The Next Step

So there’s kind of an ongoing problem with the English language, that wasn’t really considered a problem until women started getting vocal about their equality. The rule used to be that whenever using a pronoun refer to someone of ambiguous or unknown gender in a sentence, you use the word “he”. The history behind this decision is probably unknown, but no doubt it involves secret conspiracies to prove males’ continued superiority to females.

Lately, let’s say in the last thirty to forty years or so, there has been a pretty big movement to equalize pretty much everything, at least as far as gender goes. Women are being encouraged more and more to have careers, men are increasingly staying home and taking care of children. There are more women going to college than ever before, and rising to more positions of power. At least before the government, women have all the same rights as men, and we rejoice in that. However, the job is far from over.

In grammar, there is no central governing body. Everyone essentially chooses their own authority, though I think most choose Strunk and White. And Strunk and White only choose rules based on prior readings and patterns that authors seem to use. Once a certain pattern is used in enough books, it eventually becomes grammatically acceptable. The debate over he/she that a small group of vocal feminists brought up threatens to destroy generic pronouns as we know them. If “he” is unacceptable, consider our options:

1. Invent a new word. This option is probably technically the best one, though implementing it would be near impossible. Nobody would want to be the first to adopt the new word, and as a result, no one would use it. Since nobody would use it, Webster, Strunk, and friends would never recognize it as an official term.
2. Use “he/she” or “s/he”. This is fine for small, technical documents, but it doesn’t scale well. It draws too much attention to gender and destroys sentence flow. “The mysterious figure in the cloak darted behind a tree, where he/she crouched down as if looking for a lost contact lens.” The mysterious figure’s gender isn’t particularly important to the sentence, but using “he/she” really calls the reader’s attention to the fact that we don’t know it. Or, in technical documents: “Once the user has entered his/her personal information, he/she can print it out and bring it to his/her office, where he/she must sign the document and present it to his/her supervisor.” This is just plain awkward.
3. Just use “she” all the time. Because of the use of “he” for so many years, “she” suffers from almost the same problem as “he/she” in calling too much attention to gender. However, it does not suffer from the awkwardness that “he/she” does. Some authors already do this, or choose somewhat randomly between “he” and “she”.

To be honest, I am bothered more by 1 and 2 than by 3, and I prefer to have strict rules rather than lax ones. Switching randomly between “he” and “she” will just tempt someone to do a study to see if pronoun selection is truly being done randomly. So I propose that we just switch to using “she” all the time, while at the same time lobbying Webster’s to add “meh” to the dictionary as a generic pronoun. By the time, the male-rights activists get angry enough about the “she” thing, “meh” will have been in the dictionary long enough that they will push it as a viable solution. In the meantime, I am prepared to make the great sacrifice of using “she” as my ambiguously gendered pronoun.

So I’m sitting here watching the Red Sox losing to the Rockies for the second night in a row, and it’s made me disgusted enough to give a little update on my impressions of the Red Sox lineup. Since the order has changed a few times lately, I’m going in approximately whatever order I feel like.

1. Julio Lugo – Just terrible. I don’t see why he was allowed to bat leadoff for so long, and I can’t see the justification in keeping him in the regular lineup, when you consider that Cora is better defensively and, at least so far this year, offensively.
2. Dustin Pedroia – I’m impressed so far, I certainly didn’t expect much from him after his performance in May. We’ll see if he can keep it up, but he’s pulling his weight as well as anybody right now.
3. David Ortiz – As good as ever, he seems to be going to the opposite field more. I feel like the average is a little better this year and the power numbers are a little lower. Not that I have a problem with that.
4. Manny Ramirez – It took him a while to get started, but he seems to be heating up now. Like Ortiz, he doesn’t seem to be hitting for power like we’ve come to expect, but he’s still hitting well.
5. Kevin Youkilis – Certainly putting up some impressive numbers, but I’m surprised to hear that he doesn’t like batting leadoff. I think that’s where he belongs, when you think about how good he is at getting on base. Keeping him in the 5-spot is a bad move because it puts too much pressure on him to get hits instead of doing what he does best: working the count and drawing walks or really bad pitches. Better to have him getting on base in front of the Pedroia-Ortiz-Ramirez combination.
6. J.D. Drew – Very disappointing. Every time it looks like he’s going to turn a corner, he seems to hit a wall again. After that great 7-RBI game, he got very quiet again very quickly.
7. Mike Lowell – Uncharacteristically bad defense is forgivable when you’re producing like Mike Lowell. He’s got a high average, he’s hitting for power, and he’s doing it when it counts, often cleaning up the baserunners Drew leaves behind. Also has caused potential season-threatening injury to at least two opposing players this year, so pretty much as awesome as ever.
8. Jason Varitek – Like Manny, got off to a slow start and is heating things up now. I still contend that he should be hitting right-handed all the time.
9. Coco Crisp- Not hitting well, but I think our expectations of Coco were significantly lowered after last season. Still making great plays in the outfield, but it would be nice if he could make something happen at the plate.
10. Wily Mo Pena – If we didn’t have David Ortiz, I’d say Wily Mo Pena is the easy choice for DH. I would really like to see him hit more, but he is one of the most frightening fielders I’ve ever seen.
11. Alex Cora – He’s doing everything right. It’s clear to me that the Red Sox have made an investment in Julio Lugo and that’s the only reason Alex isn’t an everyday player.
12. Eric Hinske – I really want to like Eric Hinske, but he’s not making it easy. He doesn’t really have anything going for him, being kind of “eh” in both the hitting and fielding departments.
13. Doug Mirabelli – The defense is as good as ever, and that’s all we ask of Dougie.

Glaring Holes:

1. Backup outfielders:  Right now our backup outfielders are Eric Hinske and Wily Mo Pena, neither of whom inspire confidence with their gloves. We need somebody who can come in late in the game and not cause everyone in New England to collectively hold their breath whenever a fly ball goes his way. Brandon Moss and Jacoby Ellsbury are both playing pretty well in Pawtucket…
2. The Leadoff Spot: Lugo, Coco, and now Drew are not getting it done. The leadoff guy is supposed to be getting on base a lot, and none of these guys are. You could pick pretty much anybody else in the lineup, though.

In other news, I need a new desk chair. Mine drags on the floor when I try to roll around now.

On Saturday, despite the ominous band of green, yellow, and red approaching on radar, there was softball. The best crowd yet showed up for a game in Braintree, and what a game it was. Both teams had potent offenses, which led to a very high-scoring game. Team Pat sprang out to an early lead over Team Lauren, scoring a majority of its runs in the first and second innings. Despite a consistently strong offense, Team Lauren simply couldn’t catch up, and eventually would lose the game something like 35-25.

Some highlights:

• Ken, playing middle infield, tried to make a catch on Christine’s line drive scorched toward the left side of the infield. The ball bounced off his glove on the attempt, and directly into… Walsh’s glove, for the out.
• Justin, who had a good day at the plate, was up late in the game a home run shy of the cycle. When he knocked a fly ball into the gap in center field, he thought it might have one. Tellef ran it down and got it back in quickly, however, and as Justin approached third, he faced an entire team’s worth of stop signs. Channeling the spirit of Manny Ramirez, Justin ran onward anyway only to find Erin waiting with the ball at home plate. The cycle will have to wait for another day.
• The weather was far from cooperative, and the drizzle that started at about the middle of the game made running the bases quite treacherous. Ken, running from second to third base, lost his footing about 2/3 of the way there. With a tag bearing down on him, he just rolled the rest of the way to the third, getting in just ahead of Borsari’s tag. I missed this particular play, as I myself was on the ground just past first, but I’m told it was hilarious.

If I’ve missed anything, by all means add it in the comments.

I’m into my last month of co-op at Brontes (a 3m company), and putting some more work into my real website. Sure, there isn’t much there now and it’s tremendously ugly, but I do hope to eventually have as much of my web identity as possible contained there, giving you a “one-stop shop” for all your Nathan Palmer needs. You may notice that half of the menu doesn’t even do anything. Sorry about that.

I’ve also been looking into trying some integration with Flickr. Though I could take a crack at the API myself, there are quite a few Flickr API apps out there already and I’m not a big fan of repeating something that’s already been done. Anyone have any favorite Flickr applications or perhaps one they’d like to see written?

Also, I fear I am too weak to resist the new Macbook Pros. Honestly, I’m surprised that I’ve held out this long.

It is my opinion that the major problems in our health care system can be traced back to two simple issues.

1. Health care costs too much (for the insurers and the insured).

Now, just about everyone knows health care costs too much for the insured. Even if you are lucky enough to have insurance, you still have to deal with co-pays, caps, deductibles, non-covered issues, and mountains of paperwork. If you don’t have insurance, you get to deal with costs that are clearly not meant for man to pay.

As for the insurers, they deal with hospitals and clinics that probably deeply resent them and inflate their prices accordingly. Meanwhile, drug companies are spending millions advertising their latest-and-greatest prescription drugs. The costs of that advertising get built into the price of the drugs, and therefore have to be paid by the insurance company. It’s a safe bet to say that the insurers build this cost into your premiums, and that it isn’t a trivial amount.

2. There is no guarantee of health care unless you or your insurance company can and will pay for it.

The fact that, in the United States, a person who needs an operation to survive but can’t afford it has to choose between death and bakruptcy is absolutely wrong. There is no getting around it. Regardless of whether you are president of the country or Joe Six Pack in college or a bum on the street, you should be getting the same quality of health care at the same price: free.

This is the part where, if this were not my blog post, I would interrupt and start telling me off about how truly free health care is unachievable and that you’ll just be paying more in taxes to cover the extra cost. Excellent point, me. However, building the cost of health care into taxes directly is the best way to ensure fair coverage. Insuring your body is not like insuring a car. If you can’t afford the insurance on your car, then you should probably have a cheaper car, or a bike, or take public transportation. There are other options for you. As law enforcement so loves to remind us, “Driving is a privilege, not a right.” But life is a right (or should be, our wonderful founding fathers must have forgotten to put it in the Constitution (see Declaration of Independence)).

Regardless of all this, the base cost is still too high. If our taxes pay for health care, they are going to go up unless we cut back on some other government programs (which might not be a bad idea, but that’s a different issue). Reducing the base cost of health care should be a major priority. Moving health care into the realm of government should reduce costs somewhat, since insurance companies are under pressure to make profits and the government isn’t. We also need to regulate the drug companies, for the reasons mentioned above. Their paid advertising needs to be controlled or, better yet, eliminated entirely, which will go a long way toward reducing the cost of prescription medicine. Information on new drugs would still be available on the internet and in the news, as well as delivered directly to doctors.

So, is there any hope of getting a good health care system in place when we finally get to see Bush leave office? Let’s take a look at the candidate’s positions, shall we? Hillary and Obama put on a good show of being passionate about the issue, but neither outlines a plan with any real detail. Edwards‘ plan is somewhat weak (“Affordable” healthcare for all probably sounds familiar to you if you’re from Massachusetts), but at least he has a plan. Dennis Kucinich [pdf] actually co-sponsored a bill proposing a universal health coverage plan back in 2003, and stands by that bill now. All the Democrats, however, list health care as a major concern.

Any republicans with anything worth talking about? Romney just wants to force everybody to to buy insurance, while Tancredo tries to blame the issue on illegal immigrants. Brownback seems to think that the ability to “shop around” for health care will be of great benefit to Americans. Tommy Thompson at least has an Edwards-like plan. Ron Paul thinks there is already too much regulation in health care and wants to cut down on it. Gingrich almost addresses the issue in “Promoting Active Healthy Aging.” As of this post, McCain and Giuliani don’t even list health care as an issue on their campaign sites.

This post was really long.

This is my new blog, powered by Wordpress, replacing the old Blogger. It’s superior in many ways, not the least of which is having my content directly under my control. I also get to have post categories and full control over the code, meaning I can (in theory) put whatever I want on these pages. Good stuff.