Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee Endorses Chris Murphy for U.S. Senate
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 03/22/2012 - 21:37
This evening, Congressman Chris Murphy visited the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee. It seemed as if everyone there knew him. After a little chit chat, the meeting began and Chris delivered what sounded a bit like his stump speech. I had heard him say similar things at a previous campaign event.
He spoke the need for both individual initiative and community support. He spoke about the need to raise the level of public debate. Before we moved to questions, there was a motion to endorse Congressman Murphy which was quickly seconded and unanimously passed.
After the endorsement, the town committee went on with its normal business. Laurence Grotheer was elected to be the new chair of the Democratic Town Committee. This was followed by reports from various committees. First Selectman Ed Sheehy started off talking about the extension of gas lines, adding sidewalks on Amity Road and a public hearing about the traffic problems down in the flats. There was a brief discussion about what was going on with the Country Club, with Amity High School, with pesticides on town property, with a possible gun shop next to the Amity Teen Center.
If you want to be involved in the life of a town, as well as be involved major political races, it is worth it to get involved with your party's town committee.
So Much Depends upon a Rusty Blue Trike in Baltimore
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 03/21/2012 - 20:12This morning, a friend posted a picture of William Eggleston's photograph, "Memphis (Tricycle)", asking "Is this photographic art worth $578,500?" The overwhelming response seems to be no. I took a very different view, which a co-worker summed up nicely, reflecting that the picture captured very nicely the 1970's suburban zeitgeist.
With that, I'm trying to capture some of my reactions. One thought is of William Carlos Williams famous poem, "Red Wheelbarrow" which starts off simply, "so much depends upon a…". It is a very simple poem that captures a compelling image. In Williams' case, it was a red wheelbarrow. In Eggleston's case, it was a rusty blue trike.
The tricycle is from Memphis, but it also made me think of a great song by David Glaser, "House in Baltimore".
our days fled like a passing summer storm
In that little house in Baltimore
The song, like the imagist poem and the image from the photograph beautifully captures the 1970's suburban zeitgeist.
Doing a little more research, I found an article about the auction where the photograph fetched over half a million dollars. Christie's auction of Eggleston prints nets $5.9 million.
Benefiting the trust, the rare public sale of Eggleston’s work marked the first time his photos have been sold in an oversize format. Combining some of the 72-year-old photographer’s most famed works, along with selection of lesser-known images, each was produced in 60-by-44 inch size and utilized a new color printing process allowing for high quality reproductions
There is a big difference between a rare 60-by-44 inch print and a 607x419 pixel image embedded in a Facebook page. And how much does knowing the place of the photograph in history change the perceived value? The Wikipedia article about William Eggleston provides important additional context to the place of Eggleston's work in the history of photographic art.
The discussion drifted to another dimension. Catherine asked, "Does it help you look at the way you live or see the world?" That is the interesting question to me, along with variants. I asked, "what aspects of the photograph bring it the most value?" Another person had a curious comment, "Art has nothing to deliver to recipients!". They went on to talk about the folly of asking "an 'Off-Art'-Public about the 'Worth' of Art".
I was uncomfortable with these comments. Is art only for an elite cognoscenti, and if art has nothing to deliver, does it have any purpose or value?
Yet returning to Catherine's question about helping people look at the way they live or see the world, I think Eggleston photograph, as well as Catherine's Facebook post, helps people with these issues. Perhaps this blog post, too, will cause someone to stop and think.
Digging into Empire Avenue Data.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/19/2012 - 21:12A while ago, I wrote about programs that I had created using the Empire Avenue API to extract portfolio information. Originally, I wrote about using it for my own portfolio, but you can also get limited information about other people's portfolios.
So, I started pulling down the portfolios of the people that I own stock in to do some expanded analysis. Given the limits of the Empire Ave API, I can only pull down around half a dozen large portfolios per hour. Nonetheless, I kept it running for an extended period until I had pulled down around 450 different portfolios. I then loaded the data in MySQL and started crunching some numbers.
From these 450 different portfolios, I came up with approximate 30,000 different tickers. 38 different tickers appeared in over two thirds of all the portfolios I analyzed. 134 showed up in half of the portfolios, and 360 showed up in at least a third of the portfolios. Nearly 10,000 showed up in only one portfolio.
Not surprisingly, as a general rule, the 38 tickers were highly active players that are on various leader boards. It seems as if by using this data, it should be possible to recognize people that cluster into certain groups and acts as connectors between these groups. However, I have yet to find nice ways of coming up with these groupings.
My State Legislative Agenda
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 03/18/2012 - 20:50Many of my politically inclined friends get all concerned about some bill that grabs national attention out of Washington, or out of some State when the bill is particularly noteworthy. Yet every year numerous bills get considered in state legislatures that most people never hear about. Between my work for a health center, and my wife's work for a good government organization, I end up following a lot of different bills. We've ended up getting to know many of the State Representatives and State Senators in Hartford and with that, I'm sharing some of my thoughts on various bills that are being considered.
I'll start off with one of the bigger issue bills that has already gotten a lot of coverage, SB 280 - AN ACT REVISING THE PENALTY FOR CAPITAL FELONIES. This bill would replace the death penalty with "a penalty of life imprisonment without the possibility of release for certain murders committed on or after the effective date of this act". I have been a long time opponent of the death penalty. The issue has been argued over and over, and I don't think I can add much to the debate at this point.
Then, there are various health related bills. Starting the list is 5285: AN ACT ADJUSTING COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER RATES FOR CAPITAL INVESTMENTS. I work for a community health center. I see on a daily basis the important role that community health centers play in providing health care, especially for underserved populations, as well as the financial benefit they bring to the state by helping people avoid more costly emergency room visits. The problem is that there aren't good ongoing mechanisms for funding capital improvements for community health centers. This bill would establish a mechanism, similar to one for funding capital improvements for nursing homes. It appears to be a really good bill.
Perhaps related to this is SB 405, AN ACT CONCERNING TARGETED HEALTH AREAS. This bill would "establish a Targeted Health Area program and provide economic incentives to licensed physicians and physician offices providing primary care services or needed medical specialties in such targeted health areas". I have not read this bill as closely as some of the other bills, but on first reading, this bill also seems really important. One of the issues of health care reform is that, hopefully, more people will get primary care, thus reducing the need for more costly emergency room care. Unfortunately, it is hard to get good primary care providers and this will would address that.
On the dental side of things, HB 5242, AN ACT CONCERNING DONATED DENTAL SERVICES looks like a cost effective way to help provide dental services to people that currently go without. There are some great programs for donated dental services like Give Kids a Smile Day and the Connecticut Missions of Mercy. Efforts by the state to help with these important programs can go a long way.
There is also bill AN ACT CONCERNING SERVICES PROVIDED BY DENTAL PROFESSIONALS AND CERTIFICATION FOR ADVANCED DENTAL HYGIENE PRACTITIONERS. This looks like another way to help get more dental service available in our state. I'm just starting to read up on this bill, so I don't know the details yet, but it makes a lot of sense to me. I hope to write more about this soon.
A different bill, HB 5243 AN ACT CONCERNING THE USE OF MERCURY IN DENTISTRY on first glance seems like a good idea. Nobody wants to get mercury poisoning. However, looking at it a bit more closely, this bill probably isn't as good an idea as it seems. First, the evidence that fillings made with mercury are problematic is at best, weak. I know that I have more than my share of mercury based fillings, as does the head of dentistry at our health center. Yet the bigger problem is that currently, Medicaid only pays for mercury based fillings for molars of adults. Unless Medicaid funding gets changed, this law would result in more poor adults losing teeth that otherwise could be saved. With budgets tight, I doubt we would see the funding for more expensive fillings for adults on Medicaid, and without that being addressed, this will would probably do more damage than good.
Finally, on the dental side, there is AN ACT CONCERNING SERVICES PROVIDED BY DENTAL PROFESSIONALS AND CERTIFICATION FOR ADVANCED DENTAL HYGIENE PRACTITIONERS. A similar bill was heard last year, passed committee, but was never heard on the full floor. On first reading, this also seems like a good idea. The bill last year faced opposition from dental organizations, but it appears as if there is less opposition this year. In my mind, this fits very nicely with some of the other bills described above about finding creative new ways to make sure that people can receive quality medical and dental services that they are currently not receiving. So, this looks like a good bill.
On the good government side, there are a few bills that I'm interested in. On Monday, there will be a public hearing on AN ACT CONCERNING CHANGES TO THE PUBLIC FINANCING ACT AND OTHER ELECTION LAWS. Here, I'm going off of the talking points I've seen on the bill and have not yet read the bill in its entirety. The bill has strong disclosure requirements and strong shareholder protections. These appear to be a strong, well thought out, response to Citizens United. Likewise it would strengthen coordination and disclaimer rules.
Yet on the down side, it would significantly increase various contribution limits which is not a good thing, and some of the penalties for violating the law appear to be strengthened to the point of being draconian.
A few other good government laws worth looking at include HB 5024, AN ACT CONCERNING VOTING RIGHTS. This would enact election day registration. While I've heard the concerns about laws that make it easier to vote, I believe we are better off if we find ways, including election day registration, to get more people involved in the political process.
To address possible abuses, there is bill HB 5022, AN ACT INCREASING PENALTIES FOR VOTER INTIMIDATION AND INTERFERENCE. This bill, together with HB 5024, seems like the best way to encourage voter participation and discourage voting abuses.
If I had more time, there are many many more bills I could, and probably should comment on, but this is a start, and I hope it encourages some of my readers to think more about bills that their State Legislature is considering.
What bills are you watching?
All the News that's Fit to Blog
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/17/2012 - 18:41The New York Times is well know for its tag lie, "All the News that's Fit to Print". The recent OpEd by Greg Smith was challenged o the grounds that some random disgruntled guy leaving Goldman Sachs wasn't newsworthy. However, the reaction to the OpEd seems to illustrate the newsworthiness. Clearly, it has been a highly talked about OpEd.
Others have questioned whether it made sense for Mr. Smith to have his OpEd published; talk about burning bridges, Mr. Smith nuked those bridges with some of the toxic waste at Goldman.
I was thinking about this as I sat at a concert at our local high school. The music was pretty good and Kim and Fiona were really enjoying themselves, but I was so tired and the music was so loud that it just wasn't resonating properly for me.
Should I blog about the event, and if so, what should I say? Should I talk about how good the music was, even though I wasn't particularly enjoying myself? Should I talk about not particularly enjoying the show, even though the music was good? Should I just say nothing?
I thought about all my friends into positively thinking about attracting abundance, or whatever the correct mishmashes of phrases should be. Perhaps I should just post positive things.
One of the concerns my psychotherapist friends have about online interaction is that too often it is artificially positive. People post about all the fun things going on, perhaps even exaggerating some of them, but don't talk about the other side of things, the rough days, the boring days, the sad days.
Of course, not everything that is posted online is positive. Sometimes it is an attack on someone else, someone different. The case of the Rutgers student using a webcam to try and embarrass his roommate, and the roommate ultimately committing suicide is a very sad reminder of this.
Part of the ruling was about the invasion of privacy. I think this is something bloggers, and for that matter, others in social media need to be particularly sensitive to. While it does appear that the Rutgers student crossed the line, where is the real line. When is it okay to mention what a friend has been doing? Is it okay to post about a night of heavy drinking and mention the names of those drinking with you? What about simply mentioning that you went to a restaurant, and mention the names of the friends? How about if they came over to your place? How is this further complicated if you have kids? What can you say about your kids friends?
Personally, I tend to be fairly open about what is going on in my blog posts except where there is a clear need to keep something private, but not all my friends are that way.
So, how do you determine what all the news that's fit to blog, or tweet or post on Facebook is?
