Metablogs – Renaissance Guy

Foreshadowing

After a brief unplanned hiatus, I have returned from the land of midterms and existential angst. Quite simply, I stopped writing for a period because between several different papers and written exams, I exhausted my tolerance for dealing with words in a constructive capacity.

But recently, my Poli-Sci professor said something that shocked me enough to dust off an abandoned draft. After handing out a New York Times article on the impeachment inquiry, he said that, though he had covered the constitutional and political basis of impeachment before the midterm, he wanted to go over it again, because usually when he covered it, it was just for the quiz, and it looks like this is going to be a thing. He said that even as a political science professor, he didn’t know what was going to happen any better than we do, but that it was his job to prepare us as best he could.

And then he said: I hope you’re all paying attention to the news, because that may turn out to be more important than your grade in this class.

Sometimes, I wish I was disciplined enough to keep a proper journal. Given my intermittent memory issues, I can imagine that this would be immensely useful. I have been recommended to keep a journal on a few occasions by my doctors, and have attempted to cultivate the habit several times, but I never quite manage to keep it. I do not have the concentration nor the time, and I am simply not disciplined enough to compel myself to make time, or force myself to concentrate. I’m barely disciplined enough to post regularly here, and I sure do t have the fotitude to do the same thing without an audience.

I regret these circumstances, partly because it keeps me from being able to look up matters such as what I had to eat before my stomach became upset, or where I was at three o clock on January second two thousand and fifteen. But mostly, I regret not being able to keep a journal because I believe it might be of some historical interest in the far future. I may or may not remember where I was when the event that goes down in history takes place when future generations ask, but I certainly won’t remember where I was and what it was like the day before. And I won’t be able to look it up, either. All the sights, sounds, smells, and little details of human experience that I now enjoy will be washed away long before my story is even over.

We live in interesting times. That much is indisputable, I think. Some day there will be textbooks summarizing the headlines we are not watching daily. More than just textbooks, there will be historical dramas, novels, games, even musicals set in our era looking backwards. And they will get so much wrong, partly as a consequence of trying to imagine something they never lived, but mostly because they will be imagining what it must have been like to live now with the limited perspective of retrospect.

They might be sympathetic to our stories, but privately they will wonder why the future consensus wasn’t obvious to us at the time. It will seem inevitable to them.
This is the danger of history. Nowadays it’s easy to see why the Soviet Union had to fall, why the allies had to win World War 2, why the American Revolution had to triumph and establish a global superpower, why the Roman Empire was unsustainable, and so on and so forth. Those things happened, and insofar as we are satisfied in knowing why they happened, they seem to a certain degree inevitable. Or if not inevitable, it is difficult to see how people at the time could have been blind to what would come to pass.

I’m guilty of this too. In my case, it’s the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent breakup of the soviet bloc that fascinates me. I simply cannot imagine a world in which there is an east and west Germany, right next to each other, diametrically opposed, and seeing this as completely natural. I laugh every time I find a map from the time period. It just seems so silly, like a cheap gimmick. Of course they had to reunify, how could it be otherwise? Sure, I might be able to, for the sake of argument, dream up a scenario in which East Berlin is the site of something on par with Tiananmen Square, and the Warsaw Pact continues existing, placing itself somewhere between modern China and modern Cuba.

But I can’t begin to reconcile that fantasy with the real world. And I have trouble constructing a worldview where it would seem equally or even more reasonable to bet on that reality coming true instead of ours.
That is why I would want to try and keep a journal, to capture the uncertainty of this moment. It’s not that we don’t know we’re living through history, we just don’t know how it will end. If you’re reading this in the future, it may be difficult to understand, so let me give you a rundown.

We don’t know what the economy will do. Some say it will soon go into a recession, others say that’s just alarmist speculation. Both options seem plausible.
I can’t say what Europe will look like. The United Kingdom is in disarray and seems to be having an identity crisis over the prospect of leaving the European Union, which is uncertain. Allusions have been made to a more united Europe, which has caused massive backlash.
I don’t know what will become of my own country, the United States. Impeachment hearings have been announced against the president, after years of activists calling for them. The scandal, which regards phone calls with Ukraine and other world leaders, has snowballed remarkably quickly.
The President has threatened violence, and possibly even civil war, if he is removed, though most people have taken this as a joke.

This may sound like foreshadowing. Perhaps it is, but certainly not intentionally.

Hot Takes

It’s been a busy week, and I have not been able to finish any of the things I have started writing recently. But since I’ve made a renewed personal commitment to try and get myself to post things consistently, instead here are a collection of assorted hot-takes. The sort of things that might be tweeted, if I had any desire to tweet.

If someone is going to require you to go watch/read/see a thing online, they should be obliged to send you a direct link to that thing. If that link doesn’t work, I am not obligated to hunt it down.
If you park in an electric vehicle spot, I will henceforth assume that your car doesn’t need gasoline. If it has any in it, I will do you the favor of siphoning it out.
As of this year, experts estimate the number of spam and scam calls has eclipsed the number of legitimate phone calls. With this in mind, if you call me and your number does not come up on my phone, your call will be going to voicemail.
Handicap spots are for people who need them. Your permission to park there has nothing to do with how long you’ll be parked, whether you remain with your vehicle, what kind of car you drive, how big your wallet is, or what power you have over the rest of the facilities. If I have a handicap tag and you don’t, you’re in my spot.
On a related note: it’s true that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, accessible restrooms / stalls are not exclusive to those who rely on them. However, those that need them don’t always have a lot of options. I get that sometimes when you gotta go, there’s no time to look for other options, and okay, fine. But while I’d hope that you would clean up after yourself regardless, if you are leave a handicap stall worse than you found it, you are a horrible person.
There is a difference in a public space between giving your kids room to explore, and letting them run wild. This is up to you to find the balance. However, if your children are causing property damage, are infringing on my personal space, or are making such a ruckus that I have to turn up my music volume above that which is required by the ambient noise of the surroundings, you are failing.

Early to Rise

I am not a morning person. This has been the case for as long as I’ve been old enough to have sleeping patterns to speak of, and unless my metabolism does a total reversal with age, I don’t foresee this changing. I am a person who wakes up late and goes to bed accordingly.

This isn’t because I hate sunrises or morning talk shows; on the contrary, I enjoy both. My problem is that trying to drag myself out of bed in the morning is immensely painful. It often feels like someone is using a metal claw to unceremoniously yank my spinal cord out through a hole in my back, dragging the rest of my body with it by the nerves and sinews. I won’t say it’s the worst pain I’ve every experienced, but it’s up there. I also don’t wake up quickly, either. My brain takes time to boot up in the morning, and during this time I am unable to so much as walk a straight line. The earlier I am woken up, the longer this process takes- if I am dragged out of bed early it can take an hour before I’m conscious enough to make decisions, and leaves me for the rest of the day with an overwhelming exhaustion that borders on clinical narcolepsy.

I am aware that this goes somewhat beyond the normal scope. It’s almost certainly an underlying neurological problem- one of several. Since my brain already has some issues switching gears, it stands to reason that we’re looking at a different symptom of the same cause. But since meds only seem to blunt the symptoms and draw out over a longer period, I am stuck with it. I try to avoid mornings wherever humanly possible, and suck it up when I can’t.

Of course, the problem, as one may suspect, isn’t actually with mornings. The problem is with my brain making the switch from being asleep to fully awake. In particular I have more trouble than most waking up when my brain is at an inopportune point in the sleep cycle.

Theoretically, this could be addressed on the other end- getting to bed earlier in order to make sure I get the right number of hours of sleep to wake up naturally at, say, 8:30 (which I know isn’t early by most definitions, but compared to my current routine, may as well be pre-dawn). Here we run headfirst into my other problem: severe and chronic insomnia, exacerbated by metabolic disorders that make it not only difficult, but actually dangerous to fall asleep at a reasonable hour most nights.

The situation of being a college student doesn’t help. In many ways the stereotype that college students are bad at time management is self reinforcing. Campus events start and run late, and emails containing essential information and even assignments are sent out hours before midnight. Facilities open from 10-1am. The scheduling of exams and final projects mere days after the material is covered makes long term planning impossible, and reinforces crunch time and cramming- even more so since it is all during the same few weeks. Last minute scrambling is not merely routine, it is impossible to avoid.

For as often as Americans ridicule the collectivist workaholism of Japan, China, and Germany, we suffer from the same kind of cultural fetish, or at least our young people do. Hauling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is used to encourage behaviors that are anti-productivity; destroying sleep schedules and health in order to make deadlines so that one can continue to repeat the same cycle next year. I could, and probably will eventually, write a whole post on these attitudes and their fallout, but for the time being, suffice it to say that being a college student makes already difficult problems much harder.

But I digress. The point is, my sleep schedule has become unsustainable, and I need to make some changes. Getting to bed earlier, though a good idea, will not work on its own, since every time I have tried this I have wound up laying in bed awake for hours, making me feel less rested in the morning. What I need to do, and what I’ve dreaded doing, is force myself to get up earlier and get going, so that I will be tired enough to actually fall asleep at a (more) reasonable hour. In essence, I am performing a hard reset on my sleep schedule.

As schemes go, this one is fairly straightforward, but that doesn’t make it any easier. The fact that it is necessary does not make it easier either. But it is necessary. Not only do future plans depend on it, but being able to recognize, plan, and execute these smaller points of self improvement is critical to any future I hope to have. I am rising early to great the dawn not only in a literal sense, but in a metaphorical sense as well.
At least, that is what I shall be telling myself while dragging my sorry behind out of bed.

The Project Problem

You ever find yourself start something on a lark, and then the more you work on it, the bigger it gets, until suddenly it’s this whole big thing that you don’t really know how to work with? And then you’re left with the choice of either taking to your work with a hatchet in order to bring it down to a manageable size, and suturing up the wounds to make a finished, but far less grand final product, or letting it keep growing until eventually it becomes totally unsustainable. I don’t know whether this happens to other people, but it happens to me constantly. Most of my projects die this way, either unable to survive the hatcheting process, or with me not having the heart to put them out of their misery.

This includes everything from weekend activities to final class projects. Reigning in this tendency to overcomplicate has been a serious challenge for me academically. For instance, I will get an idea for a research paper topic, dive into the literature, and come back with a twenty page essay and four pages of citations, when the assignment calls for seven pages maximum, and five cited sources. Or I will be assigned to write something in a foreign language for a class presentation, and will end up writing something which, while perfectly correct, uses vocabulary several semesters beyond the rest of the class.

Arguably this single-mindedness and overachievement is a strength. After all, I’ve never known someone to fail an assignment because they overdid their project. By contrast, I know plenty of people who have failed assignments that weren’t long enough, or where it was clear the student didn’t care. On the other hand, a seeming inability to do the easy thing and go from point A to point B on projects sounds like the kind of lesson that eventually has to be learned through hard failure and bitter tears. Overdoing is not always beneficial, and it is certainly not always efficient.

In any case, I seem to possess, if nothing else, a striking ability to make more work for myself. This is what has prevented me from posting over the past weeks- the projects which I began with good intentions and high ambitions are coming due, and it is crunch time to finish the necessary legwork to meet initial promises. Every moment of available time from now until the end of finals must be put towards these pursuits if I am to clinch the A that I know I deserve. My entire media consumption is being geared towards research and study; each ounce of my wordsmithing retooled towards finishing and refining papers and presentations.

To be fair, I did plan all of this, more or less. I mean, I didn’t plan to put myself up against the wall. I never do. But I did choose ambitious topics. I knew I was signing myself up to do more work than was probably required, because in addition to getting an A, I wanted, and still want, to be working on something that I care about, rather than hammering away at busywork. After the dumpster fire that was my high school experience, I decided I would rather be proud and excited about something than get full marks. But contrary to the popular myth, loving your work does not obviate the work itself. Which leaves me where I am now, frantically scrambling to make good on my projects.

So that’s what’s happened, and why I haven’t posted. I started working on my final projects more than a month ago, and the work got away from me and ate up my time. I’d love to say that I’ll be getting back to posting immediately, but until finals are over and I catch up on rest I’ve been putting off, I’m not going to make any promises. I will be trying to post, though. And I expect that once I am no longer directing every waking moment towards study, that I shall have more to say.

The Business Plot

For about a year now I’ve been sitting on a business idea. It’s not, like, the kind of business idea that makes anyone rich. On the sliding scale from lemonade stand to Amazon, this is much closer to the former. I think it will probably turn a profit, but I have no illusions about striking it rich and launching myself onto the pages of Forbes. Looking at the numbers realistically, I will be pleasantly surprised if I can make enough money to keep myself above the poverty line. It’s cliche, but I’m really not in it for the money, I’m in it for the thing.

My idea is for a board game, and it’s a game that I think is interesting to a wide range of people, and also deserves to be made, or at least attempted. I’m not going to share too many details, because if spending high school economics class watching clips of Shark Tank posted to YouTube has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t show your idea off until you have the legal grounds to sue any copycats into oblivion.

The obvious question of why I don’t sign it to a board game publisher has a complicated answer that relies on context that I don’t want to share at this time. But the long and short of it is that, if I’m doing this, it’s a project that I’m pursuing for personal reasons, and based on what I’ve heard from people who have gone through game publishing, they’re reasons I have cause to fear a publisher won’t respect, or might try to renege on. And besides that, there’s a part of me that’s tickled by the idea of being an entrepreneur and not having to answer to anyone (except, you know, manufacturers, contractors, accountants, taxes, regulators, and of course, consumers).

So I have the idea. I have a vague idea of what my end goals and expectations are, and some notion of the path towards them. Whether or not I’m “committed” in the sense that the guides say you need to be to be an entrepreneur, it’s an idea that I’d like to see exist, and I’m willing to throw what money and time I can spare at it. If there was any job that could ever motivate me to wake up early, this project would be one of them. The people I’ve talked to about this privately have told me it’s a good idea, including a business professor who, upon hearing my pitch, immediately endorsed it and tried to convert me to take her class. I think there’s something here.

And that’s about where I got stuck. I managed to make a prototype last summer, shortly after the idea popped into my head, and I’ve been play-testing and reviewing the rules a bit, but this is just circling the problem, and I know it. My next step is that I need to move forward on iterating the prototype towards a sellable product, and on looking into getting some cursory idea of costs. In practice this means getting quotes from manufacturers, which means I need some kind of email account and web presence.

Theoretically, I could throw up a Gmail account and launch that process off today (well, not today; I have homework, but basically any time). But conducting such business under my own name, or even under an arbitrary trade name is both murky for tax purposes, and depending on whom you consult, somewhat legally risky, since it puts all the liability squarely on your head. It’s also less clean than setting up a proper web platform with a fancy custom URL and a logo to handle everything centrally. It’s the same reason I have a patreon already set up for this blog- even if I’m not raking in the big bucks today, I’d rather be prepared for that day with the proper infrastructure than have to scramble if I suddenly go viral.

But setting up a website and branding materials effectively demands that I have, at the very least, an established brand name that can be trademarked. And doing that requires that I have the relevant paperwork filed to incorporate a business. It’s something of a point of no return, or at least a point past which returning becomes increasingly difficult and expensive. To this end I have spent quite a few free hours perusing the available information on starting up a startup and building a business. And let me just say, for as much talk that’s made about making life easy for small businesspeople, and lip service paid encouraging entrepreneurship, I expected it to be a heck of a lot more straightforward. Even the Small Business Administration, whose entire mandate is to make starting new businesses as painless as possible, is a convoluted and self-contradictory mess.

The problem isn’t so much a lack of available information as a lack of concrete information I can act upon. The website can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be written for laypeople or lawyers, and in failing to pick a side is decipherable to both. Most government websites are difficult to navigate, but I would’ve expected an agency whose sole job is to make life easier would be less egregious.

But it’s not that I can’t find a form to fill out. Again, I could always pick a name and a business structure out of a hat and plow forward. The differences between a partnership and an LLC at the size I’m looking at, while not irrelevant, are perhaps less of the deciding factor that they’re made out to be. The problem is figuring out a way to start this project that lets me keep my dependent status and hence my health insurance. Because while I’m willing to throw time and money and endure paperwork for this idea, I’m not willing to go without life support. Or rather, I’m not able to go without life support.

I think there’s a loophole that lets me have my cake, and also not die an agonizing death. But I’m not an expert on this field, and this isn’t a risk I want to take. If it’s a question between starting a business that I earnestly believe will change the world for the better, if only incrementally, and getting my life support, I’m going to pick the latter. This is really frustrating. I mean, I’m still head and shoulders above the people that have to pick between medicine and food, but choosing between medicine and chasing an opportunity is grating.

But what really gets me is the fact that this isn’t a problem in other countries, because other countries have guaranteed healthcare, so that potential entrepreneurs can try their hand without risking their lives. Many of these countries also have free education, transport infrastructure, and in some cases free government advisors for new businesses, all of which lower entry barriers for startups. But in the land of the free markets, we apparently hate entrepreneurs.

I digress. The point is, I’ve hit an entirely political roadblock, and it’s extremely discouraging. I haven’t set this project aside yet, because despite everything I still believe in it. Part of the reason I’m writing this is to remind myself of the excitement I feel to see this through. My hope is that I’ll be able to make some progress on this before summer. But we’ll see what’s possible for an entrepreneur in this allegedly business friendly country.

Operation Endrun

I find myself with very little to say these days. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I don’t have the time or energy to put it in order. This is a recurring problem for me, particularly of late. Of course, a lot of it is because I’ve been kept on the back foot for a few weeks in a row now. Over the course of the last three weeks I’ve seemingly fallen prey to Murphy’s Law, with things piling up and compounding. I haven’t slept well, I’ve been having trouble thinking straight, and while I’ve avoided missing any particularly egregious deadlines in my classes, I feel more like I’ve been treading water than swimming forward.

Amid all of this, I missed putting up a post last week without noticing. I was actually pretty sure I had done something. In fact, if you’d asked me at the end of last week whether I posted anything, I would have been fairly sure I had already done that. I probably would have bet money on it. And I would’ve been wrong. This isn’t the first or only thing I’ve lost track of in the last few weeks, but it is arguably the biggest; or perhaps better stated, one of the things more resistant to forgetting that I nevertheless forgot.

This is bad. Distraction and confusion on this level is dangerous. This time around it was a missing a post that didn’t go up. Next time it might be a school assignment, which would be bad. Worst case scenario, I might space out and forget about my life support routine. I don’t think it would kill me, but that’s the kind of risk I try very hard not to take. Whatever is causing this fugue, whether that’s a lack of sleep, too much slacking an procrastinating, or not enough productive projects to focus on, needs to be brought under control. People with my condition don’t have the luxury of being distracted. I know this.

Of course, saying something is bad and doing something to solve it are very different. And it’s difficult to turn my life upside down in order to find and eliminate the source of a problem while also going ahead with schoolwork and other plans. So, what’s the plan?

Well, first I need to get ahead in my schoolwork. The plan here is twofold: first, to make sure I’m covered for traveling next weekend. Second, getting ahead will give me the breathing room I need to begin the next set of endeavors. This kind of planning would’ve been impossible in high school, because my teachers were never so organized as to provide expectation ahead of time of what I needed to do, which I think was partially responsible for the tendency for things to snowball. College, however, has proven far easier to navigate, with important items being listed on syllabi well in advance. Consequently, it is possible for me to make plans that include completing work ahead of time.

Second, I need to get my sleep schedule under control. This is a pain, because the only way I have found to reliably enforce a sleep schedule is to wake up early, and force myself out of bed, so that by the time night falls, I feel exhausted enough to fall asleep. This is always a miserable process, because, as I have mentioned previously, I am not a morning person. Waking up early is physically painful to me. I have designed most of my current life around the premise of never needing to wake up before 11am. This will be a sacrifice. But it is necessary.

Third, I need to get up and around more. Winter often has the effect of causing me to spend most of my days inside and sitting down, since I don’t tolerate the cold well enough to go for walks. This, I suspect, is bad for concentration, and it certainly weakens my stamina over time-something I can scarcely afford to lose.

Will I actually accomplish these things? Dunno. But by writing them down and posting them, I’m more likely to try.

In Accordance With the Shutdown

In accordance with the partial shutdown of the US Federal Government, this blog has activated its contingency protocol to ensure compliance with the Antideficiency Act. Consequently, in order to maximize available resources and meet all of our ongoing mission requirements, the remainder of this post will include only prime-numbered words from a normal post.

Lately there has talk our something “Orwellian”. Accurate, interest public mind, examine original. That, “Theory Collectivism”, purpose writing. Library: Irreconcilable. Remain are. Trade with. Low, abiding intermittently daily, abolish distinctions, shall equal. History, same outlines again. Capacity govern. Overthrown the, enlist liberty. Objective, thrust servitude, cycle.

Low never. Softening revolution equality millimeter. Historic masters. Nineteenth, obvious observers. Cyclical, equality unalterable human. Doctrine adherents, change: hierarchical high. Aristocrats upon, compensation. Fraternity. Tyranny overthrown. […]

Oligarchies, circumstances. Practitioners, cheating. Knowledge delusion; rational. World-conquest fanaticism. Unexampled, the contradictions. Mystique paraphernalia.

A Lesson in Credulity

Last week I made a claim that, on review, might be untrue. This was bound to happen sooner or later. I do research these posts, but except for the posts where I actually include a bibliography, I’m not fact checking every statement I make.

One of the dangers of being smart, of being told that you’re smart, and of repeatedly getting good grades or otherwise being vindicated on matters of intelligence, is that it can lead to a sense of complacency. I’m usually right, I think to myself, and when I think I know a fact, it’s often true, so unless I have some reason to suspect I’m wrong, I don’t generally check. For example, take the statement: there are more people that voted for republicans in the last election living to the south of me than to the north.

I am almost certain this is true, even without checking. I would probably bet money on it. I live north of New York City, so there aren’t even that many people north of me, let alone republican voters. It’s objectively possible that I’m wrong. I might be missing some piece of information, like a large population of absentee Republicans in Canada, or the state of Alaska. Or I might simply be mistaken. Maybe the map I’m picturing in my head misrepresents how far north I am compared to other northern border states like North Dakota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But I’m pretty sure I’m still right here, and until I started second guessing myself for the sake of argument, I would have confidently asserted that statement as fact, and even staked a sizable sum on it.

Last week I made the following claim: Plenty of studies in the medical field have exalted medical identification as a simple, cost-effective means of promoting patient safety.

I figured that this had to be true. After all, doctors recommend wearing medical identification almost universally. It’s one of those things, like brushing your teeth, or eating your vegetables that’s such common advice that we assume it to be proven truth. After all, if there wasn’t some compelling study to show it to be worthwhile, why would doctors continue to breath down the necks of patients? Why would patients themselves put up with it? Why would insurance companies, which are some of the most ruthlessly skeptical entities in existence, especially when it comes to paying for preventative measures, shell out for medical identification unless it was already demonstrated to be a good deal in the long run?

Turns out I may have overestimated science and economics here. Because in writing my paper, I searched for that definitive overarching study or meta analysis that conclusively proved that medical identification had a measurable positive impact. I searched broadly on google, and also through the EBSCO search engine, which my trusty research librarian told me was the best agglomeration of scientific and academic literature tuition can buy. I went through papers from NIH immunohematolgy researchers to the Army Medical Corps; from clinics in the Canadian high arctic to the developing regions of Southeast Asia. I read through translations of papers originally published in French and Chinese, in the most prestigious journals of their home countries. And I found no conclusive answers.

There was plenty of circumstantial evidence. Every paper I found supported the use of medical identification. Most papers I found were actually about other issues, and merely alluded to medical identification by describing how they used it in their own protocols. In most clinics, it’s now an automatic part of the checklist to refer newly diagnosed patients to wear medical identification; almost always through the MedicAlert Foundation.

The two papers I found that addressed the issue head on were a Canadian study about children wearing MedicAlert bracelets being bullied, and a paper in an emergency services journal about differing standards in medical identification. Both of these studies, though, seemed to skirt around the quantifiable efficacy of medical identification and were more interested in the tangential effects.

There was a third paper that dealt more directly as well, but there was something fishy about it. The title was “MedicAlert: Speaking for Patients When They Can’t”, and the language and graphics were suspiciously similar to the advertising used by the MedicAlert Foundation website. By the time I had gotten to this point, I was already running late with my paper. EBSCO listed the paper as “peer reviewed”, which my trusty research librarian said meant it was credible (or at least, credible enough), and it basically said exactly the things that I needed a source for, so I included it in my bibliography. But looking back, I’m worried that I’ve fallen into the Citogenesis trap, just this time with a private entity rather than Wikipedia.
The conspiracy theorist in me wants to jump to the conclusion that I’ve uncovered a massive ruse; that the MedicAlert Foundation has created and perpetuated a myth about the efficacy of their services, and the sheeple of the medical-industrial complex are unwitting collaborators. Something something database with our medical records something something hail hydra. This pretty blatantly fails Occam’s Razor, so I’m inclined to write it off. The most likely scenario here is that there is a study lying around that I simply missed in my search, and it’s so old and foundational that later research has just accepted it as common knowledge. Or maybe it was buried deep in the bibliographies of other papers I read, and I just missed it.

Still, the fact that I didn’t find this study when explicitly looking for it raises questions. Which leads me to the next most likely scenario: I have found a rare spot of massive oversight in the medical scientific community. After all, the idea that wearing medical identification is helpful in an emergency situation is common sense, bordering on self-evident. And there’s no shortage of anecdotes from paramedics and ER doctors that medical identification can help save lives. Even in the literature, while I can’t find an overview, there are several individual case studies. It’s not difficult to imagine that doctors have simply taken medical identification as a logical given, and gone ahead and implemented it into their protocols.

In that case, it would make sense that MedicAlert would jump on the bandwagon. If anything, having a single standard makes the process more rigorous. I’m a little skeptical that insurance companies just went along with it; it’s not like common sense has ever stopped them from penny-pinching before. But who knows, maybe this is the one time they took doctors at their word. Maybe, through some common consensus, this has just become a massive blind spot for research. After all, I only noticed it when I was looking into something tangential to it.
So where does this leave us? If the data is really out there somewhere, then the only problem is that I need a better search engine. If this is part of a blind spot, if the research has never been done and everyone has just accepted it as common sense, then it needs to be put in the queue for an overarching study. Not that I expect that such a study won’t find a correlation between wearing medical identification and better health outcomes. After all, it’s common sense. But we can do better than just acting on common sense and gut instincts. We have to do better if we want to advance as a species.

The other reason why we need to have hard, verifiable numbers with regards to efficacy, besides the possibility we might discover our assumptions were wrong, is to have a way to justify the trade off. My whole paper has been about trying to prove the trade off a person makes when deciding to wear medical identification, in terms of stigma, self perception, and comfort. We often brush this off as being immaterial. And maybe it is. Maybe, next to an overwhelming consensus of evidence showing a large and measurable positive impact on health outcomes, some minor discomfort wearing a bracelet for life is easily outweighed.

Then again, what if the positive impact is fairly minor? If the statistical difference amounts only to, let’s say, a few extra hours life expectancy, is that worth a lifetime of having everyone know that you’re disabled wherever you go? People I know would disagree on this matter. But until we can say definitively the medical impact on the one hand, we can’t justify it against the social impact on the other. We can’t have a real debate based on folk wisdom versus anecdotes.

A Witch’s Parable

Addendum: Oh good grief. This was supposed to go up at the beginning of the week, but something went awry. Alas! Well, it’s up now.

Suppose we live in colonial times, in a town on an archipelago. The islands are individually small and isolated, but their position relative to the prevailing winds and ocean currents mean that different small islands can grow a wide variety of crops that are normally only obtainable by intercontinental trade. The presence of these crops, and good, predictable winds and currents, has made those islands that don’t grow food into world renowned trade hubs, and attracted overseas investment.

With access to capital and a wide variety goods, the archipelago has boomed. Artisans, taking advantage of access to exotic painting supplies, have taken to the islands, and scientists of all stripes have flocked to the archipelago, both to study the exotic flora and fauna, and to set up workshops and universities in this rising world capital. As a result of this local renaissance, denizens of the islands enjoy a quality of life hitherto undreamt of, and matched only in the palaces of Europe.

The archipelago is officially designated as a free port, open to ships from across the globe, but most of daily life on the islands is managed by the Honorable South India Trading Company, who collect taxes and manage infrastructure. Nobody likes the HSITC, whose governor is the jealous brother of the king, and is constantly appropriating funds meant for infrastructure investment to spend on court intrigue.

Still, the HSITC is entrenched in the islands, and few are willing to risk jeopardizing what they’ve accomplished by attempting insurrection. The cramped, aging vessels employed by the HSITC as ferries between the islands pale in comparison to the new, foreign ships that dock at the harbors, and their taxes seem to grow larger each year, but as long as the ferry system continues to function, there is little more than idle complaint.

In this town, a local woman, who let’s say is your neighbor, is accused of witchcraft. After the debacle at Salem, the local magistrates are unwilling to prosecute her without absolute proof, which obviously fails to materialize. Nevertheless, vicious rumors about men being transmogrified into newts, and satanic rituals conducted at night, spread. Local schoolchildren and off duty laborers congregate around your house, hoping to get a glimpse of the hideous wretch that legend tells dwells next door.

For your part, you carry on with your daily business as best you can, until one day, while waiting at the docks to board a ferry to the apothecary, a spat erupts between the woman in question and the dock guard, who insists that he shan’t allow her to board, lest her witchery cause them to become shipwrecked. The woman is denied boarding, and since the HSITC run all the ferries, this now means that she’s effectively cut off from rest of the world, not by any conviction, but because there were not adequate safeguards against the whims of an unaccountable monopoly.

As you’ve probably guessed, this is a parable about the dangers posed by the removal of net neutrality regulations. The internet these days is more than content. We have banks, schools, even healthcare infrastructure that exist solely online. In my own case, my life support systems rely on internet connectivity, and leverage software and platforms that are distributed through open source code sharing. These projects are not possible without a free and open internet.

Others with more resources than I have already thoroughly debunked the claims made by ISPs against net neutrality. The overwhelming economic consensus is that the regulations on the table will only increase economic growth, and will have no impact on ISP investment. The senate has already passed a bill to restore the preexisting regulations that were rescinded under dubious circumstances, and a house vote is expected soon.

I would ask that you contact your elected representatives, but this issue requires more than that. Who has access to the internet, and under what terms, may well be the defining question of this generation, and regardless of how the vote in the house goes, this issue and variants of it will continue to crop up. I therefore ask instead that you become an active participant in the discussion, wherever it takes us. Get informed, stay informed, and use your information to persuade others.

I truly believe that the internet, and its related technologies, have the potential to bring about a new renaissance. But this can only happen if all of us are aware and active in striving for the future we seek. This call to arms marks the beginning of a story that in all likelihood will continue for the duration of most of our lifetimes. We must consult with each other, and our elected representatives, and march, and rally, and vote, by all means, vote. Vote for an open internet, for equal access, for progress, and for the future.

The Debriefing

Earlier this month was another disability conference. Another exchange of ideas, predictions, tips, tricks, jokes, and commiseration. Another meticulously apportioned, carb-counted buffet of food for thought, and fodder for posts.

As my comrades working on the scientific research tell me, two points of data is still just anecdotal. Even so, this is the second time out of two conferences that I’ve come back with a lot to say. Last time, these mostly revolved around a central theme of sorts, enough so that I could structure them in a sequential series. This time there were still lots of good ideas, but they’re a little more scattershot, and harder to weave into a consistent narrative. So I’m going to try something different, again.

I’m starting a new category of semi-regular posts, called “The Debriefing” (name subject to change), to be denoted with a special title, and possibly fancy graphics. These will focus on topics which were points of discussion or interest at conferences, events, and such, that aren’t part of another series, and which have managed to capture my imagination. Topics which I’m looking forward to (hopefully) exploring include things like:

– The moral hazard of hoping for a cure: how inspiring hope for a cure imminently, or at least in a patient’s lifetime, can have perverse effects on self-care

– Controversy over medical identification: the current advice on the subject, and the legal, political, social, and psychological implications of following it

– Medical disclosure solidarity: suggestions for non-disabled job applicants to help strengthen the practical rights of disabled coworkers

– The stigma of longevity: when and why the chronically ill don’t go to the doctor

– Why I speak: how I learned to stop worrying and love public speaking

At least a couple of these ideas are already in the pipe, and are coming up in the next few days. The rest, I plan to write at some point. I feel reasonably confident listing these topics, despite my mixed record on actually writing the things I say I’m going to write mostly because these are all interesting topics that keep coming up, and given that I plan to attend several more conferences and events in the near future, even if I don’t get them soon, I fully expect they will come up again.