Goodreads

Goodreads is a website were you can review books and discuss them with friends. You can build a collection of books that you've read, are currently reading, or want to read. It's easy to find other people who like similar books.

I just got a Barnes and Noble membership, so I'm looking for some good book recommendations that I can read during my lunch break. Something that I can carry into work without being embarrassed when the judge asks me what I'm reading. I know everyone hates the idea of signing up for another social website, but it is really a blast to comb though old books that you haven't thought about in years and tell everyone what you loved (or hated) about it.

Sign up and tell me what you like!

Magic Woes

Our life has been a pale shadow of what it once was since Becca left her magic cards at Shayne's house after the shin-dig. :( We hope to recover them next weekend.

Movin' On Up

To the North Side!!!

We have a tentative agreement to rent a duplex on the north side of Indianapolis. We are going to deliver the security deposit this Monday and will be getting the keys right away. Our lease won't actually start until August 1, but the landlord (who seems very cool) said that we could move in anytime we want, and he won't start charging us rent until the 1st.

This is a huge relief for Becca and I, as our lease here at the Lodge was running out at the end of July and we have already told them that we will not be renewing. Best of all we have almost 3 full weeks to move, so we don't have to hurry and move in a panicked rush.

The new place is just north of college and 465. We are only 1.1 miles from Ben's apartment (my little bro), so we expect to see him coming over to do laundry once or twice a week. We are also only about 1/2 mile from Becca's work. Becca is very excited to get bicycles as we will be within biking distance of

1. Her work
2. The Monon
3. Ben's Apartment
4. Lots of restaurants and shops

I measured on Google Earth today and there is a bar within .3 miles of our front door. Score! There is also a karate school about the same distance, so I'll definitely be checking both of those out as soon as we get settled.

Other neat house stuff: Gas range (!!!), a BIG fridge, washer/dryer hookups, 2 bedrooms (i.e. 1 bedroom, 1 office), AT&T U-verse, and a yard! We are contemplating getting a doggy-dog.

BTW, if anyone has a couch in fair or better condition lying around we might like to make you an offer.

Work news: I'm getting a promotion starting the 21st. I've been doing the new job for a couple of weeks already, and I enjoy it. It's a bit more money and there is more variety in the stuff that I get to do. It's in the same office so I get work with the same people -- I've been consistently lucky in getting great co-workers in my work-life, and I'm glad that this job is no exception.

Sorry for the extraordinarily long break from blogging. I will be more productive (thanks for prodding me Megan! I need it once in a while!) If anyone would like my new address just shoot me an email and I will give you the co-ordinates.

work work work

I got a job! Hooray! aw, bummer, now I have to go to work... Oh well, at least I will have something new to complain about. :-) It is a big relief to have a steady paycheck coming in again.

I start tomorrow morning. The rate of pay is about the same as my last job, but they won't be screwing me out of 3 hours/week, so there'll be a small jump in weekly pay. They also have insurance, including vision and dental. I'll have a retirement plan (not that I plan to do this forever) that already has some money in it because my job at the Statehouse also contributed to the public employees retirement fund. The staff members that I've met so far seem very nice. I'm really looking forward to getting started.

Back from the Dead

Well it's been a few days since I've posted. Most of what has been going on in Ericville has not been the kind of stuff that anyone would find interesting. After helping a friend move on Saturday I went home and promptly became horribly sick. Two days and fifty million mad dashes to the bathroom later I was somewhat recovered.

I had a job interview on Monday for a court clerk position in Noblesville. It's not exactly what you would call "lucrative," but it is what you would call a "job." It's got all these funny things like "benefits" and "insurance." I'm not sure what those are, but I have a feeling that I want some. I have a good feeling about it. I had a chance to meet the judge and the office manager.

Garfield

Jeremy - an old friend from Ball State - clued me in to this website where Garfield is redacted from old Garfield comics. From the website:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

This is really funny. Check it out.

Trivia - Jim Davis is from Muncie, Indiana, where Ball State is located.

Science Confirms the Obvious

Slashdot brings us a study [PDF] from our very own Indiana University (go Hoosiers!) that confirms what we already knew: Men have no idea whether women are interested in them or are just being friendly. Interestingly, it seems that we are equally likely to confuse friendliness for sexual attraction as vice versa.

From the story:

Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall. For instance, the college guys sometimes mistook sexual advances as pal-like gestures.

Morale of the the story - go for it, you never know. Good Luck!

P.S. How do they keep getting funding for this stuff?

Sicko

I went on quite a rant about socialized medicine on a friend's blog and thought I would post it here and see what everybody thinks. Enjoy! ;-)

I was working at Blockbuster when Sicko came out and was subjected to the trailer for it every 25 minutes or so. It shows that scene where Moore attempts to get into Guantanamo Bay (I vote we let him in) and a few voice overs from chubby himself. My favorite is the quote that the US comes in at 37 in a WHO health care ranking (2000). Moore chimes in "right ahead of Slovenia."

I was interested in this ranking when I studied it in my law school Bio-ethics course and I looked into the methodology a bit. Turns out that most of the US's crummy ranking can be attributed to a shoddy performance in the rather subjective category of "fairness." The US was demoted in fairness for such actions as creating Health Savings accounts and having patients pay more out of pocket than other countries. Keep in mind that they're not saying it was too expensive; they just want less to be out of pocket (and more from taxes or prepaid insurance). Saying that people paid too much out of pocket implies that the WHO knows what the correct amount is to be paid out of pocket (vs. paid by insurance or government). This is obviously a political judgment.

In a couple of less subjective areas the US was considered a poor performer. Infant mortality is singled out by Moore, who points out that Cuba has a lower rate. But no-one in their right mind is rushing off to Cuba to have their babies delivered. Turns out that the reason the US doesn't do well in this category is because our extraordinary medical technology has made almost every infant savable. We attempt to save infants that we know will have severe health problems. Children die here who would have never made it to birth in much of the world. Low infant mortality rates in Cuba are accompanied by one of the world's highest abortion rates. This is probably not a coincidence.

It is worth pointing out that the WHO ranked the US #1 in "responsiveness to patients' needs in choice of provider, dignity, autonomy, timely care, and confidentiality."

When you look at particular diseases, it is clear who the winner is. The United States has the best survival rates for most diseases. For example, our survival rates top the charts when you look at cancer, pneumonia, heart disease, and AIDS.

Considering cancer in particular, the US has a 5-year survival rate of 62.9% for men and 66.3% for women. The UK, on the other hand, has 44.8% for men and 52.7% for women. (BTW, this data is from the British medical journal The Lancet)

The real danger of socialized or single-payer systems is the threat to innovation. Most of the world's new medicine comes from the United States because it is actually *worth it* to do the research here, given the astronomical costs of medical research and the high rate of failure. Of course, there are exceptional doctors all over the world, but innovation comes mostly from the United States. Half of all new medicines introduced in the last 20 years are from the United States. 18 of the last 25 Nobel Prize winners in medicine were either Americans or foreigners working in America.

The rest of the world benefits from the rewards of the research because, once the work is done, Merck might as well sell its new-fangled drugs world-wide. After all, the Americans will pay for the research with the high profit resulting from the hard-won patent. Who cares if they are barely profitable elsewhere? Manufacturing drugs is easy. Inventing them is hard.

You might be better off having a sprained (turned? rolled? i forget) ankle in France, but you're definitely more likely to survive a major illness here in the good old us of a.

Michael Moore says he doesn't like documentaries. Maybe that's why he doesn't make them.

I bought a - twitch, twitch - coffee - twitch - maker!

And it's awesome! Here I've been fussing around with a little one-cup French press for years. I broke it through over-use.

After working for the state government for a while and having that free coffee just laying around, my habit has really picked back up. I can't be bothered to grind and brew and press for each little cup.

More job applications today. I think I've applied for every legal assistant or paralegal job in Indianapolis for the past month and a half. Next step: mailing individual law firms my resume and offering to do contract writing or filling in as a temporary paralegal. ick.

In more light-hearted news, I'm watching Richard Dawkins video series "The Root of All Evil?" [part1] [part2] I highly recommend it. Some of the material is from the God Delusion [amazon.com], which I read recently and found intriguing.

Hello World!

Hi everybody!

Well, I got a blogger account so that I could sign up for the coolest service ever, GrandCentral. If you haven't heard of this yet, you will soon. The basic idea is to set up "one number to rule them all." When you sign up (free) to this Google-owned company, you reserve a telephone number. This number will be the number that you provide to everyone from now. You can then assign your contacts to groups and set up rules for specific callers or groups. For example:

I really want to get calls from my mom, so every time she dials my number, I want my work phone, cell phone, and home phone to all ring.

-or-

All callers in the "Work" category are automatically routed to my work phone. After 5 p.m. play the "you've called after 5.mp3" file.

There are an amazing amount of extra features. For example (I have no idea how this works) you can switch from your cell phone to your work phone when you walk into the office with just a couple of button presses. The other person won't have any idea. NEAT! Another favorite is the ability to send telemarketers the "the number you have called is no longer in service" message automatically.

I can't wait to see what features are going to show up next. The recent acquisition by Google is a good sign. I'm personally waiting to really start handing out this number until we get sync with Gmail contacts and (holy grail) SMS support.

Anyway, I think I'll take a shot at maintaining this. Megan's LiveJournal and little Oren's blog have been inspiring me to write a little bit.