Category: odds and ends

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odds and ends

Amy Winehouse (alcohol)

The news and internet were all a-twitter when Amy Winehouse died. Lots of shaking of the head and “I told you so’s” were going around. The general assumption was that she finally OD’d on whatever it was she was taking. The initial autopsy was inconclusive. That just set off more snark, “They just aren’t sure which drug killed her..” was a common joke running around. Now that the toxicology reports have come back inconclusive as well, I’m not hearing anything about it.

I assume that if she actually did OD on something it would show up in both the toxicology and probably the autopsy. Is there a recreational drug out there that kills you and leaves no obvious trace? So if she didn’t OD, what killed her? Her family thinks that the stress of quitting drinking cold turkey did her in.

People forget just how nasty alcohol is. It’s bad enough when you’re drinking and wrecking everyone’s lives, but even stopping drinking can be dangerous. Her family had begged her to quit gradually in order to avoid the worst of withdrawal symptoms but she decided that it was either cold turkey or nothing. In hindsight, that wasn’t a very good decision, but I can see her reasoning. If you really do have a drinking problem, having “just a little” isn’t always possible.

 

We still don’t know what happened but it does look like Amy died from her abuse as opposed to a specific event. It’s also plausible that her effort to quit is what got her in the end. Alcohol is just as dangerous as any other addicting drug, we should never forget that.

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odds and ends

Charitable efforts

I don’t make a tremendous amount of money, but I’m doing OK. There are plenty of people that aren’t of course, and I’m a big believer that aid in the right way can make a big difference. I’m also of the opinion that decent people give what they can. It’s part of my general optimistic view of people in general. I hope I’m a decent person, so….

 

I’ve been giving to Kiva pretty regularly for over a year now. If there’s one thing that has taught me, it’s how giving a little bit consistantly over time can add up. I just started giving to GiveDirectly. I can’t give much each month, but they aggregate the donations that people send in and then give them to people in a larger chunk. These two charities do what I think charities should do. Kiva allows people to invest in themselves and try to make their life better. It’s for people doing OK, but struggling to take that next step. GiveDirectly is much more about people having real difficulties and mired in poverty. As I’ve written before, GiveDirectly follows my own belief that the poor folks know where that money will have the most impact and so I should allow them to spend it as they see fit. I wish I could do more, but times are tight. Hopefully in the future things will get better.

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freedom odds and ends

Give directly, a great new charity

A little while ago, Tyler Cowan put together the principles of the ideal charity. You give money directly to people, that money has no strings attached, and they shouldn’t expect it. Giving directly reduces the non-charitable cost aspect of the donation. All charities have overhead, giving directly minimizes this. If the people arent expecting it, you have a much better chance of avoiding scams and corruption diverting the charitable donation.

It’s the second part that is so important, and it is also the part that so many people have problems with. Economists call things like food stamps, vouchers, etc. as “gifts in kind” and it has been known for a long time that they aren’t a very good way of giving aid if the primary aim is to help people. Poor people are like anyone else, they need money for different things. When you give cash, they can apply it to whatever their most urgent need is. It might in fact be food, but it could just as easily be paying off debts, legal help, maintanince, or even investing or savings.

“But they might spend it on drugs or prostitutes!” Yeah, they might. A former professor summed up that attitude with the sarcastic comment, “Oh, I like the poor, but I don’t trust them!” If we want the poor to get better, and if we want to help them, we have to allow them to make their own decisions and use money the way they need to. A more practical aspect of having no strings on the donation is that it saves the cost of monitoring them and enforcing the rules. The primary aspect of no strings donations should always be respecting who you are giving money to, it is supposed to be a charitable at after all.

GiveDirectly is a new charity based on these principles. They are working in Kenya right now because of the easy and inexpensive system for distributing cash via sim cards in place there. They are claiming a 90% effeciancy for donations. I am going to start using these guys for my monthly charitable donations along with my microfinancing thing thorugh Kiva. They are brand new, so there isn’t much information on the progran just yet, but I am willing to give it a try. I encourage you to do the same if you want to give aid directly to recipients!

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MS odds and ends

Events are conspiring against me

It’s amazing how the little things in life can be blown up with MS… I needed to get the muffler fixed on the car, but they had to order the part. When could I leave it to be fixed? Well, they were going to get the part in on wednesday and I didn’t have to be at work on thursday until 1:30. Plus, the parking lot in front of my house was going to get repaved starting really early on thursday morning. This gave me a place to put the car. So I’ll just drop the car off after work and then pick it up before I go on thursday. Plus, the shop is just a bit further than my Pakistani resturants, i.e. about 4 blocks away. I figured I’d drop off the car and then walk back home.

That’s when things started to go downhill. Wednesday was also the day the heat wave kicked in. Walking the 4 blocks in the heat after a day’s work was exhausting. I managed to get the garage to pick me up the next day although I still ended up hanging out in the heat for a while before they did. Was really beat at work, but I did get through the day. I got out of work around 10. Forgot that the paving was still going on, so I had to find a parking space when I got back home. Ended up parking 5 blocks away. The walk home in the heat after the day’s work just about killed me this time.

My alarm went off at 7:30 this morning. I must have fallen asleep as soon as I turned it off, I certainly don’t remember doing it. Woke up briefly around 9:30, dragged my carcass out of bed to text work and then promptly fell asleep again. Woke up after 12, still groggy and stiff. I need to go retrieve the car after 6, the paving is supposed to be done by then. I fully anticipate being hobbled by the walk, but without the standing up for 7 hours, it’ll be doable.

Still, another day off of work, this is getting expensive. Here’s to hoping that stupid little things stop ganging up on me!

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financial odds and ends

Not a whole lot going on

I’ve been trying to not post negative blog posts, you know, the whole, “If you can’t say anything nice…” approach. The world’s financial outlook is depressing. Europe is looking less and less sound by the day, and our politicians are playing chicken with our debt obligations. Things could go just fine I suppose, but it’s looking more and more likely that there is going to be some pain coming up. Just to be on the safe side, I would hold a minimum of cash and money market funds right now, they could decrease in value quickly if things fall apart.

Enough global doom and gloom, I’ve got money issues myself. The car needs a rather expensive repair (my muffler was damaged and there aren’t any aftermarket ones) and I missed a day of work. SIGH. Wasn’t sure how I was going to take care of that, and then I remembered my savings in the form of Apple stock. Was hoping not to have to touch that, but I guess that’s what savings is for, right? Once I get this out of the way, I will be in a better mood, but man, it’s going to hurt.

Other than that, not a lot going on, working, eating, etc. Woohoo, do I know how to have a good time or what?

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odds and ends

Whew! That’s a dream!

 

I was living in what looked like a house that had been carved out of a cave or something. I was expecting my father to get back, but to my surprise he was already there. We chatted for a few minutes and then heard someone coming to the door. He went to go answer it  (it was around the corner) when I heard him say, hello! anyone there? And then dad walked in from his trip. He asked how I opened up the door and then got back to the front room so quickly.
That’s when I realized what happened. A future version of him had managed to leak into the past. When he came into contact with his previous self, there was only one of him. That totally freaked me out. It was like seeing a ghost of him. Later I worried that he might actually be stuck in a time loop too… it got worse later on…
Since I had a time anomaly on my hands, who better to call in than the crew at Big Finish (the guys that do the Dr. Who audios)? The gang was all there, Jason, Nick, the Pauls, and even Lisa. Why I thought they could help I have no idea, but it was a dream, it all made sense. Then, my stepbrother came in with a bunch of his friends because they were making a student film. Here’s where it gets complicated.
As future versions of folks came in, the current people were absolutely terrified. Seeing themselves was just too weird and unsettling. The future folks had it just as bad, they were seeing ghosts of themselves too, but they remembered what it was like to see themselves in the past and relived the experience plus had all of the weirdness of seeing their ghosts. Then it got worse. Now when future and past versions came into contact, they would merge into one person. The problem was that they simultaneously had the memories of all the things that had happened, and also understood that they hadn’t done those things because they essentially got sucked into the future. And then future versions of themselves would show up and the effect would compound.
Between the disorientation and the fear, people started to go totally insane. And we started to accumulate multiples of the same people. Different groups of person would react in different ways. Some thought they were aliens discovering their true nature, some were convinced all of the others were trying to kill them, and more than a few were just curled up and crying.
The panic level was getting out of hand. At some point bullets started to fly. That’s when I understood what was going on. I was sure that at some point, a future person was going to kill a past version of themselves and create a paradox. The effects of that paradox would spill outwards both in the future and in the past. Retro-causation is a tricky thing, but it made total sense. Then I woke up.
How’s that for a dream?

 

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odds and ends

Had a nice vacation

Saw a ton of people. Mom, my uncle Brian, Dad, My Aunt Cathy and uncle Doug, my cousin Beth and her husband Evan and their adorable little girl Zita, even my stepsister Coleman! That’s a lot of family packed into one week, it was too short. The Bach family is the target for my next vacation. My brother is down there with my aunt, uncle, and cousin on that side of the family. And they’re in Virginia Beach, I really don’t have any excuse to not see them…

Did a few things that I hadn’t done in a long time over that week. First, I used canned shaving cream. I have been using shaving soaps and and creams for the past three years but I decided that I didn’t want the hassle of packing them and a brush. Man, what a difference, that canned stuff sucks! Yes, it was a much thicker lather than I usually get, but it really dried out my skin and the blade didn’t glide nearly as well. The hell of it is that it is the same price as the good stuff, not going to do that again!

The other thing I did was listen to FM in the car. Ugh. I have been listening to my iPod, and more recently to LastFM or Slacker Radio in my car for the last 2 years. I do not miss FM at all. It was filled with nothing but commercials and people yakking. Oh, and some really terrible music to boot. I really don’t mind paying in order to avoid commercials, and I love the ability to skip songs and tell them to never play that again… Technology really is wonderful. My drives are so much nicer because of my iPhone.

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odds and ends

Dreams and how my brain works

I dreamed that I was in a photography class the other night.

My cousin Beth was in there with me and I explained to her in extreme detail how to use achieve accurate focus on an enlarger. I went through everything, the grain focuser, lens alignment, focus shifts as you top down from wide open, optimum apertures, vibration control, etc. This is pretty arcane knowledge at this point, and I was correct in every excruciating detail. What I failed to notice was that I was trying to focus onto previously exposed and developed film. That doesn’t even make any sense. I had one of my slides on the board and was getting frustrated that I couldn’t focus the image on the slide by shining light on it. The reflection was getting to me, the last thing I remember doing was looking for a polarizing filter to get rid of the reflection coming off the film. I had conflated copy photography and printing.

I woke up wondering how I could dredge up so much technical stuff accurately, stuff that wouldn’t even occur to me without actually trying to make a print and be so far off on the main event in the darkroom. It would be like knowing all about carburetor overhauling and then wonder why a mixture of water and molasses wasn’t doing real well in the car. Strange stuff…

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odds and ends

Bin Laden

I’m glad to see the general tone of reaction about his being killed being toned down a bit in the days after the event. Frankly, I was a bit shocked at the glee that had been expressed. Most of the commentators I follow have now come out and said pretty much the same thing. I can’t say I’m unhappy that he’s dead, but I can’t get too happy about any killing. I was actually afraid to post that feeling the day after we heard the news. I half expected someone to ask me if I couldn’t enjoy Bin Laden’s death, whose death could I enjoy? is there a word to describe the fear of irony?

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odds and ends

New website!

OK, after many fits and starts, I finally overhauled my website. This exercise has reinforced my understanding that I am not very good at website design… It’s not quite finished, I need to add some more content, but that will come as I feel like it. It’s still a really simple site, that’s by design. My main goals were to update the look a bit and get rid of the clutter that no one ever looked at, including me. I still need to put up my econ papers, those actually got a fair number of views and they are what drove more outside visitors to my site as opposed to family and friends. Please let me know if there are any obvious bugs or problems!