Distracted Driving

Okay, I promise that my next post will be something more lighthearted, but I felt in important to share this compelling video.

I see a lot of distracted driving on my commute every workday: people talking on the phone or texting, eating or drinking in such a way that their vision is blocked, applying makeup, shaving, reading, wrangling kids in the back seat. Nine times out of ten, if I see someone drift in and out of their lane and then I pull up even with them at a stoplight, the person is distracted in some way or another. It's pretty scary sometimes.

Why Our Health Care System Has Gone Completely Insane

How American Health Care Killed My Father is an article in The Atlantic magazine that constitutes the most clear-thinking analysis of what's wrong with the American health care system that I have ever read. Read it. Read it right now.

(Thanks to Jim for sending me the link.)

Art and the Game

I've been thinking recently about how video games are perceived. Yes, I know, not exactly a “deep” subject, but stay with me. For some reason that I don't fully grasp, video games seem to be relegated to second-class status compared to other forms of entertainment.

It's easy to see how this could have started. A quarter century ago, video games were fairly primitive. Your character was a blocky splotch on a screen drawn in black and white, or at best, preschool colors. Music and sound were equally primitive or nonexistent. The plot (when there was one) was insulting to an adult's intelligence. Most grown-ups didn't want to play video games for the same reason that they didn't feel inclined to eat macaroni and cheese very often: maybe their kids thought it was great, but their experienced palate demanded something more sophisticated. Only a very few games rose above the crowd and had something resembling a real plot, but most of those were text-based interactive fiction, meaning you had to type out what you wanted your character to do, then read the result. The primitive text parsers of the time made this less than fun: it's kind of hard to get into the story when you're too busy trying to figure out which synonym of the word “attach” the parser will accept. And for every really good IF title, there were scores of lousy ones.

The perceptions didn't keep pace with the technology. Many games today have deep and interesting plots coupled with equally deep and interesting gameplay. The visuals are beginning to seriously rival Hollywood. The beeps that passed for sound and music have been replaced with high-quality sound effects and rich soundtracks. I have played some games with soundtracks recorded by full orchestras. There's even a rich and vibrant independent game industry.

In fact, the visuals are now becoming so realistic that I think they're starting to suffer from the opposite problem: diminishing returns. I mean, it's amazing that the technology can make a rendering of a human that is so detailed that you could count the pores on their face, but ironically, the closer a rendering gets to reality, the less impact each improvement has. Games (and CG effects in general) have been going for hyper-realism, but what I want to see is hyper-unrealism. I see pores every day when I look in the mirror; show me something that I have never seen before. In fact, this trailer for the upcoming game “Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet” is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.

Anyway, there's one thing that a game can do which Hollywood's offerings cannot: actively engage you in the proceedings. Because you control the actions of the protagonist, the character becomes an extension of yourself. A well-crafted game will nurture that relationship so that you feel empathy with the protagonist more than would be possible with a film. Games which employ the first-person perspective take it even one step further, having you see the world through the protagonist's eyes. Some even make the protagonist silent and give no clues to their identity, thereby allowing you to make yourself the protagonist. (Human beings seem to have an odd way of filling out missing information with parts of themselves, resulting in a combined work that's more compelling than the work alone. It's why a monster movie is scarier when you never get a good look at the monster until the end, and why people are often disappointed with movie versions of books.)

Despite these advantages, the video game remains a lesser citizen in the entertainment world. Video games are not recognized by any of the major award shows, the increasing blur between movies and games notwithstanding. While movie soundtracks can be found nearly anywhere music is sold, game soundtracks, which are often just as good these days, are rarely seen. Many people accept that some movies can be considered art, but few grant the same status to games, despite the fact that their production frequently involves many of the same artistic skills. Why can an actor perform or a composer write music for a movie, and it's art, but if they do it for a game, it's not?

If you want to experience games as art for yourself, I'd suggest the following, in no particular order:

• Prince of Perisa: The Sands of Time
• Aquaria
• Beyond Good & Evil (no relation to a certain book by a so-called philosopher)
• World of Goo
• Paper Moon
• Psychonauts

Why All Things Medical are Currently on my Bad Side

Sorry for the long silence. Not only have I been quite busy, but I haven't felt like I had anything to say on my blog for some time. Today, however... oh, do I have something to say...

For quite some time, I have taken a rather unconventional medication for attention deficit disorder, phenytoin. Typically prescribed for epilepsy, it has been helpful in the past to help me deal with ADD symptoms, but recently it has become gradually less effective. While upping the dosage might work, I wanted to find out if there was something out there that might work better.

My doctor had me try a couple of different medications, one of which did nothing for me and the other of which was no better than the phenytoin, and both were significantly more expensive. Then he wanted to do a blood test to ensure that bumping up the dosage wouldn't result in toxic levels of phenytoin in my blood. While waiting for the results, he wanted me to try one more medication. This one, called modafinil, is typically used for narcolepsy and other similar conditions, but it is used off-label as a treatment for ADD.

Usually, from my perspective, ADD medication has little noticeable effect to me, because I'm on the “inside.” My perceptions come from my brain, which is the thing being regulated, so even if there is a significant change, I may not notice much of a difference. I generally have to rely on my wife to tell me whether a medication is effective or not. Not so with the modafinil. The sample I received did remarkable things for me: I felt more alert, more aware, and more “present” than I can ever remember feeling before. If it was that much of a difference for me, you can imagine what an improvement my wife saw.

As you might imagine, I was all over this modafinil stuff, but there was a stumbling block. First of all, it's still under patent by Cephalon, Inc., marketed under the name Provigil. Provigil is quite expensive, and my insurance company refuses to cover it. Generic modafinil will not be available until at least April 2012.

Cephalon, faced with the prospect of the bottom dropping out of the market for Provigil when the patent expires, is resorting to a business tactic that could be considered pretty clever, although I'd prefer to use the term “scummy.” They raised the price of Provigil by 74% over four years, then came out with a newer, longer-acting version of the drug called Nuvigil. Nuvigil is still expensive (enough that my insurance company doesn't want to cover it, either), but it is more reasonably priced than Provigil, despite the fact that it is supposedly a superior drug. This will motivate patients to move to Nuvigil, which is covered by a patent that lasts until 2023 instead of only 2012. (Incidentally, the same company was obliged to pay a $425 million federal settlement for marketing their products in an illegal fashion.) EDIT: FallenAttorney mentions an even scummier tactic by Cephalon to wring more money out of Provigil; see his comment below. I had read about it before but had forgotten to mention it here.

Anyway, so I go back to my doctor and tell him that modafinil is unfortunately off the table. Since the phenytoin blood levels came back fine, I presumed that he would simply up my phenytoin dosage. However, he told me that the didn't want to do that because he felt that the risk of side effects was too great. My beef with this is not that he was unwilling to increase the dosage. If a doctor says it's unsafe, then I don't want to do it. What annoys me is that he charged me and my insurance for a test to see if it was safe to increase the dosage for a medication, when he had no intention of increasing it. If he felt that it was unsafe, he should have told me that up front and skipped the blood test. In the end, I'm back where I started, taking the same medication I was before, except that I'm several co-pays poorer.

So I know that there is a medication that can make a big difference in my life, but I can't afford to get it out of pocket and my insurance won't cover it. (I could probably afford it if I fired my insurance company, but that brings up a whole separate set of problems.) I have a doctor who I feel does not have my best interests at heart. All things medical are really grating my cheese these days.

While my hands are tied with regards to the insurance industry or Cephalon, there is one thing I can do: Doctor, you're fired.

Trillion with a T

I'll try not to talk about bailout/stimulus-related stuff after this, but I ran across a page that really put things into perspective. Have you ever wondered what a trillion dollars looks like? (This is why I react negatively to the latest rash of advertisements that use the word “stimulus.”)

A while back, someone posted a thread on a message forum I frequent, asking the following question: “If you had one billion dollars, how would you spend it?” (That's billion, not trillion.) The question wasn't asking you to just rattle off a few things you'd buy, it was asking you to sit down and give every cent of that $1 billion a name, to really think about it.

So I gave it a shot. For me, a chunk of it wouldn't actually get spent; I would do boring things with it like save/invest it. However, I quickly discovered something startling: I was having trouble figuring out how to use it all. I had imagined it would be difficult to decide how to spend a small amount of money; a large amount, I reasoned, would be easy to fritter away. I did all the responsible and charitable things I could think of with my imaginary wealth, and there was still a bunch left over. I started indulging in fun, frivolous things, and I still wasn't spending it all. I went nuts, spending the invisible money like a whole aircraft carrier full of drunken sailors, and I still couldn't spend it all. I finally spent the last of it by divvying it up between the investments and charitable donations I'd already thought were getting insanely generous chunks of cash.

It's pretty clear to me that, when it comes to money, most politicians and I are not even on the same planet.

Bill Watterson Explains the Bailout

I have mentioned my admiration for Calvin and Hobbes previously. What I didn't remember was a particular Sunday strip he did a decade and a half ago which seems eerily reminiscent of today's economic situation. That is, until someone emailed it to me today. I'll refrain from posting the comic itself to avoid running afoul of copyright issues, but here's a transcript of the comic. Setting: Calvin sits behind a makeshift lemonade stand (an inverted cardboard box), on which rest a cup and a pitcher of greenish liquid with a lemon suspended in it. On the front of the box is scrawled: "Lemonade $15.00/glass." Suzie comes up to the stand:

Suzie: 15 bucks a glass?!

Calvin: That's right! Want some?

Suzie: How do you justify charging 15 dollars?!

Calvin: Supply and demand.

Suzie: (looking around) Where's the demand?! I don't see any demand!

Calvin: There's lots of demand!

Suzie: (skeptical) Yeah?

Calvin: Sure! As the sole stockholder in this enterprise, I demand monstrous profit on my investment! And as president and CEO of the company, I demand an exorbitant annual salary! And as my own employee, I demand a high hourly wage and all sorts of company benefits! And then there's overhead and actual production costs!

Suzie: But it looks like you just threw a lemon in some sludge water!

Calvin: Well, I have to cut expenses somewhere if I want to stay competitive.

Suzie: What if I got sick from that?

Calvin: “Caveat emptor” is the motto we stand behind! I'd have to charge more if we followed health and environmental regulations.

Suzie: You're out of your mind. I'm going home to drink something else.

Calvin: (enraged) Sure! Put me out of a job! It's you anti-business types who ruin the economy!

Calvin fumes for a bit, then goes and finds his mom.

Calvin: I need to be subsidized.

I tell ya, it's spooky.

I am a User Interface Snob

What follows is a rant on a geeky topic that most normal people probably don't give a lick about. You have been warned.

One of my pet peeves is a poorly designed user interface, not just for software or web sites, but in physical objects, too. A common example is door handles in public buildings. The two kinds you encounter most often are the vertical handle and the horizonal bar that goes across the entire door. A person encountering the former will automatically tend to feel that the door should be pulled to open it, while the latter causes people to want to push it open. Yet sometimes, you encounter a vertical handle on a door that has to be pushed. They have to put a “PUSH” sign on it so that people will know they have to push it, and you will still be able to see people trying to pull it all day. Instead of putting up a sign, why not just use the right handle?

I ran into another one just now, when scanning a file with the AVG virus/malware scanner. It's nice that it scans for both viruses (Why aren't they called virii?) and spyware, but the results screen leaves something to be desired. It basically says something like this:

Infections found:	0
Infected objects removed or healed:	0
Not removed or healed:	0
Spyware found:	0
Spyware removed:	0
Not removed:	0

Every time that screen comes up, my brain has to sit there and figure out where I'm supposed to look to tell whether it found anything or not. The screen ought to look something like this:

NO BAD STUFF FOUND!

Then there's that recorded voice that tells you, “You must first dial a 1 before calling this number.” Why doesn't the phone system just pretend that you dialed the 1 and connect you? I mean, we have computers now! The system clearly knows what you meant, so why not just do it?

The best interface designers understand how to make things that just do the right thing with a minimum of hand-holding. They don't clutter up an already busy amusement park by putting up a sign that reads “Don't sit on the railing;” they just cover it with bumps or pokey bits that make it incredibly uncomfortable to sit on. They don't write software error messages that just tell you that it didn't like what you did for some arcane, programmery reason; they write ones that tell you what to do about it, or if feasible, make it impossible for you to make the mistake in the first place.

So what do you wish was better designed?

Paid to Campaign?

I don't plan on talking much about politics on my blog, mainly because thinking about it too much makes me want to take a shower. But one thing that really grates my cheese is this whole business of campaigning while in office. Take the two current major presidential candidates, for example. Both McCain and Obama are senators, so they are supposed to be representing their respective states in the Senate. Right now, though, they're spending very little time actually doing the job for which their constituents voted them in (and for which taxpayers are paying them). Am I the only one bothered by this?

So a question: Say you're basically phoning it in at work because you're too busy looking for your next job. How long would it be before you'd be fired?

I Smell Bogus Emails

I've become well-known at the office as the guy who, upon receiving one of those forwarded emails from a co-worker, will immediately go hit up Snopes to find out if it's true. Of course, one might question the reliability of Snopes itself, but in all seriousness, if it's been in a few hundred inboxen and the truth of the matter can be found, Snopes will find it.

It astounds me that anyone could get a few of these emails and not start to develop a healthy case of cynicism about what shows up in their inbox. Not long ago, I heard a co-worker (who will remain unnamed to protect the guilty) ranting about how members of Congress have a taxpayer-funded pension system that pays a full cost-of-living adjusted salary for the rest of their lives, and that they don't have to pay into Social Security. Knowing Congress, people readily believe this, but it's bunk. He'd never admit it if he was confronted directly, but in a little, unexamined part of his brain, he's saying, “I know it's true! I read it on the Internet!”

So I'm here to help. I have a simple, straightforward rule that correctly determines whether or not a personal email is bogus 99% of the time—way better than weather forecasters or stock market analysts. Here it is:

If an email's subject line starts with “FW:”, it is bogus.

I am completely serious. Follow that rule, and you'll be right so often that in many peoples' minds it will border on the supernatural. But if that person you're thinking of right now that just can't help but hit the forward button would like a bit more detail, here are some additional things to check:

• Does Snopes say it's a hoax? I've occasionally ran into something that wasn't already covered by Snopes, but usually they've already done the grunt work, and they always provide authoritative sources.
• Does the message urge you to forward it to everyone you know? This is the whole point of the hoax. Why legitimate messages are less likely to do this is explained further on.
• Does the email claim that someone can tell if you forward it? There is no reliable way to count the number of people to which you forward a message, and nobody's going to pay anybody else because you forwarded it. Bill Gates didn't get rich by throwing money away, so you can bet he isn't going to be sending you a check because you spammed your entire address book. The Red Cross isn't going to donate money for a sick child because you forward an email, either, even if they could tell that you did. Charitable organizations like the Red Cross receive donations.
• Does the message properly cite sources? Political and virus emails, in particular, are notorious for spewing facts and not backing them up with reliable sources. That doesn't mean just name-dropping, it means giving you a link to the official web site of the source where you can confirm the information for yourself.
• Is the original author anonymous? If someone stands by their claims, they put their name to it.
• Is the (alleged) original author famous? Famous people don't do these things by email because email isn't authoritative. They put what they want to say on their web site. So if you get an email that says that political candidate A said X and Y about political candidate B, you can almost guarantee that candidate A has already posted something on their web site refuting it. An email can come from anywhere, but if candidate A's web site says something, then candidate A is saying it. That doesn't mean candidate A isn't deluded or lying, but at least you can confirm the source. Besides, candidate honesty is a whole separate issue.
• Is the email vague on the specifics (names, dates, places)? It may seem like a waste of time to you and me, but hoax emails don't just materialize from the ether. Someone decided that they had time to sit down and write it. However, they usually don't take the time to make the story believable beyond the first glance. Authoritative stories will give names for those involved, say when and where the described events happened.
• Does the email stress that its contents are “completely true,” “perfectly legal” or “not a hoax?” If they have to say it, odds are, it's a lie.
• Does the message claim to give information that not many people know, or that some organization doesn't want you to have? This is just a hook to get you to believe. After all, who doesn't like to be “in the know?”
• Is the message unprofessionally written? Hoax authors are notoriously bad writers. If you see spelling errors, ALL CAPS, or multiple question/exclamation marks in a row, it's a hoax.
• Does the message warn you about an unusual way to die, become injured or contract a horrible disease, or give an unorthodox solution to preventing it? Fear of death and pain are strong motivators, and are therefore effective ways to get people to buy in on what you're saying. You may have heard of the practitioners of this method in the real world; they're known as quacks.

The Art of Manliness

I told Gorgeous Wife the other day that I had recently started following a blog titled The Art of Manliness. Her automatic response was, “Isn't that some sort of oxymoron?” It was spoken in jest, of course, but the sentiment gave me something to think about: When did “manliness” stop being a virtue? I contend that it never did, but that the public's opinion of men and their idea of what manliness is has changed. In fact, I think most people spend so much time soaking in what society tells them about masculinity that they don't really think about how their own true feelings on the subject might differ.

Part of reason that manliness is looked down upon, I feel, rests with the feminist movement. In the laudable desire to correct wrongs against women, society has now swung the other direction and demeans men. Just as an example, how many modern sitcoms (say, in the last twenty-five years or so) regularly portray the husband as dim-witted and clueless, while his wife rolls her eyes and valiantly compensates for his idiocies? Lots of them. How many frequently show the reverse scenario? Maybe they exist, but I can't think of any. A sitcom which attempted to do so today would probably be criticized as being sexist. It seems that, as a society, we have come to believe that if you make fun of women, it's sexist, but if you make fun of men, it's humor.

The other reason that I feel that manliness is scorned today is that the accepted definition of manliness has changed. “Manliness,” for some reason, has become synonymous with machismo and boorish behavior, but this was not always so. Manliness, as it ought to be defined, is a positive trait, and is just as positive as and is complimentary to womanliness. The idea of masculinity and femininity both being positive and complimentary traits is not new; in fact, it is present in Asian philosophy and is one aspect represented by the Taoist taijitu (☯). (Not being a follower of Taoism myself, I welcome correction in phrasing from any actual Taoism adherents.)

Unfortunately, there are a lot of men who are also deluded in their understanding of the meaning of manliness, and whose behavior only reinforces the misconception. That's one reason why I was so pleased to run across the aforementioned blog. Not only does it set straight what manliness really means, it tries to help men who may have the wrong ideas about masculinity to change their behavior and stop reinforcing the stereotypes. I'd encourage the men out there (and women, too!) to take a peek at The Art of Manliness and see what it really means to be a man.

Just as an example, they've recently been doing a series of articles about Benjamin Franklin's Thirteen Virtues, and just a couple of days ago they did a post about the last one, humility. After the discussion of the topic, the article presented ways to practice humility in everyday life:

1. Give credit where credit is due.
2. Don't name/experience drop. (Don't be constantly talking about how great you are.)
3. Do what's expected, but don't make a big deal out of it.
4. Perform service and charity anonymously.
5. Stop one-upping people.

If these aren't the antithesis of what is popularly considered to be masculine, I don't know what is. I was particularly amused by the video at the end that talked about one way to stop the chronic “one-uppers:” become an astronaut and walk on the moon:

Edit: Video no longer available. Bummer.

Anyway, this is my first post where I rant about a topic of any real weight, so I'd encourage you to share your thoughts. Drop me a comment.