Humor

Just looking at random stuff tonight, but this is sad.

Poor girl doesn’t have a chance, 14 and wearing hot pants on Letterman. We all have a good sense of how this ends.

The Genetic Protection in Insurance Coverage Act of 2007 basically says that insurance companies can not discriminate based on genetic information.

I find this concept amazing.

For a second think about insurance companies.

one mississippi.

Insurance companies are a simple exercise. They take individual risk, weigh it against the pool of insured or likely insured and make a decision on how much a person is worth. They figure when a person is most likely to die and how much they need to charge that person in order for them to profi over the life of the policy.

If I were to apply for a new insurance policy they would weigh (no pun intended) all of the negative factors and balance against their pool and give me a monthly payment. This is why actuaries exist, think ‘About Schmidt.’

So, insurance companies have a good baseline of study. A 29 year-old white male with my height and weight with my socio-economic-status should live to be about 70 (give or take 50 years based on modern medicine).

What amazes me is that we have decided the point at which insurance companies can stop gathering information and must start making guesses. Basically, Math (actuarial science) is ok, genetics is not.

How can we possibly make some sort of arbitrary decision on how much knowledge is ok? Why not assail the actual algorithms altogether (that sentence took some work, but it is fun). How can we allow for insurance companies to compile one list of happenings and base a payment but not another?

How can we possibly not agree that more information is better?

It’s a tricky-deal. Should we punish those, by having higher premiums, who are weak? Now I am entering Darwinian zone here, but why shouldn’t the most healthy of our species be rewarded for their superior genes? We’ve been playing that game for, well, a long time. Then, there is that whole euthanasia thing.

Now, what if I were to argue that we don’t really make any decisions? My ability to be fat is a direct result of how I was raised within my genetic disposition. Nature and nurture. If it is a choice, then it is ok for insurance companies to gouge me–ask smokers (and actuaries usually live within these lifestyle factors). But what if I can’t control my weight? By that I mean any disposition or symptom that we show may not be a choice, but in fact may programmed. What if that is really true? (This goes for any kind of disorder in which people make ‘choice’. I am simply picking on myself for expediency.)

I don’t know, it really fascinated me tonight. There was a dude on Colbert who was talking about this. 2 things struck me.

1) He decided he didn’t want to know if he was disposed toward Alzheimer’s.
2) He had a gene that would say he would be bald by an 80% certainty. He has a beautiful healthy swatch of hair.

Anyway, I was amazed that this guy wouldn’t want to know, and, in the context of his argument, it seemed amazingly disarming. He too was drawing a line of should-be-known-knowledge.

This is what I am saying. Either you want to know or you don’t.

The march of rationalism has and will continue to run against an ethics that was born in a previous era (thank you David Harvey). Every time we run from that we rob ourselves of understanding. How can ever knowing more be a bad thing? It might mess up how we look at the world, but there is no value in pretending that known knowledge doesn’t exist.

Like I said, half-formed.

Two final thoughts.

1) Look at how many tags this topic invokes.
2) I looked up the decay/decadence idea from my last post. It comes from the Latin root–as M-W online states (but won’t let me copy and paste off their website [this is particulary interesing in light on the post, why not let me copy from a definition--how is this sacred knowledge?]) from Late Latin decadere to fall, sink.

as part of the iGoogle main page you can see the “joke of the day” which is basically a feed from a site run by Comedy Central.  It’s a good source of amusement.  Here was today’s which I thought was pretty funny given our collective predilection for this…

From a standup by Christian Finnegan:

Christian Finnegan: Trivial Pursuit

A couple of radio DJ from Canada prank called Governor Palin pretending to be the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. AND SHE FELL FOR IT. There has to be a) a reality check by her and her peeps, and b) a more legitimate way to call other heads of state. But, hey, she has plenty of experience, right? Oi vey.

Update: I found more Palin stupidity at Salon.com . If McPalin wins, we are so fucked. If they lose, and the Republican Party runs Palin in 2012, they are fucked. She is not worthy of being President, but then again, neither is Bush.

I am starting to believe that the Republican Party is much worse off than the Democratic Party – aside from the fact that the Republicans have a larger base than the Dems. I am forseeing a split in the Republican Party. The relatively sane fiscal conservatives (Libertarians) of the party are going to get fed up with the bat-shit-crazy social conservatives and bail. I look forward to that day because the social conservatives are ruining this country for everyone, even themselves. They are just too myopic to realize it.

With a killer ad.

Great stuff.

So, with little fanfare, here is my first official post to cooperative blog…

At first, I was excited that my vote in CO may actually contribute to electing our next president. It didn’t take long to realize that opportunity came with a constant barrage of political ads, every commercial break, all day long, every day, for the last month and a half. I’m now so terrified that electing either candidate will lead to an economic meltdown, lost jobs, and wars with Iran, Korea, and Pakistan I’m going to use the time I would have spent in line waiting to vote to build a bunker under my deck.

Since discovering the mute button on my remote, my paranoia has improved, but the visuals in this ad caught my attention…

Department of peace

In Denver’s Senate race Mark “Boulder hippie” Udall is squaring off with Bob “big oil” Schaffer in a pretty nasty campaign. I’m a big fan of Mark Udall, but I got to give it up to Bob (or atleast his C4 political action committee) for cracking me up with this ad…

It has sparked a cease and desist order from Udall and an even bigger debate about the role of freedom of speech for political action committees who have no supervision or regulation under either candidates political machine…

http://www.reporterherald.com/news_story.asp?ID=19367

Chadd

I’ve never read FoxNews before. I just assumed that they were as bad as I have heard. But now I’ve read it, and it is fricken awesome.

For instance, in an article about Earth existing in a cosmic bubble, they lead with with this

If the notion of dark energy sounds improbable, get ready for an even more outlandish suggestion.

I mean that is awesome on so many levels. First, they know about dark energy, awesome. Second, they set the tone early – “OMG you are totally not going to believe this but …,” awesome. Third, the rest of the article is reasonably well informed and well written, doubly awesome. Fourth, they play to their base awesomely,

When Nicholas Copernicus argued that it made much more sense for the Earth to be revolving around the sun than vice versa, it revolutionized science.

Since then, most theories have to pass the Copernican test. If they require our planet to be unique, or our position to be exalted, the ideas often seem unlikely.

Why does our placement in the universe make us unique or worthy of exaltation? Maybe we’re at a cocktail party and we’re stanky and the rest of the universe is trying to avoid us. Have they ever thought of that? That sucks. I don’t want to be stanky and alone. I wanna be doing a keg stand* with everyone around me screaming, “chug, chug, chug . . .”

And then in the very next, sorry for the non sequitur, article that I read about a British dude saying he invented the iPod in 1979, FoxNews says, “London’s Daily Mail, always ready to wave the Union Jack in the face of boorish Americans . . .” Seriously, that is awesome. I wonder what they say about the French? I might become a daily FoxNews reader.

* I’ve never actually done a keg stand.

Paris Hilton totally owns McCain.

What if the corporate design process was used to design the stop sign?