May 13
I apologize for my several month absence, but we had a baby! It’s another healthy boy (that makes two of ’em), and it’s directly related to my topic today: how hospitals are really just businesses trying to maximize their profits and don’t really care about you other than that they can make money off of you.
Let me start by saying that we have a Health Savings Account (HSA), and we love it! If you don’t know what HSAs are all about, read about them at Wikipedia. Because of the deposit arrangement with my employer, the net effect is that we’ve had no out-of-pocket healthcare expenses since last July (that’s right, none—we don’t have copays). I recommend that everyone look into HSAs if their employer offers one—they’re awesome!
As a result of having an HSA, we’ve been learning what things actually cost and what doctors and hospitals are actually charging for things. We have had two all-natural births, but after watching The Business of Being Born, I was made more aware of just how serious this hospital-business problem has become. Here are some samples from the itemized insurance statements:
- My wife’s room and board: $1700
This is pretty outrageous, but is the most justifiable expense on the list. They could conceivably be lumping in a bunch of expenses like nurses, etc. But still…$1700 for two days and two nights? That’s like staying at the crappiest, most expensive hotel ever! - My newborn son’s room and board: $1400
What!?! He was in a bassinet in our room ALL OF THE TIME except when they took his pictures and tested his hearing! And he breastfed! What in the world is this charge about!?! It's highway robbery! - 10-12 motrin: $150
Are you kidding me!? Where are they buying this? Is it coated in 24 karat gold? - 4-6 percocet: $550
I’m speechless. Perhaps we should take our unused percocet prescription and sell it on the street! Oh, wait…percocet is actually dirt cheap. WHAT!?!
Wow, I didn’t like hospitals before, but now I really hate them. We also had a similar experience last autumn with the emergency room. My wife stopped in because she was pregnant and was having abdominal pains, and after making her wait for hours before deciding she was perfectly all right, they charged us over $1000!
What a bunch of scum-sucking vermin.
PS. don’t even think of suggesting socialized/single-payer healthcare. Read this testimony by a Florida neurosurgeon to see why. What we need is a real, free market system unencumbered by government regulation and insurance mandates.
Mar 10
As much as I love the internet, I am really annoyed by how many myths and mistruths are fostered by it. I’m not really sure where this particular myth got started, but it was probably even around before the internet age. Which myth? I’m sure you know the one: “the United States began as a Christian nation.”
Ummm, No.
That’s wrong, and no amount of believing it will make it so. Was the U.S. founded with Christian moral principles in mind? Mostly. Was the U.S. founded by people who believed in God? Yes. Was the U.S. founded by Christians? No. While a few of the founding fathers were Christians (most notably George Washington), the majority were deists.
The “age of enlightenment” was still going strong, and French enlightenment philosophy had a strong grip on the minds of our founding fathers. This meant that they wanted to found the nation on a belief in God, but they believed in not locking the entire country down to one religion, so it wasn’t The Christian God.
Thus the newborn republic was imbued with the concept of “separation of church and state” right from the start, even though that particular phrase wasn’t used at first. A country in which men were truly free had to be one where no particular religion could be favored or forced upon the people.
A Concept Distorted
One current problem with this concept is that some people on the liberal end of the spectrum think “no religion” means “no God” and are trying to force the mention of God out of public life. This obviously wasn’t the view of the founding fathers, since they themselves believed in God but simply didn’t want to force their views on other people.
Another current problem is with conservatives reacting to the liberals’ position. Since liberals are trying to completely remove God from public life, conservatives are fighting back by trying to insert Christianity everywhere possible in public life. Now, I’m a Christian, but this is not the right way to go.
This is exactly what the founding fathers didn’t want to happen! If the current majority religion gets thrust upon everyone, whether or not they want it, then it sets a precedent for later generations. Just because Christianity is currently the majority religion doesn’t mean it will always be so. What if someday another religion gains a majority following in the U.S.? We wouldn’t want that religion thrust upon us, so why do we think we have the right to thrust our religion upon others? What happened to the golden rule?
The core problem lies in the misinterpretation of Christ’s teaching that He is the only way to get to God. While I believe this to be true, it is frequently misinterpreted, e.g., “since what I believe is true, then I have the right and obligation to show everyone else how wrong they are…and since their religion isn’t true, I won’t allow them to practice it.” While I may be disappointed that other people believe in wrong and kooky things, I will defend their right to believe them, since each person is ultimately free to make his own choices.
One last observation puts the nail in the coffin (for me, at least). Christ Himself wouldn’t want Christianity thrust upon people unwillingly! While He was on Earth, He never forced himself upon anyone, which is part of the reason He didn’t want to be involved in government. His message was (and is) all about a change of the heart, not a particular practice or group policy.
Jan 19
What is Destiny? It's an interesting question that everyone has an opinion on, but opinions vary widely. Some people are worried by the concept that another force controls their life; we Americans like to be in control of our own destiny, right?
But throughout history, a lot of cultures have had conceptions of destiny, such as the three fates of ancient Greece. As a Christian, I believe that God controls my life. Not all Christians believe this...and some Christians don't really know what to believe in regards to the idea of God predestining some or all of our actions in life. I could write on and on, but ultimately it would be my opinion, since I don't really have any evidence to back up my argument except for a recent occurrence in my life.
I recently made contact on Facebook with a friend from high school that I haven't heard from since then (twelve years ago). Not only are both of our wives pregnant currently, but they are both using the same midwife (and delivering at the same hospital), and they're both due within a week of each other! Now, what are the statistical chances of all the above things happening? Pretty low…
Dec 9
Ok, so how about a more easygoing type of question: why do men hate cats?
Now, that's definitely a generalization, because not all men hate cats. Single guys tend to like cats, and even married-yet-childless men like cats. But there's something about entering fatherhood that changes things—I would be willing to bet that most fathers don't like cats.
I've now crossed through all three categories. I liked cats ok when I was single, loved them when I was married-yet-childless (we had and still have two cats), but now that I'm a father, it's different. The cats that I used to love now drive me crazy. I wouldn't say I hate them, but I definitely don't like them. They're always underfoot, constantly meowing at the least opportune times, making messes I have to clean up, climbing on top of furniture and knocking stuff off, as well as clawing everything in sight and shedding everywhere! Need I say more?! The most interesting thing that I noticed after bringing our first kid home from the hospital is that my attitude towards our cats changed almost immediately, like a switch was flipped…but why?
I think it can be summarized in this: fatherhood is more stressful and time consuming than the other two categories, and cats are too smart for their own good—they always want our attention and love and aren't willing to be trained to forget that. It's almost as if all cats are hardwired with the love language of “physical touch.” So despite the fact that I don't have the time (or desire) to give them attention, our cats refuse to obey me because they want that attention regardless of whether or not I want to give it.
And dadgumit, It's annoying.
Nov 10
Music Piracy…this phrase sometimes invokes feelings in people, but sometimes not; sometimes people just don't care about it. I mean, after all, the RIAA isn't breaking down our doors, so it's not that big of a deal, right?
The big problem which is usually overlooked by pundits and analysts is that this apathy is created because “right” and “wrong” have changed from those ethics with which we've grown up. The law during the seventies, eighties, and nineties said that once you purchased a tape or CD, it was yours to do with as you wished, as long as you didn't try to sell dupes of it. This is a commensense approach; as long as you've bought it “fair and square,” you can listen to it in different ways.
Now, the law (as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) has been changed to say that when you buy a CD, you can only listen to it in its original form. In other words, you cannot duplicate the CD to keep a copy in the car, you cannot rip the CD to listen to it on your computer, etc. This is ludicrous! I've paid for it, why can't I listen to it however I want?
The underlying question is really that of “usage rights.” This used to not be an issue, because once you purchased content on a physical medium such as a book or record, there was no way to make you stop using it short of coming to your house and taking it back. But now that there are computers and easy ways to block content from being consumed, the big companies are thinking, “Hey, we can make more money off of this if we make them pay twice for listening to music in two different places!” When we buy music nowadays, we're supposedly only paying for the rights to listen to that music, we're not actually owning a copy of it.
Think of it like most End User License Agreements (EULAs) you get when you install software. If you've ever stopped to read one, you'll notice that when you buy software, you don't own a copy of the software, you own a license to use that software. Therefore, the software company has the right to disable or modify the software at any time, since they own it. The interesting thing is that in a recent California court case, a judge struck down the legality of EULAs in some situations, because they are contracts that are forced upon the user without the option of contract negotiation.
So, that brings me to the root of my title question: what makes something unethical? Is something unethical because the government says so? I believe that ethics are rooted in Truth, which is revealed by the supreme God of the universe, and they have nothing to do with government, except that government will reflect the ethics of those running it.
Feb 12
One thing I’ve really missed since migrating to standards-based (i.e. table-less) web design is the ability to vertically align elements, such as bottom-aligning text inside a block space, so the text will stay bottom-aligned when the browser’s text size is changed. With tables, it’s easy, just add valign="bottom" and you’re done. But with CSS and semantic HTML, it’s unfortunately not that easy yet.
I have taken inspiration from reading Eric Meyer’s writings about the One True Layout, especially about performing math with CSS properties.Then I thought, “why could we not use the concept of ’CSS math’ to do other things?” So I did!
The concept is simple: use the padding and margin of two nested elements to add and subtract different units (make sure both are set to display: block;). The key here is that you have to use the padding as the number to add and use the margin as the number to subtract. If you reverse them, then your text will disappear behind the top of an element’s bounding box.
The only caveat is that this technique is dependent on the number of lines of text remaining the same (except at extremely large text sizes, at which legibility is really the only concern). Thus, it works best for situations where your titles are determined ahead of time or are guaranteed to be short. It’s not really great in situations like blog entry titles where you typically don’t know how long titles will be on future entries.
Bottom Aligned Titles
For bottom aligned titles, the first step is measuring the distance between the top of the element and where you want the baseline to fall. By measuring to the baseline of the text, we ensure that when the browser’s text size is changed, the text resizes upwards instead of downwards. In figure 1 below you will see that our sample distance is 100 pixels. Set this distance as the top padding of your block element (padding-top: 100px).
figure 1
Now we get to use the magic of ems for the second part. Those of you who haven’t explored the unit “em” need to do some more reading, because it’s an awesome thing. Basically, one “em” is equivalent to the current text size, and it changes whenever the text size changes. The benefit here is that we can move up our titles using “lines of text” as the unit. If your line-height is 1 em, then 1 em is your “line of text” equivalent. Thus: 1 em would be one line of text, 2 ems would be two lines of text, etc. So in the case of a single-line title, we give the inner element a top margin of -1 em (again, make sure it’s set to display: block;), as you can see in figure 2 below.
figure 2
Voila! Your text is magically bottom-aligned!
Middle Aligned Titles
If you want your titles to be middle-aligned, it’s the same process, just altered slightly. First, instead of measuring the top padding to the text baseline, measure it to the middle alignment point. Then, when applying the negative top margin to the inner element, use half of the line height instead of the whole value.
It’s that easy!
Nov 26
Anyone who's been doing the HTML side of web design for a while has most likely laid out a page using tables. Nowadays, that's frowned upon…and for good reason. But sometimes, tables are just handy! Sometimes it's difficult to do what tables can do without them. But since I'm committed to using semantic HTML as much as possible, I'm always experimenting to figure out new ways to simulate tables' behavior.
I've had some limited success in simulating tables, in limited circumstances. This is one of those circumstances. In this instance, I was wanting two columns of content (not columns for page layout, that is). The exact behavior I was wanting is to give the left column a fixed width and have the right column be as wide as necessary to fill the remaining space, as seen in figure 1.
figure 1
I also wanted the left column to resize if the text on the page was resized, to allow for flexibility in browser settings, and the solution turned out to be relatively simple. Simply float the left element and give it a width in ems. Then make sure the right element has “display: block;” and give it a left margin equal to the width of the left element (using ems). See figure 2 for an example. Voila! Problem solved!
figure 2
I enjoy using this trick with forms. If you treat the input labels as the left elements and also give them “text-align: right;” then group the input and any other items next to it together in an element on the right, you get a marvelously center-aligned form! (Make sure to give all the labels a width in ems that's large enough to accommodate the longest label.)
Oct 28
When it comes its support for web standards, I've never thought of IE as being that bad. Yeah, it has its quirks, but it's not as bad as most people think. I've done some pretty complex layouts and I've never come across any problems with IE that are insurmountable…until now. The interesting thing is that it's not a problem with HTML or CSS support to which I'm referring, but instead a problem with its event handling.
I was trying to write a simple script to create little event popups (or popovers, as I like to call them, since they're not separate browser windows) for a grid calendar. Now, of course, I went about doing it the correct way through progressive enhancement, which involves taking an existing page and adding event handlers dynamically, without any embedded JS. This worked easily in Firefox, where I do most of my development, but when I tested it in IE 7, I just couldn't get it to work.
Here's the basic concept I was implementing: the user mouses over a link on the calendar, and that shows a little popover with detailed information. Now, that popover is actually a link being styled as a block element, so that way the entire area of the popover can easily accept mouse events. When the user's mouse leaves the calendar link that activated the popover, a timeout is set so that the popover is hidden within one second if nothing else happens. But if the user mouses over the popover, the timeout is deleted so that the popover remains visible.
I've used this technique before with great success, but for some reason it wasn't working this time. After a little testing, I figured out that the function being called by the popover wasn't receiving any reference to the popover element, which didn't make any sense, because it was receiving the reference in Firefox. After some more debugging, I discovered that the function was receiving a reference to the element initiating the mouseover event, but the problem was that the element was a span inside the link, instead of the link itself.
That made me remember research I had done a while ago on event bubbling, so I began that research anew, and came across a great article on understanding event bubbling called Event Order at Quirksmode.org. So, it turns out that since I had additional elements inside my popover link (which was handling the events for the popover), it is actually impossible in IE to discover which element was supposed to be controlling the event. Wow, that's really disturbing…why would Microsoft make an oversight like that?
So I ended up using jQuery, which is pretty cool. I had never used it before (and it has its own issues), but it did make my script shorter and somehow has its own workarounds to the IE event bubbling issue.
Event Bubbling Resources I've found useful:
Oct 1
Ok, so I'm doing the printable version of a webpage layout for a client. The "tarket" is older middle-aged men and this particular page is printed a lot. I started with the assumption that browsers print by default at 72 ppi unless "shrink to fit" is turned on, which is a logical assumption considering how large browsers typically print things. But then I got to thinking, "is that a valid assumption? It's been a long time since I've measured it…"
So I do some print preview screen captures in Firefox 3 and IE 7, and am plesantly surprised that they both print at higher resolutions than I thought. Unfortunately, they don't both print at the same resolution. I also tested in Firefox 3 on Mac OS X, and it's different than either Windows browser.
IE 7 seems to print at 96 ppi, which is pretty logical, but Firefox 3 only prints at 91.5 ppi…? What's that about? Mac Firefox was higher than both, but I didn't bother measuring it since I only cared if it was lower. The other bizarre thing is the default margins. They tend to be larger than I expected, around 0.6-0.8 inches on the left and right, leaving a lot less printable area than I thought based on my first screen captures.
So the result: the optimal printable width seems to be 660 pixels wide, since the lowest resolution browser (Firefox 3) seems to print 664 pixels total, but I just rounded it down. Now, most of the time this doesn't matter since a lot of people just use "shrink to fit" all of the time. But if you have a page that just has to be guaranteed to print correctly, aim for 660 pixels or narrower and you'll be golden.