Muttrox - Muttroxia

Security Questions

Good security questions are not as easy to make as you might think. Many of them are terrible. Asking for your mother’s maiden name or the last 4 digits of your social security number doesn’t help at all. If someone else is impersonating you it is easy for them to find this information.

A good security question should be something that

1) Bad guys don’t know (and can’t easily find out)
2) I know

The second issue sounds obvious, but it’s a very real issue. “What is your mother’s maiden name?” can be stymied by the complexities of modern life. I have at least 3 maiden names to pick from, due to the divorces and re-marriages of my parents. Some days I can’t remember which one I picked originally.

Emigrant Direct went above and beyond the call for failing on the second issue. Look at the security questions they have.

How many of these could you answer unambiguously, and be confident that the next time you went to log in, you would give the same answer? The only one I know for sure is my Grandmother’s first name. And that’s only because one grandmother wasn’t really part of my life and the other one is awesome. (By the way, happy 101st birthday Grandma!)

What is my favorite sports team? It’s the Celtics! No, wait, it’s the Patriots. I honestly don’t have just one answer. And do I write it as “Celtics”, “Boston Celtics”, or “The Boston Celtics”? It’s a good thing I hate baseball!
How about a childhood friend. Um.. .which one? A couple of you are reading this blog right now. Let’s see, I probably meant Chris W. No… maybe Andrew B? No? Michael W? I hope it’s not Michael, I’ve been spelling his name wrong for forty years. Did I use both names, or just a first name? This one is impossible!
Who’s my favorite president? I don’t know. Clinton? Lincoln? LBJ? I read Theodore Roosevelt’s biography lately, he’s awfully incredible. Would I have used first names?
Obviously I attended more than one school as a child.

They have five mandatory questions, and not one of them is a good question! All five of them allow for ambiguity. Going zero for five is something special. That takes effort!

Emigrant does redeem themselves a little. Besides the five mandatory questions shown, you can also make a set of questions yourself. (They then ask you any two of the combined set.) These are great. For example I used, “What’s my nickname for my college roommate?” I will never forget that as long as I live, and hardly anyone else on the planet knows it. I can ask a trivia question about The Who, one that’s hard to get even via Google. Or, how old was I when I _____? Or, what did I want to name my first child? Or, what was the first name of the kid who almost drowned me at camp in the 70s? All these questions are ones that I know the answer to instantly and anyone else would have a very hard time guessing. That makes for an ideal security question. (For most people you can also use the name of their first pet. That doesn’t work for me. “Muttrox” is kind of public…)

So Emigrant Direct, I award a D. You allow free-form questions, which is excellent. But your mandatory questions are so awful that I’ve had to get my password reset both times I needed to answer these questions.

Social Security Update 2010

The 2009 data is out. If you’ve followed any of my previous posts, you’ll understand that this is the key figure, the long-term projections:

SS Projections

Due to the economic crash of the last couple years, we are turning into the bad parts of the curve. We are no longer adding to the SS surplus, we are starting to draw on it. How long can that last for? Using their scenario II (in another post I’ve shown why this is overly conservative), it lasts until 2037 or so. The Congressional Budget Office has their own calculations, and they show the fund lasting until 2043. After the fund runs out, we pay out more than we are taking in. We come up with a way to balance the books then, or make minor changes to balance the books now.

The last time we checked in, the fund was depleted in 2041. So in one year, it’s gone down four years. That is not good. However, this is nothing like bankruptcy. This is like saying your expenses have gone up and you are spending more than you make, but fortunately you have an enormous nest egg that you’ve diligently saved up. I can’t show the image here, but check out Figure 3 of the CBO report. You’ll see why there isn’t much to worry about.

So sleep well. Even with the economic disaster of the last couple years, social security is in good shape.

Links o’ Interest

What makes a fart: Hands down the most edifying interview I’ve ever read.

3 invisible….

Jim Henson’s characters breakdown

The untold story of the world’s biggest diamond heist

The underseas internet map

Bubbles Perv

An interview with history’s youngest chess champion

Drew Brees vs Olympic Archer. Guess who’s more accurate?

Dew in the morning: Wonderful pictures

Worth it

Rock on cloud

Willie Wonka reenacted by Christopher Walken and Jack Nicholson

Drought

The still face experiment

It’s the end of an era. Audience lets crowd diving Iggy Pop fall

Reincarnation

A helpful lesson on resource locking

Gods Soldiers

The life of a letter to the President

Another cover of Don’t Stop Believing. Don’t these kids know enough to know how uncool they are? No they don’t, that’s what makes it so nice to watch.

Japanese experimentation in WW II. “He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.”

This Speeding Law Sounds so Good

Georgia is proposing a law that makes it illegal to drive too slow in the left-hand lane. At first it sounds great. We’ve all been behind those people who just don’t get it. The fast lane is for going fast. Let’s go people!

However, it’s crazy as written. You can now be busted by the police for going one mile over the speed limit, or one mile under the speed limit. It’s a situation that is asking for selective enforcement, a situation where everyone is guilty all the time, and the police can ticket you at any time.

Update: The article I read had it wrong. The actual violation is for driving “a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic.” Much better!

The Four-Year Old: Clash of the Titans

Out of nowhere, the four-year old suddenly said,
“Everyone got mad at God. Then they killed him with a cross.”
“Er, right.”
“Jesus is everywhere Dad. Even the air is Jesus!”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Dad, I’m punching Jesus!”
We turned around. Sure enough he was flailing his fists around, punching Jesus.

What is the Health Care Law?

This summary is as good as any.

the things I think are most important—stuff readers may not know about, or may want to tell friends or family who don’t follow politics as closely:

— Chief among these is the idea that kids will now be able to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until they’re 26. I’ve seen this mocked in some precincts, always by people fortunate enough to have full-time employment. But with unemployment at 10 percent, clearly many people are not fortunate enough to have full-time employment. And if your son or daughter is about to graduate this spring out of high school or college right into the face of the worst labor market since the Great Depression, your family is probably going to be happy about this provision.

— This year, children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. If I were a member of congress who voted yes on reform, I’d be finding a family in my district that this will help and asking repealers why they think sick kids shouldn’t get medical treatment.

— Big increase in funding for community health centers starts more-or-less right away, which is a crucial recession-fighting measure as well as something helpful for the long run.

— Last, in 2011 the ACA provides a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the gap in prescription drug coverage. That’s a start on full closure of the “doughnut hole” over time.

There’s much more below the fold. But the point is that this kind of stuff is a news story. People want to know “what’s going to change for me and my life?” And the answers to those questions are more interesting and more important than a political story about who called whom what names and why is Eric Cantor so horrible.

Let’s start with how health insurance reform will expand and strengthen coverage:

— This year, children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. Once the new health insurance exchanges begin in the coming years, pre-existing condition discrimination will become a thing of the past for everyone.
— This year, health care plans will allow young people to remain on their parents’ insurance policy up until their 26th birthday.
— This year, insurance companies will be banned from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage. This year, restrictive annual limits on coverage will be banned for certain plans. Under health insurance reform, Americans will be ensured access to the care they need.
— This year, adults who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions will have access to affordable insurance through a temporary subsidized high-risk pool.
— In the next fiscal year, the bill increases funding for community health centers, so they can treat nearly double the number of patients over the next five years.
— This year, we’ll also establish an independent commission to advise on how best to build the health care workforce and increase the number of nurses, doctors and other professionals to meet our country’s needs. Going forward, we will provide $1.5 billion in funding to support the next generation of doctors, nurses and other primary care practitioners — on top of a $500 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Health insurance reform will also curb some of the worst insurance industry practices and strengthen consumer protections:

— This year, this bill creates a new, independent appeals process that ensures consumers in new private plans have access to an effective process to appeal decisions made by their insurer.
— This year, discrimination based on salary will be outlawed. New group health plans will be prohibited from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that discriminate in favor of higher-wage employees.
— Beginning this fiscal year, this bill provides funding to states to help establish offices of health insurance consumer assistance in order to help individuals in the process of filing complaints or appeals against insurance companies.
— Starting January 1, 2011, insurers in the individual and small group market will be required to spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Insurers in the large group market will be required to spend 85 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Any insurers who don’t meet those thresholds will be required to provide rebates to their policyholders.
— Starting in 2011, this bill helps states require insurance companies to submit justification for requested premium increases. Any company with excessive or unjustified premium increases may not be able to participate in the new health insurance exchanges.

Reform immediately begins to lower health care costs for American families and small businesses:

— This year, small businesses that choose to offer coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make employee coverage more affordable.
— This year, new private plans will be required to provide free preventive care: no co-payments and no deductibles for preventive services. And beginning January 1, 2011, Medicare will do the same.
— This year, this bill will provide help for early retirees by creating a temporary re-insurance program to help offset the costs of expensive premiums for employers and retirees age 55-64.
— This year, this bill starts to close the Medicare Part D ‘donut hole’ by providing a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the gap in prescription drug coverage. And beginning in 2011, the bill institutes a 50% discount on prescription drugs in the ‘donut hole.’

An Open Letter to Conservatives

This guy gives a good rant. A well-documented rant, even better.

Whew.

Two Poker Updates

I was in New Orleans this past weekend. I managed to get to the casino for a little under one hour, at a $1-$2 no limit table. In that 50 minutes, I made $129. My kind of outing. Most of the table wasn’t very good, they were overly aggressive. My motto is, “When they play tight, you play loose. When they play loose, you play tight.” Which I did. The two good hands I had both paid off, and I pulled off a stone cold bluff on my way out, since I had built my rep already.

Last night was not so good. I got demolished again at bar poker. You start with 1,000 in chips (And I got another 300 for ordering a meal there). In the fairly early going I had pocket 10s and raised the blinds to 100. I got two callers, and then one guy came over the top with a raise to 400. I called, the other two dropped out. The flop was K-x-x. He put in 500. I grudgingly folded. So I was already short-stacked. After that I never saw another good set of cards. We were leading into chip-up time. I was down to 520 and the blinds were going to 50-100. With a pair of 7s, I went all-in. One person called me, the girl who had four shots, with A-10. (I’m not saying it was a bad call, just annoying when someone doesn’t put any thought into it.) Two more Aces came out, and I came out to the car. Blech.
How come I can’t beat these idiots at the bar?

Still, $129 to the good over the last week.

What Does Health Care Reform Mean To You?

I don’t like the idea of this. The point of government policies isn’t always getting “mine”. The point of government is to think about the “ours”. But nevertheless, The Washington Post has a neat little calculator showing how much reform will cost you personally.

The answer is, for almost anyone reading this, absolutely nothing.

Obama’s Comments to the Democrat Caucus

I call it comments rather than a speech because the text was not prepared. It is worth reading in full. Go for it.

The end is inspirational.

And I decided finally to get involved because I realized if I wasn’t willing to step up and be true to the things I believe in, then the system wouldn’t change. Every single one of you had that same kind of moment at the beginning of your careers. Maybe it was just listening to stories in your neighborhood about what was happening to people who’d been laid off of work. Maybe it was your own family experience, somebody got sick and didn’t have health care and you said something should change.

Something inspired you to get involved, and something inspired you to be a Democrat instead of running as a Republican. Because somewhere deep in your heart you said to yourself, I believe in an America in which we don’t just look out for ourselves, that we don’t just tell people you’re on your own, that we are proud of our individualism, we are proud of our liberty, but we also have a sense of neighborliness and a sense of community — (applause) — and we are willing to look out for one another and help people who are vulnerable and help people who are down on their luck and give them a pathway to success and give them a ladder into the middle class. That’s why you decided to run. (Applause.)

And now a lot of us have been here a while and everybody here has taken their lumps and their bruises. And it turns out people have had to make compromises, and you’ve been away from families for a long time and you’ve missed special events for your kids sometimes. And maybe there have been times where you asked yourself, why did I ever get involved in politics in the first place? And maybe things can’t change after all. And when you do something courageous, it turns out sometimes you may be attacked. And sometimes the very people you thought you were trying to help may be angry at you and shout at you. And you say to yourself, maybe that thing that I started with has been lost.

But you know what? Every once in a while, every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made in all those town meetings and all those constituency breakfasts and all that traveling through the district, all those people who you looked in the eye and you said, you know what, you’re right, the system is not working for you and I’m going to make it a little bit better.

And this is one of those moments. This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself, doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service. This is why I’ve made those sacrifices. Because I believe so deeply in this country and I believe so deeply in this democracy and I’m willing to stand up even when it’s hard, even when it’s tough.

Every single one of you have made that promise not just to your constituents but to yourself. And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine. We have been debating health care for decades. It has now been debated for a year. It is in your hands. It is time to pass health care reform for America, and I am confident that you are going to do it tomorrow.