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Wednesday, 23 December 2009

  • arguing with the warranty mechanic

    I recently bought a used car from a dealer who was kind enough to give me a 1 month bumper to bumper warranty. Well, unfortunately for him, I actually used it.

    I gave them a list of about 7 things that were wrong with the car. Most of them were trivial things like "missing passenger seatbelt mount cover" or "power outlet isn't connected" but one of them is giving them grief and they wanted to blame me for the problem. The only two, possibly major issues were "AC does not blow cold air" and "power steering seems to turn off at severe steering angles". They didn't like the latter issue.

    Apparently the underlying problem with the power steering was that somehow the power steering system got filled with coolant, which normally goes into the AC system. Strangely the power steering was working pretty well. That also made me wonder if that is why the AC wasn't working. That maybe it had power steering fluid in it...

    Anyways, the mechanic working on the car said that his shop most definitely did not make such a horrendous mistake because they were all certified mechanics and therefore it had to be me or someone I might have loaned the car to. I never loaned out the car as I have never done that in the past and I have only owned it for three weeks. So I told him that and his response was basically that he "knew" that it didn't happen on their side so... He trailed off. I finally said "well, whatever you want to do. Just let me know how much it's going to cost before you go ahead." and that was the end of the conversation.

    After thinking about it for a while I decided to be a little more forceful. I called him back and told him that I knew I hadn't done anything to the car and that no one else had either since I had bought it. Furthermore, I explained to him that not everyone working at his company was a certified mechanic and that it could have been one of their salesman. Finally, even if that weren't the case, everyone is capable of making a mistake, no matter their credentials.

    I thought about telling him about one of my friends who was on track to getting certified as a mechanic at the local community college with a 2.5 gpa, which really didn't give me a whole lot of confidence in his certifications. I didn't want to piss him off though so instead I went with the example of my being an engineer who can still make simple mistakes and has on occasion. He mumbled something about talking to his boss and hung up.

    I'm hoping that means it's getting fixed right now and not getting billed for it :).

Sunday, 13 December 2009

Thursday, 19 November 2009

  • Isn't an unbiased news source possible?

    Every reporter, editor and witness/researcher/etc has a perspective and therefore biased but isn't there a way around that?

    In regards to dealing with bias in witnesses all that really needs to do done is for hte reporter to interview multiple witnesses and just report the information that overlaps.

    The reporter themselves will want to highlight certain pieces of information that they like, so it's up to the editor to notice this and make them fix it. That's pretty simple if the editor has a complementary political/social viewpoint to that of the reporter. It shouldn't be too hard to hire some people meeting that qualification. There's also the injection of opinion into articles and that's very easy to deal with for a good editor. I almost automatically discard information in an article that isn't backed up with the source material but I'm sure stuff gets by. A good editor won't let it get by.

    But how do we deal with the head honcho's bias. They can just refuse to print the article unless it matches their beliefs. Well, that will probably be the hardest thing to deal with. Maybe the head honcho will actually have to be a committee made up of people from varying backgrounds. There will be no "one" boss in an unbiased news organization.

    But it's impossible! There are no unbiased news sources because they can't exist!

    Maybe they don't exist because every news agency needs money and to get money they have to rely on someone or some entity that wants a certain message put out there.

    How do we deal with the inherent flaw in the news as a business model?

Monday, 16 November 2009

  • the purpose of government

    Fundamental Purpose of Government
    "The most basic purpose of government is to prevent people from encroaching on eachothers' fundamental rights." -Me

    Every once in a while I see someone state that the purpose of government is to protect us and that's it. This is usually after seeing them comment on several other posts denouncing any form of government regulation or government run social programs. I do not know if that belief about the purpose of government is the source of their anti-government stance or if it's just what they say to validate their fears. Even so they are failing to fully apply the concept of "protection".

    Protection can be both physical and psychological and it can be both internal and external. The military protects us from external physical threats and the police protect us from internal physical threats. Those are just two such physical protections. There's also the FDA, which protects us from unsafe foods, drugs, and medical implants (I'd bet not everyone knew that one). The FCC does the same thing for high tech stuff, the EPA for environmental factors, etc to infinity.

    All of government regulation serves the singular purpose of protecting us from each other and from the world around us. At what point do we have too much protection though? Probably when it no longer serves the purpose described in my own quote. We have fundamental rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to quote the founding fathers. So our air should be easily breathable because if it weren't then that would be a hindrance to pursuing happiness. We shouldn't have to walk through trash to pursue our life goals for the same reason. The EPA's purpose has now been validated twice by the fundamentals of government.

    But really this just goes to show how complex government administration is, because after all, everything in this world costs money. Government spending equates to taxes on commerce, and taxes on commerce are a hindrance to the "pursuit of happiness". It's a really complex system to say the least. Politicians and bureaucrats have to balance all of these variables and maximize their own effectiveness within the parameters given to them. I kind of doubt they actually do this though. For the most part they are probably just like the people who vote for them and guess most of the time as to what's the best course of action. It could be calculated guessing but it's still just a guess and hence why our laws are in constant fluctuation.

    Example of an EPA decision
    Are 10,000 less asthma cases a year worth one million dollars? Well, we'd need to take into account how much someone's happiness is reduced by asthma, quantify that as a dollar amount somehow and then add in the reduced productivity from that person. We should probably also take into account the cost of R&D as well as production costs in making the medication that make life livable for them. Yeesh, I would not want to work for the EPA. Then again, they probably just guess at most of this stuff since it would cost quite a bit of money to research an accurate cost per case of asthma.

    Another Purpose of Government
    Should we force people to buy health insurance? Nope, not if you agree that government has only one singular purpose and that is protection. So we can have some very severe government regulation of the marketplace but still no mandated health care coverage.

    But what if government serves multiple purposes... what if it were also formed to make us a more productive, stronger society? Well then health care coverage for all would be almost a no brainer. I say almost simply because there are some gray areas where people would have to be dropped due to not contributing to the community. That would bring up certain moral dilemas of course but morality has no place in government; I may be wrong about this but since morality is so subjective I really don't think it should play a part in decisions which affect everyone.

    Ok, that's enough ranting from me for now. I hope someone learned something. If not, at least I did.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

  • be brutally honest

    Have you ever met someone older than you, say in their 50's, who clearly has faults that wisdom should have eliminated by their age? Ever wonder why?

    I think that it's simply because no one has been brutally honest to them. No one has flat out said "your egotism drives me nuts!". As humans we are afraid to hurt people, especially our friends, but we are perfectly fine with distancing our selves from them. If we only hang out with them on occasion we can stand their faults. Are we depriving these friends of personal growth opportunities? Wouldn't it be better to cause them temporary pain rather than a life of misery?


    I have an elderly friend who's a pretty good person and very intelligent, but she has certain character faults that have guaranteed her to lose friends. She has only been married once and that was almost 20 years ago. Her sons love her but have moved far away, as if to create enough distance that they won't have to deal with her on a regular basis.

    She has been living with us for the last 10 years but things are falling apart now.

    My mom can't stand to be around her anymore because of her character flaws. My dad and I are ok with dealing with her simply because we are really laid back but even we have begun to lose our patience too. Often I'll change the subject of conversation if she gets too "me" focused. Sometimes she'll pick up on the social cues such as no one participating in the conversation or no one giving her eye contact but that's a rarity and I sense that she might be blaming us for the lack of interest in the extensive details of her life. She does often blame other people for her losing things so maybe that in itself has prevented her from learning from her mistakes: they aren't "her" mistakes.


    So, be brutally honest. It may hurt and it may damage relationships but it's the only way for real, positive change to ever occur.

locketine

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    • Name: Carl
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    • Member Since: 9/20/2008

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