According to the Urban Dictionary, this expression has been used for centuries to explain how someone has been placed in an emotional state that would cause them to be “out of one’s mind” because of strong emotions. Forms of the expression have been around from at least the 15th century. Other versions include “…beside oneself, out of one’s wits, out of one’s senses. An example that I found to be quite odd is, “I was so beside myself looking at all the women on the beach that I hadn’t heard my wife yelling for help.” That would be the statement of a man in trouble, but it doesn’t seem to match someone in such an emotional state that they were “beside themselves.”
Author Archives: RF_Alum
Insurance Costs and Credit Ratings
We recently posted a commentary about how we had learned that accepting offers from retailers for price breaks if we applied for their credits cards was costing us in insurance costs. The September 2015 issue of Consumer Reports has an article about their extensive two year study of insurance costs. One of their conclusions is that, “The way insurers set prices is shrouded in secrecy and rife with inequities.” Their study resulted in study of “…2 billion car insurance price quotes from more than 700 companies with the greatest share of customers in all 33,419 general U.S. ZIP codes.” What they found “…is that behind the rate quotes is a pricing process that judges you less on driving habits and increasingly on socioeconomic factors. These include your credit history, whether you use department store or bank credit cards, and even your TV provider.”
Reading the entire article and our own experience with having higher insurance costs because of taking out more credit cards leads to the conclusion that insurance companies have found a way to artificially increase costs for customers, which of course increases their profits. Insurers “cherry pick” elements in credit reports in a proprietary manner. Some of the results are quite astonishing. The study found that “…single drivers who had merely good scores paid $68 to $526 more per year, on the average, than similar drivers with the best scores, depending on which state they called home.” Credit scores were found to have more impact on rates than driving records. Having a moving violation in Kansas increased rates by $122 per year while having only a good credit rating increased rates by $233. A poor credit rating would add an average of $1,301 a year. Another trick being used is called “price optimization,” which is prohibited in a six states. It uses data about how much of a price increase will trigger you to shop around for a better price.
One suggestion is to shop around, because there is some truth to the ads that say “People who switched to our company saved and average of…” Of course there were people who didn’t switch who aren’t included in that average. California, Hawaii, and Massachusetts prohibit insurers from using credit scores to set prices. Perhaps those of us in the other states should begin a campaign with our insurance commissioners to have our state added to that list. Page 37 of the magazine has a petition you can mail to Consumer’s Union.
Plutopia
The subtitle of this book by Kate Brown, “Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters,” reveals that the author was not a fan of plutonium production. The book focuses on the Hanford plant near Richland (site “W” in Manhattan Project language) in eastern Washington State and the Soviet Maiak facility near Ozersk (“Lakedale”) in the southern Russian Urals. People who lived in nuclear cities that were havens for workers, especially in the Soviet Union, but the primary focus of the book is about the hazards created. “Each kilogram of final product generates hundreds of thousands of gallons of radioactive waste.“Ozersk was one of ten nuclear cities in the Soviet Union that existed secretly, off the map…” One statement that expresses the general conclusion of the author is that, “The lethal landscapes surrounding the plutonium plants are pockmarked with landmines of percolating radioactive waste and people who are persistently sick…” Continue reading
109 East Palace
The fascinating book “109 East Palace, Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos,” was written by Jennet Conant. She is the granddaughter of James B. Conant, the administrator of the Manhattan Project. The address in the title was given to people who were to report for work on the Manhattan Project. They would enter a wrought iron gate and narrow passageway off a tourist plaza to meet Dorothy McKibbin, a widow who became the gatekeeper for twenty-seven months to Los Alamos and personal confidant to Oppenheimer. The relationship between General Leslie R. Groves and Oppenheimer also fits into the story. The two men were able to work together effectively despite opposite personalities. The author writes in the preface that the book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” by Richard Rhodes details “the saga of scientific discovery,” while her book examines “the very personal stories of the projects key personnel.”
Arthur Compton, the director of the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) at the University of Chicago (unofficially “bomb headquarters,”) summoned J. Robert Oppenheimer to an assembly of brilliant physicists including Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Richard Tolman, and Robert Serber to meet in attic rooms in Le Conte Hall. The meetings were held in the utmost secrecy, but Priscilla Greene, Oppenheimer’s young secretary one day walked into his office to find a drawing of what “…was obviously a bomb.” “Almost immediately after that, everyone started calling it ‘the gadget’.” Continue reading
Grant
I posted a review of the more than thousand page Ulysses S. Grant autobiography and thought I should follow that with the 173 page biography by John Mosier for those who want to know more about Grant but don’t have many days of reading time to commit. I understand that, although I will comment that the autobiography gives a much richer insight into the man and his remarkable accomplishments as a general. My primary complaint about Moiser’s book is that he could have reduced it by any number of pages if he hadn’t spent so much time comparing Grant’s military actions to those of other great generals. A couple of instances would have been appropriate and instructive, but there are dozens of instances.
Moiser is indeed a Grant fan. The fly cover says, “…Mosier reveals the man behind the military legend, showing how Grant’s creativity and genius off the battlefield shaped him into one of our nation’s greatest military leaders.” Grant had many critics, and the book attributes much of the criticism to other generals (read Halleck) who feared Grant’s successes would detract from their careers. Newspapers were filled with stories about the horrible slaughters of Civil War battles, and there emerged an image that Grant was a drunken butcher who won battles by sacrificing the lives of thousands of the soldiers in his overwhelmingly large forces. My belief is that Grant was indeed a master strategist who cared deeply about human life, understood the need for solid logistics, and was amazingly quick at determining proper tactics to take advantage of terrain. In short, I believe Grant was a leader in the true definition of what would make the average soldier in the trenches or on the march look at him and decide he was a man worth following. I submit the absolute trust given Grant by William Sherman, who famously said something to the effect “I know that you will come save me, if alive.” I can’t think of a more powerful endorsement of trust between comrades in arms. Continue reading
Colorado High School Education
An article in the Denver Post by Peter Huidekoper, Jr. explains that recent higher graduation rates aren’t being accompanied by improved educations. There are “…several high schools where the four-year graduation rate is impressive but the (low) ACT scores and (high) remediation rates are not.” Apparently the ACT test given in the 11th grade is the one remaining “…assessment that matters.” The article discusses examining the ACT scores for 2012 juniors, 2013 senior graduation rates, and remediation rates for those who entered a Colorado college the next fall.
The data studied by Huidekoper showed a clear correlation between ACT test scores and graduation and remediation rates. “For students with ACT scores 21 and above nearly 90 percent graduate and remediation rates are exceptionally low. Graduation rates decrease and remediation rates increase as ACT scores drop. Westminster High (in my home city) had an ACT average score of 16.3, a surprisingly high graduation rate of 76.9%, and “…most of those graduates who went on to college required remedial classes.”
The author gives many more examples of generally depressing data. The “…staggering statewide remediation rate of 34.2 percent does not include nearly half of the 2013 graduates who did not go on to college.” It is clear that there an appallingly small number of seniors who receive a high school diploma and are “college ready.” The author asks whether “…a diploma from a Colorado high school truly stands for something.”