The Post Office is SOOOO not platinum...

So I went to the post office two days ago to mail something. No biggie, right? Wrong. Despite the fact that 1) Christmas has been going on for quite a while and 2) the U.S. Postal Service has a pretty good idea that this means a few more packages going out, the post office near me has the same two individuals working behind the counter. No extra help. No rearranging of schedules to increase workers. No anything. Just two incredibly slow and surly individuals who do not seem to be interested in working very hard.

For my accompanying friend and I, we each had relatively simply goals. We each needed to get stamps and mail some letters. Unfortunately, we needed the stamps so that we could mail our letters. When we walked in, the line to deal with the aforementioned super pleasant civil servants (Ironic Titles R Us called and wanted to give props to whoever came up with that one) stretched out the building. Looking to avoid the line, we went straight for the machines that dispensed the stamps. Wouldn't you know it, both machines were out of stamps/broken. Perfect.

My buddy and I stood in line, talking trash about the entire experience for the next 25 minutes. When we finally got to the front, my friend went up and asked for stamps. The lady, in her "I'm doing you a favor telling you this, even though I don't really need to" voice said, "We only have one kind left." She handed it to him, and he looked at me and chuckled. I walked up and asked for the same thing. She repeated the line and gave me the stamps. I quickly understood why he was chuckling.


Yes, that is the Virgin Mary and baby. How ironic that at this time of year, that's the one stamp they still have extras of. I mentioned to my friend how unamused my Jewish mother from New York would be if the same thing had happened to her (or if I sent her a card with one of those on the envelope). I couldn't help but laugh. The experience of witnessing, of all places, the Post Office, run low on stamps reminded me of when Milton Friedman said, "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."

platinum insults.

Abase yo self! This time around the thesaurus helped me with some rank insults. Boy I'm getting to be a sharp kid. With these bullies are sure to leave you alone on the playground. (The assumption of that last sentence is that readers of this blog get picked-on at the playground. I realize this is a complete fallacy and that I am projecting a bit of myself on to y'all. As such, these are still pretty cool, even if you yourself are doing the picking on)

You troglodyte! (yea get him you troglodyte. or you lift like a troglodyte. or it's so easy even a troglodyte could do it. or you're mother was a traglodyte)

or

YOu're a Palooka!! Look it's a palooka, lets trip him! and for the festive reference... Palooka's arn't platinum...

just a few. (words are cool)

Token bailout post/Wayne's World reference...

Here’s another scary link from the New York Times RSS feed on the Auto bailout.

It's a copy of each of the actual documents/”plans" submitted by the big 3.

Mixed into all the pure huffle-puff-hodgepodge-claptrap they show how they are going to be better now, and that they used to be bad, that now everybody's going to love them. and as they say in Wayne's World... Yea and monkeys'll fly out of my butt!!

Can being a cold hearted economist be platinum?

If you are willing to really appreciate the idea of opportunity costs, then I think the answer is yes (HT: Ellie). This article appeared on Slate.com a few days ago. I think it also expresses my greatest fear about moving to a single-payer medical system. Would you want a political appointee making this decision about your family?


In Praise of Lethal Rationing
Posted Wednesday, December 03, 2008 2:06 PM By William Saletan

Good front-page article in today's New York Times on Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which, among other things, decides whether a few more months of your life are worth the expense. The article begins with a guy named Bruce Hardy who needs a drug that might give him an extra half-year of life but would cost $54,000. NICE said no. The agency comes off as heartless. "Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can," Hardy's wife pleads. The article concludes: "Meanwhile, Mr. Hardy waits. In recent weeks his growing tumor has pressed on a nerve that governs his voice. He can barely speak and is increasingly out of breath."

Aw, hell. It'd be great if we could buy an extra half-year for everybody. But we can't. We have unmet needs everywhere. People die every day from being uninsured and unattended. They just don't make the front page.

There's a cruel bias built into our minds that makes you feel more for the person who's suffering in front of you than for people whose suffering appears only in statistical form. (I can't remember what the psychologists or economists call this bias. If you do, please share it with the class.) So now you know all about Bruce Hardy, and you probably regard the bureaucrats at NICE as cads for stiffing him. It's harder to remind yourself of all the health and added life that $54,000 could buy for others. For example: Where does the Gates Foundation send its medical dollars for maximum efficiency? Childhood vaccines.

As far as I can tell, NICE is doing good work. Its refusal to pay any amount for life-prolonging drugs has forced drug companies to cut prices. And by drawing a line against paying too much in some tragic cases, NICE preserves money for other cases where the money can do more good. If anything, NICE is a bit soft. For instance, the Times reports: "After consulting a citizens group, the institute decided that the nation should spend the same amount saving or improving the life of a 75-year-old smoker as it would a 5-year-old." If I ran NICE, the 5-year-old would take priority. And I'm irked to see that NICE is already backing off from its rejection of cases such as Hardy's. According to the Times, this comes after NICE was "flooded with anguished comments." I'm sorry, but anguish is everywhere. If patients like Hardy get funded at $9,000 per month, which other patients won't be funded? What about their anguish? Or does your anguish count only if you have the means and know-how to lobby the government?

Yes, everybody deserves as much life as possible. But that means the person in front of you can't take an undue share of limited public funds when others are in need.

Could I get my bailout in Platinum Bars?

http://mtblog.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/12/01/federalbailout.html

Time Capsule

You can tell your grandchildren you saw this website. Catch it while you can. It'll surely be gone soon.

http://www.gm.com/corporate/careers/

Beardbember is officially over...

For the month of November, I grew out a beard. I know, I know....You're wondering how it's possible to improve on perfection, but hey, I gotta do something with my free time. It appears that I wasn't the only one who thought Beardbember had some merit.

Unfortunately, it looks as though their month didn't end as well as mine. (HT: Karl)

JFK is awesome.

Just spent a couple of hours this weekend in JFK... It's great!  

It might have been that I spent the whole time in the jetblue part of the airport and it might have been that Dulles is worse then the Detroit Lions (maybe not that bad).  But JFK was really nice.

Let me just drop some convincing points:

1. Free wireless.  Yes.  I said it.  Free.
2. Touch-screen computers everywhere where you can order food.
3. Great food, and a cafeteria juice bar and not over-priced. (I had pulled pork Bao) 
4. Every things new.
5. The bathrooms are nice
6. You can also go shopping at designer stores.  

Basically I think JFK is Keepin' it Platinum.

Side note.  Dulles is the least platinum place I have been in a while.  It sucks.  they have these four wheel drive transporter things that remind me of a bad science fiction movie.  It's like Dune.  and they're slow.   Build a tunnel Dulles, less you run the risk of not being platinum. 

The Portrait Gallery goes for the gold...errr...platinum.

So I went to the National Portrait Gallery the other day and saw the Mask of Lincoln exhibit they currently have going on there.

As amazing as it is to see 160 year old photos of Lincoln, a random thing happened. When my friend and I entered the gallery, we saw this...
My friend and I proceeded to use her precious anytime minutes to have our very own audio tour of the entire exhibit. Especially interesting was when the security person came in and told us we couldn't talk on the phone and I, embarassed, pointed to this sign. We finished our (audio) tour and mused about the coolness of audio tours via cell phone. Platinum...I think yes.

Platinum Choices vs. Platinum People

After I finished college, I had a week to kill before I needed to report for my Teach For America training. Naturally, I went home to St. Louis to hang out with friends and family before my impending move to Hawaii. After going through the process of looking for jobs and making decisions that would have ramifications in both the near and long term, I was pretty reflective with regard to the reasons why I was going into teaching. Simply put, I felt lucky. Despite the fact that I come from what I consider to be a good family that cared deeply about my education, I would call the schools I attended mediocre at best. Looking back, there were maybe three teachers that I thought had had a positive impact on me as a student. The number of teachers who had a negative impact on my learning was easily above 15. Simply put, I became a teacher so I could even that number up a bit for some kids who had probably had even worse experiences than I. You can then imagine how freaked out I was when I saw that Sterling Johnson, one of the three or so teachers who I would have included in my good list, did this.

Pretty messed up, right? Nevertheless, the experience of seeing someone I held up pretty high fall from grace was good. It taught me that everyone is flawed and that my responsibility is not to judge them (aside from the whole super illegal thing), but to try and understand other people on their own terms.

Looking back, I can say honestly that Sterling Johnson wasn't that great a teacher, but at a time in my life where I didn't know if I was coming or going, he was a friend. So while what he did was atrocious and by my own standards I'm pretty sure he should have been fired much earlier in his career (I'm pretty sure I witnessed Mr. Johnson drunk at school several times but was too naive to realize it), I can't help but reflect on the things I learned from him.

I guess it reminds me of that thing I would say to any of my own students when they messed up. I'm disappointed in his poor choice, but I don't think he's a bad person. I think. At the same time, pushing that to it's logical limit means a moral relativism that this dude cannot abide. I guess the question I end up with is when do we go from non-platinum behavior to non-platinum people. I think there is probably no truly consistent rule and the best I can do is go by my gut/logic to attempt to form a system that has some general premises but allows for flexibility given circumstances...any thoughts?