Make Us Well, Macusweil

A fresh blog from an old friend: Macusweil's Mind

Observations from one man; original poetry; quotes from the quotable and others.

(I know where some of the skeletons are closeted.)

Enjoy. I plan to.

Too Young Bayler Couple Pass Four Weeks Apart

Three weeks ago I wrote about my friend, Mike Bayler, who passed away while bicycling. He was survived by his wife, Sharon Covington Bayler. Unfortunately "was" is now the correct form of the verb in that last sentence. Yesterday, in an numbing tragedy, Sharon was hit from behind by a truck while on a group ride. She died from the injuries. I'll link to the Huntsville Times blog article, but more because of the comments posted than because of the article -- apparently the facts originally reported were not checked very thoroughly.

I did not know Sharon well, but well enough to know that she was terrific. She was warm and welcoming to me, whether because I was a friend of Mike's and that was good enough for her or because she was that way with everyone, I'm not sure. It doesn't matter; I still feel like I've been punched in the gut; twice. And as down as I feel I know her family and close friends feel it more; my heart goes out to you all.

Perplexed by Parliament Non-Pundits

"Ewww, Britain may not have a clear winner in their election; whatever will they do?"

Both NPR and The Daily Show seemed aghast yesterday and today that a democratic nation like Great Britain would not immediately emerge from their general election with a clear head-of-state.  This is something I had learned twice by my 10th grade civics class.  It's a parliamentary system... with a Prime Minister (not a President)... typically they require a coalition government.  This is not unusual.  The unusual thing has been that they've had a clear majority most of the last 30 some years.  Typically it's been a multi-party system with a coalition formed by at least a couple parties in order to elect a Prime Minister and form a government.

  One criticism often leveled at parliamentary democracies is that they may be less stable than those with heads of state elected by popular vote (more or less in the US case, see Electoral College).  That's probably why I found it interesting (almost 30 years ago in that 10th grade class) that Great Britain's government was actually more stable, at least as measured by how long the head of state ruled: they were averaging around 6 years at that time, while the US was closer to having Presidents that served for 5 years.

  So, Pundits, give old England a chance to sort it out.  Nice to see a third party get a chance for a little influence; especially since its the LibDems.

Rapport with a Friend

I’ve never really understood those roadside wreaths and flowered cross displays along a highway at the site of an accident; a fatal accident. Never empathized with the wreath placer, the mourner. That’s not where the victim is, not even their shell of flesh; doesn’t it make more sense to decorate the gravesite, or the home? But this week I feel a little differently. This week I sent an e-mail to an empty address. Oh, the address was still valid; the e-mail hasn’t bounced. But there is no one there to read my “so long” e-mail. I know that no one is there because my friend passed away last Saturday (I tried “died” where I have “passed away”, but I couldn’t leave it; not as a fully contextualized sentence; I need the euphemism.)

Saturday, April tenth, was a great day to be alive in north Alabama. I did some yard work under the spring sun. Mike Bayler, my friend, was riding bicycle as part of a group when his heart gave out on him. I don’t know the details. I don’t need to know the details. I know it wasn’t a prolonged thing, I know that he got to ride on his final day; something he loved to do. Mike (who was often “Mr. Bayler” to me, despite the fact that he was seven years my younger. I’d greet him that way with a nod, “Mr. Bayler.” I know too many Mikes, and it separated him from the others for me. “Mr. Patton;” he would often counter-greet me. I figured he was poking fun at my formality, but now I see that maybe he was distinguishing me from other “Chips” in his life: I see two others signed the online memory book for him at madisonchapelfuneralhome.com.) was a cyclist. He had the gear, the clothes, and he felt the joy of it. He was at one time president of the Spring City Cycling Club, but he was just as happy to be a member, to help others get started, to fix up their “rides”. He helped my wife learn to use her clip shoes; stayed with her for an entire outing, reminding her to unclip whenever they came to a stop so she didn’t topple over.

I didn’t ride with Mike. I worked with him. I traveled on business with him. He took me to howl at the moon in Orlando. The dueling piano bar, I mean. I hadn’t been to one before and not since; but it was a great time. In no way do I sing, but I sang there. No mystery why they call it “the howl at moon saloon”. No pretension with Mr. Bayler.

We also spent a couple days in Oklahoma City; shared a plate of fried cheese with hot pepper jelly at some sports bar, the Super Bowl on their big screen. The second day there Mike saw me say hello to one of the hotel housekeeping maids as we walked past her in the hotel hall, a striking young lady with oddly colored hair, an almondy-silver. I explained to Mike that the prior day I had asked her for an HBO guide, maybe the one for my room had been tossed in the trash by the prior guest. She had looked at me a bit blankly; turned out her English was less than good. She didn’t look Hispanic at all but Spanish was sure what she spoke; if she had looked more Hispanic I probably wouldn’t have tried to talk to her. So it took a minute to communicate with her; and her wrongly spaced and crooked teeth contrasted with the rest of her sharp appearance. Anyway, Mike thought I provided too much detail and kidded me about the housekeeper from Oklahoma City for years.

That project was a small one. Management had been ready to “no-bid” it, but Mike and I picked it up and made it a success, at a time when the company needed successes. In fact, Mike finished it on his own because I took a job in Pennsylvania. And when Mike was in PA on business, he visited and stayed at our house. When we moved back to north Alabama he made sure to invite us to the party that he and his wife, Sharon, were having at their house – helped me get back into the flow here.

They’d gotten married while we were up north. He obviously thrived within their relationship; seven years they were married, that seems short to me right now, but it was the rest of a life to him, and rightly spent.

I didn’t get to hang out a lot with Mike the past year or two – a couple of lunches; a few crossed paths at work. I was elsewhere during his fortieth birthday party last April, but my wife and daughter were there. I was present, however, for this April’s gathering for Mike, but it was visitation at a funeral home. Still there was quite a turnout and I was heartened to see it. I hope that his family, down from Illinois or other parts north, also took some solace in the congregation. I hope it was as obvious to them as it is to me that though he had left their home, he had made a rich life here, and touched a lot of lives here, including mine. So long, Mr. Bayler; good-bye, Mike.

Running with Little Atoms

During today's lunch run across the end of Lady Anne Lake, in addition to passing within arm's length of a four foot tall great blue heron and a 4 foot long black rat snake, themselves only separated by a couple hundred feet, I listened to Cory Doctorow's April 3rd interview on ResonanceFM's Little Atoms show. Most of the topics I'd heard from Cory before, although they were freshly iterated here: privacy, copyrights, authorship. But near the end was a subject I don't remember having heard from him before and it was worth the hearing. He gave his take on patents in terms of property. How we have a legitimate interest in things; a stake in them; even though we don't own them. His first example was your child. You don't own a child, but they are "yours" nonetheless. If someone kidnaps them or kills them they haven't stolen from you, they've actually done something worse: kidnapping or murder. Your cell phone number is another example where you may not "own" it, but you have a vested interest in it since your friends all know it; your business cards have it printed on it, etc. Your phone company shouldn't just suddenly assign it to someone else. So patents. So maybe some things, like genome sequences, or similar, shouldn't be patented in the same way that more traditional inventions are. Patents exist to help inventors get capital and to allow inventors to share their inventions without fear of losing their profit potential. Society wants inventions, and we want the insights shared so that other inventors can move to the next idea beyond. But currently patents are all the same: the inventing company gets 90 years of exclusivity -- a bit long for something like software. A big wig at Microsoft told Cory that they probably wouldn't write any less new code if they only got exclusivity for 10 years -- so why grant the other 80 years? (My synopsis is inelegant; have a listen if you're interested.)
Cory did quote the Microsofter as saying they were already writing code in "all the hours God sends", an expression I wasn't familiar with, and after chasing it around the Internet a bit, I doubt that's an expression used by a Microsoft executive. Apparently it's quite a British turn of phrase.

No Activist Judges !? Hrmph !

"No activist judges!" That has been the refrain from the far right, from the "conservative" talk radio and Fox TV hosts, and the politicians they embrace. Well, we now have a U.S. Supreme Court with a Chief Justice and a majority that is favored by these "more moral than you" types, and this week that high court brought us one of the most revisionist decisions in decades.
Not content with the issue before them, they continued to broaden the scope of the complaint until it allowed them to override enough precedents to establish the law in the manner in which they saw fit. Don't take my word for it, Justice J. Stevens, in his dissenting opinion, writes, "Our colleagues’ suggestion that 'we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell,' ante, at 1, would be more accurate if rephrased to state that 'we have asked ourselves' to reconsider those cases."

(Since some of you may be wondering which decision I'm referring to, it's "CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION", decided Jan. 21, 2010. The effect will be to remove electioneering restrictions on corporations, i.e. they'll be able to spend as much money as they want, as close to election date as they want, directly in favor or against candidates.)

Both the decision, and the opinions are available on line, and are surprising readable. In fact I was a bit surprised by the informality of some of the language. The decision repeatedly uses the expression "chilling effect" and variations there on, to refer to the law's impact on political speech. The crux of the majority's argument is that free speech applies to corporations (and unions, etc.) just as much as to real persons. I disagree; Justice J. Stevens argues this nicely: "The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its 'identity' as a corporation. While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. ... In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters."

Justice J. Stevens goes on to present a laundry list of precedents, some dating back a hundred years, that the court has overturned with this ruling, in violation of the principal of stare decisis, i.e. making rulings based on prior decisions. Maybe the "more moral than you" crowd will now change their mind about judicial activism, they certainly have changed it about whether it's okay to criticize a sitting President. I guess there's no reason not to be hypocritical about the third branch of our federal government. Sigh.

St. Joseph's and the Lakota (Sioux)

I'm not sure which bleeding heart list they pulled my name from, I'm on bunches of them, and most of the stuff that I get sent as a result goes straight to the recycler. I often wonder whether my meager donations have a net gain impact versus the postage, paper and return address labels that I receive on a weekly basis from sundry do-gooders. At least the US Mail gets some business, lords know they need it. But I was glad to receive the less usual token gift from St. Joseph's Indian School. It's one of these weekly planner pocket calendars. I've used one, usually purchased at Staples or Office Depot, each year of the last 20 or more. Often I've received them as Christmas gifts and appreciated it, as they can be a pain to find in the right size, and are not cheap ($8 to $20); I did have one particularly nice one given to me that had the USATT logo on it (which year was that, Mike, 2008?).

Anyway, this year, St. Joseph's sent me a personalized one (here's a photo); and I'm using it. In fact they sent it early enough that I could tell people I wouldn't be needing one for Christmas. So I sent them a small donation. As near as I can tell they do good work for a people that, as a nation, we have treated poorly. And I am enjoying the cultural enlightenment as each month's moon is described from the Lakota heritage. February's is Cannapopa Wi (see this picture for what it means to them).

Consuming Cory Doctorow Audio at Lunch

In addition to finishing listening to Cory Doctorow's new short story, Epoch, on my lunch run today, I also listened to his first public reading from his latest novel, Makers. Epoch is about a sentient Artificial Intelligence and the issues surrounding shutting it down. It's a good story, better told. I say a good story only because it's plot line is almost a genre in itself, from Colossus (D.F. Jones) to 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke), etc. and this is a short story. But it has novel aspects and great details of the life of modern day Sysadmins -- Systems Administrators. The lingo is perfect and very much fun.

I've only read the first dozen or so parts of Makers (out of eighty-some), about economic turmoil and the reuse of technological detritus. The part he read overlapped the part I twittered in when he asked for suggestions prior to his reading appearance -- my first verified participation in a crowd sourced event! Makers is fast-paced and fun so far.

Noticeable Serendipity: Roseanne Cash Two Times

Now I realize that authors and artists sometimes have a product to pimp, or even two, so things that at first seem highly coincidental are really not so spectacular. But Roseanne Cash isn't exactly a "celeb ubiquite" (that's faux french), so when she popped up on my not-so-mainstream mass media twice last night in the space of an hour and a quarter, I noticed. First she was on public radio's World Cafe on my drive home about 9:20 with a song ("Sea of Heartbreak" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3LSrcKksCo) from her new record. I found it curious that Bruce Springsteen was singing the harmony (I previously liked the harmony she did with her dad on "September When it Comes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2WilM6ljUg, but she won't be doing that anymore as The Man In Black is no longer among the living; at least until technology can repro his voice, say, 2021?).

Then I flipped to Steve Colbert at 10:30 and he was soon disparaging Bruce Springsteen's "The River" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAUyAogHtYk ) as a good candidate for use as a torture song at our Guantanamo Bay prison (wow, that makes me cringe, calling it "our" prison, but that's what it is and I feel the shame). Bruce is a pretty big name, so two mentions didn't raise my eyebrows. I flipped to soccer, Houston and Seattle still tied at zero after 70-some minutes of hard play; that's soccer.

Hey, Colbert, whatever your view of The Boss (I've never been a huge fan), he's still got some grit and some great lines: from "The River": "Is a dream a lie if it doesn't come true?"

I flipped back to The Colbert Report, and he's introducing Roseanne Cash, in person at his desk. Now I've noticed the serendipity (editorial aside: and we have our blog post title) and get engaged in their banter -- and its good, partly because Colbert is trying hard to maintain his right wing persona but his distaste for the goings-on at Guantanamo is seeping through. He signs her petition asking that our government (there's that "our" again) release the list of songs used to torture the detainees there. He signs, he says, "because it'll make it hard on Obama" (since he hasn't made good on his promise to close that facility). You can see the whole Colbert bit video at http://www.closegitmonow.org/.

Capitol Steps, Falling Down

Caught a bit of the Capitol Steps latest production on NPR at noon today. It was less than stellar. They riffed on Sarah Palin to the tune of "A Holly Jolly Christmas", but it had no insight, stale jokes about Russia being nearby and such. Then they think they need to find faults with Barack Obama's performance. I think, I hope, there are other ways to find humor than just finding fault. They dissed his handling of the Boston arrest of a black Harvard professor breaking in to his own house. Sure, he gave the loonies an opening by using a slightly offensive word - "stupidly" I think it was (yep, pretty inflammatory, huh?). But the transgression was by the police, using too much suspicion and not enough parsimony. The Capitol Steps also picked up on Obama's win of the Nobel Prize for Peace. Simply removing the old regime of Bush W, Cheney, Rice, Rove and Rumsfield was enough. It's like a weeklong cloud cover of gloom and storms has been rolled back and the sun is shining on the happy valley again. That's no small feat; to turn a scorched earth atmosphere into one where hope prospers. Sure, hope is more promise than reality; but hope is more peace than oppression, exploitation, lies and torture. If that transition isn't enough for the Nobel Peace Prize, then it is indeed a noble prize; I expect he will rise to it in any case. I plan to support him as I can and push him as he needs it. Shouldn't we all?

Good Guys at Delta Air Lines

As annoying as air lines can be, with their prices that go up and down depending on day of week and time of day, their silly costs to take an earlier flight, bundling and unbundling of fees like per-checked-bag and in-flight-meals, boarding inanity and on and on; Delta has, on a couple of occasions, done extra little good things that they really didn't have to, such as: I flew back from Philadelphia to Atlanta on October 5 (DL1077), and it was delayed, at least in part due to weather in Atlanta. My connection ended up a bit tight, but I made it. Based on the connection times that other passengers mentioned to me while we were still on board DL1077, I assume some of us were not so lucky. But I just received a letter of apology from Delta informing me that 2500 bonus miles have been placed in my SkyMiles account. I use my SkyMiles -- this past summer I had a free trip to Montreal, Canada on them. It won't be long before I've got enough for another adventure. Thanks for the token, Delta.

Finished Reading Ariel

And posted a quick review, here's an excerpt: "a novel of every boy's fantasy land, to meet and befriend or conquer mythical beasts; to be both a loner and to make meaningful friends and do important deeds with them ...."

In which I am Schmap'ped

The folks at Schmap are "delighted" to let me know that
my "submitted photo
has been selected for inclusion in the newly released ninth
edition of our Schmap Montreal Guide: Chinatown".

They spotted my photo on flickr and asked if they could include it in their guide. Sure, I said.

If you could look closely enough, you would see a group of WorldCon attendees walking up the sidewalk on the left side of the photo, including authors Cory Doctorow and Larry Hodges.

PodRunner: A Beat for Feet that Run

From the "How Cool is That?!" department on the internet: I downloaded a couple one hour long music mixes targeted for running from PodRunner. Tried it out on the treadmill this morning (it's a rainy Saturday). Pretty nifty stuff. Steven Boyett, DJ and author, posts these techno-music compilations with targeted BPM to pace your run or workout. There's a bunch of them and they keep coming, technically free, though there is a tip jar or merchandise to help support your habit. An easy way to keep yourself in fresh music; put your energy into the burn.

Fig Tree With Green Lynx Spider

Spotted this critter in my back yard a couple days ago. I left her guarding her egg sac and my as-yet-unripened figs. Hopefully we'll get some cold weather after this rain and the fruit will go ripe. Mmmm.

Health Care and Burning Houses

I don't always agree with Dave Winer's take on the world. But we align on health care. This post from him is short and worth reading.

Ariel Update

I’m currently reading Steven R. Boyett’s book Ariel and enjoying it immensely.

I did just realize that even though it was published 26 years ago, that still means that it was published after I read some similar post-apocalyptic and epic journey books like Hiero’s Journey (Sterling E Lanier) and Shardik (Richard Adams). I’m liking Ariel in part because it is chock-a-block full of literary and pop-culture allusions that are from my coming-of-age era; and because I can see Boyett’s musical avocation seeping through – not just because it’s about mythical beasts and anachronistic combat.

We've Got To Relieve... Health Care Burdens

I was thinking about the health care morass on an airplane the other day; thinkin hard enough to jot down some notes. My thoughts aren’t all good, but this is important stuff and needs to be fixed. I heard back from my Congressman, Parker Griffith, who is a retired medical doctor. He used a Hippocratic Oath analogy: “first we need to do no harm to our current system.” I didn't swallow that cod liver oil. His is a misguided anthropomorphism – our health care system is not a human being. If you break it completely it may actually help you to rebuild it better than it was. Besides, there’s no reason to think that doctors and hospitals will stop treating sick people during a transition from one payment system to another. What else they gonna do?

We need meaningful reform. We need it on moral grounds, to help people who don’t get care for routine and treatable ailments. We need it on financial grounds, to make our businesses stronger and independent of the yoke of health insurance. We need it on equitable grounds, to stop the arbitrary nature of who has coverage and who doesn’t, just depending on which way the labor market winds are blowing. We need individual coverage that can negotiate the same rates that groups can. No more small group "death spirals".

We need to align the monetary goals of providers with healthy consumers. We need to flip the pay-per-treatment or “fee for service” system on its head. A pay-per-patient system is possible and being tried in certain places. I worry that that method incentivizes not performing needed treatments, at least in the short run. Maybe there could be monetary penalties if a treatment was skimped – this is basically the old HMO model and didn’t work out well in the US(although similar models work in other countries). The salient differences should be explored and overcome.

Or pay doctors via a salary, with bonuses for healthy patients. This seems pretty reasonable, but has a couple of pitfalls to guard against. For one, “the talent” will no longer be automatically getting paid for their high skills. Management will be seeing the cash flow (both on the insurance company side and on the hospital administration side), and they’ll rake off as big a share as they are allowed to. So it needs regulating, which is unsavory, but sane. Absolute control of the monetary pipeline leads to money-drunk plumbers -- I may have mixed my metaphors there, but unfortunately we need watchers when money is involved. And people to watch the watchers.

Health itself is not and healt care also is not and will not be, egalitarian. Maybe there is some solace for the less-well-heeled in that. That is, that everyone can fall ill or get injured, and all of us get old. Waiting for routine and typical care as a method of cost control is unacceptable. That is, back door rationing of health care through curtailed availability cannot be a solution. Apparently that is a diminishing state of affairs in Canada and the United Kingdom at this point. Their waits are often no more than ours for the same specialists. Have you tried to get an appointment with a dermatologist? Your best hope is for a cancellation to open something up -- or to look up a good poultice on the Interweb.

Extraordinary care remains another matter. Extremely expensive and experimental treatments have to be uncovered (except as part of research studies, but that's a special case). But the bar needs to be high and the decisions open and transparent. I'm sorry, it's not worth 2 million dollars to extend anyone individual's life by 6 months -- not to society (i.e. the rest of us). If there is a rich benefactor, okay, it's their money. But when it's our money, we can extend a lot of other people's lives a lot more than 6 months with $2MM.

Risk takers are a tough area for me. I haven't got that figured out. In some cases of course their health care is cheap -- if they fall while rock climbing and die, well, it's their funeral. If they only break their back, though, then it's everyone's bank account. I think in those cases they need to cough up some personal funds to help with coverage -- but which things are risky? Smoking? Of course (if you weren't already addicted in 1965). Failing to exercise? Eh. Over-exercising? Hmmm. Maybe we better hope this one comes out in the wash, that it evens out over the pool of citizenry.

Penultimately, I want to address what the correlation between health insurance and business should be: none. There's no rational connection. Health insurance should be more like the fire department; businesses can pay their share through taxes. Different businesses shouldn't pay different amounts per employee depending on the type of business they are, how big they are, etc. In the U.S., employer paid health insurance started as a differentiating fringe benefit. It's no longer effective in that role, except to stifle small businesses, consultants and entrepreneurs. And it allows large business management (and their customers) to squeeze the employees through passing on ever higher health insurance costs to the employees through higher co-pays and decreased coverages.

And finally, I find myself agreeing with some European voices that I respect, that treating the health misfortunes of others should not be a ticket to riches for anyone. It's just plain wrong.

The Migraine Sufferer's Wife

We just saw The Time Traveler's Wife at the movie theater. I thought the movie was much better than the mediocre reviews that I've seen. The dialog is crisp. Rachel McAdams has a great smile. The treatment of time travel is as good as in any recent main stream movie; it's a fairly novel conceit: spontaneous, uncontrolled time travel triggered by some correlation to stress, just for one individual, just for Henry; it reminds me of my migraines -- they're pretty rare but take me completely out of the present -- I lose time to them (not so much now as before, but still sometimes). And they have something to do with stress and/or drugs like caffeine.
Also, I enjoyed the use of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" as a couple's wedding song -- sounds like a terrific cover by Broken Social Scene.

Stay Free Little Brother

I finally finished Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. Brief review here.