I was reading some of the blogspace "debate" about the CRU files and particularly the graphic code with the valadj vector. None of it is worthy of links, you have them already if you are interested are aren't if you don't. Independent of the results, the whole thing depresses me.

1. It is religion. If you believe, you can explain everything based on your belief. If you don't, those very explanations are further evidence that the belief is just wishful thinking (or maliciousness, but lets not go there). Worse, both sides of the "debate" would cheer that statement and apply it to the other side.

2. It isn't a debate or a discussion. Tied in with the ideas being "religion" is the fact that no-oe can afford to be wrong. So it isn't about trying to find common ground or a good conclusion or even a basis for future work based on lessons learned. It is all about showing your side is RIGHT and the other side is not only WRONG, but malicious, deluded, incompetent and scheming. Again, I think that sentence can apply to either side.

What a way to start a Monday.

It is finally out, Project Donut! Basically my newest RPG infatuation. Post-scarsity science fiction in an isolated "small town" space station.

As with most of my RPG infatuations, free-form tags -- describe what you want, don't just pick from a list -- and social conflict is treated mechanically similar to physical -- in fact, all conflicts are treated exactly the same.

For the record, I gift it to you. Up to you whether you want to take it. :)

Well, I've got an account. Now I have to find some good way to try it.

Don't know why these thoughts crossed my mind.

Poker and football (and presumably many other examples) get strategy because of the repeated plays of tactical choices. A single hand or a single play in isolation is not interesting except sometimes in watching a rare event happen.

For some reason that lead me to wonder about whether examples that are more disconnected. Are there many good examples where strategy is exogenous to the repeated tactics of the "game"?

And, if there are, does that really mean that they are just larger tactics (the "wargame fallacy")? Of course the name I give implies I think it isn't the case, but I can't think of a good example off-hand.

The only examples I have are Go and warfare. In both (to some extent) the strategy is about which tactical fights it is safe to underinvest in. In Go at least that feels sort of like grand tactics though. That maybe part of the skill at high level Go is being able to hide the tactical details from yourself so that you can play the larger board like a tactical problem as well (shift between levels at will).

Interesting graphic

I'm not the first person to comment that what struck me most when I looked at the graph was the debt per capita is concentrated in the wealthy, developed world. One might almost conclude that developed economies have a large scale version of the lack of savings that plague their citizens.

If personal borrowing -- mortgage debt -- drove the most recent price bubble, what bubble is government borrowing driving?

Debt as a percentage of GDP doesn't look so bad, but does start to look bad as projected to 2011.

I just read a statement (not footnoted, but in a reasonable source) that the life expectancy in the U.S. changed from 49 to 68 in the first half of the twentieth century! That's incredible.

In particular, deaths by infectious diseases dropped. According to the source -- written in the 50's -- heart attacks and cancer took their place.

I don't have any judgements or conclusions from the information. Just thought it was worth sharing.

System -- Let's play D&D!

Setting -- Greyhawk? Forgotton Relms? Eberon?

I want to play a Kender! I'll be a war forged barbarian! ....... (degenerates)

Scenario -- How about agents of a small merchant "house" working on long distance trade relations?

Yeah, that's cool. My kender can handle the negotiations! And, my war forged can do the leg breaking to get people to pay up! Youse got a problem wi' that?"

Situation -- So, you are all in a bar.

(Which degenerates into lots of sarcastic asides about Mr. Smith who comes to hire the PCs or tell them about their first job. Followed by no-one trusting anything about the story he gives 'cause obviously the DM has a plot twist in mind. Etc.)

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It is too bad we so often basically stop discussion after the 1st two s'es and just assume we'll get to a fun situation (i.e. the interesting stuff happening right now in the game) by throwing a few random PCs at the DM's idea of a scenario.

It would be fun to try discussing them in a different order.

I forget what triggered me to go back and read about Glorantha, but the reading is just feeding my love for it as a setting. Not just the shear amount of stuff out there for it -- I never got into any other big settings in the same way. There is just something fun about all the speculation and interconnected bits. Besides of course, that all the core homelands are pretty cool too.

Of course, the very reason it is neat is the reason I'm unlikely to ever really play in it. It is a huge barrier to entry. Not that you have to know all the historical bits and bobs to play, but if part of the fun of the setting is that type of stuff, then if only one person knows it, some of the fun is lost.

The blogsphere is fun, but it is also too big. Especially when reading about politics or economics there is both too much opinion and simply too much data.

At least it is a better problem than their being too little.

Reading more by Mark Thoma after following a link in my previous post, I found a post titled The Rationing Canard. In it he argues that the idea of rationing is a red herring. He ends with a good summary -- clear enough and short enough to quote in full. I don't agree (comments below), but again, at least he's getting his assumptions and goals out on the table.

The Republican attacks are, essentially:

Democrats intend or will be forced to reduce costs by reducing the number of people covered (perhaps focusing on the elderly) and by reducing procedures per person (i.e. a lower level of care on average). Dramatic tax increases may be needed as well.
The Democrat's response runs along the following lines:

That's a fabrication. There's no intent to reduce the number of people covered or to reduce the level/quality of care. In fact, the number of people covered must rise to achieve universal coverage, and procedures per person, i.e. the level of care, will only fall to the extent that procedures with little or no benefit are eliminated. The number of procedures (i.e. the quality of care) will, if anything, go up.

To achieve the goal of universal coverage while controlling costs, it is necessary that costs per person fall. However, this will not be achieved through rationing care. Instead, costs per person will be reduced by lowering the cost per procedure (through lower administrative costs, increased competition, lower drug costs, etc.) and by eliminating unnecessary procedures. Additional revenue may also be used to broaden coverage. Cross-country studies indicate that the reduction in costs per person needed to provide universal coverage without reducing the level of care is achievable.

The goal of Democrats is to lower costs without sacrificing the quality of care (which will allow coverage to be expanded). Whether that's achievable or not is a legitimate point to debate, I think the experience in other countries suggests there's quite a bit of excess in the system that can be removed without affecting the quality of care people receive, but accusing Democrats of intending to cut the quality of care or to ration care within particular segments of the population (or overall) mischaracterizes what they are trying to achieve.

His summaries of the Republican and Democratic positions may be correct. I can't judge. I disagree with that framing of the debate though because I think it loses sight of what's important.

* People maintain that we spend too much on health care for the benefits we get (both are hard to measure, but ...). If that's the case, we should be able to propose a way to cut costs w/o cutting benefits.

* People maintain that it is morally wrong to not provide a minimum standard of universal care. If we believe that -- or even if we don't as a society -- we should be able to propose a plan that will provide that universal standard and give the associated costs.

My conclusion is exactly the opposite of the author. Rationing isn't a canard, it is the key since people seem to be conflating the two points. By "paying" for universal minimum coverage by saying you can lower costs, you are making a rationing choice. Especially if you believe -- as the author attributes to the Democrats -- that there are significant cost savings to be had in high-cost/low-benifit procedures since there are by observation people out there who are willing to try those procedures.

It would be really refreshing for a politician to provide a plan for universal minimum health care including cost and actually force people to line up for or against it. It wouldn't pass -- it might even be political suicide because it would lead to being tarred as being in favor of arbitrarily raising taxes -- but as long as we don't have a proposal like that on the table, we are just being asked to trust some group of people to figure out a way to do something as they go. Which is kind of the "free-market" approach, but in this case it would be people working for some new or expanded government agencies.