Linguistics, Dancing, and a Few Good Books

12 April 2003

The US government is handing out decks of Iraqi Most Wanted playing cards. This is just beyond bizarre.

Now for a few hours of work; and then, the luʻau! Whee.

"When state legislators are willing to pay only, say, $10 for a visit of a Medicaid baby to a pediatrician's office, but are willing to pay $50 for a visit by their own, they are signalling a different social valuation on the medical care of different people." --Uwe Reinhardt

Posted 2:48 PM [+]

11 April 2003

9:30pm on Friday of Spring Weekend, and what am I doing? Sitting in my office, working on my thesis. Well, technically, right now I'm sitting in my office procrastinating my thesis, but that's just for the last five minutes or so. Fortunately, I've made a deal with a few other thesising friends to work for a bit longer and then head over to their suite at 11. Honestly, it's probably getting me to work quite a bit later on this than I otherwise would.

But the thesis is coming along great. In doing a semantic derivation just now, I discovered yet another piece of corroborating evidence for my theory. This is so fun.

"Pure egalitarianism strangles everything. I'm just saying, be decent." --Uwe Reinhardt

Posted 9:32 PM [+]

10 April 2003

I just went to a great talk by Uwe Reinhardt, a professor of economics at Princeton, on the viability of universal health care in this country. The words were very pessimistic, but the attitude was not defeatist; his goal (eventually stated explicitly) was to build our level of anger so that we would not just say "yes, that's a good idea", but actively fight for it.

I'm reminded of a phrase Arianna Huffington likes to throw around: "sustained outrage"---the duty of every progressive, especially these days.

We spend so much money on health care in this country---more per capita than any other, even after adjusting for pretty much anything you can adjust for---and yet, for the average joe, it's not that much better. And for the poorer-than-average joe, it's not even available, or if it is it's even more expensive. Anytime we discover a new Object of Compassion (OC), and decide to give funded access to health care to the OC, we spend so much time, energy, and money to erect barriers---to prevent even a single non-OC from benefitting from our magnanimity---that we end up spending less on care and more on administration than (say) Germany, and we don't even manage to cover all the OCs.

So sad.

"I have never seen such passion for foetuses as here in the US, but as soon as you take one breath of oxygen, it's 'you're on your own, kid.'" --Uwe Reinhardt

Posted 6:59 PM [+]

07 April 2003

More snow. Crazy. I mean, you can usually expect a snowfall around here sometime in April, usually light. But this will be, I think, the third so far this month. And this one is due to actually leave 5-10 inches on the ground by late evening. In fact it's supposed to be snowing on and off until Wednesday afternoon, except for the times when it's sleeting or freezing raining. (This is Mike's cue to gloat about his choice of grad school. I should really move this thing to a comments-enabled blog app one of these days.)

Day two of MIT went a lot better: Kathleen and I passed the qualifying round and got an additional callback in silver quickstep (to quarterfinals); and then Qi and I placed 7th in foxtrot and 8th in viennese waltz, from a starting field of 14 GOLD competitors! I think that might be the best I've ever done. Yaaay!

"I love Chicago! It's just like New York, except that it's bright and clean, and people there try to be helpful." --Rebecca Santoro

Posted 5:07 PM [+]

06 April 2003

Happy daylight savings!

Day one of the MIT comp is over; they debuted an idea of qualifying rounds (which they inaccurately call "preliminary rounds"). A reasonable idea, but given that the great appeal of MIT is that it gives a chance for those who aim for breadth to show off---especially beginners, doing things like paso, bolero, and mambo---a failure, since those who might really shine in those events get knocked out before they can even dance them. Because, you see, the qualifying rounds are just the two most common dances from the section, so if your strengths are elsewhere, too bad. This is especially a problem at beginner level.

Part of Boston's Big Dig is open!! On the way up there, we discovered that I-90 now extends all the way to the airport via the Ted Williams tunnel, and I-93 disappears underground around exit 19, into a spacious four-lane-wide high-ceilinged tunnel, with shoulders most places and two-lane curved tunnel offramps. It's so cool. This massive engineering feat (and they aren't even done yet) is, in all seriousness, a modern Wonder of the World (CivIV designers take note).

Also, I finally more or less finished Amy's skirt. It's about 28 inches from waistband to hem, and so full that the hem is on the order of 20 feet long. Big pain to work with, but it looks cool. We'll see how it looks if she dances in it tomorrow (er, today).

Hm, I should go to bed. I can get a whole two hours of sleep!

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." --Mark Twain

Posted 3:51 AM [+]