Author Archives: Jerry

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Scientific Survey

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Pharaoh heard that in his prisons there lived a man who could interpret dreams. He called for Joseph, and his soldiers brought the young man before him.

“I have had a dream,” Pharaoh said. “In my dream there are seven fat cows, and seven thin cows. The thin cows eat the fat cows but they remain thin. What does it mean?”

Joseph pondered, and quietly asked God for guidance, and said, “it means that there will be seven years of plenty, and Egypt will prosper like never before. But there will follow seven years of hardship, and unless Egypt prepares now, by saving as much of the plenty as this great nation can, there will be great suffering.”

Pharaoh nodded, seeing the wisdom of Joseph’s words. It only made sense to prepare for hard times while things were going well, even if the precision of Joseph’s prediction was questionable.

“Um… Pharaoh,” said the trusted advisor on his left, the chief architect of the pyramid project about to launch, “Seven years of plenty! That’s great! If you ignore this man’s advice, I can make the monument to you even more magnificent.”

On his right, another adviser spoke. “If bad times follow the good, it is the will of the gods. WE will survive, OUR families will not starve, even if millions of the working class who just finished your pyramid die. That, too, is the will of the gods. The workers will die happily, knowing they contributed to your eternal might.”

Joseph listened to this discourse and said, “No, seriously, It’s going to be bad. I’m 99.9% sure it’s going to be really really bad.”

“Aha!” cried the architect. “So you’re not certain!“

Pharaoh looked from his advisors to Joseph and back. “Make the monument bigger,” he said.

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That Carbon Dioxide Tipping Point

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I file this under politics because it is politics that is blinding us.

The oil industry* and their paid shills (known as deniers)** made a few waves recently when, in a carefully-worded survey of climate scientists, fewer than half were willing to single out carbon dioxide as the single greatest contributor to global warming.

“Half of all Scientists disagree with climate change!” was the nonsensical conclusion. A slightly-less-nonsensical conclusion was “Humans create carbon dioxide; if that’s not the primary driver of global warming, then warming is not because of humans.”

But let’s look at that for a moment. There’s another conclusion, and while it’s much more reasonable, it’s also much more scary: Carbon Dioxide isn’t the the primary driver of global warming any more. We’ve crossed a tipping point.

Meet Methane, and the point of no return.

While CO2 was the problem, there was something we could do about it: produce less CO2. Let the algae and the rain forests (whoops!) absorb the surplus back, and let our planet return to its previous equilibrium. We dithered, and denied, and the tundra began to thaw. Now the tundra is burping up enormous amounts of methane.

As a greenhouse gas, methane makes CO2 look like a punk kid with missing teeth.

So if many scientists don’t think Carbon Dioxide is the biggest contributor any more, that doesn’t mean they don’t believe the surface of our planet is getting hotter, it means that the game has changed. It means things have moved to a stage that we cannot reverse just by suddenly not being so selfish and short-sighted. It means there is nothing we can do to stop the change, and the sooner we turn our efforts to dealing with it, the less it will hurt.

But man, it’s gonna hurt.

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* shorthand for all carbon-based energy companies
** almost all the publicized climate-change deniers are on the energy company payrolls. I say “almost” only because there are probably a few who are just stupid.

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Knives Episode 30, Almost Known as “Hekka’s Middle Bunghole”

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This is one of the big ones, so it’s a time to thank all my patrons for their continued support. Thanks! You guys put the iron to my backside.

The title of this episode is “An Ethical Foundation”, which is a central idea in the story as it develops, but I toyed with calling it “Hekka’s Middle Bunghole”.

I was searching for the perfect profanity for the moment after someone explodes, and I never found it. What I came up with might have been perfect, with the proper setup: Hekka is a God known in the south, who has three heads and who gave birth to heaven, hell, and our world. Elena, apparently, stopped to consider what three heads might imply on the other end.

There was no way to fit that bit of information into the narrative without breaking the flow of the story; perhaps a future “bonus content” project could be a series of short legends about the deities I pull out of my (only) bunghole when I need a good profanity.

Speaking of bonus content, my fake user accounts with the same settings as my loyal patrons can all see the bonus content properly. Patrons, please let me know if any of you are still having trouble. If it’s working for you, I’ll start loading up Kat’s backstory.

Meanwhile, on the writing front, the curse of the serial novel is starting to bite me. I’m deviating from my plan as I come up with ideas during the flow of the writing. I like the direction I’m heading, but some of the big-picture stuff is starting to drift. But you know, I’m just going to run with it for a bit, and focus on the relationships that will drive the story. What could possibly go wrong?

Enjoy An Ethical Foundation

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My Government-Subsidized Health Plan and What That Means to Joe Sixpack

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I work for a company that provides above-average health benefits. My employer has even raised the ire of some municipalities in this great nation by extending those benefits to non-married partners without asking about gender or gender preference. A partner’s a partner; no need to make it complicated.

My employer, in turn, can write off the portion of the the cost of my health plan that they pay. In a big company like mine, that’s some serious money. And since I’m not taxed on the portion of the plan my company picks up, it results in a big chunk of tax money going to my health plan. It’s an untaxed benefit, and it means that eventually someone else will have to pick up the tab.

There is a dichotomy these days, where Democrats (often mistaken for liberals) are saying, “We want to cover your health for a reasonable cost,” and Republicans (often mistaken for conservatives) are saying, “That shit don’t work, we’ll get you jobs and HONORABLE health care. We’ll get you the same tax-privileged shit those Democrats who are talking down to you already have.”

The Republicans are lying; they don’t have the power to get everyone jobs. But the message resonates, even if the people hearing it don’t know about the tax privilege I enjoy. They know that the insurance an employer gives you is better, and really what else matters? If everyone has jobs, there is no problem with access to health care. The answer that comes from the rust belt Trump supporter who is about to lose his ACA coverage is, “fuck Obamacare, give me a fuckin’ job.”

The down-and-out are shooting the moon. They don’t want government support, they want jobs. I can’t overemphasize that. And they elected a guy who lied and said they would work again. Meanwhile, folks like me, who barely realize the billions our government forfeits so we can have good coverage, scratch our heads and wonder why Joe Six-pack doesn’t see what’s right in front of his face.

We have to end the hidden subsidy for my health plan, and we have to disconnect the need for health care from some weird code of honor. Health care should not be a perk. Health care is what we do for one another.

When you say, “we can’t afford single payer,” don’t forget to account for the billions in tax dollars the current system hides. I, for one, am ready to pay.

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Knives Episode 29 Published!

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A quiet murder, followed by a confrontation. Martin doing what Martin does best. But this time, his best may not be enough.

This episode went well, writing-wise; there were some details I had to work out for realism but the overall chain of events was pretty set. The rest was a matter of the small things. If there’s one thing I regret about the serial format, it’s that when I read an episode long since published I often wish I spent more time on the small things. It’s a lesson the Kansas Bunch has been trying to pound into my head for years now: The life of the story is in the little details.

We have in the narrative an honest-to-god MacGuffin now, and I have mixed emotions about that. It’s a time-honored device that appears in some of the best stories ever, but it also serves as a crutch in some pretty bad writing (see, “The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy”). I had intended to resolve this particular item fairly quickly, making it more a clue to the mystery rather than an object of great contention, but… well. I might not.

Please enjoy Episode 29.

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Defensive Programming: Put the Guards Near the Gate

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We can file this one under “not interesting to pretty much anyone who reads this blog,” but it’s an important concept for writing robust code. This is part of a discipline called Defensive Programming.

Let’s say you build yourself a castle in a clearing in the woods. There is one path to the front gate, and you need to guard it. “Hah!” you think, “I’ll put the guards where the path comes out of the woods, to stop shenanigans before they even get close!” You post the guards out there in a little guardhouse, secure in the knowledge that no bad guys will reach your gate.

Until someone makes a new path. Perhaps when the new path is created the path-maker will notice that there are guards on the other path and put a little guardhouse on the new path as well. But perhaps not.

In software, it’s the difference between code that says, “when all conditions are right, call function x”, and having function x test to make sure everything is OK before proceeding.

Putting the guard by the trees:

    function x(myParameter) {
        myParameter.doSomething();
    }

    thing = null;

    ... other stuff that might or might not set 'thing'

    if (thing != null) {
        x(thing);
    }

This is fine as long as everything that calls function x knows to check to make sure the parameter is not null first. It might even seem like a good idea because if ‘thing’ is not set you can save the trouble of calling the function at all. But if some other programmer comes along and doesn’t know this rule, she might not do the check.

    // elsewhere in the code...

    anotherThing = null;

    ... other stuff that might or might not set 'anotherThing'

    x(anotherThing); // blammo!

Better to move the guards close to the gate:

    function x(myParameter) {
        if (myParameter != null) {
            myParameter.doSomething();
        }
    }

Now when someone else writes code that calls function x, you can be confident that your guards will catch any trouble. That doesn’t mean you can’t ALSO put guards out by the edge of the forest, but you shouldn’t rely on them.

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Patio Life Returns

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Life is good.

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The Trickiest Part of Universal Health Care

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Health insurance is not like other insurance. Take fire insurance. Chances are, your house will never burn down. But you pay a little bit each month so that if you should be the unlucky one, you will have the cash to move on with your life.

Health insurance is different. Sure, you are protecting against disaster, but it’s not if you will have a health disaster, it’s when. We will all of us get sick. So sick we might die. It’s just a matter of time. Health insurance is about all of us putting our resources together so the sick people can get better without bankrupting themselves.

For this plan to work, healthy people need to pay into the system. The Affordable Care Act, lovingly known as Obamacare, tries to force healthy people into the system by taxing them if they don’t have insurance. This is not popular, and I’m not surprised. The new plan proposed by the Republicans does away with that, replacing it with an even more ill-advised penalty for coming back.

The core of the problem is this: Your insurance is only as good as the group of people in your pool. If you’re in a pool with lots of young, healthy people, your costs are low. The insurance companies have been slicing us into literally thousands of pools, and have made rules to keep people who are already sick out of any pool at all.

Both ACA and the new Republican plan miss the point. The problem is not how to force healthy people into the pool that has the sick people. The problem is that there are too many pools. Insurance companies make a shit-ton of money slicing and dividing us, and it’s time to come to a simple realization: we’re all in this together.

One pool.

I’m still pretty healthy, but the insurance companies don’t come a-courtin’ the way they used to. I’m sliding into the riskier part of the actuarial table. Still, I work for a company that takes care of its people, to a level I’m not allowed to talk about. I’ve got good health care, though, and my company doesn’t spend as much as it might because overall its employees are a pretty good pool.

Chances are, I’d be on the losing end if all the pools were united, but I’m OK with that. More than OK. Excited at the idea. Excited that the emergency rooms across the nation won’t be clogged with people who needn’t have been there if they had access to basic care. Excited that maybe some of the homeless I pass each day on my bicycle may be able to get the care they need and, yes, get a fucking job.

Side note: the phrases “Get a fucking job, you bum!” and “They took our jobs!” often come out of the same mouth.

So let’s get back to the basics and realize that the offerings of both parties fail to understand the core of the problem. It’s not about pushing people into a pool that’s disadvantageous to them, it’s about getting rid of all the goddam pools.

One pool.

One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

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When does School Let Out?

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Recently I was riding on a path and ahead of me was a small bank of flood-deposited sand and gravel. It looked pretty solid, so I thought I could coast gently over it and be fine.

Nope.

Plunk! and a scraped-up knee, bleeding down my shin as I plodded on to work. “Lesson learned!” I thought to myself. “Unless you have big, fat tires, that’s not the terrain for you.” So at the expense of a little flesh I became a wiser bicyclist.

Yesterday morning I was riding calmly through a little park. Many people walk their dogs on those paths, and I like to give dogs plenty of space when I come up behind them. It’s not fair to the dog to expect them to just step calmly aside when startled from behind. So when the human walking a pretty bulldog didn’t respond to my bell, I did what I often do: I left the sidewalk and circled around on the grass. I made a point of giving him a cheery “Good morning!” as I slogged through the lush lawn.

Only, this particular time, the deep green hid the fact that the step back up to the pavement was rather high. I hit it at too soft an angle, didn’t hop with my front tire, and spilled over the handlebars and onto the pavement. Plunk!

My OTHER knee is now scraped up, and I have a nasty contusion on my thigh where it hit the headlight attached to my handlebars. Lesson learned: Always assume that transition will be dangerous unless handled properly. So at the expense of a little flesh I am now a wiser bicyclist.

I just hope I reach the end of the syllabus soon.

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Knives Episode 28 Published!

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It’s been a while, for which I apologize. This episode was more difficult than I anticipated; on the surface it’s just a series of actions, but adding the nuances of Martin’s voice to narrative was trickier than it should have been.

Next episode has killing in it, so it should be easier.

Behind the scenes, my new health regimen has been a little at odds with my writing routine; so I’ve made the command decision to allow health rule breakage in cases where writing benefits directly. This might be the time to buy shares in Scottish distilleries.

In OTHER behind-the-scenes news, this will be the weekend I straighten out the patron-only content. I promise.

Please enjoy Episode 28: Down the Hole.

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The Washington Video Game

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You know how in a video game, one of those shoot-em-up things, you get to the Boss Lair and there he is, mighty and grotesque, sending fireballs and/or rockets at you. He’s right there, and so you fire off a burst of bullets/lasers/magical exploding crystals to finish him of.

But hold on there Sparky! All those shots are wasted. Why? Because between you and the Boss are the Protector Minions. Until you take care of them, your attacks on the boss are futile. Those minions are pretty badass themselves, and until they’re gone, you can’t kill the Boss.

In Washington, the Protector Minions are the Republican leadership in Congress. Two years ago, they (rightly) hated and distrusted Putin and Russia. (Rightly) hating Russia was part of the Republican identity. Now there will be no investigation into a foreign power influencing our elections, because the Protector Minions have formed a circle around the Boss.

At one point I thought that perhaps if something really terrifically damning came out about our president, that the Protector Minions would turn on him, but it’s too late for that. They have already overlooked too much, compromised conservative ideals too much. They burned their ships. There is nothing they can do to save their careers if Trump goes down.

Though perhaps, I hope, when the missing 19% ownership of the Russian state oil company is resolved, at least a few of the Protector Minions would see the writing on the wall. (You might recall that Putin promised Trump 19% of the company if he got elected. In December, a chunk that size + fees changed hands into a black hole.)

Correction: It would appear that what was offered to Trump’s friends was the brokerage of the 19% deal, according to the Christopher Steele documents. Still a massive pile of cash. Only some of the 19.5% is still missing, but the numbers don’t quite add up.

The question of the moment is not, “How do you impeach a president?” because the House of Representatives holds the power of impeachment and the Protector Minions will not allow that process to start. So first the House must be wrested from the Protector Minions. The real burning question is, “how do you turn enough of congress against the Protector Minions?”

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Brief Movie Synopsis

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Based on the trailer I saw, there’s a movie out with the premise, “A hydrogen bomb didn’t kill this thing, so we’re sending in a badass dude with a machine gun.”

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The Sanctity of Life

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There are a lot of people who voted for our current president with the logic, “he can burn the country to the ground as long as he kills the Affordable Care Act and overturns Roe v. Wade.” We all have our hot-button issues.

I have a friend who might die if the ACA is repealed. I’m not making this shit up to create a straw man, so let me repeat myself. My friend, someone I worked with for several years, needs ongoing care to stay alive and without the ACA he won’t get it. He seriously might die.

He’s an interesting guy; if I have my stories straight he once taught unarmed combat at an anti-terrorism school in exchange for submachine gun training. You know, just your average liberal snowflake. He used to sit outside the office on his lunch breaks playing exotic (to me) musical instruments.

I wonder if any of the no-ACA right-to-lifers out there would like to sit in a room with him and explain their stand on the sanctity of life, and why they are so intent on letting him die.

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Good Times

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I am sitting by the fire with my dog, sipping whiskey, and life is good. The log in the fireplace is the product of a factory, but it burns well. I’m sitting cross-legged, and my foot is going to sleep, but it supports the laptop well. The dog would rather I give her skritchins than use my hands to type, and one way she expresses her preference is by typing for me; I am currently using half my fingers to deflect the dog, while the others fill in for their distracted brethren. The whiskey is an inoffensive blend, as you might expect from Canada, but it goes down nicely.

I would not give up any of those qualifiers (except perhaps the foot gong to sleep); it is the details like that which make the moment real.

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Happy Oughto Oughto Day

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Long ago, when the Muddled Calendar was actually present around here (dang, I hope I have the code for that still), one of the Muddled Faithful suggested that February 2th (pronounced twoth), or 02/02, should be celebrated as oughto, oughto day. It is the day you think of what you ought to do.

In the words of a person known only as Funkmaster G-Force:

Its the 02-02-2005 day, or aught two, aught two. We could make it oughto oughto day ,as in Jerry ought-to ought-to have the Monster Within wrapped up by then, or we oughto oughto make this a beer drinkin holiday.

While FGF’s definition made it more of a deadline, I’m unable to achieve that level of planning so I use it as a New Year’s follow-up. In the 31 days since January 2th, you can get a good idea what sort of vector you’re on, vis-a-vis resolutions for the new year.

Here’s how I’m doing:

Weight: Right on schedule. Five weeks, five pounds. I realize they are the easiest pounds, but I’m still stoked.
Bike miles: WAY behind. The rain is partly to blame, not getting into shape as quickly as I thought I would is another factor.
Writing every day: Ugh. I have to just shake off the way the world is going to hell and write my stories about people in worlds going to hell.
All the other resolutions: I… don’t remember what they were. I’m sure I’m doing well at them, though.

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