September 2007 - Page 4 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Going for a Constitutional

Today is Constitution Day. Monday, September 17, 1787, 220 years ago, was the last day of the Constitutional Convention. Ben Franklin, by proxy, gave this speech about the flaws of the Constitution. yet, his address fit into the “let not the perfect be the enemy of the good” theorem.

I double-checked the Constitution, and yes, I remembered correctly: the legislature is discussed in Article I and the executive branch in Article II, suggesting that Congress should have important role in the governance of the country. Guess some folks have forgot.

Here’s something that totally slipped my mind – There are TWO ways to amend the U.S. Constitution:
1. Both houses of Congress approve by a two-thirds vote a resolution calling for the amendment; this does NOT require the president’s signature. To become effective, the proposed amendment then must then be “ratified” or approved by the legislatures of three-fourths (currently 38) of the states . Usually, but not always, Congress places a time limit of seven years for ratification by the states.
2. The legislatures of two-thirds of the states (currently 34) vote to call for a convention at which constitutional amendments can be proposed. Amendments proposed by the convention would again require ratification by three-fourths of the states.
I’d forgotten about the second way because the Constitution has never been amended by that method, though there has been conversation about such an event, e.g. for a balanced budget amendment. The Constitution has been amended 27 times; the Bill of Rights are the first ten, and the 18th and 21st, concerning prohibition, canceled each other out.

Of course, the interpretation of the Constitution falls to the judiciary, established fairly early on. The notions of “legislating from the bench” or “strict constructionist” have been so mangled in this politicized era as to be rendered nearly meaningless.

Still, I hold a (cautious) hope that the rights long established, fought and died for – including the right of dissent – will survive the current attacks, cockeyed optimist that I am. Here’s another view.

ROG

How To Ride a Bicycle in the City

I ride my bicycle in the city of Albany, New York at least seven months out of the year. I tend to ride when the ground is free of ice and snow. I’ve developed some rules for riding, based on my experiences.

1. Wear a helmet.
If you’re over 14, you may (edit: WILL) be mocked – “What, do you think you’re riding a motorcycle or something?” My advice: wear a helmet anyway.

2. Signal.
I get amazing amount of yielding by cars because they actually know my intentions. Or maybe it’s just the shock of seeing a bicyclist actually following the motor vehicle rules. Do this in spite of the fact that:
* Other bikes don’t signal.
* Cars often don’t signal, especially when they are turning right.

3. Keep right. Go WITH the traffic.
I’ve actually had debates about this from drivers and bicyclists, who think I should go against traffic like a pedestrian on a country road. Read the manual.
What I’ve learned from trial and error, though, is that when you’re riding to the right when there are no parked cars, and parked cars are coming up ahead, you need to be out from the curb at a suitable distance as though a parked car WERE there, moving out at least a car length before reaching the parked car. Otherwise, you may appear to be lurching into traffic.
One of my favorite moments is when I’m riding, and a bike, obviously NOT keeping right, is heading toward me. My solution: keep right. But be prepared to stop. (Not so incidentally, this is also the rule when two people are walking towards each other – keep right – unless you are in England.)

4. Use lights, front and back, not only when it’s dark, but at dusk, dawn and when it’s foggy. Reflective clothes and other items are a good idea as well.
If a large percentage of cars have their lights on, that’s usually a good signal to do likewise.
Since most lights are only useful to be seen, rather than for seeing, I’ve opted that if I only have one light available, to put it on the back if possible.
I also suggest that you get a removable front light. Not only does that keep it from “disappearing”, but you can use it as a flashlight if you’re walking from a dark garage to a building.

5. Follow the rules of the road, but not at your peril.
I stay on the road, as opposed to the sidewalk, except in those places where the road is too narrow to feel safe. If I do ride on the sidewalk, I yield to the pedestrian.

6. Focus.
I don’t recommend headphones, because I think you need to hear what’s going around you. Suffice to say, I don’t suggest cellphone use, either.

7. Maintain your bike.
Put air in the tires. I’m not mechanically inclined, so I take it to the bike shop at least once a year to be checked out, especially my brakes.
My personal experience is that I like the bikes with the wider tires. They’re not as fast, but they are less likely to blow out from broken glass and other debris than the bikes with thin tires.

8. People are unpredictable.
I now expect people to walk in front of my bike at an intersection where I have the right of way, and for cars coming out of driveways to pull right in front of me, where I also have the right of way. I still need to be vigilant about:
* people coming from between parked cars
* drivers opening car doors
* people chatting on the driver’s side of the car
* people and cars turning around in the middle of the street and coming back from whence they came

9. You probably can’t outrace a dog.
Even back in high school, I’d ride down some dead-end street, seeing no canines, and yet, seconds later, they’d be about a half dozen, barking at my tires. I’ve found stopping, then walking the bike to be a useful response.
Some people recommend squirting dogs with water or pepper spray. I have used neither, so I cannot speak to this point. I HAVE heard stories, though, about people using pepper spray and have the wind shift, so that they become the victim of the spray.

10. Some people are just hostile to bicyclists.
At least twice a year, some yahoo in a car, usually in the passenger seat, will make some untoward comment. You have two options: ignore it, or be prepared with some pithy retort; they’re driving away, so make it short.
On at least two occasions, I’ve received the insult, and they’ve driven off, only to catch the traffic light, allowing me to pull along side of the truant. “Ha, ha, only kidding!”, they always reply, nervously.
Still my favorite insult was from someone sitting on his front porch, who yelled out as I was riding by, apparently without irony, “Get a car!”

(Graphic from here.)
***
“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling.
I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.
I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
— Susan B. Anthony

ROG

The Theological Implications of Doris Day QUESTION

My racquetball buddies and I were in the locker room, and someone said, innocently, “Que sera, sera.” Somehow, this led to some great theological/philosophical debate. One person suggested that the line of “whatever will be, will be” was a position of those Christians who believe that “everything is fixed, and you can’t change it”, while another opined that it was antithetical to the Christian tradition, because God is an active God. The fatalism of Nietzsche was invoked in the conversation, as were the impersonal gods of the ancient Greeks.

So, a simple question, and a more complex one. Please respond to either, or both:

1. What other purely popular songs suggest theological or philosophical meanings to you, and in what way?
Example: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin may evoke the “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” of Matthew 6:28.
Example: “The Word” by the Beatles. John 1:1, “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Lennon/McCartney, “Now I’ve got it, the word is good.” The song also notes “That the word is just the way”; John 14:6, Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” Note also, John 1:1 and the first verse in the song start, “in the beginning.”

2. To what theology/philosophy do you think Que Sera, Sera belong? Does it belong to yours?
***
Anyone else, when they hear his name, sing “Dave Petraeus, Dave Petraus” to the tune of “Doctor Zaius” from the Simpsons? I thought not.
“The general came to shed some light
On why we needed to keep the fight.”
Of course, you can color the couplet to your personal political preferences.

ROG

Insurance Blues

A couple weeks ago, I was telling someone about the movie Sicko, and I’m relating it to my tenure in 1989-1990 as a customer service representative for an insurance company. I get animated, and, apparently, loud, so much so that I was asked whether I have high blood pressure. (No, my bp, when it was checked five weeks ago was 124/78, thank you very much.)

What it does mean, though, is, to paraphrase Paul Simon, that I am Still Ticked Off After All These Years. And it wasn’t until this recent iteration of the story that I realized that it wasn’t just that I felt I (and others) who worked there were treated badly; I recognized, more fully than ever before, just how poorly their customers were treated as well.

This was the job I took after FantaCo. There were perhaps 16 of us in the training class, learning about medical prefixes and suffixes for eight weeks, which was actually cool. Then we got on the floor, already diminished by four, but adding to the five people already on the job. Soon, the 12 became eight as the tedium and/or the low pay – I was making $5000 less than I did at FantaCo – wore on people.

Yes, it was 1989, but how could it be that EVERY single claim for the use of an MRI was initially rejected as “medically unnecessary?

There is a condition called TMJ disorder, which involves the jaw. Routinely, people with medical coverage were rejected, saying it was a dental issue. People with dental coverage were rejected, saying it was a medical issue. EVENTUALLY, people with both coverages would get their claims paid, but it was, I realize now, a stall tactic.

When I started, we had what seemed to be a perfectly good dental claims customer service interface on our computers. It was changed during my tenure to some illogical, incomprehensible product, which, as it turned out, was ordered because someone’s brother or cousin developed it. Grrrr.

There were huge layoffs right before Christmas. The organization WAS middle-management heavy, and several of those folks went. But so did the clerks, who were runners to find files for the customer service reps on the phones. Never have I been more disappointed than when I WASN’T laid off.

What they say: You are now empowered to take care of these problems.
What they mean: We have systemic problems, and when they inevitably happen, you’ll be the fall guy.

The single most egregiously stupid decision made by this insurance company was the timing of the changeover from one medical claims billing processing system to another. The actual change in product was fine, but the time frame was ridiculous. The old system went down around Christmas. The new system was supposed to be up in two weeks; it took six.

If it were up to the customer service representatives, the switch would have taken place after the third or fourth week in January. People really cared about their 1989 claims for income tax purposes; less so about their 1990 claims. They could/should have announced that the 1989 claims were received by date certain in early 1990 would be processed on the old system and all others on the new. But no.

During this period in early 1990, some people wanted to know, not when the claims would be paid, but if it had even been received. Since the new system was batch processing, nothing was being entered at all. While I wasn’t supposed to tell the customers, we were told there were 40,000 claims in the basement, so I literally couldn’t find out the answer to their question. The official answer to the query, “Should I just send it in again?”, was “no.” But I’m told some at least a couple of the more irate customers “all right; if it’s duplicate, the system will kick it out.” This was true. But you know how some phone calls “may be monitored for quality assurance”? Got raked over the coals a couple times over that.

FINALLY, the new system was up. Claims were being processed, and far more quickly than before. But wait! Many of the policies had deductibles. The AMOUNT of the deductibles (e.g., $50 before a claim would be paid) were programmed into the new system, but the amount of the deductible ALREADY MET so far for those 1989 claims was not. So, customers who had met their deductible were getting letters saying “The claim was applied to your deductible.”

These people were now FURIOUS. And rightly so. The insurance company had a policy that the third call on the same claim would be a supervisor callback. By this point, EVERY OTHER CALL was a supervisor call. And here’s the source of my 2007 rage; for years, I had attributed this situation to an incompetent management of ignorant rubes. I now firmly believe, after seeing the movie Sicko, that not putting in the 1989 deductibles that were met into the new computer system was a deliberate attempt by the company to save money, hoping that the customers didn’t notice. And I’m sure that there were customers who DIDN’T notice, especially those who had separate deductibles for each member of the family. I’m now convinced the company put profits in front of the well-being of their customers and their beleaguered employees.

The last straw: we were scheduled to move into a new building in Corporate Woods. Two weeks before the move, I notice an ambulance at the new building. Then another. Then another. Then a school bus. It turned out that thirteen people went to the hospital because of something in the air ducts, a problem which, we were assured, was “rectified”. A fortnight later, we moved in, and at the end of that week, I gave my two-week notice.

I didn’t have another job. I didn’t have any savings. Since my last day was March 1, 1990, I did have health insurance through April 30; if I had left the day before, it would have run out on March 31. I just didn’t want to be working there on my birthday. Looking around, of the 16 people in that training class, after I left, only three of them were left, one in a different location. Interestingly, the five customer service reps who were there when I started were STILL there; hearty folks.

After that, I worked on the census for five months, then, having nothing better to do, went to library school; that seems to have worked out.

Oh, the pictures of the turkeys: taken a couple days ago from the third floor on a cellphone, looking at just outside my building, which, like the insurance company, is in Corporate Woods. Representative of the turkeys I used to work for.

ROG

Underplayed Vinyl: Chicago

I had to buy a record player, and it’s all Fred Hembeck’s fault. O.K., not really. But he was the inspiration.

I was visiting Fred Hembeck’s MySpace page. This is actually fairly unusual in that I generally spend my time at his Fred Sez page instead. I must have wanted to leave a comment wishing his daughter a happy birthday, so I went to the that day’s post. The other thing the MySpace page has that FredSez doesn’t is an indication of Fred’s mood and his current musical excursion. For that particular day, the selection was Chicago, the second album of the group formerly known as the Chicago Transit Authority. I hadn’t listened to that album in ages!

So, at the next opportunity, I pulled out my double album, put the first LP on the turntable, and…NOTHING. It had been cranky of late, with me having to start it up manually before it would take hold, but this time – nothing at all. The turntable was probably fixable, but for how much?

Then I remembered one of my former interns at work had purchased a record player at Target for $70 or $80 this past summer. I attempted to see if it was still available at the local store; the website said it was, but the person at the store assured me that it was not. Then I went to Amazon and found a Memorex® Nostalgia Turntable and Stereo, for $39.97, plus $8 shipping, provided by one of their vendors, Bargain Outfitters. I ordered it, and it came within a week.

The assembly was minimal, and so I finally got to play that Chicago album that I received for Christmas in 1970; I don’t remember this, I had marked the album 12-25-70 ROG, as was my wont at the time.

So what did I think?

Well, much of it lyrically is a bit earnest, especially It Better End Soon, which dominates Side 4 (oh, I miss the notion of Side 4). But I really enjoyed the album all over again. I recognized some really interesting musicality. Fancy Colours, which starts Side 3, starts off in a very slow 4/4, then switches to a fast 3/4 (or 6/8), and ends with those discordant horns that made me think originally, and again recently, that the record was skipping.

Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon, which takes up much of Side 2, to be punny, made me smile. Even Colour My World, which I’ve disliked since it was the the theme song for my high school girlfriend’s prom, I seem to have lost my loathing for.

I have no rational thought about this Chicago album, except that this one and its predecessor were as good as this group ever got musically, though greater commercial success came later (Chicago V through IX each went to #1.) And i am really enjoying my record player.

One annoyance about Columbia Records at the time; they never had a copyright date, either on the LP or on the package; maddening.

Today is former Chicago singer Peter Cetera’s 63rd birthday. Coincidentally, David Clayton-Thomas of Blood, Sweat and Tears, another horn-based rock band on Columbia, is celebrating his 66th birthday today.
ROG