The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

What today is about

One of my Duke classmates posted a Facebook status update that prompted a discussion. I thought responding in long form would be more appropriate than continuing a comment chain.

Here's the chain so far:

JP: If healthcare passes I guarantee the stock markets will drop tomorrow.

Me: So?

BR: David, doesn't a drop in the stock market after the passing of a monumental legislation like the healthcare bill indicate investors feel that the bill will be a detriment to the healthcare sector? Doesn't that seem significant to you?

RZ: It won't just be the healthcare stocks that will drop. It's an added cost/uncertainty for all businesses, and the considerable legal issues will start almost immediately.

AS: B/R,
The stock markets might drop, as health care is such a major factor in the GDP (I think it's 12-15%). But then, if health spending comes down, individual consumption might go up, so retailers and manufacturers would benefit. That benefit would only play out over a 12 month cycle.
Also, while this is more subjective, I think if it lowers the overall long-run, firms might ramp up hirings. One of the biggest issues in the past decade has been jobless recoveries and jobless growth.

RZ: That would be great if it lowered spending, but even the scam artists themselves admitted that the bill is not about cost containment.
My biggest question is, since the CBO scoring assumes taxes for 10 years, but 6 years of "benefits", what are we going to do in the second decade? Or, are we supposed to take a presidential term off once per decade and just be content with our health?

First, the tribulations of panicky investors don't matter much in the medium- or long-term. Some people will dump their insurance-company shares tomorrow, and others will dump their shares across the health sector, but it will be a blip. So what, let some share prices flop for the next few days, then cooler heads will start buying up the bargains.

What bargains? Well, I don't expect the future profits of health-insurance companies will be as high as in the past, but that's kind of the point. So those stocks will never have the value they had on Friday. To me, good riddance. Because instead of wasting 30% of U.S. health-care expenditures on administrative expenses, instead of dropping people who have the temerity to make claims against their policies, instead of denying coverage to people who once had a runny nose, insurers have to run leaner operations in which they actually pay health care claims. They're not going out of business; they'll just have to compete in a marketplace that requires them to spread risks. You know, like auto insurers, all of whom suffer terrible indignities like the steady profits of a guaranteed market.

No, for bargains look at health-care providers, like hospitals, technology companies, drug manufacturers. (OK, maybe not drug manufacturers.) If I had a ton of cash right now, I'd short Aetna and, a couple of days from now, go long on a portfolio of health-care service providers.

Think about it: 65 million people who don't have health insurance now will start buying it. And those people will start consuming health care services in ways they haven't before, for instance by getting preventative care and not using the E.R. as a first resort. This will mean, most likely, more health-care spending in general.

So, yes, the legislation isn't "about cost containment," as RZ complains, but it's an excellent value for the country. Two things will happen once the U.S. joins the rest of the world in providing health care to all its citizens. First, people will be healthier. Second, because they're healthier, they'll be more productive. When you spend money on something today so that you realize greater gains tomorrow, that's not "cost containment," it's "investment." And actually, according to the CBO, the effect on GDP will be a wash. In other words, we'll provide health care to everyone for about what we're spending now. Maybe it'll cost taxpayers another $20-25 per year, each.

This isn't really a debate about the costs, though. Of course we should consider the costs—and I think we have. No, ultimately, this is the end of a century-long debate about whether Americans should have a legal right to basic health care. There is no objectively correct answer to the question. There is, however, a political process to resolve it.

It may seem like an argument to the people to point out that a majority of Americans believe we should, but in this case it isn't fallacious. That's why we've spent years—decades, even—going through this process. In the U.S. we have strong protections for minority views, but sometimes, just sometimes, the majority prevails. If the bill passes tonight, the majority wins. If not, all the things about health insurance that people hate will get worse. And that will cost us more than we have to spend in the future.

(3)25th Anniversary

It was on this day in 1985 that I drifted off in Mr. Collins' Algebra class and arrived at the name of my corporation: Punzun Ltd.

The corporation became an actual legal entity on 17 February 2000.

Oh, and if he were still alive, Bach would be 325 today, and he would have over 100 children. (Oh, yeah—and if we hadn't switched calendars in the 1750s. If you convert to the current Gregorian calendar, Bach's birthday is actually March 31st.)

Have you seen this man?

There are two nearly-identical copies of this poster at Duke of Perth, one unfortunately vandalized by neo-Nazis. (I'm not kidding.) Does anyone have any idea where to get one?

I've actually tried getting in touch with Scottish & Newcastle, the company that acquired the John Courage Brewery, but they've since gotten bought by Heineken. No luck there. I even called a poster dealer in London, someone recommended by another poster dealer as specializing in that sort of thing.

Any information would be appreciated.

FROPA

That's the code for "frontal passage" on aviation meteorological reports. Apparently yesterday while I was on my way to O'Hare I missed a big one:

While temperatures began dropping across the far northern suburbs as early as mid-afternoon, the city was invaded by 30+ mph gusts late in the evening rush hour, initiating a thermal tailspin. In a single hour's time, readings at the Harrison-Dever Crib, three miles off Chicago's shoreline, dove from 62°F to 42°F—a 20°F pullback—between 6 and 7 p.m. The same period saw readings at Northerly Island on the city's lakefront plunge from 64°F to 47°F. A minute-by-minute temperature analysis off a Weather Bug sensor on the South Side at the Dumas Elementary School indicated readings there plunged 15°F in only 12 minutes—from 62°F at 6:39 p.m. to 47°F at 6:51. By late evening, North Shore readings were uniformly up to 25°F off the 60°F levels of only hours before.

Yikes. Here's the art:

Today's forecast is for sunny skies and 26°C.

Oh, sorry. That's my forecast. Back in Chicago they've got snow and freezing temperatures. Sorry.

Upgrade

After a lot of procrastination, I've finally upgraded The Daily Parker to dasBlog 2.3.

dasBlog logoNothing outwardly has changed, but apparently the developer community has fixed a ton of bugs and, more helpfully, upgraded to .NET 2.0. I don't have time at the moment to go through the entire feature list, but I'm sure there are a couple in there I'll use.

Mainly I was tired of having an item on my to-do list since October 2008. (I said "a lot of procrastination.")

You have thirty seconds to comply

Ahem. No, RoboCop isn't pointing a gun at me. However, Avanade's personal blog policy strongly recommends that I post the following, and I happen to agree:

Avanade does not control or endorse the content, messages or information found in any public Weblog, and therefore specifically disclaims any liability with regard to this Weblog and any actions resulting from my participation in any Weblog.

Also, I am not authorized in any way to speak on Avanade's behalf.

This applies not only to The Daily Parker but also to re-posts, as for example the automatic content pull from The Daily Parker into my Facebook profile.

We will now resume your regularly-scheduled program, already in progress.

More confirmation about dog origins

NPR reported this morning that dogs likely descended from Israeli wolves:

To come up with their results, [UCLA researcher Robert] Wayne and his colleagues studied DNA from more than 200 wild gray wolves. "We looked at wolf populations in Europe, the Middle East and East Asia and from China," he says. In each case, they sought out and found genetic markers that were unique to these different wolf populations. So, for example, there were some markers that were only found in Chinese wolves, and others only found in Middle Eastern wolves.

Then they analyzed DNA from more than 900 dogs from 85 breeds, and looked to see which of the wolf markers dogs most closely resembled. It turns out that most dogs shared markers unique to Middle Eastern wolves, although there were some dog breeds that were closer to other wolf populations.

"Many wolf populations may have contributed to the genomic diversity of dogs, but the dominant signal comes from the Middle East," says Wayne. The new research appears in the journal Nature.

Finally: a solid explanation of why Parker wears a yarmulke.

End of an era

Or: How I learned to stop being irrational and give up a piece of history.

I'm about to mail (yes, use postal mail) a termination order to Earthlink, with whom I have had an account since they acquired Mindspring, with whom I had an account since they acquired Pipeline. That means I've had my Mindspring email address since 1998 (I got the Pipeline address in 1997, but Mindspring converted everyone over), and I've kept it as my spam account since I set up my own email server in 2000.

So, I'm feeling a little twinge. It's a piece of history, a connection to the days of dial-up and modems, of Outlook 1997 and Pine. It's also $7 a month, and every last scrap of email it receives with the exception of Earthlink payment receipts is junk. I've kept it because it seemed like a trivial expense to remain connected with the early days of the Internet. But you know what? The Wayback Machine does that too, and it's free.

Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore. Literally: Time flees while we hold on to insignificant details.

Daily Parker post #2,000

I had hoped, as I hoped about Post #1,000, to write something lengthy and truly self-indulgent.

This will disappoint many readers, but I don't have time to do that. Instead, just a quick update: even though Inner Drive Technology still exists (as does all of its software and ongoing maintenance), I'm now working for Avanade, a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture.

And, in the spirit of the season, on my way to Avanade's Chicago office yesterday, I noticed something...odd...about the Daley Center:

Gotta love Chicago. And tomorrow they dye the river green. Thursday they show up to work late.

Brewery tour

A friend and I toured the Big Boss Brewing Co. in Raleigh yesterday. Possibly owing to the gorgeous weather, or a widespread spirit of scientific inquiry, or—long shot here—the $1 33 cL beer samples, yesterday's tour seemed awfully popular:

Brewmaster Brad Wynn dragged all 642 of us around the tiny brewery, entertainingly explaining their brewing process quickly enough for us to get more of the aforementioned $1 beers:

Great fun. They're having a party on Wednesday which I'll have to miss, but their tap room is open Monday through Saturday. I'm looking forward to more Angry Angel, their crisp and hoppy Kölsch-style ale. It really is better right from the tap.

Next up: The Daily Parker hits a major milestone. Stay tuned.