Before going to the movies at the Rialto in Westfield, we’d run across the street to Barron’s drug to buy candy.  With a selection far too big for a health-themed establishment, this place had a solid hold on the market for kids with a pile of change burning a hole in the pocket.  Personally, I always liked the little theaters upstairs at the Rialto, the ones where small releases started or blockbusters went to die.  The theater (or so I’m told by my crust-encouraging mother) used to be one of those grand old places hundreds would pack into to see a show.  When they chopped it up for movies, the balcony seats were close enough to the ceiling that the screen had to be pushed out into the abyss that once would have looked down, leaving a front row with a comfortable unobstructed view and a ledge to put your refreshments. 

This, I have to admit, is a much better arrangement than say, the movie theater in Manchester with its downward sloping floor that suddenly starts arching back uphill towards the screen halfway down the aisle.  I can’t say there were clear best seats in this layout, though somehow we usually ended up somewhere near the gully.  Chalk it up to gravity.  Luckily, there was hardly anything ever playing on that theater’s two screens that we actually wanted to see.  And once we had our driver’s licenses, forget it, the freedom to drive around with only a vague objective was enough to keep us from the screen’s warm glow.  Though perhaps we didn’t realize it at the time, but the destination really wasn’t all that important.  The main event wasn’t walking around the mall window shopping the stores pinned between K-Mart and Sears or trading the Manchester movies for a slightly more conventionally adequate venue 35 miles to the north, but the crisp cold Vermont air whipping through an open window on a winding country highway: flipping through radio stations, the mindless chatter turned revealing conversation and the relaxation that only comes with speeding down a peaceful stretch of road at night.

It’s difficult to convey the vividness of these scenes in just a few lines.  We live in a world where instant access to precise bits of information is increasingly pervasive, and let’s be honest, you lack the attention span.  We are faced with being the ability to find the 10-word answer to all but the most complex problems.  But whether you’re getting the whole picture or even asking the right question is unclear.  We all want the sugar-coated answer — the white lie, the movie plot or the quick solution — but context is essential for understanding.  This website as a whole is my story, the context of me.

In case I’ve piqued your interest with this crazy Bayesian statistics/psychology business I’m so fond of through my information science, economics, psychology and statistics studies (most notably Edelman’s Psych 214), you might want to get the Bayes Theorum under your belt then connect it to neural networks.  If that’s a little too aggressive for you, you might be satisfied with the comic that prompted this post’s title.  There, see? This blog is educational!

At this point you might be wondering what I do in my spare time when I’m not bettering myself through education in actuarial statistical methods or saving the world through retirement income security.  This month, I perched in a cherry blossom tree outside the Jefferson Memorial, ate Hot Truck overlooking Ithaca from the WVBR transmitter, and talked to the only friendly guy in New York City (a creepster out in front of the Port Authority who decided he wouldn’t fight me after feeling my muscles!).

And so this is where I find myself: trying to take in enough experience to reinforce the knowledge I need for my test on Tuesday.  As the sun emerges, the temperatures rise and the messages from the family off frolicking in Bermuda pile up, it seems ever the more essential not to get distracted.  Right.  I’ll get to it then…

It’s back to exam season until May, which basically means when I’m not working I’ll be studying for the next in the nearly inexhaustible series of professional exams I need to take to become credentialed in my field.  The kickoff event was five days in Austin, TX at the Jim Daniel seminar, hosted at the tolerable La Quinta hotel.  There was a free continental breakfast with make-your-own-waffles shaped like the state of Texas.  I ate one every day.  Upon arrival, I found something in my room that I think was once pizza, although it was hard to tell for sure.  The door to the seminar was marked by a picture of Jim Daniel himself in what appeared to be an outdoor pond full of rubber ducks.  The caption read “Jim Daniel and friends”.  Hopefully only a subset of his friends, but this was unclear from the illustration.  I hope that because I’ve included the name “Jim Daniel” several times in this post, it will appear on Google when people search for his seminars.  Other than being significantly more prepared for this exam (that is, significantly more than absolutely not at all), I was able to eat Tex-Mex, barbeque and ride a mechanical bull on this trip to Austin.  Success.

This past month, among other things, I also did my own taxes (no fewer than 3 state returns), extravagently enjoyed a table with bottle service in a club (I always say I’ll try just about anything once), and enjoyed an outdoor St. Patrick’s Day music fest in the pouring rain (the second corn dog I’ve ever eaten).  And since I fully intend to spend the next month holed up studying, those three things (which interestingly, as I read back, could be easily construed as hardly fun at all) will have to do for now…

…but, then again, what’s the rush?  I’m not even grown up yet.

One effect of a city shut down is that I had an exceptionally small credit card bill this month.  I really do usually do more than just buy food.  But that’s about it for the past month.  And sure, February was a little shorter than your average month, but it comes down to that there just aren’t a lot of consumer opportunities available when you’re snowed in with Larry, Curly and Moe and a trek outside involves transportation limited to boots, snow banks, and an unlimited supply of wet and cold.

But hey, what’s a little winter weather when you’re used to Ithaca and Vermont?  Snow and a crippled Metro system merely slowed me down a bit.  Among other things:  I ate a piece of pizza much larger than my head at 3 am.  I turned our tacky flashing colored Christmas lights into a giant indoor Star of David as a birthday present.  Ate lots of chicken wings and watched the Super Bowl.  Got beaten badly at pool.  I hung out with a kid who’s had the worst luck on Valentine’s Day I’ve ever encountered and likely ever will.  Spent not one but two weekends with U-Haul rental vans.  And took advantage of an empty house in Vermont to hit the slopes and snowboard more in one weekend than I have in the past few years.

Not bad if I say so myself for a month where many schools were out of sessions as many days as they were in.  Yeah the city shut down, but not me…

It’s not too serious.  That would be a dealbreaker.  I like flying and traveling around and the female lead plays a fresh graduate from Cornell.  It gets points for that.  But it’s the questions that it leaves you asking that make the film stick in your mind long after the empty box of Sour Patches have been discarded.  What if everything important to you in your life suddenly wasn’t anymore?  Could you come to realize that all that you’ve been working towards will just be hollow and unsatisfying in the end?  In a way it’s a downer.  But in a way, it reminds us that things will inevitably look a different farther down the road.  Things that seem likely to fall into place now, could easily fall apart, and that which seems nearly impossible may just be within reach in the not too distant future.

So I take it one step at a time.  It’s liberating not worrying too much about the long term.  Next weekend maybe I’ll be trying to learn how to play golf.  Or maybe I’ll decide I need a personal assistant.  Or maybe it’ll just be a Chicken Pizziola sandwich and watching the street performer who plays the violin over looped tracks at Eastern Market.  I’ve been thinking about checking out the National Building Museum.  And buying a digital SLR camera.  And taking a cooking class.  And building a bookcase for my room.  And I’ve really been meaning to frame those classic Mr. Gnu comics I’ve been carrying around since the spring.

But sometimes the world is a little more deliberate and premeditated.  January 4 had special significance this year as the much anticipated “Day One” of Towers Watson, the merger of my company with another firm in the field.  I pretended as if the Day One party was thrown especially for me and thoroughly enjoyed going out afterwards with old & new coworkers, even if it meant it would be that much harder to wake up for Day Two.  But otherwise it’s more or less business as usual, with new logos and colors, new coworkers, and small changes.

But now that the company has more human capital than ever, they seem to be doing a good job of keeping us informed on the current policy debates, including health care.  Without getting terribly political, I think the “Health Care from the Actuarial Perspective” presentation summed it up quite nicely.  There are two ways to do health care that will work well:

1. You pay a health insurance company a premium based on your risk of needing care so that you’re covered.  Old people are going to pay a lot.  People with medical conditions are going to pay a lot.  If you get a terrible disease you’re going to pay a lot.  Simply because you’re using a lot of health care.  That’s not to say that charity or tax policy couldn’t help you pay for it, but the insurance company needs to put the money in a reserve somewhere.
2. Everyone plays.  Participation is compulsory.  Because you’ve got young and old, healthy and unhealthy, you can spread out the risk.  Sure, the young will always be subsidizing the old and the chronically healthy the chronically unhealthy, but maybe that’s just the luck of the draw.  This way we can make everyone pay the same (or more likely what they’re deemed to be able to afford).

So, of course, we currently have neither of these cases (possibly closer to (1) if you take away Medicare, Medicaid, and the books and books of existing laws on what you can cover, how coverage can be sold and how much you can charge) and will only slightly move more in the direction of (2) with the legislation that may or may not happen.  Trying to straddle in between (1) and (2) is a mess.  We know.  Democracy only kind of works sometimes.  So pick let’s pick one.

But, then again, maybe we shouldn’t worry about it too much.  Things could look very different in the not too distant future.  Maybe the looming fiscal crises in the government sphere will make people much more receptive to the idea of (1) or (2).  Maybe I’ll get hit in the face with a golf club or choke on a Chicken Pizziola and be much more receptive to the idea of (1) or (2).

Who knows, I guess let’s take it one step at a time.

From here on out, my plan is to write a post each month around the same time with the goal to capture a snapshot of the month’s events and any insights that may have been ruminating.  2009 was a year full of new experiences and changes big and small, and while 2010 may not have quite the life-changing effects, it’s at least got some potential.

To start things off right, here are a few places in D.C. I’d recommend so far:

• Little Ethiopia – off the Ethiopian restaurants  in the U St area, this one is more out of the way than the others, but the food is delicious, decor great and the night I was there had only other Ethiopian customers.
• American Art Museum – with taste in art usually somewhere between traditional and modern, I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of artwork.  The National Portrait Gallery is interspersed in the same building and not quite as exciting but this place is worth a look.
• Charlie Chiang’s – I was pleasantly surprised by this being a good meal, just make sure you know a decent recipe for how much and what kinds of sauces to put on your dish, they provide little to no guidance in the buffet line
• Five Guys – though perhaps a DC cliche, one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.

In honor of the recently passed Tax Day (April 15), I wanted to examine something that has become the status quo, but perhaps deserves a second look — progressive taxation.  At face value, it seems relatively logical.  Government programs cost money, and well, we have enough government programs that if we just split the bill evenly there would be some people just not able to pay.  So we have rich people pay more.  And in fact, a progressive tax goes one step further by making the rich pay quite a bit more.  My guess is that most people confuse the terms flat tax and head tax, one of which is thrown around once in a while in this country.  From a completely non-pragmatic philosophical point of view, I tend to think along the lines of one person, one vote, one tax bill — but for the sake of staying within the realm of reality, let’s push that aside for now.

What really piqued my interest on this particular tax day were the coincidence of two things.

(1) While protesting at the Ithaca Post Office in our yearly tradition (that’s right you Tea Party people, we’ve been doing this for years!  But I’m proud of you, especially the 400 who skipped work to make a stand in Montpelier, VT!), predictably, most people grumble about taxation and agree with us as they proceed in to approve the government’s claim on a third of their income.  The only semi-positive tax statement I heard all day was one man’s cry to “tax the rich!”, presumably referring to people making more money than himself.

(2) In behvioral economics, we discussed a study (or at this point, a family of studies) conducted on altruism and game theory that reveals an interesting human behavior.  The setup goes like this:  There are two players, one and two.  One is given $10 and told he can divide it anyway he likes between himself and the other player (including the option to keep it all).  The catch is that Player 2 must sign off on the deal.  That is, Player 2 can accept the allocation and both players get their share, or they can reject it and both get nothing.  Now traditional economic theory would say that Player 2 should accept any split of the money.  After all, getting something is certainly better than getting nothing.  Even if Player 1 chose to keep it all, Player 2 should be indifferent between accepting or rejecting, and if Player 2 had any ounce of altruism in them (that is, he got any little bit of pleasure from seeing someone else happy), they would even allow Player 1 to make off with all the dough.  But as you’ve probably guessed by now, that’s not what we see at all.  In fact, we repeatedly see Player 2 rejecting a few dollars and going home penniless, seemingly just to punish Player 1 (or any other interpretation you might have of this behavior).

So what the heck to these two things have to do with each other?   Well, let’s return to the original question: why have people chosen such a progressive tax system?  One notion is that its just easy money — the majority can wield its power on the minority as a means to an end to fund various programs it’s looking to implement.  But I think the urge runs deeper than that.  Like in the experiment, people are fundamentally upset when they see that their piece of the pie is smaller than their neighbor’s.  In my eyes, this unhappiness can be channelled two ways:  positively, by striving for excellence and appreciating the subtleties of your particular situation, or negatively, by aiming to strip some of your foe’s riches or punish them.  In the experiment, instead of appreciating that they are $2 or $3 richer, or at a minimum no worse off than when they started, individuals get so fixated on the money the other player is making that they exercise their power to make everyone worse off.  The angry post office patron and so many more people are the same way: so fixated on the fact that someone else has more, that they spend real energy and resources to try and change that.  They elect officials to take away from those they reassure themselves are undeserving and fund their pet projects.  And quite frankly, like the specific project or not, I think it is fundamentally wrong.

In short, as always, people could use to lighten up a bit and appreciate what they have without coveting what they don’t.  We all know the grass is virtually always greener on the other side anyway.  There is likely a great deal of jealousy, feelings of entitlement and outright contempt for our fellow man that goes into policies like progressive taxation that has no place in deciding the laws that govern us.  And until we stop pitting one another against each other to pay for this or fund that when we all have our own unique and beautiful individual desires, we will never truly live in a free society.

One of the more interesting economic phenomena to come out of the financial crisis we find ourselves in is the shift in consumer mentality and consumption patterns. Suddenly the opulence of the past decade is being replaced by increased saving the popular thriftiness. It’s interesting to read how advertisers and merchants are reacting to this trend by adjusting their strategies to convince people products are valuable, durable and long-lasting and beyond that will enhance the user’s life.

I can only hope that these trends are far-reaching and long-lasting enough that they will begin to ease the impending burden of years of blissful indifference and fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the aging members of our population. Then again, the magnitude of “hundreds of billions of dollars” has essentially lost all awe after this parade of bailouts and stimulus packages. So we gain an inch and lose a mile.

Though there’s one unbridled and beautiful display of free market capitalism and unfettered Americanism that even a financial crisis couldn’t bring down: the Super Bowl. Football aside, this year’s crop of ads proved to be more YouTube-ready than ever, with a few definite winners in my mind. These include:

Cash4Gold: Totally over the top and ridiculous. I’m pretty sure I exclaimed “Is this for real?” several times.

Pepsi Max: Can’t go wrong with humor derived from people getting hurt.

Cars.com: Seemingly inspired by the teems of online “Chuck Norris” jokes, but applied to someone with brains not braun.

Bridgestone: The satirical, over-the-top video style inspired by YouTube, done professionally.

You can see all the ads ranked with some magical scientific rating system, here.

The latest round of stories about the automaker bailout and the strong emotions flying around Washington have a resounding phrase in many of the quotes that will no doubt permeate the sound bytes on this issue.  The White House says Congress failed to act.  The Democrats are saying the Republicans failed to act.  Anyone who was not in favor of these bills to give loans to failing companies with bad credit ratings, buy some stock in them and give federal judges a raise failed to act.

What’s so bad about doing nothing?  Maintaining the status quo should be default.  Our government is intended to be hard to pass laws through and to be responsible.  We shouldn’t push massive legislation that promises to change the way things have been done in a big way and then chastise everyone who likes things just the way they are.

Regardless, I hope that people can see these statements as what they are.  As always, there are two sides to every issue and neither side is failing to do any more than defend what they believe is right for them (and hopefully their constituents).  Republicans and Congress are not failing to act, they are simply rejecting a bad idea, like Congress does every day.  It is just as easy to frame the issue as Democrats and the White House failing to act to protect the millions of Americans who will have to foot the bill for the mistakes of a few.

So maybe we can keep things civil.  Don’t pout Pelosi.  And Congress, just keep failing to act on all the bad ideas out there, and maybe there will be enough money left for us to do some good in this country.

Ever make a dire prediction and have it start to come true, much to your dismay?  It’s often hard to decide whether to shake your head and lament how you “knew this would happen” or whether to find the other idiot that was blindsided and get the hollow satisfaction of an “I told you so”.  Now I’m not going to pretend I predicted the credit crisis or the bailout.  Heck, I didn’t know what those strange quasi-governmental organizations with strange names like “Fannie Mae” were any more than the next guy.  But I will say I don’t think it takes a genius to have predicted that at some point these sorts of practices would become an issue.  I wrote about how people’s irresponsible use of credit couldn’t end well in both March 2006 and March 2007, even if I didn’t quite grasp the specifics of the situation.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, hit the nail pretty much on the head and has me beat.  He testified to Congress in September 2003 about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the organizations at the center of this mess.

But I think what bothered me the most about this whole ordeal (so far) is the bailout.  Regardless of whether or not individuals thought it would help the situation or various parties involved, lawmakers pushed it through against massive public protest.  As this article in the LA Times pointed out, the calls and emails flooded in yet lawmakers decided to take in upon themselves to spend $700 billion of our tax dollars against our will.

Both the markets and the government idiocy and intervention is only going to get worse before it gets better.  Consider this your warning.