tfl: The Flatiron Life

Zach’s comment to my post about Anastasio Prieto getting his money back was “What a pleasant surprise. You don’t often hear good news like this.”

You never hear about this for 2 reasons.

First, I am a pessimist on government and I think it is not in its nature to do the right thing most of the time.

Second, often the main story is front page news but the follow-up will be months later and buried.  The follow up is usually more interesting to me.   (Call me romantic, but I also like to finish books and know the conclusions to stories generally.)

I don’t have great advise about the first.  Don’t believe government, support watchdogs and lobbies, and vote.

Through the miracle of technology and The Google, I do have an answer to the second provlem.  Google news allows you to setup email alerts and subscribe to feeds via RSS.  Want to know when your company is in the news?  When a relative is in the news?  When Alastasio Prieto is in the news?  Just set up a feed.  The next time you read something you want to be sure to hear the end of, set up a search.

Joscelynn: Why do some people just not care if things are true or not? I just don’t understand that mentality.

Jacob: I think the difference is that you and I are introverts, so we don’t like to say a lot. But some people are extroverts and they like to say a lot of things and so some of it is true and some of it isn’t.

Joscelynn: I could see that. Most of the time I feel like I just shouldn’t say anything unless I can put a big QED at the end. I don’t always get it right, but I’d like to think I’d set things straight if it’s not.

Jacob (Imagine this very emphatic with lots of jesturing from the forehead): Extroverts are just streaming. . . but not like stream of consciousness. . . like your thoughts are at the back of your brain and your language is at the front of your brain, and they’re not streaming from the back to the front, they’re streaming all off the front, its just language. Stream of consciousness is like having multiple applications open and you’re looking at all the windows at once. Extroverts are just XML, there’s no content.

Joscelynn: Did you read about this somewhere?

Jacob: No, I’m making it up.

I told you 6 weeks ago that Anastasio Prieto had his cash holdings taken away from him by the DEA because he was assumed to be a drug runner.  Today I read that thanks to the ACLU the DEA is returning his money.

Today is the 17 anniversary of German Reunification.  In 1990, the states of the DDR were unified into the Bundesrepublik.  Again the German brothers stood together, not from the Meuse to the Neman and from the Adige to the Belt, but with Unity and justice and freedom for the German fatherland.

Here is the follow up to the John Stossel article I blogged about last week and later clarified.

Again, I think Stossel is a mix very correct and incorrect.  He shows an example of an employer health care plan that puts patients in control and keeps costs down for employers, Whole Foods oddly enough.  However, he sees their adoption of HSAs are evidence for his less insurance stance.

I don’t see it this way.  I see putting consumers in charge, like they are for nearly everything else, as the moral of this story.  If consumers want to buy the insurance with high premiums but low deductibles, they should be free to.  If they want to buy insurance that covers everything that might ever ill them, they should be free to.  If they want to buy just insurance that covers coma, ingrown nails, and UTI or any other combination and someone will sell it to them, they should be free to.  If they want to pay cash only for service, they should be free to.

The ills with the system today are twofold.  First, insurance purchases are biased toward being  made by employers in the tax code.  Second, there is one level of care inforced by the state.  True, premiums and deductibles my vary but the service offered is the same.  The combination of these factors means if some one is able to find an inovative way to offer insurance it will be many years before anyone is able to take advantage of it.  This is even the case with change inacted by the state in this area.  HSA and MSA were created years ago, but few have this option.

I blog for the exact same reason as Scott Adams (Dilbert cartoonist):

There is nothing more frustrating than writing a perfect sentence and not being able to publish it. That’s why I love having this blog. Otherwise, it’s just me and the cat having a laugh at how witty I could have been. And it’s creepy when the cat laughs because I can never be sure we’re laughing at the same thing.

(HT: Vallywag)

I’ve been afraid that the recent glut of pop economics books and blogs is leading to a misunderstanding of what it means for a person to call himself an economist. I must make it clear that I do not consider myself an economist either, but having sat through a whole lot of hours of economics classes, I at least have an inkling that becoming one involves just a smidge of high level math and a whole lot of graphing and is not so much a bunch of libertarians sitting in a room high fiving eachother, chanting “Markets clear!!” In fact, I thought Bryan Caplan made an excellent point in The Myth of the Rational Voter that economists are most rewarded for finding flaws in traditional thinking and market failures.

I think it’s great that we’re coming to an understanding of the implications of econoimics for other disciplines, but there are, in fact, limits as to what is properly economics and it includes more than simple price theory. So while I haven’t quite felt qualified to make a categorization as to who is and is not an economist, Free Exchange puts forth its definition, albeit speaking of the term economist more as a professional designation.

If you disagree, go ahead and call me sour grapes about the dilution of my undergraduate degree.

Only 8 more weeks ’til eviction

Originally uploaded by flatiron32

I’m not sure I buy it. At 32 weeks I theoretically have 8 weeks to go, but I think Jonah must be packing up his things by now. I just can’t imagine these living arrangements will work out for the two of us for much longer.

Up to this point pregnancy has been very kind to me. I really don’t have much to complain about in the way of discomfort. I am, however, really starting to resent living on the third floor of a walk-up.

More than uncomfortable, I have found pregnancy to be just bizarre. At four pounds, it is equally amazing and horrifying to feel him shift around, changing the shape of my belly and his feet making little bumps up near my ribs. He is a complete person inside of me. It really doesn’t get much weirder than that.

As Jacob mentioned in his post, we are thoroughly captivated by Dr. Karp’s method. So far the cat hasn’t taken too kindly to our practicing the S’s on him, but we’re hopeful that Jonah will be putty in our hands with the soothing technique.

We have completed out first round of classes preparing for the coming of Jonah.

We have finished the birthing classes and know how Jonah is getting out and what to expect during the 20-hour saga and the recovery.

Last week we had our New Baby class.  We learned the do’s and don’ts of caring for Jonah for the first months.  We also learned the amazing calming technique of the baby whisperer, Dr. Harvey Karp.

We have more classes upcoming: Infant CPR, Breastfeeding, and Pediatric Care.  We will learn a lot from these classes, but it is more about after delivery.  As for labor and delivery, I am waiting for Jos to tell me when she thinks he is coming and then to help her to work through it until contractions are “5 min apart, strong, and regular”.  Then I am calling the OB and going to the hospital.

What are some things we should remember that first time parents won’t know?  What should we take to the hospital for sure and what should we not take?

Also, we learned that the new hospital has 100% WI-FI so I might be live blogging the whole event.

From Over The Counter:

Financial experts from the University of Reading’s ICMA Centre are to investigate how medieval credit finance arrangements have formed the basis for today’s loans.

“Evidence suggests that English monarchs were sub-prime borrowers, allegedly causing the Frescobaldi of Florence to suffer a ‘run on the bank’ at the turn of the 14th century. This arose precisely as a consequence of a lack of investor confidence due to the bank’s loans to the unreliable Edward I, the then King of England.”