Trumwill: Formatting and restoring is like going to the dentist. It’s something you should probably do every six months or so, but it’s really inconvenient and not very fun, so most people - myself included - put it off until the last possible moment.

TrumDad: Speaking of dentists…

Trumwill: I knew I shouldn’t have used that metaphor!

TrumDad: How long have you had that cavity?

Trumwill: Six months, possibly a year.

TrumMom: And when do you plan on doing something about it?

Trumwill: Well, the way I see it I don’t know when Arapaho licensure is going to go through and when her insurance is going to kick in, so that could be a problem.

TrumDad: How?

Trumwill: Well, let’s say that I visit a dentist who determines that I have a cavity. Then, by the time it’s time to get that cavity filled, I’m on her insurance. But they don’t have a record of the first visit. Or it becomes a pre-existing condition.

TrumDad: Or I have a better idea. Why don’t you call tomorrow morning, explain the situation, and make two appointments. Find out if any of the dentists in Callie can do that.

TrumMom: I like your father’s idea.

Trumwill: Yeah… but… you see… that’s… uhm…. how many extra calls? Or I can wait for a couple months and visit then.

TrumParents: {Forcefully failing to buy it}

Trumwill: Dad’s pressuring me to go to the dentist.

Clancy: Didn’t you say you had a cavity?

Trumwill: Well, let’s say that I visit a dentist who determines that I have a cavity. Then, by the time it’s time to get that cavity filled, I’m on her insurance. But they don’t have a record of the first visit. Or it becomes a pre-existing condition.

Clancy: I’m sure if you explained it to a dentist they would see what they can do to get the two appointments before the insurance change. Why not at least call and find out?

Trumwill: That’s exactly what Dad said!

Clancy: … and?

Trumwill: And y’all are throwing monkey-wrenches into my logic here.

Clancy: I’m looking around and I’m not seeing any logic here.

Trumwill: Stop that! You’re ruining my plan!

Clancy: I’m looking around and I’m not seeing any plan - any real plan here.

Trumwill: It’s hiding. My plan is a shy one.

Obsidian argues that men are generally more expected to “settle” than are women:

Because of evolutionary realities, Women are and have always been the choosier sex. This is understandable-Women only have a limited amount of eggs, a limited amount of time to “make good” on them, and human childbirth is perhaps the most difficult of all the mammals on the planet to pull off successfully. All of this makes sex, even in our time of vastly improved medical science, quite risky for the Female; if she makes the wrong choice of mate and has his kid(s), it can prove disastrous in a whole host of ways. I personally know scores of Men who, upon merely finding out that a Woman has a kid or two, immediately drops her from contention, not only as a date, but even as a pump and dump. They don’t want to be bothered, and in our age of “Maury Baby Mama/Baby Daddy” high drama, I can’t say that I blame them. Of course, there are also scores of Men out there who can and will screw just about everything in sight, and that’s kind of the point of this post today.

It’s an interesting theory, but one that I believe has two major vulnerabilities.

First, it’s easy and understandable for men to talk about how choosy women are because we are the ones that get rejected by them. They do the rejecting. We ask out. We seek to mate while they spend a good portion of their time shooting down men that seek to mate. Or that’s one way of looking at it, anyway. But men don’t spend much time rejecting women because we almost never have to. If we’re not attracted to a woman, all we have to do is refrain from asking her out! We ask out a very small percentage of the women that we know, so in a way we’re defacto rejecting the vast majority of women out there.

I’m not saying that it’s fair that we are expected to ask women out or that women must to some degree rely on men asking women out, but it’s still the most common practice. One of the upshots for men is that it allows us to reject women without rejecting them. It allows us to evade our own standards. It’s easier to believe that you have an extremely open mind when girls you’re uninterested in are background furniture.

The second problem is that we’re choosy when it comes to… what, precisely? Sex? As Obsidian points out, we’re notoriously unchoosy in that department. But when it comes to a monogamous relationship, marriage, and other forms of commitment, guys have something of a different reputation. When guys angle for sex but put off any sort of commitment, we are being choosy in our own way. We are being selective about who we give our monogamous devotion to. A guy that’s sleeping with a girl on a regular basis but refuses to commit to them is not necessarily being any less choosy. Can a woman who hedges on sex or romantic commitment even while she’s getting exactly what she wants from the guy (emotional validation, bug-smashing willingness, etc) make the claim that she’s not being choosy because she’s spending time and giving attention to a guy that is not exactly her ideal? It’s the same sort of thing.

Whether men are more picky than women or vice-versa is extremely difficult to gauge. Not coincidentally, both sides believe that it’s the other side gumming up with works with their unrealistic standards. As is often the case, the truth falls somewhere in between. It’s unlikely that each side is exactly the same degree of choosy in the aggregate, but it’s also the case that there is such wide variation within each gender that it’s problematic to paint with a very wide brush at all.

-{Link from In Mala Fide}-

Generic statement indicating my disdain for Corrupt Politician X.

Categorical denial that I wish anyone to commit any item of physical violence to anyone.

Reiteration that should any natural disaster, ill health, act of god, or otherwise strange circumstance not caused by willful malice on the part of a human being result in the aforementioned politician’s death, I would:

Our wireless router upped and died. Fortunately, we had another one on hand. I bought my parents a wireless router for Christmas about a week before Dad bought a wireless router for himself. So he donated his wireless router to me. I was dissatisfied with my previous router, a Linksys, which tended to get overloaded during intense downloading sessions. The router would get so busy with handling Internet traffic that the wireless functionality would blinker. Then out of nowhere it stopped sending a wireless signal at all. The new router is a Netgear. We’ll see how it does. I have the Linksys plugged in just to see if it magically reappears.

Clancy was working in the bedroom last night, organizing her closet. When I started getting sleepy, I decided to go ahead and sleep on the couch. Holy moly do we have a comfortable couch. I woke up without any of the temporary aches that usually come with sleeping on a couch.

Unfortunately, our living room television faces a window, which makes visibility obstructed during the day. High on our list of things to get when we have more money is a new television so that I can have one in the living room and in the basement. I was going to put the new HDTV in the basement since the basement was reserved for “intense viewing” (ie not multitasking and with the volume turned up). Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to need the HDTV in the living room because it has less glare.

The sale of the house we’re renting ultimately turned to our favor. It’s unfortunate that we won’t be able to buy the house even if we stay in Callie, but it looks like the new owners are planning for it to be a retirement home. So we likely have a couple years here, which (a) means that we have no excuses not to completely unpack and move in and (b) should hopefully give us enough time to get an idea of how long we’re going to be staying here.

Callie has low speed limits. We live on a street with a 15mph speed limit and nearly the entire town is either 15mph or 25mph. Speed limits are also alleged to be vigorously enforced. I had contemplated that “someday” I would like a car with turbo. I’m reconsidering that because I don’t think I can afford it. Not the car itself, but the speeding tickets that I’m sure would come with it.

Our auto insurance in Arapaho is a little more than half of what it was in Cascadia. That was before they found out about my ticket in New City, though they did not say anything about how that might increase my rates. Since to date nobody has discovered the incident from the move out to Cascadia, it’s the only ticket on my record and it’s a pretty minor infraction.

The common response to Ricky Martin coming out of the closet is to transparently feign surprise. After all, everybody knew he was gay, right? Actually, I wasn’t so sure. I think the contrarian in me made me wonder if it was too obvious to be true or something. Not that I spent a whole lot of time thinking about Ricky Martin since I was finally able to get that song out of my head two years ago*. I would have preferred it if Martin had come out prior to that point so that it wouldn’t have a resurgence in my mind. Thanks, Ricky.

It’s interesting the line that celebrities walk when it comes to such things. It was in Martin’s professional interest to be straight, or at least pretend to be. So when approached about it, he denied. Megan McArdle comments:

What Martin did is awfully brave and daring–given his profession, and what I understand to be the demographic for his music, this might be a career-ender.

I find his coming-out letter sort of interesting, though. He says that by not coming out, he was “not sharing with the world my entire truth”. Well, yes, but who does? I assure you, dear readers, that there are many parts of my “truth” to which you will never be privy, and lucky you, really.

It would have been a career-ender a decade ago. Arguably, the rumors did sufficiently damage his sex appeal that kept him from reaching his full potential. I remember Julianne’s reaction at the time was something to the effect of “Oh, of course he is. Damn.”

As far as the importance of coming out, if anything that can be chalked up to a reaction of his being hounded on the subject. If he’d never been asked and never lied about it before, it’s really quite possible that he would have taken the David Hyde Pierce approach to privacy. Pierce himself came out, of course, but that was in part to acknowledge his long-term relationship to Brian Hargrove. While one’s private sexuality is not something everybody needs to know, homosexual celebrities can’t skip straight past the homosexuality to acknowledge their would-be (and in Pierce’s case eventual) spouses**.

That it draws attention is not precisely their fault. Indeed, people like Martin and Pierce come out precisely because they’re asked the question. In their cases, over and over again. It’s the entertainment industry’s responsibility and by extension ours.

Of course, some celebrities come out more enthusiastically than others. Ellen Degeneres had a flailing sitcom and tied her announcement to her character’s in an attempt to save the show. Or at least that’s my reading of it. Even with the cynical motives I ascribe to Degeneres, though, I am inclined not to ask why she felt the need to come out. Being in the closet means having to keep your relationships under wraps. As long as we care who they’re dating (I don’t, but I mean “we” collectively), we force them to either hide it or come out. Being in a “secret relationship”, whatever the reason, sucks. I would find it immensely preferable if we didn’t keep tabs on what celebrity was dating what other celebrity, but curiosity is a witch. I don’t care as much as a lot of people and Americans don’t care as much as the British***, but few are completely immune. And as long as that’s the case, the preferable response is simply to say “okay” and move on.

* - It’s actually even worse than that. There was another song that came out at about the same time by someone else. I only barely remember the song and I remember a nod to the state of Nebraska, a metaphor about treading water, and the words “la vida noche”. I really liked the song and would love to be able to track it down, but it was just before the point where any Top 40 song gets planted in a bunch of lyric databases. I can’t find it to save my life. “Livin’ La Vida Loca” reminds me of that itch I can’t quite scratch.

** - This post is not about gay marriage.

*** - Sometimes I get frustrated with our celebrity-obsessed media, but whenever I go to a British website, I realize how much worse it could be.

I mentioned the Roethlisberger rape allegation a couple weeks ago. It’s been interesting to watch the story develop. I had assumed it would be a he-said-she-said regarding whether intercourse was legal. Instead, Roethlisberger is denying that intercourse took place and the whole thing apparently took place in the club bathroom. They interviewed the bar manager, who described a series of events that - whether Roethlisberger is guilty or not - make the Steelers QB not look particularly good. Further, the security recordings from the night were mysteriously erased or damaged (and not due to recording-over). The idea that the bar is trying to protect itself from any liability it has over the incident is possible. Of course, they could be concerned whether a rape took place or not.

The overall vibes I’m getting from the case are that the accuser is not a gold-digger. If she wasn’t raped, it sure seems to me as though she thinks she was (or was convinced she was). I’ve heard rumors that her BAC was .2. On one hand, that makes for pretty unreliable testimony. On the other hand, she was too drunk to consent to anything that might have occurred. It looks like they are going to have trouble proving anything did occur, though. They’ve rescinded their request for a DNA sample, which means that they are skeptical of the girl’s claims or the girl’s claims are such that there would be no DNA.

Interestingly, while I am inclined to give the Georgia accuser some benefit of the doubt in terms of good faith, the more I read about the Nevada accusation the less bad Roethlisberger looks. That one reads much more like someone that had consensual sex and for one reason or another (money, being spurned, or both) made an accusation out of it. Of course, one of the things that made me take a sour look at Roethlisberger in the Georgia accusation was that this wasn’t his first. Seems odd that someone would be falsely accused or rape but then would go out and commit one. Or, for that matter, but himself in a position where such an accusation could be credibly made.

It makes me wonder if there was some beer haze surrounding the incident and that, after finding out what Roethlisberger was accused of before, the accused (or her friends) filled in some gaps with speculation. Of course, if her BAC was as high as reports suggest, anything that occurred would still be illegal. Whatever the case, one hopes that Roethlisberger will get his act together.

I’ve never been remarkably good at pool. I’m not terrible so much as terribly mediocre. And that’s for an amateur. Put me up against someone that knows how to play and I’m doomed.

Kendra Hofstadter was no amateur and she was far from mediocre. In fact, she had previously won a statewide pool contest and scored third-place in the national-regional contest. She and I met online somewhere and before long we were talking on a daily basis. Back then, when I met someone online outside of the personals, I typically left it up to them to agitate for a meet. The psychology here was I guess analogous to “game”. It allowed me to come to the meeting from a position of relative strength and a little confidence. I got away with it in part because, however socially awkward I can be in person, I was a skilled online conversationalist (make of that what you will).

And so it went with Kendra. It didn’t take three weeks before she started agitating for a meeting. She was somewhat backhanded about it, too. Less asking if I would be interested in meeting and more pouting that I apparently had no interest in doing so. For reasons that escape me, I told her that I would probably be stopping by at such-and-such after work and if she wanted to she could stop by as well. Maybe we could shoot some pool and I could beat the state champion, I said. Except that I knew she wasn’t 21 and wouldn’t be able to. I figured I would shrug it off and put things back a couple of weeks. As it happened, I had a date that Friday night. I figured that it wouldn’t take but a date or two for me to screw that up and then I’d have Kendra in the bullpen. That’s the best I can do in assembling a rationale.

It didn’t work, though. She said that she would see me there. She mentioned the 21 thing, wondered if I made the suggestion on purpose (busted!), but said “no worries” because she had a fake ID.

And so we met at a bar and it turned out that she knew the bar better than I did. The bartender knew her by name. Well, by the wrong name, “Kay”. Her “fake ID” was her sister Kelly’s. They looked noticeably different or at least I thought so. They both did, however, have a cleft chin that probably served to distract. Kelly was a touch heavier than Kendra and their hair color was different, but if you assume that hair color changes on women and a little bit of lost weight as well as relative indifference on the part of the ID checkers, I could see how she could pass with such confidence. To avoid confusion, she went by “K.K.” or “K” or “Kay.”

I noted that they seemed to know her there. She said that this was one of her prime pool hangouts. She took me to a trophy case where there was a plaque with the name “K. K. Hofstadter” on it three times. That was when she told me about the state championship and regional bronze. She asked me if I had any interest in playing. I told her I wasn’t very good but that I lose with an entertaining style.

And so we played. I geared up to lose with entertaining style, but I was actually on a bit of a roll. Much to my shock, I won the first game. She asked if I wanted to play again. I told her that no, I had just beaten one of the all-time greats and that I would retire with my perfect record against state champions in tact. She laughed more than my joke was worth. Then she looked at me like a coward instead of a comedian. So I figured that I hadn’t actually used my entertaining loser guise yet and why not. I didn’t really have time for any guise the second game as she completely and utterly destroyed me. I can’t say whether I had a good game or a bad game because while I only sank two balls, I only had five turns.

I laughed it off. “Best two out of three?” she said.

I wasn’t so good on the third game, but neither was she. And… I won. I took the reigning state champion best out of three.

I chose to ignore the overwhelming likelihood that she let me win.

A couple of really good scenes from the BBC show The Coupling involving nerves, awkwardness, and talking to women.

Jeff approaches a woman in a bar and ends up talking about a bucket of severed ears:

Steve calls Susan and ends up going to war with the horror movie blob of silence:

I tend to try to avoid hot-button political issues on Hit Coffee because by and large I have discovered that people on both sides of most issues bring their opinions and sets of “facts” to the table and in blogland it devolves into a screaming match of accusations and name-calling. But every now and again I do feel compelled to discuss a sub-issue of limited scope if I feel that we can avoid being dragged into intractable larger debate where everybody’s mind is closed like a liquor store on Sunday.

The hot-button issue at hand is the health care reform law passed by congress and signed by the president. While everything is not completely settled on the matter, we have the broad strokes of what it is going to look like. The sub-issue I am interested in is the insurance mandate. There are all sorts of arguments for and against such a mandate and the Constitutional legitimacy thereof, but since they mostly come down to arguments about SOCIALIST(!!!!)S and FREE-MARKET WORSHIPPER(!!!!)S and STATIST(!!!!)S and HATER(!!!!)S OF CHILDREN, I am mostly interested in two particular arguments that I find off-base.

First, the comparison made between the federal government requiring that we get insurance and the requirements of each of the states that we get automobile insurance. Proponents of the legislation argue that of course the insurance mandate is okay because we already require auto insurance. There are three distinctions, though, of differing validity. I will approach them from least to most concretely valid.

1. There is a difference between individual states and the federal government enacting such laws. Truthfully, I find this argument uncompelling for reasons I will discuss below. However, there is at least a theoretical difference between a state government and the federal government enacting such a provision. Namely, if a state government enacts the requirement, people are free to leave the state without leaving the country. Or, if all states choose to enact a provision or requirement (as with auto insurance requirements) there is a substantive argument that the public has spoken as opposed to the blue states forcing something down the neck of the red states or vice-versa.
2. Drivers are not required to insure against damage to their own car the same way that a health insurance mandate would require is to insure against our own bodies. No state that I have lived in has required anything more than liability insurance. Right now, my Escort is not insured if I hit a light-post or another car. My car isn’t actually insured, but rather what my car hits is insured. For it to be comparable to a health insurance mandate, the state would be required me to insure my car against damage. I don’t know of any state where that is the case, though even if it is true in some state (a) we still revert back to #1 where the more local government made that decision for itself and (b) a whole lot of people that support liability insurance requirements would not support that move. So it’s not the “gotcha!” that a lot of proponents of the individual mandate suggest.

   The counterargument to this is that an individual mandate does protect other people because the uninsured are a drag on the system because they rack up health care bills that they cannot pay and the costs are passed along to everybody else. But this is far, far more indirect than the case that can be made for required auto insurance. Taken to its logical extension, it can be used to justify federal prohibition of any behavior that is unhealthy because the government (Medicare) is going to (partially) take care of us in our old age. That’s risky terrain even for those of us that are not of a particularly libertarian bent. In other words, this hands a substantial argument to those that would call this plan statist in nature.

3. Nobody is required to purchase auto insurance. You’re only required to purchase auto insurance if you drive. True, it’s difficult to get by in this country without driving, but people do it every day. Further, when people agree to drive they are already committing themselves to a series of expenses and we can just add auto insurance onto the cost of the car, licensing, and so on. I suppose one could make the case that living costs money, too, but I would think that as a society we would be more willing to accept people being unable to drive because they cannot afford it far more willingly than we would accept people being unable to live because they cannot afford it.

None of the above is to say that a health insurance mandate is a bad idea. In fact, despite the above I personally support it in the abstract (even if I have reservations with regard to how it was implemented in this law). On balance, though, in any system in between a state-run or completely state-subsidized health care system and a completely Darwinian system that allows people to die on the emergency room steps unable to enter because they cannot afford to be stitched up is going to be better served by inducing or coercing people into getting health insurance. Disagree with that? Fair enough. You have my views and I have mine.

The second argument I find off-base is that an individual health insurance mandate is simply not something the federal government can do. It may be true that either (a) how this particular health care plan does it runs afoul the Constitution or (b) a “proper” reading of the Constitution (ie how you would read it) does not allow for such a thing, but the courts have already given the government enough latitude to be able to practically enforce an insurance mandate by giving the federal government control over taxation the way that they have. And if the mechanism used by the current law does prove to be unconstitutional, there is a relatively easy workaround at Congress’s disposal.

Because the federal government has the ability to set the tax code, all that is needed is “fine” people by raising taxes and then to make health insurance tax-deductible (up to a particular amount or in total). Whether it was envisioned by the Founding Fathers or by those that enacted an income tax in the first place is procedurally beside the point. Right or wrong, the courts have buckled by allowing the government to use taxation as a stick and carrot to promote desired behavior and discourage undesired behavior. If they can encourage home ownership through the tax code, they can “encourage” the purchasing of health insurance.

There are some legitimate questions as to whether or not the way the precise way that they are using taxes to punish those without health insurance is constitutional, but the notion that the federal government is incapable of punishing those that do not get health insurance is not, as far as I can see, true. They punish housing renters every day.

-{I realize that by even mentioning the health care law I have potentially opened a can of worms. Let’s try to avoid broader discussions as to whether this bill is on balance a good thing or a bad thing and any comment that accuses those with differing opinions of being dishonest, unintelligent, uninformed, or of moral integrity will be clipped or deleted.}-

I’ve previously said that Microsoft could be doing themselves harm if they were ever really successful in fighting piracy because Windows and Office could lose their position as the standard if everybody that didn’t want to put down several hundred dollars had to go with a competitor instead. I think that’s true of Microsoft Office, though less so for Windows. Even back when I was saying that, the case for Windows was precarious. I was living in a computing ecosystem wherein most people I knew built their own computers. To the extent that I thought about it, I figured that homebrew computers would become more rather than less popular. Not only hasn’t that been true, but the trending has been in the other direction because people that used to build their own computers are increasingly turning to laptops.

So as Microsoft turns up the heat to stop Windows 7 piracy, it’s probably a good business move. Particularly since they’re doing so in a way that is leaving laptops unthreatened. At least, for my ThinkPad machines, I don’t have to mess so much with the activation hassle even if I am installing from an independent CD rather than anything given to me by Lenovo. ThinkPads could be unique in that regard, though I doubt it.

ZDNet’s Ed Bott has been exploring the world of Windows 7 piracy and the pack and forth between Microsoft and those that want to use its software without authorization. For Windows XP and before it was the case that once you got through, you were golden. Increasingly, Microsoft will keep throwing things out there and so would-be pirates will have to keep downloading and implementing new workarounds. Given the shady, often virus-infested world of software hacks, that can be kind of risky.

But will it induce people to go out and purchase legitimate copies and thus increase sales? I really don’t know that it will. It won’t lead to widespread defection to Linux or Apple, but people going out and buying shrinkwrapped copies of their software is not really where their market is. Their market is with people that buy Dells and HPs and Gateways and so on. And in those cases, they get paid by the manufacturer. I also don’t see a huge market for people upgrading their existing laptops. First off, for most people it’s not worth the trouble. Second, you have to pay $100-200 for the inconvenience. Third, successive versions of Windows typically require new hardware (though Win7 is an exception in this regard). Fourth, the people that are going to be most excited about the latest copies of Windows are either not going to be put-off by spending the money or they’re going to accept the inconveniences of regular authorization requirement sidesteps.

There are a few exceptions and places where it could be worth their while and lead to increased revenues. A minor example is the laptop I am typing on. It has a copy of Windows Vista on it. I am using Vista because Windows XP and Linux won’t work on this machine. Windows Vista and Windows 7 do. Since I had a spare license for the former, I went that route. Otherwise, I probably would have paid for Windows 7. Of course, I only know that Win7 works due to a temporary illegitimate installation. If they were to prevent that from happening, I wouldn’t buy Win7 because I wouldn’t know if it would work. A slightly more common example is if somebody needs to run a particular software application that requires the latest version of Windows. There was a stronger argument for that before people bucked Microsoft on Vista in favor of XP. I think that sent a message to developers not to assume everyone is going to upgrade (if such a message was ever needed).

The biggest and most credible area of increased profit, though, is that it does force people to buy into their price-discrimination scheme. If they put up absolutely no barriers, people would just buy the cheapest version of Win7 on their laptop and then install Windows 7 Ultimate, depriving Microsoft of money. Given the increase weight Microsoft is giving to price discrimination, I suspect that this is where they are coming from with their increased attempts at beefing up piracy-blocking mechanisms. I really don’t think it’s because of increased piracy because I think that, thanks to the domination of the laptop, piracy rates have actually gone down somewhat.

Of course, none of this applies to Microsoft Office. Office does not come with most PCs unless specifically ordered. The temptation to obtain an illegitimate copy is therefore greater. MS Office also widely discriminates on price, to boot. Office also sports a significant barrier to exit insofar as they control the file types most frequently used in businesses across the country. I had previously hoped that the one-two punch of Microsoft uprooting its file format and the emergence of OpenDocument Formatting would change this, but it hasn’t.

This whole business makes me want to find an alternative to Windows. Unfortunately, Apple just isn’t for me and Linux isn’t ready yet (if it ever will be). Or perhaps I just haven’t invested enough in the latter. While Microsoft has thus far done a reasonable job of gatekeeping, I fear that at some point they’re going to start a serious crackdown wherein the inconvenience and expense of some legitimate users will be considered acceptable collateral damage. When I switched from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice a couple years ago, my motivation was not money but rather was simply not having to worry about licensing at all. That’s one of the big draws of Linux. But since most of my computers these days are laptops and most laptops already come with Windows, it is thus far not really worth the effort. We’ll see if that changes.

The CDC released a report entitled Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States that takes a look at marriage and cohabitation in the US. This has been an area of interest to yours truly since I take a position relatively unpopular among those that I consort with: namely, that premarital cohabitation is generally not a good idea.

The report frustratingly stops just short of being useful by failing to take the information from Table A and Table B and putting it together. The statistics show that, generally speaking, married couples that did not cohabitate prior to marriage enjoy higher marriage success rates than those that don’t. The flaw with this data is that it fails to control for demographic differences between the two groups. This report obviously looked at demographic differences that would be relevant (namely race and education) and it looks at marriage success rates among those who cohabitated and those that did not, but it fails to combine the data into a more useful (for my purposes) picture.

I did a rough-and-dirty analysis to see if race or education level accounted for the difference. The answer is that it likely accounts for some but not all. Basically, if you look at what the cohab/nocohab marriage success rates should be based on the education/racial demographics, you get a difference less than half of the overall difference. I couldn’t control for income based on the information provided, so that could account for some of the difference, though (a) income correlates with education and race and (b) what appears to happen in regards to race and education is that blacks and lower-income folks are removed from the equation because while they’re more likely to cohabitate, they’re also less likely to marry at all and so are less likely to affect marriage success/failure rates. Even so, I will cop to the imperfection of the data.

That being said, I do consider flawed data to typically be more instructive than rank speculation as to what each of us thinks is the case. And on a subject as complicated as this, it is simply impossible to control for every data point that someone would consider relevant. Even if the data does not “prove” that premarital cohabitation diminishes the odds of a successful marriage, it does at least eat into the widely held belief among many of my peers that getting married without living together first is somehow risky or even reckless.

There are a number of ways to look at premarital cohabitation and marriage and the success and failure of it. In some ways, I am doubtful that it really matters. I certainly know people that lived together for long periods of time, got married, and live happily ever after. I don’t consider these people to be exceptionally lucky or bizarre exceptions.

To look at this most effectively, I think that we need to look at different situations. We’ll name them John and Jane. Looking at a specific John and a specific Jane under two scenarios, one in which they live together before marriage and one in which they do not, I would expect the likelihood of marital success to be nearly identical. I believe firmly that the success or failure of marriage depends most strongly on the preparedness, maturity, and compatibility of its participants. Circumstance also matters, but not the circumstances surrounding when the couple got that piece of paper (except insofar as a couple with that piece of paper are less likely to split up than a couple without that piece of paper, but that’s the answer to a different question).

Where premarital cohabitation makes a difference is not the success of failure between two specific mates, but rather in mate selection. Many supporters of premarital cohabitation consider it self-evident that cohabitation provides a useful filter because you have a better idea of marital compatibility if you live with them beforehand. Logically, this makes a fair amount of sense even if there is no real data to support it.

I would suggest, however, that the “weeding out” phenomenon and the advantages it provides is undone by a number of other phenomena.

Most particularly, it leads to circumstances in which a couple “backs into” marriage. The Sunk Cost Fallacy starts playing a role where John or Jane have accumulated significant opportunity costs by staying together in an arrangement that is harder to break free from than if you’re living separately. When staying together is the path of lease resistance and the difference in resistance-level is as great as it is between cohabitationing couples and couples that don’t have a lease and shared possessions to worry about if they split up, you can expect some sub-par couplings to stick together out of inertia and eventually marry for the wrong reasons.

Secondly, it “unbundles” decisions and makes each increased level of commitment easier to do even if you’re unsure of how committed you really are. Rather than taking one large step that includes both the piece of paper and the cohabitation and the grand contemplation that occurs on the eve of such commitment, it breaks down the commitment to provides an easier avenue for the uncommitted to take the next minor step without contemplating the severity of the move. Indeed, if a couple is already living together, marriage itself becomes less important in itself. Drawing the line at cohabitation instead of, say, premarital sex or spending the night or vacationing together can seem arbitrary. It is. But it’s also all that’s left. It might abstractly be worthwhile to revisit some of the other things we’ve unbundled from marriage, but that cat has left that bag, if it was ever really in the bag to begin with. Of course, it’s increasingly too late for cohabitation, too, which is why I would consider advising someone to surrender to a cohabitation ultimatum if their partner is worth it.

Jumping back, the question is, with regards to an incompatible John and Jane, are they more likely to discover their incompatibility through trial cohabitation or through contemplating marriage and cohabitation and marriage without having lived together first? I would argue the latter.

There is an interesting statistical nugget in the report that I believe supports this view. Roughly 61% of couples that live together before marriage have successful marriages ten years out. Let’s divide that into two categories In the first category, you have couples that are living together and engaged. In the second category, you have couples that are living together and not engaged (but become engaged and married later). The success rate in the first category, which already contemplated marriage and decided in the affirmative prior to moving in together, is nearly identical to those that contemplated marriage and waited to move in together until after they were married (65% to 66% for noncohabitators). The second category, which moved in on a more provisional or trial basis, reported considerably worse marriage success rates (55%).

This coincides with my belief that the potential threat that premarital cohabitation presents can be mitigated if the cohabitation is more logistical in nature rather than simply sticking the toe in the water. In other words, moving in together with someone that you are confident about because someone’s lease is up does not present the same sort of problems as does moving in with someone because you want to see how it will go.

Of course, this has caveats among caveats. The difference in marriage success and failure are relatively minor (5-6%), though as mentioned it increases if you look at non-engaged cohabitators. Also, my position on this is more defensive rather than moralizing. I don’t really condemn those that took a different path than Clancy and I did so much as I want to dispel the myth that getting married without a trial run is particular risky. What Clancy and I did worked out for us, but what my friend Dave and his now-wife did made absolute sense for them. While I believe that no cohabitation is the better solution for more people, I am nowhere near willing to make a universal statement on the matter. Merely to encourage exercising caution and not to move in under the false belief that it will improve your chances of determining whether your significant other is the right person for you.

And, of course, this all leads aside one of my bigger concerns with premarital cohabitation, which doesn’t show up in marriage success or failure rates because it includes couples that never get married. Nearly half of those living together for three years and over a third of those living together for five years still are not married. Now, it’s sometimes going to be the case that both partners simply don’t want to get married at all. I suspect, though, that a fair amount of time it’s one party or the other declining to make decisions that need to be made.

And on one last note, even if the statistics are skewed to some extent because those of education and means make one set of decisions and those that lack education and means make another set, if I were advising each group on what to do… I would not be advising the former to emulate the behavior of the latter.

In a follow-up to Sheila’s post about bikers, the story of some folks talking about their Lego-thieving habits while appearing on the Dr Phil show:

The couple was under investigation for shoplifting before the “Dr. Phil” appearance, but detectives did not suspect them of being large-scale thieves until they appeared on the show.

The show also aired a video of the couple’s three small children accompanying them on a three-day shoplifting binge.

The Eatons were arrested last September, nearly a year after they appeared on the show and claimed they made as much as $3,500 a week by selling stolen goods.

Interestingly, it took the cops a year or so to make the arrest.

Wary of the dangers of overworking on a given single study, but here’s one: at least in rats, there is a definite causative effect of HFCS with relation to weight gain that is not seen in rats with equivalent access to normal table sugar.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet.

I, for one, am going to do my level best to stay away from HFCS. Which is not as easy as it sounds.

Since getting booted off AT&T, I am a free agent for the first time in my life when it comes to cell phone plans. Though each time I moved (up until the Cascadia move) I kept changing carriers, I always beelined to AT&T because I’ve always been reasonably satisfied with them and they’ve been the devil I’ve known. More recently I’ve decided to stick with AT&T because they use a GSM-SIM network and so I am not locked into a pre-authorized phone.

Now, of course, I am off AT&T for the time being. My initial thought was that I would walk straight over to Verizon. Verizon, of course, boasts the best network in the country. They also have the Motorola Droid phone. With Windows Mobile sadly going the way of the dodo, I have decided that Android is likely where I will depart to and the Droid is the gold standard right now for Android phones.

I had some trepidation about going over to Verizon. The main reason for this is that Verizon, like Sprint, uses CDMA phones. What that means is that if you buy one of their phones, you will never be able to use it on another network. This is in contrast to GSM networks, which are based on SIM cards that are transferrable from one carrier to the next. GSM carriers do tend to lock their phones down in an effort to prevent you from doing so, but for a small fee you can (with the exception of the iPhone) usually unlock the phone with minimal intrusiveness (compared to, say, jailbreaking an iPhone). Beyond that, though, you don’t have to buy a phone from the provider nor do you have to buy one associated with the provider. Verizon and Sprint, on the other hand, can much more easily refuse to activate any phone that isn’t theirs. As such, they can more-or-less require that you buy a phone from them (that won’t work for anyone else) for an outrageous price or for a lesser price with a burdensome contract.

In the end, though, I wasn’t going to let my ideology get in the way of practicality. I may not like the Verizon arrangement, but if they can offer me something that nobody else can (a national network, in this case, and the Droid), I’ll make due.

Three things changed my mind about Verizon. First, their rates are high. Much higher than any of the other carriers in the area. With the other carriers, it depends on what precisely you want as to whether or not it will cost you more or less than the others. Except Verizon, which is always higher. At least in my usage bracket. Second, and this is a relatively minor point, the Droid has some hardware/software limitations that my current phone does not and I am less enthusiastic about what was Verizon’s biggest selling point. And if I really want, I can get a Droid-equivalent SIM phone anyway.

The third thing was the biggest thing. I had been able to dismiss the practical sides of my ideological opposition to the way that Verizon does business by figuring that I can put up with a bad carrier and a required data plan for a one-year contract. But I then discovered that Verizon will not let you out of the data plan as long as you have a smartphone whether you are under contract or not. That means that if I ever want to get rid of my data plan (which I’m not sure I even want in the first place), I have to (a) get a new phone which requires a new contract, and/or (b) carry around a Pocket PC in addition to my cell phone. I did (b) for a while and I don’t want to go back to it because I am unreliable at remembering both and it’s my cell phone (the more important of the two) that I more typically forget. More than that, though, I resent being forced to make that choice. AT&T doesn’t make me do that unless they subsidize my phone (which is more than fair) and even then only the term of the contract. Nor do either of the other carriers.

The fourth and last thing that changed my mind about Verizon was finding out that AT&T is buying itself into my market. By the end of the year, they will have purchased Galaxy Mobile, one of the regional carriers, pending FTC approval. That means that the one year contract that Verizon requires would make it that much longer until I can switch back to AT&T when they come to town.

The other two options, however, both give me considerably more flexibility. Galaxy is being bought out by AT&T and so if I go with Galaxy I will be able to switch over to AT&T as soon as I want, assuming the sale goes through. In fact, I will be forced to switch. That’s the downside. Galaxy is presently a CDMA carrier and I would have to buy a phone just to use in the interim. To buy a Galaxy-compatible HTC Fuze (which is what I own now) will cost about $150 and Clancy’s phone will cost an additional $50. Or I can just get a cheapo phone to tide me over, but (a) I don’t know how long it will take before I can go back to my Fuze and (b) I’ll have to carry a Pocket PC and a cell phone in the meantime, which I don’t like and I’m not good at.

But of the three local carriers, it is Galaxy that had the best sales pitch. A good enough sales pitch that even if they weren’t bought out by AT&T, they would probably be getting my business despite the CDMA problem. Good rates and, despite the fact they are a regional company, national coverage.

On the other hand, Frontier Wireless is by far the most flexible option. Frontier not only uses SIM cards but doesn’t deal with locked phones at all. Clancy’s phone is already unlocked and it will cost less than $10 to unlock mine and I will be good to go with Frontier immediately. It is also a very local company, which I really like but which is also its greatest weakness. Frontier operates almost solely out of Arapaho and while they have national coverage, they discourage off network use. Any data plan I get with them would only cover Arapaho and have roaming fees everywhere else. That wouldn’t be an issue except that the times I most need a data plan is precisely when I won’t have it: when travelling. On the other hand, Frontier doesn’t care whether I have a data plan or not. I can use my Fuze as a Pocket PC, which Verizon won’t let me do at all and Galaxy will only let me do when out of my contract (in this case when they boot me over to AT&T).

So, while waiting on AT&T, I am debating between Galaxy and Frontier. It mostly comes down to whether I want a data plan or not. On the one hand, I lived without a data plan all the way up until late last year when I got one. On the other hand, I got kind of used to it. Back on the first hand, though, I’m not sure how useful it will be when I spend almost all of my time within a 5-minute drive home. It was most useful when I was traveling, which I did a lot of previously but am likely to do less of when Clancy starts work. Then there’s the question of my work. If I get work in Tupelo or with the Census Bureau, it will suddenly become much more useful. If I start software testing for OpenOffice at home, it won’t be very useful at all.

It’s odd to know exactly what I want (AT&T) and yet not be able to decide what I want (until AT&T comes to town). I guess I should be thankful that Verizon so graciously removed themselves from consideration.

Everyone hold your noses. I can’t help it, I just have to quote our local bad-boy regulatory analyst (can’t spell it without anal!) roissy41 (who is 41). He’s got a tip on how to put your woman in her place when she insults your brute self with a penis-amputating name like “dummy.”

Let us remind ourselves who Mr. 41 is and what he does for a living, because he seems to be forgetting we found out. He is an office worker who recruited his audience from places like Marginal Revolution and Half Sigma. His fans are men with college degrees who like to argue on the Internet about economics and biology. I suggest the voice of Niles Crane for your internal narration of his lecture.

Reader discretion advised: The recommended slap-down involves the F-word! Oooooh.

“Hey! Don’t use that word on me again, do you understand?”

She looks shocked, and squirms a bit in her seat. The conversation among the group sitting at the table lulls. A wind blows from the West. Sensing escalating danger, or perhaps simply confused, she mutters an inaudible, and notably unapologetic, OK and continues yapping to her friends without missing a beat. You squeeze your grip on her forearm tighter and address her louder than before.

“Hey! I said… don’t use that fucking word with me again…… Got it?”

Now the table has fallen silent. A grim specter has alighted upon the land. Your woman, pressed into a corner by your imposing strength of will, finally succumbs and silences herself.

“Ok, sorry, sorry.”

Ohhhhhh … the hissiness … Perhaps David Hyde Pierce is too macho a narrator for the ‘41′ writing style. Maybe we need Christian Siriano. All real alpha males are fierce!

Let’s remind ourselves again of ’41’s fanbase: It is not men with criminal records. It is not men who date gum-smacking, chain-smoking high school dropouts (although they may like to imagine those women starring in porn movies they don’t actually watch). It includes men like Phi, a Lutheran churchgoing professor with small daughters, and Half Sigma, a cat-loving Jew with a Wharton economics degree. I’m sure they would never be subjected to insults from their own female companions, who would be paragons of patience and virtue. (They would have to be.) I, however, have had the personal pleasure of insulting both of them.

For instance, one time I called Phi a pedant. Lacking the guidance of the Master of the Dark Arts, he merely deleted my comment and said he was offended. But clearly no real man responds to an insult without crudely escalating the conflict. As for Half Sigma? I said his opinions on women relied too heavily on others’ Internet commentary. He retaliated by accusing me of being “snarky,” failing dicklessly to include the slightest obscenity or threat. What did they teach those men in graduate school? What self-loathing wimps they must be. (Oh, it is so funny to even imagine Phi saying the F-word!)

But thanks to roissy41, my reign of castration may soon end in a flurry of F-bombs and forearm-gripping. Ah, but it is predicted that I will be the more sexually satisfied for it. That’s the problem with you educated, professional men — you need to act like thugs. Everyone knows those guys have a great life.

Is that the secret? Is that blog some kind of fantasy Internet “Fight Club” for the Marginal Revolution set? Because you must know this crap is loser behavior and he doesn’t do it himself in real life. It doesn’t work for anyone in the long run, and especially not guys like you, and not on the women you want. If she’s truly insulting or abusive, her problems go way beyond something you can fix with a nasty comment. And if you try any whiny little shows of physical aggression, you’re at minimum a social outcast. And you’re risking a very unflattering jumpsuit.

——————————————————————————

Here’s some good advice he should have taken himself as a blogger:

You know that a highly self-possessed man won’t sweat the small stuff. Reacting indignantly to every petty affront is the domain of the less secure greater beta trying to prove the weight of his cohones.

And finally — know that you’re taking lectures on manhood from a guy who can’t spell “cojones.”

Clancy: I think I’ve finally listened to enough Tom Petty that I have George Michael out of my head.

Trumwill: That’s good.

Clancy: You do know George Michael, right?

Trumwill: WHAM!

Clancy: Well, I was talking about his solo stuff. I heard some the other day and it’s been stuck in my head ever since.

Trumwill: I’m actually vaguely more familiar with him as a solo artist, too. I didn’t even know he was with WHAM! for the longest time. But I just wanted to give you a keyword to demonstrate that yes, I do in fact know who George Michael is. I thought about saying “Faith”, but I hate that song. WHAM! at least had that one song of his that I liked.

Clancy: I remember when I was in junior high and “I Want Your Sex” was a top single. Casey Kasum refused to say the name of the song.

Trumwill: Well, I’ve give George Michael credit for something. A lot of crap 80’s songs that were about sex tried to be all coy and eye-rollingly pseudo-clever about it. Michael at least came out with it.

Clancy: There is that, I suppose.

Trumwill: I still hated the song. I think the music that has come out since taught me that there’s something to be said for subtlety, even of the coy and eye-rolling variety.

A motorcycle gang appears to be threatening local law enforcement:

An unidentified person called a 911 operator at about 5:45 p.m. and said a police car would be blown up in the Hemet-San Jacinto area in the next 24 to 48 hours, Hemet Police Chief Richard Dana said.

The caller said the attack would be in retaliation for the law enforcement sweep against the Vagos Motorcycle Club earlier this week.

What do they think they’re going to get out of this? Do they think the cops will give up and leave them alone now?

You’d think if they were serious, they’d have blown the car up first, then taken credit.

It’s almost too good to be true for the police that this would happen at the time of year when everyone’s negotiating budgets.

When I wrote previously here and on Ordinary Gents about playoffs, one of my objections was that a small playoff would become a large playoff and would render the regular season meaningless. I would not object too vociferously to an 8-team playoff, but anything beyond that and you’re letting in 9-3 teams. Since Division I-AA has 16 teams, I just cannot imagine that I-A would not get there in pretty short order and perhaps beyond. Playoff proponents argued that this does not necessarily have to be the case and that 8 will be enough. So I have to point out a couple things:

First, starting soon the I-AA will not have 16 teams. They’re upgrading to 20. This adds a whole other week to their playoffs for the inclusion of a measly 4 more teams. But at that level, nothing matters but the playoffs. So why not?

Second, college basketball, which had admirably stayed at 64 or 65 for quite some time, is now looking at 96. It’s hard to imagine that 128 is not far behind.

At approximately 6am on Tuesday of this week, I got a terse text message from AT&T:

YOUR OFF-NETWORK DATA USAGE IS IN VIOLATION OF YOUR SERVICE CONTRACT. CALL [phone number] FOR DETAILS.

I also noticed that my phone was listing “Off Network” a couple places on the screen where it usually said “AT&T.” I hadn’t noticed that before. I assumed that I was still within AT&T’s network because I knew that they had serviced around Callie and the phone had given me no indication that I was not in an AT&T area. Had I been missing the words “Off Network” this entire time? One of the downsides to having my detail-attention problem is that I never know these things for sure.

I called AT&T when I got out of bed a couple hours later and sure enough I was outside AT&T’s range. This meant that AT&T was having to pay someone else for the use of their tower. This was costing AT&T money and AT&T did not like this very much. If I continued to do this, there would be a series of repercussions and none of them good. None of them logical, either. First, they would start charging me for off-network use. Then if I didn’t stop they would cut my off-network use. Then if it did not stop they would cut off my data plan and then my cell phone altogether. Then if it did not stop, they would cut off my entire family’s cell phone plan (my family shares a plan - I have a Colosse number).

The first step is in itself curious. If AT&T starts charging me for off network use, then are they still losing money on me? Seems to me that they could charge the same amount that they’re losing to whoever’s towers they’re using. Or they could do what companies like AT&T often do and charge more and make a little profit off the deal. The charge is 5 cents a kilobyte. Are the local towers really charging them more than that?! Then, if they proceed with the next step, which is to prevent me from using data for any off network at all, the rest is rendered moot. Because at that point, it has to stop.

The next thing he said was equally bizarre. He said that the problem was that my usage was over 40% off network and that was the problem. So it wasn’t the amount of off network use I was doing, but rather the portion. So then, theoretically, if I go up to Tupelo (where AT&T has coverage) and use up a whole bunch of bandwidth, I could bring that average back down. The easiest way out for me then would be to clog up their data streams needlessly. That I could do.

What appears to be the case, however, is that the guy I was talking to was talking out of his hat. While the portion may have been an issue, the number is not 40% (which is really quite generous) but 20% (which is about what I would expect it to be). But mostly, there is a kilobyte limit that I was not only exceeding, but smashing like a pinata. No amount of data usage in Tupelo would have made up for that. So at that point, my only option was to cancel my data coverage on AT&T. Further, given that I am presently out of AT&T’s service area, it probably won’t be long before they discover where my phone calls are being made out of.

I’ve been a loyal AT&T customer since I was 17. It wasn’t AT&T at that point, but it was a company bought by a company that merged with a couple other companies that bought AT&T. And I technically wasn’t with AT&T in Deseret, but was with an affiliate that was on AT&T’s network. But then I got on the folks’ plan and have been with AT&T since. The only problem I’ve ever really had with the company was actually with Deseret Mobile, the affiliate, who were not up front with me about the price spike that came with a new phone I had purchased and, despite the existence of a 7 day no-questions-asked return policy, would not let me get back on my old plan.

As it happens, I may not be away from AT&T for very long. It appears that they are moving into the area by the end of the year as long as the FTC does not step in. Of course, this is a bit frustrating because all of this could have been avoided if they had just done so a year ago. Now I’m going to have to figure out what to do between now and when they arrive or elsewise decide what other carrier to go with.

I’m tempted to tell AT&T where they could stick it with their illogical threats, but I am inclined to think that was mostly just the guy I was talking to. The fact that he got the 20%/40% wrong tells me that he wasn’t reading from some threatening script. Besideswich, whoever made this happen more than made up for it.