Slut Shaming

Slut shaming. This is a strange term for me. It's one of those things that when I hear it, my brain tingles, like a veil of cognitive dissonance is resonating between places I don't want to be yet am comfortable being labeled. If that didn't make sense, imagine what it's like to be a supporter of science in a classroom deeply entrenched in an area of the US that believes creationism should be a classroom topic; you feel you should own the label, but know you're in deep trouble if you're outed for having it.

That just describes the feeling I get with this term, because, I think, there is some part of the term that I am guilty of yet I don't know if I should feel guilty for it.

It doesn't help that socially hot topics aren't something that encourages conversation. Most people with strong opinions in this area tend to judge by emotion and have trouble relating to people with my type of brain wiring; to not simply understand or empathize with them means I'm stupid or ignorant, or worse.

What I really would like to do is solve what it is about the term "slut shaming" that rings that cognitive dissonance bell in my brain; what am I not understanding? Or do I have an opinion formed, but am missing a key aspect of the topic to have an informed opinion?

I've had this topic in my Trello list of Things To Possibly Blog About for awhile; I'd glance at it, and think about it, turn it over in my head a bit and end up thinking, "Let's save this for later" once more to let the topic ferment in my brain a little longer. I'd re-watch Laci Green videos, like her Jenna Marbles video response to Jenna's Slut Edition video.

 I also watched Laci's appearance on Dr. Phil in an attempt to understand the topic better. I've watched that episode several times, as a matter of fact. And yet...something about it left me feeling more lost than educated.

The Dr. Phil show no doubt was considered, for the general audience that watches his show each weekday, an educational source. But what do you learn from it? Let's break it down.

The episode is called "Girls Who Bash Girls Who Dress Sexy." I'd link to an episode, but a few have already been pulled by television networks claiming copyright infringement, so nothing guarantees my links won't go stale within days so you may have to look it up yourself.

The episode opens with Phil bringing up the latest news headlines regarding the Steubenville rape of a 16 year old girl, where he then ties "blaming the victim" to the term "slut shaming." Both of the terms are already emotionally charged, so I suppose this is an early warning of what the show will be aiming for in terms of what the viewer should conclude lest they are obviously deviant of Dr. Phil's viewership.

He introduces his first guest, a teenager who posted a meme that ended up going viral. She thought her peer age group were often dressing "inappropriate" and decided to post a picture expressing her opinion.

Dr. Phil touches on spoofs of her post as well as people who have given her death threats and insults as a result of her opinion.

This, he said, was kind of the genesis of slut shaming, judging others for their choice of dress. I'll file that away as an aspect of slut shaming:

Telling someone to not show so much cleavage is slut shaming. You're seeing someone's choice of dress, you carry the opinion they should not do this, and make them feel bad for it. The show also labeled this as judging them which is both true and emotionally charged so if you don't necessarily agree, you're made to feel like the bad person in the narrative (can you tell I'm more sensitive to emotional bias when it seems to be more for manipulation purposes instead of education?)

Next up was someone he obviously threw in as the villain in the show. Jason carries the opinion that slut shaming is not only okay, it's a noble pursuit. He doesn't think you should respect people who have no respect for themselves, and slut shaming is about taking responsible for your actions and the consequences of spreading your legs for all sorts of people.

Jason maintains that he judges people by their behavior, which Dr. Phil counters with he's judging people without knowing that is what they're doing. When pressed, he tacitly admits it's based on their dress or rumor. He tries to make his point that if Lady Gaga wears a meat dress in the savannah and a lion eats her; maybe the meat suit isn't the best choice of apparel. "We judge people a lot by what we wear," he said. Dr. Phil counters by showing a picture of he and his wife at a social event (I assume, since he's wearing a suit jacket and open-collar button up shirt and his wife was) wearing a low-cut dress, to which Jason says she's dressed "very tastefully." This was another manipulative moment to define him as the bad guy; what else could he say?

He was going to introduce his next guest, so what did this segment tell me about slut shaming?

Slut shaming is based on seeing people's choice of dress and drawing conclusions about them. There's obviously more I'm supposed to draw from this because it was so blatantly transparent that Jason was cast as the villain of the episode, but I'm trying to enlighten myself a bit about slut shaming, not get sucked into the dramatic aspects of the show. Jason was trying to say that people have conclusions drawn about them because, in part, of the way they dress; he then labels them as sluts given their "uniforms," and assumes more about their behaviors, which is the part he really is taking umbrage to. Their behavior, in turn, is what he disapproves of and sees as irresponsible.

The next guest was Laci Green. Dr. Phil defined slut shaming as women being made to feel inferior because they are dressing, acting, or engaging in inappropriate behavior that connotes sexuality. He then introduces Laci Green saying that slut shaming is about controlling women, not teaching self-respect.

She is quoted from her video talking about promiscuity being a "bad decision" for women, being called slut, losing respect, or asking to be raped. Meanwhile, "dudes" being promiscuous is a "good decision." She goes on to say that, from society's view, dudes are expected to make bad decisions so it's okay.

Dr. Phil and Laci then attack Jason, where Dr. Phil compares his view as bullying. ("Bullying" is a wonderful hot-button word to use.) Why he took this opportunity to attack Jason right after introducing Laci I'm not sure...what was the point of having Laci on? Her viewpoint was entirely summed up by the video, then her chance to talk (on the broadcast) was basically to echo that she disagreed with Jason, then another guest was introduced.

So what do I take away from Laci's segment?

Slut shaming is about controlling women and being sexist, because men aren't shamed for slutty behavior.

His next guest was Trisha, who is shamed by women for the way she dresses. She talked about people anonymously attacking her, then referencing Jason by saying people like him were cowardly when they couldn't hide behind a computer screen.

(It's really hard for me to even pretend you're trying to have a dialog or educate someone when you demonize the person you're trying to convince of the error of their ways. You're doing little more than stooping to a level of childishness and...what, trying to shame them into seeing your side of the argument?)

Trisha talks about sluts, when she was growing up, were the girls who had sex with a lot of people; they screwed half the town or many people in school. Now they were calling her a slut because of the way she dressed.

Jason was pressed for his opinion, and he said she was dressing for attention. She denied this, saying she's all about being "girly" and she's proud of being curvy. She said she's not even interested in men right now.

Laci adds that even if it were for attention, she doesn't see what's inherently wrong with dressing the way you want. It says something more about the person who's judging them rather than the person wearing the outfit. Jason tries to say that most men don't really care what women are wearing but other women seem to judge each other for this, which Laci interjects that many people do care, but then seems to agree that it is a problem because women judge each other for this and not men. She seems really angry that there is a perceived double standard...and the fact that they both seem to say that women are harsh on other women more then men is never pointed out; it's a rule that you don't concede a point to the villain.

Trisha added that she hadn't had sex in three years, yet Jason concluded she was loose and said as much on national television, so he shouldn't be judging her by what she was wearing.

This marked the end of Trisha's segment. What did I conclude I was supposed to learn from this?

Sluts are girls who sleep around, not dress in a provocative or revealing manner.

Phil's next segment was highlighting the "Slut Walk," protests against victim blaming in rapes. Scantily clad women march to reclaim the term "slut." He then introduced Kira, who is an "advocate of modesty" and said that slut shaming is a term used to silence people like her. People are engaging in a competition to sexualize themselves, and she thinks it's an issue of wanting attention. "Women need to put a little more thought into the image they are projecting."

Kira talks about promiscuity having consequences that can follow you for the rest of your life, and that concerns her. She also said that slut shaming is a term to shame people who feel others should be more modest.

Dr. Phil says that you cannot criticize, humiliate, censor, or hold them up to public ridicule and not consider yourself a bully.

He keeps finding reasons to bring that word into the conversation..."bully."

Kira just replies that she's not advocating Jason's position (another slam!) but is advocating modesty and she shouldn't feel ashamed for advocating this.

Phil says it's a leap to go from thinking this person is dressing in a way you wouldn't, to assuming this person is sleeping around and exposing themselves to STD's and such. He also talks about how he has two boys that dress very different, one a rocker, one a preppy Wall Street type, but talking to them they are alike.

This marked the end of another segment. What did I take away from this?

Slut shaming encourages you to draw conclusions about people from their choice of dress, and it doesn't necessarily reflect the truth about who they are. I say this because Kira made a point of advocating for modesty and feeling that slut shaming was a term made to label her as unreasonable, but the host of the program instead discussed how deceiving looks are, which doesn't seem relevant to the guest's point. He talked about his similar-personality yet differently imaged boys, and he discussed someone who had backlash after pointing out Miley Cyrus had been in a 3-year relationship but was labeled a bitch and slut, while Taylor Swift has been with 13 guys in 3 years but is labeled inspirational and sweet. He didn't seem to address Kira's point at all other than the comment regarding bullying...implying she was a bully.

Next up was a guest speaking on behalf of Felicia Garcia, a teen from Staten Island, jumped in the path of a train after she ran a train on four football players and a few girls and a couple of guys harassed her about it mercilessly. "Words don't hurt, but they kill," Alissa, her friend, said. The segment was little more than telling the story of how she was bullied until she killed herself. "She made a mistake" (referencing having sex with four guys.)

Dr. Phil talks about promiscuity being about pain, lack of self worth, need to be accepted, lack of self esteem, basically a number of things that aren't sex. So the label of slut ignores the actual issues and just adds to the issues that may have driven that behavior in the first place.

The next segment continued the Felicia story, but then he introduced Gabriella Van Rij, author of an anti-bullying book, and a small discussion on getting help for kids being bullied. The only thing I remember of her contributions were that 85% of the girls she talked to in schools claim to have been bullied (is that a real statistic, or anecdotal?) and that people don't need their mistakes pointed out to them repeatedly, they know they screwed up and are humiliated enough.

This segment, I suppose, is supposed to tell me that slut shaming is a form of bullying that can lead to suicide. Especially if you're a teenager where everything is a major, universe-changing incident, from being picked on to having a pimple break out before prom.

Here's the summary of what conclusions I drew from the show:

• Telling someone to not show so much cleavage is slut shaming.
• Slut shaming is based on seeing people's choice of dress and drawing conclusions about them. 
• Dr. Phil defined slut shaming as women being made to feel inferior because they are dressing, acting, or engaging in inappropriate behavior that connotes sexuality. 
• Slut shaming is about controlling women and being sexist, because men aren't shamed for slutty behavior. 
• Sluts are girls who sleep around, not dress in a provocative or revealing manner.
• Slut shaming encourages you to draw conclusions about people from their choice of dress, and it doesn't necessarily reflect the truth about who they are.
• Slut shaming is a form of bullying that can lead to suicide. 

I think those are all the conclusions I drew from the segments. It seems that the majority of them have to do with how women dress. If I had to summarize, I'd think that "slut shaming" is primarily about seeing a woman dress in a particular manner, then telling them they shouldn't do that (or make them feel inferior for their choice of dress.)

I had a few problems with this presentation of slut shaming that I think impedes my ability to properly understand the argument. At the very least, there are some issues that I don't think were addressed.

Several times, the point of the choice of dressing style carrying the connotation of behaving in a certain manner or believing in a certain lifestyle had come up but was not addressed beyond dismissing it as being misleading, or at most having the label of "judging others" slapped on the act so as to shut down the subject (since judging others carries a negative connotation, therefore you're performing a negative act and should be ashamed of yourself for judging someone.)

Yet we choose our image every time we get dressed and go into public. In the segment where Phil shows a picture of himself with his wife, I guessed he was at a social function; it was outdoors, there were other people around, but he's wearing a suit jacket with button up shirt, she was wearing a low-cut (but elegant!) dress. It's never brought up why he is hosting the show in a suit coat, trousers and tie. Why does he wear this outfit? Is it just what he is most comfortable wearing? Or is it because he won't be taken seriously wearing pajama pants and tee-shirt, something I've seen more than once in high schools and in Wal-Mart?

Come to think of it, the guests on the show were all wearing outfits that, on the average spectrum of clothing, would be considered less casual and more dressy. Even Trisha, the one criticized for her outfits, wore something that didn't show much cleavage.

Why? Why did they choose the clothes they wore?

How can you claim that outfits don't mean anything when there was obviously some shared theme to the choice of outfits worn for appearing on TV?

We do judge people at some level when we see them. Snap judgement act as a shortcut for our brains; it's a simple way to evaluate how we should react to people around us.

Is it realistic to pretend we don't acknowledge that we do certain things to project a certain image? Many people will say they don't care how people see them when they dress; it's their own style, or it's just an expression of themselves. SO DON'T JUDGE ME!

But...how are you expressing yourself without those styles having a certain meaning? Otherwise you're expressing nothing. It communicates nothing. Even the act of communicating nothing is a form of communication, much in the same way as the people in high school who go against the grain by actively trying not to fit in with the pre-labeled social cliques become, themselves, their own group.

Right or wrong, your clothes do draw certain judgements from others.

Think people might be a little more hesitant talk about their beliefs, if they're not Christian, and you're wearing a cross on your neck?

You think teens didn't get backlash if they wore a trenchcoat to school after Columbine?

Even Phil talking about his son wearing rock musician outfits said there were unusual looking kids at the concerts...implying they tend to wear a particular style of clothing to fit in with a certain crowd.

The rational part of my brain will say that the outfit doesn't necessarily reflect who that person is in other ways; looks can be deceiving. But on the other hand, the outfits are still a reflection of how they want you to see them. They are projecting an image that you're expected to understand. And it's a disingenuous joke to expect people to not draw conclusions based on your outfit, whether it's to tell others you're a 'Don't mess with me' biker in a leather jacket or a 'Respect me' business suit.

Is it realistic to expect people not to draw conclusions about the image you project?

You can choose to reject their judgements or conclusions. You can choose to put the onus of changing opinions on yourself, and change the image you project. But you really shouldn't whine about it; I fully expect strange stares if I wore a spiked red mohawk, or a garishly multicolored muumuu to work, because these are fully outside of society's norms to the point where it would be considered strange. There are already the occasional odd look from people when you're strolling into a building in the financial district, populated by bankers and traders and other expensive suits, while wearing a tee-shirt and jeans.

I also think that there was another point of possible irony that was glossed over. When Laci's video was being played, there was a bit blipped out; "Women, you don't give away your precious <blip> gift until you're under the ownership of a man!"

Watching her actual, unedited video, the word blipped out was "vagina."

When showing the montage of images for Trisha during her introduction, there were a number of shots where her cleavage was fuzzed out. Basically, censoring her body.

...if these things aren't inappropriate, if these are things that shouldn't matter, why were they censored?

Isn't that a non-verbal slut shaming, saying that whatever outfit she was wearing in those images cannot be shown on television?

And keep in mind that not only was Phil humiliating and criticizing Jason, which would fall into the purview of his repeated call of bullying, but his show censored Laci and Trisha.

There's some irony, if not cognitive dissonance, to that.

In the end I'm seeing hypocrisy in the show's message, and never having the point of how appearance draws judgements from others (and engaging in dressing in a certain manner for the show, implying that outfits do project a certain image and adds to the legitimacy of the idea that there are "appropriate" outfits) properly addressed or acknowledged.

I'm confused in this.

The idea of social shaming is also never addressed, and the relationship of social shaming to slut shaming. Social behaviors reinforced through collective social shaming has been a strong force since...well, societies existed. Why is social shaming allowed, and in many ways encouraged, yet slut shaming is somehow special and needs to be excluded?

Perhaps the big difference is whether you make your disapproval known. You can disapprove of a behavior or outfit without telling the person, although then I am lost as to where the difference is that this isn't the same as a chilling effect, discouraging you from expressing an opinion.

Perhaps my mistake is trying to understand this concept through the lens of a daytime TV show. It seemed pretty obvious that it was less about educating and more about forming a dramatic narrative; Dr. Phil's show had a definite "here's what you should believe" instead of a "here are the facts" approach.

Or maybe this is a topic governed largely by emotion and less by rationalization, so it's a little more nuanced and complex than I can easily empathize with. I'll probably continue to turn this topic over in my head, trying to understand it better...but if I've gone this long without understanding it, I'm not sure I ever will.

A Reason Wealth Inequality Matters

I intended to follow up on my previous post regarding wealth disparity much sooner than this, but sometimes life gets in the way.

I rent an apartment in Manhattan. If you know anything about the five boroughs of New York, Manhattan is the borough the Muppets, Jason, several superheros and Cloverfield have all either taken or destroyed, and is also known as one of the most expensive places to live despite the several times it has had to be rebuilt. Well, the non-Hollywood part is true, at least.

I work in a part of Manhattan called "The Financial District," a very small area of real estate where each weekday enough money flows through the virtual coffers of the banks and trade floors to fund small countries.

Last Friday I was sitting in the back seat at the coffee bar with some developers who, despite having Internet access cut off at the office, decided to stick around and socialize a little. A small part of the conversations involved a nearby apartment building whose rent, they said, ran around $40,000 a month.

That's $480,000 a year. Nearly half a million dollars.

I said I couldn't imagine what it's like to have so much money in the bank that I could afford to spend that as rent. I'd love not to have that kind of financial worry in my life...and then I wondered, what is it like for people who do make that kind of money?

Someone said that they knew someone who had lived near there a period of time and said it was a nice apartment, but the location sucked. My first reaction was, "How?" but someone else reminded us there aren't really any supermarkets nearby.

That's true...groceries would almost exclusively be delivered.

(I know there are some markets in the financial district; they tend to be small and pricey, though, even for Manhattan.)

This isn't to say that if you have groceries delivered in Manhattan that it means you are wealthy. It's quite common; there are several people I know that are getting various grocery-type items delivered who aren't what I would consider top income earners. But it is an added luxury that does add up over the course of a year, especially when you add in the cost of having laundry picked up and delivered (it usually costs a dollar or two a pound, although pricing for dry cleaning and specialty treatments can quickly increase costs. The convenience of having grocery and laundry items delivered as a service is, to me, like cable or satellite television...nice to have, but something I can do without, especially after actually sitting down and doing the monetary math.

Manhattan is a kind of illustration of the wealth disparity in America. There are pockets of affordability; it's safe to say that my apartment is nowhere near forty grand a month in rent. But it certainly is far north, for what I get in relation to what I pay, to what I could afford back home with the same amount of cash. Other people get by finding roommates on Craigslist to afford rent, or making do with tiny studio apartments that suits a more frugal lifestyle.

And by tiny, I mean 500 square feet or less.

And by pockets of affordability, I mean I can cross a street or two and there are apartments that will cost the upper side of four figures, or possibly five figures, per month. Even near our office I've heard rumor of apartments that are slightly below $3,000 a month in rent being a block away from apartments that are tens of thousands per month.

The cost of living isn't getting any cheaper, either. Rent costs, along with transportation, and service industries, are creeping higher. Couple that with the news that middle class income is essentially stagnant, and you end up with the most common option for people who work in New York and need to afford housing; they have a longer commute.

The truly affordable housing tends to lay in the concentric zones farther from Manhattan; on the far north side of the island is Harlem, or people move into Brooklyn or Jersey, across the river. The rent is lower, but the commute tends to jump from a 25 minute subway ride in train-dense Manhattan to 45 minutes or an hour once you factor in multiple train hops, or in some cases and hour and a half. That's the tradeoff for affordable living if you enjoy your job (or in this economy, just want to keep the job you have.)

In the course of the conversation I recounted an account I read in a book on New York "tunnel dwellers," people who lived in the subway tunnels. It was remarkable; it described how you could walk within three feet of someone, and not even know they were there. One fellow interviewed worked more or less full time at McDonalds, and said his coworkers had no idea he lives in the subway tunnels. It was sad and surprising given the amount of spin and vitriol, especially during our recent presidential campaign season, towards the laziness of the poor who are portrayed as lazy ne'er-do-wells sucking tax dollars in exchange for sitting on the couch watching daytime TV.

Here's the thing; much of the city thrives on the poor and middle class to do the jobs the upper (and upper middle class) rely upon, but wouldn't want to do.

I don't see too many bankers who would want to be out in crappy weather delivering Seamless and GrubHub orders to hungry folks. Or doing laundry or custodial services, or waiting tables. Even the artists performing on Broadway often share rooms with multiple roommates to make ends meet. These are people eking out a living, hoping they don't become ill or badly injured lest they end up going bankrupt with a visit to the hospital or ending up not being able to go into work from illness, meaning no income since many of them are hourly workers (which, by the way, is a terrible way to prevent the spread of disease, when you think about how many people come into contact with someone who had to go to work in order to make ends meet while still contagious...think about that when you are commuting on the subway or eating prepared food.)

If prices keep rising, more people move farther away, until the strain of the commute will basically price them out of the city. They move on. It's a process that is basically an extreme form of gentrification, only with the economy being what it is, it's not only pushing out the poorest people. The lower middle class and middle class feel the strain as well.

Of course there is a counterbalance to this that econ 101 teaches us; prices will level out at a point where people will pay what they can afford. The pendulum is supposed to swing to a point where once it is noticed people are moving away, the overall economy suffers, jobs aren't being filled, and the politicians and businesses start offering incentives for people to come in again, hopefully in the form of "this apartment is pretty crappy so we'll make the rent affordable."

Only I wonder if that's what is actually happening. My employer is actually paying a very decent salary, and I'm still wondering how long it will be before I will have to look at moving to Brooklyn. The city has raised transportation fees, which doesn't affect me personally (thank you again to my employer offering Metro cards as a job perk) but does cost money when my wife and son come to visit; most people on the island are beginning to notice the nickel and diming adding up for them to get to work.

So what happens?

I wonder if you'll see a push of poor and middle class out of the city. Jobs will become more difficult to fill as people move away; at least, the jobs that keep trash cans in offices emptied, clothes laundered and food delivered. Business will end up having to pay more in order to get workers, squeezing small businesses closer to going out of business.

Quality workers may become more scarce. I see this effect in education; as the job perks slip away and the negatives become a heavier burden, teachers who are good teachers, people who care about the work of being a teacher and not a cog in the education system, they leave. They see that the reality of teaching is far removed from the job description and certainly doesn't match what they thought was happening when they were sitting at the desks on the receiving end of an education.

Instead I saw, over time, more B-stringers getting their chance to become teachers. These are people who are less passionate about teaching and more fitting into the dysfunctional system that is in place; real teachers become disenfranchised and demoralized, and soon enough begin looking for work outside the education field. The B-stringers just stop caring or are comfortable working at a mediocre level within the broken system.

Ever notice how hard it is to find teachers who are passionate about their jobs? The people who would be passionate are driven away from the field.

So what happens if a city becomes largely dysfunctional, and the people who would be passionate about it leave? Does it end up become like Detroit?

I doubt that a place like New York City will ever be like Detroit, but then again, it wasn't long ago that you wouldn't have thought Detroit would become today's Detroit. I hear stories about what has become of the Vegas suburbs after the economy tanked, and California, as a state, is having larger scale issues that are creeping into the lives of its citizens. Florida is having interesting economic effects on its citizens largely in part from Tea-Party political ideas put into effect, and Florida already has an economy heavily funded by retirees and spring break tourists.

Only time will tell. But one thing I'm sure of is that as long as people look only for themselves, there will be looming problems. The myth of the job creator paints a picture of a wealthy citizen waking in the morning and feeling the burden of keeping his employees employed; the truth is we have more people who are willing to step on whoever is in his or her path to financial gain in order to have more financial gain. There is a disconnect wherein the wealthy can't relate to the middle class, let alone the poor. I read an article outlining tips to save money for bankers and their wives, and the disconnect couldn't be more stark; it made what was common sense for middle class families sound almost novel or shocking. If these ideas hadn't occurred to them before, no wonder they don't care about the financial situation of people around them. And worse, the advice felt like the equivalent of, "Instead of driving the Ferrari, take out the Benz!"

I read the tone of the article summed up in the lines,
“I still go to New York  five or six times per year, but now I forego business class to travel in premium economy,” he said. “With the new flexibility to plan ahead – which was impossible when I worked for a bank – you can get good fares. And if you’re smart about it, the airlines still give you all the perks.”

 and,

“The wife is doing the ironing,” another banker told us. “She’s not loving it, but she doesn’t want to get a job herself so is having to accept it.”

It's a novel idea to have to scale back and still have perks many people will never have.

We need to care about our neighbors. We need to understand that when people become miserable and stressed, there are repercussions. This doesn't mean handing out free checks to everyone (although this is done in Alaska...) to boost incomes but it does mean acknowledging that maybe a single minded pursuit of everything that's best just for ourselves will come back to bite society in the ass. Benefiting everyone still means everyone will benefit, not just the poor or middle class. And we need to stop stigmatizing the desire to help others.

Otherwise you end up in a system where only the most connected and financially powerful will call the shots, and gradually they get into positions where laws are created that will only benefit the most connected and financially powerful, snowballing their accumulation of wealth until there's nothing left for anyone else.

Sound familiar?

Look at the Numbers: Wealth Inequality

In continuing with the theme of my previous post, I'd like to present yet another "How can a sane and/or rational person look at these numbers and not think that something is a little wrong here?"

And today's topic is "Wealth Inequality".

Wealth inequality is the term used to describe why the majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck while one percent of Americans own over a third of the country's wealth.

Articles like this give more numbers and try to illustrate the point. Unfortunately the people most affected by this social problem tend not to be good with numbers; partly because the human brain sucks at dealing with numbers and there's a point where all big numbers are just subconsciously translated as "wow that's big" instead of comprehending the comparisons, and partly, perhaps, because this is a topic that once politicians get into the mix becomes something that you either actually think about or reject outright because it's against your personal ideology.

Numbers and graphs sometimes just don't cut it for conveying a message of these proportions. Let's try a video instead. Every time I've seen this I can't help but wonder, "How can you not think something is a little wonky here?"

There's an important point to make here; there's a difference between wealth inequality and income inequality. Wealth inequality is what leads to the reaction, "We pay sports stars millions of dollars to throw a ball while teachers educating our future leaders make so little!" or some similar comparison.

Income is more of a flow of money...your paycheck. Wealth is the accumulated value of things you own. This would be why many people who are retired have very little income, but are not considered necessarily poor, because they have accumulated assets in their lifetimes. Also, money gained from trusts, dividends, and investments aren't considered income.

It's easier to remember the difference between wealth and income when you remember that Steve Jobs, cofounder and CEO of Apple at the time of his passing, had a salary of one dollar in his position at Apple.

I see these numbers and look at these graphs and it absolutely gobsmacks me that people defend the idea that this is not only fair, but reasonable.

One YouTube comment read, "Nobody has time for your whiny, ignorant, socialist crap. If you want socialism, go to Russia. Those top people work very hard. And Obamaites like you don't realize that it is fair based on how much you work. Go complain somewhere else."

I normally attribute YouTube comments about as much credibility as 4chan comments, but this is actually something I've seen echoed by people in FaceBook, with actual people not necessarily hiding behind trollish anonymity. And these were not wealthy people saying this; from what I can tell the sentiment was being expressed by economically lower to middle class people, the very people falling under a category I labeled "being screwed."

Maybe I lack the ability to properly convey how I see the situation.

No one is working 380 times harder than the average person.

You can, perhaps, say that someone is working 380 times harder than someone else. There are people in comas and on the other end of the spectrum there are athletes training 12 hours in the gym in preparation for the next Olympics. I can see that fitting the scenario.

But that's not the average person.

See, the average would be, ideally, the middle class. You have a job. You put in your 40 hour workweek. You do your part, and you should, in theory (according to the version of the American Dream I was told) be able to provide comfortably for your family, be able to afford healthcare, and maybe take a vacation once or twice a year.

But as you can see in that video, that's not the reality.

And when you take that average, you shouldn't have it common...that is, routine, and expected...for a person to make 380 times your economic value if they have a particular title in a business. I can see it happening, but it should be the exception, not the rule. And I'm not saying that CEO's should have more wealth or money; they are the people that are leading the business, and they shoulder the responsibility of keeping that company running and keeping employees employed.

But 380 times more than the average employee? Isn't that...excessive?

It would seem that some economists agree. Something along the way has become seriously warped.

I see a progression of blame in society.  A series of excuses, really.
"If you're poor, you deserve to be poor."
"It's America. If you work hard, you will make it."
"Nothing is stopping you from going out and making that money."

The reality is that it's not a level playing field. Most of the money going to the top of the wealth pie doesn't come from their paychecks, although that's a big help (remember, Steve Jobs, dollar salary, worth millions...) Thanks to Congress and Congressional lobbies over time, tax and economic policies favor people who get a chunk of cash to start off well in the game of accumulating wealth. Wealth creates more wealth. Investments create more wealth. It's a feedback loop. And it's the reason you see wealthy people being compensated with large, healthy salaries on top of stop options and bonuses and other forms of compensation.

Ever play the board game Risk? I used to like playing it. It's a game of war. As you conquer more countries, you get more armies each round so you can place them and roll dice to take over another country and expand, leading to more armies on your next turn if you're successful, and you get a bonus number of armies if you control a particular region. Also you get these cards each time you take over a country and after collecting a certain number of cards you turn them in for a bonus army set, which gets higher each time a set is turned in.

Follow that?

The game is fun the first several rounds. Especially if you can get Australia. You'd understand if you played.

But inevitably the game loses its appeal at the end, because usually about a third to halfway through you know who's going to win. Someone by that point is getting an obnoxious number of army units each turn, and everyone else is going to be faced with fighting a juggernaut with so many armies that only a gambling addict would think the dice would overcome the odds. "I'm going to place my 55 armies here, 34 armies here, and 25 here...against your total of 15 armies in Brazil. Roll the dice!"

Our economic and tax policies have been crafted in such a way that if you have 6 or 7 figures in investments, that money will make more than enough money for you to live on. And it just snowballs. Meanwhile the poor and middle class have hardly enough to pay the taxes and insurance premiums to live on, let alone pass on in inheritance to their kids. The hard part is getting that initial investment amount so you can build up a snowball to roll down the mountain, metaphorically speaking.

I suppose it shouldn't be surprising; once you have people making a lot of money through means outside of income or salary, they have more power and influence to tell Congress how to create laws that are beneficial to their ways of making more money. And they have enough money to hire people who specialize in making money to spend their time taking advantage of loopholes in laws so they can make yet more money. The fox is guarding the henhouse; Congress isn't generally comprised of blue collar workers, but rather wealthy businessmen and lawyers. Your representatives are probably not able to relate to you economically. There's a disproportionate skewing in the background that comprises our Congress compared to the rest of the nation. Yet they are supposed represent your interests in matters of law? I suppose it should be no surprise to find laws passed that benefit more economically privileged positions in society once you see who is running our government.

When you hear people say that the poor don't work hard enough, that's really just a way of placing blame through word play. I understand there are CEO's that put in long hours at the office. Most have had times of extreme stress at various times of their lives. And CEO's of large businesses can look back and think about the difficulties they've had in their lives while sipping alcoholic beverages on a beach in Bermuda.

I think back to people like my dad who woke at 4:30 in the morning to drive to work by 5:30 and get home that evening after putting in a long day in his job at one of the three industrial plants funding my home town's economy. I think back to a man named Dave who worked long days at the garage he owned beside his 2 employees, grease and oil covered from mucking about in the undercarriage of cars and SUV's. I think about the numerous farmers living near my home who woke before the sun rose and continued spreading that "Dairy Air" scent until the sun went down, and rarely were able to take vacations (unless they were a corporate farm or had enough farmer family neighbors that would check in and keep their farm going for a day or two). My mother made a comfortable living as a teacher...not wealthy, by any definition, but not living on spam and bologna, thanks to efforts of the teacher's union ("When I first started teaching I made $7,000 a year. Your dad made more at the time. He worked at a garage mounting tires.") She would get to school by 7:30 and, much to my impatient chagrin as a child, stay in her classroom grading papers and preparing for the next day until roughly 5:00 every weekday.

These people worked hard.

So why aren't they wealthy?

And how do laws favoring wealth building wealth creating a fair playing field, a fair opportunity for the poor to become wealthy?

I see a question of, "How can you blame people for not being wealthy, if the opportunity is the exception, not the rule?"

How can it been reasonable that any person is worth 380 times the average worker? I have no problem with someone being wealthy. I'm not criticizing that. I'm simply pointing out the excessive nature of that number. That's a really big number when it's compared to an average...and wealth by its nature hoards wealth; the wealthy aren't using their wealth to create jobs.

And why is it considered fair to have laws favoring money making money, meaning that it's easy for the rich to get richer, while the poor and middle class struggle to have modest incomes? Shouldn't it be easy, if you have a job and work your fair share, to afford not to worry about your bills being paid and have a vacation once or twice a year, and once you reach a certain point of wealth it should be harder to continue having your finances snowball like the leading player in a game of Risk builds their armies?

Why Aren't We Hearing About Healthcare Prices?

The topic of healthcare prices has long been something that infuriated me.

I think about it every time I have to go to the doctor. Every time I am inconvenienced by some bill or statement. I have so little faith in the co-mingled bureaucracies woven by insurance companies and hospitals that every envelope marked with the address of the insurer or hospital leaves me feeling a sense of overwhelming dread as to what I'm expected to pay or have to sort out yet again.

The sad part is that I'm one of the fortunate ones; I've spent most of my life with decent medical insurance. I read horror stories from other people, and what they have to go through, and on days where I'm in a more empathetic moods they leave me feeling bereft of hope for our country. Not only do I wonder how we as a society could have let things get this bad, but I wonder why we continue to put up with it.

Or worse, how people could be such monsters that they will defend our current system. Our government is crawling with such selfish monsters. People like Florida House speaker Will Weatherford who decried the decision to accept Medicaid expansion for the state. He told the story of his little brother passing from cancer, and his family being left destitute from the bills for treatment. Medicaid didn't help them! Charity from the hospital helped them! Which is what Florida needs! Not that nasty Medicaid stuff!

Only the story was complete bullshit. The bills were paid by a program funded by Medicaid. Whoopsie.

But this twit isn't alone. There are plenty of people throwing numbers out there showing how unsustainable our healthcare costs are, complete with predictions of bankruptcies and destitution.  And yet, when I read stories of what suffering Americans are going through, I wonder: why is it so expensive in the first place?

I mean, really? Are people really not seeing the same things I am and thinking, Something just isnt right here?

Am I really the only one? Because I'm seeing some really outrageous things going on.

An article by Steven Brill was recently published in Time magazine about the cost of healthcare in America and it was truly infuriating.

I grabbed a notebook and began jotting down some facts from the article, and ended up filling quite a few pages with material that no sensible person would think would come from the "greatest country on Earth."

The story talked of Sean Recchi, 42, diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. They paid $469/month for an insurance plan, meaning they paid $5,628 a year, and it was 20% of their income, which by my math meant they made a modest $28,140 a year.

Even with insurance, the policy only covered $2,000 per day of hospital costs, and the hospital wouldn't take their insurance anyway. In order to create a treatment plan, they had to front $48,900. To actually begin treatment, they borrowed another $35,000 from family.

The hospital made them wait 90 minutes because they couldn't confirm the check cleared. They had to pay $7,500 with a credit card as a good faith payment that the check would clear.

What. The. Hell.

So...these insured Americans had to pay $83,900 up front just to have a first round of treatment for cancer.

What kind of things were they being billed for?

Tylenol on Amazon costs around $17 for a bottle of 100 (there was a cost of $1.49 here, but in checking, I don't see it and don't know if it was a typo...), the hospital charged $1.50 for a single pill.

A chest X-ray for $283, which Medicare pays $20.44.

Rituxan,  a cancer drug, was charged to them to the tune of $13,702. A dose. The actual cost from the drug supplier to the hospital was around $4,000, which the hospital pays less for because they can get it in volume, so the actual price to the hospital would be an estimated $3,000 to $3,500. It cost the company about $300 to manufacture, test, package, and ship the drug.

There was the story of Janice, who experienced chest pains. She rode 4 miles by ambulance, and after 3 hours of testing, it was diagnosed as heartburn. Out of work for a year, she had no insurance. Her bill? $21,000.

The ambulance, for a four mile trip, was $995.

The doctors, whom she saw very little of in the ER, cost $3,000.

The hospital fees for room, tests, and equipment...$17,000.

Let's break some of the costs down some more. She had three troponin tests, which look for a protein that indicates a possible heart attack. Each test cost her $199.50.

Medicare would pay $13.94.

A CBC test was charged to her for $157.61. Medicare pays $11.02.

Diabetes test strips were charged $18 each. You can order them on Amazon for $0.55 each.

A stress test was performed with an injected dye and CT scan. $7,997.54. Medicare would pay $554.

How does Medicare get away with such low fees? Here's something I didn't know. Medicare, by law, is restricted to paying what is basically the actual cost of the procedure...including staffing costs, overhead, etc...plus about 6%, so there's some profit in there for the hospital. So when you see how much Medicare will pay for a procedure, that's more or less supposed to be pretty close to the actual cost of the procedure to the hospital.

The New York Times did an article on deficit cutting proposals that included cutting payments to hospitals, and Steven Safyer, the Chief Executive of the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, sai that any cut to hospitals would be a cut to beneficiaries. The hospital couldn't afford these cuts!

His salary was $4,065,000.

His Executive Vice-President's salary was $2,220,000.

The head of their dental department was making $1,798,000.

That hospital's operating profit for 2010 was $196.8 million, 99.4% of which came from patient billing and only 0.6% from fundraisers.

Where do these prices come from? A dirty little secret hospitals apparently don't like to talk about. The Chargemaster. That's a list of prices charged for each service. This is the list they go to insurance companies with and start talking pricing from, and these are the prices given to the patients after treatment if they don't have insurance.

How are the prices calculated?

They're arbitrary.

Yeah. They're made up. The reason they stink is because they're pulled from someone's ass.

The numbers on the Chargemaster are where many of the numbers come from when citing statistics. The American Hospital Association ran ads in some Washington rag remind Congress that they shouldn't cut payments to hospitals because think of the poor and all the good they do for them; the hospitals paid $39.3 BILLION to the poor in forgiven fees and procedures!

Only that was based on Chargemaster pricing. By the author's research, that $39.3 billion dollars was really closer to $3 billion. A lot of money, sure, but hardly the nearly forty billion they were boasting they spent on those icky poor people.

Honestly, to read some of these stories you'd think that the primary goal of insurers and hospitals was to make sure being dead was cheaper than living. I've heard plenty about the uninsured...but being insured is hardly a guarantee you're better off than the uninsured. Scott came down with pneumonia. After 4 or 5 days in the hospital his wife went down to check on the bill...it was already at $80,000.

Their insurance had an annual payout limit of $100,000.

By the time he checked out of the hospital, the 161 page bill came to $474,064. After insurance, that bill was lowered to $402,955.

Would it surprise you to learn that they were charged between $84 and $134 for bottles of saline solution? You can get them packaged in drip bags on Amazon for $5.16.

There are reform measures out there. It's just that the government works hard to prevent them from passing. For example, Congress made sure that if two drugs were shown to be equally effective in treating a disease, but one drug was $4,000 and the other was $400, Medicare cannot say they'll pay for the cheaper drug and not the overpriced treatment. They are forbidden from negotiating prices on equipment or drugs. So hospitals can still make a nicer profit from the drugs by reporting how much the average retail price of them is, and conveniently dropping the part about rebates they get for buying in bulk.

There are some that say that the high prices paid in America are what subsidize R&D for hospitals and drug companies. But do we?

According to the article, the securities filings for pharma companies state they are spending around 15% to 20% of gross revenue on R&D, which are hardly enough to cut into the net profits they're making (and are accounted for after R&D.) In other words, if you do the math you'll find that the companies are making so much profit that our outstanding prices and fees are not necessary to fund their R&D efforts.

The article stated that if we were to regulate hospital costs the way other developed countries do, we'd save $94 BILLION a year.

Honestly, how can someone look at these numbers and  not understand that something is seriously wrong with our medical system? There's a brilliant amount of spin in media keeping people from seriously questioning why things are so expensive in the first place. It's a common-knowledge joke, much like the $5,000 hammers in the army and $10,000 toilet seats on subs. Charged an extra fifty bucks for an Aspirin? Well, it was administered by a skilled nurse! Gotta pay her salary somehow! Har har...

Only it's not so funny when you're hit with thousands of dollars in fees because your insurance doesn't cover a procedure, or only covers to a certain point then you're on your own.

And thanks to the fact that the Chargemaster prices are based on arbitrary numbers, it should come as no surprise when hospitals charge you $50,000 on a bill that gets magically cut down to $10,000 after the right person makes a phone call to push the right buttons. Hospital bills are actually the opening to negotiation, something they don't tell their average patients. They claim they're willing to work with you and make a deal. Which is great, since the bill you end up holding is largely based on fiction.

An even bigger joke is that the prices on Chargemaster are sent to people without insurance as the full price owed. Insurance companies deal with the negotiation process all the time; they have people dedicated to just haggling with hospitals. But the uninsured...they often find themselves in a position of shellshock. They just got treated for an illness or catastrophic life event; it probably doesn't occur to them that in addition to the recovery efforts they would be slapped with the challenge of a four to six digit bill. Most people don't do a lot of shopping around for medical work when they're dragged to the hospital in pain.

And can you imagine having to deal with the choice of treating cancer or letting yourself die if it meant not putting your family in debt that will outlast you?

The people who are least able to afford the Chargemaster prices are the ones that GET the Chargemaster prices. How stupid is that?

If you can look at those prices and think that something isn't fundamentally broken with our medical system, I question what kind of person you are. Profits aren't a bad thing, but outrageous profits...that's different. There's something sinister about an institution that codifies a system of substantial profit on the backs of the suffering.

This is a wonderful illustration of a system that is screaming for regulation. Yet the government does nothing. Well, that's not entirely true. Congress has actually gone out of its way to make sure prices stay high. They worked hard to keep people uninsured, or at least keep people with plans that are beneficial to the companies providing the insurances out there. They work hard to keep up the appearance of wanting a population that is insured, when in reality the insurance is worthless if you have a major health event and the insurance doesn't cover more than a pittance of the bill. But it does make you look better in the statistics to say you're insured!

Try reading that article in Time. It's shocking. It's infuriating. It illustrates how fundamentally broken the system is. And worse, none of our representatives are doing their jobs and stepping up to fix this. Short of having a major economic collapse, I don't know what, if anything, will fix the situation.

After all, we hardly even talk about this problem. Without that conversation it's hard to see the situation improving anytime soon, despite how glaringly obvious it is.

The City; It Changes You

My first day at the new job was July 9th, 2012. I moved to the city two days before that. Today is February 19th. That means it's been roughly 227 days since I arrived in New York City.

Handy tip, straight from the Unix Stack Exchange site. If you want to know the difference between two dates, ask a snake for help.

$ python
>>> from datetime import date as D
>>> print (D.today() - D(2012, 7, 7)).days

Handy tip from the sysadmin rolodex of tricks.

These 227 days have been filled with emotional ups and downs. I deal with the constant feeling of being an inadequate father, as I'm not physically with my wife and son back home. Usually at least once a month either I'm back home visiting them or they come to the city, and each time my boy seems to have grown another inch, despite not looking so different on our periodic Skype sessions.

That wears on you after awhile. I had several reasons for coming here, and there is the promise that things will improve. The time between moving and things getting better, though, that's the rocky part. It's a tough road to travel. I don't recommend it unless you're really dedicated to taking that path, and you have a strong relationship with your significant other, because without a very strong support system something will definitely give in your relationship.

Sometimes I think the only things that have kept me going are my extremely strong support system back home and my enjoyment of the new job.

But there are times when I look at my life and I see that some things have changed. Not just in circumstances, but in my general outlook on life. I suppose it comes from the horizon having been stretched a little wider, due to the fact that I lived my entire life in a small town with as many bars as there are churches, and we have a lot of churches back home. Here...it's New York City.

There was a story of someone living in the Chicago area who went home to a more country area to visit his family. The strange thing was he never came back to the city. Just quit his job...his coworkers apparently didn't have much idea of what happened.

Upon hearing this, one of my own coworkers said, "The city will make you or break you." That stuck with me. It was said as a nonchalant observation. But it rang true. You are either a city person or a country person, and some people just can't take the transition between.

I still have some of the fragments of country life in me. I know it's true; I have a stab of repulsion at my reaction to homeless people. Not repulsion at the homeless; my reaction to them. I ignore them. Like just about every other New Yorker, I ignore them. At least, I ignore them to the extent that I don't pull out my wallet, I don't donate to them, and I pretend I don't hear them if they're speaking.

I still try to glance at the cardboard signs they hold in front of them as they sit on the sidewalk. Not long ago I saw one man with a hand on a sign and the other on his dog, who lay quietly at his master's side. "Lost everything but my dog," it read.

Another time I was walking to the toy store to find something for my son who was planning to visit in a few days, and a passed a woman sitting against a light pole at a crossing not far from an Apple Store. Next to her was a large bag and a tattered sign. She was sobbing. I was in a bustling crowd that split apart as they approached her, as if grief were something that you could catch if you got too close. I didn't know what she was sobbing about. I moved with the crowd.

Why?

In part because I can't save the world. There are far far too many homeless and desperate out there, and handing out money for a short term assist will do little in the long run other than deprive me of resources that I can, admittedly in a selfish fashion, use on myself and my family.

In part because I'm afraid; afraid to engage people. Many are mentally ill. It is not difficult to find stories of people who end up being mugged because they engage with a homeless person, and once the wallet comes out...you're a target. Or they may suddenly flip out on you.

Cynicism also plays a part. How many of the people asking for money are telling sob stories that are disingenuous? Do they really have a family that's starving? Or will the money be used to feed some addiction?

And then there are the scammers. As there are stories of people being mugged for trying to help, there are stories of people who actually pretend to be homeless, or play on your emotions to get more money. Want more donations? Try sitting outside with your children, or your dog. You're a really heartless bastard for letting someone's kids suffer when you have a spare buck in your pocket.

The way I see it, the city has made me more of a heartless bastard.

I take solace in hating myself for it. It means that there's still a part of me that questions that behavior...it's just that that part is smaller than the part of me that pretends I can't hear them through my headphones.

Then there's the people. So many people! Back home a heavy crowd means having to pass within five feet of someone in the mall. I remember when that was irritating.

Here...two words. "Times. Square."

Ugh. One more word. "Tourists."

With all the flashy animated signs, you'd think someone could add a billboard that slides the words "MOVE IT" in that sardine can of a tourist trap. I don't know how many times I was bumped into, shouldered, and run over with rolling suitcases as I navigated my way around that general area.

But it wasn't limited to just Times Square; that was just where the effect was most pronounced. I would get shouldered as I crossed the street as I commuted to and from the subway station and my apartment. On the weekend I would make a trek to the ATM and from there to the comic shop; I'd have to dance around the sidewalk to keep from getting plowed by New Yorkers yacking on phones or jogging or just glowering at me.

Eventually I realized that this was like some kind of test. I was moving because they expected me to move. When you're 300 pounds...that's just ridiculous. I was being bullied by complete strangers.

See, there is this thing that happens when you're in an environment that is just filled with people in close proximity to you. Manhattan has over two million people living and working on a relatively small island. The five boroughs have, during the workday, more people total than my entire home state of Pennsylvania. This is crazy full of people.

So many people in such a small space...you begin to see other people as if they were two dimensional. You're forced into a small space, but you have an instinct to respect some semblance of personal space, while physically forced to break the personal boundaries...subways will crowd you to the point where you wonder if you've impregnated someone between two stations because you didn't have enough room to turn around, yet the whole time you and the strangers you're rubbing up against have this insane mutual understanding that you all don't actually exist. All of you refuse to acknowledge the other people are there.

Unless, of course, one of them is insane. But that's another story.

You end up with this situation where people act as if no one else exists, and you don't generally acknowledge their existence. And that kind of dehumanizes you; the infamous "don't look other New Yorkers in the eye" seems to stem in part from the unwritten rule of never acknowledging the existence of others. When you do this, you force them to acknowledge you, and it triggers something primal, like an animal being challenged for territory.

I was thinking about this one day when I realized that my moving around the streets to accommodate others was a way of signalling my submission to others. I was a target of bullying because I allowed myself to be bullied. I nearly laughed when I thought about the image of a 300 pound guy hopping out of the way of some 100 pound bastard sporting thick rimmed glasses and expensive brand name jacket; he was no better than I was, and I had every right to be where I was.

You move.

And as I crossed the street, they did.

Well, most did.

Whump!

Dude. I'm 300 pounds. Your skinny ass isn't going to stop me.

I don't think I've been a prick about it. I don't plow over old ladies or ram headlong into people just because they're there. But when I'm walking a straight line, and they clearly see I'm coming and they move into my way...I don't really move over so much to accommodate them. I've noticed that there are people who will actually move into your way, like a challenge.

Now I take that challenge.

Whump!

Times Square is worse. There are times when I've contemplated molding rubber to my shoulders to cushion the blows from passersby. Some of them almost seem shocked when I don't get out of their way.

Get used to it. You and me, when we die, we both become dirt. I've been a doormat long enough and I'm hardly invisible.

Then I get back to my apartment and I feel shock. I'm pushing people out of my way instead of dancing around, trying not to get pushed over. I'm ignoring people that sit on sidewalks painted in dried piss, begging for a buck. At times I hate myself for it. Other times I feel as if I'm seeing more of what people are really like; I see how it's possible to have little regard for other people and place yourself at the top of the priority list.

Care about yourself first; other people here don't give a damn about you.

The other night I sat on the floor of the Port Authority waiting for my wife and son to arrive on the bus. I clutched my bag, which basically held my clipboard of documents and a couple containers of lunch leftovers; my trenchcoat shielded me from whatever unpleasantness was skittering about on the floor, and my headphones played a podcast loud enough to drown out the low din of travelers trying to find their way around the terminal when it occurred to me that the best way to be ignored, even on an island with two million people crawling around it, was to put a cup in front of me and dump a couple dollars into it. That would virtually guarantee that I would become instantly invisible to people as they hustled by. Just sitting on the floor in my decade-old trenchcoat and out-of-fashion clothes seemed to be enough to keep me camouflaged from most of the travelers.

I was starting to understand how this worked. I was starting to understand how people are, when they feel anonymous in large crowds. When they are given the freedom to behave how they want without consequences. Without having to conform beyond the minimum of civility towards other people.

Basically, in some ways this was a real life version of the Internet. The city anonymizes you and gives you leave to care more about yourself, or you will be taken advantage of by others.

These emergent behaviors seem to make it hard to raise a child in the city environment. How can you teach your son to care about others when you also teach them that it's okay to ignore people sitting on the corner begging for money?

I'm not entirely sure.

I suppose the only thing I can do is look for teachable moments, where I can make some difference in his character. Not long ago we were in a Barnes and Noble, and he was looking at a large book. It's slightly above his reading level, but I still encourage him to read whatever he can, because $DEITY knows children today get more than enough flashy commercials to fill their brains with PURCHASE THIS OR YOUR PARENTS DON'T LOVE YOU messages. I hope that teaching my son to love books may foster his curiosity and help him become a bit of a critical thinker as he grows older.

As he flipped through the book I heard the sound of paper shredding. The heavy binding slipped from his grip and a page suddenly gained a four inch tear.

He was clearly embarrassed and his face reddened.

"Be more careful," I said. "Support the book with both hands."

"I will, Daddy," he said.

I sighed. "Well, it looks like you've gained a book." I closed the back cover. "Thirty bucks."

"That's a lot," he said. I could tell he was afraid I'd be docking his allowance to pay for it, which was horrible for a boy obsessed with trying to negotiate advances in his allowance to feed his BeyBlade addiction.

"Yeah, it is. Here's the deal...I'll pay for it, and you're going to read it to Mommy. You read it and if you do well we'll talk about a new Bey for Easter."

"Okay," he said.

On the surface it was a bribe. What I hoped it taught him, in some small way, was manifold lessons.

1. If you damage something like that, you don't hide it. You make it right. In this case, we bought the book. Because really...how would you feel if you bought a new book at the store and when you read it, found a page ripped?
2. I might get upset at something, but if we're going to work on a solution, it's okay to get upset. I won't stay mad. Cover it up, and then I'd get mad. Lie to me, and then I'd get mad. Acknowledge the problem and work on a solution, I'll get over it.
3. Honor is the one thing only you can give away and no one can take from you. I could have had him hide the book back on the shelf. Sometimes doing the right thing is more scary...or in this case, expensive...but it's still the right thing to do.
4. Mistakes happen, but if you learn from them, it's okay to make mistakes.

I can't help but think there's a paradox to the direction I find myself personally evolving. Becoming more impersonal, and seeing people as more generic when they hustle by me on the street. I sometimes question my own existence here. On more than one occasion I've even seen my coworkers, people I see in the office during the day, walk by me on the sidewalk without acknowledging my existence. Did they not see me? Are they ignoring me? Or am I just another empty shell, another obstacle among the many others shuffling around the streets of the city?

Then I find myself trying to teach my son to be better person, which in part is the opposite to how I see myself reacting to other people in the street.

I still haven't found a way to fully reconcile these observations and behaviors. Maybe in the next 200 days I will find a way to integrate them into a narrative that makes sense, so it will be okay to look out for your own good while still believing in the goodness of others and hoping that people aren't always, completely, selfish.

But in the meantime...don't stand in my way when I'm crossing the street. In New York City, I'm invisible. And you are too.

Hello Trello!

I was a skeptic.

When I started working at Stack Exchange, I had to adapt to a new workflow. They had certain things they did in a certain way; that's something that is to be expected. There are ways certain things are expected to work, and you are going to conform to them so things run smoothly among your team.

They used a lot of tools, largely unfamiliar to me. And as with any new job, it took time to "ramp up" and become familiar with the tools.

One of the tools, Trello, was created by our sister company, Fog Creek Software. I didn't quite get it at first. I'm not even sure I quite get it now...but over time I became a believer.

How can I describe Trello? Trello is like...lists of lists. A veritable listception. If you have a project that can be tracked or organized using cards which can in turn be organized into topics, Trello is the ultimate organizational tool for you. It's a new way of organizing just about anything using the Trello web page.

Maybe you're an author working on a book. You can create a Trello board, and on that board create a list called "Agents to query." Then create a card in that list for each agent you send your manuscript to. Suppose one of these agents is named Likable Literary Agency, Inc; you click the card and for the description you add the address of the agent.

 Create another list called "Manuscripts sent." Click the Likable Literary Agency, Inc. card again and enter as a comment the date which you sent your manuscript and the contact you sent it to. Then drag the card from Agents to Query to the Manuscripts Sent list.

After a few months, you can create a list called "Rejections", and drag the card to that list! And move on to the next card on your "Agents to query" list!

Being relatively new in the city, I am always getting a little lost. I created a board I titled "Locations." In it, I created lists by subject; banks, clothes, books, etc. Then under each list, as I found a location of interest, I would note it in my Trello. My bank has a card; in the comments, I added the address of each ATM. In another card I added an address of a Barnes and Noble to the comments along with a note telling me the nearest subway stations and what trains stop there. For a clothing store, along with notes on the address and station, I uploaded a screenshot of a Google map so I could get some reference of the nearby streets.

The Trello team released a very usable iPhone app; the only complaint I've had is that it relies on a connection to the Internet to update at the time you use it, so when I'm in the subway I can't read my notes. Once I pop above ground, though, I can open Trello, pop into my Locations board, and refer to my directions.

I also use Trello as a to-do list; I track my tasks at work, organized by what I'm currently doing, what I need to do, what I periodically needs to check, and what I've finished for the week. When it comes time to work on the weekly report, I can pull up my finished tasks and jot them down on the report. Better yet, there are times when I've needed to refer to past items I've finished and my Trello lists tell me what I completed and when, along with my notes.

What started as a single list blossomed into several. "This website looks interesting, but I don't have time to look at it right now..." Blam! New list.

"This might be an interesting blog topic..." Blam! New list.

Organization was almost addictive with Trello.

I know someone who uses Trello as a shopping list; he created a board and invited his wife as a user, so they can both add to the board and edit things as needed.

I even liked it when Taco the Dog made an appearance on the board to make announcements; I remember "feeding Taco" treats in the form of inviting new users to Trello. IT WAS JUST FUN.

I really haven't pushed Trello to the limits. You can invite multiple users and collaborate on projects; assign them cards or tasks, assign due dates, create lists on the card (wherein it will give you a kind of percentage complete as you check items off), and upload files to cards. You can track research papers or writing projects or constructions projects.

Anything that needs organization, especially if you need to collaborate, can benefit from using Trello.

Here's the kicker. It's free.

There's really no risk to trying it out. You can create a board and set the permission to be as strict as you want; invite others to collaborate, or keep it private while you experiment with it yourself. Or do what I do and create boards for yourself and others that collaborate with someone.

Seriously. If you need to organize a projects...or your life...or collaborate on a project with other people...try Trello. Click the link. It won't hurt. I promise.

...now if you'll excuse me, I have to remove the Trello card from my list of possible blog topics...

New York Times Hack and Symantec

If you're the kind of person that monitors news relating to security in technology or have been paying attention to headlines in the mainstream media, you may have seen the news stories detailing the infiltration of the New York Times' network by the Chinese.

The details are surprisingly thorough for a mainstream story, and the Times is being rather candid in their sharing of details. Usually when a business is "hacked" they'll do anything and everything possible to hide the details from the public so they can save face.

For people in the tech industry the story is still overly simplified and light on gritty details, but for a story aimed at public consumption the details get gory. So I won't bother rehashing them. I even linked to a version of the story so you can view it there.

What I did find interesting, though, was the small storm that erupted because of the malware software the Times used being directly named in the article and the publicity that it generated, most of it negative. I have had dealings with Symantec, along with several other security/malware/antivirus solutions, and upon reading that there were 40-plus pieces of malware created to infiltrate the Times in one way or another and their Symantec software caught approximately, oh, one of them wasn't much of a surprise to me.

But apparently this is still news.

In terms of dealing with this, I found the fluffy public relations face rather amusing. The article recounting events mentioned Symantec in passing; not a directly attack on the company. But merely mentioning the name put a face upon which to plant a black eye. While probably accidental, it was nice of them to be candid about it while accidentally making the company look rather incompetent.

Symantec wouldn't, at first, comment, and I thought their initial reaction on Twitter was rather...strange. Didn't they realize how they looked in the news story? A company using their Enterprise solution (I'm assuming, given their size) with not-so-cheap licensing associated with said product (no solution with the word "enterprise" is cheap) had over 40 malware applications get into their network and your product caught one of them. And yet, Symantec said this:

There's some irony to the order of these tweets.

That tweet was rather...bland, don't you think? Perhaps the press release was more interesting. A fiery defense of the company? Acknowledgement of weak points in their software? From the article:

"Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described in the following article, (http://nyti.ms/TZtr5z), underscore how important it is for companies, countries and consumers to make sure they are using the full capability of security solutions. The advanced capabilities in our endpoint offerings, including our unique reputation-based technology and behavior-based blocking, specifically target sophisticated attacks. Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats. We encourage customers to be very aggressive in deploying solutions that offer a combined approach to security. Anti-virus software alone is not enough."

...So the problem was that the Symantec software would have been effective, but the Times didn't use all the software features to detect the malware. In other words, our customer was too stupid to fully use our product.


It didn't take long for others to notice this response and criticize Symantec. Somehow Symantec was still trying to spin this in a positive light for themselves.

I'm not a marketing person, but I'm not sure implying "Our customers are morons" is a good public defense.

I can understand what Symantec is saying, even if I'm not sure I'd have framed the reply this way.  I would think blaming the customer, even though they may legitimately feel this way and there is probably more the customer could have done to try to protect themselves, is usually not going to make you look good. The fact their last tweet I quoted above is a link to their entire software suite just conveys the message (to me) that if you don't want what happened to the Times to happen to you, you just need to buy more of our stuff!...doesn't seem effective.

On the other hand, protecting your network and your users is hard.

In the old days, viruses tended to be written by clever malcontents eager to show their technical prowess. Viruses were a way to display their programming ability while at the same time showing their hatred for non-technical people who dared to bring their non-geekhood to a domain ruled by geeks. The basic idea was that if you were stupid enough to get a virus, it was your own fault for not knowing how computers worked so you deserved what you got. Their software carried an implicit message with every infection:

Non-geeks are not welcome here.

But computers were becoming more mainstream and non-geeks weren't going away.

Somewhere along the way viruses went from becoming a nuisance to becoming something more sinister. Black hats learned that stupid people had money! The behavior of viruses evolved until they were no longer technically viruses, but rather "malware;" they relied on social engineering and software flaws to spread rather than self-replicating code, and the target was less the computer and more the person using the computer. If you knew the computer was "infected", that was an accident, whereas in the golden age of viruses the programs often announced their presence with pride.

Much of the malware out there now is backed by organized crime and State-sponsored campaigns. These groups will pay individuals or groups to orchestrate attacks to farm naive or ignorant users into running programs that will then target a user for spammy and intrusive ads, redirecting your web browsing to ad-ridden websites that may contain more malware, tracking your keystrokes to intercept passwords to banking websites,...all sorts of fun things.

 As you can probably guess, the antivirus industry is quite lucrative, and have created a kind of arms race with malware authors. In the beginning the cycle of war was pretty simple; virus author created a new virus and released it into the wild. Antivirus vendors got a sample, reverse engineered it, found a "signature" sequence of code in the executable that was unique to the virus, then they updated their product for clients. The Antivirus product then scanned every program you ran on your computer and if anything matched that unique string of code, it flagged it as a virus and sometimes would try to clean your computer.

One step forward for virus authors matched by one step forward by AV vendors.

Virus authors fancied themselves clever, so they needed to find clever ways to beat AV vendors.

That's when we started seeing viruses that incorporated encryption as well as adapting in memory to alter themselves so you couldn't find a single simple signature. AV vendors had to react and find new techniques for deconstructing these polymorphic viruses.

Second step from virus authors...second step from AV vendors.

The point: clever people with time on their hands are obsessed with the challenge of finding new and creative ways to be destructive and/or profit from people.

This little lockstep war continues today. It's reached a point where the possible attack surface (the places where unauthorized users or code can be run) against a potential target is huge, and as our society continues to become more connected through the Internet the surface continues to get worse (or better, depending on which side of the fence you're on.) Computers, cellphones, our cars, printers, security cameras, televisions, disc and media players, even home appliances like refrigerators, air conditioners and thermostats are accessible over networks.

That baby monitor you installed to watch the crib from your computer? Did you forget to use a long, secure password? I bet the wireless connection was a lot more convenient than having to run a wire. But you did securely encrypt it, right? Since your wireless signal could be intercepted a house away...or from the street...or farther, if someone used a directional antenna?

It's really neat that you can connect your phone to your car. Handy, especially in states where it's illegal to use your phone without a hands-free connection and $DEITY knows you HAVE to take that call from your boyfriend the moment he calls. But did you change the default connection sequence to marry the bluetooth in the car to the phone? Are you even able to change it? Because someone did write a program for clever techs to use a laptop for connecting to nearby bluetooth systems. It's fun to stream porn audio into unsuspecting schlub's cars on the freeway. Or listen in through the car audio system.

The point: there are ways for malware to get into your systems that you may not even be aware of.

Secondary point: The things that make our lives more convenient can be used against you.

The security industry now relies on a variety of techniques to try closing the holes in the potential attack surface.

Vendors rely on signatures, heuristics, behavior analysis, probabilistic analysis of email and web pages via proxy scans, along with good practices in firewalling connections and locking users down to accessing only the things they actually need to use on their computers (keeping users from being able to install updates to Word or new programs also means they can't accidentally install malware.)

Users, of course, tend to hate this because security measures come at a cost. Malware scanners use CPU and memory while they check every program being accessed, slowing down the computer. Proxies intercepting your web browsing and email to analyze the content for spam or embedded malware sometimes go wonky and end up messing up your email or creating web browsing quirks. Locking down the computer access privileges means you end up waiting hours or days for software updates or programs to be installed that would have taken a few minutes if you could do it on your own.

Users hate this. They just want to get their work done and just want their systems to work. This stuff gets in the way. And when security people do what they're supposed to do, they make the lives of their users more miserable; thus users being to hate their system administrators even more. It's a cycle of antagonism.

Point: security is a balancing act. You can have it really secure or really usable for users.

Most of the malware out there is kind of generic. These crime syndicates trying to steal your money or browsing habits (or control of your computer) cast a wide net and are pretty content with the replies they get; this is why you normally get laughably horrible emails filled with generic messages offering you tons of cash in exchange for contact and banking information. Malware often comes in the form of code on hacked websites that waits for you to find the webpage and asks you to install a plugin that isn't really what it reports it is. The weak point is the social engineering of the user; we tend to be trusting of things we don't want to think about beyond the immediate future.

If I want to see boobies I need to install this plugin? Okay! <click>

<dialog box pops up> words...words...words...whatever. <click>

<email comes up asking you to run an attachment.> Blah blah. Okay, whatever. <click!>

People aren't just trusting, but we do things that are blatantly dangerous or stupid if it means getting some kind of payoff. When a company does put in generally good security policies it still falls down when users are willing to give away their passwords to anyone who says they're from IT and need your password to test something.

In fact, a study found that users were willing to give up passwords for a chocolate bar (although it's a valid point to say that there wasn't any indication whether these passwords were tested for validity.) There are also cases where USB drives left in parking lots were taken and plugged into systems with little thought of whether there was malware on them.

Point: Users are the weakest point of any security policy, and social engineering can be a powerful attack vector.

Unfortunately with technology we still have to trust someone at some point.We end up needing to trust that someone more skilled or knowledgeable is doing the right thing for us, or acting in our interests, in areas in which we lack skill or knowledge.

Of course in many, if not most cases, we abdicate responsibility for these domain-specific areas of knowledge; we don't want to deal with it. This is understandable when you look at the complexity of our society today, I suppose...

If you read this far...

 ...this is where things tie together a bit. See, I sort of understand the difficulty the Times IT crew faced because they made themselves a target.

Usually malware is sort of out there, like a poisonous jellyfish in the ocean waiting for prey to happen into it. But the Times was running a story on someone that was a big name in China. And China is known for sponsoring targeted "cyber-attacks" (to be fair, this has been long rumored for the US and its allies as well. I'm just focusing on China because it is alleged they were behind the New York Times attack.)

When you get into becoming a named target, things get worse. Much worse. Because you are targeted for a custom attack. You're no longer a target of opportunity; you are a target that is researched, and a breach means tendrils of back doors being installed and user activity being actively monitored.

The network gets scanned and probed. Your employees are researched, and emails come in specifically addressed to specific employees with malicious code embedded (or more likely, links to malicious code.) Maybe they had a meeting with someone who was set up to hand over a drive with malicious code. Or maybe someone got a device sent to them for testing that contained trojan-horse type code that went to work as soon as it was connected to the company network.

Once there is some kind of hook into a computer, software can be installed and run that will scan the network from the inside. A military sponsored attack means that when they find something connected with a vulnerability, custom code can be created to create a back door into that system again; for example, installing malware on a particular brand of printer.

Yes, it's possible for a printer to have custom code embedded into it for attacks.

Emails get monitored, maybe forwarded or copied without your knowledge, leading to more information being leaked and another user that can be targeted with possibly better access privileges.

Malware monitoring relying on signatures would be useless if there's software being custom-crafted to attack you. If there is a device running on your network that isn't monitored directly, the only way to detect it is to have intrusion detection at the border of your network, or devices watching for suspicious network behavior to alert administrators, and if the attackers are aware of what you're using for defense (which they'd know, for example, that you're running Symantec the moment they pull a list of running programs from an infiltrated system) they can create software specifically meant to bypass the malware scanners in use.

Worse, once a system is infected, it's nearly impossible to know with 100% certainty that you've completely eradicated the intruders. Clean a workstation with a complete reformat and reinstall only to discover that the intruders managed to reinfect it because you didn't realize that laser printer was also allowing remote access to your network...very frustrating, to say the least.

People tend to think that they install antivirus software and they're safe. They're not. Security is a process with several layers, and there are many factors to consider in the great set of tradeoffs between security and usability. So the fact that Symantec detect one piece of malware out of over 40 programs used to attack the New York Times isn't really surprising to me. Symantec's response, to blame the customer for not having more monitoring and alerting mechanisms in place, is valid in that it may have helped to some degree but I doubt it would have stopped this attack.

On the other hand having a completely secure environment would likely have been a management headache as well as a miserable environment for the users to try to actually get a product out the door. Sometimes I think software vendors in a certain industry develop a myopia to this aspect of their product in the real world.

In the end Symantec took a bit of a black eye for being named. I have my gripes with their security products...several several gripes...but part of the problem is just the environment in which security software must co-exist and operate and blame can't be entirely laid at their feet.

Security is complicated. End users misunderstand it. And vendors, in their zeal to sell products, misrepresent the issues involved. If you're a company that may draw a giant target on your back, it's worth your trouble to hire people focused on computer and network security to work in your IT team, lest you, too, end up making the news for the wrong reasons...