Partiality

I was listening to This American Life and their episode on Urban Legends. There were a lot of things in this episode that really irritated me. Mainly because the reporting presented conclusions, but did so by missing pretty important alternative explanations. Explanations that left their conclusions on less solid footing than they presented.  I’m only going to talk about one of them.

If you’re familiar with TAL, you know that they break their show into “Acts”. An act is a single story that revolves around the central theme that they’ve chosen for that week. The theme for this particular week was urban legends that turn out to be true. Act 3 was called “Sleeper Cell”.  And it was about the urban legend that cell phones are dangerous.

At one point, the person being interviewed, Christopher Ketcham, notes that there are lots of studies on each side of this debate. But he notices that if you draw a line around the source of funding of the studies, you discover that of those studies that are funded by industry, 75% show no harm. But those studies that are not funded by industry have 75% of them showing harm.  The implication is that industry is buying the results that they want.

And let me say right now: maybe that’s true. But the big question that came to my mind was this: who’s funding the studies that aren’t funded by industry? There are really only two possibilities: these studies were funded by individuals (extremely rare) or they were funded by the government. And here’s where Ketcham makes an assumption that I think is false: that government is independent, working for our better interests, with no ulterior motives involved, and that their funding of studies is for pure scientific results only, and is not in any way influenced by an agenda.

I don’t believe this assumption. Maybe my friends on the left do. To which I would say to remember that republicans are part of the government, too. It’s pretty easy to see how they’ve got ulterior motives, isn’t it? Sure, you might say, they’re funded by industry. Ok. But some of them lose to democrats. Who funds the democrats campaigns? By people ardently opposed to industry? If you believe that republicans are beholden to the sources of their funding, why do you then not believe the same thing about democrats?

My point is this: if you assume that the source of funding for a study invalidates the results, then don’t you have to call into question the studies that are funded by the government? Aren’t politicians at least as politically motivated to lie and get the results they want as is industry? Why do we automatically assume ill gotten results when industry funds a study, but automatically assume validity when government funds a study?

And none of this even goes to the heart of the problem: it is patently false to say that the source of funding is sufficient as the *only* means to invalidate a study. If you want to correctly invalidate a study, you have to find fault with one of the following:

• The methodology used to gather the data in the study
• The data
• The conclusions drawn from the data

A critique of the funding source is only valid *AFTER* you’ve found some flaw inside the study. At that point, and only at that point, can you claim that the funders bought the results that they wanted. If your only critique of a study is the funding source, what you’re demonstrating is that you were either too lazy to read the study or too ignorant to be able to critique it on its merits.

Watch me now feign surprise that Ketcham, the guy who found the connection between the funding and the results, was a journalist and not a scientist.

And one more thing. Ketcham’s article on this topic says the following: “Interphone researchers reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell-phone use, the chance of getting a brain tumor—specifically on the side of the head where you use the phone—goes up as much as 40 percent for adults.” Two things: first notice the use of weasel words “as much as”, second it provides no context for what 40% means. That looks like a really big number so it must be a really big risk, right?

Let me show you a completely hypothetical example of how numbers can be used to mislead.  Suppose that in any given year, you have a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of dying prematurely. That’s a 0.0001% chance. If you introduce something else and the risk of dying now is 2 in 1,000,000 the percentage is now 0.0002% chance. However since the number of people who died has doubled, you can say that the risk of the thing you introduced increases your chances of death by 100%. And this is not false. But the risk of death is still only 0.0002% after introducing the change. In absolute terms, the new risk is still incredibly small, only slightly larger than the old risk.

Journalists are prone to this type of reporting.  Numbers like this are really big and create a reason for people to read their story. Note that by this logic, a risk that goes from 0.0001% to 0.001% is a 1000% increased risk. But a 0.001% risk is still an incredibly small risk.  So when you read that the risk of some bad thing increases by some percentage, the thing to ask is this: what was the risk before, and what is the risk after? If they’re both really small numbers then you probably shouldn’t worry about it.

Ungoverned

I've been re-watching one of my favorite TV series of all time, Firefly. It's unfortunate that this series was canceled before even one season could complete. It was absolutely brilliant and Fox did it a great disservice in the way they aired it.

Anyway, I like it mostly because the cast of characters in this 14 episode series are incredibly complex and rich and well thought out. My favorite character is Malcolm Reynolds, the captain. He would be - if he lived here - a libertarian. This quote from him is really quite insightful:

A government is just a group of people, usually notably ungoverned.

And it reminds me of those who put a great deal of trust in government. The government isn't magic. It's just people. People who are given a lot of power. And with almost no accountability. Sure, there are elections... every 4 years!  But in between those elections we have very little power to contain the hubris of those we've elected.

And I'm reminded of this as I contemplate a piece of news that came out today:

Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield.

The person in question, Anwar al-Awlaki, is an American-born Islamic cleric. In other words, he's an American citizen. Now one could argue that this doesn't change anything. And I have before. I believe that the rights described by our constitution are rights that all people have - not just US citizens. So it makes no difference that he's an American or not. I believe that his right to due process is a constraint on the behavior of our government regardless of his citizenship. Of course, not everyone agrees with this.

But there is little disagreement that the constitution requires due process as a protection for American citizens, and he is one. And the president has just authorized his execution without due process! This is crossing a line beyond which is a short step to totalitarianism. I was angry when the Bush Administration held what it called "enemy combatants" for years in Guantanamo. That was, in my opinion, an egregious violation of those people's civil rights. But so far as I'm aware, no one was summarily executed. If the people in power can kill this man without due process demanded by the constitution, what else are they willing to do? Is there no line they're unwilling to cross?

My hope for this is that somewhere, something was grossly mis-reported. That there's some fact here not yet known that changes this whole story. The alternative - that it's accurate - is horrifying. It means that we don't just have a government that's fiscally out of control, we have people in power who do not respect the rule of law. And they have the keys to the weapons.

This Bears Repeating

The United States Code -- containing federal statutory law -- is more than 50,000 pages long and comprises 40 volumes. The Code of Federal Regulations, which indexes administrative rules, is 161,117pages long and composes 226 volumes.
 
No one on Earth understands them all, and the potential interaction among all the different rules would choke a supercomputer. This means, of course, that when Congress changes the law, it not only can't be aware of all the real-world complications it's producing, it can't even understand the legal and regulatory implications of what it's doing.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds

No Tax Refunds

Megan McArdle has a great post on why it’s important to *NOT* get a tax refund. Long and short: you’re giving the government an interest free loan. Don’t do it. If you really like the forced savings, you can do that on your own AND earn interest. Adjust your withholding on your W4 form so that you don’t give them the interest free loan. Unfortunately, she doesn’t address how to adjust your withholding so that you can control how much you pay in taxes. So I’m stepping in to tell you what I do.

I should mention that I am *NOT* a tax attorney, nor an accountant. I’m simply telling you what I do and what works for me. If you decide to use this, and it doesn’t work out, don’t come looking to me for answers. You’ve been warned.

So here’s the deal. You want to withhold enough to cover what you’ll likely owe in taxes, but not too much so that you don’t give too big of a loan to the government. My personal goal is a $100 refund. My real goal would be a $0 refund. But the problem is that if I estimate wrong, I underpay. And our lovely government, who doesn’t pay interest if you overpay, will charge you a penalty if you underpay. !@#$%*^ hypocrites!

But it turns out that it’s pretty easy to adjust my withholding to be pretty darn close to what I want. Here’s what I do:

1. On last year’s tax return, I look for the amount I owed in total tax. For 2009 (the one I just filed) it this was line 44 on form 1040. I don't know if it's always line 44, but that's what it was this year.
2. I will use that number as a guess as to how much I will owe next year. Let’s pretend that the number was $2000 and that I get 24 paychecks per year.
3. Now, if I want to get a $100 refund, I need to pay $2000 (what I estimate I'll owe) + $100 (my intended refund). And I need to divide that into 24 paychecks. Which means that I need to pay $87.50 per paycheck.

Now I know that I want $87.50 withheld from my paycheck to reach my goal of a $100 refund. To set that up, I get a W4 form from my HR department. It’s got a whole bunch of instructions on it. I ignore them & go straight to the form part:

1. Line 5 on the W4 asks how many allowances I am claiming. Using the instructions, most people get fewer than 10. With 4 kids, I end up with about 10 allowances. But I declare 30. Yes, really. By declaring that large of a number, it effectively puts my federal withholding to $0 per paycheck.
2. Now, of course, I don’t want to underpay, so on Line 6 it asks me how much additional I’d like withheld. Since I’m already at $0, and I know from above that I want exactly $87.50 withheld, I put $88.00 on Line 6 (the feds like to round to the nearest dollar, and I don't want to guess if they'll round up or down). And that’s the exact amount that my HR department will withhold for Federal taxes each paycheck.

I then do the same thing for the state withholding form, using last year’s state tax paid. It works well.

My point: I give the government a teeny tiny interest fee loan. Sure, I don't get that big refund every year, but I get a bigger paycheck each pay period.

Public Prayer

As a Christian, one of the things that happens frequently is that in a group of people, one of them will, sooner or later, offer to pray for something. If it’s a meal, we’re asking to bless the food and the conversation. If it’s a small group, we might pray for just about anything that is on the minds of the people in the group. If it’s a church service, typically, the pastor will close the service in prayer, asking for help related to the topic of the message that was just delivered.

We pray publically. A lot.

But I’ve always been fairly uncomfortable doing it. I never know what to say. I often feel like what I’m saying is not meant for God, but rather for the people I’m with. Perhaps to share my needs, fears, etc with them so that they know. Perhaps to reinforce something that we’d talked about. But when I pray publically like that, I constantly fumble around what I mean to say – and it almost never comes out quite right. Which isn’t a problem for God, but is if I’m trying to share that information with the people in the room. And, by convention, there’s no chance for those people to stop me and say, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

This weekend, as I attended a men’s small group that I’ve just recently joined, something odd struck me while we were praying. Every man in that room was a Christian. Which means that every man in that room has the holy spirit with them, guiding them, as a still, small voice. Including me. The problem is that I am very skilled at ignoring that still, small voice. Or I’ve built up habits in my life that serve to muffle the voice. And it struck me that the entire meeting is a public prayer – not just the 5 minutes or so at the end where we close our eyes, bow our heads and start talking. When I meet with those men, what I’m doing is hoping that the issues that I bring, and the questions that I have, that those other men – in aggregate – will listen to the Holy Spirit and help me to un-muffle the voice that is speaking to me.

And as a mechanism for communicating with God, this is LOT more effective than just talking with my eyes closed. Someone talks back. If they don’t understand what I’m saying, they ask for clarity. If they do understand and have a suggestion, they give it. If that suggestion doesn’t match with Biblical teaching, the odds that someone in the group will know that is higher because there are more people listening to the Holy Spirit and thinking about the Word.

I’m think that there is a value in traditional “prayer time” for me privately. When I stop myself, close myself off from distractions, lay the issues in my life in front of God, and still myself to try and hear his response through the Holy Spirit. But I’m beginning to think that my public “prayer time” is quite a bit less useful, especially in comparison to just the conversation that happens with other Christians. That public prayer time allows me to share my stuff with the people I’m with, but in an extremely ineffective way, precluding others from asking questions and giving feedback. Instead, I’m beginning to think of the entire time as an interactive prayer among people each trying to un-muffle the voice of the Holy Spirit. And together being better able to get at His voice than we can alone.

Still, I often find myself listening to someone else who does pray publically very well, and I’m often emotionally moved by the power of what they’re saying. Maybe it’s the humility that they’re expressing. Maybe it’s their awe at God and his world. I think that there is great value in public prayer. I’m just terrible at it, so I tend to avoid it.

My point: traditional public prayer is, I think, more about the people in the room than about communication with God. Deep conversation with a group of Christians seems to me to have a better chance at 2-way communication with God via the Holy Spirit than does group prayer.

But I could be wrong.

Obama vs McCain, The Rematch

President Obama put a smack down on Senatar McCain today during the health care summit. Here’s what happened:

"Both of us during the campaign promised change in Washington," McCain said. "In fact, eight times [as a candidate] you said that negotiations on health care reform would be broadcast on C-SPAN cameras," he said. "I'm glad that more than a year later they are, here. Unfortunately, this product was not produced in that fashion, it was produced behind closed doors."

"Special deals for the special interests and favored few" should be removed from the health care legislation, McCain said.

Obama said in response, "Let me just make this point, John, because we're not campaigning anymore. The election's over."

Wow! Just, wow! McCain holds the President’s feet to the fire for not fulfilling a campaign promise and the President tries to make it look like sour grapes for having lost. Here’s what I wish McCain would have said in response:

Excuse me, Mr. President, perhaps you’ve misunderstood what I was talking about. I was not complaining about having lost an election. You won that election on the strength of your promises. Promises that have been broken. I am not just exercising my duty as a US Senator, but more importantly as a citizen of the United States. You got elected on promises that you’ve since broken. I think the American people are interested in a reconciliation of that discord, much more than using reconciliation to bypass dissent.

Because I said so

A guy I know from church writes a great blog documenting his experience as a stay-at-home dad. He wrote a very entertaining post in which he lamented saying and doing all the things he hears himself saying. Including the classic “because I said so” response. I want to defend the phrase. All 4 of my boys have heard it from me and their mom, and I think it’s a good thing. I have three reasons why I’m not embarrassed using it:

1. God doesn’t seem to be embarrassed to say it to me. He expects my obedience. He will occasionally explain why to me, but not always. God knows human behavior better than anyone. He knows how we react to explanations and the lack of explanations. And he doesn’t always give explanations. Apparently he seems to think we’ll be ok without always having directions explained. If God thinks I’ll be OK without an explanation then I think my kids will be OK without one, too.
   
   
2. My kids are not smart enough to understand all of the intricacies of decisions that I have to make on their behalf. “Because I said so” is typically a wrong answer to give to a peer. But it’s completely reasonable for someone who understands the bigger picture to give to someone who doesn’t.
   
   This is the justification for why God doesn’t always explain himself to us. This is the justification for why my manager frequently doesn’t explain her decisions to me. This is the justification for why I frequently don’t explain all of my coding decisions right back to her. And it’s a completely reasonable justification for why my children simply must comply when I say to get shoes on and get in the car right now.
   
   Do you, dear child, understand what happens when daddy is late for work? Do you understand how it impacts your vacation next summer? Do you understand how this impacts mommy if I have to stay at work later? Do you understand how it impacts a huge variety of things that you are important to you? No, you don’t. And you don’t need to yet. You’re 4. The answer to your question is “because I said so”. It embodies not just that I expect you to comply (which I do), but also that I have your interest in mind. Interests that you can’t even fathom.
    
3. My kids may not understand all of the intricacies of human interaction that will stem from their non-compliance with my directions, but they are smart enough to realize that “why” is an effective stall technique. They don’t really want an explanation. They want to delay following my direction in the hopes that a long enough delay will result in not having to comply. And the more complex the answer, the longer the explanation.
   
   There is a simple one-liner that you can use to acknowledge your child’s curiosity while still expecting compliance. When they say “why”, simply respond with, “I’ll be happy to explain after you’ve done what I said.” And then turn into a broken record. Any time “why” is asked, simply repeat the one-liner, probably followed by, “Now please go do what I said.” This one-liner will distinguish the truly curious from those who are trying to stall. Those who want to know will follow-up afterwards. I’d say that my kids follow-up less than 10% of the time. Some of the 90% non-follow-up can be explained by forgetfulness, but most I attribute to the ulterior motive of trying to stall.

As my children get older, I think it’s very reasonable to explain things to them. As they become adults, I am decreasing my responsibility for their lives in proportion to their taking that responsibility. When they are fully adult, they should have full responsibility for their life. And if I do something that impacts their life, then it’s reasonable for them to demand an explanation. But my pre-teen children are not there yet.

I frequently think that parents are overly influenced by their experience as teenagers. They think, “I’ll never do/say/think that” to some behavior that their parents did when they were in their teens. Teenagers expect to be treated much more like adults than children. And I think that’s correct. I think it’s completely reasonable for most 18 year olds to expect to be treated more like an adult than a child. But my 4 year old is *NOT* remotely close to being an adult. And it is completely unreasonable for me to treat him like one. I think that far too many parents make the mistake of treating their toddlers like they wanted to be treated as a teen. Then the resulting misbehavior that child learns from too much freedom, requires that they treat those same children like toddlers when they’re teenagers. Spurring those children to repeat the whole process all over again when they become parents.

I say, “No.” I will happily not explain myself to a child who can’t possibly understand. But in exchange, I will give that child more freedom (along with the corresponding responsibility) as he approaches adulthood. My hope is that by the time my children are 18 years old, they will be taking most of the responsibility (and receiving most of the corresponding freedom) for their own lives. Hence my challenge (for my 12 year old) is to regularly release my control of his life to him by giving him more freedom, not less.

But this required starting with “because I said so” when he was 4.

My kids and race

Niffer asks asks me to comment on an awkward situation caused by the innocent observation of a child.

And I must confess to being stumped by this one.I don’t really have any confident suggestions for this situation. Maybe the parent could have said something that would have alleviated the tension. But then again, looking at the links in commenter Liana’s post, it is apparently incredibly easy to say exactly the wrong thing and then be judged harshly by the internets.

Frankly, I’d prefer that everyone involved recognize that children often say blunt things. And no amount of parental input has kept my children from saying inconsiderate blunt things to other people. Children do this because they have no idea what impact those things will have. They don’t know that other people often get hurt when we say blunt things. When an adult says something blunt, we naturally think that adult did so intentionally to hurt the other person. Because we expect the adult to know, from experience, how others are likely to react. But we really shouldn’t expect this same thing of kids. And it really shouldn’t reflect poorly on that child’s parents, either. After watching my four children, and scores of their friends, I’m convinced that children just say blunt things, and that no amount of parenting can really prevent that. If you don’t believe this, then why do you know the phrase "Kids say the darndest things"? Because parents everywhere are surprised by (and frequently embarrassed at) the things kids say. This happens so often that we’ve developed shorthand to capture this, and it’s that phrase.

Had the situation happened to me, I’m pretty sure that in the midst of it, I’d have simply apologized and pulled my kid away from the situation. And I can even imagine the conversation I’d have with him in the car about people having lots of different skin colors. I might even stop to show him that hi skin color isn’t as dark as my own. I would then mention that a lot of mean people don’t like the fact that some people have darker skin than others. And as a result, when you notice someone else has darker skin, they don’t know if you’re one of the mean people or the nice people. They might think you’re trying to be mean. So if you’re going to say something about someone else’s skin color, it’s a good idea to say something nice about it. Then that person will know that you’re not a mean person.

But then again, I’m pretty certain that my 4 year old would have lost interest at about the point I was saying, "people have lots of different skin colors." Maybe that’d be enough. Maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know. As far as I can tell, no parents anywhere have found an effective way to prevent embarrassment from the things their kids say.

The good news is that they will eventually become teenagers, and embarrassment will run much more easily in the other direction. I personally plan on taking advantage of this. Late for school? No problem. I’m going to dress up in the nerdiest outfit I can find, walk you to class, and announce that I’m your proud father. I will introduce myself to every person I meet, especially if they’re pretty girls, and frequently hug you. All under the guise that as your parent, it’s my job to make sure you get to school on time. If you can’t handle that on your own, then this is what I’ll have to do.

I’ve already announced this to all of my children in the hopes that the mere threat will prevent the need to actually do it. My own personal teenage nuclear weapon. I have it. You know I have it. Don’t make me use it. Yes. This is payback for the comments you made to the guy in the wheelchair when you were 4.

In my box

Someone I've never met made a painting. It's a beautiful painting. I like it quite a bit. Although, when I looked at it more carefully, I saw things that I didn't the first time around. I don't know if that was intentional by the artist or not. I don't really care. I like it for my own reasons.

And the reasons are that it reminds me of something that was given to me by my girlfriend in college. She had this drawing that she made on a piece of cardboard. One that she didn't think very highly of, but that I liked. She tried to throw it away but I didn't want her to because I liked it. Eventually, she completed that drawing and wrote a note on the back of it and gave it to me. I was pretty sure that I kept it. So I went to the box that I have where I think I'd have put it.

The box is this wooden foot locker type box. It has my name on it and a padlock - which is now permanantly opened. It was made for me by two of my uncles and my grandfather when I was my oldest son's age. It's turned into the place where I store stuff from days gone by.

I haven't been in the box in a while, and I started looking for this drawing. I didn't find it. It may just be that I need to look more thoroughly becuase I got distracted by a bunch of things that I did find. Letters to and from old girlfriends. Compositions that I made in highschool and college. Letters to and from the girlfriend who eventually became my wife.

Most of what I found I wouldn't share with anyone. It's *FAR* too embarrassing. But I came upon one thing that I really am glad that I found. It's a poem that I wrote as a senior in high school, after I'd had a very unexpected dream.  Here it is:

Camille

In my dreams I saw her
It was night
And she was afraid of the lightning
And she came in our room
And she held on to me. Tightly.
And when she let go, it was day.
And we were in the park
By the playground.
She asked if she could
Go on the swings with me
The smile that lit up her face as I nodded
Flooded into me
And all I wanted was for her to smile forever.

Because her smile is just like yours
And her eyes are just like yours
And she's a lot like you
But not exactly.
And that's why loving the both of you
Makes me complete
And for the first time in my life I can appreciate
My parents.

Legalism

I'm a fan of google reader. I'm able to read a lot of blogs rather quickly using that tool. One of the blogs that I read is called fingertoe. The author put up a post which included a couple of youtube videos and some commentary. The commentary is when I look at the blog with google reader, but not directly on the site. The author appears to be working on this. Hopefully it will show up there, soon.

But here are the videos.  Below is the quoted commentary.


(Direct link for those reading this on facebook)


(Direct link for those reading this on facebook)

In both of these examples, I think that they hold up an ideal that is correct. Husbands should provide for their families. Parents should actively insure that their children are being descipled under the biblical worldview.

Now the challenge is that many of us fall short. We live in a fallen world, and we are being rescued from a fallen culture – one that doesn’t necessarily prescribe to the same values as Voddie and Mark. The values being espoused should be something that we can aspire to, not something that we need to feel unchristian about because we are not fully sanctified yet. If you are 18 years old, just setting out on your own, don’t go and aspire to find a Doctor wife so you can stay at home and play all day. Aspire to be a primary provider. But if you are a father of 4, and your wife has a long established career, give yourself some slack… Try to conform to the ideal as much as it is practical. Your situation isn’t ideal, but few are.

Many folks tend to say “Oh, he is just too radical on that issue” and throw out the advice altogether. I do not think this is wise. When we are in less than ideal circumstances we need to understand that. We need to try to compensate for that, and when practical we ought to consider making sacrifices to get ourselves into a more ideal situation.

I find both of these videos to be highly disturbing. The first one quotes scripture, but without citations. My question for Mark Driscoll would be this: Scripture says that men must provide for their family. Is financial provision the only possible meaning of that passage? I'm not sure that I can agree with that interpretation. It may very well be that the circumstances of a person's life are such that the husband staying at home, allowing the wife to work, is actually a bigger financial provision than the husband working. This turns out to be happening quite a bit.

When it comes to homeschooling, I'm really at a loss for words. The quote that is mentioned from Luke comes in the middle of a passage about judging others.  Here's the full context. That passage, to me, says this: don't let people teach you to judge. I don't think it says, "don't let your kids go to public school."

Here's a basic fact, that seems indisputable to me, both biblically, and empiracally: we are each given different skills in life. Bibically, these are called gifts or talents. Empiracally, this is called the division of labor. And both theology and economics find that these differentiated gifts are very, very good things. What if our skills are not in giving our children an education in basic skills like math, reading, writing, history, etc? What if they are best served learning those fields from others with gifts and talents in those areas? Yes, we as parents, are to lead them spiritually, but do you really think that the only way to do that is to extract them from public school and provide all of their education at home? Really? I don't.

I would like to take the advice of the blogger above: and not throw out the advice in these two videos. And I think it's wise to be humble. But I am finding myself, more frequently of late, thinking that a lot of pastors have a difficult time differentiating what works for them with what ought to be prescribed for everyone. And I think the above two videos may be doing that. I think they're interpreting scripture in light of their personal circumstances and coming up with what it means they are to do for their family. But I suspect that they're also then saying, and you ought to do this too, without considering the possibility that each family's circumstances are different.

But I'm willing to listen to others who think differently. Please share your thoughts.

To Deduct or Not To Deduct

I’m frustrated with the health insurance that we have.

First I should tell you that we don’t have traditional health insurance. For my family, I have a high deductable health plan (HDHP) which allows me to contribute money to a health savings account (HSA). The money that I put into my HSA goes in before taxes are calculated on my paycheck. I can then take that money out of my HSA tax free as long as it’s used for certain health related expenses that the IRS has decided are acceptable. The list of things that the IRS allows includes the vast majority of things you’d expect to be called health expenses. And several things that most insurance companies don’t cover.

There are a few reasons that I do this:

1. The cost of an HDHP is a *LOT* less than traditional health insurance. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a better deal. But when I calculate the worst case scenario of HDHP + HSA and compare it to the worst case scenario of traditional health insurance they come out about the same. The worst case scenario costs are the annual sum of all premiums plus the plan’s maximum out of pocket expenses. Add those up, and HDHP+HSA is roughly equal cost to traditional health insurance.
   
   Where the HDHP+HSA really makes up the difference is in best case scenario. In the best case scenario, I have no out of pocket expenses (e.g. I don’t use health care at all for the year) but I pay only the premium. For traditional health insurance the best case scenario is only a tiny bit less expensive than the worst case scenario. But with the HDHP+HSA plan, the best case scenario is a *LOT* less expensive than the best case scenario of traditional health insurance. Thus, with an HDHP+HSA plan, I get rewarded for consuming wisely.
   
   Now, IMHO, neither the worst case scenario nor the best case scenario are very likely. More realistically, we’ll spend more than the best case scenario and much less than the worst case scenario. But the worst that can happen is that we’ll spend exactly the same as traditional health insurance. And more than likely, we’ll save a lot of money.
   
   
2. There are some tax advantages to HDHP+HSA that aren’t available with traditional insurance. With traditional insurance, I can only deduct the premium expenses from my taxes, if I get the insurance from my employer. That’s still true with an HDHP. But with the HSA, I get to deduct $6000 per year (in contributions to the HSA) that I can’t deduct if I’m self employed or  not getting insurance through my employer.
   
   
3. If I’m frugal and don’t spend that $6000 contribution this year, I still get the tax deduction. But I also keep that money in the HSA. I’m not left with a “use it or lose it” type scenario like with flexible spending accounts.
   

All told, I think HDHP+HSA makes a lot of sense. It makes the health insurance market much more like other insurance markets. Encouraging this type of health insurance is the type of reform that would actually drive health care costs down.

I like the plan that I have. My frustration stems from how health care providers have to react in light of it.

So my wife just called me from visiting a chiropractor – an allowed expense. When she went to pay for the we were stuck with a decision. We get the insurance negotiated price, which in this case is $42 per visit. However, the Chiropractor offers a package deal to customers. E.g. buy 5 visits, and the price per visit is $35. That saves $7 per visit compared to the insurance negotiated price. So you’d think, well that’s a good deal, let’s go with that.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Our HDHP has (of course) a high deductible. $4000 for the family. All of our expenses count against that deductible. Prior to meeting the deductible, we pay 100% of those expenses out of our HSA. After meeting the deductible, we pay 20% of those expenses and insurances covers the remaining 80% until we get to our maximum out of pocket. Once we get there we pay 0% and insurance covers 100%. So there are 2 levels to be concerned with:

1. The deductable - $4000 of expenses
   
2. Max out of pocket - $8000 of expenses
   

And here’s the problem. If we choose that 5pack of coverage – saving $35, the whole cost ($175) won’t count against our deductible nor our max out of pocket. It can’t. If the provider submits this fee to the insurance company, the insurance company will then try to renegotiate his prices. The provider who used to have a $42 rate will now be forced down to a $35 rate, and he’ll get less reimbursement from the insurance company.

So we’re stuck with this decision: is it better to pay $35 per visit (saving $7) but not have it count against our deductible? Or is it better to pay the $42 per visit and have each visit count against our deductible? If we choose the former, we save $7 now, but we might have to pay an additional $175 later if we get close to our deductible. If we choose the latter, then we lose $7 now.

And you’d be surprised how frequently we’re stuck with this type of decision. There are many times when we’re talking to a health care provider who, knowing that we’re paying for a service out of our pocket, is willing to cut us a deal. But in doing so, we forfeit the ability to have those fees count against our deductible and max out of pocket.

And these costs matter. Because they change the worst case scenario calculations that I made above. They increase the worst case scenario cost of having an HDHP+HSA.

I think in the example that we’re talking about. Saving $7 per visit is really not that much savings – only about 16% savings. In this case, the differences are close enough that it probably makes more sense to pay the $7 to have it count against our deductible. But there are other providers for whom the deal that they’re willing to cut us is about 50% savings. That’s a much bigger immediate savings and a much bigger cost as we get closer to the deductible. One example is where the out of pocket cost is $200 and it applies to our deductible. But if we pay it out of pocket directly, it only costs $100. What do you do then? Do I save $100 now, or pay $200 in additional deductible later? I’m tempted to save the $100 now. But it’s not obvious that’s the right plan.

Palm Pre vs HTC Hero Part 3

A while back, I wrote two comparison reviews of my experiences with the Palm Pre and the HTC Hero. They are available here and here.

I track the hits on my blog. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom you'll see a little green square from sitemeter. Go ahead and click on it. You'd be surprised at how much information it contains.(For those of you reading this on facebook, click on "view original post" then scroll to the bottom)

It turns out that those two posts are the most popular posts on my blog... by a *HUUGE* margin. Prior to these posts, I had maybe 200 visits in that little green box. And it took a couple of *years* to get to that.  Since I made those posts in November (a mere 2 months), I have nearly 7000 visits! So, as a follow-up (and also a way to generate more hits) I'm writing my reactions a few months later.

I was never able to convince Sprint to let me swap out my Palm Pre for an HTC Hero. I really wanted to do that. I was tired of the problems that I was having w/the Pre and needed something that was going to work more reliably for me. In retrospect I'm glad that it didn't happen.  In the 2 months since I did that experiment, WebOS has advanced by leaps and bounds.  I was on WebOS 1.2.1 when I wrote those. Since then 1.3.1, 1.3.5 and 1.3.5.1 have been released. Each has come incremental improvements, but most notably:

1. Battery life is a little bit better overall, but *MUCH* better when using WIFI at home. I can easily get one full day out of a single charge if I stayed on wifi all the time. Easily. Whereas it used to be a struggle to get through a day.
2. I don't remember which release brought it (I think it was 1.3.1) but the calendar is a lot faster now. It's become usable.
3. 3D games are available. I have purchased only 2: Asphalt 5 and Let's Golf. Both of which are great fun.
4. The number of apps in the app catalog has grown rapidly. Back then I think there were around 500 apps. As of right now, the number is 1348. They hit 1000 apps on Dec 31 right before the new year. 348 apps in a month is very encouraging.  And some of the apps that are coming out are very clever.  I'm particularly fond of GeoStrings which has saved me from forgetting a honey-do task on several occasions.
5. Palm has announced that 2 things will be available in the 1.4 WebOS release in February: video recording and Adobe Flash support. Video recording is a big deal to me. I really miss that feature from my centro. Flash brings things that I've wanted to get on my phone: mostly access to audio & video that I would normally have to use a computer to access.

Those things have made me quite a bit more pleased w/my Pre than I was in November. That said there are still things that I wish this phone could do better:

• Battery life while not on Wifi is still attrociuos. I carry a spare battery and it's annoying that I have to frequently use it.
• The OS speed is better but it can still get really really laggy. I hope that they will run all the animations through the GPU to improve performance.
• The Tasks application is still bad. I have no way to set a recurring task - like (for example) reminding myself to take out the garbage every Monday night. But of course once it's done it should stop reminding me until next week!
• There are a couple of visual voicemail applications available (here and here). But both are hacks that rely on using a 3rd party voicemail service - which, to Sprint's credit is easy to set up. However, I really want to see direct supported visual voicemail from Sprint on this device similar to the way it works in Android. It's much more reliable than either of the available visual voicemail apps.
• There are still no voice recording or voice recognition features. Something that I *really* liked on android.
• I still dislike gestures. Others seem to absolutley love them. But I find them unreliable. When I want to go back, I want to go back immediately. I don't want to swipe at the screen and only convince the phone that I'm going back 9 out of 10 times. This is too basic of a function. 90% is too low of a success rate. The 10% failure rate is like a giant black splotch on a pure white wall. Of course, this is not something that can be fixed in software.

All of that said, at this point, my assessment of Hero vs Pre is not as lopsided as it was 2 months ago. It's a coin flip with a lean towards the Pre due to it's potential.

CBS, NOW and Tim Tebow

Apparently Tim Tebow's mom, in conjunction with Focus on the Family, wants to run an ad during the superbowl (*). The gist of which is to express Mrs. Tebow's joy at having made the choice she did and it resulting in Tim Tebow - QB extraordinaire for the University of Florida.

But this has angered the National Organization for Women (NOW). They think that the long standing prohibition on advocacy ads during the superbowl should remain in effect, thus disallowing the ad during the superbowl. I have not read what their position is on running the ad at any other time. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and presume that they would not object to it running at another time.

Unfortunately, I've listened to NOW defending their complaint. And if they could just stick to the point that advocacy ads are prohibited, I think they'd be ok. But they keep bringing up that they're defending a woman's right to choose. And this seems really inconsistent to me. If that's the case, why are they complaining about an ad which shows one woman's choice? Does NOW only like women's right to choose when it's the choice that NOW supports?

And this isn't the only time that NOW has seemed inconsistent to me. They've explicitly called for a ban on breast implants. Do they want the government interfering with a woman's choices over her body or do they not?

The inconsistency makes it seem like their position is less about changing people's minds and more about enforcing the choices they prefer on others. I could be wrong. But from the outside that's what it looks like. This is why consistency matters. It suggests that there's an underlying principle that your actions are consistent with. But in this case, their actions seem to be more consistent with a power grab rather than a principled position.

And NOW is not the only one that seems inconsistent. Frankly, the behavior of the vocal pro-lifers annoys me. I'd be much more moved by their concern for the children they're trying to save if they were willing to adopt those children. Do they really care about those children or are they more interested in punishing the mothers?

That said, I believe that the best approach to speech you don't like is more speech, not less speech. If you disagree with me, talk to me, I'll listen. Then I'll talk and you listen. But lets' stay far away from trying to force each other to shut up. So I think NOW should come out with their own advocacy ad. But trying to ban someone else's speech? Yeah, that's crossing the line.

(*) As a side note, I'm not going to start calling it "the big game" like so many other people are doing in response to the NFL's threats to sue. This is certainly a risk on my part, but a) I'm not hosting a party and trying to capitalize on the NFL's trademark, and b) I have like 5 people who regularly read this blog. To get in trouble w/the NFL, they have to notice first.  That said, I think the NFL is nuts in their desire to suppress the use of the word "superbowl". Yes it's a trademark. Yes they own it. But, c'mon. You're prohibiting superbowl parties? What's next? Will I be in trouble if I mention that the Packers are my favorite team? Or will I be required to call it, "the pro-football team from Green Bay"? If ever there were an argument for reforming trademark laws, I think this is it.

Lenore Skenazy is my new hero

One of the economics blogs that I really like (econlog) has a blogger that I really like (Bryan Caplan). He's writing a book about parenting that I'm anxious to read. And he recently blogged about another parenting book that he really likes.

You'll notice a lot of "really like"s in that last paragraph. Basically, they all contributed to my desire to read this book. I was pretty close to pulling the trigger on Amazon, when my wife suggested I see if the local public library has it. And it did. But not only that, it turns out that they had it available as an MP3 download. So I've been listening to it on my phone to & from work for the last 2 days.  And it's fantastic.

The book is about how we parents are overly hyper about the safety of our kids. Safety's a good thing. A very good thing. But not when the additional cost brings about minimal safety. My favorite fact from the book (so far) relates to our fears, as parents, of having our children abducted. And that these fears are ridiculously overblown. To prove it she pulls out a statistic: there is a 1 in 1.5 million chance that your child will get abducted. That's pretty small. But because we humans have a hard time with very large numbers, Skenazy quotes another way of looking at these odds. If you were trying to get your child abducted and held overnight, how long would you have to leave them outside, unsupervised before the odds were likely that this happened? 750,000 years! Of course, no one wants their child abducted. It's a thought experiment. And the results: 750,000 years. That's how ridiculously unlikely it is that our children will be abducted.

Now *that* is a useful point of view. I strongly encourage everyone, but especially parents, to read this book. Or listen to it. It's also a useful as an anti-condescension tool for non-parents.

Also, the author has a very good blog.

Haiti and Starvation

On the way to work a few days ago, I listened to an NPR segment on how relief efforts are going in Haiti. The long and short: not good. The most basic of necessities (food) is not getting where it needs to get. When relief trucks show up, the crowds absolutely mob the truck, immediately. And those who are the strongest get all the food. And those who go without on one day are very likely to go without again the next time the truck shows up. There’s too little food and an ineffective way of distributing what’s there.

However, the piece also mentioned that markets (as is their tendency) are emerging, allowing for people to buy food. The problem, however, is that no one is working and as a result everyone is depleting their savings trying to get food.

But this mix strikes me as odd. Because what you’ve got is:

1. A *LOT* of people not working, and
2. A *LOT* of work that needs to get done

Why aren’t these two things combining to reward people willing to work by paying them, thus solving the food crisis?

Sure, some people who are idle are incapable of working right now. Let’s assume that for every 2 families, that at least one person could work. And that work would be sufficient to purchase food for those 2 families. Why is this not happening?

One answer could be that no one is hiring. Because, of course, they don’t have any money to hire either. There are two problems with this answer:

1. Hiring to do a task increases wealth. For example, if you hire someone to help you pick fruit, you have twice as much fruit to sell. Roughly doubling your profit margin. So hiring should generate more money, not less.
2. Foreign investors, who have money, should be anxious to get access to the labor force that is desperate to get paid so that they can eat.

And I suspect that #2 is the key to solving the conundrum. Haiti started off as a poor country for a reason. That reason being that the institutional structure of the country has been in turmoil since Aristide took office in late 1990. This creates uncertainty for investors. They are not sure what type of government will exist, and what type of rules it will have. Will it have rules favorable to investment or will it behave like Venezuela, where foreign investors spent a lot of money building their oil production capacity only to have the Hugo Chavez’ government come and confiscate it. If you had money to invest into Haiti, but you were completely uncertain as to whether or not you’d lose it, what would you do? Would invest it there or find someplace else that had rules that you understood? Most people do the latter.

The question that investors have for Haiti is this: what type of government will Haiti have? Will it be worth it to invest there and help rebuild Haiti? If investors do this, will they get to keep their investments, or will the Haitians confiscate them? The fact that investors are not doing this in Haiti tells you what they think the answer will be. To solve this, the Haitian government, whatever is left of it, along with the Haitian military, needs to convince investors that stable institutions that encourage investment will remain. That investment brought to Haiti will not be stolen.

Convincing investors that Haitian institutions will be stable is not easy. But that is what is needed in Haiti to solve the starvation problem.

Another solution: let the Haitians become refugees and come here to work. But that has its own set of hurdles.

Why I hate democracy

There was a special election in Massachusetts recently. This was held to replace the seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. Based on the results of the election, and the campaign rhetoric, the people voting seem to be making a statement about President Obama’s healthcare agenda: they don’t like it. If a republican can get elected on this platform in the single most democratic state in the US, then they’re simply no avoiding what is being said by a majority of people. Simply put, they agree with that platform: opposition to the President’s healthcare agenda. Personally, I oppose this agenda as well, so I’m breathing a sigh of relief that it looks like this agenda is going to be defeated.

But while a majority did agree with this, this is *not* a landslide victory like some seem to be suggesting. Brown won 52% to 47%. 5 points. If this were a basketball game, that’d be a pretty close game. If this were measuring market share of two competitors, the leader would be worried. Only in politics is a 5 point victory considered a big win. And what it has me thinking about is the 47% of Massachusetts that lost.

I’m a huge fan of markets. I think markets work better than the political process for the provision of just about everything. And while I think there are a few things that governments probably ought to do (e.g. national defense) it’s only “probably”. I have incredibly little faith in government. I have incredibly little faith in empowering one tiny group of people to make rules for the rest of us.

And when you’re on the losing side of an election, that’s what you worry about. That other people whose ideas you don’t like, will dictate your fate. That you will lose some bit of freedom that you had hoped was coming as a result of your guy winning.

But this problem doesn’t exist when markets provision goods. Over the summer, I bought a car. I chose a Hyundai Elantra Touring. I’m pretty pleased with my choice. Although I have a friend who found this choice troublesome. He’s a Ford mechanic, and believes that the Ford Focus was a much better choice. It certainly has much better market share than the Hyundai I ended up buying. But here’s the thing that makes this experience so different than government. My vote for the Hyundai did not force me to live with a Honda Civic – the car with the biggest market share in that segment. I voted for, and got exactly what I voted for.

In a market, if I vote for the 2nd place option, I don’t worry that I’m going to be forced to live with the 1st place option. Heck, if I vote for the 20th place option in a market, I get the 20th place option.

This is in huge contrast to how it works in government, and democracy in particular. Because it’s not true that only 47% of the population of Massachusetts are the ones who don’t get what they want. None of the rest of America got to vote on this pivotal election. There are a *LOT* more people than those in Massachusetts who are feeling like they’re about to lose something that they thought was coming. They voted for 2nd place, and from it they’re going to get nothing.

Democracy is the illusion that your vote counts for something. But that illusion is only upheld if your guy wins. Markets allow 2nd, 3rd, 4th, … to get what they want even if they don’t get 1st place. Why do I hate democracy? Because it creates a huge number of losers at the expense of the winners. Markets don’t do that. I much prefer markets for providing goods and services. Not even the vaunted democracy comes close to making as many people well off as do markets.

The single most surprising event I've seen as a parent

Today, we had the sad task of taking the child we hosted over Christmas to the airport to send him back home to Latvia. (See this and this.) I haven't blogged much about the experience of having him here, because having 4 boys of our own and adding a 5th to the mix has kept me on my toes. Throw the holidays into the mix, and my uncle's death on Christmas, and our family has been thoroughly busy.

Suffice it to say, that the experience of hosting this child was thoroughly positive.

But that's over now, and my wife & I are now allowed to utter the a-word: adoption. And we are forced to think about if we're going to do it. There are a number of things pulling us towards adopting him:

1. We really liked him.
2. As an orphan (2nd lowest social strata in Latvia) and a "gypsy" (lowest social strata in Latvia) he's pretty much got *nothing* to go back to.
3. We could make this one kid's life better. And not just by a little bit. We could give this kid a future that he simply doesn't have right now.
4. And probably the biggest factor, one day we're going to stand before God and make an account of our lives. And it's almost impossible to imagine saying that we didn't do whatever we could to change his life because it would be too expensive and too hard.

Of course, there are some things pulling us from adopting him:

1. It is expensive. And I don't mean a little bit. The cost ranges between $10,000 and $40,000. My company has some adoption credits, and the government offers some tax credits, but added up those don't come anywhere close to the worst case scenario cost. Doing this means, we probably have to stop putting money to our children's college funds for a while.
   
2. It will require a huge commitment of time: we will likely have to take at least 2 trips to Latvia, possibly 3.
3. It will be a lot of work. He has to learn English. We have to figure out some mechanism to driving him towards a productive life. And he's 14 already. Which means that we have a lot of work and not a lot of time.
   
4. And the biggest fear is that, after watching him interact with our children for a month, that he won't fit into the mix in our family very well. 

I recently blogged about my 2nd son, and how he struggles to get along with people. And during the month we hosted, #2 and our guest got along about as well as #2 gets along with most other children. He was aggressive and intolerant of differences, and physical. Our guest is cut of a similar cloth to #2. So there were disagreements between the two, that would end with one or the other getting physically hurt.

Which brings me to the single most surprising thing I've ever seen as a parent. I was working from home today so that I could make the trip to the airport. I came downstairs after my children got off the bus to discover that #2 was crying. I figured he'd had a confrontation with someone on the bus or maybe one of his brothers. But the reason was that he missed the boy we'd just taken to the airport.

He was crying on the way to school this morning because he knew he'd just seen our guest for the last time. He was crying on the way home from school because he knew that our guest would not be at home.  And he was crying when he got home because it was all confirmed.

I didn't know what to say, but at the same time as I was sad for my son, my heart almost burst with pride for him, too. At only 8 years old, there are depths to his character that many adults I know have not yet reached.

One thing, though. One of our excuses not to adopt was just blown to bits.

Perspective From The Other Side

I read a post from Niffer about a couple of experiences that she’d had with other people and her child. I wanted to post this as a comment on her blog, but after realizing how long it got, I decided to make it a blog post. The rest of this will be from the perspective of me writing to Niffer.

Hi Niffer,

I read your 2nd experience and felt the need to give the perspective of a parent whose child misbehaves. Our 2nd child is an interesting kid. He’s very different than our 1st child. #1 is a naturally compliant child. He is aware of other people’s feelings and responds to them. Which makes parenting him really easy (for now at least). #2, on the other hand, has a tendency to be incredibly self-reliant. He tends to be an experiential learner. Meaning that he doesn’t tend to believe things that are told to him. He tends to want to find out from direct experience whether or not something is true. How someone feels about it doesn’t really matter that much to him.

Both of these traits are strengths, that I think God has given them to be used for a purpose. Unfortunately, in the wrong situations, they can be weaknesses. For example, #1 is very good at relating to other people. He easily understands their feelings and responds to them. This is a trait that allows him to make friends very easily. But he’s also very bad at standing up for himself. He can be convinced by others to do things he shouldn’t. He’s simply responding to other people’s feelings. In contrast, #2 is much more able to stand up for himself. No one is going to convince him to do something that he doesn’t want to do. But his need to experience something to believe it means that he struggles with making and keeping friends. Friends expect you to trust them, and he tends to be confrontational. He often reacts strongly when he thinks he’s been wronged. And he doesn’t need anyone else to help him deal with it. He’ll handle it himself. Forcefully. Even violently.

As a result, we are sometimes confronted by other parents who are complaining that son #2 hit their child. The last time it happened, we were at an indoor playland called “Monkey Joes”. We were heading to the car to eat the lunch we’d brought, when a woman, who was clearly angry, confronted us about our 2nd son. She told us how he’d hit her daughter and caused a cut on her face. I said, “Yeah that sounds like something he might do. I’m so sorry. I’ll talk with him.”

Now if it had stopped there, I probably wouldn’t remember the details of the encounter. I would have talked to my son, tried to figure out what was going on, and hoped that he’d absorbed 10% of what I’d said. But it didn’t stop there. She went on, saying that just talking to him wasn’t good enough. And I asked her what she thought I should do? She suggested that he be taken home for the rest of the day, and be punished. At which point, I told her that I hadn’t seen what happened. That I was simply trusting her, and I asked her if she’d seen what happened. She had not. But the cut on her daughter’s face was clear that something had happened. I said, “OK, that’s true. But the cut doesn’t tell us exactly what happened, and not having seen the incident, and not having had a chance to talk to my son about it, I need to find out his perspective before I punish him. Besides that I have 5 other kids with me and they want to stay.” (My 4 kids had 2 friends with them.) At which point, she grunted, and said, “Well, then just keep him away from my daughter!” while pointing her finger in my face and turning and walking away.

Having been through this before, I assumed that the story she told was correct. That #2 had initiated the fight. Of course, #2 claimed innocence. And surprisingly, my first child (who’s 12) and his friend (who’s also 12) immediately corroborated #2’s story. Apparently, this girl and her friends know my son from school. And they frequently chase him around the playground. And they also frequently get him into trouble by pestering him until he responds and defends himself. So he’s accustomed to seeing this particular posse of girls and running from them as quickly as possible.

My first son – who is able to sense that I’m not kidding around – is typically very honest. He’s earned his parents trust. He & his friend confirmed that this group of girls had been chasing my son for most of the time we’d been there. And when the incident occurred, they were trying to pull him off of a slide, and they succeeded. And in the process of falling, my 2nd son fell on the girl who claimed he’d punched her. And that’s what caused the cut. She initiated it entirely, and as his her habit, she tried to blame it on my son.

Of course, upon hearing this, I was mad. But I calmed myself and found the woman. In as non-accusatory a manner as I could, I told her what had happened and what was confirmed by my oldest son and his friend. At the end I said, “I don’t know exactly what happened – I wasn’t there. And I will respect your request to keep my son away from your daughter, but I thought you should know that this is happening.” By this time, she had calmed down from her initial anger at my son, and she was able to hear me. Despite that, I spent the rest of the day trying to assist my son in staying away from this posse of girls who were relentless in pestering him.

What is my point? I don’t know. When you told experience #2, I immediately thought of this event. And I remembered being the parent of the kid who’d misbehaved. Maybe my point is that there’s always another perspective. And in my case it was wrong for me to assume that my son had misbehaved. But it was also wrong for this woman to approach me with such accusation.

I also know that as a parent, when I feel like I’m defending my child, I get angry too quickly. I jump in and attack back at whatever I perceive is attacking my child. In this particular case, I think I handled it better than many previous examples, where I had immediately raised defenses and went into attacking the accuser – who was clearly in the wrong. I think the fact that all those experiences ended up badly has taught me that

I can’t just go attacking someone whom I perceive as threatening my child. I have to listen first. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly difficult to control my own desire to defend my child and my desire to know the truth of what happened. So maybe my point is to caution you to go into a confrontation with another parent with humility.

Re: the boy who called your daughter something horribly insulting, you may be right that he’d heard it from his father. But maybe he heard it from older siblings. Or maybe from friends of his older siblings. Maybe his parents have confronted him on it so much, that he’s figured out how to get away with it when they’re not around, but not figured out how to get away with it when other parents are around.

Maybe I’m feeling defensive for those other parents, because I’m so frequently on the side of having my son be the one who wronged someone else’s child. And to the parents who confront me on it, I promise you, I’m *more* frustrated by it than you are. You’ve had this one experience with my child, and when you go home, it’s done for you. I’ve had this experience many times and this just reminds me that we have more work to do. Maybe those other parents would have wanted to say that. Maybe they wouldn’t have known how, and would have reacted badly as they perceived someone attacking their son.

Obviously, I don’t know. But I’m certain that when it comes to parents interacting with other parents over conflict between their children, the only possible way it will work is if both sides approach things with humility. If I’m not willing to be the one who approaches with humility, then there’s no chance that the interaction will go well.

Why do men cheat?

In the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal, USA Today asks why men cheat. Personally, I think it’s the wrong question. Biologically, men are sperm production machines. We release roughly 40 million of the little buggers every time we ejaculate. This fact simultaneously contributes to, and is a result of, a strategy for increasing the number of human beings in the world. This strategy has been exercised by men and women for tens of thousands of years. Some of the elements of this strategy:

1. The fact that women have ridiculously small production of eggs compared to men’s production of sperm, means that women are in general, more selective about their sexual partners. They want both:
   

   1. Men who will commit a lifetime to them in order to help provide stable child care
      
   2. Men with the strongest genetic material, to increase the odds of survival of their children
      

   This often results in a problem for women, because of this statistical fact: not all women can have above average lifetime mates. By definition, not all men are above average. There’s no getting around the fact that, on average, men are average. So, on average, women find themselves choosing either a or b, but not both.
   
   
2. On the other hand, men’s production of ridiculously large numbers of sperm means that sperm are in plentiful supply. To replace the current generation, any given society needs to have all (or nearly all) of the women reproduce. But only a very small number of men are needed to accomplish the same thing. The rest of the men are expendable. Hence, they are available to take on the much more risky tasks, like protecting the group from invaders, getting meat, etc.
   

The results of the extremely high costs of female eggs and the extremely low costs of male sperm is the strategy that got us to where we are today: relatively small number of men have historically reproduced. The remaining men simply died off. Those who did reproduce, had to be among the horniest buggers of all time. Those who weren’t that horny simply died off.

So what are men now? We’re the descendents of long lines of the horniest and most reproductive men ever. This tiny minority of men had sex with almost all the women. The women wanted this because they all had access to the best genes which meant a higher probability that their children would survive. The men wanted this because it let them spread their genes most widely. The offshoot? Men are horny buggers because we’re descended from horny buggers. And women enabled this trait by giving birth to offspring from that tiny minority of men.

And this is borne out by studies of genetic lineage. Some studies of China have found that 8% of that population is a descendant of Genghis Khan (1). Think about that. One out of every 12 people, in a society of over 1 billion, are descended from one man. Other studies have found that, historically, only 40% of males reproduced. The remaining 60% died before having children (2).

The long and short: all of us (in general) but specifically men have an incredible biological urge to promiscuity, because we are descended from long lines of men who successfully deployed this strategy, and we inherited the desire to do the same.

So the question is *not* why do men cheat. The question is why don’t they.

And the answer is, I think, related to how marriage benefits the 60% of men who previously didn’t get to reproduce. Without the institution of marriage, almost all women would reproduce. But only 40% of men would. Marriage, and the social pressure to remain faithful, provides benefits for both men and women. For most women it provides them a long term caretaker. For men, it provides that other 60% the ability to reproduce. An ability that they simply didn’t have before.

Marriage is, I think, an emergent social norm that maximizes reproduction for both men and women. It’s a good thing. *BUT* don’t forget our biological history. It’s that history of success that makes it so hard for men to not cheat. Men find themselves trying to walk a tightrope. They have enormous biological pressure pushing them towards infidelity, and social pressure pushing them towards faithfulness. It should be little surprise that several slip off that rope.

UPDATE: I just realized something. A) I am a lifetime companion to my wife. B) I've never been approached or seduced by any woman, ever. I therefore have to conclude that, apart from marraige, I'd have fallen into the 60% of men who never got to reproduce. This conclusion is corroborated by my experience in high school, and the observations of a former boss. After work at the bar, he told me I had "no game" - meaning that I couldn't pick up a woman if I really wanted to. I objected saying that I got married and was able to pick up at least one woman. His response: that was just pity. Over the years, I've come to realize he was right. My point: there's at least one positive about being in the bottom 60%.

Cited References:

1. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html
   
2. http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm FYI, this article is worth reading in its entirety.
   

Additional references:

1. http://jessiegirl.blogspot.com/2008/11/monogamy-part-1-impossible-dream.html
   
2. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/a-commitment-pill/?apage=3
   

First Story, Part 2

Just a short update for those who are following along with what we're doing to try and make the life of a kid better and at the same time, make a better story of our own lives.

Yesterday, my wife & I spent almost all day in an orientation session to learn about hosting an orphan from Latvia over Christmas.  Here are the big things I came away with:

1. The importance of avoiding the a-word could not be stressed enough. Despite the fact that he will know very little english, the a-word is one that he'll know. They really don't want to raise the expectation levels of the kids only to have them be disappointed.
2. To that end, the kids who are hosted won't find out that they're going until right before they leave.  As I understand it, someone will show up, ask them to pack and then they go. On the way to the airport, they'll get a letter that was written by the hosting family - translated into their native language. Ours included pictures and a small description of each family member. The pictures we included were a picture of the whole family, a picture of the room he'll stay in and a couple of pictures of the kids playing with the dog (so that he'll know we have a dog, and that the dog is friendly with even the little kids).
   
3. A statistic was presented: 30% of people who host describe themselves as "open" to the a-word, but 70% actually adopt. To which, I said, out loud, "Aww. Crap!"
4. After he's been here for 2 weeks, we will receive a form from "the organization" that's coordinating all of this. We will have to answer this question: do you wish to adopt the child you're hosting. We will have to answer either: "Yes", "No", or "Uncertain". If we answer "Yes" the child will be taken off of the organizations web site completely.  If we answer "No" the child will be put back on the website in order to encourage other families to host, and possibly adopt. If we answer "Uncertain" the child will be put back on the website. In this case, if someone else decides to pursue adoption they will contact us first to determine if we'd made a decision.  My reaction: wow that's not a lot of time to be able to make that big of a decision.
   

The orientation session was good, but it could have been more efficient. I felt like they covered a lot of stuff that was in the required reading. By the end of the day, I was getting pretty fidgety. But we did meet many of the other families that will be hosting in our area as well as some who'd flown in from the entire opposite side of the country. I really enjoyed meeting them. We've already planned one group activity. We are hopeful for more. Group activities are good for the kids because they get to interact with other kids in their own language.

When I told my mom about this, she thought we were completely crazy. I took that as a good sign that we're achieving at least one of our goals with this.

Other things we know now that we didn't when I wrote the first post:

• The child's flight will arrive at 11:52pm on a school night. They encourage the entire family to be there and to be excited. I'm not sure how we'll pull that off. My wife wants me and my oldest son to go while she stays home with the younger 3. This is not the kind of thing I get really hyped up about. So it may take some divine intervention to get me excited.
  
  And the kid will just have spent the previous 30 hours traveling. Which seems like a long time until you put that into perspective that he's only known about who he was going to meet 30 hours earlier. So, he'll be exhausted and nervous at the same time.
  
• So far, our criminal checks have come back containing exactly nothing. Which is oddly relieving. I didn't expect them to contain anything, but I couldn't avoid the paranoia that they might contain something for which we were wrongly implicated.  
• The FBI investigation has not yet been received. We have to call the FBI and ask them to expedite. The friends of ours who got us into this program did the same thing, and the FBI had lost their requests. It's pretty late in the game, I really hope they have not lost ours.
• The paper work that I fretted about was either not as hard as I thought, or my wife (having done nearly all of the work) did a fantastic job of hiding that effort from me.
  

We have pictures of the child that we're hosting. I was thinking of posting them here, but that's problematic. I may have already spoken too much about our consideration of the a-word. I don't want to get "the organization" in trouble, as they are only a hosting organization, not an adoption agency.