"The longest and the shortest wedding I've ever been to."

After a tense 45 minutes waiting for a judge who never arrived, Dad called Pastor Dan and the wedding went on as planned only an hour and half late. Then, ten minutes later, it was over. If not for that one snag, it all would have gone as planned.
Since we 'crowd sourced' a lot of the wedding activities, it'll be a little while before I have a picture album to link here. We're waiting for pictures to be uploaded and emailed around. I"ll then pick the best - there are already over 160 photos. Also, Kelly needs some time before she can get the video done. I hope to have that online relatively soon!
For now, you can see an initial selection of photos at my shutterfly album.

Hello Visitors!

Now that I have the Clustermap, I've become a bit obsessed with my far-flung visitors. How do they come here? What do they think? I've had the ability to see who's coming in via Sitemeter for a while, but it wasn't until I had that array of red dots growing on my map that I really began to become excited. It's just a shame that I added the map after the visits from Brazil and Australia. I keep hoping for representation from every continent!
If you stumble upon (well, I'm sure you can't find me through Stumble Upon) my blog from elsewhere, go ahead a post a short comment. This is just a blog, after all. And as long as you don't fill up too much space, it'd be interesting to hear from you. That goes for my friends who visit as well.

Beating the Heat

Even with temps hitting the mid nineties, and a heat index over 100, we're still only 86 inside. If we can keep this up, we might make it the whole summer without hauling up the air conditioner! Although I think it is starting to mess with my body - I just have enough time at night to get accustomed to the heat and then I have to sit all day in the freezing air conditioning. And just hauling the sweater home the half mile from the bus stop makes my poor arm sweaty. . .

Universal Careful

I'm a fan of universal health care in the countries that have it - it seems to work great for them. But at heart I'm a realist (pessimist, perhaps) about what is possible, and I just can't see universal health care working in the United States. Not because there's something fundamentally wrong with a single government system (it's got flaws, of course, but so does every other system), but because there are some fundamental aspects to Americans themselves that can't be ignored.

1) Universal Health Care is expensive. Of course European countries pay less in total for their health care (and it's reasonable to say that many of those countries provide better care to the bulk of their populations than we do), but their costs are all lumped in one big number. Americans pay piecemeal, and piecemeal means we never have to see the whole cost. Heck, most Americans couldn't tell you what the total employer plus employee costs are for their own health insurance, let alone the entire nation. And with 300 million people, the total cost of American universal health care would be phenomenally huge. We can't wrap our head around the cost of the Iraq War (200 billion or so really isn't that much). Can you imagine 1.2 billion for health insurance every year!?! (That's the cost if we spent what Ethiopia does per person for health care.) How about a more reasonable number - say we pared down to just $4400 for each of us (what a former employer said was their cost), we'd hit $1,320,000,000,000! Of course that's less than we spend now, with all of our varied plans or lack of them, but that's beside the point. That many zeroes would sap a lot of public support fast.

2) It's easy to underfund. England's been doing it for ages, and the U.S. has a fine history of underfunding all sorts of things. We're busy underfunding Katrina relief as I write today. With the giant numbers of the previous point to back them up, the more conservative and libertarian members of Congress would be happy to cut, slash, and drown the whole system in a bathtub. Europe doesn't have the same political culture - and we shouldn't forget that.

3) Government programs are a favorite way to control others' moral lives. Food stamps are full of rigid rules because we can't imagine the poor ever deciding for themselves, and universal health care would be just the same. The reason Medicare is largely free of this is because every woman on Medicare is menopausal and people are comfortable turning off the machines when the patient is 90. Imagine Terri Schaivo and the HPV vaccine fights magnified a hundred times. Brace yourself for the rhetoric: "why should my tax dollars pay for Pap smears for sluts?" Even when they pay cash we can't help tsking the drunks who get kidney transplants. Now any and every medical condition will be fair game because "we" are paying for it: fertility treatments, cancers with potential behavioral causes, birth control, birth defects with potential maternal or genetic causes, STDs, injuries due to abuse, injuries due to carelessness, etc.

4) Existing universal systems aren't posh enough for our taste. For those of us who know the numbers, it's so tempting to see the dollar amounts for European health care and imagine a big cut if we made the move, but it probably wouldn't work out that way. Europeans are content with a lot less posh. In fact, they'll even share rooms! I've seen American hospital rooms that are larger than whole apartments in London or Paris. Those nice digs cost money, as do full body scans, 3D fetal sonograms, and waiting-room aquariums. In America success is visible - in a fancy car, big house, and marble countertops - will we trust a hospital that doesn't look successful? And how happy will be be receiving care there?

5) We're pretty damn sick compared to other places. We've got a lot of uninsured people just waiting for a chance to receive care. We've got more poor, and more rural people without much in the way of access today. The second we insure these people, there will be a surge in demand. And that could last several years. Of course it could make Medicare cheaper, as those in their early 60s stop putting off treatment until they're pretty far gone, but it'll be pretty pricey to get up to speed.

6) The government will start to look at public health issues as a bottom line reducer. That's great, right? Well, sure, until they start handing out all sorts of rules and regulations that we don't like. And it'll be a pretty big fight on our hands as we try to debate a few billion saved on heart disease and diabetes versus a fat tax. C'mon, you really want to eat your cake, and buy it cheap too. Just as some businesses have responded to health care costs by banning smoking near entrances and pressuring staff to start exercise programs, the government will do the same. And that's not something Americans are used to putting up with. A significant number of us still bristle at seat belt laws or required home smoke detectors. Suddenly everything has the potential to be a government health care cost saver from gun locks to hand washing.

7) We don't expect it to work. We've believed for years and years that it won't work. It's just a recent blip that we've found the current system too expensive. The second we're on universal care every wait or list or restriction will bring our minds right back to 1994 and HillaryCare. Statistical increases in infant survival or broader availability of preventive care can't compete with perception, and we're primed to perceive it as a failure.

I know this is pessimistic, but I'm not totally without hope. Some states are full of people willing to pay up and judge the system by the same criteria that Europeans and Canadians do. And those states should go ahead and do it. Just don't expect what's good for Massachussetts to be good for Mississippi, even if Mississippi "needs" it more.

Kitties in the Tub!

Library Schmibrary

This article from the New York Times made it's way into my inbox via the ALA newsletter, and I just have to wonder, what are they thinking? A library in Arizona has done away with Dewey (call numbers on books, that is) and shelved according to Barnes & Noble. Apparently this is supposed to make younger patrons happier, since they can now just browse through based on subject.

But, ahem, that's what Dewey was designed to do. Only now, instead of browsing your way through a small collection on a specific topic, you have to wade through EVERYTHING. Okay, this may work out okay for this pissant little library in the middle of nowhere, but how can any substantial library even begin to serve its patrons this way? I get annoyed enough at my local branch because all the novels are in alphabetical order (how am I supposed to stumble upon more 18th century novelists when they could be a hundred linear feet apart?). I've actually scanned the LC shelves at my old college library for new authors and then tried to look them up individually in the public library catalog. Even a big Barnes & Noble has a paltry collection in political science or biology. An average urban library can have dozens of shelves where a store has only a couple.

And that's where the problem lies. Book stores are about brand new books. Libraries are about collections that have been developed over years. Sure, some library patrons are fine with whatever serendipity presents them, but others actually want to find something specific, and for those people, trolling one segment of a number is far better than wandering through everything under the sun.

The problem with the Dewey Decimal System is not that it is outdated (because it's more than adequate for what most public libraries need), but that it presents people with a visual reminder of their own ignorance. If you don't understand Dewey, it doesn't actually hamper your ability to pick up a book as you saunter along, but it does remind you that you don't really understand why it was shelved where it is.

I guess that those of us who can't stand the thought of wandering around trying to find a single volume can always make the library staff do it: I'll pick mine up at the Patron Request shelf. Lets think of it as a bit of job security for paras.

Passing Judgement on McMansions

The Austin Chronicle had an Am I a McMansion or Not contest, and you've got to see some of them to believe them. While I can't imagine living in a giant house (old or new), it seems only a fraction of newly built mansions have anything even approaching an aesthetic sense. That'll be readily apparent when you view the pictures posted for the contest. Some of the houses aren't ginormous, they're just out of keeping with the neighborhood by 1000 or so square feet. Others are just such gigantic monstrosities that I can't imagine anyone wanting to live nearby. Seriously, I've seen oil refineries with more aesthetic value than some of these.

The other interesting thing about this contest is that there's actually no way to tell just how large the houses are from the pictures. People love to point out huge old homes as somehow being exempt from being ugly, but in reality, it's kinda tough to find an original Victorian that's above 7,000 square feet. Most of them fall into the 3,500-5,500 category, and it's their architectural styling that creates the impression that they're larger. Troll a real estate website and check out the numbers - it's eye-opening.

But what really makes me wonder in all of this, is why people are so interested in just the square footage. The detractors tend to hate the hideous, with the greatest opprobrium leveled against the giant and ill-proportioned. But why would someone building a 8,000 square foot house decide that proper proportions, consistent styling, and careful material choice don't matter? Are they just aesthetically blind? Or do they care so much about the size that anything else doesn't matter? I walk around my neighborhood and see just terrible houses - and most of these are infill or remodeling jobs. There are 70s suburban-style split levels turned on their sides and sandwiched in, homes that keep getting larger as you move backwards in the lot (a homeowner's version of "big fish eat little fish"), and others that create a timewarp of 30s craftsman followed by 80s modernism. Others just build a giant garages (3, 4, 5, how many can I get if I don't pull a permit?) that fill the entire backyard. And yet those people still need to park on the street.

Apparently we need all this space for our stuff, but our stuff can't possibly be worth it. Maybe one or two percent of the population is housing a museum-quality collection of something in their back rooms, but most of us are just housing crap we haven't bothered to get rid of. And now that it's all coming from China, where it's been made in 15 minues or less by a person making a dollar an hour, it can't possibly warrant the extended life-span we insist on. At over $100 a square foot in nearly every community in America (up to $1000/sqft in the most expensive neighborhoods), that's a lot of money to spend storing old sweatshirts, unused exercise equipment, and VHS tapes. In my neighborhood, going from 2 bedrooms to 3 can be a $30,000 option. That's a lot of money for a "scrapbooking room."

Any thoughts?

Global Literacy or Idiocy?

Newsweek must have spun their non-news wheel again and landed on that trustworthy holier-than-thou wedge that suggests yet another story about what people think they know, but get wrong. The funny thing this time is not that more people can name Jordin Sparks than John Roberts, but that some of their own questions are iffy, belying their own focus on the popular rather than the substantive.

First, their question about how many countries have nukes was an adventure in patriots vs. realists, and fear-mongers vs. skeptics. The first seven are pathetically easy: US, Russia, England, France, China, Pakistan, and India. None of them deny, all have done obviously successful tests. Next there's Israel, which, please remember, officially has nothing. Does acknowledging that they do make one as dangerous to the state of Israel as Mordechi Vanunu? (Aside: Isn't it interesting that when Vanunu tells the truth about his government's activities, it lands him in jail, but when Libby lies about his, he gets a get-out-of-jail-free card . . . ) And then there's North Korea, which should really just be awarded the Participation Ribbon of nuclear proliferation. Their one test threw off some radiation, but most analysts say that the bomb test was a bomb (in the it-didn't-really-work sense). So is it really fair to add them to the list when they probably couldn't hit a internet cafe in Seoul with what they've got?

And then, in the most bizarre question of any You-are-Dumb test I've ever seen, they ask if we're winning the fight against Al Qaeda. Here's how they summarize the results: "roughly half the poll's respondents (52 percent) think that the United States is losing the fight against (bin Laden's) terror group, Al Qaeda, despite no military defeats or recent terrorist attacks to suggest as much."

What an interesting thing to say when Al Qaeda is floating around all over the place, and has successfully executed or planned attacks on our allies on a regular basis. The idea that we must be winning because there hasn't been an attack in the U.S. is preposterous (Napoleon to troops: We must be winning the invasion of Russia! How do I know this? Not a single Russian attack has been made on Paris!) The funniest part is that as I'm typing this very post, the top story on the Newsweek website is "The Return of Al Qaeda: A New National Intelligence Estimate Raises Concerns that the Terrorist Group is Growing Stronger." That raises a fascinating possibility:
Newsweek's editors think that we're winning, but implying that we may be losing sells more magazines (and they wonder why 52% think that's true).

But, of course, that question relies on a belief that I just don't share: that you can really tell who's winning or losing a struggle with terrorists when you're stuck right in the middle of it. Sometimes you can't even tell for sure when it's over. So, who's winning: ETA or the Spanish Government? Who won: the British Parliament or the IRA? Even before the first NATO soldier arrived in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda had a nearly decade-long history of attacking intermittently with long stretches between operations. It is far too easy to mistake a tactical decision on their side for a success on ours. And with an ever-expanding list of affiliated organizations we could destroy Al Qaeda only to find ourselves deep in the muck with it's varied brethren. It seems to me that when you have doctors signing on for terrorist operations, you can't plausibly say the movement is on the outs. Declaring victory against Al Qaeda is a bit like declaring victory against the water in my basement: every time it rains and the floor stays dry, I'm a bit more confident, but it'll take a lot of rainstorms before I can be sure.

No, but yeah, but no, but yeah . . .

My newest obsession is Little Britain (I know I'm way out of date, but it has to do with when we find things at the library . . . and as everyone should know by now, I'm so horribly behind in my Netflix queue, I've barely made it out of the 70s).

Anyhoo . . . if you haven't seen it, you absolutely must! Lou and Andy are my favorite, and now that I've read that the older you get, the less you can identify humor, Little Britain is proof that I'm still young at heart! Now I just have to count my moles . . . I hate turning 30!

Photos from ALA

I've finally uploaded my pictures from Washington DC. Check them out - they are librarian free, but full of the Library of Congress!

On another note, I subscribed to the Economist and now I'm getting junk mail from the Cato Institute. It's a long letter (by junk mail standards) and includes an encomium from JOHN STOSSEL!!!! I can't imagine anything less likely to impress me (except, maybe, financial advice from Robert Mugabe's finance minister).

When East Africa beats the West

Several African countries have already or will shortly be enforcing plastic bag bans. This includes Zanzibar, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. Check out this great little story on the BBC about why Uganda has decided on a ban.
Seems to me that if American environmentalists want to finally get rid of the plastic bag from our shores, they can take a hint from Africans: the flying latrine. Okay, you don't have to do it yourself--farm this one out to the pooches--but imagine what would happen if every empty plastic bag was quickly filled with poo and then thrown as far as the arm could toss it. If it were up to me, I'd add fire to the mix, but that's probably not safe . . .
On a related note, a former owner of my house purposely buried plastic bags in various parts of the yard. It was a real bitch to clean out, and probably exacerbated my drainage problem in the basement. Sheesh, if you're going to use an artificial barrier, at least have the good sense to buy something suited to the job!