Chicago style.

In order of intensity, a (mostly unhealthy) list of things I want to consume in Chicago:

1. the $225, 29-course “Tour” at Alinea
2. Hot Doug’s Fuck, they are closed the entire time I’ll be there.
3. New Glarus Fat Squirrel
4. Chicago-style pizza
5. anything at Kuma’s
6. Italian beef

Holiday flicks.

Movies I want to see:

1. Sherlock Holmes
2. Up in the Air
3. Crazy Heart
4. Avatar
   

Liberal health care reform opponents: Stop fucking around.

In the last few weeks, I’ve heard a lot about disgruntled supporters of health-care reform, epitomized by my friend Andy on GChat:

Andrew: if you believe it’s immoral to put in place a system that leaves people uninsured, it isn’t more moral simply to decrease that number
[...]
I’ve made complete renouncement of compromise a fundamental aspect of my worldview
the disappointment of this administration’s approach has lead me to it

It does seem like a lot of the backlash against health care reform is due to the perceived failure of the Obama administration to take a hard stance on the issue, be “liberal enough,” or giving too good a deal to insurers, and so the best solution is to raze health care reform in a fit of pique.¹ It reminds me a lot of the pretzel episode of The Simpsons, after Mr. Burns wins that new car:

Now, obviously, this isn’t a perfect comparison. But let’s break it down:

1. It’s absolutely fuckstick crazy to assume that killing this bill will bring about something better. With the possible exception of Snowe and Collins, Senate Republicans have been marching in lockstep opposition to health reform, and Obama’s liberalism (or lack thereof) has absolutely nothing to do with their actions.²
2. Nobody in the stadium gets anything when Mr. Burns drives away in that car. However, even without the public option, 538 calculates that a family of four with a total income of $54,000 would pay $4,000 a year in health insurance costs under the proposed Senate Bill. Without it, that family would pay over $19,500–or about 40% of their income. And of course, the Senate bill would cover millions of people who currently have no insurance whatsoever, and comes with $100 billion in subsidies for the poor and sick.
3. For all the bad ink they get, health insurance is not a particularly lucrative industry. You don’t hear about proposed windfall taxes on Kaiser Permanente very often.
4. Any bill has to include an individual mandate. Ezra Klein explains why in detail here, but here’s the gist: “The mandate is what keeps average premium costs low, because it keeps healthy people in the insurance pool. It’s why costs have dropped in Massachusetts, not jumped. It’s why every other country with a universal health-care system — be it public or private — uses either a mandate or the tax code.”
5. Killing the bill kills people. Lieberman, Howard Dean, and everyone who joins them in opposing this bill will have blood on their hands if it fails.

Fuck your wounded pride and your fragile sense of fairness. Support the bill.

Top albums of 2009: the Obsessive Edition.

It’s late December, so it’s time for the deluge of “best albums of 2009″ posts. But since a lot of the albums I keep on repeat find their way to my end-of-year “best of” lists, I’m wanted to try a different approach–one that combines music wankery, listing  and graphs into one big nerdgasm. Onward!

My initial plan was to just take the high counts from my Last.fm charts for the last year. However, I realized that this would unfairly punish short and/or recently-released albums. Furthermore, that doesn’t really describe “obsession” as I’m used to it–the kind of constant repetition that drives my girlfriend insane (see also: Hercules and Love Affair, In Ghost Colours). So I decided to use the yearly chart as a jumping-off point, but only count the first two months after an LP initially appeared on my weekly charts. I then divided the total play count by number of tracks, and finally came up with an average for the eight-week span. The list, eight-week average and graph are after the jump. And, please–no complaints about the methodology. This isn’t 538.

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2009 NFL picks, week 15.

Going 3-0 last week won’t do me any good if I can’t pull it out this week in round two of my fantasy playoffs–and my opponent has DeSean Jackson, Ray Rice, and Brandon Marshall.

In related NFL news, I’ve decided to buy a Rice jersey. Yes, half for the dumb joke.

Last week: 3-0
Overall: 24-10-1

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