[4 Oct 2011 | No Comment | ]
Win on the loose!

In the past few weeks Wins has started to crawl. He does the foot tuck. Suddenly he is everywhere. He peeks from around the corner with a smile. He looks over his shoulder, waits to be chased, screams out, and takes off at a fast clip of about a foot every 3 seconds.

I go into the closet to get shoes and there he is, playing my pants. I put him down in the living room and see him from the window outside on the balcony, …

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Health & Fitness »

[13 Apr 2011 | 2 Comments | ]
You Shall Eat Chicken Nuggets

Sara Palin makes my skin crawl.  So my tendency is to discount anything that comes out of her mouth.  This includes her declaration of Pennsylvania being a “nanny state run amok” when the schools tried to limit sweets at classroom parties.
At the heart of the issue is who gets to choose.  What is the role of the school, and hence government, in the life of the family.  Here my libertarian bent comes out – unless there is an imminent public safety issue at stake (inclusive of my arguments about immunization …

Health & Fitness, Vaccinations »

[19 Jan 2011 | 2 Comments | ]
Tom’s Dumb Vaccine Argument

Last week I got into a heated argument with my friend Tom over vaccines.  Now, normally Tom is a very logical fellow.  But I should have been prepared for the discussion to turn ugly– vaccines being so pregnant with issues about justice, public goods, the role of the individual in society, and the role of government in our lives.  He even warned me going in about how he has soured friendship.  Hagwash I thought.  Any reasonable person could see the logic of my argument.  But nooooo.
I am going to recapitulate …

Gadgets, Stuff »

[6 Jan 2011 | 5 Comments | ]
Safety Recall

I recently called Maxi-Cosi to get their advice for getting Win into the car seat.  Just seemed too tight.  While Win has grown a lot in the past 8 weeks, now about 13 lbs, the seat is rated to like 20 lbs.  I figured there must be a way to expand the harness beyond what I could see.  They gave some advice but ultimately told me that Win could have nothing but a onesie  on as the model was relatively tight and the fit for all seats are already meant …

Health & Fitness, Vaccinations »

[23 Dec 2010 | No Comment | ]
Behavioral Economics and the Autism Debate

Recently for my day job I have been reading up on behavioral economics as it relates to banking.  In my research I stumbled upon, of all things, an article on the autism-vaccine debate.
Behavioral economics concerns itself with the cognitive biases that impact how we make decisions, particularly in ways that diverge from rational choice theory, the foundation of classical economics.
Here is an example:
Suppose I tell you that you can drive 10 minutes down the street and purchase an iPhone for $400.  However, if you drive an extra 15 minutes further, …