JSwan archive at FraudWasteAbuse

Author Archive for JSwan

Jul

Bread, Water, and Michael Moore

By JSwan 6 Comments

Categories: Democrats, civil rights and constitution

I think it’s funny that people try to dispute the facts in Michael Moore’s films. Why? Because the facts are correct and easily verifiable. Then again, so are the facts on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide: A substance that kills millions and devestates entire economies each year. On the streets, this substance is commonly known as “water.”

It is also a fact that virtually 100% of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours after injesting… bread.

What should be disputed is the perspective which Michael Moore presents. For example, in SiCKO it is stated that “there are nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance.” This is a verifiable fact. However, this fact alone fails to give viewers a complete picture.

Allow me to explain: The population of the United States is just over 300 million. That means that roughly 17% of Americans are uninsured. That’s a pretty big chunk - about one in six people - so let’s break it down further to make sure we are not being mislead.

About 11 million of the 50 million uninsured Americans are elegible for government healthcare plans that already exist. That leaves about 39 million, or about 13% of the population that may be involintarily without insurance. That’s not quite as bad, but can we do better? Yes.

Of the 39 million people that do not have insurance and are not eligible for existing government healthcare plans, about 7.8 million of them can afford their own health insurance.

Given these additional facts, the number of people truely in need is actually about 31.2 million, or about 10% of the US population.

So how much did Michael Moore misrepresent the numbers? By about 70%.

May

Advice for young teens

By JSwan 3 Comments

Categories: life, school, education, children, teachers, kids, abuse, parenting, child and teacher

My best friend’s 13 year old sister and I sometimes talk on MySpace. Generally she asks my advice because I like to give her real strategies that she can use immediately.

This advice typically comes in the form of “what I wish I would have said” when I was her age and experiencing similar predicaments. At age 13, it is easy to get frustrated by the inability to articulate what you feel; so I try to give her the words she is lacking.

This is proving surprisingly effective, enabling her to develop her own set of surprisingly effective strategies completely on her own. Over time her emails have shifted to requests for advice to stories of how she has gracefully handled a situation. I’m proud of her.

The following text is by far my single favorite example of our exchanges:

Her: im bored i have like nothing to do cuz i got in trouble and now im grounded!!! lol oops

Me: What’d you do?

Her: i got in trouble at skool from my 1st period teacher cause i had my cell phone out! the teacher said bring ur cell phone over here and give it to me. i said why and shes like dont question me bring it here now!!! so i brang it over there and i layed it in her hand and then she said owww you hurt me im gonna press charges!

she’s always lyng on me!! i went back to my seat and i was talking to my friend and i was telling her how the teacher always lies on me and she must hate me and she wrote a referal saying that i used the f*** word whitch i didnt and she put down that i said that “she f***in hates me” and she saying bad stuff about me,and she wrote a referal that i slamed the phone in her hand and i didnt!!!!

wat do you think about it????? what am I supposed to do if the teachers just gonna lie??? yo my brother doesnt even kno yet!!!! lol but the skool took away my cell phone and the principal said we r allowed to hav a cell at skool if its turned off…… and it was off!!! but they still took it away and they havent gave it back yet!!!………..do you think thats fair?lol

Me: I hope you are not too young for this. Today, I will give you a secret weapon. It is really DANGEROUS if you use it incorrectly - so be careful, and be MATURE about it. Do NOT say these things unless your teacher REALLY is lying; otherwise she will make your life a living hell.

If you do not understand why this secret weapon works: DO NOT USE IT. Just keep this message and re-read it every few months until you do understand why it will work. ONLY THEN should you use it.

Understand?

OK, here’s the secret:

Next time you get into trouble (with a teacher, the police, or anyone in authority) for something you didn’t do, say things like this to them and to their superior (like the principal) when you’re all together and talking about what you’re in trouble for.

You must NOT say these things as if you are angry, or vengeful, or proving a point. You MUST say them as if you are very disappointed, sad, and depressed - as if someone close to you has just died. The key is to be quiet and reserved - never raise your voice, not even a little bit, no matter how angry you are.

Like I said, be careful. Only do this when you know you’re right.

Here is what you can say:

“I come to school to learn. But I feel like what my teacher is really teaching me is that it’s ok to lie if you know that no one will believe the truth. I guess I just have to accept that.”

“I’m telling the truth and she’s not - and I know you will believe her and not me - and I don’t understand why she would do that ’cause I always thought the truth was better. Now I don’t know what to believe… or even who to believe in.”

“I won’t argue. I didn’t do it, my teacher is lying but I know you won’t believe me. Go ahead and punish me. I know I must have done something wrong, but I don’t know what it really was. I wish I did though. I wish someone would tell me. There’s got to be a reason for this.”

“I just feel so sad about this. If I did something wrong, I would apologize for it. But I’m in trouble for something I didn’t do, and you won’t believe me. I don’t know why you won’t believe me, but whatever I’ve done to lose your trust: I apologize. I’m really sorry and I hope you will forgive me.”

“I know kids my age lie, and it’s hard to believe us. I understand that. It’s just… how are we supposed to know any better when our teachers lie too? Aren’t we here to learn from our teachers? I don’t expect you to believe me - but I know my teacher is lying. Go ahead and punish me, I don’t care because I know you believe her and not me. Just PLEASE tell me; what am I supposed to learn from this?”

Feel free to ask questions.

A few weeks went by before she got into trouble again. This time, however, she was prepared. When she went to the Principal’s office with her teacher, she expressed her disillusionment with precision and clarity. When she was finished speaking, she said that her teacher and the principal were quiet for a long time. The principal then asked her to leave the room. Five minutes later, they called her back in. Her teacher admitted to lying and offered her a full, written apology.

She hasn’t been in trouble since.

May

Blackjack: How to count cards

By JSwan 66 Comments

Categories: games, travel, entertainment, vacation and income

Plans are still tentative, however it looks as though some of the characters from FraudWasteAbuse are going to Las Vegas next month. I happen to be an avid blackjack player, so I thought I’d share some the technique I use for counting cards.

Blackjack is one of the few casino games with a memory. A slot machine, for example, does not have a memory - previous plays on a slot machine do not affect future outcomes. In blackjack, on the other hand, once a card is played it cannot be played again for the remainder of the shoe/deck (whichever is being used). This adds a level of predictability to the game.

Of course, remembering every card that gets played is impossible, even on a single deck game. You could use a computer to do the tracking, but that would be cheating (and it’s illegal). Aside from it being impossible, even if you could track the cards in such a way you still couldn’t predict the order of the remaining cards.

The key is identifying the overall favorability of the remaining cards for the player vs. the casino. Generally speaking, high cards (10, Queen, King, and Ace) are good for the player and low cards (2, 3, 4, 5, and 6) are bad for the player. The reason for this is that the dealer must play until 17 is reached, but the player can stay with any value even if it’s less than 17. So if a dealer has a hand valued at 15, and there are more high valued cards than low valued in the shoe, then they are more likely to draw a 10 and bust (so any players still in the game win). On the other hand, if there are a lot of small cards the dealer is more likely to “make” the hand and not bust.

So how can you know if there are more high or low cards in the shoe? You count them. There are several counting methods, but the easiest one is called the “high low” method. The method is simple: Each card has a count value of -1, 0, or +1. For each card dealt, you add the card’s count value to a running total in your head. High cards (10, Queen, King, Ace) have a count value of -1, low cards (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) have a count value of +1, and all the other cards (7, 8, 9) have a count value of 0. If you count all the cards in a deck or shoe this way, the count will be zero.

A deck with a count of zero is considered neutral; the house has a very slight advantage over the player. A deck with a negative count is bad; the house has a more definite advantage over the player. A deck with a positive count is good; the player actually has an edge over the house.

To thwart counters, casinos often use six-deck shoes. This greatly reduces the significance of the count, however it can still be counted. This is where the true count comes in. The true count can be determined by taking the current count and dividing it by the number of decks left in the shoe. For example, a count of 5 with five decks left in the shoe means that there is only a true count of one (5/5=1).

Don’t go running off to Vegas yet, though. Learning to count is only the beginning; you also need to know - and be able to appropriately modify - basic strategy.

Good luck!

Apr

In God we trust, all others bring data

By JSwan 17 Comments

Categories: healthcare, War on Terror, government, war, stats, health care and universal healthcare

Since joining FraudWasteAbuse I’ve had several good article ideas, each of which was eventually tossed out for lack of data. (Sorry for the lame coffee article - it was all I had left!)

For example: a few months ago I read two unrelated articles - one that tallied the number of terrorism related deaths in the USA over the last ten years, the other that tallied the number of deaths caused by deer-vehicle crashes in the same time span. While reading the deer article I made a surprising connection: For nine of the last ten years, deer have killed more people on American soil than terrorists (2001 being the exception). For April 17th, I planed on writing an article about fear, death, and taxes based on this data.

Alas, I could not find the data needed to support the article and thus it was nixed. It was not due to a lack of effort.

And that made me wonder: Why is good data so hard to find? With the 2008 elections coming up and all the talk about universal health-care, the war on terror, illegal farm subsidies, and CO2 emissions; isn’t data - which provides us the ability to measure impact and effectiveness - of dire importance?

Without good data analysis to prove or disprove the merits of a particular policy, aren’t we destined to argue endlessly without truly comprehending the significance of our actions as a nation? Isn’t it likely that, without meaningful data, bad policies will continue and good policies will be eliminated simply because the policy fit or didn’t fit into some political ideal that can be proven wrong, but hasn’t been? Isn’t data the key to accountability?

So where is the data politicians keep spouting off about? I want it. Show it to me. I do not want ridiculously misleading statistics, true as they may be. I want raw data that I can analyze myself should I choose to do so. I want to see people like Hans Rosling analyzing the data and debunking myths caused by ignorance. I want to know the facts behind the facts, not perspectives on data designed to manipulate my opinion. Where is it?

Tiger got to hunt,
bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder,
“Why, why, why?”

Tiger got to sleep,
bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Apr

The Morning Coffee Ritual

By JSwan 7 Comments

Categories: life

Gulp! Every Monday through Friday I wake up at 6:30, 6:38, and again at 6:46, thanks to the snooze-button. I then trudge out of bed, get ready for work, and then head into the office.

Once at the office I take a few minutes to check my email, then I get up do what gets me through the day: I get coffee. The coffee where I work is awful, nay, terrible! I mean it is just plain disgusting. It has a decade-old cardboard taste that no amount of cream and sugar can cover. To make things worse, it costs a dollar!

But it ain’t the coffee that drives me. It is the snooze-button effect that the ritual has on my day. To get to the coffee I must walk down three long hallways and two flights of stairs. When I arrive at the cafeteria, I get to chat mindlessly with the same three people that get coffee at the same time I do. Mostly we talk about how bad the coffee is.

Once I’ve shelled out my dollar, I don’t walk - or even stroll - back to my desk: I mosey. And I don’t take even a single sip of my coffee until I get back to my desk. That way I don’t waste it. Once I am back at my desk, I take sips each time I need a little break. The feel of the coffee moving down my throat, and even the awful taste, brings an exquisite feeling of relaxation and well being.

And when I’m finished with the coffee? A bathroom break, of course.

What is your morning coffee ritual?

Apr

Why Kids Do Drugs

By JSwan 105 Comments

Categories: drugs, marijuana, LSD and War on Drugs

When I was in elementary school, during the “Just Say No” days, I remember hearing about drugs and being utterly confounded by the message. If drugs are so bad, I thought, why the heck (I didn’t say hell - it was a bad word) did so many people risk their lives just to get high? Something didn’t make sense.

In sixth grade, I was confronted with marijuana for the first time when a friend of mine tried it. Still believing the propaganda, I was very concerned and nearly turned him in “for his own good.” After all, he couldn’t be thinking straight… could he? Well, yes, he could. Contrary to my expectations, my friend was perfectly happy, did well in school, and did not start hanging out with the wrong crowd. Something didn’t make sense.

In high school, things started to get heavier. People I knew were not just smoking pot; they were snorting coke, dropping acid, and more. Being the straight kid, I even acted as a trip sitter on a few occasions.

Finally, I saw some of the negative impacts drugs could have. Of course, the reality of the negative impacts were nothing compared to what anti-drug propaganda would have had me expect. Upon smoking pot, eating shrooms, rolling on X, or whatever - none of my friends went crazy, had their life destroyed, or any such nonsense. The vast majority of the time, all they got was a good time.

Things started to make sense. Kids do drugs because they realize that adults have lied to them about it. If they are to discover the truth, they have only one course of action: Do drugs.

Yesterday I heard a story on NPR in which children were asked what they thought about drugs. Each child parroted back, with conviction, all the same false information I believed at their age. They said things like “you’ll die” and “you’ll lose all your friends.”

What will these kids do when they find out it’s not true? Drugs. When it is discovered first-hand that drugs aren’t so bad what, then, will these kids do? More drugs.

Duh.

Don’t get me wrong. I did see a few who “crossed the line” and actually abused drugs. However these kids had a lot of problems, drugs being only one of them. Unfortunately for them, the stigma of drug use would prevent them from seeking help even after they realized they had a problem. Making matters worse, “help” would often put the focus of treatment in the wrong place; they were treated for drug use when the focus should have been more holistic. Even if they got sober, they still tended to be depressed and self-abusive - just without drugs.

So what is the War on Drugs really accomplishing? Or, rather, is it being waged effectively?