Stray thoughts on a rainy April morning.

April showers bring May flowers. That is holding true -- our front yard's landscaped area is starting to come into bloom, and when it is fully there, I will again envy the people who live in more temperate climates, where the flowers are always in bloom. They probably don't appreciate them as intently as we do, but I like to think they do notice them.

My daughter and I just went for a short walk. It was intended to be a longer one -- she even wore a down vest that she liked -- but it got cut short when she noticed that the sleeveless vest was doing nothing to keep her arms dry -- arms that were cold to the touch, too. If her mother had been here, she'd have been sure that the daughter went out properly protected, but I exercised the guy's right to say heck, she's not gonna die, and this way, she'll learn without me telling her. And that apparently worked -- she stopped at one point and suggested that we make a quick loop back to the house, and have some hot chocolate on arrival, too. I asked her if it was getting chilly, and she nodded. I noticed that, too, I said -- and that was all.

We have the Sunday papers stacked on the kitchen counter, and as it was just below the cabinet where the sprinkles were (can't have ice cream without sprinkles), the daughter stopped to read the headlines. She asked me why people were still fighting in Iraq if we had already found out that Iraq doesn't have massive weapons. I didn't have Condi Rice here to help me spin that one, so I simply told her it was a group of people who didn't want us there, some of whom had further agendas. She thought that it was dumb of them to fight us if we were trying to help them, and I think that a bit, too. I like clean answers, but there aren't any there. I do think its intriguing that the guy in power who used to be a military guy is the one pushing against a military solution, and the guy who wasn't, is. Food for deep philosophy, there.

I am quite taken by that YCC concept car that Volvo made. If this is a realistic example of what women designers can come up with, we ought to get lots more. I like it so much (except for those doors) that I can even accept the comment one of them made (it might have been an American, actually; I've heard it both ways) that once you meet a woman's expectations, you've exceeded a mans. That sure does seem to be true in this case. Though it leaves me wondering: if it were available, would I buy it or the Prius? The attraction of the Prius is lessening the use of gas. I like the idea of sticking it to OPEC, and I'm sure that my refusal of five hundred gallons a year would bring them to their senses right away. Except that economically, I think they *are* in their senses -- getting as much money as they can for their product, right now. And they could be getting more, too. I'm sure they've noticed that.

I hear where a woman came up with a site whose name is, I think, Down With Bush, and where the ultimate expression of acceptance for that concept is that you shave off your pubic hair. So far as I know, its limited to women. I wonder if women are as taken by the idea of a guy without pubic hair as guys are for similarly shaved women? I admit, I find the idea tittilating, but I always feel stupid when I think about it. I mean, whats the big deal? I recall reading quite some time ago that in societies where things we hide, like breasts, are exposed, its very rapidly accepted as normal to see them. In my one foray to a nude beach, I noticed that -- just like I noticed the boat going back and forth . Remember the song lyrics about 'a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking'? Sheesh. Maybe guys never do grow up.

You know what would be cool? Being able to have the cell phone plug into the audio system of the van, so that while I am driving to lunch I can still listen in to a teleconference, using the speakers of the audio system. Okay, its probably possible, but not for me. Not yet, anyway. Someday....

The other day, I was thinking about the price of gasoline. I use about 12 gallons a week, mostly driving to work, which takes about a gallon each way, so at the local average about about $1.70 a gallon, I pay about seventeen dollars a week for the privilege of driving. That's up about two bucks per week. I wondered how high it would have to go before it affected my consumption. I guessed that for me to make a change, the price would have to increase up to about $2.50 a gallon. At that point, I’d be paying around thirty dollars a week, and that, I’d notice.

Those thoughts came back to me as I read in the Sunday paper that some people feel that an increase in gasoline taxes would reduce dependence on foreign oil by reducing consumption. It would probably reduce consumption overall, but I would bet that it wouldn’t affect it for everyone, or even most people, because the driving they do, they have to do.They don’t have a convenient alternative. Until the price got so high that it cost more to commute than the person earned, they’d continue to pay. Like me, they’d likely notice the difference, and grumble, but they wouldn’t use substantially less.

Buying cars would be a different matter. The demand for fuel economy is probably elastic with respect to gasoline prices to a lesser extend than usage; as prices go up, people are more likely to think about the mileage that they expect from a new vehicle when they are researching the purchase. But e-ven then it's questionable - I doubt mileage is a major factor in what vehicle to buy, though it might be a factor in differentiating between acceptable vehicles.

Several months ago, when my partner and I were both pretty busy, and were finding it difficult to come up with ideas for dinners that could be accomplished quickly, we started a list of meals that we liked. It had two columns -- one for things that took a little bit of time, and one for things that took longer. We went through a couple of iterations of how to organize the list -- one of the first tries was Hard to Make, Easy to Make, and another was Weekday/Weekend -- but it settled down pretty quickly into QUICK and LONG. QUICK is something we can make quickly, and LONG is something that takes effort, and is expected to be seen again at some point. QUICK is as you’d expect; things we can make almost on the fly -- burritos, hamburgers, soup, grilled cheese, and the ever-popular Round Food, a.k.a. pizza. The LONGs are more complex, or at least take more time to make than we usually have during the week. They’re expected to generate leftovers. In fact, some of them generate so many leftovers that the output is bifurcated into something we eat and something we store, and that second category is split again into something we store to have later in the week, and something we freeze to have in two or three weeks -- or longer. An example of that is the Bean Bake, which I dearly love; it’s a simple recipe that takes a while to cook in the crockpot, but once done, I know I’ll want it twice, perhaps three times in one week -- and then not again for a while. So, some we eat, some we store, and some we freeze, to be found weeks or even months later when we’re roaming through the kitchen saying Don’t we have anything to eat?

In our house, it works out that if someone is going to make a complex breakfast (meat, waffles, coffee, muffins or toast), it’ll probably be me; if someone is going to make a complex dinner (more than five minutes prep time), it’ll probably be my partner . Lately, though, with all of the time that my partner been putting in with preparations for the school’s Science Night, our dinners have been a little on the basic side, even if she’s the one making them; if I make them, you can pretty much count on them being of the soup or spaghetti level of difficulty. So, we thought that this might be a good time to start doing a little revamping of the menu list, the better to motivate one or the other of us to actually make the meal. To that end, I took two of our cookbooks into the bedroom, settled back, and started leafing through the first one. It happens to be one that we bought for our child, but though it is a ‘kids cookbook’, it’s a real one, with real food in it. Insofar as I eat like a kid, this is a cookbook for me, but some of it is advanced for my tastes. Still, its a great place to start, and indeed I came up with two things to try. One is a simple spaghetti sauce. A couple of years ago, we thought to try to make our own sauce. I had visions of the scene in The Godfather where the round guy -- what was his name? Don’t recall, but I do remember a line he had after they’d just shot the chauffeur and were abandoning the car - "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." -- is stirring the huge pot of sauce while commiserating with Michael’s troubles. It turned out that it was a lot more difficult to make the sauce than I thought it would be, and since then we’ve discovered the Newman’s Own brand of sauce. I had originally been against buying it (or Emeril’s, or any other sauce with a recognizable name) because I thought heck, how good can it be? But it turns out that the Newman’s sauce is actually quite good, and that’s been our staple ever since -- and probably will be even after we try the one from the book. But the one in the book is really quite simple -- carrot, celery, garlic, tomato and puree -- so what the heck, we’re going to try it. It’ll just be the two of us; our child believes that to have any kind of pasta other than angel hair is an abomination, and to have any topping other than butter and a lot of grated cheese compounds the offense. We’ll see. The other thing we’ll try out of that book is a form of french toast. We all like FT, though since we discovered the delights of freshly made waffles, especially made our way, which is to say, with white chocolate chips in the batter, with a side of sausage or bacon, it’s been a tossup. But this sounds good -- cut the bread into star shapes, make the FT immersion batter, fry it in hot oil, sprinkle cinnamon on it. Crunchy French Toast. We’ve still got a little vanilla ice cream in the freezer, too, so we’ll likely have that on top. That’s actually the kid's idea, and its a good one. First time I bit into it, I recalled the story of how the ice cream cone got started. Don’t know if it’s a true story, but I like it.

That's the plan for two meals, this next week. If I can come up with two more additional things to try for the first time, we’ll add them to the menu list, and that’ll be it.

Went to the barbers, got my usual chop and hack job. Barbers don't think, they run by muscle memory. Probably not completely true; definitely not completely not. Got home, found out that the nurse practicitioner I have been seeing, is going to quit the practice. Bummer. Takes me a while to warm up to any doc, and we were just getting somewhere.

I've always been fascinated by architecture.

I'm not sure that fascinated is the right word, but what the hell. And I guess always isn't the right word, either. Double what the hell. I've always been fascinated by architecture.

Both the style and the substance intrigue me. The style: making shapes that excite you, move you. The great hall of St. Peter's cathedral, or St. Patricks. When I hear designers talk about things like moving from a small space into a large one, so that you get the gradually growing sense of width and mass, that grabs my attention. I wonder how you learn how to do that -- if its something that you have to be born with, but which can be enhanced by training, or whether anyone can be taught to do it (though even then, the best, I guess, can do it better, no matter what). But how do you know what's possible? And where does it start? Got to believe that it comes from a whole lot of messing around with models, literally just playing around with shapes to see what clicks. Sure, some are major flops, delightful only to purists of the art, but man, when you play in a ballpark that visible, you've got to accept that. Look at all the dazzling buildings in Houston, San Francisco, Chicago, New York.......

And the substance: making a building that works -- that lays out space in innovative ways. Curtain walls, staggered elevator shafts, multiple elevators in the same shaft. My goodness. And the materials they're made of -- how do you find out what’s even possible? I recall reading about why an I beam is that shape. How long were beams the way they were before people figured out that half the mass of the thing wasn't contributing to the support it offered? Or at least, cost more to have than it offered as support? And new solutions to old problems. I remember reading about a building which has a moving mass of concrete half way up its height that acts as a damper when the building is swayed by high winds, keeping it stable, or, at least, more stable. Wow! What kind of mind can think of stuff like that?

Maybe fascinated is a good word, after all.

Today I get to meet with the auditors -- the Corporate Auditors; when people mention them, you can hear the capitalized initials in their voices. I don't have a problem with the concept of auditors; I think of them as keepers of the faith who, by their rigidity, pull an organization toward the pole that the corporation says it hews to all the time, religiously (The analogy of the Taliban does occur to me). What I've got a problem with is the basis of audits, and response to them.

BASIS: Too much of audits are based on the whim and bias of the auditor. While some, and perhaps even most, of this is based on expert and/or experienced knowledge, much of it is based on the bias of the auditor, and what a given auditor expects and chooses to accept. What's acceptable to one is not acceptable to another; it might not even be acceptable to the same auditor at a later date.

RECOURSE: In corporations, there is no recourse from what an auditor chooses to write up. Even the IRS can be beaten into submission if you're willing to spend the time and money, but auditors have no similar back door. Most times, a manager will just roll his eyes and advise you to go along. That's not right.

I know its not that straightforward. When you delve into the intricacies of any human system, there are plenty of opportunities for disagreement. One person thinks a change is minor and should not require oversight; another thinks it's major, and ought to be reviewed. Usually, the second view is that of a person who doesn't personally have to wait for the oversight -- but that doesn't make them wrong.

Resilient systems allow for human error. About two months ago, I sneaked in a change. It was a change that was needed, and was valid -- but I forgot to get prior authorization, and waiting to get authorization at that point would have meant public notice that the change went in late. So I just did it. Was that wrong? Yes, unquestionably. I did the wrong thing, just so I wouldn’t be held to blame. A better answer would have been that I remembered to get authorization -- which is why there is now a piece of note paper on my cubicle wall with the name of that system in big black letters, to remind me that yes, I am responsible for that system, too. And if an auditor asks why I have that system name written there -- I'll -- ah....prevaricate.

Fascinating article in the Times today on findings regarding the effectiveness of stents vs cholesterol/blood pressure reduction in the reduction of likelihood of heart attacks. Really, really interesting stuff.

Whenever I see an article about concierge medical services, I read it. And I usually stop when I hit The Phrase. Sometimes it shows up in the beginning, sometimes in the middle. But it's always there.

From today's Washington Post: Doctoring at Your Service

"Eichelberger and Blakeslee say they were forced to try this new model for patient service because the managed health care system had been cutting doctors' fees. "I had no choice. It was my only way to actually stay in business," Blakeslee said. "I would have been out of business in three years for financial reasons." ..."This is not an easy road. This is not get-rich-quick", Eichelberger said. "We're probably making a little bit more money than we did before. But we know that we have potential for growth."

And there it is, again.

Of course, who can blame them? Do what you want to do, the way you want to do it? Desirable. And have less annoying paperwork? Excellent. And your customers really do get better medical treatment? Faster, more focused, more comprehensive? Outstanding. And earn more at the same time? Stellar. Go for it.

Why can't they admit that the increased dollars are attractive? Do they think it will detract from their image as noble healers? And, if so, is that so bad?

Another bullet dodged.

After the failure of the second remote control for the Sony DVD/VCR player, we had thought to stop by Circuit City to look for a replacement unit. We did this grudgingly, as the idea of replacing the entire unit simply because the remote doesn't work does not fill us with happiness. Bad enough that the remote is a modern masterpiece of non-design, but to have to replace the whole thing.... well.

We were in the store for quite some time, looking at units ranging from a very inexpensive DVD player to a quite expensive DVD player/recorder with 80 GB hard drive. After wandering back and forth, thinking about the method that we'd use to connect the player to the TV in a way that would allow connection of the old VCR (which we still have), we balked. None of the options, from the cheapest to the most expensive, sounded right to us. A combination of gibberish on the units (what in the hell is 'Double ReMastering'? One unit proclaimed this ability) and on the advertising copy (how expansive is 80GB for video recording? Is that ten minutes or ten hours?), along with the thought that we had just done this, why were we even thinking about doing it again -- convinced us that we weren't going to buy spontaneously, no matter how long we had to wait for the remote's replacement.

Which was in the mailbox when we got home. Zing!

That's not to say that we won't eventually do a massive replacement. We've agreed that when the television dies, we'll replace it with a flat screen unit that can display letter box format but is not necessarily high-definition ready. What I'd really like is the ability to mount the television up above the mantel, where there is a socket, though no cable or antenna connection. I understand that there is the capability to have wireless television connectivity; I don't know how to do that, though, and I certainly don't trust the people at Circuit City to tell me, no matter that I did once see an article about a person -- one person, one Circuit City -- who was quite good at it. If it becomes commonly possible, that's one thing. We're neither of us pioneers.

We'd also like to replace the audio equipment that's in that room. It currently consists of an amplifier that I bought when I was in Thailand with the Air Force (which is to say, 30+ years ago), a turntable, and a cassette deck. There's also a pair of speakers hung on the wall which were once connected, and now are not. The basic problem there is two fold; first, I detest the design of pretty much all amplifiers; they are black in black on black. I want something with elegance, style, simplicity, and color. Come on, it is possible. And second, the newer amps (which means, those built in the last fifteen years ) don't accept turntable input. I resent having to buy a module just to connect them. I know that that makes me sound like someone who resents that there are no decent buggy-whip makers these days.

An interface to the PC (or the local LAN) would be nice. A Tivo would be good, too, because we do watch television on occasion (why, just last night we watched Men in Black; how cutting edge is that?) , and hard drive recorders make more sense than tape, provided you can watch one thing from the hard drive while recording another. Can't do that with tape. Oh, and being able to watch something from the hard drive while the timer is set to record something else, or even starts to record something else -- that would be good, too. Can't do that with tape, either.

We vaguely know what we want. We vaguely know how it's might be possible. We just don't know how to put it together so that it actually works, and we know of no one we trust to guide us, impartially, on this. No matter how many cheery Circuit City ads we see.

Good thing we enjoy figuring things out.

I've come to the conclusion that any job which is described using the phrase "your .....professional', as in 'your financial services professional', 'your window repair professional', your television and audio professional', is more than likely referring to someone who is undertrained and unempowered. People who can actually do things -- who iknow what to do and can do it of their own volition -- don't have that phrase in their job title. They actually ARE professionals.

One of the sayings that I like is 'Sometimes wrong, never uncertain'. Not universally applicable, but it comes into its own on occasion -- as this evening, when I had a quiet discussion with my daughter about the mechanics of having her period (or as she referred to it, "that end of sentence thing"). She knows what will happen, and how it will manifest itself, but she didn't really know how she'd handle telling the teacher that she had to go to the bathroom right now, and she couldn't see herself going up to her in the middle of class, whispering urgently while other kids milled around. I had a couple of ideas about that, which she accepted with some relief. I told her that if she needed to talk to someone, and there weren't any girls around to talk to, she could talk to me, and I promised not to laugh or think that what she was saying was gross (though, truth to tell, I could have done without learning a couple of details about her friends that she mentioned as proof that they knew what they were talking about.) She told me that she knew that while the whole process might be messy, it wouldn't hurt, and I agreed. Like I know.

But what the heck. Sometimes wrong, never uncertain.

This morning, we had an exceptionally fine Sunday brunch.

For one, we had hazelnut coffee, which we both like, adding to it a bit of the intense coffee beans which we bought from Ten Thousand Villages (or as I like to call them, to my daughter's dismay, Ten Thousand Maniacs). Along with that, we had seasoned bacon -- thick cuts of bacon which were seasoned with rosemary, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper. But the piece de resistance was the waffles, and only then when my daughter looked up and slyly asked if she could put a scoop of ice cream on hers. Ice cream? With brunch? Well, what the hell.....

Paper, coffee, good food, family -- excellent. Truly excellent.

This morning, my daughter told me that she had played her mother in Rummy, and 'whupped her butt'. The maternal sense of humor wasn't engaged by this phrase, and her mother was looking for an alternative. I suggested 'made her cry like a girl', which for some reason she didn't like either. At last, she suggested 'cleaned her clock', and the daughter said 'I didn't clean your clock, Mom. I don't like to clean.'

Is she great, or what?

I didn't write this. Wish I had. I found it at http://www.margilowry.com/archives/000476.html

Operator: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut. May I have your..."

Customer: "Hi, I'd like to order."

Operator: "May I have your NIDN first, sir?"

Customer: "My National ID Number, yeah, hold on, eh, it's
6102049998-45-54610."

Operator: "Thank you, Mr. Sheehan. I see you live at 1742 Meadowland
Drive, and the phone number's 494-2366. Your office number over at Lincoln
Insurance is 745-2302 and your cell number's 266-2566. Which number are
you calling from, sir?"

Customer: "Huh? I'm at home. Where d'ya get all this information?"

Operator: "We're wired into the system, sir."

Customer: (Sighs) "Oh, well, I'd like to order a couple of your
All-Meat Special pizzas..."

Operator: "I don't think that's a good idea, sir."

Customer: "Whaddya mean?"

Operator: "Sir, your medical records indicate that you've got very
high blood pressure and extremely high cholesterol. Your National
Health Care provider won't allow such an unhealthy choice."

Customer: "Damn. What do you recommend, then?"

Operator: "You might try our low-fat Soybean Yogurt Pizza. I'm
sure you'll like it"

Customer: "What makes you think I'd like something like that?"

Operator: "Well, you checked out 'Gourmet Soybean Recipes' from
your local library last week, sir. That's why I made the suggestion."

Customer: "All right, all right. Give me two family sized ones, then.
What's the damage?"

Operator: "That should be plenty for you, your wife and your four
kids, sir. The 'damage,' as you put it, heh, heh, comes $49.99."

Customer: "Lemme give you my credit card number."

Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay in cash.
Your credit card balance is over its limit."

Customer: "I'll run over to the ATM and get some cash before your
driver gets here."

Operator: "That won't work either, sir. Your checking account's
overdrawn."

Customer: "Never mind. Just send the pizzas. I'll have the cash ready.
How long will it take?"

Operator: "We're running a little behind, sir. It'll be about 45 minutes,
sir. If you're in a hurry you might want to pick 'em up while you're out
getting the cash, but carrying pizzas on a motorcycle can be a little
awkward."

Customer: "How the hell do you know I'm riding a bike?"

Operator: "It says here you're in arrears on your car payments,
so your car got repo'ed. But your Harley's paid up, so I just assumed
that you'd be using it."

Customer: "@#%/$@&?#!"

Operator: "I'd advise watching your language, sir. You've already got
a July 2006 conviction for cussing out a cop."

Customer: (Speechless)

Operator: "Will there be anything else, sir?"

Customer: "No, nothing. oh, yeah, don't forget the two free liters of
Coke your ad says I get with the pizzas."

Operator: "I'm sorry sir, but our ad's exclusionary clause prevents
us from offering free soda to diabetics."

--------
How silly, huh? I mean, COME ON! The Pizza Dude would have caller ID, so he'd know which number the customer was calling from. Sheesh.

We're going to be selecting wallpaper for one of the rooms, and dreading the thought of going to the store, leafing through tons of samples, dragging some home... why isn't this stuff digitally available? Key in some search criteria (dark, pattern, blue), and let it show you page of possibilities? Much more effective...

Its just before noon on a chilly Sunday morning. I was up early today, dialing in to monitor a system upgrade. I never sleep well, the night before having to do that, and I almost always wake up before the alarm. Of course, then I turn it off and lie there, and moments pass...or more. The upgrade was without incident, as we expected it would be. While I was waiting for them to announce that it was a success, I took the opportunity to fire up Quicken and create some reports with which to update our retirement spreadsheet. The recent surges in the market have had a startling effect on our net worth, and I have taken to saying well, when the market dropped, we lost this percent of our stock-based net worth, so if that were to happen again, here's what our net worth would be. Which is sobering, but only for a little while. In fact, we had arbitarily picked a total net worth (excluding the house) value out of thin air a few years ago, saying that when we reached it, one of us could retire, and it actually seems like we're going to reach it this year. Then you start thinking well, sure, you're at that number, but retirement means an immediate drop in income, so don't you really mean some higher number, like 1.1 or 1.2 X, so that the drop puts you where you were when you retired? Truth is, no matter how much we have, it never seems like it'll be enough. Then you look at some articles about the number of people living in middle-class poverty, let alone all of those living near the actual poverty line, and you feel positively flush.

My wife's company is making the great switch from desk tops to laptops. Last night, we got her laptop working with a phone dialup, and then we found that the Dell Latitude contained a MiniPCI card, which is a wireless card, so we activated that (why didn't it come activated? Beats me), and then she could just talk wirelessly to the router and thence to the cable modem. So this morning, she was at the kitchen table, wirelessly talking to the router, then to the Internet, then to her company network, then to her office LAN, and then to the hard drive on her office PC -- accessing files, moving them back and forth, no prob.

Wow.

Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea, looking at the sunlight reflecting off the snowy fields and onto the barns of the neighboring farmer. I know it can't last, but it's sure nice while its here. I hadn't planned to work from home today, but my daughter's ill, so I trekked in to the office early, picked up my laptop and some materials, and came back. One of the very nice things about working for my company is that I can do things like this, usually without having to warn people in advance. And one of the nicer things about being an IT person is the ability to work remotely.

I have always enjoyed learning how things work.

For years, I wondered how exactly how a house gets built -- what, literally, do you do to build a house. How do the walls get built? What’s inside them, anyway? And why don't they fall down? I found a book several years ago, titled, I think, Why Buildings Don't Fall Down, that answered a lot of that, but some of my knowledge there comes from just watching builders, when I can. I've been surprised to see just how basic some of those fixes and methods are -- how a wall actually gets built, and what keeps them on the foundation. A couple of years ago, I was leafing through Fine Homebuilding, and was astonished to learn that they don't, always; they had pictures of buildings in San Francisco that had literally slid right off their foundations. I was amazed. So were the owners, I guess.

Usually, my desire for knowledge doesn't go too deep into the topic. Take my recent fascination with the concept of aortic dissection, something which I'll grant most people would not want to know about at all, let alone want to understand the innards of. I think its pretty cool stuff. I like knowing what it is, what’s actually happening, how it comes to pass, how it gets fixed. My knowledge about the phenomenon isn't too detailed, even for a layman, and I surely couldn't speak of it at length with anyone who actually understands it deeply. There’s a line that appears with some regularity in the Aubrey/Maturin novels, wherein someone who is talking to Stephen Maturin, who, in addition to his other skills, happens to be a physician (not a surgeon, he notes with some acerbity at one point); the person will say something like 'I am not to be speaking of medicine to a doctor of medicine....', the implication being that it would be presumptuous at best, and insulting at worst, to bring up the topic. I probably would, though, at least mention it, because it lets me establish a bit of a linkage with people who do understand the topic, and that might let me learn a little bit more about it. It also might help me know a bit more about people who understand this sort of thing, and I like that, too. So, I'd mention it.

Robert Heinlein was fond of saying (or having his characters say) that without substantial theoretical underpinnings, people could not offer valid opinions on the topic. That’s not so. It isn't normally necessary to understand an idea comprehensively in order to judge it. An informed opinion is sufficient, and sometimes, even less than that. How many people can speak authoritatively and provably regarding the relative worth of outfielders in professional baseball? But understanding what the outfielder is there to do is the basis for being able to speak about it. Similarly, knowing how a blood vessel works, how walls are attached to build a house, what a derivative is, understanding the role of the outfielder -- they all say that you are conversant with your world; you know more than what comes at you every day from your own discipline, your own narrow corridor. When you hear about something new, it provides linkage, a place to hook ideas together, or a framework against which to judge those new concepts for validity and usefulness. It allows you to offer opinions based on what you've just learned, and what you already knew. They might not be right, but they'll be worth something.

Plus, sometimes it’s just fun to know things.

Just knowing that stuff really does have a logical basis for how it works is satisfying to me. The current craze for carb counting is part of that. Years ago, I was talking with the woman who was our family doc about the concept of blood sugar, and what it literally meant, and she mentioned that people who want to track that and affect it will count how many carbs they eat. I asked her why, and, surprised that I wouldn't know that, she gave me thirty seconds of the relationship between carbohydrates and sugar. How could I not have known that, she seemed to think. But we all have holes in our understanding of the world. There’s a scene in Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where an artist asks the author why, if a light switch doesn't always work, is the author sure that its the switch that’s probably bad. Why not the wire? Or the light fixture, or the bulb? And why doesn't it take a couple of seconds for the light to light up, when you flick the switch? (Okay, that one, I knew.) But the idea that there would be people to whom that concept is as alien as the relationship of carbs and sugar is to me - - wow, that's amazing, and sometimes I remember that when I don't understand why people just don't GET some concept that I think is perfectly clear.

Of course, this is the time of year to think about impenetrable concepts, that being another way of referring to the US Tax Code (Why is it a code? Because it’s a secret! ). I was pleased when I realized, quite some time ago, that it wasn’t just coincidental that articles about what happens to people who don’t pay their taxes would show up in papers right about now. Doesn’t seem to happen all that much lately, though, but I think that’s because more people have a cavalier attitude to what they owe; Dennis and Martha’s behaviors probably are, if not the proximal cause of that, at least contributing factors. There is a terrific quote from today’s paper; a guy who wrote ‘Confessions of a Tax Collector’ (which I want to read; sounds good) says, in an article he co-wrote with a tax evader, that he learned the basic rules of tax collecting: Find what they love, and take it; if you can’t find what they love, find what they fear, and exploit it. Wow. He says it all comes down to knowing how to push people’s buttons. I’ve never been any good at that. Never have. I’m doing good to understand why buildings don’t fall down. Hey, I understand the concept of curtain walls and laminar flow, doesn’t that count for something? People and motivations, though, that’s beyond me. I did figure out, years ago, that most people are insecure to some degree. Some of us are insecure to a great degree, but everyone has some insecurity, and if all you do is tell them that they’re okay, that the image they’re putting out isn’t all fake, they really are hacking it, they really are worthwhile -- well, they don’t get that message from many other people, so they appreciate hearing it.

And that’s my big insight for today.