Hammocks

Pottery Barn has a very appealing 4-pole 2-person hammock:



I like the idea that the hammock is stabilized at all four corners, so you can’t fall out of it. But it’s not really a hammock if it can’t swing, is it? It might be able to rock if you remove the small braces on the ground, but that just makes it an enormous rocking chair.

Public input

The arts council that I’m on is required to collect public input every three years to determine in what ways we should adjust our funding priorities. It’s a good requirement in theory, like the requirement that our meetings be open to the public. In practice, nobody ever comes to our meetings.

We had been planning to hold a big public meeting at City Hall where we would, um, well, ok, planning may be too strong a word. We had been vaguely contemplating a meeting of some sort where people would provide us with clear and thoughtful input. Or at least advocate for their own interests. Or at least show up. We didn’t have very high hopes, really.

Then someone from another arts council mentioned that they had recently tried doing a public survey instead of a public meeting, and had received far more input that way. So this time around, we’re trying a survey instead. It’s not the most exciting survey, but we’ve received about 20 responses already and we can look over those responses in a calm and collected way. It makes a lot of sense. We’re even planning to include a version of the survey in the 14,000 water bills that will be mailed out next month, and if we can get even a 0.5% response rate, we’ll be drowning in public input. And we can probably increase our response rate if we add a question about the water rates, though we run the risk of getting blamed for the water rates. Nobody really knows what the arts council does; maybe we set the water rates. It wouldn’t surprise me, and I’m on the arts council.

Being on the collecting side of a survey has given me a different perspective on surveys. When we went to an art exhibit on Sunday and they were trying to get people to fill out their survey, I felt obligated to hold up my end. And a little bad that I didn’t have a copy of our survey to hand them in return.

Budgets

Our city is now going through the sort of budget crunch that neighboring cities went through several years ago. I’m not sure how we avoided it for so long, but the consequences are starting to become clear. Increased class sizes and much less foreign language instruction, dozens of layoffs in the school system, no new trees planted by a city that used to be proud to be a National Arbor Day Foundation’s Tree City USA, no replacements for retired cops and firefighters, and a 91% cut to the budget for part-time help in the library.

City Hall is feeling the pinch, too. Not a single layoff, of course. The mayor sets the budget, and the mayor runs City Hall. But no shifting from answering machines to new-fangled voicemail. That would be about communication, and the city is resolutely opposed to communication. They’re actually slashing the IT budget as well, and removing a number of high-speed Internet lines serving City Hall. You’d think Comcast would be willing to donate a little broadband to City Hall in thanks for the egregious monopoly that the city enforces (No FIOS for YOU!), but the budget is really just an excuse for City Hall to become even more remote.

Daily life in the city won’t change much. Parents will be rightly concerned about the school system, and there will be pockets of public discussion about property tax overrides and debt exclusions, but most people care about their personal economic situation much more than the city’s. And that’s ok, or it would be if families weren’t all making those same choices that the city is making.

Lupine

Photo by Michael

Texture

Photo by Michael

Open wi-fi: comments

I was greatly cheered to see a signboard outside a rural Maine library last month declaring that the library is now a wi-fi hot spot at all times, not just when the library is open. Like post offices that provide access to P.O. boxes 24/7 simply by leaving the outer lobby unlocked, libraries can easily provide Internet access 24/7 (to anyone with a laptop) at no additional cost to themselves. Putting a sign up saying so helps out anyone driving by, and certainly clarifies whether it’s ok to use their wi-fi.


Photo by Michael

I used open wi-fi networks when I was traveling, back before anyone suggested that it would somehow be wrong to do so. I run an open wi-fi network at home because it makes it easier for myself and my friends to connect to it, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if someone driving by used it to check their e-mail. Since it’s a home network with limited capacity, I’d prefer that it not be used for steady high-bandwidth uploading and downloading by passing strangers—that should be common courtesy. If my router made it easy to do so, I’d probably enforce that by offering unlimited bandwidth to listed computers and limited bandwidth to unlisted computers.

Marshall Point

Photo by Michael

Kelp

Photo by Michael

Balance

Photo by Michael, Arrangement by Lisa

Cigna math: inexcusable

Warning: this will hurt your brain.



I’m baffled. I know that “Submitted Charge” is the amount the provider submitted. “Charges Not Covered” is the difference between the submitted charge and the negotiated (or contracted) price that Cigna has agreed to pay for the mystery service. We have a $100 copay, so the negotiated price is applied to the deductible until we hit $100, and then it shifts over to “Covered Balance.” So on the first line, 108–56.14=51.86. Fine. But then how is Cigna getting to $8 under “Cigna Coinsurance” and $8 under “Member Coinsurance”? And what are they 0% and 100% of? Well, $8 is 100% of the submitted charge of $108 less the copay of $100, but that makes no sense because the coinsurance is supposed to be calculated based on the negotiated price, not the submitted charge. And $8 isn’t 0% of anything, even with rounding. This utter nonsense continues on the next two lines, where the percentages and the dollar values are completely disconnected.

So how was the final column, “Member Responsibility,” calculated? In the first line, it’s the negotiated price minus either the Cigna coinsurance or the member coinsurance. But on the second and third lines, it’s the charges not covered. On the fourth line, it’s the amount that was applied to our deductible, which is also the negotiated price minus the Cigna coinsurance. So it’s possible that there were only two different calculations used in the first four lines to figure out the Member Responsibility. And one of those calculations might be right.

The fourth line looks like it could be right. We pay $19.81 towards our copay, reaching $100 total, and then the remainder of the negotiated price is paid by Cigna. If the member responsibility is supposed to duplicate the copay amount, then that line is ok.

But then we reach the magical fifth line. Cigna’s coinsurance suddenly jumps to 208%, while the member coinsurance jumps to 108%, for a total coinsurance of 316%. That’s a lot. Strictly as a percentage, 108% is 100 points less than 208%, so it’s the absolute value of X (|X|%) in the formula 208% + X% = 100%, since the two coinsurance percentages should total 100%. And I cannot imagine a reason that a set of calculations like this should ever be using absolute value to convert negative amounts or percentages into positive ones.

Why is Cigna’s coinsurance the exact amount of the submitted charge, and why is the member coinsurance the exact amount of the charges not covered? The total of the two coinsurance payments should be the negotiated price, which is neither of those numbers (and in fact is smaller than either of those numbers).

Perhaps the details are the problem, and I should just look at the totals. The EOB ends up with a total copay of $100 (which is correct), a total member coinsurance of $91.96 (which is not correct), and a total member responsibility of $119.30 (which is neither correct nor connected to the first two numbers). On the summary of claims page, which links to individual EOBs like this one, the total member responsibility is listed as $8.04. That happens to be the difference between the total copay and the total member coinsurance, but there’s no reason why that calculation should ever be done. Nor any reason why the total member responsibility should be different on the summary page and on the EOB.

How an EOB should be calculated

(A) Submitted Charge: A
(B) Negotiated Price (not shown): B
(C) Charges Not Covered: C=A–B
(D) Applied to Deductible/Copay: D=B until deductible/copay is reached, then D=0
(E) Covered Balance: E=B–D
(F) Cigna Coinsurance after out-of-pocket limit is reached: F=100% of E
(G) Member Coinsurance after out-of-pocket limit is reached: G=0% of E
(H) Member Responsibility: H=D+G

How Cigna works

(F) Cigna Coinsurance after out-of-pocket limit is reached: F=A–copay, or F=A, or F=E
(G) Member Coinsurance after out-of-pocket limit is reached: G=F, or G=A, or G=0% of E, or G=C
(H) Member Responsibility: H=D–F, or H=D+G, or H=C

My brain hurts. How’s yours?

Help us to lie down in peace

Are there particular prayers in the Shabbat service that you find comforting or moving, even out of the context of the service?

My favorite has always been hashkivenu:

Help us to lie down in peace, Lord, our God, and awaken us to life again, our King. Spread over us Your shelter of peace, guide us with Your good counsel. Save us because of Your mercy. Shield us from enemies and pestilence, from starvation, sword and sorrow. Remove the evil forces that surround us, shelter us in the shadow of Your wings. You, O God, guard us and deliver us. You are a gracious and merciful King. Guard our coming and our going, grant us life and peace, now and always. Spread over us the shelter of Your peace. Praised are You, Lord who spreads a shelter of peace over us, over all the people Israel and over Jerusalem.

It’s not a prayer for which I’ve ever known a melody, though there are of course scores out there. I grew up with the congregation reciting it in English in unison, and for the past decade it’s been a silent reading at the services I attend. The sung liturgy is what draws me to the service, but hashkivenu is the heart of the service for me.

I see it as a wish for peace in several forms, not just a peace that is the absence of conflict. Other prayers ask for justice and for the defeat of our enemies, but this one asks for a shield rather than a sword, peace rather than victory. We ask for life and peace, because without peace there is no meaningful life. I’ve thought about inscribing it on a mantel or a bed canopy, to give the prayer some real form and indulge my literalist tendencies.

Where the questions stop, nobody knows

Having agreed to continue the interview concept:

Anyone who wants me to interview them leaves a comment on this note so indicating. I come up with five questions. That person posts the questions’ answers on their own blog, should they be embloggened, or should they be disembloggened for whatever reason posts the answers as a further comment here. In addition to the answers, however, the interviewee must agree to become the interviewer in turn, offering to ask five questions of anyone so inclined.

and having nearly finished answering the questions posed of me, I hereby make good on my commitment by inviting anyone who wants to be interviewed in this fashion to let me know in a comment here.

Hereditary executive

From Vardibidian: What do you think would be good qualifications (personal history, traits, skills, priorities, etc) for a mayor of a town like yours or mine: old, 50,000-75,000 or so residents, a suburb of a bigger town (the state capitol, actually), lots of retirees, lots of schoolkids, lots of single-family houses and triple-deckers? How could you tell if somebody in town would make a good mayor?

I have no idea. I used to think I knew, when the town government seemed more remote and monolithic. I’d want someone creative and curious, skilled in listening to people and talking to people, able to recognize expertise and accept advice, and able to inspire lots of people to contribute to the greater good. Pretty much what I’d want of a person in any leadership position.

The practical reality seems very different to me now, and I’m not sure what would be good qualifications. Our mayor brings in a tremendous amount of state and federal funding, but I’m not sure how he manages that. Other than bringing in outside money, I’m not sure exactly what his job entails, so I’m not sure how the job would be different if the characteristics of the town that you mention were different.

In a town like this one with hereditary job positions, the way I’d tell if somebody in town would make a good mayor is to check their family tree, on the assumption that a mayor wouldn’t be effective if he didn’t come from one of the political families because he’d obtain no cooperation from the other people in power.

In the eye of the beholder

If you got to nominate somebody for a MacArthur Fellowship (the genius grant), who would it be?

Aside from me, my wife, and my friends?

The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.

Victor Gaultney, type designer at SIL and the designer of Gentium. His work is thorough and brilliant, both in producing fonts and in writing about their design and history, and I’d love to see what he will do next.

Kirk Hawkins, if he successfully brings the ICON light sport aircraft to the market. We’ll know in 3 years.

Matt Ruff, author of two of the best books I’ve read (Fool on the Hill and Set This House in Order).

Jeffrey Summit, who has created a campus Hillel organization at Tufts that inspires and engages an incredible number of people, continually develops new programs that help the community, and serves as a national role model. He’s done this while also teaching, doing an advanced degree and research in ethnomusicology, and engaging in side projects like putting together a Grammy-nominated album.

I’m a little surprised that I’m having trouble naming artists for this. Lars-Erik Fisk (sculpture), Jan Owen (calligraphy), Shayna Leib (glass), Josiah McElheny (glass). Ok, maybe I’m not having trouble. They’re all producing work that is original, unusual, thought-provoking, and finely executed.

Moses Pendleton, founder, artistic director, and choreographer for Momix. Co-founder of Pilobolus. Though I’m not sure a MacArthur would actually change what he’s doing at this point, because he’s already been so successful.

Long as God can grow it

Do you miss having long hair?

(Background: I’m answering interview questions from Vardibidian. Until April 14, 2005, it had been approximately 18 years that I’d worn my hair in a ponytail.)

When the immediate need had passed to have short hair, I considered growing it back out. My appearance in the mirror hadn’t changed as much as the general feel of turning my head. But I found I don’t mind having short hair, and I like the folks who cut my hair every 5-6 weeks now. The answer is no.

I do miss the sense of freedom that allowed me to choose to have long hair, and I miss the ways of looking at the world that vanished around the same time and for the same reasons. But I’ve actually needed to maintain a short cut for the past 18 months for other reasons, so it’s been convenient to have already chosen to keep my hair short.