Albatross, 194: "Structured procrastination" sounds so much nicer than "work avoidance."
I think I get as much as I do done at work because there is eternally filing I can slough off. I hate filing.
(I realized something about myself not that long ago: I'm a slob, sadly, but I actually love orderliness (hence the accounting major). When stuff stays in order, I'm happy; it's when stuff won't stay in order, but insists on needing to be re-ordered, that I despair and retreat to slobhood. Bookkeeping stays put, generally, so yay bookkeeping. Filing, laundry, dishwashing, haircuts, grrr.)
Chris W., 69: Thank you, but if I may nitpick, the damn thing in the Balkans was June 28, 1914, with ramifications throughout July; hence, the guns of August. (I'm fascinated with the House of Habsburg.)
Chris W., 57: the more I read about WWI the more I'm convinced that, contra the view that the war and it's horrors were somehow inevitable products of technology and politics, the unique awfulness of the western front was produced by a unique confluence of factors that were hardly inevitable.
I'd like to hear you elaborate on this, but you can wait till Teresa posts her usual 11/11 thread if you wish...
Rob Rusick, 65: One of the more interesting books about the Civil War I recall reading in high school...was written by Winston Churchill.
Not that surprising; Churchill's mother was American by birth and he was apparently very attached to her.
Tempting, however, I'm committed to the Sacred Fall Ritual, game 2. Phillies delendi sunt. (The Yankees are Not. Helping.)
I wish I had the chops to be in a Making Light house band. My three weeks in the MIT Concert Band disabused me of such aspirations. There were some very good flutists around, and my two years of lessons didn't come close to measuring up. The MIT musical community was surprisingly strong for not having had a real academic music program at the time ('86-'87); it seems they do have one now.
Xopher, 333: ContentiÅ is clearly the source of our word 'contention'; does it carry the meaning of conflict between different parties that our word does? I realize 'striving' can mean that (cf. 'strife'), but what I meant was striving in the sense of "keep on trying (esp. to improve oneself), even when it's really hard."
The source verb contendÅ, contendere does mean "to argue" as well as "to aspire" (the striving you mean), and a bunch of other things. The most basic, literal meaning is "to stretch" (as in a muscle or a bowstring), the other meanings being metaphorical extensions thereof.
David Harmon, 231, and Inge, 234: I bet "Those who can't do, teach" is one of those ambiguous statements that can sustain multiple interpretations, every single one of which is right, like some of the lines in the Tao Te Ching, and unlike "you can never put too much water in the reactor core." (SNL Transcripts hasn't typed up that sketch, but I'm pretty sure it's "Nuclear Retiree.")
Xopher, 155: Your motto, in Latin: Per dubium, contentiō; per contentionem, eruditiō.
I think you deserve a good Latin motto.
(Abi, feel free to amend as you see fit, my Latin is decidedly rusty.)
TNH: Samurai?
Must've gotten his training from Alberto Fujimori.
I share a birthday with Bolivia, but Bolivia's a lot older.
OTOH, I was born during the 1968 Republican National Convention. Maybe that's why I find Nixon so compelling a fictional character.
Futurama did make Nixon up, right?
Many happy returns to Jon and D.!
Patrick, 133: I have felt for a while now that "politically correct," as used in the US nowadays, is a meaningless locution, and rephrasing for greater precision is pretty much obligatory.
Its opposite just means "obnoxious towards socially acceptable targets."
You've conflated the name, slightly, of Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town. Also, it appears to be all rentals, not condos.
And there is no Manhattan Borough Hall; that big building just north of the Brooklyn Bridge is the Municipal Building (the office of the Manhattan Borough President is in fact situated there).
Otherwise this is very cool. (Next time you cross the Brooklyn Bridge, say hi to my mom, who lives on Adams near Tillary, in the housing complex to your left.)
Re: Village Voice Beatles remasters sidelight: (Man, Ringo didn't carry off the longhair look at all.) Chuck Klosterman has his own take on the Onion A.V. Club.
BTW, a confession: I'm pretty sure that last week I listened to Rubber Soul and Revolver straight through as albums for the first time in my life (I had the Red and Blue Albums growing up). "Taxman" followed by "Eleanor Rigby" is really an odd juxtaposition if you're coming to it fresh in middle age.
72 et seq. re: laser eye surgery: I've never been interested, because one eye is much less nearsighted than the other, enough so that I can move around and function without having my glasses on for brief stretches. The other one is not that severe either; I expect aging to reduce the nearsightedness as time goes on. I may have one nearsighted and one farsighted eye some day.
A liberal acquaintance of mine has a number of conservative friends who he seems to enjoy arguing with, and recently he received the following e-mail forward, which he has asked me to run up the fluorospheric flagpole in the hope of eliciting some succinct refutations of its allegations. I don't know if any of the viral e-mail watchers have seen this one, but it's pretty illuminating:
A Quick History Lesson
The U.S. Post Service was established in 1775. So they've had 234 years to make it work. It is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935. They've had 74 years to make it work. It is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938. They've had 71 years to make it work. It is broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970. They've had 39 years to make it work. It is broke.
The War on Poverty started in 1964. They've had 45 years to make it work. About $1 trillion of taxpayer money is confiscated each year and transferred to “the poor.†It hasn't worked.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. They've had 44 years to make it work. They are both broke.
AMTRAK was established in 1970. They've had 39 years to make it work. Last year it had to be bailed out and today continues running at a loss.
$700 billion bailout of 2008. It has yet to create a single new private-sector job.
Cash for Clunkers in 2009 went broke after 80% of the cars purchased turned out to be produced by foreign companies.
The U.S. government has a 100% failure rate.
My acquaintance says, "I would love to have a pithy set of answers to show that almost all of this happened under Republican control.... [I'm not sure about this, actually. - CQ] I would really love to frame an answer that was factual, and not full of emotion. I would also like to have examples of all the great corporations that are “broke†like AIG, GM, Merrill, etc."
Social Security and the Post Office are fairly easy to debunk, but the others I admit I don't have info handy on. So please, have at it! I'd love to know what you can come up with!
Thanks.
Sean Sakamoto, 157: I wonder if the writer of that Letter from Yale has any scientific training? I can't tell if she understands that "inertial" is not a mere linguistic overextension of "inert," but a genuinely different concept.
Which makes me a bit wary of the rest of what she's saying.
Ah, the things we non-English majors choke on...
Serge, 124: Some years ago, I'd idly considered trying to write something where the financial markets achieved sentience. A limited grasp of the economics plus a lack of literary talent kept me from doing it, but if someone else who has the chops wants to give it a try, feel free!
Corporate personhood is a terrible thing. More so because it came about via dictum in the Santa Clara railroad case, assumed rather than argued. The book Gangs of America was pretty good about the historical background, but the author loses his focus in the latter part of the book. Anyone know of a better book on the subject?
Incidentally, Fred Clark at Slacktivist, who's been on a tear this week, discusses Delaware (where he lives) and its role in enabling corporate power over the last century.
Yarrow, 53: where do you get your FICA percentage from? FICA as such (aka Social Security) is 6.2% of gross income payable by the employer and an equal 6.2% withheld from the employee's gross (up to the $102K limit). Then Medicare, which is frequently lumped into FICA proper in casual discussion, is 1.45% from the employer and 1.45% withheld from the employee (no annual limit, every dollar earned is taxed). So I'd have expected to see 6.2% or 7.45%, not 7.07%.
If you're self employed, you get to pay both halves, so you pony up 12.4% FICA and 2.9% Medicare on your earnings, lucky you!
Also, mmmm, defined-benefit pensions...
The deductible is the base portion of a medical bill that the patient has to pay before the insurance covers the remainder. Often once the deductible has been paid, the insurance covers all expenses above that amount for the plan year. I suppose the insurance wants the patient to have some skin in the game for some reason. Copayments are a portion of a medical bill, generally an office visit, that the patient is responsible for regardless of whether the deductible has been met or not. They're similar ideas but not interchangeable.
Then there are sometimes limits to the coverage above which you need to pay out of pocket. I'm close to my limit for my dental coverage, so once the crown I'm waiting for is put in, I'll need to pay the rest from my flex spending money and, since I think that won't be enough, whip out my checkbook. I set the flex spending at the amount I did because of teeth that needed fixing. I have no problem with spending all of it because it's a use-it-or-lose-it kind of thing, but I still haven't bought new the glasses and orthotics I should really have.
I meant copayments more than deductibles when I posted above, but I have a cold so my concentration is off. I think I have some deductible or other anyway, I've been to so many doctors this year it's all a blur by now. And in spite of all this, I'm basically healthy!
BTW, seeing the other figures popping up, either my math is way off or I'm getting robbed blind. I do feel my coverage is very good, though, so maybe I'm getting what I'm paying for.
I'm in New York. My health insurance covers Avram and me; Avram's income is nominal, so I'm not including it in these calculations. (For the record, NYC sales tax just went up to 8.875%, having been 8.375% through July. I rent my apartment, so property taxes aren't an issue.)
My company's health insurance is about half covered by the company and half out of my pocket. This includes regular medical and dental. We also have a flexible spending plan to cover non-insured costs like deductibles and prescriptions. My health insurance contribution and the flex spending contribution are pre-tax, so for the sake of the calculation, I'm adding those amounts to my take-home. I'm not counting the employer health insurance contribution as part of my gross or of "i". These numbers are based entirely on my taxable income and my outlay.
That said, I agree with Joseph M. that the second - in the second equation should be a +, and on that basis this is what I come up with:
(a) 26%
(b) 44%
I've had a fair amount of pricey dental work, optical and gynecological issues, and multiple prescriptions, plus these are New York doctors. Still, that's a lot to shell out.
If I factor out Avram's portion of the health coverage, the latter figure becomes 32%. If I throw the employer numbers back into the mix, I get (a) 35% and (b) 51% with Avram and 40% without.
This is back of the envelope number-crunching and I'm juggling so many balls that I could have gotten something wrong.
That we're living as comfortably as we do, all things considered (did I mention I have student loans I'm paying off on top of everything else?), can be attributed almost entirely to NYC rent stabilization.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 76 |
| 2008 | 103 |
| 2007 | 10 |
Total: 189 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Chris Quinones:
Show all comments by Chris Quinones.