I learned from a student recently that the FBI can listen to you through your cellphone, even if your cellphone is off! I don’t have much to say about this, except that I find it incredibly creepy. Sure, the FBI probably isn’t listening to what I say - its not like I ever say anything that would be of interest to them - but the mere fact that it COULD is really disturbing.

I don’t know the mechanism for doing this sort of spying - maybe you need cooperation from the cell service provider for this to be possible. But it also seems possible that some clever electrical engineering students at my university are secretly listening in at faculty meetings…

Can anybody explain to me why it is that people can receive retirement benefits from social security, even if they’re still working? Wages go up over the course of a career, such that older workers tend to have higher wages than their younger counterparts. So, people who have higher salaries are additionally receiving supplemental income from the taxes of people with lower salaries.

I’ve been helping my parents determine when to start receiving benefits, and the more I look at the system, the more broken it seems. No wonder it’s heading towards bankruptcy…

An unusual thing happened at dinner tonight. A couple comes into the restaurant with a dog. The hostess tells them that the dog has to wait outside, and they tell her that its a service animal; the fellow is handicapped, and that he needs it with him. They assure the reluctant hostess that its very well trained, and point out the official uniform that it’s in as a handicapped helper.

A half hour goes by with no incident, but then two teenage girls come into the restaurant. Maybe the dog didn’t like their perfume or clothing - I’m not sure what happened. But suddenly the dog jumps up, starts barking, growling and bearing its teeth at the two (very frightened) teenagers. The owner of the dog is telling it to hush, but the dog isn’t listening, straining at its leash in what appears to be an attempt to attack the girls. The hostess is forced to put the girls at a back corner table well away from the dog before it quiets down.
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Forget global warming. Forget health care. Forget education, and poverty, and terrorism. The world faces a much bigger problem: a limited supply of curling stones. This is a serious crisis. Quick, Obama - borrow another trillion dollars and get some people working on this…

It’s that day again. The worst day of the year. The day that society rubs it in the face of those of us who can’t find love. As if it wasn’t bad enough that we have to deal with the social, emotional, health, financial, and psychological burdens of being single. I’m not going to expound upon those burdens here - I’ve done it in previous years’ posts.

I want to use this as a chance to reflect upon love, and on being single. The thing is, for many people, love just isn’t in the cards. There is a small, but non-negligible percentage of the population that will never find love. Most of our culture is predicated on the notion of finding meaning in life through romantic relationships. But for those of us who don’t get to live out that cultural meme, where can we look for models of a fulfilling life without romance? Read the rest of this entry »

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is the primary handbook of clinical psychology. It defines psychological disorders and their symptomatic characteristics. It is the ultimate authority on pathological abnormality for psychologists. And its being revised. While my area of expertise is not clinical, I feel there are some really important policy implications here, and I’m probably the best situated of the leftfielders to frame the debate.

This is not the first time the DSM has been revised this new version with be the fifth instantiation (DSM-V). It undergoes revisions every 10-15 years to update in accordance to research in the field. The idea is to make it conform as closely to scientific knowledge about the mind and brain as possible. But it is unavoidably political. Homosexuality, for example, used to be classified as a psychological disorder requiring treatment and possibly being committed. Recent versions of the DSM have not included sexual orientation. You can see why the newest revision is drawing the scrutiny of many activists. Read the rest of this entry »

I am constantly surprised, when talking to policy makers, how rarely they ask the question “then what happens?” when developing their policy. Imagine you need a source of revenue, but you don’t want to burden the taxpayer. A surprisingly large number of policy makers “solve” this dilemma by suggesting a tax on business, say oil companies. But lets ask “then what happens?” The business isn’t going to just take the loss. It will raise prices to pull in additional revenue in order to pay the tax. Where does the revenue from the business come from? The consumer, i.e. anybody who uses gasoline, i.e. anybody who drives or uses public transit, or uses products that are transported in a gasoline powered vehicle, i.e. the taxpayer.
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I have no idea why 10 Americans, in Haiti on a humanitarian mission, thought it would be a good idea to take 33 Haitian kids to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic. No one that I have seen has suggested that they were paid or had any insidious motive. My guess is that they were trying to help, but doing so in a naive and arrogant way.

With that in mind, a few thoughts:
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So, today Pelosi came out against the notion of piecemeal reform for the health care system. She claims that making slight adjustments to the law won’t do anything, because the system is so complex. This is a failure of creativity on her part.
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It is rare in politics these days that I see something I consider a truly and innovative solution to a problem. I appreciate out of the box thinking, so I like to highlight them when I see them.

The current focus of my innovation watch is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent proposal to outsource prisons to Mexico. Cost of living is much higher in California than across the border, which means the state of California could save a lot of money annually if they send inmates to Mexico rather than housing them in state. There are strengths and weaknesses to this proposal, and I thought I’d talk briefly about them.
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