Archive for October, 2006

Some reasons you should use Pandora

So, recently I have discovered Pandora. Pandora, for those of you who were like me just mere months ago, is a free music radio station on the internet. What makes this radio station any different from any other radio station, you might ask? Pandora is built on the foundation of the music genome project. Basically, a whole bunch of muscians and other music geeks analized over 10,000 songs and put together songs that are related by certain sounds, vocals, rhythms, drums, arrangements, harmonizations, ect... and made a giant database of them. So, how does Pandora work? Basically, you go to the website and tell it what kind of music you like. It makes you a radio station of whatever you told it you like. Then, it starts adding songs to it that sound similar or that it thinks you would like based on what kind of patterns in the music are similar to the stuff you already like. You have several radio stations based on what you are in the mood for at the time. It finds stuff you like, and if you don't like it, then you tell it so and it doesn't play stuff like that anymore. So, reasons to use Pandora: 1. It's free. There is no need to register or anything. 2. It finds you new music that you might not have heard of (it knows some pretty obsure stuff) but that you will probably like. 3. It's really easy to use. Some would say, user friendly. 4. Who doesn't like finding new music? 5. It makes buying the music you like easy by having links of the songs you like to itunes or amazon.com. 6. Why are you still reading this instead of making yourself a radio station on Pandora? As Kurt Vonnegut told Rolling Stone magazine in a recent interview (Issue 1007-August, 24th, 2006): his epitaph is to read 'The only proof he needed of the existence of God was music'. And I believe him.

People’s U – meta unsolicited input

The other week, I got a phone call from someone who immediately expressed her intention to offer unsolicited input, then proceeded to beat around the bush talking about how libraries are underfunded and such. She described an illuminated map that we used to sell in the gift shop and advised that we start selling them again and require every school building in the state to purchase one and display it prominently for the edification of young minds. However, she continued to tell me, this was not her primary suggestion, which she did not begin to unveil until much more pounding in the vicinity of shrubs. Her unsolicited input was kindly offered, free to the library, with no expectation of monetary compensation. "Do you know of [incredibly famous historical local writer, one of whose characters is the namesake for our city football team]?" she asked me. Heh. I did. "You know his house? It's here in the city" Again, I did. "Well, he's very popular around here and people go crazy for anything about him. I was thinking that a lot of people would like a cookie jar shaped like his house. Don't you think so?" "Umm..." I replied. "Well, they don't have to put _cookies_ in it" she quickly continued, seeming to note my lack of enthusiasm for the idea. "They could put whatever they want in it. They could put it on their desk, actually. No one has enough space on their desk these days. They could put rubber bands and binder clips and other things in it." [no response] She vyed further for my approval. "The thing is, most cookie jars are made of ceramic, which is very fragile. So it's probably not good to make the jars of that. But I think something more sturdy, like bronze, would be good. Plus, his house is brown. I'm not sure if it was always brown or if they painted it that way after he died. But they might have kept painting it the same color to preserve its historical value. Anyway, if the cookie jars are bronze they will look more like his brown house." "Ah." I said. "Well. Um. I will pass this idea on to my superviser." "Well, don't you think it's a good idea?!?" she demanded. "It's, uuurm... very interesting" I offered weakly. "Ah, that um sort of thing... uh, merchandising, isn't my specialty. I'm really just here to look up information. I'll be sure to pass this along." "You could sell tons of them and make lots of money!"she proclaimed. "Wouldn't you want one for your desk?" "Um... my desk is very small and mostly I need to store papers and books on it," I said. "Well, MANY people would want it for their desks, I can tell you that much," she said. I did eventually get off the phone with her, after deflecting numerous further attempts to get me to declare her idea brilliant and taking her contact information so we could let her know when the jars had been manufactured and were ready for sale.

People’s U: Metaphorical Ornithology 101

MPOW has a system that assigns people to use computers. The other day, I was summoned by a frustrated-looking woman to assist her with it. She pointed to a user number assigned to a particular computer and told me "That's me, but it won't let me on!" I looked at her user number, which was a different string of digits from the one at which she was pointing as well as from every other number on the waiting list. "That must be someone else's number, which is why that computer won't allow you to log on" I informed her. "I don't see your number anywhere on this list. I'm not sure if you signed up earlier and got timed out, or what happened. I'm sorry, but you'll have to sign up again to get on a computer." "This crazy message keeps coming up when I try to enter my number, see!" she complained. It was the message asking if the person really wants to sign up for the computer waiting list. "Oh, that always comes up" I told her. "NO it doesn't. YOU PEOPLE are full of BULLSHIT!" she hissed at me and started to mutter angrily. Taken aback, I stared blankly a few seconds and then walked back to my workstation without bothering to dispense my "I can only help you once you've calmed down and stopped using abusive language" schtick. In my peripheral vision, I watched the woman fiddle angrily with the sign-up computer. Then she stomped towards my desk. She leaned across the desk and down towards my face. Her face was, like, a twisted mask of rage, about a foot from mine. She screamed at me "YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE INFORMATION... THAT I NEED!" then she stalked away with the luggage she had brought into the library, turning several times to scowl at me. So, yeah. But this story has an epilogue that makes it more interesting. I described this person to one of my coworkers in an attempt to determine whether she was the same person who had yelled at my coworker on the previous day. It turned out that she was not, BUT, based on my description, my coworker, a seasoned 20-something-year vet of this insitution, thought that she was actually a former "regular" who had once been arrested for attacking a judge. Several coworkers recalled the story, found by a staff member in a local paper a few years ago, of how she lunged over the bench to assail the presiding judge during the middle of a trial (not her own). The attacker went to jail, but eventually got out and resumed her library patronage. Eventually her attendance waned and she hasn't been seen in several years. I still don't know whether my unpleasant run-in was a true sighting. As with the ivory-billed woodpecker, I may never know.

Reforming American Education: Further Thoughts

I recently wrote a glib, throwaway post on Five Quick Steps for reforming education. While the list was made partially in humor, it has sparked a substantive debate and I would like to wade in with more detailed thoughts. 1. We should not overly federalize education. The federal government, bastion of bloat and incompetence, cannot address education issues as well as the various States. The federal government is crucial for legislating on issues that are national or interstate, such as environmental regulations. That is where they are most useful. Education is primarily a local issue. Therefore, it is more appropriate for the States to control education, since they would be able to craft solutions that address the specific needs of failing schools. While one school district may have crumbling infrastructure that needs to be addressed, another may have a teacher shortage. The federal government does not have the time nor the energy to address such specific issues and their attempts at reform, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, have been deleterious rather than ameliorative. 2. The teacher's union has a stranglehold on the school system. In New York, it is so difficult and costly to remove a teacher, even when there is proof that they have sexually solicited a student, that the school system created something called Rubber Rooms. These are rooms where teachers that are clearly unfit to teach are placed during the day, away from children, while still receiving their salaries. This is a grotesque situation, but we cannot blame the administrators because they are behold to an overly powerful union. Teachers have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and suppressing any sort of educational innovation that may threaten their jobs. The countervailing interest of making sure children have good educations does not act as a counterweight, because the teacher's union is abnormally strong. As long as the union remains in its present form, any true educational experiment will be strangled in the cradle and go the way of GM. 3. Instituting a voucher system will give power and choice to parents and the resultant market pressures will force schools to adapt. In my earlier post, I implied that all government controlled schooling should be eradicated. While I still think this would be better than the current regime, I realize that it is politically infeasible. A compromise could be to incentivize the creation of nonprofits, for-profits, parochial, and other types of schools to exist along side public schools. This is already the case, as with the maligned charter schools, but there is no real competition available and voucher systems are hampered either legally or through delibertae misinformation spread by teachers' unions. I can imagine an educational landscape with a multitude of various types of schools, each competing for children. This would destroy the socializing function of public schooling, which inculcates a shared intellectual and social baseline across the union. I believe this to be a good thing, as independent thinkers are more important to me than uniform citizenry. A thousand schools booming, combined with a true voucher system, would enable parents to decide what type of schools are best for their children and the brutal market will weed out the institutions that are not performing. Here, the federal government could play a role by subsidizing the voucher system, either directly with grants or through the States with subsidies. This would be preferable over current federal attempt to control schooling, like the execrable No Child Left Behind Act. Jason expressed concern about information asymmetry in the educational market. I don't believe this is a real concern. Parent's that care about their child's education will do the research to utilize their voucher. Parent's that don't care, just don't care and wouldn't do anything anyway. But even in the latter case, a rising ride raises all ships, so the disinterested parent's child would still be benefited. Perhaps we can resurrect the Department of Education and turn it into something similar to the GAO. It can require, oversee, and audit extensive disclosure from every school, like the SEC does with public companies. This would create a database of reliable and current information about schools, enabling parent's to make educated choices. Either the government or nonprofits could then disseminate the information in easily digestible portions for parents who do not want to take the time to comb the raw data. 4. Start slow using limited geographic areas to make sure that reforms are working. I agree wholeheartedly with Jason that the key to any reform is start slow and utilize the scientific method. One benefit of devoving control over education to the States is that it creates 50 little laboratories in which we can observe how various changes affect schools. The corollary to this is that we need to buckle down for the long haul. Like with health care, there is not a simple or quick solutions. The fate of America rests with each new generation and their contributions to society. An educated and scientifically-literate population keeps America competitive with the rest of the world. An uneducated and superstitious population signals the waning of American and our quality of life. It is worth laborious, expensive, and time-consuming efforts to ensure that we create the former, rather than the latter. There are some curricula reforms I would like to see and some legislation I would like to see repealed as well, but we will save that for a future post. NOTE: I've edited this post for clarity and completeness.

I’m not fat – I have a disease!

Hooray! After 27 years of suffering through being Really Really Fat I have FINALLY been given the answer I was looking for - it is NOT my fault and my fatness is a disease with a name! No, it's not diabetes or hypothyroidism. Those have been around for many years and all Really Really Fat people have been tested for those at least twice in their lives. The new disease is Metabolic Syndrome. It's symptoms are:
  • Obesity (particularly around the waist)
  • High blood pressure
  • High cholesterol
  • Insulin resistance
OMG I am so stoked. The Mayo Clinic says if I have any one of these symptoms, I'm totally in the running for Metabolic Syndrome. Now my obesity can be attributed to my high blood pressure and high cholesterol and not the other way around! This Syndrome was brought to my attention by the latest issue of Wired magazine, which usually just tells me about science I can't understand, technology I'll never be able to afford and biological & environmental achievements the government can never get behind. So why are they talking about my Fatness? Well, this new Metabolic Syndrome is a big hit with "Big Pharma" (and Wired loves to write about Big Pharma). Give a group of symptoms a fancy name and the pharmaceutical companies will find a miracle drug for it. Apparently the old name for Metabolic Syndrome - obesity - was just not.....selling. In the Wired article, they cite business owner and Kentuckian Karen Cunningham who gained weight after her pregnancy. She "couldn't shake the weight" and went to "various specialists" to tell her what was wrong. Apparently "lose weight and you won't feel like shit anymore" was NOT the answer she was looking for. Her answer was "Metabolic Syndrome."
The breakthrough came last December when her new endocrinologist diagnosed her with something called metabolic syndrome. She'd never heard of it. As she Googled to learn more, her chronic ailments – the weight, the high blood pressure, the lack of energy – started to make sense. They even seemed treatable. She's now on Glucophage and Avandia (which both regulate blood sugar) and has lost 20 pounds by cutting out carbohydrates. "Getting a diagnosis was a relief," Cunningham says. "I have hope now, whereas I didn't have any before."
Wow ok so you have....the beginnings of Type II diabetes and eat too much sugar and starch. That's pretty much what Dr. Robert Atkins was telling the world for 30 years before he died in 2003. Some people - not all people, but a good chunk of them - have bodies that just can't deal with insulin-raising carbs. Some are diabetic, some are just plain fat. People went berzerk over this claim. Doctors yelled and screamed, scientists wagged fingers. Me, I lost 90 lbs. But fuck all of that healthy eating stuff. I mean, "going on Atkins" means cutting our sugar and starch, eating more low-sugar fruits and veg, and eating whole grains. Yeah, and eating meat too (but not gobs of butter rolled in bacon smothered in cheese). Why should I have to eat like that if there's a PILL that will "cure" me of my new-found disease? You bet your sweet bippy there's a pill, too. Now that Atkins has died things have gotten awful skeevy on the "low carb" frontier. His company is pretty much a manufactured crap food warehouse now. Doctors and scientists are taking his ideas seriously now. But instead of having to claim he was right while he was alive and giving people the non-pharmaceutical way to fight your body's stupidity, they waited until he was dead so there'd be no one around to tell people "just stop eating sugar" so they could instead say "try this magic pill." The new pill is rimonabant. So far, human trials have shown that the only side effects are depression and anxiety. But those also happen to be side effects of being Really Really Fat. So what's the harm? It doesn't quite matter, because now Big Pharma has a disease and a pill to combat this disease. Without a disease, HMOs aren't likely to let you get the pill. And like any drug, doctors are going to be eventually pushed into prescribing it - to quell the pushy pharm reps and to quell their fatass patients who say "nothing I do works." I will come clean and say that while I did lose 90 lbs, I am still fat. I lost 90 and put back on 50 (truth be told, I was still fat after losing 90). Why? Well my body sucks. It's high maintenence. And I am too lazy to maintain it. It's my lot in life that I have a high maintenence body. Some do, some don't. I'm living proof that "get up off your butt and move" doesn't really mean the same for everyone. I could eat and move the same as someone else and probably still be fat. But I recognize the difference. I do have to watch what I eat and I do have to bust my ass. C'est la vie. I didn't gain weight because what I did didn't work for me. I gained weight because I stopped doing what worked for me. Duh. So now it seems that I have a choice. Get back on that high-intensity workout regimen again, or go with the "Metabolic Syndrome" wave and get a pill to fix me. I don't think I'm ready to give up the fight just yet. Maybe it's the Puritan in me that feels like I should be punishing myself for my "failing" instead of taking the insta-cure. The lack of serious side effects (such as bleeding from the eyes and exploding diarrhea) is pretty tempting if you consider some of the side effects of previous "fat" drugs like uh...speed and phen-phen. All you get is some depression (which, like I said, most of "us" already have). But the side effects of ass-kicking exercise are lack of depression and a good night's sleep. Perhaps some weight loss along the way. For now, I'll stick with that and not let myself be pigeonholed into some "disease" which has caused my "affliction." What would you do it you could take a pill and cure your "fat"? Would you do it? Would you even believe it could be possible? Check with me in 20 years, though. If I'm in my late 40's and still fat and single, perhaps I will have changed my mind.