as there has been for the past five years or so. This is what happens if you stand in the sun for 30 seconds:



On the way home I tried to get some pictures out the window of the car; they didn't turn out that great. But I did get a shot of the billboard that mystifies me every time I drive back to DC via the PA turnpike:



In case you can't read that, it says "Saturday the true Lord's day. Sunday laws = the mark of the beast!" I'm always tempted to call for my free book.

# : 6:40 PM : :

MOM
I'm sick of all these government intrusions into my life.

ME
Then you should vote Libertarian!

MOM
No, the Republicans are the party of small government.

ME
Maybe they used to be, but not anymore.

MOM
The conservative Republicans are.

ME
Sure, and they've been overruled. Just look at what the Bush administration has done!

MOM
That's just because they're trying to compromise with the Democrats.

ME
Mom, the Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress. They can do whatever they want.

MOM
They're not used to having power yet, so they're still trying to work together with the Democrats.

MENTAL ME
And they say the Bush followers aren't interested in reason or logic!

ME
So how are the cats doing?


I know tomorrow she's going to ask me how I voted. I still haven't decided. (It's not going to be Bush.)

# : 9:35 PM : :

I taught a Verbal Reasoning and Writing class on Saturday. It wasn't as much fun as teaching physics, or even strategy. I like VR, but the students struggle so there's not much class participation. I don't like teaching writing, because I don't feel particularly qualified. I mean, I got a good enough score to be officially qualified to teach, but I'm no writer. And teaching writing is so very different from teaching physics or something where there are right answers and a limited number of useful tactics. But I had a good time anyway, and I still really like the students.

For Halloween, I was Schroedinger's cat. Actually, I was a kind of half-assed cat (felt ears and tail, cat makeup, black street clothes) and then if anyone asked me what specific kind of cat, I'd tell them Schroedinger's. I figured if I did anything like draw an X over one eye, I'd look funny and still no one would know what I was without asking.

Yesterday I went rock-climbing and that was a lot of fun. Being short was a definite liability, but I did manage quite a few climbs on the easier end of the spectrum. I'm very sore today.

I'm also still sick. I keep waking up coughing, and now it hurts because my back muscles are sore! I'm pretty sure I have a fever, because it's 69 degrees in here today and a lot of people have complained about the cold, but I'm comfortable.

Somehow I got caught up in a turf battle at work. I'm not actually involved in any of it, but someone picked me as the go-to person. I'm trying to coordinate as well as I can, but today I got yelled at because I accidentally misrepresented what one of the players said and failed to take a hard line on "our" position, which I don't actually share. I should have yelled back, but I felt bad about the misquoting, and rather than yelling I cried. I've cried at work before but never in the actual office in response to a coworker, and it was very embarrassing. (Especially when another coworker told the yeller not to yell at me because I'm sick.) I took a walk to compose myself, and when I got back the yeller apologized, so I feel better now. Also, I think I am going to be successful in getting out of the middle of the stupid situation.

# : 1:29 PM : :